Dispatcher

Evil so Singularly Personified:

Richard Strauss: Mason Williams (huh? Sure.)

Also an interesting craft. I'm so habitual in terms of symmetry of design that I never would have thought of it. - - - Updated - - - Nice design. Keep up with your goals on this. I'm sure a vertical launch design will be more effective.

I think you should replace the multiple control surfaces with just lifting surfaces (but keep one set of control surfaces). I don't think your tail fin needs any control surfaces. Its hard to tell what there is on the ventral side of the plane, but you might not have enough air intakes relative to the jets. No way to see landing gear placement. Is that a cargo bay behind the cockpit? If so, I'm guessing the payload is somewhat massive. Good luck!

Really nice work, PK! For non-Rapier SSTOs (planes or otherwise) I've had the most success with a turbojet/ aerospike combination. You may also need to experiment with the type/ quantities of air intakes. The ram scoop takes in a lot and the shock cone seems to reduce drag. One of my favorite "should have been" spacecraft is the Pan Am Space Clipper. With or without the closed wing, it would be cool!

panzer1b, I even have my doubts about a 1-way mission being attained with your target parameters. At least with my skills it would not likely happen. I do think its cool that you are trying, though. I'm in the multistage camp when it comes to interplanetary missions (and back). But I also am a fan of SSTO planes, the true definition given by the acronym. As I wrote earlier; let us know what you achieve and post those pics or videos!

I hear you. BTW, I wasn't sure what you meant by SSTO since that does not have to be a spaceplane, so my reply was based on a general approach. If you follow the link in my sig line to my engine test results graph (not the old chart), you'll see the practical mass I was able to lift with a single stacking engine or 3 and 2 radials. The test was using 40% "wet" mass, but I think its scalable up or down in a crude way, and multiple/ mixed engines add thrust (and mass). As you know, there are those pesky trade off's between thrust and iSP/ efficiency. Oh, outside of Rapier use, the best SSTOs (spaceplane or not) I've made used a turbojet/ aerospike combination. Of course for reasonable mission times and fuel use, I've relied solely on LV-Ns for orbit to orbit flights in the past. I've not yet experimented with translunar/ interplanetary flights using the Nuke since before v. 1.0.

Interestingly, and probably due to the design, I can alter the dV of a craft by placing fuel lines on the craft, even when all parts are cross-feedable. Usually this is detrimental as far as the dV is concerned, but sometimes it allows multiple engines or mixed engines to have full access to the shared fuel/ oxidizer throughout the flight; when otherwise it doesn't always seem so.

That's quite a challenge. Part of your strategy ought to be including enough air intakes to allow you to achieve low orbital apoapsis before jets flame out or Rapier is switched to vacuum mode. Ideally your rocket engine(s) will not be engaged until your air breather(s) run out of air; if you are not using the Rapier. I think your design should incorporate chutes/ aerobrakes to land your craft without using (much) fuel; at both Laythe and Kerbin. Any chutes will need to be repacked at Laythe. If you plan on resource extraction at Laythe, the equipment is gonna impose a mass penalty in itself. Good luck and we want to see pics if you succeed.

You've Got Me in a Vendetta Kind of Mood:

Cool! Mine is eight years old but I've maxed out the RAM to a whopping 4 GB. Hey, I doubled it recently by replacing the two 1 GB sticks with two 2 GB sticks.

Yes, I find the 55 especially useful for landers and in tandem with other engines. For performance as a rocket trio or plane pair, see my engine test graph (not the old chart) in my sig line. You may find that they fill the gap between the Skipper and the LVT series in terms of mass lifting and altitude reach. The 55 can be seen to be to be capable for early stage in early career or intermediate stage later.

Space is big. Aliens might be ... alien. They don't want our water. They might find Saturn or Jupiter far more homelike than Earth. Earth-like worlds might be a low priority to them. As for our world and its life being a colony of an ancient advanced space faring civilization and its life (certainly not closely affiliated to the gas giant crowd); Uplift science fiction on one hand and world religions on the other hand share elements with that concept.

One of these:

Well, this; Nike - Hercules: ... and this:

Nice work, Kaboom!

Lately I've been making more spaceplanes. This one looks ugly but it works, even with bad piloting skills. I call it the Torchship. If you duplicate it and fly it, you'll understand why. I had intended to leave it at that and do a better design, but I decided to bring it home instead. I overshot the KSC out of control, turned, got control, ran out of fuel and landed with help via RCS. Here is a view showing the plane location in relation to KSC. Look for the part status bar in the center of the image. I had flown over the hills between the sea and the landing site.

We have limited senses, intellect, experiences, cultural duration and biological history, as a species and for life on earth in general. Thus, our conclusions are limited to those confines. So in this context, many things are "possible", even if they seem improbable. My opinion is that its best to claim that something is possible rather than not, until we have irrefutable proof otherwise. That goes for this question, and probably most reasonable questions of any type.

No pics; Safari

Now those are cool! Thanks for pointing them out.

Had the same thing, only it was in a pizza parlor.

Wow; makes me want a "steampunk" mod for KSP.

The shwah is silent.

Now that's what I'm talking about. I like how the wingtips are swept up. How does it handle?

I was under the weather today and so sitting around, I made a spaceplane of sorts: As you can see, it's really a rocket lofted to 10K by jetted wings. Definitely not an SSTO.