Andrakon

My first poor attempt at an SSTO just jumped right into orbit!

Thanks so much for this! I love having more small parts! I tend to make a lot of probes and I love to make my ships as small as I can. This is great! One thing I would like to have is a few really small wings. Those are so hard to find.

Hey peeps! I started a Let's Play with Realistic Progression Lite a little while ago and I thought you may want to see it! Sometimes I do videos of it and sometimes I do youtube live streaming. Here is the playlist: However here is a special hilarious episode about a very unfortunately shaped space ship: This may be using a slightly older version of Realistic Progression Lite and I am not using quite all of the recommended mods, nor am I using a realistic sized solar system. However it is still quite good of a tech tree and has been very fun! https://www.youtube.com/user/BadashGames

Hey pretty good! It looks quite capable! I noticed the little battery on top of the docking port. I had no idea you could put something there and the dock would still work. And I see how the 1 center engine could be a big help, if you turn off all the rest at really high altitudes. Neat choice of landing gear, is all gear weightless in flight or just those ones? Thanks for sharing! I love to see other peoples designes!

Sweet! I would love to see it! Please share!

Yep, Orthogonal struts are definitely used. There are 8 Mk2 to size 1 Adapters that are definitely clipping over eachother. Also the Rockomax 48-7s's are attached to the bottom of those and the jets are on struts too. The previous version of this I built with out clipping except the air intake stacks but it turned out to be way less capable, probably should have put an atomic rocket motor on it. VTOL Heavy Lifter V I usually try to build without much clipping but a good VTOL is pretty hard to make without it. Also it seems to be pretty common especially in VTOL design.

Would you consider my VTOL Launch vehicle? The Black Night III It can get up to a 42 ton payload into 100x100 and all in a single stage!

It is fun to fly with smaller payloads. Added a subassembly download. Just chuck it into your subassembly folder! Have fun!

VTOL carrying a 42 Ton payload to LKO. Quite a few experimental ships lead up to this and its the best thing I have ever built! Full thread HERE

Do you even lift? The Black Night III certainly does! With a max payload of 42 Tons it can get your fuel or station parts to LKO with loads of fuel to spare! The Black Night III has 8 Turbojet Engines with 64 Ram Air Intakes and 6 circular air intakes, 1 LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor for orbit and maneuvers and 8 Rockomax 48-7s's for emergency maneuvers. I know what your asking. How can anything get to orbit without a serious amount of rocket thrust? SUPER SPEED! It can easily achieve 2300ms and a altitude of 100km on Turbojets alone! Once above 70km use the LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor to circularize the orbit and do orbital maneuvers. You don't even need the 8 Rockomax 48-7s's in most cases. I've only used them once when I was about to hit a station and had to stop ASAP! The Black Night III also has landing gear, 8 Radial Mount parachutes, and 2 Drogue chutes to make landing easy! Just lower the landing gear, hit the 0 (zero) button around 2,500 meters, turn off the sas and it should land in one piece, usually. Note: with payloads above 36 Tons you may want to add wings and an extra set of reaction wheels to your payload. This makes flying a lot easier! Downloads: Craft file: Download Subassembly: Download Action Groups: 1: Toggle Jets 1-4 2: Toggle Jets 5-8 3: Toggle All Air Intakes 4: Toggle all 8 Rockomax 48-7s's (small rockets) 5: Toggle LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor 0: Deploy Chutes Flight Directions: Enable SAS immediately Activate all jets (hit 1 and 2) Go straight up until 12,000m Tilt to 45 degrees At 18,000m to 20,000m try to almost completely level off and pick up speed you are aiming for 1800m/s+ At around 30,000m you will have to throttle down when the engines start to burn out. If you are carrying a heavy payload, burnouts will not tilt you much. (below 0.20 air intake in the resources bar) By 40,000m you may want to cut jets 5-8 and turn up the throttle on the remaining jets. Air for around 2300m/s soon. By 50,000m, 2300m/s+ and 0.1 air intake left you should be at the lowest throttle that is not completely off. Toggle off jets 1-4 (press 1 button), turn off air intakes (press 3), turn on the LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor (press 5) and throttle up all the way. You should have no problem getting to LKO from there and circularizing your orbit. You may have to practice, with payloads smaller than 36t it is very easy to accidently fly above 30,000m and not have enough speed built up to reach a proper orbit, just let the Black night drop down to near 25,000m, level off and try to get a high speed before going much higher. (Fine Print: No cheats were used in the construction, not even part clipping. No mods were used to make anything any easier either.)