O-Doc

If you want some decent range you're going to want to carry some nukes. Most of my designs are now NERVA equipped so that they are useful once in orbit. Here's another Minmus capable Mk3 flyer to demonstate that it is quite possible.

Sorry, there's basically no meta reason to use spaceplane parts. But, I won't play the game without them. Flyers gonna fly.

It's back. Voted by you as the best pre-beta SSTO, the Robin makes it's spectacular return. The formula one of the Kerbin skies now boasts increased range and operational capability while losing none of it's signature maneuverability, with perfectly balanced aero for maximum performance and SAS-free flying. This unique design achieves a ridiculous low-G turning circle with high yaw-assisted, roll rates. Orbit is a breeze with enough dV at LKO to grab Mun or Minmus for transfers and refueling. This is definitely a craft all spaceplane fans should have in their hanger. Download the Robin MkII

Problem identified.

Well, if we're showing off our spacedozers, here's mine. Sloppy piloting and navigation still gets her to Minmus, from there you can get to any planetoid or moon and haul a serious amount of fuel up to your orbital silo. This one's still going through trials and will enter production in the not too distant future.

. That's because your center of drag is above your center of thrust so when you fly out of thicker atmosphere your vertical control surfaces lose grip on the air to the point where you flip. You definitely need more control surfaces and probably an angled wing or two underneath the craft to balance out your drag profile. The other option is angled tail fins that are rotated inwards to help lift up the back end of your craft.

Good question. From what I've seen on the forums my specialist heavy lifter is more fuel efficient than most. I know Rune gets slightly better payload fractions with an approach similar to yours. But, my high TWR planes are cheaper to operate and take far less time to suborbit. I'm over 30% payload fraction and over 50% fuel at LKO.

Larger vertical stabilizers required at the back. I'd also not use angled tailfins, or at the very least, make them roll only control surfaces.

You should put on all your vertical velocity in lower atmo(always use the entire runway) and as you get up to speed, point directly into your prograde which should sit just below ten degrees above the horizon. You want the least amount of drag possible so keep pointing into prograde all the way into space. High TWR is important and your craft should want to go into trans-sonic at low altitudes which you can wash off with higher and higher AoA below 8km. I've found the most efficient crafts have a high enough TWR for me to have to wrestle the prograde down to the horizon as I go trans-sonic. There's definitely a fine line you have to dance between maximising speed and spontaneously combusting at around 12km. - - - Updated - - - Yeah, sorry. I meant 7-8 degrees above the horizon.

In 1.0.4, at about 8km you want to be at about 400m/s and around 7-8 degrees AoA(pushing through the sound barrier at about 6km). Keep that AoA for maximum results. Assuming you don't have junk on your flier that drags and splodes, you will reach almost 1.7km/s on open cycle. All my SSTOs got over a 5% payload fraction increase on the patch but, I had to drop in around 25% extra atmo fuel.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm still tweaking the fuel load with this on, trying to wring the most out of it. The payload has fallen to 23% but, it's a better plane for it. It sits on the runway at 172T with a 40T payload. However, I'm now getting to a 75km orbit with 5T of LF and 4T of O. That's the front tank at full LF and about two thirds O to spare. If you include say, eight of those tons of ranging fuel as payload then, you're looking at around 28% fraction. I think TWR is important but, minimising drag is the key. The Gemini has only 4 control surfaces, placed in positions of low drag. That and the ascent style make all the difference. Have a bash, it basically dictates your ascent so it makes for a good trainer in the new aero. Here's the basic ascent profile. 1. Full throttle and keep pulling back on the stick till you're at 12km 2. Nose into your apoapsis till around 700m/s velocity 3. Pull back until you are around 15km and then nose straight into apoapsis again 4. As soon as your speed starts to slow close cycle and pull back 5. Raise your apoapsis to 10 degrees and nose straight into it for the last time 6. Cut throttle when your apogee is at 100km and coast for injection De-orbit is simple. Pump all remaining fuel to the front, point directly into apoapsis and turn on the brakes. To land pump fuel to the rear and toggle on pitch control on the top airbrake. Download Gemini

I've messed around with turbo/rapier builds. It's all a bit frustrating getting through the sound barrier which can double your effective flight time(out of warp). My Gemini below will pull up a big red plus mono tank with a payload fraction of less than 25%. I won't include cross ranging fuel as payload fraction because, design. If I was to go about improving ascent efficiency then I'd go for a mid-wing design with less intakes, that would improve balance and reduce drag. However, rear wing designs are great for re-entry. Here's the typical switch-over point. And here's a nominal orbit result. With a mid wing design for drag reduction I think you can switch over at around 1460m/s at a height of 28km. That's pure speculation though.

You've got two basic problems. One, too much fuel. And two, you're craft isn't balanced which creates control surface drag. You need to be able to fly level with SAS turned off or have very small control surfaces. I like to rotate my v-tail fins to get some downforce at the back.

Here's what I've been working on. It's the lawn dart style SSTO which I'll use for all my refueling needs. It's not a station builder, that will be the next project. The standard orbital silo gives a payload fraction of 25%. It's a great flyer, ultra low drag and very hard to heat up. Re-entry is dead easy, point directly into the prograde marker and turn on the brakes.

I just found out last week KSP hit 1.0. WO0T! I'm very happy with the final features, especially the love Squad gave to us spaceplane junkies. Here's what I spent my Saturday on. I did alot of experiments with the new parts and aero. Looks like lawn darts with pre-coolers should comfortably take 20% payload fraction to orbit. This one above is the result of getting a great sea-level flyer to be a useful SSTO. It takes half a ton payload to orbit and the nuke gives it some excellent interplanetary reach if refueled at LKO. I'm not sure about what you guys are doing but, I'm finding the best ascent profile is on rapiers with between 1.25-1.5 TWR at sea level, punch off the end of the runway and dial in 45 degrees, only lowering your nose with apoapsis drop as your speed increases into the sweet zone where your rapers push over 300kN. I fire rockets with a short angry burst when rapiers die at about 60kN and nose to 20 degrees to punch a 75km suborbital apogee. As per usual, I think the main trick is getting your spaceplane perfectly balanced for SAS-free flying so your control surfaces don't drag on the way up RIP in peace turbojet!

I've played about 8hrs of KSP since 0.25. It's mostly the art stuff that's killing my enjoyment of the game(Porkjet's wings being the worse offense). Squad needs to have a serious internal conversation about the art direction of the game because at the moment it's just a mishmash of dialogues, geometries and textures. I'm talking about art direction, not graphic design. No attempt has been made to reconcile the models with their manufacturers and descriptions. For those who hate on the barn, where does Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co. fit into the high tech world of KSP? I know the barn graphic design, to put it politely, was a little rushed. But, where is the story of a space center built from humble beginnings to an interplanetary launch facility? Composition is the key word. The current attempt for beta tier one looks like a placeholder for the future, final tier KSC. That's far from organic.

Not even close to an argument there Kyten. You can of course show where the research team turned around and said "Yup, we expected that. We did the math you know." They didn't get the results they expected and fobbed it off as the comet being made of a fine dust. How does a comet, supposedly made of ice have a consistency of talcum powder? How did it not completely fly apart on impact if that's the case?

On any other forum I regular I would use slightly different language to respond to this post. Instead, let's all enjoy a quote from one of the greatest minds of the 20th century: It's up to you to decide whether or not your attitude is going to serve, or has served, your productive capacities.

Do you mean like ? Rosetta/Philae, same orbit, same charge differential.

I agree. Clearly what we are seeing in this picture is rotten ice.

This is the thing I fear. Squad centering their gameplay around a broken mechanic. Almost all of my rockets blow up the launchpad and all of my medium to heavy lifter SSTOs blow up the runway. To be fair, I turned off destructible buildings after only a small amount of testing. It's hard to say whether Squad means to have this in the game or not but, if this persists then the whole section of gameplay based around broken runways and launchpads will be ignored by me. In terms of testing, I don't think QA wasn't aggressive enough to go back to Squad with a big WTF?!? Sal, can we get that part of the screengrab that shows the beginning of the runway exploded? Hence the reason why you took off from the lawn. Edit: Can we also see a screenshot after you've landed?

I've decided to hold off on modding KSP until we get closer to release. I'm not even playing the game at the moment given the aftermath of 0.25 which meant I'm forced to go for a modded install and my "required" mods are not playing nice with each other. So, there's too many things in flux t the moment to be giving any real attention to KSP. I am planning on doing this and a Kerbal Racng Chapmionship mod once we move towards beta and I get interest back. Let's see what the developers come up with first.

To be honest, I really don't think SQUAD has a clue what they're doing beyond sending rockets into space as a game, as evidenced by they haphazard way they have implemented career/contracts and then turned around and said, "OK guys, the game's basically done. Enjoy" They've indicated an endgame but that revolves around cliched gameplay mechanics like developing characters(Kerbals + buildings). There's no endgame there other than the style of tech-tree completion we've already got. If no-one beats me to it I'll be doing my own endgame mod "Kerbal Origins". The short description is that it's a massive procedurally generated(random) easer egg hunt to find alien artifacts that explain the mystery the origin of the Kerbal race. This kills two birds with one stone because it provides meaningful goals above career mode so it can be seemlessly integrated into core gameplay, as well as, providing the much needed storyline without having to throw in cheesey cut scenes or characters. The mod will require scansat, life support and remote tech to play. The basic idea is that you have to establish an orbital station/satellite network to find all potential planet anomalies and then send and expeditionary landing party to to take readings of each one. Next you have to establish a small surface base to run scientific tests to confirm the artifact's location. Once that's done you need to send in the mining equipment to dig it up and transport it back to KSC to run tests on it to uncover it's secrets and find out the planetary body on which the next one is located. You would have a mechanic to "activate" your artifact in the KSC lab so that the next one can actually be found. This can all be done as a special career mission without having to build a whole bunch of coding architecture. It seems pretty simple to do and presents the advantage of forcing players to master each planetary body as they play through the game. Because the artifact locations are procedurally applied at the start of a new game, every play through is different.

This is not a bug, it's broken gameplay mechanic that artificially limits the size of spaceplanes you can launch and land. It is guaranteed that no testing was done on this mechanic. If there was then, why no life support, deadly re-entry and other realism focused features in KSP? But wait, we should limit the size of your spaceplanes for... you know ...realism. I don't think so, devs were having a brainfart when they thought destructible runways and launchpads would be fun.

FAR, DRE, Procedural Dynamics, Procedural Tanks, Procedural Fairings, Tweakscale, Raster Prop Monitor, Hull Camera, Remote Tech. These all absolutely should be stock. Without these mods KSP is a tiny fraction of the game experience.