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Hi all. I have some very specific mission requirements that I've toodled around with and haven't yet gotten to work. So I've decided I need some help from the forums. Right now I'm using 2 Thuds for rockets and 3 panthers for jets. My intakes are engine nacelles and a circular intake on the front of a Mk1 Inline; I don't have ram intakes yet. I'm using stock aero, not FAR (which is a first for me). Here, have a link to the craft file: https://kerbalx.com/crafts/13522/ and a picture: It needs to be able to get at least 2 passengers (preferably more, but I'll fly more missions) into orbit, rendezvous with a station in 125km x 125km (not dock), and re-enter. I'm comfortable with a bingo fuel reentry. Right now it gets into an 85km x -60km suborbital trajectory. My flight pattern involves getting up to Mach 2.5 around 15km on afterburners, then cutting over to rockets for the rest of the flight (keeping jets on until they starve out for the extra savings). I originally tried a single-core plane without the extra fuel on the front; it behaved similarly, but I had to enter a shallow dive from 10km to punch through the Mach barrier. I'm comfortable doing that, if it works, but with 3 Panthers this is just point and zoom. What modifications do I need to make to make this work? Am I flying it correctly, or is there a more efficient profile? I haven't flown SSTOs since 0.90, and I haven't flown stock SSTOs ever (I'm a FAR aficionado momentarily exiled by my potato computer). Thanks pre-emptively for your help.

Allright lads - I'm in the midst of preparing a Laythe landing (and as a consequence been preparing a Laythe landing vehicle). With time and patience I've finally managed to create an SSTO, both capable of flying into Kerbin/Laythe's atmosphere and out. Been tested so far on Kerbin - able to get into a circular orbit of around 70-80km it seems, with enough fuel to return to Kerbin (or reach the orbital vehicle/refueling station, depending on need). Here's a pic or two =) Try not to land on water - guarantees appear to be voided in that case....

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Astrojet-Citation 5 Kerbals. 2200 dv in orbit. Inline clamp o tron. Vernier engines, fly by wire hub. Able to horizontally land on Minmus and Duna. This project arose from two inspirations. The first was a design sent to me by Bewing. It still shares the basic layout , but you could say I stretched it a bit The other was a project of mine to try and achieve the best possible handling for manual control. I wanted to avoid CG shifts as fuel burns off, without relying on any fuel balancer mods and keeping draggy struts to a minimum. When running off jet engines , this is easy - just balance the number of tanks fore and aft of CG, so the centre of mass does't move. However, the NERVs, like all rocket engines do their best to mess your spaceplane up. First, they refuse to take from wing tanks, strake tanks, in fact anything radially attached and not of their own stack. Second, from all the tanks they can access, they drain the front most first before working backwards, messing with your CG. So , there is only one fuel tank on the same stack as the NERV , a mark 1 liquid fuel fuselage (400fuel), and i arranged things so the midpoint of this tank is exactly on our CG. Since this ain't enough fuel to go to orbit, I ran a fuel line to the largest available tank - the Fat 455 airplane wing (600 fuel), and arranged this to be over our CG too. After all the effort i put into balancing the plane, I at this time discovered Mechjeb. It takes a lot of the stress away and makes trying different flight profiles very repeatable. In between the physics bug that makes all aircraft, however stable, gradually roll to one side or other, and the the lack of joystick support, it is impossible to fly smoothly, hold the desired pitch angle with single degree accuracty AND make rapid pitch changes when going through sound barrier/speed run etc. Here's some video of me flying to space with Mechjeb. Having found the optimum pitch angles etc with autopilot, it should be possible to make a manually controlled flight that gets quite close to this using pitch trim adjustments - with the proviso it'd probably be better not to attempt the kind of manuvers i make around the transonic region, and just hold constant 4-6 degree pitch, using the NERV to boost us through it. The jet's party piece is horizontal landing - The pure SSTO version of this craft can reach Duna, aerocapture/brake (20km or above), land, take off to orbit, but probably not finish the burn to return to Kerbin. It has a docking port so you can refuel it in orbit of Kerbin or Duna. It is unlikely to be able to aerocapture Kerbin on the return leg, due to low heat tolerance parts. I have now developed the "Citation X", a no-holds barred version of this ship that includes Panther jet booster pods and has the ability to shed the Rapier (note, if your destination is Laythe you might want to hang on to that!).https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Astrojet-Citation-X 3700dv in kerbin orbit.

This my very overkill SSTO. Four jets, two rockets. And lots of G-forces... Here's a little montage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upiil3LCwkQ I'm currently working on an SRB-boosted one, a kind of JATO, just to get to space quicker (and hopefully make large payloads feasible). And people were saying SSTOs are dead! They're alive and well! Now I need to find pilots insane enough to fly it... JEB!!!

Hopefully you can pick up some design skills and ideas from the video! Lots of planning and testing went in to creating this and I wanted to not only share it with everyone but also teach you all how to make these kids of crafts Enjoy!

I've been trying to design a SSTO space plane to ferry crew and fuel to the small station I recently put in orbit around Kerbin. I can do it with rockets, but it just seems much more viable to me to use a reusable SSTO. I've read most of the good guides out there and I watched all the up-to-date youtube videos on the topic (More or less up to date, most of them were in version 1.0.4). Following all of the tips and instructions given to me I made a basic space plane with ~9km of DV. However, no matter what I try this thing won't get into orbit. My TWR is good, I accelerate fine, but when my jets cutoff, I don't have either the DV or the thrust to get into an orbit with more than 100 m/s of DV to spare Here are some screenshots of the craft, with kerbal engineer readout included My flight pattern is as follows Take off Immediately point to a 45 degree angle and climb O2 gets low at about 22-25 km and I switch over to rocket power Burn straight prograde 1 of 4 things happens after this. A. I run out of fuel and never make it above 40 km B. I burn up due to the extreme speeds I'm going at while still in the atmosphere C. I make it out of atmo but on a sub-orbital trajectory without enough fuel to both stabilize the orbit and then come back. D. (RARE) I make it into a stable orbit with enough fuel to come back, but not enough to perform an orbital rendezvous. No matter what flight pattern I try or what I tweak about my engines, wings, fuel, and cargo, I either can't get high enough, can't get fast enough, or just can't get up off the runway in the worst cases. If anyone should care to give me some pointers or better yet, a complete, up-to-date guide with the new heating and aerodynamics I would be very appreciative.

After review of our wildly successful VSSTO Ray, we realized that the Vertical takeoff was really holding back a magnificent airplane and trying to force it to be something that is very impractical. Our engineers went to work, Feverishly adding landing gear, removing a couple engines, putting one back, and testing several times to make sure that we provide you, our loyal customer, with the finest Single Kerbal Excursion Craft that your funds can buy. Though we spared no expense, don't think this craft will break your bank! Coming in at only 31 parts, the H-Ray costs on 43,660 funds to launch and is 100% reusable. Ask Val - you need one of these! Download this ship on KerbalX! As always, best of luck! All warranties void upon ignition. Thanks! Danny. P.S. Tried to get some better pics - go view them at full resolution! P.P.S. Did I mention that this ship will get you to a 72k LKO with more than a thousand delta-V left over (1045 on my third flight!) This is way cool!

Not sure why I created this or what I'm going to do with it, but it's been kinda fun to fly... If you know about Rapiers, at low speeds they loose thrust as you gain altitude, so it's a little tricky on takeoff, but basically, just hit T Z <SPACE>, start pitching slowly right away to get airspeed and get the wing flying. A wheel or two might actually make a nice addition, but it was just kinda fun to do it this way. I make no guarantees about landing, as I actually haven't landed this yet... But she does get on orbit with 400-500 dV to spare on the Rapiers. Some of you cool folks feel free to update this and make it even better... Danny. Tough to make it any cooler looking though... Oh hey - maybe I ought to include the .craft? https://www.dropbox.com/s/ruk0iuwhmhrrfhx/Ray.craft?dl=0

Specific impulse isn't nearly as important for SSTO designs as impulse density is...you can pretty much send the impulse density as high as you want as long as your engine T/W ratio is good enough. The Merlin 1D FT has T/W in spades, so why not build a really small SSTO powered by nothing more than a pair of Merlin 1Ds? Basic HTOL design. The pair of fixed air augmentation ducts should increase the specific impulse enough to effectively zero out gravity drag and aerodynamic drag and give the Merlin 1Ds an average specific impulse equal to the Merlin 1D vacuum specific impulse. Kerolox is fairly dense so the craft is small, but heavy at 128 tonnes in only a 22-meter-long ship. HTOL requires pretty heavy landing gear, which increases dry mass, but thanks to the small overall size the payload fraction remains close to 1:1 with a total mass to LEO of 6 tonnes. Use VTOL with lighter landing gear and the payload mass jumps, but you lose the ability to take off and land from any large runway. You want to keep that in case you use this as an antipodal hypersonic suborbital transport. Rolling takeoff is to gain airflow through the augmentation ducts, not build up speed for aerodynamic lift. Payload looks like it should be just about enough for a 7-crew ISS ferry.

This has been the bane of my existence for as long as I can remember. Rockets? No Problem. Planes? Piece of cake. But SSTO's? HOW DO THEY WORK? Getting it to fly is no big deal. I can get it into the upper atmosphere. My problems stems from the fact that I can't get to orbit. I've been using combinations of "Whiplash" and the LV-N nuclear engine. The whiplash being used to get off the ground, the nuclear engine being used to get into orbit (with the added benefit of high ISP). I can never seem to get out of the atmosphere though. Always edging JUST behind that allusive 70km mark. So I ask YOU, fellow kerbonauts: Teach me your ways!

SSTO RLV proponents often argue that once a vehicle with rapid reuse potential exists, it would create the market which would enable it to be cost-effective. Unfortunately, it's doubtful than anyone will bother to build or design such a craft unless the market for rapid small-payload LEO launch already exists. This creates a chicken and egg problem, where the market won't exist until the launch vehicle does, and the launch vehicle won't exist until the market does. It's possible, however, that a launch vehicle could be designed for a broader market, thus becoming available without requiring the rapid small-payload LEO launch market to exist first. From an economic/investment standpoint, it is much more attractive to build a vehicle which can use an existing market than it is to build a vehicle on the speculation that it will create a nonexistent market. Such a market could potentially be realized in a similar way to how we first got into space: using the same vehicles for suborbital and orbital flights. The US and the USSR both figured out that the gigantic missiles they were planning to use to lob nukes on suborbital trajectories could, when properly staged, be used to boost payloads into orbit. Many orbit-capable vehicles would make excellent hypersonic suborbital transports, suitable for transporting a large payload between any two points on Earth in an extremely short time. With a decent-sized fleet of such vehicles* servicing regular hypersonic transportation around the globe, you would have the support infrastructure necessary to service those same vehicles on orbital flights, either with reduced payloads or with a launch assist stage. The question, then: does such a market exist? Is there a need for large cargo (or, on the other hand, passenger transport) to be whipped around the world in a matter of hours, regularly? Who would pay, and what is the probable market saturation? *Skylon could potentially serve such a role, as it likely has excellent suborbital hypersonic flight capacities. It's not ideal, though, because it requires a great deal of LH2.

Good day fellow kerbalnauts! i have for you all, a challenge! please design the smallest SSTO-like-vehicle you can that conforms to the following requirements (modded or unmodded): it needs to house one(1) kerbal (perferably inline cockpit, but any cockpit or seat is fine) it needs a docking port in line with the center of mass, preferably in the back* the upper or space stage is allowed to not have airbreathing engines, as long as it can re-enter/glide down, this refers back to requirement 2, you are allowd to have a detachable plane-bit in the back, as long as it could theoretically fly or glide down. it needs to look sleek and cool!, bonus points for style! bonus points for the following: the docking port is mounted so the kerbal can actually get there via the cockpit - designing a space-addon that can attach to the back/front to take the ship further out!

Brought my Mk3 up to 1.1 spec. This design has been calibrated. Numerous testruns. Nonessential parts stripped away. http://kerbal.curseforge.com/projects/mk3-orbiter On re-entry the fuel should be moved up into the front wing sections. It carries a small amount extra liquid on re-entry should you undershoot runway..or landmass in general. I think you all might like Ion bike (ruggedized), control from the octo.

Have you ever wanted to do the Jool 5 challenge in a single stage? Flag every rock on the kerbol system in the same emission? Well now is your chance! Introducing the Arrow. With enough oomph (that's the technical term) to land on Tylo and take off again, quite literally, Eve is the limit. As in, Eve is the only place you can't take off from, not that you can't end your Grand Tour there! But hey, I'd say every other place with a solid surface is good enough, for today at least. And before I go any further, huge thanks to @TAL, whose amazing video in the SSTO thread got me started on this road. Спасибо! How do you do such things, you ask? Well, with a lot of fuel, basically. Plus, the ability to mine even more fuel, meaning you range is limited by your piloting skills, mostly. Land vertically like a rocket on some airless moon, open the cargo bay ramp, and start drilling away to your heart's content. Being RTG-powered and using a single big drill, it doesn't care about local insolation or ore concentration, given enough time, it will fill up the tanks and allow you to continue with the tour. It can take quite a bit of time, tough... It also has docking gear, though I don't really know why you would use that, other than the shielded docking port being an awesome heatshield. Still, I wanted the option of super-powerful RCS to control attitude, so why not. And regarding reentries, the wing loading is kind of... well, to put it bluntly, it has very little wings. I know it looks like a plane, but it is mostly a rocketship, if you want to glide it down you'd better make sure it's fully empty or you will find it only flies because the Vectors can give it quite the kick in the pants (and if you have some remaining fuel, make sure it's on the front of the vehicle) . For everywhere else with less than one bar of pressure, I'd say fly it like a rocket, ass first. Oh, and did I mention I packed all of the goodies into 75 parts? Yeah, it wouldn't be one of my builds if it didn't have a low and round part count. Now, onto the rest of the flight notes... they are not that many to keep in mind, unless you want to tackle the ultimate mission, the dreaded "Tylo run". Let's get on with it, bulletin style: -Of course, remember to control form the front-mounted docking port, otherwise things won't make any sense. Made a note somewhere to mention that so you know, just in case. -Make sure that your vertical landing speed is less than 4m/s on high gravity landings, too, or you risk breaking something. -You can tailstrike when taking off. I was going to solve that, but my testing team* cheerfully informed me that I should leave things as they are, since this way the takeoffs are "more fun". When there is no air for the wings to help, the use of a suitable terrain ramp is highly encouraged, BTW. -The nuke is for space, the high TWR Vectors for takeoff. That is generally true, and will serve you 90% of the time, starting with liftoff from kerbin. You always want to burn the low Isp propulsion first in order to maximize dV... -...but that is not always true. In order to make Tylo, you have to save the high TWR propulsion for last, and still have enough dV to get you to low Tylo orbit. Empty the Mk3 adapters surrounding the main fuel tank of oxidizer in that case, so you have a bit more dV on low thrust mode to get to Tylo from Bop with just enough LFO mix to make the landing. I am by no means saying that is an easy thing to do, as @PointySideUp can attest to. But it can be done! -Other fuel loads would apply to other challenging mission plans (i.e: to make it to Moho you need to load just enough oxidizer for the final landing, so you have enough dV on the nuke to get there). But those are untested, and while easier than Tylo, I can't do all the work for you guys, right? Experiment and tell me how it goes! -Kerbin takeoff, OTOH, is pretty simple and straightforward. Just get to a 45º climb ASAP, and at about 7kms of altitude start following the usual gravity turn that you would follow with any rocket of such a high TWR, aiming for a time to apoapsis somewhere under one minute. You should make it to orbit with some LFO mix left, if you circularize on the nuke, or burn the last fumes of oxidizer to make orbit. And with a fuel flow that keeps you (mostly) aerodynamically stable the whole time, too, which was not easy to accomplish! -The only tricky part in the whole flight envelope, really, is that the Vectors provide a tad too much control authority and general... exuberance, shall we call it? As it is, you can pull enough aerodynamic stress on the first pitch up maneuver to make it blow up! So please take your time and do things carefully, if you want to go to space today. ...And I can no longer think of things to say, so that must mean I am done, right? If not, you can always ask me the questions later, so have the album and DL link already! IMGUR ALBUM: DOWNLOAD: https://kerbalx.com/Rune/SSTO-Mk-LXXX-Arrow *Many kudos to my testing crew for this project, @castille7 and @PointySideUp, for helping me put this thing through its paces. I myself would have never have found the time to properly test it, so if you see it here now it is thanks to them, give them a like somewhere on my behalf. I have LS installed, so I can't do it there and would have to make another install, which is a big bother and has killed many projects before. Besides having a ton of fun during the last couple weeks, we came up with more ideas that you will see elsewhere soon™! Rune. I have been know to be a tad too verbose at times...

I was building a Battlestar Galactica Viper fighter the other day and was wondering if I could make it so that it could get to orbit from the runway. After many tweaks (adding more oxidiser), it finally did, and now I am challenging you to do the same. Build a replica of a fictional starcraft and fly it to orbit. Rules: Must be stock. No Mechjeb either, because you have to fly whatever you create. No alt+f12 cheats or HyperEdit It must at least resemble (doesn't have to be perfect; mine isn't) a starship from a fictional series. Link to an image if you can. Part clipping is allowed to help it look like...whatever it should look like. Note: If there is another challenge like this out there, I didn't see it. Also, if this is popular I will make a badge for this challenge. My submission:

I posted my interplanetary ship a while ago, now here is the (almost) complete chronicle of the mission to build it.

Hello! I spent some time making an SSTO VTOL with some mods and made a music video of it rescuing a capsule from Laythe. This is part 3 of the Laythe trilogy but it can be viewed separately. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wzOJlYOok

I finally managed to get 100 ton to orbit using an SSTO. As you can see I only used rocket engines making it so much easier to "fly". Download

You ever wonder, "Gee, why don't we have SSTO's IRL?" Well, here's my challenge to you. Install RSS, and any other mods you choose. (No cheaty ones) Make an SSTO. Fly said SSTO. Post pics or video here. Best of luck, the best submission will get featured on my YouTube channel.

Hello, this is my first thread in the ksp forums, but ive been lurking a while. So ive been reading and reading, and whenever the subject of ssto, cheap reuseable lifters or promising new space craft is discussed, skylon hardly gets mentioned. If it does it gets dismissed. why? The last i heard it was showing a lot of promise as a cheap, short turn around, fully reuseable moderate load lifter. Did i miss a press release or something?

If you aren't familiar with the Chrysler SERV concept, check it out. Quite possibly the most innovative of the proposed Shuttle concepts, though it was never seriously considered. The military need for crossrange maneuvering during abort-once-around polar orbit launches, coupled with a lack of reliably restartable rocket engines, led to them adding dozens of jet engines to the design...which really doomed it. But with the air augmentation of a ducted rocket design, inner side-mounted deeply throttleable linear engines, and an overall ballistic re-entry profile, this could be promising. The crew-carrying variant would be mated at the top to a Dragon V2 capsule, while the cargo variant would hold an internal payload ducting would allow for weight-free afterburn injection to increase launch thrust for larger payloads with an extended upper fairing: The ducts at the top would allow maximum airflow and thrust augmentation without adding significant drag: The lower base would have a passive heat shield, dissipating heat both around the body and up through the heat-resistant ducting. The linear engines are positioned in such a way as to make maximal use of the atmosphere, from aerospike effect and thrust augmentation all the way up into vacuum operation, without needing to use any moveable flaps or panels: Downstream injectors (not shown) allow for added thrust at takeoff, using a denser fuel (yes, I favor hydrazine) to combust with the existing exhaust stream and the airflow. This would be used when the extended fairing holds a heavier payload and requires additional thrust. Although this requires a greater weight of fuel, thrust augmentation would be significant enough to increase the T/W overall and keep the total dV constant. Due to the possibility of afterburn-style thrust augmentation, this vehicle can have its thrust increased dramatically at the cost of reduced delta-v, making it a fantastic super-heavy lift first stage. After reaching orbit and ejecting payload, re-entry would take place using the base heat shield, landing on a hover at the launch pad with the throttleable main engines. In no case would re-entry be manned, as the capsule would re-enter separately. Since orbit would be achieved on virtually all missions (with the exception of super-heavy lift scenarios as noted above), this wouldn't have the SpaceX downrange problem or need to land on a barge; it could just abort once around and come back to the launch pad every time.

I built a small and simple spaceplane. Flies like a breeze, and it functions as a proper SSTO. I parked it in a circular orbit at an altitude of 100 km. I did a de-orbit burn and then things started to go south. In short, I burned like a crisp. The question, how should I de-orbit to avoid this? My mk1 cockpit exploded due to overheating at 35 km (speed= 2070 km/h).

I made a very simple SSTO. Wings, fuel tank(with some LQ fuel emptied), air intake in the front, and the RAPIER engine. So I take off and start maneuvering my SSTO into a 70 degree approach. All of a sudden, my SSTO starts to loose speed. I check the air resistance, and its pretty normal. I tried everything! Other engines other wings. Nothing works! I'm getting frustrated

Its big and pointy!