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So a lot of the time I see someone playing ksp using nerv and the plumes are red what makes this?

After few days experimenting with mining spaceplanes, i've found this is not really suits my needs. 200t+ spaceplane with VTOL engines blocks that able to carry convert-o-tron 250 and few Nerv engines is too bulky and have not really good delta-v (so, requires refuelling at orbit with other ships often) with very slow acceleration rate and quite hard to operate. So, i've decided to switch to copter-style ships. Build simple one with 16x nerv engines (in 8x blocks with two engines), 28t Mk3 liquid tank, 14.57 Mk3-2.5m adapter with LF+OX, 4.57t Mk3 monopropellant tank, some Mk1 LF tanks, two large drills (one at top - for asteroids mining and one at bottom - for planets harvesting) 2700 ore capacity (had few contracts for mining and hauling ore around), RCS, grab unit, Sr docking port and full set of scientific stuff with 3 kerbals crew capacity (one engineer and two scientists in mobile lab). Also features many lamps to mine at dark places (well, wasn't really good idea as it kills my videocard at places like Duna when turned on, i guess because it tries to calculate atmosphere's light paths). The ship is quite self-sufficient, 5000+ delta-v with quite good push (so, less boring time while accelerating), able to land and take off Duna and smaller bodies, has ability to refuel other small ships on orbits. Because large ore tanks - it is able to get large bonus delta-v (about 20%, so it will have 6000+ dv!) as you can start from small bodies full of ore and convert it is to the fuel after taking off and finishing first maneuvers. Cost is about 1 million (with first two stages to get on orbit, could save a bit if have used vtol-landing stage but was a bit lazy to build such large pusher). Contains only stock stuff, except mechjeb (can be removed, of course). Launched the ship to 200km orbit, headed to Minmus to complete "get ore from Minmus to Kerbin's orbit" contract, flew to the Ike and brought 2700 ore to the Duna's surface (had 1.7mil contract on this), made atmosphere fly with copter-style flying to get closer to old Duna base, picked experienced crew there and went back to Ike (to finish "make EVA on Ike's orbit). At launch pad To 200km orbit Final separation at orbit Heading to the Minmus Landing at Ike Mining at Ike Hauling ore to Duna Landing at Duna Picking up crew at Duna Ugh, forgot to install ladders... Well, EVA jetpacks were enough... ...But a bit tricky Taking off from Duna

So , my most recent creation was based off @lodger 's Xkos. https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/ASES-SP2-Xkos-Dual-Nukes It weighs about 30 tons, and it's a 3 holer. My rule of thumb is that you want one Rapier or Whiplash for every 30 tons and 60kn Closed cycle power for every 15 tons mass (if nuclear) or every 10 tons mass (if chemical). So, it's got about the right amount of jet engine power by my book. In rocket mode, we have an embarrassment of riches. With 120kn nuke power in a 30 ton ship, that is sufficient by itself. But it also has a Rapier producing 180kn in closed cycle mode. On it's own , that would also be sufficient. With both, it's already in LKO before I manage to burn all the Ox off. If I continue to run the nukes till our LF is gone, our PE ends up halfway out to Dres. It's carrying 2 tons of Rapier, 6 tons of NERV, 11.4 tons of LF and 2 tons of Oxidizer. I'm wondering what's going to work best here - 1. Fly it with full tanks as i have done so far. 2. Leave the oxidizer tanks empty, because we're wasting LF burning it at 305ISP in a Rapier when we could be feeding it into a nuke for 800ISP 3. Use configurable containers mod to swap the adapters to hold all LF and no ox, and don't use the Rapier's closed cycle mode 4. Drop down to a single nuke, saving 3 tons, and bring enough oxidizer to get us through the roughest part of the ascent (1 ton may be enough?). Now, how do you fit one rapier and one nuke to a ship that size and not have horrendous off-axis thrust probs?

Hi all, I've conceived a medium SSTO this morning based on an aircraft I really like, it is absolutely inefficient but should be able to reach a 200x200 km orbit. It's only about the look. My main problem is due to personnal choice, appearance and aerodynamic reasons I tried to place 4 Whiplash and 4 Nerv in tandem but the Whiplash explode due to overheating each time. When I'm making ground test on the runway I can run the Nerv at full power with just the ramjets overheating just a bit, but when I'm reaching 15-16 km of altitude and ignitiate the Nerv all ramjets explode istantly due to overheating. I've tried to shut down the Whiplash first, back the throttle to idle then ignitiate the Nerv and spool them up slowly but the result is still the same. I have place two large radiator on the engines section to see if it would make a difference, same result : Ka-boom! I remember seeing some SSTO concepts here and on KerbalX where peoples succeed to built those tandem Nerv-Whiplash engines, even calling them something like "Next Generation Propulsion" or "Nuclear Turbo-ramjet" but I can't find them in the database. Could you help me by explaining how you build them ?

Just looking for some engineering input here- I'm thinking of making a MM config that would add TWR to the Nerv (and maybe the ion engine) while keeping the in game balance of it. So, if one has a 30 minute burn with the Nerv, can we reduce it to 3 minutes while keeping the same amount of dV used? I'd only want to change the vacuum settings just to keep transfer burns shorter. Again, not a stock game request, just looking to tweak my own experience and perhaps free up time in other players lives as well

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.