Any idea how to lift this in the air?

[LordFjord]

What's in the cargo bay? (one benchmark orange tank I guess?)

Also, are all the fuel tanks full? Cause that's an awful lot of fuel your plane can carry. You can probably empty some of those and save half the weight of that bird.

Otherwise I'll go with the flow: more boosters, 6 jets for 200 tons is surely not enough. I don't play with FAR but it would not feel right.

[Othuyeg]

To be quite honest, I think your TWR is rather low.

[WhiteKnuckle]

Cicatrix, at a glance I'd say you have far too much wing and far too little thrust.

This is the orange tanker I'm working on at the moment:

I can't recall the weight at the moment, but I think it's somewhere around 100 tons. And to lift that it's got 4 Turbojets, 6 Rapiers, 2 nukes, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Another thought, are you letting the jet engines spool up completly before you release the brakes?

[eddiew]

IMHO you've not got enough engines for an MK3 plane of that size... My own MK3 plane has 4 turbojets and 8 rapiers:

What's your TWR on the runway? Anything less than 0.7 and you won't enjoy the slog to rocket altitude. Anything less than 0.5 and I'd turn around and go back to the SPH

You also have a LOT of wing area... you're probably suffering due to excess drag which is seriously complicating the lack of thrust...

I recommend B9 Procedural Wings in order to keep your part count down and take the pain out of tweaking your wing area and control surfaces.

Edited February 23, 2015 by eddiew
added mod suggestion

[Van Disaster]

I did just notice the SPH TWR ( 0.31, that's ok with FAR - you'll take 30 mins to orbit but it's enough to get you to engine changeover ) is probably *with* the rocket engine - that engine is probably 3/4 of the thrust, pull that off and see what you're left with.

I don't remember what an orange tank weighs so I guessed at it, that's the nearest craft size-wize I have at the moment if you want to check wing areas and so on. Would take another 20t up in that, any more and I'd switch to a four-engined version just for sanity.

@Eddiew: is that stock or FAR? because that is considerably less wing than a FAR craft generally likes.

[WhiteKnuckle]

I don't remember what an orange tank weighs so I guessed at it

32 tons IIRC

[capi3101]

36 tonnes according to the wiki. You can get that into space with stock aero with a craft that looks like this...

That was a RAPIER craft IIRC...I might try again with Turbojets. You know, see if I can come up with something a little less oooogly.

[thadisjones]

When your runway is too short… you don't need runways where you're going. Taxi off the runway, and ramp that thing off one of the gentle hill slopes to the north or west of the spaceport.

[cicatrix]

I changed the design a bit Actually, it's a completely new plane from the scratch:

I's fast, it's powerful, but I have different kind of problems right now.