1.0 SSTO Spaceplane Things!

[Mat2ch]

Hello,

yes I love space planes and so the first thing in 1.0 was to build one. Actually it looks a lot like one of my spaceplanes from .90, but it needed a few modifications.

First of all: Sadly, no more canards for me. The stress seems to be too much for those, so I built a delta wing.

So, how to get in space? It's a bit like before, but also much different. Climb as fast as you can, but watch your speed. Don't go fast than Mach 1 (~332 m/s) or it'll become hard to control your place. Level out in the higher atmosphere, above 20 000 m and gain speed and slowly climb. If you get too fast in the lower atmosphere, you'll burn up. Then wait until your engines stop making you faster. The RAPIERs didn't flame out on me, like they did in .90, just stopped to make me faster. But to go into space you need to get faster.

So if that happens switch to closedCycle. Do it manually to have a better control over it. And close your intakes, they produce drag. And then it's just waiting until your apoapsis goes above 70 000 m, stop your engine, wait until you get near your apoapsis, do your orbital burn and your in space! I did it on my second try, it's really easy.

Here's a first pic of my plane, it still needs some tuning:

You see me here on my way back to KSC, but I'm a bit too high there. Don't do that, our you'll need to fly back.

The outer control surface are used for pitch and roll, the inner most are "speedbrakes". They're used to slow me down. Which brings me to my next point.

Re-entry!

Don't point your nose down on re-entry. Don't. Never. You need to loose speed if you want your Kerbals to survive this! And you wont, if you go nose first. Instead point your space plane anti radial when you hit the atmosphere. That's why I'm using control surfaces as speedbrakes: They also help keeping the nose up. Doing this should slow you down to 1500 m/s when you hit the lower, thicker atmosphere and your plane will survive. Well, mine did.

Now, do a nice landing (you can control the break intensity now. Wow!) and you successfully had a plane in space!

What did I miss?

[Arkadiusz]

How is it helpful to use only some elevons for pitch/roll and not all of them? Does using too many make this thing 'too manuverable'?

[Sharpy]

And how do you activate/deactivate the speed control surfaces?

[Horophim]

I have problem going above 15-20km, at that height the plane just loses vertical speed.

[A_name]

How is it helpful to use only some elevons for pitch/roll and not all of them? Does using too many make this thing 'too manuverable'?

Yes, at least in my designs using too much control surfaces will make your rocket spin if you maneuver too hard by accident. Especially on the roll axis.

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And how do you activate/deactivate the speed control surfaces?

In the VAB or SPH, right click on the control surface and you can select and deselect which directions that part will control. Deactivate all directions and bind the pitch up function to the brakes action group to use them as speed brakes.

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I have problem going above 15-20km, at that height the plane just loses vertical speed.

You want to either pitch up at the last minute right before the jets flame out or else wait until you switch on the rockets to pitch up, and that will help you gain vertical speed. Alternatively, if your plane has high enough thrust, you can keep your pitch higher, between 15 and 30 degrees (depending on design) throughout the ascent and that will also buy you some extra vertical speed.

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Don't go fast than Mach 1 (~332 m/s) or it'll become hard to control your place. Level out in the higher atmosphere, above 20 000 m and gain speed and slowly climb. If you get too fast in the lower atmosphere, you'll burn up.

If I may add my two cents...

Sometimes you'll want to break Mach 1 earlier if you don't have enough engine to do it at higher altitudes where the air is thinner and engines produce less thrust. Thrust on jets increases with speed, so you want to milk the high thrust while you're lower and have more air. Yes, you will heat up. You'll need to use trial and error to find the ideal ascent, but I've found that after 19 km the heat starts dissipating. Push your parts as far as you can get them, keep them on the verge of exploding.

Edit: Do yourself a favor and get Claw's Stock Bug Fix Patch to fix the memory problem with temperature gauges so you can keep them active and monitor which parts are about to explode.

Which brings me to leveling out at 20 km. Depending on how much thrust you have on a particular plane, you should ascend at 30 to 45 degrees and start leveling out gradually between 6 and 8 km. The higher your thrust the more you can pitch up initially and the earlier you want to start leveling out. For an easy leveling-out maneuver, set your SAS to prograde and let it dip down, then set back to stability. Yes, you should be level or almost at around 20 km, but don't wait until that altitude to do it, otherwise you'll shoot out of the lower atmosphere too fast and won't be able to gain enough vertical speed. Again, you will heat up, but that's OK as long as you don't explode

Edited June 17, 2015 by A_name