No more SSTO's

[Wanderfound]

These two show that both small and large SSTO's are possible, I've just not had the ah-ha moment with the new aero. Could you guys take a moment out from building awesome aircraft and explain what your flight profile is like now.

Check the captions on the Imgur album; I describe the profile for that ship there.

In general, though: after take off, settle into a climb of sufficient steepness that, although you continue accelerating, will not take you above Mach 3 (roughly 900m/s) until you're over 20,000m. Gradually flatten off your climb as you go; you want to build as much speed as possible, but you need to stay above the speed/altitude BBQ curve.

Once you're over 20,000m, you can pile on the speed as you slowly climb to about 25,000m, at which point your jets will start losing thrust and your speed will begin to drop. Kick in the rockets immediately; you'll lose too much speed if you try to maximise jet altitude. Keep it pointed close to prograde during the rocket burn; upper-altitude drag is minimal in stock, so a long coast to apoapsis isn't a problem.

For reentry, it's once again about that speed/altitude BBQ curve. You have to wash off the speed before you drop below the altitude at which that speed is survivable. You don't need airbrakes; just come down with a 45° AoA and a few S-turns and you'll be fine.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Wanderfound

[katateochi]

Check the captions on the Imgur album; I describe the profile for that ship there. snip*

I noticed the album comments just after I posted. Following that profile (and craft design) I made it, thanks!

[Tarheel1999]

Check the captions on the Imgur album; I describe the profile for that ship there.

FYI, if those were the unshielded solar panels that were non retractable it is a feature not a bug. The shielded ones retract.

[TokiTech]

Managed to retrofit my first 1.0 design into a drone that allow me to carry up to 4.5t cargo to 80km with docking capable and passenger transport, still left with enough fuel for return trip.

[ComradeGoat]

Cracked it. Keeping a high TWR was key for me. Two RAPIER engines, lots of fuel, but light enough to punch through the sound barrier in a sustained climb. Designed so that fragile things are shielded from the airflow as much as possible. Climb away from the runway at Mach 1 (300ish m/s), at 10,000m drop to a 20º climb and go to full power. The plane gets VERY hot during this next bit, but it's over quickly and control surfaces are safely tucked behind rigid lifting surfaces (NO CANARDS!)

The plane is doing about 1,200 m/s as it hits 23,000m, and will accelerate to around 1,300m/s by the time it starts to lose speed/air at 25,000m. The key here is to power through this part, keeping your apoapsis climbing. The old tactic of getting as high as possible and levelling off to gain speed doesn't seem to work; you just burn up.

Once I'm at 30,000m and the flames are gone, level off, reduce thrust to a trickle to keep pushing the apoapsis slowly out to 100,000m, while bringing the periapsis up towards zero (or maybe a bit above). At 50-60 K, once apoapsis is where I want it, kill power and glide to apoapsis. Circularise.

Reentry is easy and no airbrakes are needed. Burn retrograde to get the orbit line to intersect the ground roughly where I want to land, warp until below 70k, put the plane in a nose up attitude at 20º and leave it there. At somewhere between 35 and 40k, before the flames start, the wings will create enough lift to slow the descent while scrubbing off speed. Hold the nose up attitude all the way down to about Mach 2 at 25k ish, and land at your leisure.

100K orbit, 600m/s delta V left, docking port, RCS.

Now just got to get a couple refuelled and shipped off to Laythe!

[MarvinKitFox]

Who builds a non plane SSTO?

Smart people.

Now admittedly this seems to be outside your field of expertise, but a rocket-ssto launcher. (which then drops the payload vehicle and self-returns) is almost as cheap to get to orbit as a winged plane, and WAY more capable in carrying capacity.

[control9]

Actually, I've manages to get the stock Aegis-4 to LKO with 1.0. Because of my not-so-good piloting skills (I went for 45 degree climb until flameout) it took an additional usage of monopropellant to rise peri from 65km to 70+, but still, it's stock aircraft, and it still had a tiny bit of fuel for landing. Landing itself is quite easy, the main trick is to lose enough speed in upper atmosphere, which can be done almost too easy with just raising and lowering nose of plane. So "No more SSTOs" title seems at least strange to me.

[GoSlash27]

My first launch (and also first successful launch) was an SSTO sounding rocket. I used it to figure out the DV budget to orbit and explore launch profiles.

SSTO spaceplanes aren't "dead", it's just that the old method of making them won't work anymore.

Best,

-Slashy

[SelectHalfling0]

Use the new atmosphere! You don't need massive, wide wings that are stacked 2 or 3 times. In fact, less wings are better now and streamlined designs work like they should.

[Arran]

I allways was crap with SSTO's/spaceplanes, i never got them into LKO, ran shot of fuel etc etc etc... so i gave up on them thusfar..

Then 1.0 came out, gave it a other shot, and OH My..... on my first attempt..... SUCCES!!!!

Using only 2 Turbojets and 2 LV909 making a 100x100 orbit with bare minium fuel left for a deorbit to 30km where i could scoop just enough drag to slow it down enough to fall like a feather (yes it fell like a feather coming to about 15km height at a ridiculous 90m/s slow speed) and could ignite my TJ's again.

Granted reentry took me a several attemps before i could bring it back though all the ways i saw thusfar didnt work so i had to find a new way for that particulair spaceplane..

For this particulair plane a extreme AoA of 70 degrees slowed it down so much, i didnt even had any reentry heat effects kicking in, what was imho rather unrealistics, going through the upper regions coming from over 2000m/s to a slow 90m/s without breakes or chutes..

Still with 1.0 i find Spaceplanes alot easier..

My guess those who had troubles before find them easier, those that can adapt to the new Aero/drag dont have a issue too, those that keep trying to do it the old ways, just cant get them up there..

It is like we have to unlearn everything you learned thusfar and adopt/learn new ways to do so..

[waterlubber]

What I'd propose is a simple "tile" ablative system for cockpits and payload bays, and also for spaceplane-specific fuel tanks. These will just appear as "texture swaps" (i.e. showing tile textures on the lower surface of spaceplanes and or wing sections) if you select them as your part in a spaceplane you're constructing. By choosing this variant of that part, your spaceplane will have more overall weight, yet the part will be more robust on re-entry, provided that you correctly orient your craft. If this gets implemented, I'll be a happy man, and won't rely much on "airbrake cheating" anymore.

Original SP+ had heat shields

Yeah, we need that, and hopefully changing the style of tanks like in B9

Cracked it. Keeping a high TWR was key for me. Two RAPIER engines, lots of fuel, but light enough to punch through the sound barrier in a sustained climb. Designed so that fragile things are shielded from the airflow as much as possible. Climb away from the runway at Mach 1 (300ish m/s), at 10,000m drop to a 20º climb and go to full power. The plane gets VERY hot during this next bit, but it's over quickly and control surfaces are safely tucked behind rigid lifting surfaces (NO CANARDS!)

The plane is doing about 1,200 m/s as it hits 23,000m, and will accelerate to around 1,300m/s by the time it starts to lose speed/air at 25,000m. The key here is to power through this part, keeping your apoapsis climbing. The old tactic of getting as high as possible and levelling off to gain speed doesn't seem to work; you just burn up.

Once I'm at 30,000m and the flames are gone, level off, reduce thrust to a trickle to keep pushing the apoapsis slowly out to 100,000m, while bringing the periapsis up towards zero (or maybe a bit above). At 50-60 K, once apoapsis is where I want it, kill power and glide to apoapsis. Circularise.

Reentry is easy and no airbrakes are needed. Burn retrograde to get the orbit line to intersect the ground roughly where I want to land, warp until below 70k, put the plane in a nose up attitude at 20º and leave it there. At somewhere between 35 and 40k, before the flames start, the wings will create enough lift to slow the descent while scrubbing off speed. Hold the nose up attitude all the way down to about Mach 2 at 25k ish, and land at your leisure.

http://www.sarahlizzy.com/KSP1.0_PhoenixOrbit.png

100K orbit, 600m/s delta V left, docking port, RCS.

Now just got to get a couple refuelled and shipped off to Laythe!

This is exactly how I flew my SSTO's in .90, EXACTLY. With sloppydyanmics. Wohoo!

Edited April 29, 2015 by waterlubber

[Vdragon]

Someone said fatter was better, i wanted to test that (317 tons, 20 rapier engines):

Ended with approximatively the same fuel ratio than my lighter SSTOs, but with apparently much more delta-V.

So an actual "solution" to the problem would be to have a giganormous craft, and a tinier craft in it, and actually bring the large craft to orbit, then departure from it with the smaller one with full tanks, doing whatever you have to do in space, then get the tiny craft back in the big one and land the big one.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Vdragon

[malkuth]

I have found that its possible it just takes a little practice. And patience to understand where your vessel needs to be, when are where.
Too fast you explode. Not high enough when rockets engage Failure or burn up. Its a balancing act.. I did it with this smaller vessel, and a few others based on the same ship layout. My first version actually had a Cargo Bay and worked. Edited April 29, 2015 by malkuth

[KerikBalm]

So an actual "solution" to the problem would be to have a giganormous craft, and a tinier craft in it, and actually bring the large craft to orbit, then departure from it with the smaller one with full tanks, doing whatever you have to do in space, then get the tiny craft back in the big one and land the big one.

This has always been my solution, more or less...

Except I rarely have provisions for recovering the small craft with the larger one.

I have an SSTO haul cargo up... whatever that cargo is... fuel tanks to be sent to duna orbit, a munar lander, a LV-N tug... whatever.

Most of the time, if it goes up, it stays up. I can launch SSTOs to refuel what is already up there, and small SSTOs to shuttle crew back and forth.

or, the craft would be capable of coming back on its own (ie, parachutes and landing legs... I suppose now in 1.0, heat shields too), and doesn't need recovering by the large SSTO.

[MainSailor]

Found a new bug: solar panels won't retract.

That's actually by design, and noted in the change log. The non-shrouded solar panels no longer retract.

[rodion_herrera]

Someone said fatter was better, i wanted to test that (317 tons, 20 rapier engines):

Ehem...

Here is what I noticed about my builds--ironically it gets easier with larger and larger spaceplanes. Which basically means, for a larger design, I can squeeze in a payload bay, and thus making it useful for station building..

[DaMichel]

Ha, i found the overheating problem. Only one part got really hot, the tail connector which i put at the nose (because it is so aerodynamic)! Another plane with a Mk1 Cockpit in front works fine.

Incidentially, the tail connector has about 1/10th of the thermal mass rating than the cockpit. This rating appears to be some sort of heat capacity which would explain the overheating. Not cool, but the new Deadly Reentry is going to fix that from what i read.

[malkuth]

Upgraded Passenger version of the vessel I used in my video. All I had to do was double the engines. The 2.0 Mass of passenger Cabin was too much for older engine layout. I can still add a little more Oxidizer for I have a little extra in orbit.. But other than that this gets up to space. Little close on the leaving atmosphere and heat. my whole front end glows a little red when rockets are shut down.. It cools off after a few minutes.

Update: With some modifications.. Added some solar panels to whole top end on each section. Reduced a little Fuel, and added some extra Oxidizer I can achieve orbit with about 256 Fuel and oxidizer. This could be turned into a cargo version by taking off the Crew Cabin. Could get small satellites in space I would say.

My X10(passenger) posted above Ship File

Orginal X10 Posted in my How To Video

Edited April 29, 2015 by malkuth

[soulreaver1981]

Because sacrificing fun for realism is not always a good thing.

man i feel your pain. but its time to learn some new trick.

atleast that my goal right now.

in all probability somebody gonna make a mod with will turn things back.

idd like my jetengine's to work longer, butt hey what yu gonna do

[regex]

I feel like the title of this thread should be changed to "YES WE CAN INTO SPACE WITH SSTO" because it's clearly inaccurate.

[TimePeriod]

Fact is:

New aero.

New rules.

New tricks.

New aircraft.

It apply to law, nature, war, quantum mechanics and spaceplanes.

[iVG]

I will be streaming in 2 hours and I have 2 example crafts with only small differences just to show that it is entirely possible to get an SSTO to orbit. Furthermore I put an additional challenge to myself - use only a single engine. Yes - it is trickier with the new mach effects but definitely not impossible. I'll upload the craft if people are interested.

[EtherDragon]

I will be streaming in 2 hours and I have 2 example crafts with only small differences just to show that it is entirely possible to get an SSTO to orbit. Furthermore I put an additional challenge to myself - use only a single engine. Yes - it is trickier with the new mach effects but definitely not impossible. I'll upload the craft if people are interested.

I have a little single engine, single seat, snub snip (I called it "Gadget") that is an SSTO.

[ArmchairGravy]

I just messed about with a couple of my stock designs (a Mk 1 & a Mk 2) and yeah, back to the drawing board for me. It looks like the new design strategy is "more space, less plane". All of the air-based systems got knocked back by 10k it seems, so the solution is obviously MOAR BOOSTERS!

[Tajin]

Because sacrificing fun for realism is not always a good thing.

Well if that bothers you, why don't you simply change ur difficulty settings and scale down the heating effects?