massive problems with 1.0.2

[Screeno]

Well, I have an ssto, made to be just like skylon, it consists of, from the center of the craft, symetrically going towards each end, a mk2 crew cabin, 2 mk 2 lfo shorts, two probe cores, two mk2 to 1.25 long adapters, then two reaction wheels, and finally two ncs adapters with nosecones attatched, and for wings, standard delta wings in the middle, where the rapiers, preecooler ands shock cone intake are like skylon. And it als has two canards at the front, and one rudder.

This should fly great I thought. But no. It cannot get even to 400m/s! Useless! Two rapiers spaceplanes can't fly anymore. I could just add another but then it would not be skylon! Seriously it would easily beable to go atleast 1300m/s before flameout... Personally I cannot understand why squad messed up the drag so badly that even a realistic design like that sucks. Either that or airbreathing engines at the current time do not produce enough thrust in subsonic and transonic flight... I played with FAR before for a while and it looks like I'm going straight back to it when NuFAR comes out. Or is NuFAR out?. Anyway... Point is, with this hot"fix" one cannot make a reasonable ssto with 2 or less rapier engines

[Aanker]

Remove the wings completely, your current build is just not realistic enough.

[Bill Phil]

Did you go for altitude or stay low? Wait till you're high before you go fast. Maybe even dive a bit to take advantage of gravity.

- - - Updated - - -

Remove the wings completely, your current build is just not realistic enough.

That's an overreaction. Maybe try to be helpful? Or just say nothing.

[Screeno]

Uhhh.... What. That would make it not a plane... It's only got two of the standard delta wings, barely much..

- - - Updated - - -

Well what I do is take off at 30 degrees and remain there unroll I get about 10000m then ill go 10 degrees. And then it will get to about 350 m/s and not get any faster

[Bill Phil]

Uhhh.... What. That would make it not a plane... It's only got two of the standard delta wings, barely much..

What is your flight profile?

Nono. Go higher. About 20 km. Experiment.

[Screeno]

I'm going to try it again right now, and ill tell you the exact thing I do mate

[Kuu Lightwing]

You might try to switch to closed cycle for a couple of seconds to get past 500 m/s, I think... After that they would kick in on on open-cycle.

[Bill Phil]

I'm going to try it again right now, and ill tell you the exact thing I do mate

Do you see the little atmosphere bar at the top? At 10 km it's still in the light blue. But you don't want that. You want to go higher. Where there's less drag. Much less.

[Screeno]

Just know I was flying at what seemed to be terminal velocity, at around 14000, then I decided to dive very slightly just 10 degrees off prograde and suddenly I rapidly accelerated! Up to 500 m/s really quick so then I pitched up and was still getting massive acceleration, hit 1500 at 25000 and exploded... Hahaha! Looks like I have to fine tine the flight profile somewhat. Thanks for the tips, ill post back if I make it to orbit

[Bill Phil]

Just know I was flying at what seemed to be terminal velocity, at around 14000, then I decided to dive very slightly just 10 degrees off prograde and suddenly I rapidly accelerated! Up to 500 m/s really quick so then I pitched up and was still getting massive acceleration, hit 1500 at 25000 and exploded... Hahaha! Looks like I have to fine tine the flight profile somewhat. Thanks for the tips, ill post back if I make it to orbit

You're welcome. And I hope you succeed in making orbit.

The atmosphere is a bit weird... Drag seems to just go away at a certain altitude, and then bite you in the rear end when you're going too fast.

[Lorunification]

You could check out my kOS script to gain an idea of the flight profile.

The Script as well as the example craft can be found here : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118833-Lorunificiations-SSTO-DIY-Guide

[Chruschtschow]

[...] hit 1500 at 25000 and exploded... Hahaha!

Explosions and laughter. That's KSP for me.

[eddiew]

Just know I was flying at what seemed to be terminal velocity, at around 14000, then I decided to dive very slightly just 10 degrees off prograde and suddenly I rapidly accelerated! Up to 500 m/s really quick so then I pitched up and was still getting massive acceleration, hit 1500 at 25000 and exploded... Hahaha! Looks like I have to fine tine the flight profile somewhat. Thanks for the tips, ill post back if I make it to orbit

That's the current power curve on rapiers; they're great once you get them over about mach 1.3, but are really weak up to that point. Some bi-rapier designs can get to space by racing to 12-14km, then taking a shallow dive to get the engine power to kick in, and turning back upwards with that added oomph.

Damned annoying, tbh, but there it is :/ I have a thread going about this issue in the support forum if it interests you; http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118686-Rapiers-seem-too-weak

[Screeno]

Fusalage Got really hot and had to switch rapiers because jet mode was useless past 1100 m/s at 20000 m... Almost exploded... Got my apoapsis up to 72 km, barely any fuel left... And then ksp just closes itself instantly.. this keeps happening when any plane gets really hot, during launch or reeentry... It's crashed 3 times o. This flight alone. :'( ever since they added the temparture gauge it happens. In 1.0, I could get planes as hot as. Anything and no crashes. Please fix this squad...ksp is my favorite game and now I can't play it... Because it almost alyways crashes mid flight

[Bill Phil]

Fusalage Got really hot and had to switch rapiers because jet mode was useless past 1100 m/s at 20000 m... Almost exploded... Got my apoapsis up to 72 km, barely any fuel left... And then ksp just closes itself instantly.. this keeps happening when any plane gets really hot, during launch or reeentry... It's crashed 3 times o. This flight alone. :'( ever since they added the temparture gauge it happens. In 1.0, I could get planes as hot as. Anything and no crashes. Please fix this squad...ksp is my favorite game and now I can't play it... Because it almost alyways crashes mid flight

Aren't the gauges optional?

Oh, and, maybe add a tiny bit more fuel?

[Screeno]

It's crashing whenever I fly spaceplanes really... Whenever they get hot it seems. Rockets are fine, I can fly them no problem, no ksp crash. But want to fly spaceplanes too man... I want 1.0 back! It was perfect.

[Bill Phil]

It's crashing whenever I fly spaceplanes really... Whenever they get hot it seems. Rockets are fine, I can fly them no problem, no ksp crash. But want to fly spaceplanes too man... I want 1.0 back! It was perfect.

Go higher, then? Higher up the heating properties are less intense.

[Screeno]

Problem is, past 20000m airbreathers are crap. You know what... I'm just gonna wait for either nuFAR or till squad fix this nonsense.

- - - Updated - - -

Now just about to test this mod... Which can restore the 1.0 config. Will report back with result

[eddiew]

Problem is, past 20000m airbreathers are crap. You know what... I'm just gonna wait for either nuFAR or till squad fix this nonsense.

nuFAR dev build doesn't increase the altitude of airbreathers, and nor will Squad; that's just the new altitude limit, and we'll have to work with it. Rapiers are good to about 24km, turbos quit at 20, and both have a much lower top speed.

Most people are lighting rockets at about 20-24km and 950-1000m/s; alas the days of mach 5 on air are behind us.

20km and 1000m/s is pretty much the limit of thermal safety, too, and you'll want to be at a good rate of ascent as you pass through this band.

SSTOs can be done, but you can't fly them like you used to anymore

[Wanderfound]

Apparently there's a memory leak issue with the new heat gauges; F10 to disable them if you're having trouble.

[Chaos_Klaus]

suddenly I rapidly accelerated! Up to 500 m/s really quick so then I pitched up and was still getting massive acceleration, hit 1500 at 25000 and exploded... Hahaha!

Welcome to the world of supersonic flight. It is relatively hard to break through the sound barrier, but once you pushed through, drag suddenly decreases. this is a realistic effect.

only thing is, that with 1.0.1, drag was drasticly increased for some reason. I guess/hope they will reduce it with the next patch.

[Screeno]

Apparently there's a memory leak issue with the new heat gauges; F10 to disable them if you're having trouble.

I thought as much, so from now on ill turn them off

[Teutooni]

For me there are two huge hurdles now with 1.0.2 compared to 1.0. Transonic barrier was an issue in 1.0 when trying to optimize payload fraction (i.e. as few engines and fuel as possible, as much cargo as possible). I used an ascent profile that climbed to ~7-9km subsonic, went into a dive to push through to 450m/s. Now it's impossible, or at least much much more narrow. Dive doesn't really help because even 1km loss in altitude means absolutely massive increase in drag and will actually slow your plane down in a nosedive (which is absurdly unrealistic, dart shaped planes will not slow down in a full-thrust nosedive at 300m/s). With the mk3 hull I found I need around 1.5 TWR to be able to go supersonic in level flight. Another hurdle is related to the first. Because I need so many engines to do the same as in 1.0, they need to be packed tightly to reduce drag - so then they overheat. The one ascent profile I managed to achieve orbit involved climbing as hard as I can through 15-30km at the expense of speed just to get into thin enough air so my engines don't explode. This results in a horribly inefficient ascent needing to burn 90% of previous payload as propellant. Oh and CTDs are frequent in 1.0.2, gona try disabling the heat gauges if it helps. Frankly I had more fun trying to build an SSTO spaceplane in .90 with FAR, DRE, AJE and realistic solar system.