RAPIERs and Turbojets are amazing in 1.0.3

[KarateF22]

Cruising at 1550 m/s at 24,000 meters is just fantastic and makes for a ridiculously quick and efficient transition period into orbit, SSTOs just became a lot more practical from what I can see. Turbojets also became similarly improved, i was noticing them capping out between 1300 and 1400 m/s at 22,000 meters; their new graphic effect is major eye candy too.

[Captain Sierra]

Time to test out all my saved SSTOs that barely failed to make orbit in 1.0.2.

Will report back!

[Empiro]

That I'm glad to see. I've always liked space planes, but other than the design challenge, they were just so impractical. They take longer to design, longer to get into orbit (because of the slow climb followed by horizontal acceleration), and much, much longer to bring back. If I'm playing career mode, I'm limited mostly by my play time, and I can design and launch 5 rockets in the time it takes to get one space plane up and back down.

[NathanKell]

And the static thrusts came down, so that's all drag changes.

[Starhawk]

And the static thrusts came down, so that's all drag changes.

That's what I thought from the release notes.

Loving it!

Happy landings!

[Red Iron Crown]

Turbojets got some visual love, now they look like they're afterburning:

[VR_Dev]

Turbojets got some visual love, now they look like they're afterburning:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/KSP/1.0.3/screenshot0.png

Why don't we have any engines that afterburn? Increase the fuel drain for a little extra kick.

[NathanKell]

We do. The turboramjet's afterburner can't be turned off. :]

[VR_Dev]

We do. The turboramjet's afterburner can't be turned off. :]

Yeah I meant one you could toggle for a quick burst. Dramatically increase the heat output too so you can't boost too long.

[Vagani]

yeah, that would be good for the BJE

[Jon144]

Can you have an option to disable the effect? The after-burning effect looks stupid with my B-52 replica.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Jon144

[Chronosheep]

Cruising at 1550 m/s at 24,000 meters is just fantastic and makes for a ridiculously quick and efficient transition period into orbit, SSTOs just became a lot more practical from what I can see. Turbojets also became similarly improved, i was noticing them capping out between 1300 and 1400 m/s at 22,000 meters; their new graphic effect is major eye candy too.

My experience so far is the exact opposite: RAPIERs and turbojets have been heavily nerfed (which is a fact. Their ISP is halved, and their thrust heavily reduced).

Hardly any of my SSTOs (that were able to get to space with ease in 1.0 and 1.02) are able to get to space anymore, and it takes ages to climb.

Seems like i'll need about twice the number of engines I've been using before.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Chronosheep

[Streetwind]

Can you have an option to disable the effect? The after-burning effect looks stupid with my B-52 replica.

Your B-52 replica ought to be using basic jets... the real deal doesn't use ramjets either! Its 8 engines have a mere 75 kN thrust each, and it has a maximum level airspeed of 282 m/s.

[Sidereus]

My experience so far is the exact opposite: RAPIERs and turbojets have been heavily nerfed (which is a fact. Their ISP is halved, and their thrust heavily reduced).

Hardly any of my SSTOs (that were able to get to space with ease in 1.0 and 1.02) are able to get to space anymore, and it takes ages to climb.

Seems like i'll need about twice the number of engines I've been using before.

I'm having a somewhat similar experience, though it's complicated by the fact that my design was using the Mk1 Liquid Fuel tanks, which have had their masses more than doubled and their fuel content increased from 150 to 400. My 1.02 design had six of them, so the total mass went from ~28t to almost 40t.

Going to have to rejigger some things, I suppose.

[KerikBalm]

My experience so far is the exact opposite: RAPIERs and turbojets have been heavily nerfed (which is a fact. Their ISP is halved, and their thrust heavily reduced).

Whut?

I haven't downloaded 1.03 yet, but there was nothing in the changelog about that... they said the intake air requirements were reduced, but that hasn't factored into Isp since 1.0

*sigh* time to redesign my SSTOs again, most likely. Hopefully at this point, with reduced drag, I can increase their payload fraction.

However, with more heating, I think I'll have to be more careful on reentry, and recovery will be harder.

At least I got this assembled in orbit yesterday:

* Its my not TAC, but roleplaying for sending kerbals on long interplanetary missions ... spin for gravity, 15 kerbal capacity (only going to send 6 at a time)

Although it would be nice ot have put radiators on it.

That whole thing was launched by SSTOs in just two launches (I didn't launch it empty, its nearly full, no docking with a fuel depot or additional launch needed.... it has tons of dV now)

Edited June 23, 2015 by KerikBalm

[Rune]

All I can say is YES! This sounds VERY good.

Rune. See you guys once I've gotten a TWR<1 spaceplane to orbit.

[Chronosheep]

Whut?

I haven't downloaded 1.03 yet, but there was nothing in the changelog about that... they said the intake air requirements were reduced, but that hasn't factored into Isp since 1.0

Look closer:

* Jet thrusts rebalanced for new drag (thrusts lowered, BJE curves altered). Jet Isp halved due to increased fuel quantity and lower drag.

[rofltehcat]

Ok, I recently started a save game in which I do pretty much everything with small and medium space planes (except early science gathering, tech tree for space planes is messed up).

So I loaded up my medium plane, 28.2 t with 2 turbojets, 2 terriers and 1 swivel (turbojets initial climb, boost around 20k with rocket engines, turn off rocket engines once apo is 73k+, adjust swivel thrust to ~35-40%, start circularize and slowly turn down swivel thrust, shut swivel off, finish circ). Barely got it off the ground, (very) slowly climbed to 4k before going back to the hangar. The lift doesn't seem to be nearly enough to do anything either. It is also notable that it is now trying to pitch down pretty heavily.

Back at the the hangar, it seems the patch has shifted the centre of lift back a lot (or CoM forward?). So I removed the payload (which brought the CoM back) and slapped a little more wing area on. Ended at 24.3 t.

So the climb to 10 k was a slog. But once I was up there I accelerated so quickly to 1050 m/s that it kinda took me by surprise and I climbed too fast. I could probably have accelerated even further had I stayed around 18 km altitude for a bit longer. I got to a 80x85 orbit with quite a bit of fuel left (expected without payload). However, I used noticeably more liquid fuel than before the patch so if I use up all of the ox the rest of the lf would probably not be enough to guarantee hitting the landing strip.

Here are the two ships (yeah they aren't pretty designs but everything I build with mk2 stuff doesn't make it to orbit for whatever reason):

http://imgur.com/ZCIOUjZ (center of lift wasn't as far back before patch somehow, it was always a bit far back but that was so it was still stable after shedding the payload)

http://imgur.com/tlWSDGf (no payload, a little bit more wings)

So what I'll probably try tonight is:

- Even more wings!

- More LF!

- Possibly slightly more control surfaces

- 3 Turbojets, 2 swivel engines for more aerobic TWR (better climb, higher speed before firing rockets). Possibly 3 turbojets, 1 swivel, 1 terrier if I can somehow do that without making it too unstable.

-New ascent profiles! It seems getting to 10k will be a drag but once you're there it works fine.

Edited June 23, 2015 by rofltehcat

[Goddess Bhavani]

Can you have an option to disable the effect? The after-burning effect looks stupid with my B-52 replica.

You could text-edit the turboramjets' visual fx settings in the part file. Just comment out the afterburner fx and put the code from the basic jet engine on there.

[HafCoJoe]

Though slightly off topic from your title, I want to point out that the gigantic SRB's are extremely good now as well ^-^.

...

MOAR POWAH!

[Kuu Lightwing]

Though slightly off topic from your title, I want to point out that the gigantic SRB's are extremely good now as well ^-^.

...

MOAR POWAH!

Do they have good thrust now? Or just more fuel?

[eddiew]

Excellent. Sounds like FAR under 0.90 :]

- - - Updated - - -

And the static thrusts came down, so that's all drag changes.

I'm pleased by the end result either way. The time has arrived to start a 1.x career!

[Cirocco]

[insert long stream of expletives throroughly unsuited for the forums]

whelp, there goes my peace of mind. Not two weeks after I had finally come to terms with my failure to get a super-heavy, long-range SSTO spaceplane into orbit, this update happens. Guess this means I'll be stuck in the spaceplane hangar again for the coming weeks. Why do you do this to me SQUAD?!

in all seriousness though: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Time for more spaceplanes and SRB usage again!

hells yes!

EDIT: also, shock diamonds in the turbojet exhausts. sooooooo pretty ... *drool*

Edited June 23, 2015 by Cirocco

[Red Iron Crown]

The Isp nerf doesn't seem to be hugely significant for my SSTO designs so far. They certainly use more fuel, but the fuel from the air breathing portion of the ascent is dwarfed by that for the closed cycle portion, so the payload fraction hardly changes at all.

Likely much more significant for planes meant to stay in atmosphere, though, especially long range ones.

[Old Foxboy]

I quickly tested some of my craft.

Results so far:

1. Basic Jet engine: Crafts finally able to go a little bit beyond Mach 1 if designed well. Wasn't possible before.

2. Turbo-RAM-Jet: Awesome nice afterburner effect. However, the SR-71 only used them to take off. Doh! It seems they are much more balanced now.

3. Rapiers: They use much more fuel during initial ascend now, and the buff totally depends on your flight profile. I found out you have to alter your flight profile to some extent to make use of the drag changes. The same ist true for Turbojet-SSTO craft:

You now can accelerate the craft to higher speeds in air breathing mode, but you also need to do so to get the most kick out of them Rapiers. Because of the heat/drag issue, i had designed my craft to make a steeper ascend and avoid the heat spike, so i had to completely change my flight profile now and rebalance the liquid fuel / oxidizer mix. Overall performance is nearly the same however.