How do you test your STS craft for "glider worthiness"

[oversoul]

(stock aero)

I have been playing with STS designs again, because I'm drunk, and those vertical stacks always work, and frankly bore me with their space worthiness.

So today I am again designing STS crafts, and after many hours, none work. Shockingly, I know.

Here's one way I decided to test the glider phase of them before tackling the objectives of actually getting them to space with some out-of-control yawing at transonic speeds and other v104 erratic behavior.

Anyway... do any of you STS builders out there test gliding in similar methods?

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited July 6, 2015 by oversoul

[benjee10]

I do it the NASA way

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[katateochi]

I like your approach OP. My problem with that is I like to have a shuttle with a much shorter front landing gear so it's pitched forward quite a lot when on the tarmac, but that means it has about as much inclination to leave the ground as my aunt's obese cat.

That's also a very nice approach benjee10. Did you land both craft one after the other? (props if you did).

There comes a point though when testing and testing and testing some more that the time taken to lift a craft to the right point to test it becomes rather tedious. And those approaches (even though they are good) don't test the "does it tumble on re-entry" aspect which I find is one of the main issues. So (and dear community, please don't hit me) I use hyper-edit to perform tests. We don't have a simulator or wind-tunnel (or an army of physicists), so instead I use HE to put a test craft into orbit, adjust its fuel levels to what it might have on re-entry and try it out at re-entry speeds. If I don't crash I can quickly chuck it back into orbit without even reloading the craft, adjust fuel again to something different and test it again. It just saves time (which is not something I have much of these days). After HE tests I always revert the flight so it's only used as a simulation tool.

[Juicy]

That Hyper Edit is pretty ideal for this kind of testing is logical, given the lack of other means to test. Though for low altitude testing, I find rocket pods on radial decouplers for lift off and gaining some initial speed work just as well.

[Geschosskopf]

Anyway... do any of you STS builders out there test gliding in similar methods?

Whether drunk (usually) or sober, I just tweak the tanks to about what they'd have when it's time to land. Then I slap a small de-orbit stage on the thing somewhere using a decoupler/separator that leaves no "residue" on the ship. Then I HyperEdit this into a typical orbit, use the new stage to knock me down, get rid of it, and fly it in from there.

[Zephram Kerman]

I just activate the SMEs and use infinite fuel cheat to blast off down the runway. After a couple minutes of that, the ship has enough energy to turn around and land in the usual way.

[Moh1336]

Just fill the tanks with enough fuel to take off and make a return course, then glide back or use the old runway on the Island just off the coast. Beats spending time making an additional craft just for what is essentially a simulated run.