Pro SSTO builder/pilot Challenge

[Jakalth]

@ GoSlash27, you either only had a portion of that Delta-V, or had as much as 4000 m/sec in orbit for the Nuke. It all depends on if the Nuke was able to pull fuel from the outer fuel tanks... Central engines sometimes have issues with pulling from radially attached tanks...

Neagle attempt 3:

Got the craft off the ground just fine. Just gave it very tiny and light inputs like GoSlash27 did. kept it at about 10 deg angle until 10Km where I stopped giving it any inputs at all and just let it fly strait. It accelerated pretty well up to the 20Km mark where I turned on the nuke. At about 25Km the rapiers had to switch to Closed cycle. At 32Km, the rapiers ran out of oxidizer. And finally at about 46Km, I ran out of acceleration, climb, and time and had to ditch the orbital attempt. Instead I shot for a landing on an island on the far side of Kerbal.

The craft reentered on it's own, got quite hot, but held together. As the altitude got lower, I deployed the airbrakes and brought it down to speed so I felt safe enough to maneuver it. With a lot of it's fuel burned off, it actually flies better and can accept greater control inputs without freaking out. The descent was shallow and slow, intentionally, with the engines idling for a bit then flying dead stick for the rest of the way. I was able to get a nice clean touch down at about 90m/s, but the craft flexes so much that it ended up tipping on it's side a bit, breaking off it's wings, canards, both ram air intakes, the front two fuel tanks on the left engine, the Nuke engine, and two of the airbrakes due to flexing. The craft also broke its nose off after rocking back and forth a bit and lost the passanger section behind that before coming to a stop. Luckily the cockpit survived being wrenched off the craft so both kerbals survived.

Results, the craft was battered, busted, and smoldering, but at least it landed. And as Jeb would say; "The landing was fun. Better then any amusement park ride."

purchase cost = 68,495Kredits

recovered amount = 33,432Kredits(-35)

traveled half way around kerbin with 2 kerbal pilots on board.

Nearly lost it all.

score = -35(this attempt only), somewhere around -99 if you average all three attempts.

actual score = NRO(never reached orbit)

I'll give it a 4th try, I was close. This craft WILL go orbital.

Also, I did a bit of messing around with it just because... If you move the main wings back a bit, the craft suddenly becomes very forgiving and lets you get away with some wildly exaggerated pitch angles while still recovering. It still has a tendancy to over react while adjusting pitch though... issue is with how much flex there is in the two side engines and the wings attached to them. If it's made a bit more rigid, it looses the pitch issues and becomes a much smoother flier.

Edited July 30, 2015 by Jakalth

[Nich]

Yes I tried flying it today fully loaded and any pitching maneuvers are just plane dangerous because the head just flexes so much it is going at a significant AOA different then the wings are. I did most of my flight testing nearly empty getting it to orbit my first try must have been from working with big heavy clunky craft from the payload challenge. A strut from cockpit to the back on the bottom should stiffen it up so it wont be so erratic but I think the best solution would be to move the COL back half way through the COM. Or just removing the canards and going with a normal elevator in the rear. In the End the Neagle has claimed too many kerbal lives I am going to call it a complete failure

On the Plus side I think I made a beautiful badge. If I get enough likes I will make a Pilot and Builder variant.

Edited July 31, 2015 by Nich

[Jakalth]

@ Nich Yeah, moving the COL back a bit does make it fly considerably better. and strutting the side engines helps, but you have to strut the back of the engines as well as the front to fully stiffen them. otherwise you still get some "flap".

Vamanos..

Attempt 1: takes off nicely. wants to go fast, but has an oscillation problem that I was never quite able to figure out... Part of the problem is the wing slats(elevons) you added to the front of the wings. They get confused some times... But, it flew up to orbit with no issues other then drifting off course due to the oscillation. Got it into a nice medium orbit of 136Km x 139Km around Kerbin with just the two pilots on board. I deployed the satellite which was easy to do, it deploys nicely. Then performed a retro burn and brought her back home.

Re entry went off without a hitch, used airbrakes and initially had her nosed up 30 deg, until at about 40Km where she started to climb again. So I brought the angle down to only 20 degrees which continued to slow her down nicely and let her sink into the atmosphere. Only a few of the tanks and the rear elevons got warm during the descent, which is a little odd, but was a nice change. From this point on, I simply flew her in dead stick with no engines. I never felt the need to turn them on during re entry, I had no worries I would be able to land safely without them. I misjudged the approach to KSC and ended up landing on the grass next to the runway. The vamanos's landing gear placement let her soak the landing nicely and she had no issues at all with the slightly rough handling I gave her during the taxiing to the runway, still at fairly high speed. I felt comfortable throwing her about on the ground, she was nice and stable there. So the landing ended on the runway with everything intact and no blemishes on the craft.

Purchase price = 79,610(73,460 after satellite deployment my bad...)

recovery value = 70,153

cost score = -3.3

satellite delivered into 140Km+ orbit @ 0.7t = +1.4

MKO achieved(medium kerbin orbit of over 120Km) = yes(136Km x 139Km)

total score = -1.9

other then the odd oscillations, I pretty nice craft to fly. It does drift a bit and maneuvers tent to alter more then one direction though...

Edited July 31, 2015 by Jakalth
forgot to factor the cost of the satellite into the score

[Jakalth]

BadHat

attempt 1: the craft taxied nicely, and had lots of acceleration, infact, I didn't pay enough attention and it nearly went overspeed on the runway. Silly BadHat, supersonic on the runway is for land speed cars...

it took off smoothly, had no issues with maneuvering or flying strait. It transitioned smoothly from air breathing to rocket booth to orbit. I got the craft into a nice clean 80Km x 80Km orbit dispite my missing that is had a swivel instead of the nuke I've gotten used to having behind a craft like this. I kind of over did it with the throttle during closed cycle stage so ended up wasting more fuel then I should of... oops...

In orbit, I found the debree I had floating up there and rescued one of the Kerbals, I noticed the external seat you had placed in the cargo bay and used that to bring an extra man back down planet side. I was not able to dock with the debree due to no docking port on the debree, but got close enough to touch the debree with the spaceplane and did the short eva to bring the kerbal into his seat on the BadHat. I believe this counts as a crew transfer right? The BadHat had sufficient RCS to move it about, but doesn't maneuver really quickly in all directions. Thankfully, the BadHat turns through SAS fairly well which more then makes up for the slight lacking in lateral RCS.

Re entry went well, the craft handled the heat of re entry without any issues, other then the command seat getting quite hot inside the cargo bay for some odd reason... Used the same 30 degree nose up + airbrakes deployed trick that has been working splendedly for me with every spaceplane I've flown in this contest. Once the speed was dropped below 900m/s I turned off the airbrakes and brought the nose down a bit, still letting it bleed off some speed. For the majority of the flight back home, I flew it dead stick, with the engines turned off to conserve fuel. But this craft does not glide very well... I had a very hard time keeping it on a nice glide slope during the flight too the KSC and ended up having to kick on the engines just before the mountains west of KSC, otherwise It would of been yet another mountain landing... There was more then enough thrust in the engines to bring the craft over the mountains, but due to my sloppy flight to space, there was very little fuel left. In fact, the fuel ran out just as I was passing over the other side of the mountains forcing me back into glide mode... I missed the runway, and KSC by a bit and landed in the rolling hills just west of the KSC. The craft had enough maneuvering to land on the hills but I was forced to deploy the brakes to keep it from rolling off into more of the hills. In doing so, the bottom airbrakes tore off. No other damage was sustained and the craft was recovered at 94% due to the distance from the runway.

Purchase cost = 33,810

recovery value(x0.94) = 29,918

cost score = -3.9

1 kerbal recovered from Kerbin orbit = 2

total score = -1.9

score if landed at KSC would of been exactly 0... but I failed to anticipate the glide profile of the craft.

Overall, A very nice craft to fly, superb job. Very nice to fly, not so nice to try and glide though.

Edited July 31, 2015 by Jakalth

[GoSlash27]

all,

This is Llanthas' spaceplane if you're wondering what it looks like.

I'll take it for a spin.

Best,-

Slashy

[GoSlash27]

Results for Llanthas' SpacePlane:

very dangerously wobbly on the runway. Made it, but almost hit a light.

Good acceleration, handling not twitchy at all, but a bit vague.

Failed to reach orbit

Lots of oxidizer on board, but nothing that burns it. Also, no piping between the outboard tanks and NERVs mounted inboard. There was plenty of fuel to make orbit, but it was in the wrong place. By the time I had it transferred inboard, it was too late. Abort.

Extremely tailheavy during abort. Got backwards, but was able to correct it by shifting fuel, applying the speedbrakes, and throttling up.Jeb was busy...

Recovered at 3km, over 1/4 of the way around the planet East.

Good heat tolerance. Was able to cruise it all the way back to KSC and land it without breaking anything.

Thankfully, I had fuel leftover so I didn't have to deadstick it.

Yaw stability is disturbingly weak, even with the active fins. Gotta manually rudder this plane around the pattern. Structure (and therefore landing gear tracking) was flimsy. Nose gear was airborne to 30 m/sec. Not because it was gliding, but because the fuselage was bending up.

68,201 at launch 66,264 value at recovery on the runway

-2 points score

This will make orbit easily with a little piping, but it really needs structural reinforcement.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited August 1, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Jakalth]

Hay, Nich. That's not a bad banner, but how does it look in smaller size? If it's shrunk down to the size of the KSP Caveman pic GoSlash27 has been showing in his signature, does it still look good? That's about the right height for a signature banner.

Also, would you have anything against me submitting a second craft? I don't want to remove the one I've already submitted because it has it's uses, and it was fun to put together, even if I goofed up in a few spots. I have a complete remake of an older ssto design I made back in 0.4x I wouldn't mind submitting. Don't worry, this time it would be a conventional space plane with a much more serious capability. Thinking along the lines of about 9% of it's mass is payload that can be used and flown in space. It also has not be flown yet, just tested to see if it's parts function as intended on the runway before recovering so I'd have a more accurate purchase cost and testing cost score.

[Nich]

By all means feel free to submit a second design. I plan on submitting an MK3 version of the Neagle and hope it gains some much needed stiffness.

[Jakalth]

My second entry is a much more normal ssto, a space plane. Hopefully this one will level the playing field a bit better. I based it on an old design in had built back in 0.4x release of KSP that had very good flight characteristics. But this older design no longer worked the same in KSP 1.04. It suffered from some major fuel issues. So I completely rebuilt it from the ground up. I call it, the "Multicord Thresher", Multicord for short. I'm confident the craft can make orbit now with no payload, and pretty sure it will still be able to go orbital with the 3.4ton muner lander it is carrying in it's cargo hold. The craft it's self is not likely to go any further then lower Kerbin orbit even if your able to hold an ideal flight profile, unless it is carrying no payload. At that point, I can only guess at how far it can go.

Here she is, in all her beauty:

Craft file: Mk2 Multicord Thresher

at 43 tons, she's not a light weight, I'm hoping she's got enough kick from her twin turboramjets to go supersonic at least. This craft is untested except for some quick part tests performed on the runway to make sure all the parts operate correctly and hold together. So how she performs and if she can actually reach orbit are completely unknown at this point. Which makes waiting for the Pro pilot testing results that much more exciting! Be sure to place a kerbal crewman in the munar lander's command pod so it's fliable.

Purchase cost = 79,255

Testing cost = 740

Retrofit cost = 6543

Total cost for mk2 is now = 86,538Kredits

Payload = 3.4tons

Launch:

1: set throttle to 0%

2: activate the engines by pressing spacebar

3: hit the 1 key to keep the ramjets active and deactivate the aerospikes.

4: go full throttle as you start taxiing down the runway, use SAS for now, I'm not completely sure how stable she's going to be just yet in flight.

Flight:

1: stay at full throttle until you transition to rocket power.

2: Once airborn nose her up to about a 15 deg climb, ideally she should slowly accelerate while climbing, adjust her angle of ascent if she's to slow or two fast.

3: level her off at about 12Km if she's not already going supersonic and push for speed, shooting for close to 1100m/s

4: resume your 15 degree climb once her speed is up again

5: at 20Km, OR when she stops accelerating, whichever comes first, hit the 2 key to bring the aerospikes online.

6: lower your throttle a bit so she's still accelerating, but not too quickly, to conserve a little fuel for later on

7: when the ramjets cut out, hit the 3 key to turn them off while leaving the aerospikes on.

8: proceed to orbit

orbit:

1: shoot for a 75Km orbit with this craft. fully loaded I have doubts she'll be able to do more then that.

2: once orbit is achieved, hit the 4 key to deploy her solar panels. you might as well recharge a bit while your up here.

3: open the cargo bays using the 0 key and release the munar lander from the docking port.

4: use the Multicord's RCS to free the munar lander from the cargo hold and send it on it's way.

5: with the cargo released, there is nothing left to do but return to KSC

6: deorbit as best you can, if you have to, she should have enough Monopropellant to deorbit, but only just.

re entry:

1: bring her in at a shallow deorbit and aerobrake into the atmosphere if you have to

2: deploy the airbrakes and bring her nose up 20 - 30 degrees once you reach about 55Km, this will help slow her down and reduce heating during re entry

3: as you get deeper into the atmsphere, you can start reducing the nos up configuration

4: by the time you reach 35Km, you'll want to have the nose up configuration no more then about 20 degrees to prevent her from trying to go orbital again.

5: once your speed drops to about 900m/s, level off the nose. you can keep the airbrakes on at this point for a bit, if you still need to drop her speed more.

6: to this point, you should still be flying with no engines on

7: at 12km, you can kick the ramjets back on by hitting the 1 key again. there should be enough liquid fuel left for powered flight back too the ksc

8: fly in and land at the runway.

I hope you enjoyed flying the Multicord Thresher. We at Jak Airways hope you'll come back to us for all your "this should be good enough" aircraft needs.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Jakalth

[Scarecrow88]

Just in case anyone is still looking at this challenge, I've come up with another craft. Designed to deliver Kerbals to space, I present Deliverance. 5 flights were used to develop the craft for a total cost of 8758.

It's capable of rotating 6 crew to a space station at 100k orbit, or taking 4 space tourists to an 85k orbit. Why the difference in orbit height? The craft is tight on fuel and needs to be flown efficiently. If relying on the fuel load it starts with to return to the surface, I would suggest an orbit no higher than 85k - perfect for tourist flights. It can rendezvous and dock with stations in a 100k orbit to rotate crew, but you will need to take on a bit of fuel to be sure for the de-orbit burn.

Pilot notes:

Pre-take off checks. Reduce throttle to 0, stage to fire engines and then press 2 to shutdown the rocket engines. Engage SAS and throttle up for take off run.

Take off can be achieved at about 80 m/s

Initial climb out can be done at 20 degrees nose up, but in later stages of the climb, you will need to drop this to keep the speed from dropping.

At 10,000m you will need to reduce the nose up attitude to 10 degrees to build up speed. Small adjustments may be necessary to keep the nose close to the prograde vector.

When the acceleration on jets stops, switch to rockets but maintain the 10 degrees attitude

When apoapsis hits 85-90k, shutdown engines, coast to apo and then do a circularisation burn.

Action group keys:

1: Toggle jet engines

2: Toggle rocket engines

3: Extend airbrakes

Deliverance craft file

[Nich]

May I present the Neagle MK3

Supper easy to fly

-Full throttle

-Turn on SAS

-Space to light engines

-Don't touch the arrow keys

-Let plane fly off runway and bring up gear

-Don't touch the arrow keys

-Around 10km cockpit will start overheating back off the throttle a bit until it starts to cool then full throttle.

-When propagrade dips below heading switch to follow it.

-At 20km press space to light nukes

-When no longer accelerating press 1 to switch to LFO mode burn until empty

-Circularize like normal

A better flight path will results in more dV in orbit but this is the easiest way up. The craft handles quite well loaded but it does want to dive a bit when empty. On final approach you can move fuel from the center MK3 LF tank to the 2 MK2 LF tanks to center it pretty well.

Optimal climb speed loaded is about 450-500 m/s @ 3km (if you are flying a more complex flight path)

Approach speed is 100 m/s

Landing speed is 55 m/s

-Reentry

Set PE to 45 km

Use aero braking and air brakes to drop orbit until orbit intersects KSA

aim just short of KSA airbrakes and lift do a good job of canceling each other out to keep the orbit right through KSA. No issues with overheating

I didnt calculated dV in orbit but Minims, Duna and Eve should all be within range.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[Nich]

What is the standard resolution for badges? The galaxie in the background kind of disappeared but it still looks pretty good. I think I need to right side align "Master" If someone could brighten up the back ground I dont have photoshop.

Jalkath I gave you credit for 3 kerbals with Badhat because you "essentially meet up with a station" And could have rotated them all.

If I missed any scores let me know but I think I have the leader board updated

- - - Updated - - -

Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[Jakalth]

Deliverance...

attempt 1:

The deliverance had no issues during takeoff other then having an overabundance of pitch authority. She accelerated well in lower altitudes, but started to taper off at higher ones. I had a little trouble getting her to stop climbing and just accelerate at about 11Km so ended up not getting as much speed built up as I would of liked early on. But, she kept accelerating all the way up to 17Km before needing the rockets to assist in the ascent. At this point, I nosed her up again and started racing for orbit. Getting her to 75Km went smoothly and she rounded out her orbit with fuel to spare. I still had the orbital debree, I mean space station, up in orbit at a close enough orbit to use for thansfering crew. I tried docking with the debree, I mean station, but found it easier to just wedge the Deliverance's nose into the station instead. The station didn't have a matching docking port being the only trouble I had. Crew transfer went smoothly and I left the station, spinning slightly erraticly from having the Deliverance wedged oddly into it's side, and proceeded to deorbit.

Deorbit went smoothly as well. There was more then enough fuel to bring the deliverance into a 36Km orbit just over KSC. This reentry went the exact same as every other space plane I've been flying. deploy brakes at 60Km and pitch nose up 30 degrees. This was probably the best reentry I've made so far and produced one of the most beautiful scenes I've seen in KSP in a long time. Once the crafts speed had been dropped to below 900m/s I once again brought her nose down and prepared to turn off the airbrakes and fly to the runway. And even though she glided pretty well, I decided to do a little fun flying as I made my way to the KSC by turning on the ramjets and just having some fun. She flies quite well when barely loaded with fuel, nearly as well as she does when fully loaded.

I flew her right over the tall spire in the mountains west of the KSC, clearing the top by a mere 200m. The approach was slow and steady, barely needing any input from me to keep her on coarse. I had the engines idling again at this point, at around 8% thrust just to keep electric charge in the batteries. The landing was perfect, probably one of the best I've made in this game. The craft responded nicely to the last second deployment of the brakes and the nose up stall I put her into to bring her speed down to 60m/s for landing. Touchdown went off without even a bump. Jeb did well this day. I wasted more fuel then necessary playing around with her after reentry but I just couldn't help myself.

purchase cost = 53,507

retrieval cost = 51,605

cost score = -1.9

delivered 4 crew to 75Km orbit and rendezvous = 8

final score = 7.1

Only issues was the ease that the small tail fin under the craft had at heating up... It got nearly full red as I was reentering, it even had me thinking I'd have to roll her onto her back just to keep the fin from burning up.

I had to post this, the view was stunning. "Touched by the solar winds..."

Edited August 2, 2015 by Jakalth

[Nich]

Jalkath I attempted the Multicord and was unable to reach orbit I got AP out to 69km with 1200 LF left no OX including the landers fuel. Top Speed was 1207 at 15km on air. Turning from level to 15 degrees took a lot of speed off. Part count was a little high and made pitching up a little laggy and hard.

[Jakalth]

Right now, if I was to rate the craft I'd have to call Deliverance the overall winner in my opinion. It had nice flight characteristics, it had just enough fuel to do the job, and could haul a space stations worth of crew up and back down from orbit.

in list of how I'd rate them so far...

1: Deliverance. Flies beautifully, handles well, transitions nicely, has very few quirks.

2: Noobs friend. Flies extremely well, simple, reliable.

3: Probuilder 1.0. A nice well rounded craft that does require a subtle touch to reach orbit.

4: BadHat/Vamanos. Both tied in my opinion. The bad hat handles a little better but doesn't glide very well, where as the vamanos glides better, but wanders about in the air.

5: Neagle. Has a lot of potential, but needs a bit of structural support to tighten it up.

I can't rate my own here since I'm a bit biased.

@Nich, I could probably fix the issue with the Multicord, but it would require a rebuild of the craft. replacing the central LF tank with a LF/OXY tank. The way I put it together was due to my old design running out of LF before the oxy was used up. I guess I over did it. probably should of tested the craft in flight instead of just a system test on the runway...

Also, I've somehow got the action groups messed up(pretty sure I tested that on the runway...) and some of the fuel routing is wrong... Damn this thing needs a lot of work... :\ And it's adding up in cost quickly...

Edited August 2, 2015 by Jakalth

[Nich]

You should try the Neagle MK3 I fixed all the issues with flexing and I just flew it again "unofficially" and got 3200 dV left in LKO. Pulls up nicely while at full power due to off centered thrust from rapiers. In fact it wants to climb with power on wants to dive with power off (stable) I feel it is a nice balance.

edit...

God damit I just tried to deliver the payload and I can not undock the ore........... ... this works with a docking port junior or did I miss something. I will update it with a decoupler :/

edit...

Updated with a decoupler total cost thought went up to 7,951 :'(

Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[Nich]

jakalth unfortunately because scarecrow had done testing on his craft he had development costs that need to be subtracted from the flight. For the deliveriance I have a score of;

cost = 10,660

6 Kerbals (possible to exchange) = 12

total = 1.34

Still a very respectable score

For the Multicord I just moved the spikes to a second stage and lit them off with a space. Then closed the intakes by hand when they were about to flameout

- - - Updated - - -

llanthas how much did you spend testing your craft?

Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[Jakalth]

Ok, I updated the Multicord too mk2 status. There were too many things wrong with the origional version that I basically had to update it... Redid some of the fuel routing, changed around the fuel tanks a bit, gave her a LOT more oxidizer, probably more then needed, and corrected the command groups so they work correctly now. And yes, I flew her to orbit to make sure she can do it this time. And yes, she can go orbital now, even with the Munar Lander payload fully fueled and untouched.

Mk2 variant had an increased development cost of 8,293 Kredits

Her new purchase cost is = 79,255 Kredits

I updated the origional post with the changed info and the link to the new version.

sorry about making such a bad run at this one... I should of further tested it before releasing it, now the cost is even higher.

@Nich you don't have my testing of the Vamanos up on the board yet, not that big of a deal though. As for the deliverance's score, thanks for correcting that, I forgot to add in the testing cost when I calculated the score. Thought it seems a bit too high for the way I fly...

Edited August 2, 2015 by Jakalth

[GoSlash27]

GAAH! I shall not be bested!

Development cost $2,068.

http://wikisend.com/download/520888/PBtwopointO.craft

Controls:

1) toggle intakes

Space) Stage NERV

Launch (failure to follow these instructions may force an abort):

Space to stage the RAPIERS at 1/2 throttle

Rotate at 80m/sec

Gear up, full throttle

Pitch to 40°

Maintain 40° pitch until 13km altitude

At 13km altitude, follow prograde vector to 5° pitch

Maintain 5° pitch

When ship stops accelerating, hit space to stage the NERV.

Gently pull to 20° pitch (try to avoid flaring)

When RAPIERS flameout, hit 1 to close intakes

Once apoapsis is 45 seconds out...

Reduce pitch gradually to maintain apoapsis at 45sec ahead until prograde

Accelerate prograde to establish orbital apoapsis

Circularize normally.

Deorbit:

Standard deorbit procedure. It flies like anything else.

CAUTION: This aircraft has no means to generate electricity during landing other than the solar panels. Try to deorbit and land in daylight to avoid draining the battery and losing control.

CAUTION: The lower solar panels are susceptible to overheating due to their location. Take care to avoid undue thermal stress during reentry.

This should be able to deliver 5 kerbals to a station in LKO for total mission cost of .7 points, so theoretical max of 9.37.2 points is possible. (forgot to subtract development cost)

Good luck!

-Slashy

Edited August 2, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Jakalth]

Neagle MK3...

attempt 1:

Got her to take off. It felt very strange having a craft that lifts off from the runway with no input at all from the pilot. O_o Got her up to speed and altitude with little problems. Controls were a little sluggish, but that's simply due to the weight of Mk3 parts. Transition to LFO mode was a bit easier then you made it seem and the nukes did make getting orbital interesting once the craft ran out of oxidizer. I do have to say, this craft does not like to fly strait.... From 30Km too orbit I had to constantly put manual input into the controls to keep the craft pointing the correct way. she wanted to drift up/down all the time and kept throwing off the orbital trajectory. I did, after quite a long burn time with the nukes, get it into a nice 75km x 80 km oblong orbit(nothing wrong with that if your trying to catch, or be caught, by something in a different orbit.) Deployment of the 17tons of cargo went smoothly.

The deorbit burn was hairy to say the least, it kept changing pitch on me during the burn. Reentry was accomplished by fighting the pitch the whole way in, not really sure why I couldn't get the fuel ballanced enough to get it to fly level, I only had about 6,000 units of liquid fuel left in the craft after deorbit burn was completed. maybe it just needs more SAS reaction wheels to help keep it level, who knows.

Reentry went fairly well at first, but as I got deeper into the atmosphere, it became harder and harder to maintain pitch. I ended up having to ditch my normal reentry plan and level her off, hoping she could take the heat for a while longer. With her being as big of a craft as she is, and only having the 4 airbrakes, not being able to hold her at a steep pitch meant I could not slow her down well enough to land at KSC, I ended up overshooting it by over half the ocean east of KSC. Once she was lower in the atmosphere, I attempted to rebalance her fuel again, and brought the engines back online. I then proceeded to try turning the craft back around to fly back too the runway. there was more then enough fuel to do so. but, about half way through the turn, I lost hold of the craft and she went into a flat spin. I was unable to recover the craft, even with 8,000m of height to do so, I was never able to get her out of the flat spin or bring her nose down low enough to get the speed needed to pull out... all my fighting with the controls only ended with the craft crashing sideways into the ocean at 112m/s nothing survived...

Bad flight on my part... Not sure why the craft was fighting me so badly the entire time...

I don't even want to try calculating the score for this...

[Nich]

@Jakalth I calculated 16457 for a total cost and gave you credit for 2 kerbals pluss .7t for a total of -11.06 since you had more then enough dV to meetup with a station

- - - Updated - - -

For some reason the Neagle MK3 likes to wobble in the roll axis. Not sure why. I bet this was the main cause of the loss of control. I have not done much low speed testing on this one . Interesting the nukes wouldnt hold propagrade as they should pre pretty well centered. On reentry I normally have KSA targeted before 45km below this the craft just wants to fly strait (possibly to much stability)

Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[Nich]

PBtwopoint0

Great plane very easy to fly. I undershot the landing a tad but was able to roll to the runway without any power . A little tough to pull up when airbrakes are on (my only complaint and it is a small one) I would also replace the 2 underwing solar panels and put them on top or just leave them off. I lost one on the bottom to heat

Cost = 49900 - 49150 = 750 + 2068 = 2818

6 Kerbals to LKO = 12

Total = 9.18

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Edited August 2, 2015 by Nich

[GoSlash27]

PBtwopoint0

Cost = 49900 - 49150 = 750 + 2068 = 2818

6 Kerbals to LKO = 12

Total = 9.18

http://imgur.com/a/cP7qc

*happy dance* Lookit that thing glow! The one thing I was worried about was the lower solar panels popping from the heat, but it looks like they held. Or not...

If I reissue it as 2.1 with the lower solar panels removed, should I include your mission cost in the development cost?

Best,

-Slashy

Edited August 2, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Jakalth]

@Nich, I didn't seem to have any roll wobble, instead I was getting pitch wobble, badly. I have a feeling this might be the "phantom force" issue that I've been hearing about... Might be the same issue I was having with the vamanos and one of the other craft. Something just causing issues with the simulation... The nukes couldn't hold for the same reason I was having troubles with it for the rest of its flight. Pitch issues... I'm wondering if there might be something wrong with your install? Possible an issue that is still in your install from an early version of KSP? from before 0.24? Only thing I can think of. But I'd have to try making a copy of your craft, from scratch, on my system and see if it acts the same... And I can't quite do that, your designs are something I haven't been able to pull off, asymentric wings of that type.

[Nich]

I started with 1.0.2 The career I've been doing my SSTOs on was a new career for 1.0.4 The only mod I have that I transferred over is kerbal alarm system.

I really like the asymmetric wings I think they have a lot better lift to drag ratio then the lifting bodies and it's always a plus to have your thrust going forwards rather than at an angle of attack. I do think I will try the same craft without the asymmetric wings and see how it flies