What am I going to do with all these plane parts?

[Wanderfound]

Since the atmosphere change ssto's are not useful unless you build them big. I miss my 12 ton and lighter ssto's.

It's fairly simple to build a 2xRAPIER/1xLV-N ship that can manage a KSC to Munar orbit trip without a refuel. Add an orbital top-up and you can take the same ship to Jool and back. Two-seater, with some cargo capacity, well below √100,000 and about the size of a Learjet.

(that's a FAR ship, but the capability gap between stock and FAR isn't much these days)

Shave it down to a Mk1 fighter-sized ship, and you'll reach LKO but not much farther. Scale up to a Mk3 with some ISRU gear, and you've got a self-sufficient grand tourer with effectively infinite range.

[Rune]

Heresy! Shun the non-believer!

Light SSTOs are the best thing going for putting crews into orbit to meet up with their interplanetary vessels. I've found that it's actually *heavy* SSTOs that are impractical these days. Cool, but impractical...

Of course, I could be wrong...

Best,

-Slashy

I know this is only applicable to players with a lot of experience like me and capable of building efficient SSTOs, but honestly, the way I pay for everything these days is SSTOing. Before I unlocked the big parts I used to go the tourist+satellite route (HUGE gains using tiny probes lofted in tiny SSTOs), but now that I have the tech tree done? I just grab a Longsword/Spatha, depending on whether I need crew up or not, and stockpile the extra fuel on orbit. I have whole orange tanks piled up there, even after extensive refueling operations, and I have yet to bring a tanker up. And I use orbital refueling a lot! Which means I can afford really pointless projects like a Von Braun ring station around every rock, for the kicks of it. Lifting the fuel I need is how I make money!

A standard "let's make money" mission goes like this: grab two satellite contracts, a tourist one, and a rescue mission (free kerbals!). Load a Spatha with a 0.5mT probe and all the fuel that fits. Proceed to earn north of 250-300k√ in a single SSTO flight, completing the two satellite contracts with about 1km/s to spare usually, and leave about 3/4's of an orange tank worth of fuel at my LKO depot. Not bad for less than an hour of gameplay, and I do a bit of everything (flying, orbital maneuvering with the probe, rendezvous, proximity ops, reentry, maybe some KAS job on the side). And they are really easy on the clock, you complete them in less than a kerbin day usually.

So far I have paid for the whole tech tree and all the buildings except the last level of the VAB adn the administration building (why would I need it! ), five Von Braun rings (~500k√ each), a surface base (north of 750k√), various support ships to link them, and all the ships that got me the science (which was easy, since I only needed one to get all the Munar science, after a couple at Minmus). All of this before day 70, with more than a million still in the bank.

Rune. But then again, this is my third career save, and my third year playing.

[Jett_Quasar]

I do everything beyond LKO, the general rule is the farther you go from Kerbin the more $ you can make. I recently did a couple contracts at Duna worth a total of around $1.5 million with an all-in-one craft that I already had sitting on Ike (paid for through previous missions). My cost was zero so it was all profit, and the on-board ISRU provided all the fuel I needed. In my career game I built exactly one aircraft and my space plane hangar and runway are level 1 (although my VAB is only level 2). It's not that I don't want to work with space planes it's just that it's very time consuming and a specific skill set to develop that isn't really required to play the game successfully. That said, I still use a lot of space plane parts on my inter-planetary space craft - it just depends on how creative you want to get.

The video is a bit rough but that another skill I'm working at...

Don't get me wrong, I love space planes and I've done quite a few in the past, it's just that with version 1.0 you need to basically redevelop all those skills again and it's just not where I'm at right now.

JR

Edited July 29, 2015 by Jolly_Roger

[Falkenherz]

Let me add my small example to the spaceplane discussion:

http://falkenherz.blogspot.de/2015/07/a-nice-combined-satelite-deployment.html

For me, spaceplanes are a large part of the fun. And they can look super cool!

[KerikBalm]

The awesomness coefficient is pretty high with these. Also those were the pictures I had to see to advance my horizontal launch only career.

Here's a slightly modified version (cones on the back of the rapiers), showing it at launch.

I'm not sure if its for fun or not

3 independent reentries and landings on the runway to get such a light payload into orbit?

On the other hand... getting something like that to orbit on top of a rocket is pretty hard... it doesn't have any free nodes left, so everything has to be radially attached (getting it to duna was done with the claw)

Anyway, there it is.... flying around duna at 80 m/s or so.... better than a rover at least

Maybe I should buff my electric fans.

Here is my duna spaceplane-ish lander, in orbit, with strap on spaceplanes.

Its got wings for precision landings next to the surface base (fly to the base, then pop chutes and do a tail sitter landing, which also make it hard to fit in cargo bays of my larger SSTOs - I couldad gone with smaller wings, and still had sufficient aerodynamic properties, but the wide base formed by the rear wing/vertical stabs makes a very stable landing platform.

Unlike the electric sailplane for duna, this one couldn't be horizontally launched.

This was in 1.02... I'd may to change things up a bit with reduced airbreathing thrust in 1.04. Still, got it to orbit fully fuelled.

It couldn't vertically launch from Kerbin, with a fuelled payload, as a SSTO.

I still managed 100% recovery by adding another layer of radially attached items... the small SRBs (selected for short burntimes).

I spool up the airbreathers to full thrust, then light the SRBs and start to pitch forward. As the SRBs were buffed and most of the initial thrust comes from them, I hope the transition to horizontal flight will work in 1.04 even with the airbreathers giving less thrust.

I vertically launch from the runway, so the discarded SRBs land on it, for full 100% recovery, even if its not an SSTO.

Spaceplanes let me get things into orbit very cheap... sure it takes more time, but its a game, right? playing it should be fun.

Using spaceplanes means I don't have to do as many contracts for stuff that I may not want to do, to have the funding needed.

Of course, if you don't want to use spaceplanes, its just trading 1 thing you may not want to do for another thing you may not want to do...

I made a thread on these strapons before, no one showed any interest before :'(

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125392-Strap-On-SSTOs-share-your-pics-if-you-have-them

Also note I started out with yet another vertically launched SSTO spaceplane... a massive one to compare the versatile, small, strap on SSTOs to.

[Hagen von Tronje]

Anyway, there it is.... flying around duna at 80 m/s or so.... better than a rover at least

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/11535865_10103666692595473_6263945086339643445_n.jpg?oh=0d0d4dd1894dd3f72b4609770056c6e6&oe=560EB12C

Maybe I should buff my electric fans.

Is the fan an assembly or modded part? In either case, where can I get it?

[Wanderfound]

I have whole orange tanks piled up there, even after extensive refueling operations, and I have yet to bring a tanker up. And I use orbital refueling a lot! Which means I can afford really pointless projects like a Von Braun ring station around every rock, for the kicks of it. Lifting the fuel I need is how I make money!

Speaking of orbital fuel depots...

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Lifting a loaded orange tank costs about √6,000 in FAR and not much more in stock. Once you can do that, everything else is easy. Big stuff is simple to launch when it can arrive in orbit with empty tanks, and interplanetary gets a lot easier when you can replace the 3,500m/s spent on reaching LKO.

[Evanitis]

I made a thread on these strapons before, no one showed any interest before :'(

Don't blame them. Those of us who prefer to build stuff instead of flying them don't go there too often. I don't even like to look at such pictures, because I might notice solutions I'd rather discover myself. Though I don't mind cool rapier-plane designs, as I have a tendency to restart my career when I get near to the end of the tech-tree.

Though I'll totally try strapon lifting with jet-engines.

[KerikBalm]

Is the fan an assembly or modded part? In either case, where can I get it?

Its a modded part.

The basic jet engine has had an art change since 0.18.

I used the old model+mesh for the basic jet, so it is visually distinguishable from the basic Jet (although it looks very similar).

Likewise, I used the old model+mesh for the engine nacelles/circular intakes.

Then in the ResourcesGeneric.cfg file, I added this:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION

{

name = IntakeAtmosphere

density = 0.005

unitCost = 0

hsp = 10

flowMode = ALL_VESSEL

transfer = PUMP

isTweakable = false

}

For the old basic jet (aside from a rename and tweaking mass/cost), I used this for the engine module (tweak numbers as you want to achieve your desired amount of fun and challenge):

MODULE

{

name = ModuleEngines

thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform

exhaustDamage = True

ignitionThreshold = 0.02

minThrust = 0

maxThrust = 30

heatProduction = 20

useEngineResponseTime = True

engineAccelerationSpeed = 0.45

engineDecelerationSpeed = 0.75

fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.74

engineSpoolIdle = 0.01

engineSpoolTime = 1.0

EngineType = Turbine

PROPELLANT

{

name = ElectricCharge

ratio = 25

DrawGauge = True

}

PROPELLANT

{

name = IntakeAtmosphere

ratio = 0.1

}

atmosphereCurve

{

key = 0 4800 0 0

}

// Jet params

atmChangeFlow = True

useVelCurve = True

useAtmCurve = True

machLimit = 0.5

machHeatMult = 3.5

velCurve

{

key = 0 1 0 -0.125804

key = 0.5 0.98 0 0

key = 0.8 0.75 0.2399533 0.2399533

key = 1.0 0 0.004306508 0

}

atmCurve

{

key = 0 0 0 0

key = 0.075 0.2 2.448394 2.448394

key = 0.25 0.7 0.5020669 0.5020669

key = 1 1 1.047895 0

}

So now the engine uses just intake atmosphere (which has mass) and electric charge)

I think I should lower the Isp, and then lower the electric charge:atmosphere ratio... its electric charge usage seems high enough, but I can close the intakes and run for a while on stored air. Its never a matter of not having enough intakes, its the hard limit to no thrust in a vacuum (and only 20% thrust at 0.075 atmospheres)

To get the reaction mass, I just took the old intakes, and changed

resourceName = IntakeAir

to

resourceName = IntakeAtmosphere

and

checkForOxygen = true

to

checkForOxygen = false

Setting it to false makes it supply the resource on every world with an atmosphere, not just Kerbin or laythe.

You can make all your jet engines work on duna or eve (or Jool for that matter) if you just include an air intake with the flag changed from true to false.

Obviously, I didn't want turboramjets to work on duna, so I had to use a different name for the resource supplied by the intake.

Then instead of having the part hold liquid fuel, I made it hold electric charge (basically, its a big battery with an air intake)

[Hagen von Tronje]

*snip*

Wow. Mad props to you, that's taking a build to the next level.

[ModZero]

Get a flight assistant mod, scatterer and a good EVE config. Don't build an SSTO, just something nice. Get some hot cocoa. Go around the world.

Slow and utterly pointless, but sometimes slow, utterly pointless, cocoa and a cat are exactly what I need.

But space is for rockets.

[More Boosters]

Well, I had science coming out of my ears thanks to Mobile Processing Labs, so I bought all the aircraft parts. What now?

[Red Iron Crown]

Well, I had science coming out of my ears thanks to Mobile Processing Labs, so I bought all the aircraft parts. What now?

Make planes. Fly them. Have fun.

[Jett_Quasar]

Well, I had science coming out of my ears thanks to Mobile Processing Labs, so I bought all the aircraft parts. What now?

Use airplane parts to make your spacecraft look cooler!

SideKick Starship by Jolly Roger on Sketchfab

JR

[Frank_G]

Make planes. Fly them. Have fun.

The only answer that counts.

[Jett_Quasar]

The only answer that counts.

Yeah except that they're actually not as fun to fly since they changed the areo in 1.0 and they're pretty much useless beyond LKO or with any payload of any significance. Don't get me wrong I still love space planes but I - like many people - don't have the patience for them any more in the post 1.0 game.

JR

Edit: You can still build starships like this one, it has lots of space plane parts...

All KSP images have been moved here.

Edited September 28, 2015 by Jolly_Roger

[Vegvisir]

Yeah except that they're actually not as fun to fly since they changed the areo in 1.0 and they're pretty much useless beyond LKO or with any payload of any significance. Don't get me wrong I still love space planes but I - like many people - don't have the patience for them any more in the post 1.0 game.

JR

Edit: You can still build starships like this one, it has lots of space plane parts...

http://i.imgur.com/nkqZcNK.png?1

So coooool. Many modded parts or are you just a crazy person when it comes to ship-building? ( p.s. I mean that in a positive way xD )

[Jett_Quasar]

So coooool. Many modded parts or are you just a crazy person when it comes to ship-building? ( p.s. I mean that in a positive way xD )

I don't use any mods in my builds so that I can share the craft out to anyone. That particular build is an old design with outdated parts - I really like it though so I will be porting it to v1.0.4 and re-releasing it (I guess you could just say I'm crazy). It's actually pretty build cool stuff like that once you get the hang of it & there's a bunch of people out there doing sort of the same thing already.

JR

[KerikBalm]

Yeah except that they're actually not as fun to fly since they changed the areo in 1.0 and they're pretty much useless beyond LKO or with any payload of any significance.

Ummmm... Why would you want to take a payload past LKO with a spaceplane?

My SSTOs get to LKO with rather large payloads (100 ton range), some of them I take to the Mun or minmus... but mostly as soon as I'm in orbit, I want to leave the dead-weight of empty tanks + airbreathing engines+ aerosurfaces behind...

100 tons to orbit is good enough for me.

A not-insignificant payload to the Mun.

-A mun lander with complete science package, and a stack of batteries+ extendable solar panels for the fuel depot and MPL in Munar orbit, as the ox-stats it was launched with were insufficient to run the MPL

This one I launched below half fuel, to get that ship into orbit (reduced launch costs, I had a tug take it to minmus, where I have a full 2.5 orange tank fuel depot resupplied by ISRU). That ship it carried is not insignificant (intended as an ISRU fuel tanker for supplying a Duna fuel depot)

SSTOs are more fun to fly in the post 1.0 aero, IMO.

The old getting to orbit on jet engines alone that could have 40,000 Isp was just ridiculous.

[Frank_G]

Yeah except that they're actually not as fun to fly since they changed the areo in 1.0 and they're pretty much useless beyond LKO or with any payload of any significance...

Edit: You can still build starships like this one, it has lots of space plane parts...

http://i.imgur.com/nkqZcNK.png?1

You are right about the functionality, but anyways, i find it fun and challenging to build and fly such craft in the most efficient way.

And that is a very impressive craft you have there. Looks awesome!

[Wanderfound]

Yeah except that they're actually not as fun to fly since they changed the areo in 1.0 and they're pretty much useless beyond LKO or with any payload of any significance.

You might want to look upthread a bit. Lifting bulk payloads (orange Rockomax scale) to LKO is not difficult; neither is interplanetary range.

Edited July 30, 2015 by Wanderfound

[Frank_G]

The combination of both is difficult to achieve though. My next challenge

[Jett_Quasar]

You might want to look upthread a bit. Lifting bulk payloads (orange Rockomax scale) to LKO is not difficult; neither is interplanetary range.

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for all those players who build and fly awesome space plane designs and one of these days I'll get around to working on that skill, but for now my focus is on building ships that are capable of doing lots of cool stuff beyond LKO, and I have yet to be able to lift one into orbit with an SSTO space plane. Fortunately, there are lots of different way to play the game.

All KSP images have been moved here.

JR

BTW, I've asked Space Cowboy to build me an SSTO space plane launcher so I'll see what he comes up with...

Edited September 28, 2015 by Jolly_Roger

[KerikBalm]

I'm pretty sure I could get that thing into orbit in one go....

The payload dimensions look within reason.

Its a bit tall at the top which will make the fairing either really big, or it'll have stuff sticking out of the fairing.

Is it attached bya docking node (as it seems multiple things on that craft are)... could it possibly be put somewhere else and attached to the top once in orbit?

[Mikki]

Hey Jolly Roger

The pic of your heavily asymmetric vessel with vertical landing ability is AWESOME... This is indeed very difficult to make in Stock game, do you use a Fuelbalancer addon? I allways wanted to make stuff like this, this is very cool... no need to tug around a lander to harvest the ore from surface... How do you keep the mass centered with the different thrust angles?

Greetings Mikki My Rep for you!

...OMG.... your crafts lands on Duna??? OMG! ... I must try this too, thats great!

Edited July 30, 2015 by Mikki
Typos?:)