Is it even possible to make a <15t laythe roundtrip SSTO?

[Pecan]

Single Stage To Orbit - after that any 'SSTO' rules are over. Someone who wants Single Stage To 'somewhere else' should say so. If those rules really seem important though ... undock instead of staging/jettisoning, you can always re-dock when you come back ready to land.

Hehe, then you can look at your space-vehicle and start slashing away at the extra mass you now see is not needed with all the extra-efficiency tricks you've learnt :-)

[Val]

Pecan said:

Single Stage To Orbit - after that any 'SSTO' rules are over. Someone who wants Single Stage To 'somewhere else' should say so. If those rules really seem important though ... undock instead of staging/jettisoning, you can always re-dock when you come back ready to land.

Hehe, then you can look at your space-vehicle and start slashing away at the extra mass you now see is not needed with all the extra-efficiency tricks you've learnt :-)

You're right, that SSTO is often used where people meant Single Stage To Destination. But that doesn't work well as an acronym, due to it's similarity to something people don't like to discuss openly. Though, I don't think that's why people use SSTO instead.

On this forum SSTO has become synonymous with all things Single Stage, whether To Orbit or beyond. It's a little sad, since you'd think a game that essentially teaches you rocket science, would make people look smarter. But they don't when misusing terms.

On the other hand, in the real world, with current technological outlook, there's never been much point in discussing Single Stage Beyond Orbit (SSBO©®)

So there's a definite lack of real world terms. Maybe that's why people just shoehorn SSTO in instead?

[Pecan]

You're right, of course, but since SSTO has never even become a reality in the real world, there's no reason for its current mis-use on the forum either. *Grin* Unpleasant infections need not arise, since the only 'D's would need to be SSTDu or SSTDr anyway (similarly SSTMu/SSTMi), to avoid ambiguity.

More interestingly - but perhaps not interestingly enough to warrant a derail, so apologies if that's how it seems - seems to me the idea of undocking rather than 'staging' per se. AFAIK there's no term for that sort of design but it's accepted that a 'Jool 5' or some-such will undock a lander or two but still count as a single vehicle. Can't see the problem with that myself, but some people seem very sniffy about "Single" even while they ignore "Stage To Orbit". Ah well ... again, no RL exemplar.

[ManEatingApe]

Got distracted playing with the shiny new parts in 1.0.5...

Since I don't want to contract an SSTD, perhaps we need a new acronym to avoid ambiguity in future,

for my approach we could use A.M.P.L.E = All Major Parts Lugged Everywhere

and for Pecan's S.P.U.T.N.I.K = Sensible People Undock Things Near Influence of Kerbin

...I'll get my coat

On the other hand, in the real world, with current technological outlook, there's never been much point in discussing Single Stage Beyond Orbit (SSBO™ ©®)

Just last week, SABRE got a bunch of research money thrown at it, so fingers crossed that perhaps we'll see a protoytpe soon

... undock instead of staging/jettisoning, you can always re-dock when you come back ready to land.

I like your idea of a craft that can reconfigure itself using docking ports (and since IRL the Apollo missions took the same approach it's probably a good plan )

It certainly means that we need a more fluid notion of what exactly constitutes staging.

The best thing about KSP is that's there's always many ways to accomplish the same goal, so if I want to make life difficult for myself with no staging, I don't mean to imply that everyone else has to do the same!