Now i know why they're called spaceplanes.

[sciencepanda]

Finally, i have reached orbit with a spaceplane. all stock parts, but i did mod the data values to increase fuel capacity, and thrust from the aerospike engine.

pics attached

[samstarman5]

Modding the parts pretty much removes stock from the title. Stock would mean you did this with unmodified parts already provided in the game. Note the 'un-'.

[Crusher8000]

Has anyone reached orbit with stock parts without cheating?

[Ted]

Has anyone reached orbit with stock parts without cheating?

I have, it required quite a bit of thrust and I managed to get an elliptical polar orbit of ~70km x ~300km. Although, the plane is no longer in orbit due to me accidentally nudging the RCS at my Apoapsis facing retrograde, which took my orbit down a couple of kilometers before I noticed. This lead to a decay in orbit over the next 3 orbits before I noticed anything was wrong, on the 4th orbit I re-entered the atmosphere..

[Temstar]

It\'s actually very easy. The jet engines in KSP (particularly that turbojet) have physics defying high thrust to weight ratio compared to the rocket engines.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12625

[khyron42]

I\'ve even managed it without using jet fuel in rocket engines - since they\'re supposed to be different fuel types and will be in a future update.

This design can manage takeoff to 10km on jet only, kick in the rockets there, make it to a 75km+ circular orbit, deorbit with the remaining rocket fuel, and land on jets again.

To keep the rockets from burning jet fuel they\'re in the middle. To keep the jets from burning rocket fuel I disable the jets right before they\'re done burning through their first tank of jet fuel, and will either burn all the rocket fuel or disable the rocket tanks before I re-enable the jets for landing.

Design on runway

In orbit, about to do deorbit burn. Those 1/3 full tanks are the remaining rocket fuel, the other almost-empty tanks and the two completely full ones are jet fuel.

[Zephram Kerman]

It\'s actually very easy. The jet engines in KSP (particularly that turbojet) have physics defying high thrust to weight ratio compared to the rocket engines.

It\'s easy if you guess build the thing just right. Since the laws of physics are a bit different in KSP, the best designs will be a bit counter-intuitive to aeronautics regulars.

I\'ve done nothing but work on space plane designs since version 15 came out. Finally I can present to you all the Single Stage Interplanetary Vehicle mk 1.

The maiden voyage of the SSIPV mk 1 ended up reaching all the way to Minmus! Bobsy was pleased by the stroke of good luck triumph of Kerbal engineering. Milwel and Camin were a bit less enthusiastic, due to Bobsy playing the Hamster Dance song for the entire trip.

The SSIPV mk 1 is a prototype, so nobody expected it to ever reach Minmus. Therefore, nobody thought to put landing thrusters. (Besides, the thing is underpowered already.)

Undaunted, Bobsy carefully brought the ship to a stop just over a frozen lake, then gracefully belly flopped the ship onto the landing gear.

Unfortunately, there is no documentation of the return trip, due to the launch maneuver damaging the aerospike rocket engine.

[Steve5451]

Why are your fire effects so realistic? :\'(

[NovaSilisko]

Why are your fire effects so realistic? :\'(

There\'s some new effects in 0.15.1+

[Commander Zoom]

That\'s a great-looking (and obviously quite effective) design, Zef.

[samstarman5]

As soon as I got my hands on 0.15, I immediately started testing the feasibility of jet engines as a support thrust for ballistic rockets. The results were quite stupendous. Using two jet engines and one rocket stage, I was able to achieve a solid orbit at close to 80km, with fuel to spare for a return. It is quite amazing what those jet engines can carry.

I kept the jet engines on, and had their fuel supply on a separate stage. More an aesthetic thing, really.

It does show you don\'t even need wings to use jet engines for spacecraft. So many things to do!