How do i piggyback space planes on top of atmospheric planes?

[Cloakedwand72]

How do i piggyback space planes on top of atmospheric planes?And with out the carrier plane disappearing after a certain distant?And how will i beable to auto pilot the carrier plane back to the KSC?

[legoclone09]

I think there is a mod for that, it lets you pilot something to orbit and go back to stage sep, the plane/vehicle that was piggybacked will autopilot and you can land the first plane.

[Wjolcz]

Best thing you could do is to perform a sub-orbital hop, decouple the shuttle from the atmospheric plane, put it into more or less stable orbit and then switch back to the atmospheric carrier and go back to KSC.

Or download that mod with which you can revert spent stages and land them.

[Bomaye]

Or you can do a plane on a space plane, like under - but just make it a spaceplane on a spaceplane

[legoclone09]

So... So it's a space-spaceplane?

[LordFerret]

It's a spacey spacious space-plane.

[Bomaye]

It is just a normal plane/base/lab/miner for Laythe that need a lift up to the Laythe pusher which used same space plane up.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Radial decouplers are your friend

As far as landing the parent ship FMRS is what was suggested above. It creates a save point at stage separation, so you can fly your ship to orbit, then lets you jump back in time and land the mothership, and combines the two save files into one.

BDArmory lets you extend the physics range out to hundreds of kilometers if you'd like, but it can be a bit of a pain to switch between flying two ships at once.

[Alshain]

I think there is a mod for that, it lets you pilot something to orbit and go back to stage sep, the plane/vehicle that was piggybacked will autopilot and you can land the first plane.

The mod is Flight Manager for Reusable Stages

Another option is Stage Recovery. In that one you can't fly it back, but if it has a pilot or probe and enough fuel it will 'simulate' a successful landing. Basically refunding you the money and crew when the game removes it. Not just for planes either. Boosters with parachutes will be landed for a refund, less the distance from KSC penalty, and boosters with fuel and a probe will assume a Falcon 9-style landing and give a full refund.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Alshain

[Fearless Son]

Or you can do a plane on a space plane, like under - but just make it a spaceplane on a spaceplane

Yo dawg, we heard you like spaceplanes...

[cantab]

With the new extended physics range doing it manually should be much more feasible. I think the flight plan would be:

Climb with the two planes together.

Separate, and send the spaceplane into a suborbital trajectory.

Switch to the motherplane and land it *quickly*.

In the Tracking Station switch to the spaceplane and put it in orbit.

As far as the vehicles go, the motherplane you want to be capable of diving quickly then shedding speed, so I suggest airbrakes or even drogue chutes to help it do that. The spaceplane you want to have lots of acceleration to blast its apoapsis high enough quickly enough, so I'd recommend a high-thrust chemical engine, not a nuclear-only design.

Twitch streamer Matoroignika has a couple of Falcon 9 style rockets that he flies in a similar manner, doing the powered landing manually each time, no need for Stage Recovery or FMRS.

[Alshain]

cantab, the extended physics range is not that far. By the time you let go of the other plane, you would already further from the ground than physics range.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Alshain

[Cloakedwand72]

Radial decouplers are your friend

http://i.imgur.com/nlAviaN.png

As far as landing the parent ship FMRS is what was suggested above. It creates a save point at stage separation, so you can fly your ship to orbit, then lets you jump back in time and land the mothership, and combines the two save files into one.

BDArmory lets you extend the physics range out to hundreds of kilometers if you'd like, but it can be a bit of a pain to switch between flying two ships at once.

Dos FMRS still work on all KSP versions?And is it going to be updated?

[Alshain]

Dos FMRS still work on all KSP versions?And is it going to be updated?

1.0.2 is close enough to current. Almost anything that says 1.0.2 will work with 1.0.4 and likely 1.0.5.

[juanml82]

With the new extended physics range doing it manually should be much more feasible. I think the flight plan would be:

Climb with the two planes together.

Separate, and send the spaceplane into a suborbital trajectory.

Switch to the motherplane and land it *quickly*.

In the Tracking Station switch to the spaceplane and put it in orbit.

As far as the vehicles go, the motherplane you want to be capable of diving quickly then shedding speed, so I suggest airbrakes or even drogue chutes to help it do that. The spaceplane you want to have lots of acceleration to blast its apoapsis high enough quickly enough, so I'd recommend a high-thrust chemical engine, not a nuclear-only design.

Twitch streamer Matoroignika has a couple of Falcon 9 style rockets that he flies in a similar manner, doing the powered landing manually each time, no need for Stage Recovery or FMRS.

Or use Kerbin side to land the motherplane in/near some airfield in the continent east of Booster Bay.

Then again, I've never managed to make what the OP ask - I could never properly balance CoM/CoL or get a separation in which the smaller spaceplane doesn't spin out of control.

[samstarman5]

Lately I built a two-part craft to bring space station parts up and then just let the lift vehicle burn up in re-entry. I was going to just separate the package during the peak of a sub-orbit hop, but last-minute fuel concerns got me to just make full orbit with the lift stage. That got me to thinking that is about the most ideal direction to go if you want to stick with stock is just fix your lift vehicle to be able to make orbit, and then it can deploy its package with plenty of time for it to de-orbit and land with the package safe in orbit. One other trick is to have like SRB's on your package with just enough fuel upon deployment from a sub-orbital hop to bring it to orbit while you can just focus on bringing the lift vehicle back. It really depends on the weight of the package, but two Hammers might just be all you'd need with a decent reaction wheel and either a drone or pilot at the helm. It's always worth testing out to get a feel for what can do the job for you. If you are a career nut, then going with sandbox to try it out would be just testing in the KSC simulator for you. Nothing to lose sleep over.

I play KSP for the ballistic fun, so spaceplanes aren't my bag. This gives me more the challenge of creating re-usable vehicles that only fly ballistically. With water still being more hazardous to ship parts than dry ground(there was some improvement with that one fix that was made dealing with temperatures), I have been enjoying having some dV left over for landing. It doesn't matter which way your orbit aims, the odds of landing in water on Kerbin are still high.

[Bomaye]

Just tested piggyback rocket and its doable

http://imgur.com/gallery/AtBsg/new

[KerikBalm]

Its doable (or rather something similar) on my STS replica.. where I recover the external tank instead of the SRBs.

I typically release the ET, its apoapsis is somewhere in the 60's, and I have enough time to get the orbiter into orbit and then switch to the ET before its deep enough in the atmosphere that it despawns.

cantab, the extended physics range is not that far.

Indeed, but it can help if you release below 23 km, on an ascending trajectory... so that the discarded plane goes above 23km before being put on rails, and then you have a chance to switch back to it before it despawns.

Also, it allows for recovery of very short duration SRBs.

I use fleas with LES on top... the fleas tweaked to have less fuel.

Recovery of these boosters only works due to the extended physics range:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zxv4728zhed0ol/SSTNope.craft?dl=0

^ but that's not piggyback.

[xtoro]

My Atlas Jetpack:

Fly up high at high speeds using the jetpack's air-breathing engines

Entire album:

http://imgur.com/a/rR8zR

I set an action group to fire the sepratrons and decouple in one action.

Land the jetpack using FMRS

Then go back to your spaceplane and use the LFO engines to get to where you want to go.

Also, I rendezvous with my transport vessel and dock which can then use its nuke engine to bring the spaceplane to Duna, undock, land and return the same way.

The design of my transport ship allows the CoM to stay lined up with the CoT.

[Van Disaster]

Long ago when we had even less physics range I managed a satellite launch from a normal aircraft - basically zoom-climbed as high as possible, threw the satellite out, gave it a kick to get it to at least a vague semblance of an orbit, jumped back to the now plummeting aircraft & put it on the first piece of ground I could, and then got back to the satellite & stuck it in a proper orbit.

BD Armory not only increases physics range, but has an autopilot - you could just get that to fly your plane straight while you sort your spacecraft out. Alternatively if it's in physics range any of the other aircraft piloting systems should work. You don't need to *permanently* increase physics range either - I used to have it set to 99km via one of the old mods ( lazor? ) and every time a station went over KSC the game would choke, so it's not a good idea.

Or, spaceplaneplane.