Satellite Launch From First SSTO Space Plane

[Rocketology]

Space planes are hard, who knew?

I wanted to start making space planes as soon as possible in career mode, which you can do fairly early, if doing a shuttle style launch. But it turns out, it's significantly less expensive to just use traditional rockets until you can do a SSTO space plane which requires the Whiplash engine. I was able to achieve sub-orbital SSTO's before unlocking the Whiplash (made it a priority) but to actually get into orbit, the Whiplash is a necessity.

[nsgallup]

Couldn't you make a rocket plane SSTO?

[Thegamer211]

Had to add contrast to see what you were doing

In the future, can you take photos in light?

Just a friendly tip

[Rocketology]

Actually, I have, for some reason the in game screenshot makes them really dark.

[meyerweb]

This is exactly what I’m trying to do next, and what I can’t figure out is how to mount the satellite inside the cargo bay (Mk2) in such a way that it will just drift out. Not to mention, attachment points are being really annoying: when I merge in my satellite design from the VAB, it has no attachment points. Can you post a shot of your cargo bay setup in the hangar, with satellite? And, ideally, some idea of how the frell you put it together in the hangar? Thanks!

Edited December 11, 2015 by meyerweb
Cleaned up forum migration errors (Unicode and hyperlinking were both botched—sigh)

[meyerweb]

meyerweb said:

This is exactly what I’m trying to do next, and what I can’t figure out is how to mount the satellite inside the cargo bay (Mk2) in such a way that it will just drift out. Not to mention, attachment points are being really annoying: when I merge in my satellite design from the VAB, it has no attachment points. Can you post a shot of your cargo bay setup in the hangar, with satellite? And, ideally, some idea of how the frell you put it together in the hangar? Thanks!

So, I figured this out: first, I had to rebuild the satellite in the SPH, instead of just merging in the VAB craft. If I merged in (or even just straight loaded) the VAB craft, it had zero attachment points; I couldn’t even save it as a subassembly.

Next, I loaded up the SSTO file and mounted a docking port inside the cargo bay. It had to be manually placed, as the docking port’s attachment points didn’t snap to either of the interior snap points in the cargo bay. (Unlike, say, stack separators, which were totally fine with attachment-point snapping.)

Then I merged in the SPH version of the satellite, which snapped to the docking port just fine. Runway testing of the satellite release procedure checks out, so I’m finally ready to take my own stab at this!

Edited December 11, 2015 by meyerweb
Cleaned up forum migration errors (Unicode and hyperlinking were both botched—sigh)