1.0.5, harder to make spaceplanes?

[Rune]

[quote name='Majorjim']That's a nice post Rune. I am confused why people are burning up though. All the cockpits are rated to at least 2000. I have been re-entering at random and and never even come close to burning up. Ever..

I think he might have a mod conflict of something like that as kerbin orbit re-entering is super forgiving. Unless he is entering at interplanetary speed but I highly doubt that.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, but I think I know why you think so... your craft are full of draggy details! It takes much more finesse to reenter something so-sleek-it's-actually-cheaty like my Dart, which has ridiculously low drag, especially if you let it hug prograde on the high atmosphere. Well, actually it doesn't really take finesse, just pointing it radial... but you get what I mean, you could burn it up very easily by just letting the prograde autopilot on.


Rune. BTW, for the people saying cockpits heat too much: they [I]should[/I], they are the part that takes the brunt of the heating, just like real life... unless there is a nosecone before them.

[Majorjim!]

[quote name='Rune']Thanks, but I think I know why you think so... your craft are full of draggy details! It takes much more finesse to reenter something so-sleek-it's-actually-cheaty like my Dart, which has ridiculously low drag, especially if you let it hug prograde on the high atmosphere. Well, actually it doesn't really take finesse, just pointing it radial... but you get what I mean, you could burn it up very easily by just letting the prograde autopilot on.


Rune. BTW, for the people saying cockpits heat too much: they [I]should[/I], they are the part that takes the brunt of the heating, just like real life... unless there is a nosecone before them.[/QUOTE]

Hang on Rune, you have no idea what I was using to reenter.. Also I found your use of the word 'finesse' a little insulting. I am more than capable of flying any craft mate.
Maybe watch that in future. cheers.

[Workable Goblin]

[quote name='Rune']Rune. BTW, for the people saying cockpits heat too much: they [I]should[/I], they are the part that takes the brunt of the heating, just like real life... unless there is a nosecone before them.[/QUOTE]
It's true that they should heat up a lot, but...I was designing a single-seat spaceplane (basically an X-20 clone) a little while back, with a forwards section consisting of the cockpit, then a reaction wheel and battery. I was, of course, careful to use a very nose-up reentry...I know how these things work...but the cockpit would inevitably heat up and explode quickly, before I had slowed more than a few hundred meters per second, while the reaction wheel and battery would be completely fine right on down to the ground, even though they had to endure much more heating, relatively speaking, than the cockpit. That's just wrong.

Then I quit working on that one and went off to design a Mk. 2 SSTO, which worked just beautifully. It got a little toasty during reentry, but was never close to being as bad as the Mk. 1 vehicle. Edited November 23, 2015 by Workable Goblin

[KerikBalm]

My mk1 cockpit designs on occassion lose the pod during ascent, but so far I haven't lost one on descent, but the red bar has gotten very full.

In my 1.05 experience so far, I don't consider the mk1 cockpit to really be one for a proper orbital spaceplane... its something for suborbital flights and low tech turbofan flight.

Its not incabaple of going orbital and coming back (which seems to be the case in most sceanrios where you might use the FAT-455 wings with 1200k heat tolerance), but its got smaller margins for orbital designs and I prefer the mk2s/mk3s/mk1 pod for those.

[panzer1b]

[quote name='KerikBalm']My mk1 cockpit designs on occassion lose the pod during ascent, but so far I haven't lost one on descent, but the red bar has gotten very full.

In my 1.05 experience so far, I don't consider the mk1 cockpit to really be one for a proper orbital spaceplane... its something for suborbital flights and low tech turbofan flight.

Its not incabaple of going orbital and coming back (which seems to be the case in most sceanrios where you might use the FAT-455 wings with 1200k heat tolerance), but its got smaller margins for orbital designs and I prefer the mk2s/mk3s/mk1 pod for those.[/QUOTE]

The FAT-445 is worthless as a space grade part. The 1200 is killer (especially on reentry unless you are crazy slow and come in from around 70-80km. Actually its gotten to the point that any part that has less then 2000 heat tolerance should not be used on any "spaceplane" styled builds since they are terrible for that particular purpose. Im not a big fan of this, since there were more then enough designs i had planned (like my Ho-229 inspired SSTO) which really really benefited from those wings, but ive given up on that project 100% as those wings are now impossible to use efficiently (you have to do a much slower ascent which is more fuel wasted).

As for pods, you have very low internal temp because well, kerbal is in there! Myself, all of my SSTOs dont care as they have the cockpit mounted above and to the rear of the hull, so its never exposed, be it reentry heat, or incoming flak batteries from a capital ship its charging headon. Frontally mounted cockpoits though seem to suffer greatly now, and those inline models are reccomended for spaceplanes imo. Not that you cant use front mounted ones, but they do have major overheat issues during both reentry and ascent.



All in all, ive pretty much adapted to the new game, and while im still not happy one bit about the new heat changes and new increased high altitude drag, i do have designs that are functional, and can pull ~4500 dV in LKO, which isnt that bad considering how majorly nerfed spaceplanes are now.

Im just hoping that the devs take a look at balance for 1.1, and i feel that the game would be much more enjoyable for the majority of players if heat was lowered by 10-20% (still enough to be a challenge, but not outright screwing spaceplane styled builds), and if the drag especially at the critical altitude where spaceplanes do the switch from jets to rockets was reduced slightly (that drag seems to affect only spaceplanes right now, rockets dont hang around at those altitudes, and well, airplanes dont even go above 25km on a regular basis).

Im done with whining myself, as well, ive managed to get stuff to work, but overall 1.0.5 is still in my eyes less "fun" then 1.0.4 or the original 1.0 (as unrealistic as it was, having an almost drag-free atmosphere was so much fun, how can going 2.5km/s at sea level not be fun!). Edited November 23, 2015 by panzer1b

[Workable Goblin]

[quote name='panzer1b']As for pods, you have very low internal temp because well, kerbal is in there![/QUOTE]
The funny thing was that there [i]wasn't[/i] a kerbal in there, because I was being responsible and testing my designs before sticking anyone in them. Still blew up anyways.

[herbal space program]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT="Arial"][COLOR=#000000]Burning up on re-entry has never been an issue for me in 1.0.5. I’ve never even come close, but then I basically do what Rune described. Burning up trying to make orbit is a much bigger issue for me, since I now have to fly at >1,200 m/s on the RAPIERs for a long time, pointed prograde, through upper air that is quite a bit thicker than it was in 1.0.4.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=#000000] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

[AdamMil]

Well, I'm not much of a spaceplane builder, but I thought I'd share my observations on trying to build a large spaceplane in 1.0.5. (Previously I'd only built medium-sized, Mk2 space planes suitable for ferrying kerbals to/from LKO and not much else, and that was in 1.0.4). I'm also seeking advice on how to make it better. :-)  It's powered by 12 rapiers and 4 nukes, and winds up with roughly 4500 m/s delta-v from LKO, plus it holds a lander that gets about 4300 m/s delta-v, and the ship carries enough rocket fuel to refuel it. I guess that's about 25 tons of cargo, which seems rather poor given that it weighs almost 210 tons on the runway. Maybe it can carry more, though. I haven't tried maxing out the load. Pics:

Spoiler

I wasn't really sure what to put in the first cargo bay, so I filled it with science equipment and some emergency fuel reserves. The scanners can all extend without clipping into anything else (except that the survey scanner hits the cargo bay walls).

So it's definitely true that you don't need many intakes anymore. Just 2 shock cones can power 12 rapiers with no problem (except some stuttering for the first few seconds on the runway - avoidable by not starting them all at the same time), and with a bunch of intake air left over. You can probably power 16 rapiers with 2 shock cones. It seems like Squad overcompensated. Personally I think that intakes need to be nerfed now.

My first attempts had most of the engines under the wings. That turned out to be a bad idea due to the asymmetrical thrust in and near space causing it to pitch up. This design puts only four engines under the wings, and they can be toggled with an action group, so the rockets can be used in space if needed. I guess the wings could have also been raised up so the engines were aligned with the center of the fuselage, but then it would have been harder to mount the landing gear.

My first attempts put the wings and center of mass near the center of the craft, like a normal aircraft. This worked alright, but it apparently works well to put most of the mass in the rear. This also avoided problems with engines under the wings in the center heating the rear landing gear and causing F3 log message spam on takeoff and eventual game crash, and generally made things easier to balance.

Struts connecting the wings and fuel tanks to the body turned out to be necessary to avoid the wings tearing off at high speed and angle of attack.

I used Vernor engines for RCS, to avoid having to carry another type of fuel.

I don't know much about flying spaceplanes, but here's the ascent profile I used: ~16 degree pitch until 7.5km to escape the dense air and then an 8 degree pitch from there to build speed. At some point it'll nearly explode from heat, so I pitch up very gradually to keep the heat bar at around 95% (though when it starts cooling at altitude I don't pitch back down). I activate the nukes at 21km and the rockets at 29km, then pitch up to 25 degrees until apoapsis is 59km and finish with the nukes around 5-10 degrees pitch. I never really did a dedicated "speed run", but I got up to around 1400-1500 m/s before firing the rockets. I know people say to pitch up to 45 degrees with rockets, but it seems like the high angle of attack causes too much drag. Is this profile reasonable?

Reentry is easy but landing is real tricky because it ain't no fighter jet. I usually aim for the field next to the runway because it's hard to line up perfectly with the runway.

Anyway, here are the craft files. I don't like cheaty clipping, so I tried to avoid it. There's only one cheat, which was squeezing the RCS tank into the lander. I also changed the LF/LOX ratio of the orange tanks. They still hold the same amount of fuel, but some may say that's cheating. The delta wings are stuck together, but there seem to be no good wing parts for making big delta wings.

Stork (uses parts from KER, KAS, and ScanSAT): http://pastebin.com/azJGBWFx

Stork (stock parts only, I think): http://pastebin.com/qAPC8hR0

I'm not a spaceplane veteran, but overall I think the 1.0.5 model is decent, except that intakes are overpowered now.

Edited February 16, 2016 by AdamMil

[Nich]

On 11/12/2015 at 2:05 PM, H2O. said:

I am not denying anything you are saying. I actually agree that making a 6000 SSTO was hard in 1.04. And I understand frustration as the rule of the game change. I have of course my opinions about what should be or should not be possible in the game but that is irrelevant.

What I was trying to say is that achieving a 6000 SSTO is a game breaker. It makes any other design choice a mistake. Which I think is the opposite of what the game is about at his very core: problem solving. If you agree on this, you see that a 6000 SSTO solve all the problems the game throw at you. So it is game over, end of the game. And a game like KSP should not have a end. Of course all of that is my opinion and once again I agree with everything you said: frustration, etc.

Nope staged rockets are still a win.  My most Dv entry for a staged rocket has something like 20k dv with a 2 hours burn time and 60 part limit.

[AdamMil]

Using the same basic design I created a Mk2 spaceplane that can get 2000-2200 m/s delta-v from LKO and carries a lander with 1460 m/s delta-v. It good for Mun and Minmus missions and can make it to several planets. It lacks RCS and solar panels, but that's not a problem for its intended role.

Spoiler

It's a bit long and heat can be a problem but the nose cone protects the pilot. Reentry is a bit tricky. It's my first time using inclined wings, which seem to both reduce drag and make the aircraft less stable at high speed.

It seems very hard to make a useful spaceplane without the Rapier engine. With the Whiplash I can get to/from LKO but can't get very far from there.

I found the Part Angle Display mod, which helps a lot with rotating parts.

Dart (uses parts from KAS and KER): http://pastebin.com/aLBxLuHD

Dart (stock parts only): http://pastebin.com/p9JE0yA1

Edited February 17, 2016 by AdamMil