Tips are welcome: wings on Mk3 (large, heavy) spaceplanes?

[Signo]

49 minutes ago, Stoney3K said:

I have never been able to make an SSTO with the FAT wings, only with the Big-S ones. Are the airliner wings too draggy to be any good at supersonic speeds?

FAT wings can not withstand re entry heat in a good way. They are very good at "goin' up" but they suck at "goin' down".

[Magzimum]

12 hours ago, foamyesque said:

Also, if you're 300m/s short, you probably had a very steep re-entry profile; my descent from LKO normally has a periapsis of around 45km.

Absolutely. This was far from a perfect re-entry: quite steep (Pe at -100km or so, lol), and I struggled to keep the nose up to slow down. Because I had not met my target to offload all that fuel, I still carried a LOT of liquid fuel. The ship was far from empty. And then the fuel was all in the back. After pumping it to the front she behaved a bit better already - but by then I was seeing a lot of overheating bars already... It was one of those click-as-fast-as-you-can-to-save-the-day-oh-dammit-moments.

I am not giving up this design entirely, but replacing especially the bottom Mk1 tanks is probably still a good idea. I like to finally arrive at a robust design...