DAMN AWESOME FAST SPACEPLANE!!!!!!!!!!!

[Parv Kerman]

I made a plane which was FAST, VERY FASTT!!!!

i made it fly to dres

did you made any?

[Ultimate Steve]

Four things.

1) You might want to remove the first word from your title. Some of the mods might not appreciate it.

2) A lot of people would appreciate it if you didn't type in all caps.

3) You might want to post screenshots.

4) Wow, a spaceplane to Dres? I want one!

[tseitsei89]

1. Screenshots or video

2. What it actually does (well it goes to Dres but how fast is it?)

3. CAPS + YOUR FONT GAVE ME A CANCER

Edited January 2, 2017 by tseitsei89

[RA3236]

37 minutes ago, tseitsei89 said:

YOUR FONT GAVE ME A CANCER

What font?

[tseitsei89]

6 minutes ago, RA3236 said:

What font?

VERY FASTT!!!!

this one......

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

I haven't made a spaceplane that can fly to Dres (and I probably won't; no point in hauling all that airplane stuff in space, or all that space stuff in the air) but I did make a series of increasingly lower-tech SSTO-capable spaceplanes. One could carry 4 people into a 250km orbit, dock and return, all without any 1000-science parts (i.e. no R.A.P.I.E.R.s,) one that could carry 3 people to an atmosphere-skimming orbit and back using only 300-science and lower parts (so your research lab doesn't need to be fully upgraded to build it) and one that could carry an experiment container to 250km and back using only 160-science and lower parts (good for when you want to get the full science bonus for recovered data but don't want to actually land your ships.)

[Vanamonde]

People in this thread: 

1. Leave the moderating to the moderators. 

2. Don't yell at each other about fonts. 

3. Try to be nice to each other, for pete's sake. 

[Guest]

Carrying a pair of wings all the way out to Dres seems wasteful...

Hmm, has anyone ever made a spaceplane that detaches its wings and airbreathing engines in orbit, goes on with its mission, then redocks with them to return to Kerbin's surface? It'd be like a reverse Thunderbird 2, where the cargobay is the main craft and the outside bit is the addon.

Edited January 2, 2017 by Guest

[Sharpy]

I'm smelling ALT+F12.

[The_Rocketeer]

@Vanamonde it seems to me that in your role as moderator, you are requesting that even a moderate amount of non-Moderator moderation is too much, and that we should first self-moderate to avoid immoderacy in otherwise moderate community members, or else face Moderator action. Did I get that right?

I made one of the very fastest possible planes in KSP pre-release, which is still documented somewhere among these pages. It flew an atmospheric circumnavigation of Kerbin in a shave under 40 minutes, from take-off to landing, cruising at about 1800m/s. I may be wrong, but I don't believe such feats are possible anymore due to changes to the flight model and atmospheric heating. However, it doesn't strictly qualify as a spaceplane, because although it used three RAPIERs, and could reach suborbital velocities easily, it did not carry any oxidiser and therefore could never circularise.

[LordFerret]

5 hours ago, String Witch said:

Carrying a pair of wings all the way out to Dres seems wasteful...

Hmm, has anyone ever made a spaceplane that detaches its wings and airbreathing engines in orbit, goes on with its mission, then redocks with them to return to Kerbin's surface? It'd be like a reverse Thunderbird 2, where the cargobay is the main craft and the outside bit is the addon.

That smells like a challenge. Maybe you should post that as such in:

Challenges & Mission ideas

[mystik]

20 hours ago, String Witch said:

Carrying a pair of wings all the way out to Dres seems wasteful...

Hmm, has anyone ever made a spaceplane that detaches its wings and airbreathing engines in orbit, goes on with its mission, then redocks with them to return to Kerbin's surface? It'd be like a reverse Thunderbird 2, where the cargobay is the main craft and the outside bit is the addon.

 I thought a few minutes about this. It's not practical. You need tocking ports. Even if you have a few docking ports to connect the wings you still have wobbly surfaces. That is bad for reentry. The last thing you want is for your control surface to wiggle and to potentially snap during reentry. Plus, you're saving s small weight, but you'll waste fuel and RCS to dock with it.

Edited January 3, 2017 by mystik

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

My philosophy on spaceplanes is that they should be planes first and spaceships second. They're great if you need to ferry Kerbals and small modules to and from Kerbin orbit, but if you're going anywhere beyond LKO then you should hand things off to a dedicated space vehicle. No point in hauling wings and airbreathing engines through space, and no point in hauling the engines and fuel for a prolonged space journey through Kerbin's atmosphere. Planes are good if the thing you're putting into orbit needs to come back down in one piece afterwards, but if you're sending something to space with the intention of leaving it there then it's best to use a standard rocket. You can attach parachutes to your booster stage if you're really concerned about recoverability.

[Sharpy]

2 hours ago, mystik said:

 I thought a few minutes about this. It's not practical. You need tocking ports. Even if you have a few docking ports to connect the wings you still have wobbly surfaces. That is bad for reentry. The last thing you want is for your control surface to wiggle and to potentially snap during reentry. Plus, you're saving s small weight, but you'll waste fuel and RCS to dock with it.

I once took a different (though theoretically reasonable) approach.

The spaceplane is two parts.

First is a spacecraft with minimal airplane capabilities: vestigal wings, maybe a Juno, besides that LV-N, LF tankage, payload to distant places.

The other is a "cradle" with mighty, high-thrust engines, both jets and rockets, large wings, enough fuel to reach orbit with the first part attached.

They separate in orbit, then part 2 completes the orbit, reenters and flies back to KSC, while part 1 continues the journey, still capable of flying back to KSC on its own.

That way my SSTO is fully reusable, and doesn't carry much dead weight outside LKO, plus starts the journey out of LKO with full tanks and optimal engines.

 

The main difference is that there's a decoupler in place of docking port, and full strutting capability of the whole thing, so rigidity isn't as much of a problem.

The downside is maintaining and balancing essentially three airplanes; all three: the ascent setup, the spacecraft and the cradle, all must be aerodynamically stable. You change stability of the ascent setup, stability of the remaining two changes, often destabilizing them.

 

The theory was solid, but the thing I built... uh, it didn't work entirely well. To put things mildly. I did manage to reach the orbit, I did manage to separate them with only minor need for paintjob and insignificant part losses, and managed to land about 80% of the spaceplane part, and about 40% of the cradle within 400km from KSC...

Edited January 3, 2017 by Sharpy

[Arugela]

On 1/2/2017 at 5:41 AM, String Witch said:

Carrying a pair of wings all the way out to Dres seems wasteful...

Hmm, has anyone ever made a spaceplane that detaches its wings and airbreathing engines in orbit, goes on with its mission, then redocks with them to return to Kerbin's surface? It'd be like a reverse Thunderbird 2, where the cargobay is the main craft and the outside bit is the addon.

I think you could design something so you dock with a large docking port and have the wing section in the back for easy docking. You would just need to be conciencous of the weight and change in aerodynamics. I was going to do this with something along time ago and make a front end(non atmospheric section) based on Xenon(before the change to pure LF nukes) and the back on normal fuels so they could ditch each other and drop more easily. although in that idea they both had wings or only the back did for helping get off the planet. But the principal is the same. You could still even use xenon if you made all tanks separate with a docking port. then you just need to package them and refuel from kerbin every so often. Make a nice large tank for it and it could go quite a ways independently. Just might need alot of xenon engines potentially. Or a small craft.

It might be easiest to make a spaceplane based solely on very rear aircontrols and separate it like mentioned above. The wings should even be behind the engines. Might be decent for very relatively heavy craft with the right length involved. you could even carry all/any pure LF in the rear and the LF+OX or other needed fuels in the front to dump more weight. It would help pull the COM while attacked closer to the new COL to not get too stable for atmospheric flight/maneuverability. Add a few oxygen/LF engines on the rear to help in flight and even keep any nukes on the rear also as they won't be used in takeoff depending on the design.

Basically you would be making what you said though, but looked at from a different perspective. The flight part stays in space. The drop part/cargo simply separates to go to the surface. So, it's not really different from the original aircraft idea. and do drop more fuel(assuming weights involved) you could put the mining section on the cargo... Although you might need to keep enough ore tank on it to carry up to refuel the top section or give each the ability to mine and send the rear section off to mine asteroids or refuel on a local low gravity moon that can get ascended from with pure nukes or other combos if you are willing to add a little rocket fuel.

 

The one thing I can't think off hand how to do is deal with drag.. Unless using proper sized parts for the connection simply removes superdrag that develops on parts in come cases.

Edited January 3, 2017 by Arugela

[Mastikator]

On 2017-01-02 at 5:02 AM, Parv Kerman said:

I made a plane which was FAST, VERY FASTT!!!!

i made it fly to dres

did you made any?

Never one that made it to Dres. Really would like to see pics or a video.

[worir4]

Do you have any pictures. A space plane that can get to Dres is really impressive!

[Parv Kerman]

I really tried it doesn't inserts images

 

[Vanamonde]

Pictures need to be hosted elsewhere and then linked from here. There are several free services which do not require memberships. Imgur.com is one of the easiest to use, though it is unreliable at times. 

[The Destroyer]

1 spaceplane to Dres coming up

[sal_vager]

Sounds like a mission report to me.