My first SSTO

[Victor12]

How do I fly this thing? it "should" work. I built it myself.

Sorry its so small

 

[Spricigo]

 

We will need more detail about how you think it "should work", how it is "failing to work" and the craft itself (the images is too small).

As a general answer either you build it in the wrong way or you are flying it in the wrong way. In most of cases both situation boils down to "because of the drag".

 

 

[Not Sure]

Looks like your COL is pretty close to your COM. Thats not a bad thing, but make sure your COM doesnt shift back too much when the fuel burns

[bewing]

The other answer is, for SSTOs, you don't particularly "fly" them. You turn on SAS on the runway, and maybe tap a few buttons once or twice to keep them going straight -- but otherwise they are supposed to fly to orbit by themselves, pretty much, while you just sit and watch.

[Vanamonde]

WOW, that is a lot of parts.

[Victor12]

The other answer is, for SSTOs, you don't particularly "fly" them. You turn on SAS on the runway, and maybe tap a few buttons once or twice to keep them going straight -- but otherwise they are supposed to fly to orbit by themselves, pretty much, while you just sit and watch.

The end results turned the craft into a land submarine i need actual instruction on how to fly a SSTO

Also, do i use aircraft mode or rocket mode SAS?

 

[Spricigo]

14 minutes ago, Victor12 said:

The end results turned the craft into a land submarine i need actual instruction on how to fly a SSTO

 

I while ago I come to this forum seeking that same instruction. Great community provided great advice:

 

[Ty Tan Tu]

17 minutes ago, Victor12 said:

Also, do i use aircraft mode or rocket mode SAS?

There is an aircraft mode for SAS?

[Gordon Fecyk]

Is there a craft file available to try out? I see pictures, but nothing to download.

My first SSTO was a clone of Scott Manley's SR-71 look-alike from his KSP 1.0.5 tutorial series. And I'm not the first to say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Cloning that thing was one thing, and flying it was something else entirely. And I hadn't really built my own proper design from nothing for a long time. I further trained on Mark Thrimm's low tech space plane series, and it was there where I had to learn how to efficiently fly one of those things. It's too easy to get to the edge of space and not have enough delta-v left to close your orbit. And it's easier to finally close your orbit and not have enough delta-v after that to re-enter.

It finally took flying those to get an idea of what it would take to design my own. It was a lot of trial and error after that. A lot of trials and a lot of errors. My Fat-Star series craft was built on the experience of multiple iterations and a lot of crashed probe cores, save reloads, and lots of time.

Don't give up, but don't obsess over it either. It's just a game.

[Victor12]

2 hours ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

There is an aircraft mode for SAS?

Press Caps lock, but i don't know what it does.

1 hour ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

Is there a craft file available to try out? I see pictures, but nothing to download.

My first SSTO was a clone of Scott Manley's SR-71 look-alike from his KSP 1.0.5 tutorial series. And I'm not the first to say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Cloning that thing was one thing, and flying it was something else entirely. And I hadn't really built my own proper design from nothing for a long time. I further trained on Mark Thrimm's low tech space plane series, and it was there where I had to learn how to efficiently fly one of those things. It's too easy to get to the edge of space and not have enough delta-v left to close your orbit. And it's easier to finally close your orbit and not have enough delta-v after that to re-enter.

It finally took flying those to get an idea of what it would take to design my own. It was a lot of trial and error after that. A lot of trials and a lot of errors. My Fat-Star series craft was built on the experience of multiple iterations and a lot of crashed probe cores, save reloads, and lots of time.

Don't give up, but don't obsess over it either. It's just a game.

First, Another Canadian! yay! Secondly, here.

https://kerbalx.com/Victor/1A

 

4 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

WOW, that is a lot of parts.

Not enough, you mean. 

Edited January 24, 2018 by Victor12

[Guest]

That's a very complicated design for your first SSTO. It may or may not be easy to fly but if it's your first one, that'll be blind luck.

I would recommend that you start small and build/fly your way towards and eventually to orbit. First make the simplest plane you can that will take off, fly, and land, and practice flying around with that. Then add power to get it to fly high and fast (say 20,000 m and Mach 3.5 or more). Then add more power to do a sub-orbital hop, and figure out how it re-enters. And finally enough to get it into orbit and back.

Also, if you're seriously into planes, I highly recommend the Atmosphere Autopilot mod. It'll make flying them much easier and less fussy since it holds your attitude, stops you from doing some overtly suicidal stuff, and if you're close to straight and level will do the final nudge to get there.

[GoSlash27]

9 hours ago, Victor12 said:

i need actual instruction on how to fly a SSTO

Victor12,

 Step1: Get it flying. Sounds snarky, but it's actually not.
 Step 2: Get it supersonic. Some designs have gobs of power and can break the sound barrier effortlessly. Others need to be coaxed into the supersonic regime. My really low- thrust designs need to climb to around 3km altitude (sometimes as high as 6km) before the drag is sufficiently low to exceed 360 m/sec in level flight.
 Step 3: ??? Profit. Once you get beyond 360 m/sec airspeed, the drag will reduce and the thrust will increase. It will accelerate at a surprising rate. You need to climb out at about 15° to keep ahead of the thermal and drag penalties. You may find that the handling gets weird in this area, since stock KSP gives no indication of pressure center.
 Step 4: Gently reduce your climb to approach level flight at around 18 km altitude to squeeze all the airspeed you can out of the jet engines. The altitude varies with the engines in use. Then gently increase the climb until you are no longer accelerating or the engines flame out.
 Step 5: Go closed cycle and climb out to orbit.

Best,
-Slashy

[DrLicor]

10 hours ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

There is an aircraft mode for SAS?

@Victor  There's no special rocket or aircraft mode. 
Capslock activates the precise manouvre, prevending Jeb to kill the crew/craft when he pulls up subtle. 

[Kryxal]

The other way to do things involves using trim to fly the plane instead of SAS.  It allows finer adjustment and for you to keep constant "pressure" on the controls.