What is a SSTO

[lolisdit]

i have been playing ksp for a while now but i recently start looking on the forum and i don' now what a SSTO is

can someone please explain it for me

[Ferrit]

SSTO is Single Stage To Orbit.

Frequently this means a spaceplane but any vehicle that gets in to orbit without de-coupling boosters or drop tanks counts, i.e. everything that goes up stays together. Also usually means the entire vehicle can return safely from orbit and lands in one piece but this is KSP

By the way, welcome to the forums!

[ThatBum]

Note this is single stage to orbit. It could require additional fuel from a station or separately sent tanker to leave orbit and go somewhere.

[RoboRay]

Indeed, it's a craft that does not shed any parts between leaving the pad and reaching a stable orbit.

[capi3101]

Basically they're what everybody else has said; a rocket that can hit orbit intact. They're tricky as hell to build and do anything useful with them but they'd almost definitely be reusable, which is why they're a pretty big deal.

Check out the Wikipedia article.

Mine is a little satellite launcher; basically the payload is a Stayputnik, 4 Communitrons and a PB-NUK. Whole thing is attached by stack decoupler to the rest of the rocket. It gets to orbit, launches, de-orbits and lands intact (most of the time). It has a tendency to tip over when I hit the gravity turn; still haven't figured out how to correct that little flaw. And yet I have successfully gotten about half a dozen satellites into orbit with it.

Edited April 28, 2013 by capi3101

[lolisdit]

thank for all the help guys and girls

[Nibb31]

An SSTO is not necessarily reusable. A multi-stage spacecraft can be 100% reusable and a SSTO can be expendable. To be reusable, an SSTO would need a deorbit engine and some way of landing safely (parachute, wings, retrorockets...) which would eat into the payload mass, and quite probably take away the SSTO capability.

In effect, an SSTO launcher will always have a smaller payload capability than a multi-stage launcher. In most calculations, with current materials, the payload mass fraction is so low that it really doesn't make sense to build one. For example, the Titan II first stage, with no payload, could be SSTO. The same would have been true for the X-33 or the VentureStar, if they had flown.

There really isn't much point in an SSTO other than bragging about it being an SSTO.

[RoboRay]

There really isn't much point in an SSTO other than bragging about it being an SSTO.

Oh, I dunno about that... seven-seat capacity to orbit, which is about all the shuttle accomplished sometimes.

[Nibb31]

You could do the same with multiple stages and no hacked parts.

[tomf]

The space shuttle was a space plane, but not an SSTO, it had those big boosters and the orange bit which it dropped on route.

[RoboRay]

You could do the same with multiple stages and no hacked parts.

None of those are hacked parts. The tanks follow the same fuel to volume ratios as the stock parts, and the engine is balanced pretty well with the Mainsail (barely more thrust, much heavier, it's even less efficient in atmosphere, but better in space). I could build the same thing with stock parts, still SSTO, and it would be ugly.

"Mod" and "hack" are not the same thing.

Edited April 29, 2013 by RoboRay