SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Othuyeg]

I am working on a SSTOTETESTEOTKOTKSC*

Single stage to orbit, to Eve, To Eve Surface, To Eve Orbit, To Kerbin Orbit, To KSC.

Yes.

KSP-I might be involved.

[Zucal]

Single stage to orbit, to Eve, To Eve Surface, To Eve Orbit, To Kerbin Orbit, To KSC.

All right, just as long as you know that an SSTO from Eve's surface to orbit is literally impossible.

[Roflcopterkklol]

My Single stage to mun craft

White Lightning mk5

it will reliably get you to the mun and back to kerbin (possibly minmus i should try that) and does not sacrifice performance to do so, it handles very well in atmospheric flight with SAS simply being a cruise control button, it is capable of over 1500m/s on jet engines alone and the centre of mass never moves meaning the flight performance is never compromised by fuel levels.

Action groups:

1: Toggle turbo jet engines

2: Toggle nuclear engine

3: Toggle Rockomax engines

4: Toggle solar panels

Flight instructions:

On take off be careful not to break the tail section of the craft, once in the air pitch up at 30 degree and continue climbing until 12km, at 12km lower the pitch to 20 degree and continue until 32km, between 32km and 35km start the nuclear engine and lower the throttle as needed to avoid stalling the jet engines until 25% throttle, at 25% throttle engage the Rockomax engines and shut down the jet engines before throttling back up to 90%, from here you can continue until apoapsis reaches 100km then circularise your orbit in space, the rest is up to you.

Download link: Part count: 307

http://www./download/5kblua57lpb51c6/White+Lightning+mk5.craft

Take off

12km

24km

34km, Nuclear engine is turned on

41km, jet engines are turned off and Rockomax engines turned on

56km, nearly in orbit engines are off.

Circular 132km orbit

Map view of orbit

Out to 1 million kilometer circular orbit

On path to the Mun

In circular 100km Munar orbit

Leaving the Mun and returning to Kerbin

In a circular 225km orbit

Back into the atmosphere

Nearly home

And back at base

[Radam]

All right, just as long as you know that an SSTO from Eve's surface to orbit is literally impossible.

Kspi ( interstellar) means antimatter reactors, plasma engines and warp drives...

[Rune]

I am working on a SSTOTETESTEOTKOTKSC*

Single stage to orbit, to Eve, To Eve Surface, To Eve Orbit, To Kerbin Orbit, To KSC.

Yes.

KSP-I might be involved.

All right, just as long as you know that an SSTO from Eve's surface to orbit is literally impossible.

Kspi ( interstellar) means antimatter reactors, plasma engines and warp drives...

And, probably most important for Eve, thermal engines that run on atmosphere, of any kind. You could do this with a 2.5m fusion core, or several 1.25m ones if you are clever and exploit lifting surfaces. Antimatter is probably overkill, and Scott showed us all you can get ridiculous delta-v's out of the Vista fusion-antimatter engine at ridiculous TWR (check out the last SSTO he used on Interstellar Quest, single stage to anywhere).

Rune. Gotta revisit that mod at some point, last time I did there were still a few issues with it.

[Van Disaster]

Maybe some of the near future propulsion engines + reactors might be a useful replacement; I've not managed to squeeze in the engines to test yet. If you set an inlet up to use IntakeAtm + turned off the oxygen check you could possibly replace jets on Eve with hordes of B9 compressed air thrusters

[FlyingPete]

With the right flight profile, you can do a lot with quite small craft. Here's my crew shuttle. It can carry 6 Kerbals to orbit with fuel to spare for rendezvous with the space station where I keep my Mun/Minmus transports. There's also a bit of payload capacity- in this case the rover riding piggyback. I prefer to use regular jet engine/radial rocket engine combos rather than the RAPIER engine as the atmospheric performance is better.

I also built a modified version of the design as an unmanned tanker aircraft. It doesn't lift a vast amount of fuel, but it's cheap to operate and uses relatively small amounts of fuel to get there.

[Radam]

Might be relevant:

[TheBarnetts]

Here is the Skylon BUFF. Looks like the Skylon kind of but's a Big Ugly Fat F---. More info in the album First good non-rocket SSTO I've made. Recently got it to carry 40 tons with relative ease.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited April 26, 2015 by TheBarnetts
40 ton test success

[Othuyeg]

The SSTOTETESTEOTKOTKSC has landed. It has parachutes that allow for an extremely easy landing on any body with an atmosphere.

[Othuyeg]

And safely back on KSC runway. Still had about 12000 dV left.

Atmospheric mod used with this plane was NEAR.

The beauty of this plane is that it is extremely easy to land. Inside the cargo bay and on top of the engine nacelles there are parachutes which allow for a vertical landing if the atmosphere is thick enough. Duna is still to be explored.

Also there are aerobrakes in the tail section.

Edited April 26, 2015 by Othuyeg

[blowfish]

Is it just me, or does the new aero heating seem to keep things from even approaching mach 3 without engine flameouts?

Anyway, first attempt at an SSTO in 1.0, with heating off...

[eddiew]

Is it just me, or does the new aero heating seem to keep things from even approaching mach 3 without engine flameouts?

Probably not just you. From my brief (50 minutes) experimenting, I can't get a rapier above 22km in air breathing mode, but I'm not sure if it's speed or altitude that's capping it. Turbojets die real easy now too, way before the rapiers. I feel like there's more thrust going on, but much less efficiency, and with a brutal altitude and/or speed cap.

Grats on the orbit though, with or without heating Have you tried re-entry yet? I came in at 75x50 with heating on standard - and blew up

[Redshift OTF]

Hmmm, at this rate I think the K challenge will be a hardcore trophy now.

[Rune]

Is it just me, or does the new aero heating seem to keep things from even approaching mach 3 without engine flameouts?

Anyway, first attempt at an SSTO in 1.0, with heating off...

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj251/blowfishpro/KSP/screenshot19_zpsnzofrf6l.png

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj251/blowfishpro/KSP/screenshot21_zpswkozdktu.png

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj251/blowfishpro/KSP/screenshot23_zpsefvylymi.png

I got this fat guy into orbit about 15 minutes after firing 1.0...

But that was only burning through most of the payload, and the strakes too (I've got to get a better handle on stock aeroheating like, yesterday, only the strakes blow up and I don't know why!). Then again, every time I fly it I get a different cutoff speed and/or a big fail. Quite easy to lose track of vertical speed with the huge lift you can get now at high altitudes and without KER to provide me the number clearly (I had forgotten how hard to read the stock variometer is!). And as I said, when I get decent >1km/s cutoff speeds, I've usually left behind some pieces. Gotta work on this, and see what I can do with TWRs<1 too! That might get me over the blowing up issues... but it'll also need a much biger wing, and that takes time to make it look good. This is just 40-odd parts thrown together without even Ed Tools to prettify it. And I have a hunch precoolers don't do anything other than being stackable intakes.

Rune. So happy.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Rune

[Redshift OTF]

I posted this in the General Discussion forum. I would appreciate the thought s of experienced SSTO makers.

Actually, thinking about it, a lot of spaceplane designers have mastered the art of getting as high and as fast as possible using jet power alone, saving most of the fuel/oxidiser for using in orbit. Those who aren't experts probably slap on loads of rocket fuel and rocket engines and rely on that to get them to orbit. This update seems to favour the second method. Possibly it is easier to haul larger amounts of oxidiser with fewer jets engines than before as heating is more of the limiting factor at around 20km than thrust.

[david50517]

[SHiftER2O]

I posted this in the General Discussion forum. I would appreciate the thought s of experienced SSTO makers.

Quite so sir. Quite so.

[Van Disaster]

Made this thing to test out the new aero - or well, this is about the 6th iteration anyway. Back to 0.90 until new FAR arrives, this is not aerodynamics.

Burned up at about mach 4 at 25km altitude ( over 80,000 ft ), which is just ludicrous.

[blowfish]

Made this thing to test out the new aero - or well, this is about the 6th iteration anyway. Back to 0.90 until new FAR arrives, this is not aerodynamics.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7697/17271619266_475ac2ab99_b.jpg

Burned up at about mach 4 at 25km altitude ( over 80,000 ft ), which is just ludicrous.

Yeah, the re-entry heating is kind of insane right now. If you find settings which make re-entry interesting without causing spaceplanes to explode on the way up, let me know. For now I'm just disabling it.

[eddiew]

Yeah, the re-entry heating is kind of insane right now. If you find settings which make re-entry interesting without causing spaceplanes to explode on the way up, let me know. For now I'm just disabling it.

Not sure if devs never tested spaceplanes... or need to publish some guidelines for how to make them survive now :/ Oh well, interesting challenge for when I finish work - worst case, that slider's coming down to 30%

[Redshift OTF]

Use the airbrakes. They can slow planes over 40km so re-entry is a lot easier.

[Mesklin]

Simply and with long nose. About 500 m/s of dV on LKO. And not a problem with re-entry heat - set pericenter to 25-30 km and glide all time with positive angle of attack (about 10-20 degrees)

[blowfish]

And another, with a larger payload:

The 6x RAPIER clusters aren't very pretty, but they're an acceptable substitute for a larger engine and they allow a nuke to be hidden in the center, giving 1.4km/s after in orbit (without using any fuel from the payload). The small wings also mean a rather high takeoff speed, but not any faster than what's planned for the actual skylon (upon which this is evidently based).

Edited April 28, 2015 by blowfish

[problemecium]

My first SSTO in KSP 1.0 (Career Mode):

...Trust me, this same rocket did get to space on a later mission. This was a test run to see how the parachutes worked. And yes, it's nothing remarkable but I had to mark the occasion somehow xD