SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Korsakovski]

Upgraded version of the standard Asgard, nothing special.

http://imgur.com/a/GVIGC

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Asgard-AX

[Samniss Arandeen]

The post above me looks like the God of Engines sneezed on the back of that plane.

[Thor Wotansen]

Did someone call me?

[Samniss Arandeen]

2 hours ago, Thor Wotansen said:

Did someone call me?

Yes. I called upon you in prayer to our Lord thy Booster. In the name of Thor Wotansen we pray for bountiful thrust to weight and delta V. Amen.

[Thor Wotansen]

Another pic of my Skyliner SSTO on high approach.

[qzgy]

First Mk3 SSTO! Apparently, whatever I did worked first go, minus control issues.

3700 m/s DeltaV in 84X80 orbit. Was easy to fly too. Also an infiniminer(in theory)

Edit:Further testing shows the wings get a little... explody on reentry. Redesign is in the works

 

Edited January 8, 2017 by qzgy

[Jarin]

On 1/4/2017 at 7:30 AM, Mr.Xin said:

Welcome People!!

i present my humble SSTO, with only stock parts! Its has a minning cargo on the front and a large ramp cargo bay, capable of carry around 25 tons and still make it to orbit with fuel! it can go to nearby planets and moons as long it refuels first around Minmus!

Looking good! Just wanted to note that you could probably squeeze a bit more performance out of both the craft and your computer by dropping those structural intakes out of the part count. 8 shock cones is already overkill for that number of engines, so the rest can just be tossed.

[Thor Wotansen]

Coming soon, the Pteradactyl Mk2 with 100t+ to LKO (tested to 90km).

[Samniss Arandeen]

Working on an SSTO for interplanetary missions, I'm enjoying the results.

[Thor Wotansen]

Do you need a SSTO to get your SSTO into orbit?  Why?  Who cares?  The point is you can do that now with the Pteradactyl Mk2.

100t to orbit.

[hurdurdur]

After flying around with rapiers and all sorts of things i decided to try to do without them.  Even without ramjets and the coned intakes. Here it is ,  panthers and and nukes only, no oxidizer at all, using parts that are available rather low in the tech tree.

 

 

 

Ascent profile for this is somewhat unusual darting upwards sharply with panthers in wet mode until you get up to about 700-800m/s speed (panthers in wet mode since takeoff), then around 8k panthers are getting too fast and too high, starting to lose the power - time to switch on the nukes. Yes they only have ~50kN at these altitudes but it doesn't matter, aim for a ~30-40 degree ascent, keep watching your periapsis, as you keep this crazy ascent it will go further in time eventually coming to about 75km and 1m30s away from you, aim for prograde do the maneuver nodes etc. On my quite bad takeoff here i got to orbit with 628 liq. fuel left, i think not the worst i have done.   On descent it's easy to lose control - to recover pump the fuel forwards, invoke panthers if necessary to regain control. Lands quite easily to ground at the end.

 Some more notes - i have bound "Lights" to close the intakes, i do it around 24-25k when the panthers lose the last of their thrust. When in orbit i switch the panthers to dry mode (fuel efficiency for landing maneuvers). After retrograde burn for deorbit i disable the nukes already in space and enable the panthers (and open the air intakes again!). As seen on the screenshot i actually had almost 25% fuel left after deorbit and landing, after some pretty bad flying. So you can fool around in orbit as well if you wish (those nukes are crazy efficient). The part after command module is structural fuselage, just to make the plane a bit longer and more natural. Into the service bay i hid some batteries, 1x6 solar panels and a probodyne hecs (so i could use non-pilots to fly).

Hope this helps people who don't have rapiers yet in career, but really badly want just a space plane

[Korsakovski]

Midgard with a rear ramp works suprisingly well.

http://imgur.com/a/LesKV

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Midgard-BX

[Thingymajigy]

 

longer range variant

[Korsakovski]

Went back to small craft for a bit and did a canardless long-range version of the earlier Valkyrie

http://imgur.com/a/iWABY

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Valkyrie-XR

[Rune]

12 hours ago, Thingymajigy said:

 

 

longer range variant

 

Hum. Great minds think alike? It's a good payload/engine combo.

 

Rune. I'm still not happy with my single-RAPIER design, tough.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Rune

[TeeGee]

Edited January 11, 2017 by TeeGee

[hurdurdur]

Redid my micro plane concept by replacing the panthers with ramjets and replacing one nuke with a ramjet as well. Figured it should make it into orbit just as well. Oh yes it did, it also went to mun orbit and back, proper flying would give even better results. Threw it into a video

 

 

(Edit: fixed the link)

Edited January 9, 2017 by hurdurdur

[Thingymajigy]

15 hours ago, Rune said:

Hum. Great minds think alike? It's a good payload/engine combo.

Rune. I'm still not happy with my single-RAPIER design, tough.

Interesting...lel

help I can't figure out a good ascent profile for this

Cargo bay's empty and feels like it should have more dv left

dl

not a real fan of the big-s wings tbh

[Rune]

1 hour ago, Thingymajigy said:

Interesting...lel

help I can't figure out a good ascent profile for this

Cargo bay's empty and feels like it should have more dv left

dl

 

not a real fan of the big-s wings tbh

Aesthetically they are challenging to make interesting, yes, but they are free tankage... and finding where to pack more liquid fuel is the issue on this kind of designs (they get really long, really quick). In fact, if you are lacking dV, that's probably the thing to look for, more liquid fuel. As long as you have TWR >0.45 on the runway, you can make it to orbit.

The ascent profile should be simple: hug the water until you reach 400m/s, then pitch up a tiny bit so you ascend relatively quickly but accelerating all the way, the limit should be your thermal resistance if drag is low enough. Then I hope you are packing a bit of oxi for a quick burst to sub-orbital velocities, and finish circularization on the nuke (which you light on as soon as the RAPIERs start giving out in airbreathing mode).

 

Rune. You should get around ~1,300m/s (surface) on airbreathing, and run out of oxi somewhere above ~1,800m/s.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Rune

[Capt Snuggler]

51 minutes ago, Rune said:

Aesthetically they are challenging to make interesting, yes, but they are free tankage... and finding where to pack more liquid fuel is the issue on this kind of designs (they get really long, really quick). In fact, if you are lacking dV, that's probably the thing to look for, more liquid fuel. As long as you have TWR >0.45 on the runway, you can make it to orbit.

The ascent profile should be simple: hug the water until you reach 400m/s, then pitch up a tiny bit so you ascend relatively quickly but accelerating all the way, the limit should be your thermal resistance if drag is low enough. Then I hope you are packing a bit of oxi for a quick burst to sub-orbital velocities, and finish circularization on the nuke (which you light on as soon as the RAPIERs start giving out in airbreathing mode).

 

Rune. You should get around ~1,300m/s (surface) on airbreathing, and run out of LF/OX somewhere above ~1,800m/s.

This is priceless knowledge

[Rune]

5 minutes ago, Capt Snuggler said:

This is priceless knowledge

I never get tired of sharing with you guys what I've learned here. I should probably go about it in a more organized fashion, tough, 'cause even tough I think I repeat myself a lot, apparently this still bears reminding. Search posts made by me on this thread and you will quickly find some where I go into much further detail, including optimal mass ratios for fuel/engines/payload and such sciency things.

 

Rune. One of this days, I'll write copy-paste a decent tutorial.

[AeroGav]

On 07/01/2017 at 8:22 PM, hurdurdur said:

After flying around with rapiers and all sorts of things i decided to try to do without them.  Even without ramjets and the coned intakes. Here it is ,  panthers and and nukes only, no oxidizer at all, using parts that are available rather low in the tech tree.

 

 

Ascent profile for this is somewhat unusual darting upwards sharply with panthers in wet mode until you get up to about 700-800m/s speed (panthers in wet mode since takeoff), then around 8k panthers are getting too fast and too high, starting to lose the power - time to switch on the nukes. Yes they only have ~50kN at these altitudes but it doesn't matter, aim for a ~30-40 degree ascent, keep watching your periapsis, as you keep this crazy ascent it will go further in time eventually coming to about 75km and 1m30s away from you, aim for prograde do the maneuver nodes etc. On my quite bad takeoff here i got to orbit with 628 liq. fuel left, i think not the worst i have done.   On descent it's easy to lose control - to recover pump the fuel forwards, invoke panthers if necessary to regain control. Lands quite easily to ground at the end.

 Some more notes - i have bound "Lights" to close the intakes, i do it around 24-25k when the panthers lose the last of their thrust. When in orbit i switch the panthers to dry mode (fuel efficiency for landing maneuvers). After retrograde burn for deorbit i disable the nukes already in space and enable the panthers (and open the air intakes again!). As seen on the screenshot i actually had almost 25% fuel left after deorbit and landing, after some pretty bad flying. So you can fool around in orbit as well if you wish (those nukes are crazy efficient). The part after command module is structural fuselage, just to make the plane a bit longer and more natural. Into the service bay i hid some batteries, 1x6 solar panels and a probodyne hecs (so i could use non-pilots to fly).

Hope this helps people who don't have rapiers yet in career, but really badly want just a space plane

I find you can get away with fewer nukes if you pack more wing area. This works especially well if you got access to wings that also hold fuel, but even if that's not the case i'd still add some more.  With more wing, you should be able to get to orbit comfortably with one nuke per 15 tons.

Flight profile for large winged ship - once on nuke power, just keep the nose at 5 degrees above prograde for best-lift drag ratio.  I prefer to just "cruise" to orbit rather than trying to zoom climb, which also reduces the jet twr you need.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/C7-Cormorant

I built this for a three engine challenge - more wing enables us to lift more fuel with a fixed number of engines. I don't have any videos of this one in action, but i made a Seaplane  variant and you can see it "cruise" to orbit like an airliner

 

[Thor Wotansen]

2 hours ago, Thingymajigy said:

Interesting...lel

help I can't figure out a good ascent profile for this

Cargo bay's empty and feels like it should have more dv left

dl

not a real fan of the big-s wings tbh

Another thing to think about, those Mk 2 fuselages hold the same amount of fuel as the Mk 1 tanks of the same size, but have more drag.  So instead of using the Mk 2 form factor for the wing tanks, try using a Mk 1 long oxy tank and a Mk 1 liquid fuel tank.  This will also give you more oxidizer then what you have now.

[hurdurdur]

I'm afraid the "cruise into an orbit like an airliner" is since you were using the rapier to gather loads of speed at first. If i try the same approach with 2 nuclears + 2 panthers then the drag just wears you down. I managed one super streamlined design and barely barely get into orbit with that configuration, leaving me with less fuel than the over-nuked design here.  Problem with panthers is that they have a low speed ceiling and in this super shallow ascent mode they drop the thrust before you even reach 15km properly. Also the cockpit started to show overheating symptoms since the acceleration took a while. You can prove me wrong with a better design of course  

 Added a screenshot of a 2 nuke + 1 panther that actually made it to orbit (during writing this post) with a shallowisch ascent and then landed into the ocean since i had trouble pinpointing the ksp with the amount of fuel left.

Pic of the smooth landing as well in http://imgur.com/a/hByvN

[AeroGav]

2 hours ago, hurdurdur said:

I'm afraid the "cruise into an orbit like an airliner" is since you were using the rapier to gather loads of speed at first. If i try the same approach with 2 nuclears + 2 panthers then the drag just wears you down. I managed one super streamlined design and barely barely get into orbit with that configuration, leaving me with less fuel than the over-nuked design here.  Problem with panthers is that they have a low speed ceiling and in this super shallow ascent mode they drop the thrust before you even reach 15km properly. Also the cockpit started to show overheating symptoms since the acceleration took a while. You can prove me wrong with a better design of course  

 Added a screenshot of a 2 nuke + 1 panther that actually made it to orbit (during writing this post) with a shallowisch ascent and then landed into the ocean since i had trouble pinpointing the ksp with the amount of fuel left.

Pic of the smooth landing as well in http://imgur.com/a/hByvN

Interesting looking ship.  While you were doing that,  I built this - 

I stuck to my "nose 5 degrees above prograde" mantra throughout the nuclear powered part of the ascent, until my wings started glowing yellow hot.  Newsflash - airliner wings aren't built for spaceflight.  Then I wound on a load more nose up pitch trim in a desperate bid to gain height before we melted.   Not sure how much the brown trouser maneuver cost us but i became so preoccupied with the temperature gauge i missed MECO and ended up in a really wonky orbit.

I make that about 2500 dV.

I'm surprised your sci-fi looking rhombus ship took so much more fuel to get to orbit, it looks really similar to mine.  The only differences i can see

• i think the circular intake has less drag than the ramp, and i'm only using one of them (poor air gathering above mach 3, but that doesn't matter with Panthers) - tiny difference
• cones on the back of my nukes - i've attached 1.25m nose cones to the back of my nukes then offset them forwards so they don't get heated by the exhaust.   also make sure you disable the shroud or your ship can self disassemble when the engine is activated via staging (the shrouds appear to be made of lead and rip chunks out of the wing)
• i got bigger control surfaces.   i have dialled down the authority a bit.   Large surfaces at a small deflection angle make less drag than small ones with big angle

Still, not sure how things are so far off.

If you press ALT + F12 to bring up the debug menu, then go to physics, aero, and check the "display aero data gui" box, you can see the lift:drag ratio of your airplane overall.   I adjust the pitch trim to try get best l/d - typically 3.4 to 1 or so, during the hypersonic ascent, at 4 or 5 aoa.