SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Climberfx]

[Yukon0009]

3 seater SSTO which has slightly over 1700 dV on orbit. Juuust enough to get to Minmus and back (0.0 LF left over!)

[eddiew]

I know this isn't the most exciting visual design... but it goes to space in 3.2x scale and carries a small cargo with it. And it's all stock parts. Which I felt makes it worth sharing  

[AeroGav]

I got a request for a lower tech cargo mk2 ssto, from a user that hadn't unlocked hypersonic flight yet in career mode.  Panther's it'll have to be.     Upon making further enquiries, it turns out he did in fact have nukes, and most of the rocket techs.  He'd only recently gotten into aviation, so i made a panther version of this -

...and came up with .... this

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Firefox-I

It worked out a whole lot better than expected and is in danger of showing up it's big brother. 2500dv remaining after reaching LKO.  Put some science juniors in it, land on Minmus and go for a drive across it's biomes.

The only downside, Firefox II, with smaller fuel tanks, lower dry mass, and larger wings , doesn't show heat bars on ascent where FF1 does.   Hold your nerve (or nerv) and stay on Prograde, it'll make it just fine.

[XB-70A]

Working since yesterday on the XC-73A Pallas. It's a simple 5 seats vehicle only made for crew rotation and low incomes tourists contracts.

 

Alas I still find it non-performant enough to be a good transfert vehicle. Once on a 100x100 km orbit it got only 950 m/s of dV remaining.

[AeroGav]

2 hours ago, XB-70A said:

Alas I still find it non-performant enough to be a good transfert vehicle. Once on a 100x100 km orbit it got only 950 m/s of dV remaining.

That's a nice looking ship that'd do well in FAR, looks to have low wave drag.  As for 950dV at 100km, that's more than i thought possible with a pure chemical SSTO.  My only thought is, you're kind of getting the worst of both worlds by using mk1 pointy cockpit and cabin right at the front (very low heat tolerance, stops you achieving the VERY high airbreathing speeds you'd be able to get with 4 RAPIERs on such a small ship) with mk2 fuel tanks (don't hold any more liquid than mk1, but 3 times the drag).

As a min-maxer you'd either want to stay all mk1 and just use inline cockpits/cabins further back in the stack to shield from heat (yawn, makes for a visually uninteresting plane) or if you are mix n' matching,   do it the other way around -   mk2 crew cabins and inline cockpit in the fat part of the ship in the middle, mk1 fuel tanks on the nose and tail.

[Climberfx]

another one from Omicron:

[Torquimedes]

8 hours ago, XB-70A said:

Working since yesterday on the XC-73A Pallas. It's a simple 5 seats vehicle only made for crew rotation and low incomes tourists contracts.

 

Alas I still find it non-performant enough to be a good transfert vehicle. Once on a 100x100 km orbit it got only 950 m/s of dV remaining.

I bet it...hustles...to orbit and back.

[Jett_Quasar]

This stock replica of a Correllian Corvette featured in the new Star Wars film Rogue One, is also an SSTO craft.  Yet there are many other surprises in store for you on this test flight...

There are a couple things I forgot to cover in the video: 
1) The craft does have 3 missiles it can use to shoot things down - they are the same stock variety as I put on other craft like the U-Wing and Tie fighters.
2) The craft has an interior which is accessible in the area where the ladder is located - there is also a hatch to a Hitchiker crew cabin in there as well.   

DOWNLOAD THE CORVETTE FILE HERE:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6ba1atl9oq4ym1/Corvette-SSTO.craft?dl=0

 

Here's a clip that didn't make it into the video:

Jett

Edited January 19, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[XB-70A]

9 hours ago, Torquimedes said:

I bet it...hustles...to orbit and back.

I wish it could be the perfect craft to Convey the crew.

More seriously, when I drew it on a paper my main desire was to make one SSTO with RAPIER under pods. I started by the fuselage, drew a large but pure delta wing then... s**t, now it's a pure B-58 look alike! Once in the SPH I even was about to put the small CH-J3 Fly-By-Wire part at the bottom to imitate the Hustler's M61 Vulcan turret.

The unique problem still is this horrible KSP dynamism which is making your craft flipping once in space if the engines thrust is not aligned with the center of mass.

I think I will make another small quadri-RAPIER SSTO based on the Myasishchev M-50. Like this the outer engines will already be axed with the CoM.

Edited January 18, 2017 by XB-70A

[Thor Wotansen]

8 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

This stock replica of a Correllian Corvette featured in the new Star Wars film Rogue One, is also an SSTO craft.  Yet there are many other surprises in store for you on this test flight...

There are a couple things I forgot to cover in the video: 
1) The craft dose have 3 missiles it can use to shoot things down - they are the same stock variety as I put on other craft like the U-Wing and Tie fighters.
2) The craft has an interior which is accessible in the area where the ladder is located - there is also a hatch to a Hitchiker crew cabin in there as well.   

DOWNLOAD THE CORVETTE FILE HERE:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6ba1atl9oq4ym1/Corvette-SSTO.craft?dl=0

 

Here's a clip that didn't make it into the video:

Jett

You sir are the maddest most genius of genii!  Your creations never cease to amaze and befuddle me with their stunning looks and practicality.  Keep it up man, although now that you've won KSP.......

[cosimas]

Made good use of B9 and the Concentric Aerospike engine for an SSTO with ISRU:

[cosimas]

Forgot the classic landing shot...

Love those fat legs

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

So here's the Beetle.

I needed a cargo SSTO for the various part/craft recovery missions that I'm sometimes assigned, and it'll also be useful (after some modifications for operations far from the Sun) for transporting fuel and other resources to and from my planned Laythe base, so after finally unlocking all the parts I needed I built this. It flies, and I've gotten it to orbit with 17 tonnes of cargo (a fully-loaded large ore tank) so it fills the necessary role in my fleet, but I'm not nearly as proud of this one as I was of my earlier designs. Large cargo SSTOs are a dime a dozen. I'm sure half of the craft on KerbalX fit that role, and there really isn't anything special about this one. It requires nearly the entire tech tree to build, doesn't use any interesting engine combinations (just eight R.A.P.I.E.R.s) and it isn't going to be hauling an orange tank into orbit or flying to Minmus any time soon.

I'm mainly posting it here for completeness sake. I probably won't put it up on KerbalX since, as I said, there are tonnes of other craft already there that do everything that this one does. Still, it does what I need it to do and isn't too difficult to fly.

[Thor Wotansen]

Five kerbals to LKO on two rapiers, with the sweetest handling you could ever have anywhere between the runway and the Mun.  I've had it to 1500m/s on airbreathing mode and it can make a 80 x 80km orbit with 600m/s left in the tanks.  Reentry is a breeze, although you have to watch out for overheating, due to the low drag design.  In my testing I found myself gliding halfway around Kerbin at hypersonic speeds.  My career game will definitely be seeing this one.

[Speed_Kerman]

@Jett_Quasar IO-U1, great droid name man!! I really like your designs, and your Corellian Corvette there takes the cake. Looks like it makes orbit with barely any fuel to spare!!

[Rune]

1 hour ago, Whisky Tango Foxtrot said:

So here's the Beetle.

 

I needed a cargo SSTO for the various part/craft recovery missions that I'm sometimes assigned, and it'll also be useful (after some modifications for operations far from the Sun) for transporting fuel and other resources to and from my planned Laythe base, so after finally unlocking all the parts I needed I built this. It flies, and I've gotten it to orbit with 17 tonnes of cargo (a fully-loaded large ore tank) so it fills the necessary role in my fleet, but I'm not nearly as proud of this one as I was of my earlier designs. Large cargo SSTOs are a dime a dozen. I'm sure half of the craft on KerbalX fit that role, and there really isn't anything special about this one. It requires nearly the entire tech tree to build, doesn't use any interesting engine combinations (just eight R.A.P.I.E.R.s) and it isn't going to be hauling an orange tank into orbit or flying to Minmus any time soon.

 

I'm mainly posting it here for completeness sake. I probably won't put it up on KerbalX since, as I said, there are tonnes of other craft already there that do everything that this one does. Still, it does what I need it to do and isn't too difficult to fly.

Well, it might not be the best thing that ever took to the skies, but it's something that can be worked with. A couple of tips to turn it into a solid workhorse:

- A Big Red can be taken to orbit with about four RAPIERs and some change, six at the most. You have enough power in there to lift much more, if you can make it sleek enough to go over 400m/s at about sea level. Alternatively, you could drop a lot of engine weight (at least two RAPIERs) and trade it for payload with the current fuel load.

- Even with less engine weight, you might want to either move them forwards, or put a crew cabin on the nose, to bring the dry CoM frowards. It's very common in this kind of designs to want to put all the engines backwards and a lot of fuel on the nose, because it looks cool and pointy, but then your CoM will move backwards during flight, towards instability, so you need to have a lot of it at the beginning, which will hurt your handling just when you need it the most, with full tanks and the worst wing loading of the whole flight. Another option would be to put the ramp pointing forwards, and the fuel tanks onthe back, but then you would have the same problem with the payload as with the fuel.

 

Rune. Always crucial to check how the CoM moves as you use fuel.

[Whisky Tango Foxtrot]

Yeah, it's technically overpowered, but I considered a small loss of payload capacity to be a decent trade-off for a ship that's fairly easy to fly. This thing only needs a few seconds of sea-skimming before it's ready to go into a near-45-degree climb up to the thin 100000-metre atmosphere, and my final closed-cycle burns are pretty quick, too. Since I'm going to be using this craft fairly regularly as part of my fleet I consider ease-of-flight to be every bit as important as deltaV capacity (provided it preforms well enough to complete its mission, of course.)

The forward fuel tanks are actually half-empty; they've got LiquidFuel but no oxidizer. The rear tanks seem to be enough to balance out the fuel use, so I don't get any stability issues full or empty. In fact, one of the major problems I had designing this craft was that the CoL was too far back, resulting in a plane that refused to pull up. I solved this problem by adding the strakes and canards to the front, but I had to move the wings and engines even further back to make room. It still did the job, though, and let me get the plane off the runway.

I did have a command pod on the front in place of the adapter/fuel tank at one point in the plane's design, but while I liked the additional versatility it gave the craft I already had a passenger SSTO that I liked (the Grasshopper) and the positioning of the hatch on the command pod meant that there was no good way to attach a ladder to allow crewmembers to get off and on. If I do need to carry passengers with this plane for whatever reason I'll just put a Hitchhiker module in the cargo bay.

[AeroGav]

Since we're talking ramp birds, i built one not so long ago in case i ever needed to put a rover on another world.

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

From the front in particular it looks like it's been glued together from scraps and offcuts, but it does actually fly pretty nicely, and packs a serious amount of interplanetary dV. 

@Rune Oh yeah, going back to our earlier discussion, my min-maxed designs do in fact use a 1:1 ratio of rapiers to nervs and 200-300m/s worth of oxidizer.   It was more about the dilemmas of building a smaller 3 engine craft, when you're forced to choose which engine to have two of and which for one.   I was just building 2 nuke ships to show that they work better than people think (common wisdom seems to be they'd be really hard to fly or not fly at all).  Also if you got 2 nukes in something well  streamlined under 30 tons, oxidizer is a waste because you already got plenty closed cycle mode power.  

This week I also built my largest spaceplane ever - 183 tons (not by some folks standards, but big for me).

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Liv-Tylo

I'm currently testing it with a Jool 5 mission.    The fuselage is entirely cargo bay and features IRSU,  a 7 seat tylo lander, a 6 seat rover, and a recreation area (kerbal furniture mod).  It's not fully SSTO, in that it has a drop tank and two whiplash boosters.  Main propulsion is a panther, two rapier and four nervs.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2017 by AeroGav

[AeroGav]

41 minutes ago, Rune said:

 

- Even with less engine weight, you might want to either move them forwards, or put a crew cabin on the nose, to bring the dry CoM frowards. It's very common in this kind of designs to want to put all the engines backwards and a lot of fuel on the nose, because it looks cool and pointy, but then your CoM will move backwards during flight, towards instability, so you need to have a lot of it at the beginning, which will hurt your handling just when you need it the most, with full tanks and the worst wing loading of the whole flight. Another option would be to put the ramp pointing forwards, and the fuel tanks onthe back, but then you would have the same problem with the payload as with the fuel.

 

 

Yeah my Galaxian has engines well forward , especially the heavy nukes.  

Rather a homely bird though (the SSTO, not Val). Doesn't help that i keep sticking strakes on to balance CoL,  but hey it makes loads of lift and has lots of LF for interplanetary stuff.    

Why do you need a rover again when you've got a plane?   Well, I suppose they're fun.  And the plane can come and collect the Kerbals after you crash it.

[Wanderfound]

Kerbodyne Grand Tourer

 

 

SSTA. Full mining and science rig.

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7lvjoqxm48omzc/Kerbodyne Grand Tourer.craft?dl=0

[Jens Lyn IV]

Derp derp herp* derp, derp hurr herp (durr) derp derp; durr hurr derp.

Herp, herp derp herp hurr, derp-derp derp.

Derp.

Herp derp.

Hurr durr.

Derp derp derp.

*Derp.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Jens Lyn IV
Derp.

[Thor Wotansen]

Here's a little SSTA I built that should be able to return from anywhere but Eve.  I haven't tested it beyond LKO, but the DeltaV readouts and TWR tell me that Tylo has been conquered.  

[Rune]

14 minutes ago, Thor Wotansen said:

 

Here's a little SSTA I built that should be able to return from anywhere but Eve.  I haven't tested it beyond LKO, but the DeltaV readouts and TWR tell me that Tylo has been conquered.  

Don't trust those too much, Tylo is murder. And even if you don't have the time to test it out on your own, I'm sure someone will be glad to take your thing for a ride... I know somebody did it for me!

 

 

Rune. Credit for the 'I landed on Tylo!' image goes to @PointySideUp, with whom I had tons of fun running this test mission, and was the actual guy who did the deed.

[PointySideUp]

4 hours ago, Rune said:

Tylo is murder

Wow, flashback to an awesome mission led by @Rune  Thanks to his awesome craft with power and efficiency, and his skilled guidance, I performed my first gravity burn and Tylo landing last spring break! 

https://kerbalx.com/Rune/SSTO-Mk-LXXX-Arrow

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/a/5HLjI

Sorry, dark pics

https://imgur.com/a/iaXo6