SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Aerospacer]

On 03.03.2017 at 4:33 PM, Thor Wotansen said:

I forget who made it, but I saw a Mk 3 SSTO that could put a full orange tank into orbit with only 4 Rapiers.

Really, this not so hard now. I have seen several such SSTO, and even also made my own (in january).

This:

 

Edited March 20, 2017 by Aerospacer

[cratercracker]

So i made 2 really very small SSTO's capable of reaching orbit (though still cannot carry any cargo)

Both of them are used in my kerbin geological and geographical study.

Mantel

Viper

 

[Arugela]

On 3/2/2017 at 7:14 AM, Razorforce7 said:

I think I created THE heaviest stock airbreathing spaceplane SSTO thus far posted. Only intended to deliver cargo to LKO.

Its been a long held dream of mine to create ever greater STOCK SSTOs then the ones I've build before. This time with the goal of getting as much payload in orbit with a airbreathing spaceplane.
I'm very certain I succeeded in this with my last build, and so I will share this one with ya all.

Took me days how to figure out how to attach/strut all parts without the craft loosing parts due to stress during all stages of flight.
I'm done puzzling

And I am very sure that its the heaviest, largest and with the most payload capacity to orbit of all the stock airbreathing SSTOs

She has 70 Rapier engines. Almost as long as a 747-800
She weighs over 1300Tons on launch and has 453,445kg or 453Ton jettisonable cargo in 3.75m format.
Thats a fraction of 35% payload to orbit.

As for TWR or Thrust/drag ratio she is actually capable of doing over 500 Ton to LKO. Although I might need to squeeze some extra LF in somewhere.

Can rotate in vaccuum with vernors and can perform controlled aerobrake and powered landing.

Requires 5 Vector engines within a front cargo bay to pivot the nose up to enable a controlled takeoff.

I used Mechjeb autopilot for ease of control but she is very stable and doesn't require that at all.

323 Parts including cargo.

 

 

 

 

Full Album

 

 

 

I posted a 500 ton cargo lifter that goes to Duna and possibly Laythe. It weighed in at several thousand tons and took off from runway. 8) I think it has 72 rapiers on top of 72 Nervs that had 72 whiplash engines on the end. You gotta go much bigger if you want to hit biggest ssto!!! >< Mines probably not it either. I'd be curious what is though. It would be interesting to see.

 

My weight-cargo ratio was closer to yours originally, but I kept adding stuff to take it from LKO to Duna and wherever it could get to.

 

That is the small version. This is the big version:

Unless you meant dimension like height and width.. In which case I may have some bigger... I'll have look. I always make monstrosities. My longer and wider ones are explorer or passenger planes though.

Edited March 4, 2017 by Arugela

[Andetch]

11 hours ago, cratercracker said:

So i made 2 really very small SSTO's capable of reaching orbit (though still cannot carry any cargo)

Both of them are used in my kerbin geological and geographical study.

Mantel

Viper

 

 

I like small SSTO..... I am always inclined to build as small as possible, and these little things look right up my street! Time to build some copycats I think, hehe!

[mystik]

Work in progress Arrow V (LF Proto)

 

Cannot yet reach circular orbit due to having too much lf and to little ox. Needs adjustments, but it has OVER 9000 m/s. I need to switch some to rocket fuel to get about 5000m/s out of nukes and the rest 2500 m/s to rockets. So, the hybrid is coming along nicely, I have too much m/s and will need to adjust the distribution. It flies like a brick, but it flies. Unfortunately it needs more rocket fuel to get to orbit (reached 60 km) and some extra air intakes as the engines start cutting out at 25000 one by one.

 

I will tune it until I get something more stable and with about 2500m/s on rockets (the screenshot below is for display purposes only, it was teleported to space via cheats, to see how much dv it has stored).

 

Edited March 4, 2017 by mystik

[Arugela]

I hope they do neutral tanks in 1.3 that allow us to switch fuel on all parts. That would be one of the best things they could add. Plus stuff like the ability to empty fill fuel with a bar in VAB/SPH to test on large vehicles and see the affects of fuel drainage completely. My ships always have the same problem. And the bigger and more complex they get the harder it is to switch tanks. Even when designed to make this easier relatively.

[Thor Wotansen]

@Arugela use the RCS Build Aid mod.  It shows both the COM of with fuel and the COM with empty tanks at the same time, along with some RCS stuff that is nice, I guess.  I find  it rather indispensable when building SSTOs.

[Camaron]

So, ages ago before my Kerbal playtime came to a near-standstill due to heavy college work and life in general, I found a craft built and presented by Rune that caught my attention for some reason, and I vowed to make a larger edition based on similar design concepts. Now, 14 months later (I know because of screenshot file dates), I came back to that idea and rebuilt a version that actually accomplishes all it was meant to do.

This craft carries 12 Kerbals and a full set of drilling hardware as well as a polar scanning probe on board, to space in one stage with enough D/V to happily land on minmus to refuel. Theoretically it should reach anything in the solar system after that refuel.

I wonder if anyone can point out significant improvements to the design? Also I will admit there are a few things clipped into the body, like some SAS and a single generator.

Meet the Diamondback IV
(Album in the tiny link below this image)

http://imgur.com/a/PTG6D
http://imgur.com/a/QDGTQ

Edited March 5, 2017 by Camaron

[Wanderfound]

Kerbotour Deluxe:

Rapid to orbit with no fuss and enough fuel to reach Minmus.

Full scanning, mining, refining, science and long range comms rig.

Refuels in less than a fortnight, over 4km/s dV when fuelled up.

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/trxe1wgglc2muyk/Kerbotour Deluxe.craft?dl=0

Edited March 5, 2017 by Wanderfound

[Camaron]

I love the functional simplicity of that one!

Your Kerbotour Deluxe will acheive notable things and still cause less lag than unmodded minecraft!

Edited March 5, 2017 by Camaron

[cratercracker]

My new small but usefull SSTO-

Stingray

has 4 engines has, enough fuel for 100 000 m orbit and enough fuel to go back. It is also capable 

It is also full-funxionall SSTO-electricy,storage,ladder,apperantly has a hatch,can support both crew flight and autonomous flight and can carry cargo.

[Aerospacer]

Willy

Willy - wheesley-based 3-seat SSTO from career, made for tourizm and rescue missions.

Stock, tech level - science90+1 (need one science160 "Advanced Aerodynamics" technology).

 Short Imgur album

Edited March 5, 2017 by Aerospacer

[mystik]

Work continued on the Arrow SSTA (now model X). Currently fine tuning. I also fixed sliding while sitting on runway. Optimized parts layout.

It takes off nicely now, but it requires the use of the Vector often, because it is underpowered on Rapiers until 500m/s to save fuel during interplanetary travel. It can land on the Mun using only nukes. It has 4800m/s left in orbit.

The screenshot is for showing the max dv stored in space 1500m/s on rockets and 6300 m/s on nukes. It isn't ready yet as reentry causes the crew pod to explode and it is hard to control during descent. I will add a radiator and figure out how to keep it stable while landing.

For those wondering why such an odd shape it is because the MK1 fuel tanks are the most efficient at carrying fuel for their weight. Mk2 parts used only for crew, science and mining cargo bay and adapter parts.

 

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by mystik

[qzgy]

15 hours ago, cratercracker said:

 

 

Wait, what happened to the nose cone in that last pic?

I tried building a one rapier ssto with a fairing in the middle as a cargo bay for a tiny probe.

Also did this

[AeroGav]

6 hours ago, qzgy said:

Wait, what happened to the nose cone in that last pic?

It's a fairly low temperature part to use as a nose cone - 2000k.  I prefer the NCS adapter + small nose cone combo 2400k.  Or even procedural fairing.

 

8 hours ago, mystik said:

reentry causes the crew pod to explode

Use an inline cockpit and put it at the back of your stack of mk2 parts.  Use the mk2 to mk1 adapter short + ncs adapter + small nose cone up front.     PArts at front of ship get worst re-entry heating.   No cockpit likes that, I'm finding even the mighty mk3 on my shuttle challenge craft overheat worse than mk1 inline cockpits.

[mystik]

56 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

Use an inline cockpit and put it at the back of your stack of mk2 parts.  Use the mk2 to mk1 adapter short + ncs adapter + small nose cone up front.     PArts at front of ship get worst re-entry heating.   No cockpit likes that, I'm finding even the mighty mk3 on my shuttle challenge craft overheat worse than mk1 inline cockpits.

The thing is that if I can get away with a simple radiator on top then I will do that, because adding any more weight and especially the inefficient adapters (MK2 short and NCS) will surely raise the RF m/s by a few tens and drop the LF m/s by a few hundreds. A radiator will only cause a few tens of m/s to drop. The whole design is very tricky to balance and once I figure the heating I will switch to improving the landing.

Edited March 6, 2017 by mystik

[Rune]

On 5/3/2017 at 4:35 AM, Camaron said:

So, ages ago before my Kerbal playtime came to a near-standstill due to heavy college work and life in general, I found a craft built and presented by Rune that caught my attention for some reason, and I vowed to make a larger edition based on similar design concepts. Now, 14 months later (I know because of screenshot file dates), I came back to that idea and rebuilt a version that actually accomplishes all it was meant to do.

This craft carries 12 Kerbals and a full set of drilling hardware as well as a polar scanning probe on board, to space in one stage with enough D/V to happily land on minmus to refuel. Theoretically it should reach anything in the solar system after that refuel.

I wonder if anyone can point out significant improvements to the design? Also I will admit there are a few things clipped into the body, like some SAS and a single generator.

Meet the Diamondback IV
(Album in the tiny link below this image)

http://imgur.com/a/PTG6D
http://imgur.com/a/QDGTQ

Glad to have inspired such a thing! But in my quest to to true SSTA, and cracking the nut of Tylo, I actually moved away from airbreathers. The jump to kerbin orbit is a bit trickier (not really, just a matter of an obscene mass ratio), but after that, having >3km/s of brute-force chemical power at high TWR, and after that another bunch on nukes, is kind of sweet.

Now I'm actually thinking about making do without the wings entirely, it's even more mass-efficient, and this thing doesn't really need to precision-land. Not sold on the shape, though:

3 hours ago, mystik said:

The thing is that if I can get away with a simple radiator on top then I will do that, because adding any more weight and especially the inefficient adapters (MK2 short and NCS) will surely raise the RF m/s by a few tens and drop the LF m/s by a few hundreds. A radiator will only cause a few tens of m/s to drop. The whole design is very tricky to balance and once I figure the heating I will switch to improving the landing.

A radiator would help, certainly (make sure it's bolted to the part you want to cool or the one next to it), but you shouldn't need it if you can manage your vertical speed on reentry. It takes a certain amount of wing per mass to be able to, and certainly the maneuverability to attain high angles of attack on reentry, but I've reentered with Mk1 cockpits on the front, and those have both a pitiful internal temperature rating (1,1000, meaning they need to reenter quickly or they'll soak too much temperature and explode from within), and pitiful skin temperature rating (1,500º, meaning you can't go steep and brake with high G). It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, certainly, but I did it. The how is a lot of up/down movement while you reenter, pitching down to near your skin temperature, then pitching up to brake, go up, and shed the internal heat. Oh, and you absolutely need a pilot to do this or plasma comms blackout will screw you.

 

Rune. An engineering conundrum: winged designs have the highest temp ratings, yet they are the ones that need them less.

[AeroGav]

15 minutes ago, Rune said:

So, ages ago before my Kerbal playtime came to a near-standstill due to heavy college work and life in general, I found a craft built and presented by Rune that caught my attention for some reason, and I vowed to make a larger edition based on similar design concepts. Now, 14 months later (I know because of screenshot file dates), I came back to that idea and rebuilt a version that actually accomplishes all it was meant to do.

This craft carries 12 Kerbals and a full set of drilling hardware as well as a polar scanning probe on board, to space in one stage with enough D/V to happily land on minmus to refuel. Theoretically it should reach anything in the solar system after that refuel.

I wonder if anyone can point out significant improvements to the design? Also I will admit there are a few things clipped into the body, like some SAS and a single generator.

Meet the Diamondback IV
(Album in the tiny link below this image)

If you can make it available for download I'll have a look at it.    My guess, from the pictures, is that it might be possible to reduce drag by having a look at the way the engines are attached to the rear fuselage.  This in turn allows  a  reduction in the number of engines etc.  Using aeodynamic instead of lightweight adapters and covering all open nodes is where the easy savings lie.

[Rune]

Just now, AeroGav said:

If you can make it available for download I'll have a look at it.    My guess, from the pictures, is that it might be possible to reduce drag by having a look at the way the engines are attached to the rear fuselage.  This in turn allows  a  reduction in the number of engines etc.  Using aeodynamic instead of lightweight adapters and covering all open nodes is where the easy savings lie.

You quoted the wrong guy

[AeroGav]

On 05/03/2017 at 3:35 AM, Camaron said:

So, ages ago before my Kerbal playtime came to a near-standstill due to heavy college work and life in general, I found a craft built and presented by Rune that caught my attention for some reason, and I vowed to make a larger edition based on similar design concepts. Now, 14 months later (I know because of screenshot file dates), I came back to that idea and rebuilt a version that actually accomplishes all it was meant to do.

This craft carries 12 Kerbals and a full set of drilling hardware as well as a polar scanning probe on board, to space in one stage with enough D/V to happily land on minmus to refuel. Theoretically it should reach anything in the solar system after that refuel.

I wonder if anyone can point out significant improvements to the design? Also I will admit there are a few things clipped into the body, like some SAS and a single generator.

http://imgur.com/a/PTG6D
http://imgur.com/a/QDGTQ

If you can make it available for download I'll have a look at it.    My guess, from the pictures, is that it might be possible to reduce drag by having a look at the way the engines are attached to the rear fuselage.  This in turn allows  a  reduction in the number of engines etc.  Using aeodynamic instead of lightweight adapters and covering all open nodes is where the easy savings lie.

@Rune sorry I don't know how to fix the quote on my last post?

[AeroGav]

4 hours ago, mystik said:

The thing is that if I can get away with a simple radiator on top then I will do that, because adding any more weight and especially the inefficient adapters (MK2 short and NCS) will surely raise the RF m/s by a few tens and drop the LF m/s by a few hundreds. A radiator will only cause a few tens of m/s to drop. The whole design is very tricky to balance and once I figure the heating I will switch to improving the landing.

A few versions ago it was burned into KSP folklore that all adapters are terrible for drag.     It's no longer the case,  for most types of 1-way size adapter there is an aerodynamic option (for spaceplanes) and a light/short draggy one (for rockets).   There is now very little in this contest.   The mk2 to mk1 adapter (short) is draggier than a mk1 ft400 tank which holds the same fuel, but less so than a mk2 short fuel fuselage (same capacity).   The ncs adapter is within a percent or two of the best 1.25m nose cones out there, which is always going to be tiny compared with the drag of a mk2 fuselage in any case.

Multi engine adapters are draggier, but not significantly more so than simply mounting parallel stacks of 1.25m fuselages to hold a similar amount of engines.

I run the above test four times, twice riding with Kasa and twice with Ribwise,  in all cases Ribwise's AP was about 7km higher.

Note that the pointy version is 390kg lighter.    I used monopropellant ballast to reduce the weight advantage of the pointy version to just 30kg.   OTOH,  the inline one has an extra 400lf/o capacity and an extra 80 LF capacity we're not using.

Finally, consider that it's not just about re-entry.  If you are cutting TWR to bare minimum and are trying to get the most airbreathing top speed possible (1400, 1500, even 1600m/s?) the   pointy cockpit might not like it, so the extra weight of the inline is offset by the more efficient launch profile possible.

 

[cratercracker]

Wait, what happened to the nose cone in that last pic?

I just went 1347m/s in 23 000 m altitude, i think you know what happend next...

Edited March 6, 2017 by cratercracker

[quasarrgames]

Reboted an old design of mine, the Hyper Phoenix:

An exotic luxury single-person spaceship, with 3800m/s in orbit (so far).

[Camaron]

13 hours ago, AeroGav said:

If you can make it available for download I'll have a look at it.    My guess, from the pictures, is that it might be possible to reduce drag by having a look at the way the engines are attached to the rear fuselage.  This in turn allows  a  reduction in the number of engines etc.  Using aeodynamic instead of lightweight adapters and covering all open nodes is where the easy savings lie.

Here it is, hopefully

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zp38ytzxsdbh1yr/Diamondback+IV+cp18.craft

[AeroGav]

Thanks for the link Camaron.   I love these "pimp my ride" challenges, a blank sheet of paper can be so intimidating.   Spent about an hour making the easy "stage 1" drag reduction mods.  

Original here -

7 hours ago, Camaron said:

Here it is, hopefully

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zp38ytzxsdbh1yr/Diamondback+IV+cp18.craft

Area of interest - the back end 

Whilst this looks no less clean than my version,  that's not how the game sees it.   It sees a large mk3 fuselage , which abruptly transitions to a 1.25m whiplash engine (the centre engine).   Whiplash engines are actually aerodynamic, but since this is only covering about 5-10% the surface area of the rear end of the fuselage,  it gives you 90-95% of the drag penalty you'd get from a mk3 fuselage ending abruptly in a flat plate.   In KSP. forward and rearward facing surfaces get the same drag.

But what about the 6 rapiers and 4 nukes clustered around?  Well, they are not hooked on the end node of the fuselage, so they don't count.  In fact they were attached radially with cubic octagonal struts so they are additional 1.25m stacks in parallel to the main fuselage, also creating drag.  Some of these radial stacks have intakes on the front (fairly low drag) but some were left open node, flat plate.   Also,  engines with rear attach nodes (rapiers and nukes) get slapped with a flat plate drag penalty too unless you put a cone or intake that matches their diameter on this rear face, then offset the thing inside.

There was a bit of stuff going on between the wings too, some ft800 tanks with intakes on the front but flat plate rear nodes.  Also some of the small size 2.5m tanks rotated sideways like a hockey puck.  Discreetly tucked away, visually, but the game sees them as sideways to the airflow (highest possible drag).      Finally, there were a few radially attached things like radiators and solar panels that could have gone in the cargo bay, but not that much tbh.

I solved the engine mount problem by fitting a mk3 engine mount to the back of the fuselage.   It has three 1.25m attach nodes and a single 2.5m node.     Nukes go on the 1.25m nodes,  and i attach slanted cones to the rear of these engines, rotate them 180degrees so the pointy end faces forward, then offset forwards in front of the engine.   Now we have low drag nukes that look like shuttle OMS pods !

On the centre 2.5m node i put a 2.5m triple engine adapter.  

I attach the rapiers individually which allows me to offset them inline. At a later point, i offset the 2.5m triple mount forward to hide it , since it doesn't look right with the rapiers not lining up to their mounts.  In this screenshot you can see the flipped cones attached to the back of the rapiers, before i offset.  I later swapped the two outboard cones for ramp intakes, since that's more what you'd expect to see in front of a jet engine -

Overall engine config -  2 Whiplash, 3 Rapier, 5 Nukes with 150t takeoff weight.  There's about 1600 LFO tankage (reduced from original), the rest is all LF.  After circularising, it still had over 4100dv, with 0.3 to 1 TWR on the nukes.

Flight profile info -

Spoiler

Initial climb is subsonic, aoa < 5 degrees, pitch angle 10-15 degrees , to 6 or 7km.   At this point you should be approaching 250-260m/s -  reduce nose up trim to lower AoA and arc over gently to a shallow dive, and press AG 1 to activate nukes.  At 440m/s press 1 again to cancel nukes, maybe put some of the nose up trim back to resume climb.    Level off for speedrun at 21km.   At around Mach 4.2 acceleration starts to fade,  toggle nukes on again and leave on till MECO.         About mach 4.6 trim the nose up to 5 degrees above prograde.  Press AG 2 to switch centreline RAPIER to close cycle.   When the other two flame out,  press AG3 to switch them over too.  Oxidizer will run out by 1700m/s but 5 nukes are enough to take things from there.

 

Drag reduction is what enabled me to reduce the number of engines, which cuts dry mass and increases dV.

Original version which Hack Gravity cheat and craft flying on Prograde, 200 m/s  - 528kn drag

My version , 210kn drag

 

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Diamondback-gav2

My version here - note i did detach some of the mining gear and didn't get round to putting it all back, so it's unfinished.  Needs drills, an RTG, some solar panels for cargo bay, an ore tank and some fuel cells - but i'm sure you all know how to do that ! Also, it is lacking the lab module the original had, but i suspect the only reason it was there was to balance the weight of all those engines at the back, also there was severe clipping going on -  the lab was occupying the same volume as a stack of 5 reaction wheels and several large fuel cell stacks,  and the resource converter was clipped into cockpit nose cone, so i don't feel too bad leaving it out !