SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Korsakovski]

Seeing how the thread is kinda slow, here's something that has been sitting on the back burner for a while.

The usual nuclear science SSTO with one crew. Managed to squeeze almost 4,1k dV from the design when in Kerbin orbit.

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Phantom-U4A4

[AeroGav]

Liquid-fuel only spaceplanes are a popular niche these days,  but they're mostly bitty little mk1s.     I fancied trying something bigger, particularly in view of the fact the fuselage had no room left for oxidizer after I'd finished stuffing Kerbals into it.

Gross Mass is 86,105KG

Fuel Mass is just 24,000KG.      That's about the lowest fuel fraction of anything I've ever seen make orbit.      After working on this for 5 hours,  I took these screenies from my first successful orbit. Now I need a lie down.   Got there with 550 out of 4400 remaining,  but I reached 103% of max cockpit temp on the way up.   I could have pitched up or throttled back but i didn't want to run out of fuel again.   In hindsight we'd probably have still made it if i had.

I kept adding more strakes to this thing to increase fuel capacity, and lengthening the nose to try stop the cockpit burning up.   Unfortunately the stuff you put on the front is much smaller diameter than the cockpit itself so doesn't give all that much protection. There's even a heat shield between the 1.25m nose stuff and the cockpit, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Power is 2 Rapiers, 1 Panther, and 4 NERVs.      Relax,  it may look like we've got draggy radially attached nacelles with a blunt front , but those were created with the offset trick.      I've actually got a quad coupler on the mk3 engine mount's 2.5 node which the nukes hang off,  and the Rapiers and Panthers were attached one at a time to the 1.25m nodes, then offset

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fbz39v4o6cmoco/SAAB Straken.craft?dl=0

edit - ok  that's also a 41% payload mass fraction, if we take the passenger cabin and mk3 cockpit as "payload", which is higher than the winning entry of the recent payload mass challenge...

.

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by AeroGav

[AeroGav]

Something a little smaller, and less fugly (but still LF only).    Takes 22 Kerbals to Minmus.   Has a docking port, 5 Vertically firing Vernier thrusters for landing.

Uses 2 Nukes , one Rapier and one Panther.    I had to clip the Rapier and Panther together to solve asymmetric thrust issues.  The rapier can be shut down and panther put in dry mode for economic atmospheric cruising.    I've tried to make it look like some 4.5 gen fighters i like, which means i didn't get to cram on as much wing as i like to do.    Makes the flight to orbit a little hot, but it gets us there.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Coimbra-PA-X-LR

[AeroGav]

OK, I returned to my liquid fuel mk3.      Removed the cockpit, fitted a mk3 to 2.5m adapter, then a fairing, under which went the reaction wheels, probe core and RTGs.    That's the heat largely taken care of, but it's no longer an entirely fuel-free fuselage since the adapter holds a bit.  Normally, my liquid fuel only ships have even more wing than this, it's more tankage for the NERVs and it improves lift:drag in the upper atmosphere.   Also, you run cooler on ascent because you rise into thinner air at lower speed.    But, that would result in this looking like an AVRO Vulcan  and it'd have too much fuel capacity for the mission.   It's only supposed to go to orbit !

The other problem was it felt a little underpowered.    We were sluggish getting from mach 1.3 to mach 4 and used most of our fuel here.   2 Rapiers really need 2 Panthers, but we didn't have the engine mounts.   So, i swap the Panther for a whiplash.     A whiplash weighs nearly as much as 2 panther, but they have a fatter power curve above mach 1.    To my surprise, the ship needed no tweaking after both of these changes and remained balanced.   In fact I put it on Kerbal X, considering the thing ready for prime time.

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Lusitania

[Rune]

Hi there! I think this goes here:

40mT of payload @100km circular, throwing nothing away. Well, actually the heatshield when you come back to land, but that's because I didn't like how the landing gear had to extend trough it in the 20mT version. This is supposed to be the launcher for a short-of-realistic RP'd architecture! That means no reaction wheels to magic things into behaving, no non-storable fuels being, well, stored, and everything is modular and a tidy 10mT in weight, so you can mix and match payloads to missions, yet still don't have to launch the same rocket a gazillon times per mission. You can see some examples of those payloads in both payload bays, I think they are turning out cute.

 

Rune. I have channeled mi inner Bono here, I think.

[selfish_meme]

10 hours ago, Rune said:

Hi there! I think this goes here:

 

 

40mT of payload @100km circular, throwing nothing away. Well, actually the heatshield when you come back to land, but that's because I didn't like how the landing gear had to extend trough it in the 20mT version. This is supposed to be the launcher for a short-of-realistic RP'd architecture! That means no reaction wheels to magic things into behaving, no non-storable fuels being, well, stored, and everything is modular and a tidy 10mT in weight, so you can mix and match payloads to missions, yet still don't have to launch the same rocket a gazillon times per mission. You can see some examples of those payloads in both payload bays, I think they are turning out cute.

 

Rune. I have channeled mi inner Bono here, I think.

Very nice, I was thinking about doing the same with the Heatsheild on my SSTO booster

[Rune]

11 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

Very nice, I was thinking about doing the same with the Heatsheild on my SSTO booster

It's not really that necessary (heating from LKO is not that big of a deal), but it looks really cool. It looks even better with a ring of aerospikes!

Now, does anyone know of a way of changing the fairing's texture to something a bit less... crappy? It would be really cool if there was a mod to do so through tweakables...

 

Rune. If googled for it, but all I find are dead ones, or procedural fairings.

[selfish_meme]

31 minutes ago, Rune said:

It's not really that necessary (heating from LKO is not that big of a deal), but it looks really cool. It looks even better with a ring of aerospikes!

Now, does anyone know of a way of changing the fairing's texture to something a bit less... crappy? It would be really cool if there was a mod to do so through tweakables...

 

Rune. If googled for it, but all I find are dead ones, or procedural fairings.

I used to be able to do it with the Firespitter dll and a module manager script, but I lost the file and the code, maybe I will find it again soon

 

[Jett_Quasar]

I posted a video of my latest Star Wars fleet.

I will be uploading the craft to my Star Wars Kerbal-X hangar over the weekend.  Check in or follow my hangar for notices on updates.

 - Jett

[Rune]

On 16/8/2017 at 1:56 PM, selfish_meme said:

I used to be able to do it with the Firespitter dll and a module manager script, but I lost the file and the code, maybe I will find it again soon

 

If you can fish the file, I'd be happy to reverse-engineer it to my needs... but I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to code it from scratch.

2 hours ago, Jett_Quasar said:

I posted a video of my latest Star Wars fleet.

I will be uploading the craft to my Star Wars Kerbal-X hangar over the weekend.  Check in or follow my hangar for notices on updates.

 - Jett

Those are seriously awesome. Might take a gander when you post them, I've never gone the HTHL route with chemical rockets, and it will be nice to peek under the hood for the dV and TWR ratios.

 

Rune. MTFBWU!

[Jett_Quasar]

3 hours ago, Rune said:

If you can fish the file, I'd be happy to reverse-engineer it to my needs... but I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to code it from scratch.

Those are seriously awesome. Might take a gander when you post them, I've never gone the HTHL route with chemical rockets, and it will be nice to peek under the hood for the dV and TWR ratios.

 

Rune. MTFBWU!

The Republic cruiser and Acclamator II craft are posted on Kerbal-X.  I'm just dealing with some last minute part reduction changes on the other two vehicles and then they'll be posted - hopefully later on today.

Download now from my Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X.

 - Jett

[Jett_Quasar]

I have now posted the Mon Calimari Cruiser and the Battle Cruiser.

 

Download now from my Star Wars Hangar on Kerbal-X.

 - Jett

Edited August 20, 2017 by Jett_Quasar

[Thingymajigy]

yey delta v

[AeroGav]

Liquid fuel only (no oxidizer) mk3 heavy lifter carrying ore tanks to orbit.    43.7% payload fraction !

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/partridge

Launch vid - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1j2s-LzB5M

 

Landing vid  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlmKLSkaEa4

 

[AeroGav]

Currently in Beta - my take on a high delta V SSTO.   Wanted at least 6k from LKO to be getting into Matt Lowne territory, and i just about got that.  This is also a liquid fuel only ship, just under 120t gross, 2 panthers, 2 rapier, 5 nervs.   If I only brought one nuke and a bunch of oxidizer for same takeoff weight, i'd have less fuel mass after reaching orbit, but i'd also have much lower dry mass so I might be pushing the 8k i've seen other people manage.    But, this thing has over 0.35 TWR on nukes, so it can actually land places and has non-painful burn times.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ma97wgqgy99f77s/dv2.craft?dl=0

Issues 

1. It's a tad noisy in there,  Jeb says.

2. No way to actually leave, the hatch is blocked.    If i move the cockpit forward, the heating effects will roast it.   Think i might put a service bay in front of the cockpit, Jeb can escape into that then fall out the hatch.

[agrasyuk]

Good dV and I do not mind clipping to much but TBH The wings do look to complex to my liking. Is KSP combining the lift rating for all surfaces when arranged like this?

Due to single seat and no payload it looks to have quite limited range of applications aside of test craft. But then again it probably matters to me since I play career exclusively of late. 

[AeroGav]

34 minutes ago, agrasyuk said:

Good dV and I do not mind clipping to much but TBH The wings do look to complex to my liking. Is KSP combining the lift rating for all surfaces when arranged like this?

Due to single seat and no payload it looks to have quite limited range of applications aside of test craft. But then again it probably matters to me since I play career exclusively of late. 

There is very little clipping,  but when you are joining irregular shaped Big S strakes to each other and to cylindrical fuselage pieces you have to tolerate a little overlap at the edges or leave huge gaps.  I just did what looks "least bad". I've used the least overlap possible to eliminate gaps and arranged the strakes in such a way as to minimise gapping and overlaps.

This edge overlapping has no effect on aerodynamic performance, other than moving the point where the lift and drag of that part is produced slightly.

I don't normally build craft like this, but have you seen Matt Lowne's channel?  SSTO to surface of Eeloo and back , no refuelling etc.   I wanted to try it.

I normally build less extreme machines with more amenities.   Personally, i see no reason not to refuel at the destination if you're landing on it.   A small IRSU is much lighter than a return fuel load and you have to wait for departure window anyway.     You can also stop at Minmus on the way out and brim the tanks, which requires much less skill than plotting a million gravity assists like Matt does.   I'm rubbish at orbital mechanics.  Burn prograde till i get an intercept, that's about it for me.

BTW, from another thread

, this is what a 6k delta V SSTO looks like (not mine btw!)

..one seat,  >50 tons in orbit, with only the cockpit reaction wheel and a single nuke to push it all.

...an 8k ship looks like this (not mine either!)

My ship can fly at less than 50 m/s when fully loaded,  doesn't need all the runway to take off, lets you pull 20 degrees of AoA but won't let you stall, and has the same stability when the tanks are empty.  By comparison it's a fighter jet !

[Thingymajigy]

 

2nd legit time going to laythe I don't know anything about gravity assists or planet orientation blah blah I used ~3160m/s dv from LKO entering laythe at 3000m/s is that good or bad

Edited August 27, 2017 by Thingymajigy

[evader]

Was getting frustrated by my inability to make SSTOs spaceplanes that could go beyond Kerbin's SOI without orbital refuelling so I took my longest range SSTO (Super Biplane MKII) that had previously reached Duna without refuelling and put a tiny mining rover in it.  Had to sacrifice 1 nuke engine to keep its weight down.  Sadly this rover can only re-dock in low gravity environments if it can hover using its RCS thrusters but that doesn't stop it from refuelling with the rover still docked, as long as landing gear are retracted.  This makes it my 1st proper SSTA (as in no orbital refuelling while still making it back to Kerbin).  I didn't need to include a rover but I'm obsessed with including one in every SSTO I make (that and Kerbin VTOL ability which has been limiting me to orbital refuelling).

 

Edited August 26, 2017 by evader

[JadeOfMaar]

This one has no particular name but is another unexpected, well-functioning all-stock plane. It did originally suffer the inherent side-effect of containing slanted hulls but I think it's well countered by clipping some counter-slanted wing segments. It easily hauls 4 tons to maybe 120km orbit. That's not a particularly impressive figure next to some other awesome designs in this thread. I did get a professional compliment that the design seems sufficiently modern (i.e. plausible to become an IRL concept spaceplane design).

Okay maybe I lied. The radial intakes under the nacelles are Twakscaled.

 

 

[Exothermos]

Here's a sneak peak at something I'm playing with.

 It's an SSTO based on the early Rockewell proposals for the X-30.  The "X-plane of the Day"  thread inspired me to try to make something like this work, hopefully I'm not stealing anyone's thunder over there.

In keeping with the technology of the day, RAPIERs are out.  Instead the craft is powered by 6 Whiplash turbofans and one Vector rocket.  This was a fun challenge but I wasn't sure I could pack-in enough fuel for the Vector and still preserve the x-30's lines. This is a fairly difficult planform to make work in KSP, as everything is so tightly packed, and the engines are so far aft.  This creates inherent instability as the fuel burns, but I think I have that particular nut cracked.

Thanks to the engine selection the payload fraction won't win any awards, but it can lift any standard station module that fits in the bay.  I still have a ton of polishing and revisions to make before this is ready for release.  That wimpy tail has to go, it needs some mono-propellant control, and the wing sections are a little haphazard, but the bones are there and I was excited that it even works!

[AeroGav]

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Starsailor

I've tried to combine my current "best practices" into one airplane, this Interplanetary SSTO with ISRU ability.      

SSTA would be less of a mouthful than "Interplanetary SSTO with ISRU" but would stretch the truth slightly.   It has 2600 dV after getting to orbit which is enough to fly to Duna or Minmus to refuel comfortably, but not enough for  a straight shot to Jool sadly.    After refuelling it has over 4800,  so you can get to Jool or Eeloo without assists.      It doesn't have the TWR to land on Tylo however.

I was worried about mk2 fuselage drag so made this mk1 ship.      It's just over 40T  gross - i think if you go much over that, mk1 fuselages start to become bendy.     My  current favourite engine ratio is 2 nukes to 1 rapier and 1 panther.      At this weight class, that means just one of each type of jet engine so i took the easy way around the asymmetric thrust issues and clipped the two together.

It has a bit too much wing, honestly - but when you're coming in to land on Duna or Laythe you might be thankful of that.    When flying to orbit from Kerbin, it keeps trying to climb above the max altitude of the jet engines before you hit top speed.    I've bound some trim flaps to an action group that help it stay low until we're done airbreathing, but it's like trying to hold a champagne cork under water.     By 1500m/s the RAPIER's only making 30kn thrust so it's probably not worth the drag penalty of flying along at negative 2.5 AoA, and heat bars are starting to appear.     Action group 2 resets the trim so we go to positive 0.5AoA and with all that wing, with built-in incidence, quickly sends us climbing over 35km.    This insta-disappears the heat bars!

I suppose the next thing is to pull this off with a mk2 spaceplane with an actual cargo bay.   Heck, maybe even get a Tylo lander in there?

5 seats, a docking port and a resource converter..

[Korsakovski]

On 26.8.2017 at 11:32 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

This one has no particular name but is another unexpected, well-functioning all-stock plane. It did originally suffer the inherent side-effect of containing slanted hulls but I think it's well countered by clipping some counter-slanted wing segments. It easily hauls 4 tons to maybe 120km orbit. That's not a particularly impressive figure next to some other awesome designs in this thread. I did get a professional compliment that the design seems sufficiently modern (i.e. plausible to become an IRL concept spaceplane design).

Okay maybe I lied. The radial intakes under the nacelles are Twakscaled.

You probably don't need the radial intakes. Two shock cones is more than enough for four rapiers.

Putting two of the engines behind the main fuselage and then replacing the mk2 tanks in the wingtips with mk1 might also help with the performance.

Still, a pretty nice looking craft, liked.

[JadeOfMaar]

@Korsakovski It's fine. I know I don't need the radial intakes. Those were purely aesthetic. Maybe IRL (or with a modlet I made) they would contribute to dV like Skylon's intakes. However, the slanted Mk2 nacelles are part of the core of the design and wouldn't be replaced. The craft's performance is great but I haven't stretched the design and tested how much more dV I could add to it.

[Korsakovski]

1 hour ago, JadeOfMaar said:

@Korsakovski It's fine. I know I don't need the radial intakes. Those were purely aesthetic. Maybe IRL (or with a modlet I made) they would contribute to dV like Skylon's intakes. However, the slanted Mk2 nacelles are part of the core of the design and wouldn't be replaced. The craft's performance is great but I haven't stretched the design and tested how much more dV I could add to it.

I still think you should ditch the radial intakes atleast, all they do is slow you down. But well, pretty much all my Mk2 rapier-only designs are just Mk2 main fuselage with twin rapiers and shock cones attached to radial mk1 tanks, like this one I posted earlier. Sure they are fast and sleek, but the shape does get a little monotonous after a while. So I do understand the decision to use mk2 radial tanks, they do look really nice when slanted like that.

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Thunderbolt-T2C1

Edited August 30, 2017 by Korsakovski