SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[TheWanderer05]

11 hours ago, Shadow dream said:

I like how you placed the cockpit inside the cargo bay. It's not cheaty and still gives you room for utility - gotta try one like that myself!

Thanks, it's quickly becoming my main technique for one-pilot mk2 vessels. The extra room in the cargo bay really helps with monoprop tanks or science experiments, depending on what the mission is. Here's the high-orbit version of the same plane, this one can actually go to the Mun and back and is much more versatile. 2 small reaction wheels are in the cargo bay to help with attitude control.

 

[Korsakovski]

Wasn't quite happy with the Overlord cargo SSTO so I decided to try my hand at making a something lighter that can still carry 3 orange tanks to orbit. After a few adjustments to the design this is what I finally got to orbit. Total cargo capacity 108 tons.

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/XK1-Kharybdis

https://imgur.com/gallery/y7OZN

Edited November 6, 2017 by Korsakovski
afterthought

[Thor Wotansen]

@Korsakovski first of all, very nice SSTO, making a 100t+ capable SSTO is a challenge.  However, might I suggest using the Mk1 tanks instead of the Mk2?  The Mk2 tanks hold the same amount of fuel as the Mk1 tanks, but they have vastly more drag.  Yes, they provide lift, but not as much as you might think.  An upside to having less drag is that you can get away with fewer engines, making your SSTO lighter and less expensive.

[Korsakovski]

1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:

@Korsakovski first of all, very nice SSTO, making a 100t+ capable SSTO is a challenge.  However, might I suggest using the Mk1 tanks instead of the Mk2?  The Mk2 tanks hold the same amount of fuel as the Mk1 tanks, but they have vastly more drag.  Yes, they provide lift, but not as much as you might think.  An upside to having less drag is that you can get away with fewer engines, making your SSTO lighter and less expensive.

Went with mk2 instead of normal tanks mainly for aesthetic reasons. But yeh, mk2 parts should probly be avoided, I know they are inferior to mk1+wing combo and I remember cautioning other builders of this very fact. But I just can't help myself lol.

[SkunkTwerks]

Okay SSTO lovers, you're either going to love this one or hate it, depending on your love of weird SSTOs and your hatred of dirty tricks.

I've been building pure stock Star Wars crafts for some time now, many of which have included SSTO versions. (All versions on display here in my thread in the KSP spacecraft exchange.) But it's a lot easier to make SSTOs out of some models than others. While it's relatively trivial to make a conventional SSTO out of a Naboo Cruiser, other ships are astoundingly poorly suited to SSTO ascents. Craving a serious challenge, I chose the most difficult craft in my Twerkshop and tried to get it into orbit.

With tongue in cheek, I humbly present the stupidest most ridiculous thing I've put into orbit in a single stage: the SkunkTwerks Anakin's Podracer SSTO.

Now THIS is pod space-racing!

This craft uses just about every dirty trick in the Kerbal shipbuilder's book short of Kraken effects (I was sorely tempted). Engine stacking, absurd clipping of wings and fuel tanks, excessive reaction wheels, unrealistic autostrutting, this craft has it all. But that's not the point. The point is, seven minutes of white-knuckled piloting is capable of bringing this craft to a stable 80 km LKO in a single stage, and voila, you have a podracer in space. With an open command seat cockpit, no less!

SkunkTwerks "SSTO Because I Said So" Ascent Path (Full Imgur album with additional screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/RsITv)

1) BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE, put on the brakes while you transfer your least favorite kerbonaut from the command pod to the external command seat. Jettison the command pod and shut your smart-aleck mouth, that doesn't count as a stage because the craft shouldn't even be moving yet. Kiss your kerbonaut goodbye, their odds of surviving the mission are anything but great.

2) Engage SAS, throttle to full, and pitch all the way up before activating the engine stage. If you don't pitch all the way up the entire time you're on the runway, the craft will swerve off the runway in a sudden and nearly uncontrollable manner. Even when you hold pitch all the way up, it will swerve like a drunken sailor. But 7 times out of 10, you'll make it off the ground in one piece.

3) Still with me? Awesome, the force is strong with you. Okay, now here's where things get even dumber more interesting. Immediately after takeoff, fight desperately to keep your roll and yaw under control while you pitch up to somewhere around 50-60 degrees. With absurd TWR and poor aerodynamic handling, the struggle will be real. Hold that steep climb angle until 10,000 m altitude.

4) Right around 10,000 m altitude, pitch down to ~10 degrees. You'll just have to fight for it. Try not to mess up too badly. Once your pitch is somewhere around 10 degrees, don't touch anything, and forget about fine-tuning. You're going to pick up speed *very* quickly. Watch the temperature gauge on your kerbonaut, the next couple minutes are going to be spicy. Whenever your Kerbal is on the very edge of vaporization temperature, give the craft a little pitch up nudge. Pitch up too far and you won't have enough dV for a stable orbit. Stay too level and your kerbonaut will cook. Ride that thin line in between like your kerbal's life depends on it.

5) Watch your velocity as you leave air-breathing territory around 25km altitude! As soon as it starts to drop, punch Hotkey 1 to toggle the RAPIERs into ClosedCycle Mode. 

6) When your apoapsis reaches 80km, cut engines and use SAS to hold prograde. In the minute or so before apoapsis, use the tweakble sliders to limit the thrust of both RAPIERs to 50%. This craft was impossible to balance, and there's only so much torque I could mitigate with reaction wheels, so you'll need lower thrust for a steady burn. Then set your maneuver node. (Or set your maneuver node first, and use a mod like KerbalEngineerRedux to figure out your revised burn time). Perform your circularization burn.

7) If you haven't crashed on the runway, exploded in midair, burned to a crisp in the upper atmosphere, or run out of fuel during your circularization burn, CONGRATULATIONS! You're in orbit! As you can see here, I nailed it with 5 m/s delta V left to spare. Now that's cutting it close!

The Twerkshop does not normally condone these kinds of over-hacked, barely-controllable shenanigans. But just this one time, I hope you'll forgive me in the name of KSP humor.

May the Force be with you if you wish to confirm my flight path. If anyone has a better ascent profile for getting this into orbit, I'd be thrilled to hear it.

-SkunkTwerks

Edited November 7, 2017 by SkunkTwerks
grammar

[Thor Wotansen]

The above is absolutely marvelous, and I don't even care that you clipped everything all to hell.  Thank you for the barrel of laughs.

[eagle92lightning]

SOMEONE TURNED ANAKIN"S PODRACER INTO A SSTO! AWESOME!

[Korsakovski]

A little something I slapped together for fun when I was messing with single rapier designs. 6 kerbals to orbit with docking ability.

https://imgur.com/a/CeYyU

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/Stratodart

[eagle92lightning]

How shouldI go about attempting a Concorde style SSTO?

[AeroGav]

1 hour ago, eagle92lightning said:

How shouldI go about attempting a Concorde style SSTO?

A mark 1 type fuselage looks about right for a Concorde, only problem is the pointy cockpit will not cope with the heat very well.   You'd have to use a very inefficient flight profile to get up there without melting it and re-entry would be difficult.   So do yourself a favour and stick to a mk1 inline cockpit, it will be far more robust.

Other issue is to look like a Concorde means making pretty much the entire fuselage out of passenger cabin,   where will you put the fuel ?

Well,  you can build a wing out of Big S strakes and wing parts that looks a lot like Concorde's,  and it will hold a lot of liquid fuel.

But that means building a liquid fuel only SSTO with NERVs,  something I'm pretty good at but some folk struggle with (hint,  lift/drag ratio is everything).

Note the Ogive shaped wing is pretty similar to Concorde's.    But the engine nacelles and twin tails look like they're from an SR-71.    Two NERVs and a Whiplash would probably be the easiest combo to get working on a liquid only ship this size,  I went with a panther to be a troll.     However, that means a trimotor,  and as we know Concorde had four.

Tweakscale would make life easier I admit.        Shrink the engines to Juno size.    Four underwing nacelles with nukes.    Clip Panthers into the outboard nukes, Rapiers into the inboards.

 

Edit - another idea for the cockpit,  if you really want the pointy one (will give a more authentic look).     Put a fairing on the front of the passenger cabins, then attach pointy cockpit to fairing.   Use offset tool to slide cockpit backward slightly, clipping it into the cabin.  Now build the fairing.  Now slide cockpit forward again so the windscreen sticks out and the pilot can actually see.  Violá -  you have the appearance of the pointy cockpit, but it is actually protected from re-entry heat by the fairing.

Edited November 8, 2017 by AeroGav

[eagle92lightning]

27 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

A mark 1 type fuselage looks about right for a Concorde, only problem is the pointy cockpit will not cope with the heat very well.   You'd have to use a very inefficient flight profile to get up there without melting it and re-entry would be difficult.   So do yourself a favour and stick to a mk1 inline cockpit, it will be far more robust.

I don't think you understood what I meant. I meant a cargo (preferably Mk 3) SSTO that is unmanned and with RAIPERS where the engines are on the Concorde and with similar wing shape.

 

32 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

Well,  you can build a wing out of Big S strakes and wing parts that looks a lot like Concorde's,  and it will hold a lot of liquid fuel.

 

I was planing on doing this already but using fuselage Rocket fuel tanks.

[AeroGav]

2 minutes ago, eagle92lightning said:

don't think you understood what I meant. I meant a cargo (preferably Mk 3) SSTO that is unmanned and with RAIPERS where the engines are on the Concorde and with similar wing shape.

 

Wing shape is just a case of building it.  KSP doesn't care about high speed aerodynamics,   you could use the wing from any historic airplane and it would work just as well.    Spaceplane that looks like a WWI  Fokker Triplane ?   Why not?

The only issue with making a cargo concorde is that  your engines will be near the back.     There is nothing up front to balance them that is not fuel or cargo, so you could have trouble making it fly right after re-entry.     Passenger concorde at lease has crew cabins that are always there, to counterbalance the heavy engines.

[SkunkTwerks]

On 11/7/2017 at 10:24 AM, Thor Wotansen said:

The above is absolutely marvelous, and I don't even care that you clipped everything all to hell.  Thank you for the barrel of laughs.

You're welcome, I'm glad you found it entertaining! 

On 11/7/2017 at 1:36 PM, eagle92lightning said:

SOMEONE TURNED ANAKIN"S PODRACER INTO A SSTO! AWESOME!

Thank you! I just wanted to see if it could be done.

2 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

Wing shape is just a case of building it.  KSP doesn't care about high speed aerodynamics,   you could use the wing from any historic airplane and it would work just as well.    Spaceplane that looks like a WWI  Fokker Triplane ?   Why not?

If it can work for a podracer, it can work for almost anything!

3 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

The only issue with making a cargo concorde is that  your engines will be near the back.     There is nothing up front to balance them that is not fuel or cargo, so you could have trouble making it fly right after re-entry.     Passenger concorde at lease has crew cabins that are always there, to counterbalance the heavy engines.

If you get desperate, there's always the old "ore container in the nosecone" trick to help counterbalance the craft. Not the most fuel-efficient fix, but a heavy nosecone can solve a lot of stability issues

[eagle92lightning]

58 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

The only issue with making a cargo concorde is that  your engines will be near the back.     There is nothing up front to balance them that is not fuel or cargo, so you could have trouble making it fly right after re-entry.     Passenger concorde at lease has crew cabins that are always there, to counterbalance the heavy engines.

I will have some crew sections

[Rune]

For old times' sake, and 'cause Mk2 fuselages are crappy:

4,3km/s on LKO, which is actually excessive for the intended purpose (7 crew trained to lvl3 by doing a Minmus landing, pop out of Kerbin's SOI, then return via Munar flyby). But hey, maybe you want to squeeze a Munar landing in there while you are at it. I might make a ~15mT long range cargo bird, removing the foremost liquid fuselage sections to put a larger payload bay, and optionally train in larger batches.

 

Rune. Simple, but it actually looks rather nice.

[hurdurdur]

Here is my latest low tech SSTO with juno jet engines and a swivel rocket engine. Can carry a pilot into the orbit, that pretty much it. Launch profile was sea level until it hit 200m/s, then nose up to 20 degrees, running on jets until speed fell to 180m/s (around 6km or so) then engaging the swivel and up to the orbit in pretty standard fashion, lowering the nose past 25km altitude gradually. Orbit was around 72x71km.

 

Full gallery on imgur:

https://imgur.com/a/O1PtJ

 

[Scarecrow]

Harpoon

Straightforward and easy to fly  SSTO for performing crew change duties on stations in LKO (max 250km if you want to get back without refuelling at the station).  Take off and pitch to 20 degrees.  Toggle engine mode with hotkey 1 when the engines start running out of breath at around 20,000m, and cut the engines and coast when you have achieved your desired Apo.  Circularise, rendezvous and dock as necessary.

 

Craft can be downloaded from Kerbal X  https://kerbalx.com/Scarecrow88/Harpoon-SSTO

 

 

[Thingymajigy]

Balancing aesthetics and performance

[MDZPNMD]

On 7.11.2017 at 3:07 AM, SkunkTwerks said:

[...]

-SkunkTwerks

That podracer, I must applaud you sir. The aesthetics are astounding.

[TheWanderer05]

12 hours ago, Thingymajigy said:

Balancing aesthetics and performance

Almost looks like a big F9F-8 from the top

[HeliosPh0enix]

43 minutes ago, TheWanderer05 said:

Almost looks like a big F9F-8 from the top

Oh yeah, I see that!  At first I was thinking it looked like a penguin, but that works too.  The underbelly detail is very cool as well.

[Korsakovski]

Redesigned the Kharybdis with normal fuel tanks instead of Mk2. Thanks to that I was able to remove two rapiers and some fuel.

https://kerbalx.com/Korsakovski/ZN1-Scylla

https://imgur.com/a/Va06c

[SkunkTwerks]

13 hours ago, MDZPNMD said:

That podracer, I must applaud you sir. The aesthetics are astounding.

Thank you kindly! For an atmospherically-optimized version with even better aesthetics (not to mention a bunch of other Star Wars SSTOs) and much-improved handling, I hope you'll check out my SkunkTwerks Star Wars Replica thread.

What do you think, SSTO-lovers? Does my new Defender-class Light Corvette stand any chance whatsoever of becoming SSTO-capable?

Because against all advice, the Twerkshop is trying!

-SkunkTwerks

Edited November 15, 2017 by SkunkTwerks

[Rune]

This thing is shaping up nicely, I think. What do you guys think?

20mT to orbit, seen here during shakeout test, AKA assembling another package for the next Jool window.

 

Rune. For those that say that SSTOs take too long to get to orbit, you can now go ballistic.

[Thor Wotansen]

@SkunkTwerks you might need to hide some vectors in there or something, the angled wing surfaces and sideways Mk 3 to 2.5m adapters are going to be awful for drag.  Your best bet would be to get a high TWR and punch out of the atmosphere as fast as possible.