SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[inigma]

Let me introduce to you "Mun Goblin" - SSTO with innovative easy space landing system (ESLS) - only one rocket engine under craft. No more fast rotation at the last moment in time of landing sequence. No more overturned crafts after landing, this craft is stable as rock on the surface after landing.

http://imgur.com/a/c8W9y

Clip that badboy up to not show intakes or panels and you will have one awesome looking shuttlecraft. SSI would love to review such.

[Silverchain]

Lifting a lander (overkill for the Mun, good for Moho).

The Skurj doesn't have particularly good lifting capability because the only place things can be easily attached is the front docking port. It'll handle a few extra tons.

Hello Duna, my old friend. First visit for this save...

Skurj 23-O Wanda von Duna (with disposable fuel tank attached) aerobraking into orbit.

Turns out the North Pole isn't a good place to land a heavy loaded, low-thrust spaceplane, what with being 3km above sea level and full of bumpy bits. Wanda von Duna breaks for orbit.

Ike watches smugly.

[Lone K.]

Here's two albums of the SSTO's I had recently built:

Album 1:

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Album 2:

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[Commissar]

This is true. The same can be said about the B9 SABRE engines. I learned that lesson way back with my Orion crew shuttle.

that's what i'm using.... got decent thrust, but the efficiency is **** poor. i guess that's the tradeoff....

[Camaron]

Lol, I'm loving the "Runway Light Probe" in one of the early pictures. (The one where the craft is coming in for a landing on the Helipad on the VAB's roof.)

[KissSh0t]

That would be me. hehehe...

It's a useful marker when coming down from orbit, especially when coming down in the dark.

[O-Doc]

i just go up to 25, 30km, and start a gravity turn. i think i'm gonna stick a pair of rockomax radial engines on because the hybrid engines gobble LFO in rocket mode, giving it a terrible range outside the atmosphere.

If you use air hogging then sure, start a very slow gravity turn at 15km and aim to level out around 35km. But I was talking about a non-air hogging design with one ram and one-two radial intakes per jet engine(no Sabres). You need to level out by 18km and speed up to around 1.5km/s at 20km before falling back down to 15km for your big exit maneuver. With two radial intakes/jet and a big rocket you can use a air hogging style trajectory. But, for example, my best "non-cheat" design has two jets and one nuke on the back with two rams and two radials and gets into orbit with probably enough deltaV to get a Duna insertion. Though, I haven't had the time to make a serious effort(i have about 40 space planes and dropships in my hanger that compete for my attention). It does get LKO with well over half fuel(nearly two thirds weight). Using a flat ascend I can only get into orbit with enough fuel for a station docking to splash and dash.

[BahamutoD]

My little family of SSTO's. The little one is just a fun, fast, and nimble VTOL SSTO, the medium one can take small satellites to orbit, and the large one has a huge cargo bay and can take at least a full orange tank to orbit.

[SofusRud]

Here is this thing i made:

Carries about 7.5 tons

[Captain Sierra]

My little family of SSTO's. The little one is just a fun, fast, and nimble VTOL SSTO, the medium one can take small satellites to orbit, and the large one has a huge cargo bay and can take at least a full orange tank to orbit.

http://i.imgur.com/zkzPMof.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/yBhby4E.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GOu2AWF.jpg

crafts plz???? I'm dying to dissect an SSTO that can orbit an orange tank without blatantly obvious air hogging.

EDIT: I'm perfectly willing to reinstall B9 and Pwings for those beauties.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Captain Sierra

[speedboiae86]

crafts plz???? I'm dying to dissect an SSTO that can orbit an orange tank without blatantly obvious air hogging.

EDIT: I'm perfectly willing to reinstall B9 and Pwings for those beauties.

Call me crazy (or old school), but with the new Rapier engines, I strongly prefer using stock parts to build my SSTO's (with the exception of Mechjeb), and I don't mind hogging a little air when I can. Anything to save on oxidizer and delta-v when I reach orbit.

That being said, the turbojets are still the best engine I find for screaming through the upper layers of the atmosphere on my way to orbit.

Edited January 15, 2014 by speedboiae86

[BahamutoD]

crafts plz???? I'm dying to dissect an SSTO that can orbit an orange tank without blatantly obvious air hogging.

EDIT: I'm perfectly willing to reinstall B9 and Pwings for those beauties.

Heres the craft file, however, the sabre engines from B9 don't work with .23 so I'm using the fixed cfgs from this post. You just put them in the appropriate folders in the B9 mod. I should also mention that I'm using the latest version of FAR and kerbal joint reinforcement.

Edited January 15, 2014 by BahamutoD

[Commissar]

Heres the craft file, however, the sabre engines from B9 don't work with .23 so I'm using the fixed cfgs from this post. You just put them in the appropriate folders in the B9 mod. I should also mention that I'm using the latest version of FAR and kerbal joint reinforcement.

they do, if you update one of the sub-plugins. except, for me, they seem to attach at the center, rather than the end...

[Captain Sierra]

Heres the craft file, however, the sabre engines from B9 don't work with .23 so I'm using the fixed cfgs from this post. You just put them in the appropriate folders in the B9 mod. I should also mention that I'm using the latest version of FAR and kerbal joint reinforcement.

Those are FAR planes? That explains a LOT of why they look so sleek and realistic as they do. Tell me, which is easier? Lifting a jumbo 64 WITH FAR or WITHOUT FAR? regardless of part set.

[Captain Sierra]

Call me crazy (or old school), but with the new Rapier engines, I strongly prefer using stock parts to build my SSTO's (with the exception of Mechjeb), and I don't mind hogging a little air when I can. Anything to save on oxidizer and delta-v when I reach orbit.

That being said, the turbojets are still the best engine I find for screaming through the upper layers of the atmosphere on my way to orbit.

I'm just happy with a working SSTO. I don't care what I have to do to make that.

EDIT: I've read multiple people talking about a descent phase to get under 20km before they pitch up into the exit maneuver. That's the first I've heard of that. How does that style of ascent work? It might be what I need to help me break 32km before I need to cut thrust (reducing drag losses)

Edited January 15, 2014 by Captain Sierra

[BahamutoD]

Those are FAR planes? That explains a LOT of why they look so sleek and realistic as they do. Tell me, which is easier? Lifting a jumbo 64 WITH FAR or WITHOUT FAR? regardless of part set.

I'm so used to using FAR that I find it difficult to even make a simple SSTO in stock ksp... then again, I haven't tried in a while.

[Commissar]

I'm so used to using FAR that I find it difficult to even make a simple SSTO in stock ksp... then again, I haven't tried in a while.

yeah. I find that it does affect even my rockets, to some extent. stuck a fairing over my tug, and it did loops... but that's probably due to staging issues. I need to rebuild the whole 1st5 stage.

however, I didn't get habituated into the stock methods of building spaceplanes, as I really never did any before I installed FAR.

[Captain Sierra]

yeah. I find that it does affect even my rockets, to some extent. stuck a fairing over my tug, and it did loops... but that's probably due to staging issues. I need to rebuild the whole 1st5 stage.

however, I didn't get habituated into the stock methods of building spaceplanes, as I really never did any before I installed FAR.

Stock methods either involve a fairly inefficent rocket ascent profile, or air hogging, at least I can't find any other way. Even then I struggle on a 4-1 intake-engine ratio.

On another note, I build a quick SSTO named the Midge, because it was so small. It works (sorry, no pictures). For now, it's purely a station hopper. I'm going to experiment with some lower thrust engines as I currently rely on the good ole' LV30 to make orbit.

Midge ascent profile:

Climb to 15km. Level to <20* pitch. Continue climbing. Level out at 20km, keeping climb rate very low. When yo cannot go higher without stalling, reduce your climb rate to negative. Get to 20km exactly (test flight peaked at 20.2, then down to 20). Pitch up ~40* and engage rocket. Cut engines when intake air goes below 0.6 and they audibly are about to stall out. It's advisable at this point to disable the rudders as they do weird things here. Apoapsis will be established at ~80km shortly after you clear 35km altitude (perfect!). Circularize.

Pictures of the tiny wonder will be forthcoming.

[Spartwo]

With me it's.

-climb as quickly as possible.

-point 45 up in middle atmo.

-engage rockets in upper atmo.

-disengage jet when intake runs out(sometimes before upper atmo).

[BahamutoD]

Here's my flight of the orange tank carrying ssto. I usually have a 2:1 intake to engine ratio.

Edited January 16, 2014 by BahamutoD

[Captain Sierra]

I only have about a thousand and one things to say.

1: why do you have SAS force indicator and both LF and air indicators on the SABREs. experimental release?

2: where those procedural . . . control surfaces?

3: I notice what appear to be KW parts in there too.

4: Why RCS over torque?

5: That bird wobbles around a lot. Side effect of FAR?

6: the RCS sound mod is awesome.

7: clearly the B9 bug about "lighting up planetary surfaces from orbit" has not been fixed XD

Edited January 16, 2014 by Captain Sierra

[BahamutoD]

1: Someone else's temp fix that uses the module from the rapier engine. Not sure whats up with the SAS indicator.

2: Yup, they come from the latest procedural wings version.

3: Ah, yes.. the two external tanks. Forgot about those. If you still wanna try it out, I can swap them for stock parts.

4: I had RCS on there in case it would ever need to dock in the future, and I had to use them for turning since it was too heavy for just the cockpit's torque.

5: Yeah thats a FAR thing. Stability fluctuates with airspeed and angle of attack. Also having wings that are angled up slightly cause it to roll when there's some sideslip angle. Its not too bad to keep in control; the effect looks exaggerated when the video is sped up. It could also be that I'm tapping the W and S keys alot to pitch slightly since I don't have a joystick haha

6: Yes.

7: Yes

Edited January 16, 2014 by BahamutoD

[dc4bs]

I meant to post this here over a week ago but forgot...

Buck Kerbins Starfighter

It's as close as I could get to the Buck Rogers Starfighter from the 80s TV series while still being flyable.

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After the weeks and weeks of getting Bertha figured out, I built, tested and posted this .craft file in under a day...

Note: The bottom mounted tails make landing very tricky. You have to be coming in straight and level at touchdown or the low side tail/rudder gets knocked off...

Edited January 16, 2014 by dc4bs

[Silverchain]

Project Cool Slurp F taking off (barely) from the runway. A rough attempt at a 20t payload cargo spaceplane. No exploits unless you count the mutated pentaplane wings.

Project Cool Slurp F in orbit. Unfortunately I had to dip into the payload fuel, and the tank arrangement led to liquid fuel being drained to feed the turbojets and fed from the jet reserve into the rockets which was a pain to sort out.

Ultimately an interesting proof-of-design for me, and I might revive it to use at Laythe, but it's much more convenient and many times faster flying to stick stuff onto a disposable rocket so I'll probably shelve this as it needs a total redesign to sort the problems out.

[Captain Sierra]

This is the Sparrowhawk. It's a stunt plane of an SSTO and is somewhat based off of this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29765-Mockheed-Lartin-Aeronautics-Graveyard

Problem is, it's flip happy. The aircraft becomes completely uncontrollable once I kick in the LV30. I'm not sure if switching it out for a LV45 would help.

I'll also be adding pics of the Midge later.

Any advice regarding control issues? My RCS is currently set up to do rotation too rather than have an SAS unit on. I can try that route too.