SSTOs! Post your pictures here~

[Hodo]

My latest creation for the RSS sized Kerbin...

The X-6

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Exothermos]

Fellow SSTO addicts, I have released all my "mostly-useless-but-cool-looking" designs in one pack.

The Pretty, Pointy, and Pretty Pointless Party Pack is available.

Fellow314, your payload fractions are amazing on those Box Kite designs. Bravo!

Edited March 10, 2014 by Exothermos

[p331083]

Capable of delivering 40 tons to 150km Kerbin orbit;

http://imgur.com/a/7ZYAR

How are you embedding imgur galleries?

Edited March 10, 2014 by p331083

[NKL]

Using Infernal Robotics, B9, and pWings I came up with a shuttle that I've been designing for awhile. My goal was to fit it inside the s2 wide cargobay in the b9 pack. After a lot of trial and error and different designs I came up with the turtle.

She's not the most maneuverable in atmo but it's very flyable. She's capable of transporting 4 kerbals into LKO. The highest I've tested is 175x175km but I'm confident she could reach at least 250km with fuel to spare. Its VTOL is very stable and the kerbals managed to invent a matter condensing device to hide those wings:D This is the first SSTO I've posted here too so go easy ^^

I guess I can mention the larger cargo plane too since it's also an SSTO. It's something I whipped up in 5 minutes to test the ability of the Turtle to fit and actually dock into the cargo bay. It's got a few problems that could be weeded up but I've only flown it twice It could probably lift an orangetank + large rcs tank on its own since it had plenty of dv left once I got it into orbit empty.

Soup

I'm actually working on a modular wing/ folding wing concept in order to put little exploration shuttle inside my big carrier spacecraft.

Why does everybody out race me at this? ^^

Nice work btw, but how do you manage the wing flex from the IR part? 'Cause it really bother me to have my wing that flexible...

[dualmaster]

I got around to making a few cargo capable SSTOs this weekend using some of the B9 parts.

Light Lifter

This is my favorite of the bunch - it is nicely balanced and handles very well with or without a cargo load and on full or empty tanks. It has an 8 meter long cargo bay and can carry 8-10 tonnes to LKO. The cargo bay diameter is a really nice size - it can handle 1.5m parts with attachments and can just barely fit a lander can. This makes it good for launching a variety of probes as well as lightweight Mun/Minmus landers.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Medium Lifter

This was my first (successful) attempt at a cargo plane with the wide-bodied cargo bay. It turned out ok - the weight capacity is a bit low at 12-14 tonnes, but the cargo bay now has space for 2.5m parts with attachments. This will probably be nice for space station construction.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Heavy Lifter

This is my first pass at building a plane using the HL parts. It has an 8m cargo bay and can carry ~35t to LKO. I'll be revamping this to add a longer cargo bay when I have a chance. Overall it flies pretty well for a larger plane.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Refueler

This is a stock plane I made a little while ago. It's capable of putting a full orange tank and a large mono-propellant tank into LKO.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Edited March 10, 2014 by dualmaster

[How2FoldSoup]

I'm actually working on a modular wing/ folding wing concept in order to put little exploration shuttle inside my big carrier spacecraft.

Why does everybody out race me at this? ^^

Nice work btw, but how do you manage the wing flex from the IR part? 'Cause it really bother me to have my wing that flexible...

Don't let me stop you! I thought long on hard on a design that works and I would love to see how other people would to do it to tweak my own if necessary. That's what I love about ksp, everyone can do the same thing yet the end result can be so different ^^

Thanks! it took about a week of testing and design from me to get where I am and she still needs more tweaking. I'll be honest, I haven't fixed it :S The wing flex is still there. I use KJR so I don't know if it's better than what it would be stock though. While testing I tried strutting the wing to the hinge and the hinge to the ship but that created insane spinny kraken forces so I removed them to continue testing flight. I'm going to go back to the strutting idea though and see if I can find a way to strut them without finding those forces. The ornithopter that's laying around in the spacecraft exchange looks to have struts extending from its hinges to its wings so i think its possible. When I did have them strutted originally there was not much flex and I could ignore it so hopefully that's the solution. So to answer your question my best guess is nicely placed struts...otherwise I pretend that the turtle is more like a puffin and part bird and flap its wings

Edit: Now that I'm home I was able to test the strut and I found that if I placed a strut from the hinge directly to the wing it was attached to it reduced some of the flex. There is still some but there is noticeably less. Every time I attempt to strut from the hinge to someplace not the wing I start doing barrel rolls so I haven't figured out any further ways to strengthen the connection.

Edited March 11, 2014 by How2FoldSoup

[XyllyX]

Here's mine, It's not very good though

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71988-ASF-B38AX-Atom-SSTO-%28My-First-Craft-Uploaded%29

woo

[KerikBalm]

Well, I have a working heavy lifter now....

All stock (ish), no part clipping

First successful test flight put a 54 ton payload into orbit, with over 29 tons of "rocket fuel" left (ie oxidizer+ liquid fuel in a 1.1:0.9 ratio) and nearly 500 units of jet fuel left for landing.

So, by tweaking fuel loadouts of the payload/SSTO, I should get 83.5 tons worth of payloa to LKO, with jet fuel to spare for the landing.

Issues:

* Not completely stock: the radial intakes are modded to produce a resource for electric fans, unused on this design, and those 2ndary intakes are closed the whole flight

The 80 unit jet fuel adaptors have been modded to have a lower drag coefficient - .15 instead of .2 ->largely irrelevant in this design, given their low weight reletive to the payload. I think I'll revert this, and try again just to prove it.

* Short wheel base makes landing off a runway basically impossible, and stopping on the runway rather hard. You'll notice 2 pairs of radial engines mounted on top, they are action grouped to help it pitch down, but they were more than sufficient. I think I'll put one pair facing the reverse direction, and save...lets say 0.5 tons of oxidizer, and have retro landing rockets. I already have the brakes disabled on the front pair of landing gear, but it still pitches down too much on landing (so i have to tap the brakes, and can't hold them). Top mounted retrorockets would both slow it down faster, and give it a pitch up moment to counteract the pitching down from the brakes.

* depending on "the drop", and maneuvering on the runway, when fully loaded, it has a tendency to collapse under its own+ the payload's weight on the runway. Although when returning with no payload and nearly empty (ie 400-500 units of fuel), it handles quite well in the air, and seems strong enough.

Now to make som 80 ton mission packages to launch to orbit

[Voculus]

How are you guys getting the B9 SABRE engines to function? I know there was a thread with details, but I'm not able to find it with a search.

[Fellow314]

The first successful run. After stability problems, forgetting to put any power generation on, taking waaay too much oxidiser and general tweaking, this is the cargo 16. (oh, and I overshot the landing on this one)

For putting heavy and unusually large payloads into LKO

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Full mission report to follow, assuming reliability holds

Edited March 11, 2014 by Fellow314

[KerikBalm]

Sometimes part clipping is hid rather well? did you do part clipping on the intakes there?

I can see a little part clipping on the wings.

I avoid that, and I don't use nukes on my SSTOs... perhaps I'm limiting myself too much... and have ungainly monsters that require way too many struts to hold them together (my above entry was ~500 parts)

I try not to intake spam... but when I've got 22 turbotjets and 2 rapiers to feed... I need a lot of intakes even at a a 3:1 ratio or less

[Fellow314]

Sometimes part clipping is hid rather well? did you do part clipping on the intakes there?

I can see a little part clipping on the wings.

I avoid that, and I don't use nukes on my SSTOs... perhaps I'm limiting myself too much... and have ungainly monsters that require way too many struts to hold them together (my above entry was ~500 parts)

I try not to intake spam... but when I've got 22 turbotjets and 2 rapiers to feed... I need a lot of intakes even at a a 3:1 ratio or less

Oh, it's deeply cheaty

There are a lot of air intakes on there. I mean, a lot. I overdid it really and it takes air up to about 35K.

[p331083]

How are you guys getting the B9 SABRE engines to function? I know there was a thread with details, but I'm not able to find it with a search.

In the B9 thread there should be a link to download a newer firespitter .dll to fix that problem.

[Raven.]

How are you guys getting the B9 SABRE engines to function? I know there was a thread with details, but I'm not able to find it with a search.

Here you go: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/66020-B9-0-23-fixes

[RSF77]

Here's a cool SSTO light jet I made:

I basically built the jet around the engine/intake assembly which is 3 reaction wheels, a rapier embedded into a turbojet engine, and 8 intakes clipped together with the tailfin/wings and landing gear.

It accelerates fast, goes fast, is completely stable full as well as dry and VERY agile even with the drop tank, uh... has a drop tank and is completely stock (Mechjeb was removed for the final craft file save). Can make orbit very quickly with over 1k dV remaining.

It's "parent" craft is actually this awesome little thing, as it stems from me trying to build a stock version of it:

It was almost stock anyways, the biggy being the KW fuel tank and ability to configure the fuel amount in it, 250LF/200OX in its one tank and 12 LF in an oscar B I just used to attach fuel lines on the bottom. I removed the oscar B setup in the former stock craft and did it in the midst of all the clutter internally with surgeons precision, so its actually a fuel line running from the last reaction wheel to the rapier, and another running from the cube strut connected to the rapier and turbojet into the turbojet... and it works... somehow.

This one has better performance and speed, but carries a slightly smaller fuel load than the stock one. Since it's a modded craft though I could always equip it with some better conforming drop tanks that wouldn't have to be placed on top of the fuselage, also I can configure it's only fuel tank to carry the exact amount of fuel/oxy ratio I want.

Edited March 11, 2014 by RSF77

[O-Doc]

Sometimes part clipping is hid rather well? did you do part clipping on the intakes there?

I can see a little part clipping on the wings.

That payload fraction has to have at least 12 ram intakes per jet engine. So, approx 150 intakes, or more.

Full mission report to follow, assuming reliability holds

This is my current issue wit heavy lifters. I'm building them on a girder superstructure so that they can land on rough terrain fully loaded. The frame weights about 10-15% dry weight which is enough to force the craft into a larger than comfortable engine configuration. This is a problem because the intake spamming needed to get half decent payload fractions(60%+) into orbit require craft files that exceed 1000 parts.

This is a nightmare to play and test.

I have designs that are sitting in the hanger that will push 3 jumbos into obit and put one on Duna with return but, my motivation for finishing the designs and actually playing with them is waning. Designs such as this one:

Loads like a champion, lands like a kitten, plays like @&%$#!

[Fellow314]

That payload fraction has to have at least 12 ram intakes per jet engine. So, approx 150 intakes, or more.

Oh, probably more, I haven't counted.

This is my current issue wit heavy lifters. I'm building them on a girder superstructure so that they can land on rough terrain fully loaded. The frame weights about 10-15% dry weight which is enough to force the craft into a larger than comfortable engine configuration. This is a problem because the intake spamming needed to get half decent payload fractions(60%+) into orbit require craft files that exceed 1000 parts.

This is a nightmare to play and test.

I have designs that are sitting in the hanger that will push 3 jumbos into obit and put one on Duna with return but, my motivation for finishing the designs and actually playing with them is waning. Designs such as this one:

http://i.imgur.com/j09YaV3.jpg

Loads like a champion, lands like a kitten, plays like @&%$#!

Well, that above one comes in at under 600 parts, but there's no real superstructure, it all just hangs off the fuel tanks. It would definitely not suffer a rough landing

[Mazlem]

I was fiddling around with a jet plane I'd made a while back. After adding some RCS and removing fuel from the front tanks, it made an orbit! The first orbital test involved having a kerbal get out and push at AP, but the OSHA guys nixed that for production.

Craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tggsdqpjjfxujek/SpacePlaneSSTO.craft

[KissSh0t]

Sometimes part clipping is hid rather well? did you do part clipping on the intakes there?

I can see a little part clipping on the wings.

I avoid that, and I don't use nukes on my SSTOs... perhaps I'm limiting myself too much... and have ungainly monsters that require way too many struts to hold them together (my above entry was ~500 parts)

I try not to intake spam... but when I've got 22 turbotjets and 2 rapiers to feed... I need a lot of intakes even at a a 3:1 ratio or less

Try making an SSTO using 4 Turbojets and 2 nukes as it's powerplant. with about 15 Air Intake Amount "Not 15 Air Intakes" I mean amount of received air intake when you load it up on the runway you can see how much air intake you are receiving... I can't remember how many air intakes that is.. If you build an intake array you can make like a long air intake that looks pretty cool and it doesn't take a lot of space.

This way you can go very high, which in turn lets you go very fast due to the thinner atmosphere, which in turn allows you to get into orbit without having to depend on fuel guzzling rockets instead using the nuclear rockets to do the last part of getting orbital.

With this type of design philosophy.. you could make a craft that can fly to the Mun.. Minmus.. further even depending on the design.

[Jouni]

I've never liked KSP spaceplanes very much, because going to space with turbojets and rockets becomes too easy, once you learn the tricks. Flying such planes feels more like flying a passenger jet from airport to airport, instead of doing something extreme.

Today I started experimenting with designs, where the rocket stage does the bulk of the work, after basic jets have taken the plane out of the thickest part of the atmosphere. This was the first prototype that was able to reach orbit and return back safely. With a few tweaks, the basic design can probably be improved so that the plane can rendezvous and dock with an LKO station.

[KissSh0t]

I've never liked KSP spaceplanes very much, because going to space with turbojets and rockets becomes too easy, once you learn the tricks. Flying such planes feels more like flying a passenger jet from airport to airport, instead of doing something extreme.

Today I started experimenting with designs, where the rocket stage does the bulk of the work, after basic jets have taken the plane out of the thickest part of the atmosphere. This was the first prototype that was able to reach orbit and return back safely. With a few tweaks, the basic design can probably be improved so that the plane can rendezvous and dock with an LKO station.

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jltsiren/stuff/basic_jet_spaceplane_3.jpeg

Fly to Duna with SSTO, land on Duna, take off from Duna, get back to Kerbin, land right back at the runway.. all without dropping a single part.

Then see if you have the same opinion of SSTO's.

[Jouni]

Fly to Duna with SSTO, land on Duna, take off from Duna, get back to Kerbin, land right back at the runway.. all without dropping a single part.

Then see if you have the same opinion of SSTO's.

Doing that would only make the problem worse. The issue is with the small scale of KSP that works much worse with spaceplanes than with rockets. While KSP rockets behave roughly in the same way as real rockets, spaceplanes feel more like stuff from not-so-realistic science fiction. There are basically two solutions to the problem: play with RSS (which requires too much mods for my taste) or avoid using high-altitude airbreathing engines.

[DaMichel]

Here is my VTOL Spaceplane. It actually had a real mission to perform, namely to deliver some parts to be attached with KAS onto another spacecraft in orbit and then get a second Kerbal back home.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

There are some variants of it. I use one of them to explore the ester eggs on Kerbin

[NerdCrisis]

Replaced Interstellar Microwave Receivers with stock antenna for aesthetic purposes and edited the radial radiators for same reasons.

[KissSh0t]

Doing that would only make the problem worse. The issue is with the small scale of KSP that works much worse with spaceplanes than with rockets. While KSP rockets behave roughly in the same way as real rockets, spaceplanes feel more like stuff from not-so-realistic science fiction. There are basically two solutions to the problem: play with RSS (which requires too much mods for my taste) or avoid using high-altitude airbreathing engines.

You said SSTO are not challenging... Which they are, They are fun, and challenging.. I have spent MONTHS trying to do what I described in my first response and have yet to accomplish such a thing.

I do not know what RSS is, I do not use any mods.

This is a video game, it is not realistic, play it how you want to play it, and have fun doing so.

on a side note, an SSTO does not need to be an aircraft, it can be a rocket, as long as it stays in one piece, drops no parts, and gets to orbit as a single stage.... that is SSTO.

Single Stage To Orbit ~ ~

Edited March 12, 2014 by KissSh0t