SSTO am I doing it right?

[Dombi]

So I was never a planes guy but with this new SAS system (which seems to be working great for me) and with save breaks I decided it was time to do the SSTO challenge first thing in the new update. From what people say I really thought it would take me like 2 or 3 days to master the aerodynamics system and the jet engines which I never used before.

So I started by doing some reverse engineering checking the stock planes and trying to some minor changes.

So here's the deal. When I tried Aeris 4A I never thought I'd be able to achieve orbit with it. Actually the only thing I've changed was to set an action group to shut down the turbo jets at the same time after leaving atmo so the plane wouldn't spin out of control. Then I went into a perfect 80km orbit and was able to return and (kinda) land. Is this really what everyone calls one of the hardest achievments in KSP? And a stock plane does it with minimum effort?

Or am I supposed to be doing something different?

Cheers everyone

Edited July 25, 2013 by Dombi

[lammatt]

the new SAS makes flying a plane much easier; you dont have to spam F or T while trimming the pitch

and i guess people saying flying a plane is hard because they are trying to fly a bigger plane to a higher orbit.

like... flying a 3-man plane to a 150km station for a refuel or crew transfer and return is a little harder...(see. you have to burn ~200m/s extra fuel to get from a 70km orbit to a 100km one and a considerable amount if you have to adjust your inclination...while the stock aires 4A has only ~1100m/s(vaccum) fuel available according to mechjeb;)

---

anyways... flying a plane is more fun IMO because i can go wrong so easily

and gratz u managed it in your first trial

i failed many times before i got my first successful reentry landing done right

Edited July 25, 2013 by lammatt

[CalculusWarrior]

The Aeris 4A is infamous for it's poor control and is generally known to be a bad plane. Congratulations on flying it to orbit! I have not tried using the new SAS to fly a spaceplane yet, but I'll give the Aeris a shot myself.

[lammatt]

The Aeris 4A is infamous for it's poor control and is generally known to be a bad plane. Congratulations on flying it to orbit! I have not tried using the new SAS to fly a spaceplane yet, but I'll give the Aeris a shot myself.

nah.. you just have to tweak a tiny bit and it's all good to go

it's not too bad. it has more than enough fuel and monopropellent to spare

[Immashift]

The stock aeris is -okay-. You can reach orbit with it and dink around a bit, that's it. I'd recommend a 70x70km orbit as a first goal. It's exponentially easier to get a spaceplane to minimum orbit rather than shoot for 100x100 right off the runway. At least that's what I've found out.

Here is my go-to SSTO. It's a heavily modified version of the Aeris 4a. Yes there are double wings on the back. It's to put the CoL behind the CoM, as without it, it struggles to pitch off the runway.

I added intakes and gave it some more fuel capacity. This one also has rover wheels on the front - when the front landing gear is retracted, the rover wheels contact the ground, and you can steer/drive. Lower the front gear again to go to flight mode. I have parachutes on it for vertical landing because I've been testing putting vtol engines on it, but that's still a work in progress.

The way I like to control things is to have one button switch from atmo flight to space flight. By this I mean when I hit launch, I right click activate on both my turbojets. Then when I hit the point just before flameout (for this plane that's 27km at 1300m/s roughly - I get entry effects on ascent ) I hit one button, and it shuts off turbos, closes intakes, and activates the rocket all at the same time. Ease of use.

My flight profile for ALL spaceplanes is: Take off, point 45 degrees up. At 13km begin leveling out, finishing leveling at around 18km. Accelerate as much as possible. When it looks like the plane is struggling to gain more speed, pitch to 15-20 degrees. At flameout (you have to test this so you can pin it JUST before the jets cut out) switch to space flight mode. Pitch back to 45 degrees till apoapsis is reached. Coast to apoapsis, then circularize.

You can conserve some fuel by feathering the throttle past the flameout point to get more out of the turbos, but honestly my SSTOs arrive to orbit with so much fuel left I really don't care to do it.

No planes aren't that hard to do. It's just a lot of people can't seem to do it apparently, so it's considered hard. :/

Honestly I think the hardest thing to do with planes is create one from scratch that:

A) Does not wobble to destruction while attempting to take off.

Is actually able to lift its fat self off the runway without waiting to drop off the end for lift.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Immashift

[Dombi]

Thanks alot guys. Great answers. I guess I'll aim to do a SST Mun and back from now on. That should provide a good challenge. =)

[Immashift]

I remember the first challenge I attempted with a spaceplane was to land my modified aeris on the mun with just the back rocket - no VTOL or anything.

Was definitely a challenge, you have to sort of get really close to the ground, give yourself slight positive vertical velocity, and as you shed it and start coming down, deploy gear and pitch horizontal.

Some people prefer landing gear on the back of the plane or some of the tiny radial rockets to land on the mun horizontally. Your choice - but my way is more fun

[Dombi]

Actually I played the Space Station scenario last night and it has this Aeris 4B docked fully fueled so I decided to take it to Minmus.

It was great. I killed most of my velocity with the engine facing down and then just placed it horizontally and RCS'd the last couple of meters. The low gravity makes for a clean landing. I'm a huge fan of planes with this new update!

[Immashift]

Good for you!

When I tried that, I was about 4 days into playing KSP, and it took me reloading my save from 5km up about 10 times before the swoop to horizontal actually worked without lobbing off the rocket on the back.

I wasn't skilled enough to use RCS. I actually use RCS in docking mode, cause I'm the most comfortable with WASD for translation. Problem is I can't control the main engine while translating, so I had to sort of juggle switching back and forth. It worked in the end though.

Try what I have in that picture - put rover wheels on the front gear that don't touch the ground while the gear is down. Your plane can function as a rover with the gear retracted, and it goes pretty fast too. I wish we had retractable rover wheels so it didn't look so weird though.