White Dart. Now updated to 0.23!

[Rune]

Thanks! Keep it up, and soon you will be doing crew rotations for fun, or not because they are too repetitive, easy and boring

[Firenexus13]

I'm about to test the white dart nuke

Edit: There is no action group for landing gear.

[The14th]

I tried some short test flights last night and I love these! Thanks for sharing them Rune!

[Rune]

I'm about to test the white dart nuke

Edit: There is no action group for landing gear.

What exactly do you mean by that? Haven't I put the wheeled landing gear in action group 6, as I always do, for stuff that has different landing positions? Easily fixable, but it bothers me when I make those kind of silly mistakes, so sorry.

I tried some short test flights last night and I love these! Thanks for sharing them Rune!

You are very welcome! I hope you enjoy taking them places. Screenshots are appreciated, I feel very proud seeing my little babies make it out there

Rune. This is the SSTO that convinced me that maybe I should devote time to other kinds of crafts..

[Rune]

Great! It's one of the best SSTO that I've ever seen!

Edit: How do you balanced the VTOL version? Works very good and with a little of practise even a noob as me can fly her decently.

Re-reading the thread, I find I never answered this question, and it's always nice to give other people building advice. I do it as follows:

First, take out any landing gear you have on the plane. In flight, they don't actually weight anything, so in the VAB they falsify the position of the center of mass. So, once you have them out, turn CoM on, and then place the VTOL engines right on top of it. At first I tried to do it with CoT also on, but then it takes into account the rest of the engines, you have to substitute them with mass simulators... a mess. So since pretty much all engines have some way for you to see where their goemetrical center is (jet engines have these nice painted arrows on the sides, for example), you can do it "a ojímetro", as we say here (that is, by eye and gut feeling). Just add a few reaction wheels to take care of the small inaccuracies, and good to go.

Rune. Good luck on your VTOL ventures!

[hawkwing]

Tested the nuke variant: Center of mass drifts backwards during flight, which makes atmospheric flight difficult near the end of the mission.

I really like the way the jets are pre-vectored though... Its a nice touch. Not really sure how you'd correct the CoM drift... that nuclear engine's weight is a hard thing to work around (I'm still trying to myself).

[Rune]

Tested the nuke variant: Center of mass drifts backwards during flight, which makes atmospheric flight difficult near the end of the mission.

I really like the way the jets are pre-vectored though... Its a nice touch. Not really sure how you'd correct the CoM drift... that nuclear engine's weight is a hard thing to work around (I'm still trying to myself).

Well, boop. That would be a hard thing to fix indeed. I have to admit, I haven't landed the nuke variant much, all copies of it in my save are on route to various destinations, and 0.22 and RL have conspired to leave it quite forgotten for a while. It is after all meant to be the very long range version, and for most missions inside kerbin's SOI I use the other variants. But if you want a quick fix, I'd say a couple of inline reaction wheels clipped anywhere in the fuselage (preferably to the front) should do the trick. Is it completely uncontrollable, wanting to lfy backwards all the time, or just a "make sure you have all remaining fuel front and don't try aerobatics while reentering" kind of thing?

Rune. See? Feedback! Because I don't have the time to test all I build properly. Thanks!

[Rune]

Update! Now that 0.23 is here, and the awesome RAPIER is available, I've been tinkering with my old designs with new engines. Enjoy this redesign, and check the OP for file and notes!

Rune. Short answer: it's just as good, for different reasons.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Rune

[slaintemaith]

Okay, this is gorgeous, and I totally believe the nuke version could get me to the Mun.

Of course, I suck at SSTO vehicles. So I barely limped into orbit.

What does an -efficient- takeoff-to-orbit profile look like for this vehicle?

Edit:

Figured out why, too. For some reason, even though they're connected, the reserve fuel tanks for the nuke weren't providing fuel for the long centerline tank. Added a fuel line. Problem solved.

I -did- manage to get it to 1000km orbit to refuel...only to find that I cannot access some of the tanks because they're not visible. Hoping the fuel-line attachment will fix this.

Edited April 14, 2014 by slaintemaith

[Rune]

Okay, this is gorgeous, and I totally believe the nuke version could get me to the Mun.

Of course, I suck at SSTO vehicles. So I barely limped into orbit.

What does an -efficient- takeoff-to-orbit profile look like for this vehicle?

Edit:

Figured out why, too. For some reason, even though they're connected, the reserve fuel tanks for the nuke weren't providing fuel for the long centerline tank. Added a fuel line. Problem solved.

I -did- manage to get it to 1000km orbit to refuel...only to find that I cannot access some of the tanks because they're not visible. Hoping the fuel-line attachment will fix this.

Hey! Glad you found this. Don't worry about having a few problems with the nuke version! It's the most advanced version. First, yeah, the little tanks not connected to the rest of the fuel supply are intentionally so, they are short of a reserve I sometimes like to have, and a couple of lines get them integrated with the rest without issues. There are, however, no inaccessible tanks, you just have to be very careful on where you try to select them. The liquid fuel tanks can only be clicked close to where they join the jet engines, and the LFO tanks only from the front. Takes a bit of getting used to, but you can also clip the camera around inside a piece to stop it shadowing the one you want to select. The perils of heavy clipping, I guess... you might want to try the 0.23 version too, that one is almost legit in its construction.

As to a good profile, the key is to milk the airbreathers as much as you possibly can. Level off somewhere below 30kms and start a speed run, rising slowly courting flameout (don't worry, the Dart can fly perfectly straight on any one single jet) until you reach >1,600m/S at least. With a bit of throttle control, you can actually put a apoapsis outside the atmosphere before you light the nuke!

Rune. It's nice to see "old" crafts of mine resurface

[slaintemaith]

I did mod it slightly--making a "Science/Scout" version. Added all the sciencey bits including a goo-pod, and experiment module which I put between the cockpit and the inline docking port. Also stuffed a Kethane detector somewhere in its innards... Even with my poking around, it still maintains its pretty and clean lines.

I'm having -serious- problems landing it, however. Well. Any space plane--so I'm not blaming -you-. Mechjeb has been scant little help.

So it goes--I'll get it. Eventually.

Or someone will make a functional autopilot.

Thanks for this sleek ship, though. It's one of the very few aesthetically pleasing ships that's also amazingly functional and easy to use. Elegant, really.

Slainte!

Edited April 15, 2014 by slaintemaith

[slaintemaith]

I do need to know, though: How the -hell- did you stack all those intakes?

[Captain Sierra]

I do need to know, though: How the -hell- did you stack all those intakes?

cubic struts and part clipping is the secret to massive intake spam. Thing about the RAPIER engine is that it doesn't require intake spamming (it just gives less power)

[Rune]

Yeah, as Sierra says, the key are cubic struts and part clipping (ALT+F12 to bring up the debug menu and all that). But it's not as easy as it sounds... the trick is that I build the intake stacks somewhere else (cubic strut>intake on top>cubic strut clipped to the other one>intake>rinse and repeat), then I move the whole stack to its final place (and copy if I need more than one, because placing these stacks with symmetry is a good way to corrupt a craft file). It helps greatly that I can disable the cubic struts' surface placement with Editor Tools, too.

Rune. RAPIERS need intakes just like jet engines, BTW... they just don't flame out if you have them on automatic.

[Rune]

I did mod it slightly--making a "Science/Scout" version. Added all the sciencey bits including a goo-pod, and experiment module which I put between the cockpit and the inline docking port. Also stuffed a Kethane detector somewhere in its innards... Even with my poking around, it still maintains its pretty and clean lines.

Speaking of which...

Full science compliment and certified for Duna takeof and landing (2km/s delta-v on pure rocket mix). Because I wasn't sure about my Grand Tour SSTOs landing on that thin atmosphere... and this is a rocket VTOL.

Rune. Should I add it as a version?

[slaintemaith]

Well I won't say "No!" Yours is certainly more compact. And mine has C/G issues with fuel unless I balance them before landing. (Which I always forget to do)