Space Planes Spinning-out

[MatzahMan]

Hello, I am relatively new to Kerbal Space Program, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. After I made it to Minmus, I got really interested in space planes. But as I grew more comfortable with them, I wanted to but one into orbit. But I encountered a problem, at a high altitude with very low intake air, my plane starts to spin violently to the left, and sparks fly out the engines. It takes at least 30 seconds to recover from the spin, and even SAS and RCS, cant stop it for a while. The highest I got was 35,000m before it started spinning. I am also not using any mods. I have tried transferring fuel to the nose so the CoG doesn't move to much, but it doesn't affect it. Why is this happening?

Thank you in advance.

[Johnno]

Sounds like flame-out, one of your engines runs out of intake air before the other. You'll have to monitor your intake air and switch to rocket engine before you run out, alternatively build a plane with just one jet engine, then you won't have the spin issue from flame-out.

[DaRocketCat]

Definitely a flame out, do what Johnno said.

[CaptainArchmage]

New poster here! I have been playing Kerbal Space Program for a long time now, but I only signed up for an account today.

Johnno explains why the space plane spins out on flameout. If you have a particularly massive (space)plane (like the one shown on KSPTV yesterday) or a lot of reaction wheels, the asymmetrical flameout may not cause you to go into an unrecoverable spin.

The atmosphere thins out exponentially, so you want to take your plane up to a certain altitude and build up as much velocity as you can. Afterwards, pitch up, shut down the jet engines, close the intakes, and activate your rocket engines (in that order). Using a modified Aeris 4A (with Aerospike), I think I switched over to rockets at 25,000 m. The best way to do this quickly is to set up hotkeys for toggling the jet engines ('1'), intakes ('2'), and rocket engines ('3').

You may get a little spin as you leave the atmosphere on rockets, because the wings no longer stabilize the plane, but it should not be too bad.

[MatzahMan]

Thank you very much for all your helpful replies. Just wondering though, if I add more intakes, can I get higher in the atmosphere without spinning?

[lazarus2405]

Yes, that's correct. The fraction of your spacecraft's mass that's made up of intakes will determine how high you can fly before you flame out.

[MatzahMan]

Thank you very much for the information