SSTO Design

[Mmmmyum]

How would you improve this design? (I like the jet engine's location, reminds me of older German fighters) It used the B9 pack

The rockets fire just to boost it out of the atmosphere, oh and those are KW Rocketry Vesta VR-1's, running on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. I use FAR. It tend to not want to pull up, and ramping it off the end of the runway puts it in a flat spin, which I can't fix in time. (Reminds me of IL-2 Sturmovik lol)

Edited November 2, 2013 by Mmmmyum

[Taki117]

I'd add a control surface to the vertical support to give you a tail, sounds like you need one of those. You could also move the pylon further back.

[vidboi]

Just look at the thrust vector. When you're running the jet engine you'll get a massive pitching moment forwards, making it pretty much impossible to pull up, if stay in level flight at that! The engine on a pylon system really doesn't work. KSP jet engines have very high thrust compared to real engines (those german designs had engines capable of about 6kN...) so you're never going to be able to get the control authority to counteract that.

[hobbsyoyo]

Just look at the thrust vector. When you're running the jet engine you'll get a massive pitching moment forwards, making it pretty much impossible to pull up, if stay in level flight at that! The engine on a pylon system really doesn't work. KSP jet engines have very high thrust compared to real engines (those german designs had engines capable of about 6kN...) so you're never going to be able to get the control authority to counteract that.

This.

You may try and fly it at a low throttle setting but that will make take-off dicey and is not guaranteed to work.

[Leatherneck]

Lowering the vertical engine more? Placing it on a pylon versus a wing for example. It would keep the aesthetic, but alleviate some of the control issues.

[arq]

An engine that far off-center will only work in very thick air with very large wings. Try using a small hardpoint or even just surface-mounting it to the main body. The planes you are talking about did not have the engines THAT far off-center. Also, the fact that your pylon is a wing in front of the CoM means that it tries to spin your plane around, which is very bad.