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Carpathia - Ultra Long Range SSTO VTOL Cruiser

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Designed to operate in the Jool system The Carpathia Heavy SSTO cruiser is our most efficient design yet. Every part from the massive power-plant, down to the smallest rivet has a very good reason for being there, the only part that's purely for aesthetics is the FL-A10 adaptor but at 0.05t I think we can let that one slide. :wink:

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It's capable of flying return missions to Laythe with plenty of fuel left over.

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Two massive duel stage drop tanks can power the Carpathia to almost any point in the Kerbal system.

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As you've hopefully come to expect from us the Carpathia is perfectly balanced at all fuel loads, and combines silky smooth handling with excellent high speed stability.

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The Carpathia's been a very difficult build, I started before I first released the Bulldog and it's only just ready now. The results though, have exceeded even my wildest expectations, I mean really, this ship makes trips to Jool easy! The last time I flew there with a rocket it was a big an oil tanker and had about 700 parts. This ship does it in about 300 parts at a fraction of the weight. I'm going to stop babbling now, but the Carpathia really is the jewel in the crown of the SSTO fleet.

OWNERS MANUAL:
All Cupcake Landers Gold and Platinum card customers are kindly invited to board at their leisure.
http://goo.gl/gcxSLI
We have two models available today, the standard edition and the RCS (s) model which we recommend for anyone with an orbital suite.

The Carpathia features a horizontal axis cockpit for suborbital flying and a vertical axis docking port for orbital piloting and navigation. This port can be found just behind the hatch, it's offset slightly inside the fuselage as it's designed for navigation only, not for attaching items. It operates in line with the engines and must be used when performing burns with the navball. You can also use the top docking port if you'd rather fly the Carpthia like a regular rocket. A joystick is highly recommended and SAS should be kept on at all times.

As it stands the Carpathia is set up for trips to Laythe, it'll ascend rapidly to altitude on Kerbin which allows it to keep plenty of jet fuel in reserve for tootling around in Laythes atmosphere, or flying back to base from anywhere on Kerbin. If you're planning on visiting a place where the jets won't work you can add extra rocket fuel to the drop tanks, it'll take longer to ascend to altitude and burn more jet fuel, but in this case the jet fuel is largely expendable anyway. Just remember you don't want to use more then 640 units of liquid fuel on ascent otherwise you'll be eating into your rocket fuel supply.

CONTROLS:
1 - Toggle Jets
2 - Toggle LV-Ns
9 - Toggle Ladder
0 - Activate Air Sync

ABORT - De-Couple All Ports/Eject Main Drop Tanks
SPACE - Eject 1st Stage Drop Tanks

Air What?
Air Sync works by closing all the intakes before takeoff, the same intakes are also set to toggle along with the jet engines. In short this means jet engines on - intakes Open, jet engines off - intakes closed, all without having to lift a finger. :wink:

SSTO Mission Profile:

Press 0 to activate air sync and 1 to light the jet engines. After liftoff climb vertically to 15,000m then pitch over to a 45* angle on a 90* heading. Now would be a good time to switch to vertical axis control by right clicking on the top docking port. Once you hit around 20-25,000 pitch over to the horizon and slow your rate of ascent. You'll want to squeeze as much speed as you can out of the jets with a target of 1800m/s at 30,000m.

Once you hit 30,000m light the LV-Ns and pitch up to 45`. You should let the SAS take over for this part of the ascent. Keep the jets going as long as you can by reducing throttle. You don't need to be over concerned about flameouts, the ship will give you plenty of advance warning, and it's only if you ignore these then you'll spin out. If the craft does start to list don't try and correct it yourself, instead just reduce throttle and let the reaction wheels pull the ship back into line. Once the jets die press 1 to shut them off, set full throttle and pitch flat to the horizon to round out your orbit.

NAVIGATION TIPS:
As you may have seen in the video the Carpathia can get back to Kerbin with plenty of fuel left over but you'll still need to be efficient with the way you use the craft. After getting into orbit around Kerbin I usually do a 2000m/s burn that lines me up with Jool's orbit, I then time-warp until Jool intersects this orbit. A course correction of around 100m/s at the ascending node lines the ship up nicely for entry into the Jool system. Once here I usually just gun straight for Laythe as it's usually quite tricky to accurately aerobrake around Jool. By the time I get to Laythe I usually still have a bit of oxidiser left in the main drop tanks which can be used for landing. In the case of the video I actually had too much oxidiser left over so decided to dump it to save weight. Once I've concluded any business in the Jool System a quick slingshot around Tylo will fling the ship out of Jool's influence and homeward bound.

Usually with my videos I try to combine a K-Prize entry as well which means I don't dump the drop tanks. While I did mange to do a round trip to Laythe without dropping the tanks I thought this time I'd rather show you how the ship is supposed to be used under normal conditions, I'll do a separate video for any K-Prize attempt later on.

This is how not to re-enter BTW. :blush: If you're wondering, yes the ship did survive although one of the solar panels got a bit singed.

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Anyway, I hope you enjoy the ship, and good luck with your missions. :)

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HELLO, cupcake, i see you are churning out some really high quality dropships again! good job.

Thanks man! :)

Because only Jeb would pitch a tent on another planet(oid).

Well done once again, Cupcake!

That Jeb... :rolleyes: What are we to do? Thanks for the feedback though, it's great to hear. :D

This looks fantastic! You are a fantastic dropship creator, Cupcake. :D

Is this tougher or easier than the Bulldog to fly?

I'm defiantly going to try this out. Can't wait!

The Bulldog's certainly more responsive just because it's built around a very compact frame, the Carpathia handles fine though. You'll have trouble doing aerobatics in it but why you'd want to I'm not sure! Anyway, be good to hear your thoughts on the ship once you've had a chance to play with it. :wink:

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Love it. But I think I love the video even more. Is the smaller black one you used in the video available for download? I checked your other thread but didn't see anything with landing legs.

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http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/47898-Whatever-that-was-it-was-black-and-it-was-fast%21

This is the one you're after right? You can find all my ships by clicking on the dealership link in my sig. :) Hope this helps...

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LtKraftKrackers

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Hey cupcakes, just wanted to say, this is amazing. yesterday I went to youtube and well, lets just say all of your videos have one more view, some even 2 more views (camping trip to laythe was amazing for the choice of music too) and i just wanted to ask you a question. well 4 really.

how do you control yaw with a joystick?

what joystick do you use?

any recommendations when buying a joystick? like number of buttons and stuff?

and, do you still have the skeeter?

I am just amazed with all the work that must have gone into all of these crafts, as I know its a pain to align CoM with the CoT.

dont stop this, its amazing.

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Here are the people that can make VTOLSSTOs that can go to Laythe and back, and I only just finished my first SSTO. I feel very much outdone.

Let's just say my first SSTO barely made it into orbit, it's just a case of progression really... :)

Hey cupcakes, just wanted to say, this is amazing. yesterday I went to youtube and well, lets just say all of your videos have one more view, some even 2 more views (camping trip to laythe was amazing for the choice of music too) and i just wanted to ask you a question. well 4 really.

how do you control yaw with a joystick?

what joystick do you use?

any recommendations when buying a joystick? like number of buttons and stuff?

and, do you still have the skeeter?

I am just amazed with all the work that must have gone into all of these crafts, as I know its a pain to align CoM with the CoT.

dont stop this, its amazing.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed them! :D As far as the stick goes I can safely recommend a Logitech Extreme 3D which is an excellent joystick for the price, and features a twist grip for yaw control. As it stands this is my current control setup (Sorry, I'm still trying to master Microsoft Paint) :blush:

KxZ8vrb.jpg

I'm afraid the Skeeter was retired some time ago but it's legacy lives on in the Scythe and Pixie both of which can outperform it with just the one engine. :)

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I tried it, but my PC said: 400 parts?????? NOPE. And promtlyu ran at 3 fps.

;.; This is why I'm reluctant to go over 4 jet engines as most of the part count is made up of intakes to keep the fires burning. Once the drop-tanks are gone things drop down to a more manageable 270 parts, but yeah, you do need a reasonably butch PC.

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Cupcake...

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Really digging the SSTO design, definitely one to download and study :)

Cheers, I hope you enjoy flying her. :D

Cupcake: The WJ of Awesome, small, clipped VTOLSSTOS!

High praise indeed! :cool:

Heh all, while I'm here I wanted to let you know I've finally fixed the problem of the top solar panel breaking on the Carpathia, it should be ok now but if anyone has any trouble just let me know. Also I'm working on a new firecracker dispenser cue video:

While the ships ready to go, I want to polish up the missions that come with it, so at this stage it should be released around the same time as the cinematics. Enjoy! :)

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XyllyX

XyllyX

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Doesn't the point of an SSTO mean it shouldn't have to jettison any parts? I mean it's still single stage to orbit :P but this is just me being difficult

still, impressive range and a cool plane, well done!

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Doesn't the point of an SSTO mean it shouldn't have to jettison any parts? I mean it's still single stage to orbit :P but this is just me being difficult

still, impressive range and a cool plane, well done!

Well for me the definition of an SSTO is whether it can make it to orbit without dropping parts, the choice of dumping the drop tanks is up to the pilot. For instance in all my K-prize certification runs the drop-tanks have been left on.

Hope this clears things up. :)

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