[WIP] Modular Skylon spaceplane system! Now with SABRE Engine!

[Naten]

(Such WIP) Wow! Such mod. Very Skylon!

I think this counts as "modular."

New Wings!

This is a mod I made today after thinking before sleeping so much about Skylon and REL (Reaction Engines Limited) and their stuff in KSP. So, I made this after a while, a few tries, and a lot of procrastinating.

NEW PICTURES:

SABRE Testing Round 1

I had to figure out SmokePoint transforms, and that I needed 1 thrust transform for every plume of smoke/trail, preferably every nozzle. I'm glad I got that done, though!

SABRE Testing: Cinematic Shot

SABRE Testing: Rear Cinematic Shot (shot 2 )

Old Pictures:

http://i.imgur.com/FZqv54d.jpg

The RAPIERs serve as makeshift, placeholder SABRE's... -- I modified them to consume two resources when in Air Breathing mode: the new SkylonLH and regular,

ol'e intake air.

When in ClosedCycle rocket mode (whatever that means, when 0.23 came out, I had no idea it was rocket mode. I thought it was some sort of fancy manual switching or automatic switching. / XD), it consumes SkylonLH and SkylonLOX. LOX is quite dense, while SkylonLH is very light. It goes away faster than RP-1/Kerosene aviation grade fuels because it's so much less dense.

The OMS engine produces 80 kN (kilo-newtons) of thrust, has a vacuum Isp of 410, but its ASL (Kerbin standard 1.0 pressure atmo @ sea level) Isp is 120.

It uses up its own tankage's fuel, SkylonAux.

Here's the OMS in action: http://i.imgur.com/wOBfUCu.png

(I know it looks wierd. I haven't made the midsection yet, so it's a stubby lil' spaceplane...

(but it's adorable! ))

TO-DO LIST

Red = Not Done

Green = Done

Yellow = Partially Done

Blue = Planned to be completed

Command Module / Nosecone

Tail

Tail OMS

SABRE

Resources System

Wing

Canard foreplane

Rudder (probably same, but the mesh of the tail has an even number of sides, so it won't go on right... ...so I'll have to use attachment nodes, oh, boy.... T_T)

Fix texture borders (?)

Make the thing shinier (is dat wut normel maps doo!? Anyone know? )

Whelp, that's all for now, folks. Please tell me what you think.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Naten

[Naten]

Lol guiase, it's a hot thread with no posts.

Anyways, I think it's time to work on a wing.

[CaptainKipard]

If you want to contribute to the community then all power to you but you really should have done a forum search. I'm already doing a modular Skylon with EatVacuum. Would you like to join our team instead?

[Naten]

If you want to contribute to the community then all power to you but you really should have done a forum search. I'm already doing a modular Skylon with EatVacuum. Would you like to join our team instead?

But of course! The new Skylon I made is all one big piece, I'll have to move it over to my new computer!

I kinda quit for a bit because the aerodynamics... well... sux

It will flip out any time, any where, and it loves to do other wacky stuff.

I'd love to join your team! I'm a bit of a REL enthusiast...

Wait. What if you did Skylon... and I did the A2 Lapcat and the Scimitar engine and crap?

Then everything is all happy and pink fluffy kawaii kittens with this face: :3

I'd love to! :D

[DracovaXIV]

Naten, don't listen to them. I've been following your thread for the past week or so; apologies for the belated reply! You have a parts set which is practically almost good to go. Moreover (and I think this is VERY important), your parts set is modular. It looks as though your parts could also be used to make a sort of V-2 rocket, which is something the game really needs. I use FAR - as far as I'm concerned, it's mandatory for my game experience; I even stopped using MechJeb since it was having conflicts with FAR - and there's a great necessity for well-designed, modular rocket parts that work perfectly with it. Would you consider doing several shapes and sizes? That way it wouldn't necessarily be a Skylon anymore. I can present you with an idea that hasn't been done before, to the best of my knowledge: a streamline 1.25m spaceplane cockpit that looks like the SpaceShipOne cockpit.

I was actually discussing doing some spaceplane parts (namely, Mk2 parts) with StaticAwesome, about a month ago. Perhaps I could be of any assistance to you, as well?

[Naten]

Yes, I can help.

I've already made a full Skylon a couple of weeks ago, one part makes up the body. No payload bay yet, but OMS, Sabres and wings (except the ctrl. srf.'s ) are in an infancy stage. Although, the plane flips out every time I take off. It's uncontrollable, I've tried everything...

But yes, I can help you!

I also worked on an IVA view and put a placeholder external view on it, and it didn't work.

But of course I can help you now!

Cheers,

-Naten

[DracovaXIV]

I think I know exactly why your designed flipped on end. The simple answer is, your center of lift is either very close to, or in front of your center of mass. But it goes beyond that. I was having the same problems when I built something that looked a lot like the Skylon from B9 parts (mostly Mk2; I modded the atmospheric science nosecone to be a drone core, and made an inline cockpit by combining a Mk2 fuselage section with a couple of LLL parts, it worked out rather well). Well, the real-world concept, which is one long fuselage and two relatively tiny engine nacelles, is an example of something that will just barely fly. I couldn't land with a full tank, for example, since the thing flew like a hammer and was very hard to control. I got a stroke of luck when it turned out that someone I usually communicate with via Teamspeak used to be an aerospace engineer. He suggested spreading the lift surface throughout the whole length of the fuselage, while still keeping it mostly narrow; I used Procedural Wings to do it. Basically, my spaceplane started to look a lot like the XB-70 Valkyrie. There was a huge improvement in subsonic handling. Basically like night and day. I can land that thing with full tanks very easily now, even not on a runway.

If you'd like, I can stream on Twitch and show you how I design spaceplanes, it always results in something that flies well. They're probably my strongest suit in this game; that, and unmanned probes. But the probes are a different story!

Now, as far as the parts go... I've sent StaticAwesome an e-mail, hopefully I'll hear back from him soon. By the way, Naten, I use your clusterable clusterengine pack, it's great! At least one engine could use a mass buff, though, when compared to some other stuff out there. Speaking of which, if you ever need help balancing part configs, I use a lot of mods and have a good idea how things scale game-wise, so I'd be delighted to assist you. I do this stuff in my own files anyway.