SSTO Orange Tank Orbital Refuel-er?

[m4rt14n]

Okay final spaceship:

Full Orange tank fuel tank with some spare on the side tanks, oxidizer almost full. I could sub another set of jet tanks to rocket fuel ones but it might get too heavy. The plane itself cant take off until the end of runway because of tail strike. Here's the craft file if anybody want to take a stab at it:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51811839/Orbital%20Refueler%20Space%20Craft.craft

P.S: Of course the plane needs some fuel left to deorbit and descent, so cant deposit all the fuel in orbit yet..

Edited February 1, 2014 by m4rt14n

[Claw]

Okay final spaceship:

Full Orange tank fuel tank with some spare on the side tanks, oxidizer almost full. I could sub another set of jet tanks to rocket fuel ones but it might get too heavy. The plane itself cant take off until the end of runway because of tail strike. Here's the craft file if anybody want to take a stab at it:

P.S: Of course the plane needs some fuel left to deorbit and descent, so cant deposit all the fuel in orbit yet..

Wow, very nice. I've been spending my time on the next iteration trying to use RAPIERS. It has a ways to go though.

[Hodo]

You can refuel, it isn't that bad..

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2 orange tanks on that one..

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3 on that one.

Here is the link to the craft files.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/56945-Hodo-Creations-SSTO-craft-designs-and-files-for-those-who-want-them?highlight=Hodo

[capi3101]

Wow. Y'all sure are showing me up here. I will say I'm more impressed with m4rt14n's stock craft.

Thanks to y'all's help, I successfully redesigned the Auk VI and flew her to orbit last night. Today I'm working on building a docking target for practicing that aspect of her mission. Best I can tell she made it into orbit with a 35% fuel reserve, though it looks like she may have drank some out of the spaceplane fuel resupply tanks. I'll have a full mission report if anybody's interested probably in a day or two.

[Claw]

No mods were used for construction; they're all stock parts. I'm running KER, KAC, TAC, Crew Manifest, Protractor, Docking Alignment, and one of the Texture Reduction packs. And the TARDIS mod. Mostly piloting mods - I don't know why it would be messing up.

Tips are welcome; I'm golden with rockets but at best I'm an amateur with spaceplanes.

Intakes on different action groups...well, it occurred to me that an intake adds drag when it's opened, and if you go open thirty of 'em all up at the same time that's a lot of drag all at once suddenly placed on your craft. I don't know what kind of effect that has on flight characteristics; my understanding up to this point has been that it would cause me to lose velocity and therefore lift. Plus you don't need all that air all at once from my observation - you're generally okay with 0.05 to 0.07 units of IntakeAir per engine at full throttle. It lets me be more gradual about it. I dunno - could be a holdover from rocketry (rockets = stages, spaceplanes = intake events, that sort of thinking).

Sorry for not responding. I missed this post earlier. Congrats on making it to orbit with the AUK VI.

I can say that I hadn't thought of shutting intakes at low altitude to eliminate drag, and that seemed like an obvious idea after I read your post. So I fiddled around with intake drag on a smallish plane. I put a bunch of intakes on it and tried running with them all open, and running with 3/4 of them closed during ascent. Unfortunately I didn't really notice much difference. I'll have to play around with it more, but I don't know if the drag is somehow proportional to the amount of intake air being used, or if it even matters at all in stock KSP.

I'm also not sure if I'm the best person to give tips, although I was frustrated when first trying to build planes. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground experience between those of us with little experience (who already know about CoM, CoL, etc), and those people (like above) who build massive 100t capable planes. I've been sticking with stock myself, which everyone says is more difficult. But I got tired of mods crashing the game frequently. So I removed them all except MechJeb and Engineer for design use.

Anyway, sounds like you got the AUK into space.

-I was going to say your CoM control looks pretty good.

- The CoL needs to go forward some.

-The side mounted TurboJets look slightly high which might cause some pitching down (maybe angle snap was off?).

-You can also replace those forward fuel tanks with FL-T400s and play around with the tweakables for fuel and oxidizer (if you need a little more rockets). That might mess with your CoM a little though.

-Some of your RCS thrusters look like they might be blocked by the airplane fuselage. If you're not opposed to moving them, you can probably delete a few by relocating to less blocked areas.

Congrats again!

[m4rt14n]

B9 mod and FAR looks so nice. Stock spaceplanes seems to look ghetto-rigged compared to it. Especially the wings..,

Maybe I'll install it soon..

[Claw]

B9 mod and FAR looks so nice. Stock spaceplanes seems to look ghetto-rigged compared to it. Especially the wings..,

Maybe I'll install it soon..

I hear procedural wings is pretty nice too. It sounds like you can (more easily) do a variety of things with all the mods. I've been exploring KSP slowly to eek out all the enjoyment I can. When I get bored with stock, I will probably move on to those.

Also, a lot of people start playing stock first. And I hate being that person who says, "that sucks, you must get mod XX."

Edited February 1, 2014 by Claw

[Hodo]

Stock builds are great, I often applaud great designs that work stock. Expecially if they are using stock parts and DREC+FAR. But unfortunately the biggest problem with the stock parts is there isn't near enough parts to build a decent looking craft most of the time. Not without having several hundred parts that is, and clipping the hell out of it.

B9 is a good starter for a load more options in your builds without making the game easier or harder.

I myself don't like building stock things unless I have to. And I will never run a stock KSP game again, I have to have FAR+DREC+RT2. The stock aerodynamic modelling is horrible, it is more like fluid dynamic modelling.

[capi3101]

Alright. So I built a docking target for the Auk VI - an empty orange tank, an empty large RCS tank, four empty Mk1 Fuselages probe core, eight OX-STATS, a big batt, two Sr docking ports, two regular docking ports, two jr docking ports - and began rendezvous and docking operations. I did ultimately have to cut into the payload fuel to finish the rendezvous but was able to deliver 48% of the capacity of the big tank and enough fuel for two of the Mk1 fuselages.

Problem arose when I went into landing: I never bothered to check to see where the CoM would be when all those tanks had been emptied out. Anybody care to take a guess?

Lost control at 10,000 and never was able to recover.

I find I'm having the same difficulty with the Auk VII - same notion, full orange tank this time. Empty, the CoM and CoL are nearly on top of one another so I should have good flight characteristics. Full, the CoM is well ahead of the CoL and I've got a big lawn dart. Where's the happy medium there?

[Claw]

For the bigger plane I found myself using the bigger command pod to help balance the weight of the engines. In my more recent design, I moved some of the engines forward to keep the CoM from moving so far aft. Draining one orange tank will move the CoM a lot if you don't design around it.

I can post a pic later if you're interested. Or you can post your if you like.

[sdj64]

You all should check out the Jumbo 64 spaceplane challenge. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68002-Reynard-Rockets-Rockomax-Jumbo-Spaceplane-64-Challenge?p=941619 only one entry so far but you can maybe get more ideas.

[Claw]

You all should check out the Jumbo 64 spaceplane challenge. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68002-Reynard-Rockets-Rockomax-Jumbo-Spaceplane-64-Challenge?p=941619 only one entry so far but you can maybe get more ideas.

Oh nice, thanks for the point out.