BSC: Aeris 4a - AND THE WINNER IS:

[DerpenWolf]

Yes, although I'm sure most of them will make it to orbit without upper or lower wings.

I once thought about making them to monoplane by removing upper or lower wings and then begin flight testing and scoring...

Having the extra set of wings is not necessarily a bad thing at all. It can really help with maneuverability, lift, range, and stability. Are you saying its a bad thing if an extra pair of wings improves performance???

Edited March 16, 2014 by DerpenWolf

[Silverchain]

I did not really test any of the entries except mine but it seems to me that mine is one of a few if not the only one which can reach other bodies than Kerbin.

Quite a few can get to the Mun and Minmus, and with navigating skill (something I'm not especially blessed with) a handful will make further.

It'd be running on fumes and it's certainly not intended to go there but with the right burn and aerobrake I think my Ceremonial (1200+ ms-1 on-orbit delta-v) will make Duna orbit. There's craft (e.g. the Gecko, I made that 2160+ ms-1 on-orbit, or the Leisure) with much more disposable delta-v than mine. I believe your Kaeris does have the highest practical range of the challengers.

[Kasuha]

Quite a few can get to the Mun and Minmus, and with navigating skill (something I'm not especially blessed with) a handful will make further.

It'd be running on fumes and it's certainly not intended to go there but with the right burn and aerobrake I think my Ceremonial (1200+ ms-1 on-orbit delta-v) will make Duna orbit. There's craft (e.g. the Gecko, I made that 2160+ ms-1 on-orbit, or the Leisure) with much more disposable delta-v than mine. I believe your Kaeris does have the highest practical range of the challengers.

Okay, no problem with that. I am only asking for my plane's "VTOL abilities" to be assessed in proper context. It is not a VTOL on Kerbin. Anbd when it comes to its VTOL abilities on Mun, is it really bad thing?

Edit: I made a test with Aeris 4A. I was able to reach Mun orbit with it and if I was more careful I might be even able to land there. But it is definitely not equipped to land on Mun, the dv is right on the edge, you must be very careful to not break off the engine and there is no return. My plane is intended to be able to do that and it was equipped to make it reasonably easy and in style. Because the intended challenge for the newbie in my plane is not battling a badly designed plane as with original Aeris 4A, the challenge is in figuring out how far you can get with it.

Edited March 16, 2014 by Kasuha

[BagelRabbit]

*grins* It's mostly green, with some yellow for handling, the small port and low on-orbit delta-v and an issue with the action group toggle for the rocket engines (only one works, it's that symmetry thing where it doesn't clone it if you move the part.)

That's really strange. My original Plover as its action groups set up correctly... I wonder what's going on.

Anyway, you can press the spacebar instead.

...but it's good to hear that for the most part my craft is alright.

[ssTALONps]

Having the extra set of wings is not necessarily a bad thing at all. It can really help with maneuverability, lift, range, and stability. Are you saying its a bad thing if an extra pair of wings improves performance???

Of course. Tell me if you saw hypersonic biplane in real life

I honestly can't understand why people build space biplanes.

Most of them flies just fine without upper or lower wings except for heaviest designs.

Also, I think if one tries to sorta cheat his inherently low maneuverable design into supermaneuverable design by simply making it biplane or using wing clipping, it is a procrastination.

A procrastination to forcibly cheat out of basic aerodynamics instead of looking for other designs e.g. delta + canard.

An obsession and over-reliance, I should say.

But that's just me, others can agree with you on that matter.

Edited March 16, 2014 by ssTALONps

[LordFjord]

I don't want to heat up the rating discussions and the rather complex systems some make up for it, but folks - this is all about a stock SSTO - not "who builds the best ever SSTO".

Just saying, cause some seem to forget that.

[Silverchain]

That's really strange. My original Plover as its action groups set up correctly... I wonder what's going on.

I think it happens when you have an action group set to affect engines on both sides of the fuselage, but then move the part that the engines are attached to - because when you take it off to move it there's temporarily only one engine, the action group no longer affects the engine on the other side...

@ssTalon - I'm not sure about biplanes; so long as the wings are widely separated it seems reasonable. People have proposed modern high speed (supersonic) biplanes, although I've no idea how or if it would translate to the screwy hypersonic speeds a spaceplane reaches! Same goes for wings above and below a fuselage, I can see that as a lifting body; it's only when people start stacking wings close on top of each other or clipping them together that it becomes blatantly cheaty to me.

[Silverchain]

Hey, who said anything about SSTO, anyway? The Aeris 4A is a spaceplane, and we all know how they launch.

Aeris 4A SLS* Only a Dark Cocoon on the pad... (with jets spooling up prior to Mainsail and booster ignition)

...and going for orbit.

That's an original Aeris 4A, with all its faults, so there's massive room for improvement.

Swapping a nuke in would give it silly range, do some fuel balancing, change the torque and RCS supplies, drop some unneeded intakes as the return can be practically a glide, all sorts of stuff, could make a good ship out of it.

Also the gimballed Mainsail tells asymmetric flameout just where to shove it.

*Silly Launch System

[O-Doc]

...

But that's just me, others can agree with you on that matter.

Exactly. Judge on your own criteria. You're the one taking the time to test this massive entries list. I'm getting some great insights into how others play this game from the selection discussion. More so, than trying out the other designs. If I was judging, about 40 of the crafts would not make it through the first 2min of testing so, I'm not going to be hard on the arbitrariness of the the judges selection process. All I can do is state why my plane was designed the way it was and I've done that.

[ssTALONps]

I don't want to heat up the rating discussions and the rather complex systems some make up for it, but folks - this is all about a stock SSTO - not "who builds the best ever SSTO".

Just saying, cause some seem to forget that.

Exactly what I'm thinking.

It's cool to have like ~2km/s of dV on orbit or pulling off 9G maneuvers at full tanks, but I think that's not the spirit of Aeris 4a...

I'm not sure about biplanes; so long as the wings are widely separated it seems reasonable. People have proposed modern high speed (supersonic) biplanes, although I've no idea how or if it would translate to the screwy hypersonic speeds a spaceplane reaches! Same goes for wings above and below a fuselage, I can see that as a lifting body; it's only when people start stacking wings close on top of each other or clipping them together that it becomes blatantly cheaty to me.

Most of biplane-ish submissions do not even has struts or support structure linking upper and lower wings somewhere midpoint along wing.

I guess they didn't wanted to ruin 'aesthetics' of their craft whilst removing one set of wings seems more attractive to me than biplane.

Some crafts have joined wingtips. I would only allow it for wingtip-less boxwing derivative design, which NONE of the submissions use.

For body lift, I do have wing overlaying for body lift listed at exceptions.

Edited March 17, 2014 by ssTALONps

[Cruzan]

A quick question for the voters about the poll.

How are you planning to vote? Do you plan to rank 1-50 or are you grouping things into clumps and ranking through say, 1-5?

I was debating whether or not to give individual ranks or go by certain ranges for certain ranks. On my system that would mean 95+ get rank 1, 90-94.9 get rank 2, 85-89.9 get 3, etc.

Just curious how others are actual casting their votes. I'm not sure if grouping like this would skew the voting as opposed to someone who votes by giving individual ranks.

Thanks for any input!

[ssTALONps]

I'm planning to rank everything from 1~50 or something, ties included.

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

I'm kind of wishing I had done some testing of the other submissions before I put in mine; there are definitely some details I'd like to include in the Dionysus. A few thoughts on my favorites so far:

KR100 Kodac - very stable during ascent in the stratosphere, good description field, and a decent 500+ ÃŽâ€v in LKO. I like that the reaction wheels are disabled to encourage RCS usage in space too. RCS thrusters are pretty good, but could be better balanced for translation along the ships empty CoM though, and I'd prefer a bigger docking port.

Lynx - The air scoops look nice, and the plane can pull 4G turns on full tanks. This one also has a decent 380 ÃŽâ€v in LKO, but there is a bunch of useless oxidizer in the tank, and while RCS thruster balance is not particularly great, it does have a reasonable amount of monopropellant. Needs some better illumination, and could use some more info in the description field.

Project A4C - Near-perfectly balanced RCS thrusters, and a nice 900 ÃŽâ€v in LKO. The clipped Turbojet/RAPIER engine is interesting, but makes it difficult to manage how they perform, especially given the use of only two ram intakes. Uses a standard docking port, but puts it in an odd location (which looks quite ugly if I may be brutally honest), with no illumination except from landing gears. Rear landing gear could probably be moved forward a bit too.

Peregrino - Plenty of air intakes, leading to good ÃŽâ€v in LKO, and has a high speed in low atmo. Uses my favorite engines (Rockomax 24-77!), dorsal-mounted air intakes, and it is one of the better-balanced RCS spaceplanes. Could use some more batteries, lights, and monopropellant though. Also uses a jr. port.

[Mesklin]

I am also preparing rank for all crafts without any grouping. 18 from 53 crafts were tested already

[DovahMarat]

I vote for Mesklin's SSTO

[blspblackdeath]

My ranking consists of several run-throughs.

In the first run every plane was looked at in the SPH. The planes in violation of the rules like "mod parts and too much part clipping" are minus points for me. Extra features and looks plus points.

Second run was the fligth test without RCS. How did the crafts perform in flight. Maneuverability was very important.

Third test was a SSTO flight. With the 10 best ranked planes.

I don't know if it was posted before but mareczex333 made a nice rundown of the contestants:

edit: Well it was posted, ... , but either way. ;-)

Edited March 17, 2014 by blspblackdeath

[LordFjord]

A quick question for the voters about the poll.

How are you planning to vote? Do you plan to rank 1-50 or are you grouping things into clumps and ranking through say, 1-5?

I was debating whether or not to give individual ranks or go by certain ranges for certain ranks. On my system that would mean 95+ get rank 1, 90-94.9 get rank 2, 85-89.9 get 3, etc.

Just curious how others are actual casting their votes. I'm not sure if grouping like this would skew the voting as opposed to someone who votes by giving individual ranks.

Thanks for any input!

I'll make a ranked list 1-~50 with possible ties and some comments on each craft.

I wont make a very scientific approach to the rating system - it will by my very subjective opinion on each and how I see it as a stock craft.

A stock craft being something that is easy to learn from, easy to reverse-engineer and to rebuild - and something that actually does the job of a roundtrip to Kerbin orbit and back in one piece.

We have some great SSTOs here that are brilliant by the means of construction and engineering, but they unfortunately do not fit the role of a stock craft.

I have the dilemma of downgrading truly great planes because I can't imagine them fitting that role.

I also won't rate my own craft (-> bottom of list). I'll leave that to Xeldrak to figure out what to do with those votes (just treat all the same).

[Rhomphaia]

A quick question for the voters about the poll.

How are you planning to vote? Do you plan to rank 1-50 or are you grouping things into clumps and ranking through say, 1-5?

I was debating whether or not to give individual ranks or go by certain ranges for certain ranks. On my system that would mean 95+ get rank 1, 90-94.9 get rank 2, 85-89.9 get 3, etc.

Just curious how others are actual casting their votes. I'm not sure if grouping like this would skew the voting as opposed to someone who votes by giving individual ranks.

Thanks for any input!

My first round of testing split the craft into 10 groups. I started more objective testing starting with the top group and am working my way down.

When I run out of time I should have the entries that were fully tested ranked individually, with the partially tested entries clumped together in their groups.

[Pauly]

Lynx - The air scoops look nice, and the plane can pull 4G turns on full tanks. This one also has a decent 380 ÃŽâ€v in LKO, but there is a bunch of useless oxidizer in the tank, and while RCS thruster balance is not particularly great, it does have a reasonable amount of monopropellant. Needs some better illumination, and could use some more info in the description field.

Thank you for the good criticism. I had to leave the extra oxidizer in for ballast or the CoM moves to far back. I should have mentioned that though in the description.

I wanted to do something different with intakes to make them look cooler so I turned them facing in. I am glad you thought that was a plus.

[Rune]

I'm almost halfway through the entries, and I'm already starting to wonder how am I going to order them. So many entries! Thankfully the really good ones stand out real fast, so expect my grades to get more refined the further up the list. Which frankly, is kind of the point, right? Only the top ten get the really special attention, and it's going to be hard to pick between them, but for other reasons.

Rune. And yeah, Giggle, your R-2 is one of those, I grant you that. Good job! I found myself nitpicking to write some negative stuff.

[KissSh0t]

Anticipation Intensifies.

[LordFjord]

Halfway through as well - damned its going to be tough ranking those top ~10 craft.

There is also a broad mid-field and also some on the bottom of the list (which had some general issues).

@Xeldrak: any news on how we should rate our own craft?

When attempting to be objective, I would put my spacegull somewhere between midfield and the top10 - but I think that the own craft should be excluded from voting.

[Silverchain]

I'm down to a "short" list of seventeen after three rounds of elimination. My eyes feel strained staring at the screen!

[Cruzan]

30 down, A through O, 23 to go

Populating the table takes the longest. I curse everyone whose design has a really low TWR! They take forever to test

Edited March 18, 2014 by Cruzan

[Xeldrak]

@Xeldrak: any news on how we should rate our own craft?

When attempting to be objective, I would put my spacegull somewhere between midfield and the top10 - but I think that the own craft should be excluded from voting.

Well, I think it's best to put your own craft in the last category, objectivity is allways hard when you are judging your own creation.