How to make a spaceplane capable of orbit

[Magnet_man16]

So here's my current plane. It handles Okish... Pulling up as a bit slow but could I strap a rocket engine on a new stage and add oxidiser to be able to get into orbit?

Like I said I've never before got a spaceplane into orbit. Even using the RAPIER engine.

Note: Its small because I like to make things as compact as possible.

Edited April 24, 2014 by Magnet_man16
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[Bearsh]

I've never even built a working space plane So i'll help as best as i can!

One question, Why the launch escape tower? If your not using it it's just adding more Weight.

If your in sandbox mode, Look on the space planes built by the devs and how they are built.

Try to strap 3-4 or less RAPIER engines on your wings for extra thrust. Other than that you can Google it there's got to be a wiki or something on this.

[Tortoise]

All you need is regular fuel tanks. Jet engines will still feed fuel from it, and when you switch to a rocket engine, it'll take the oxidizer too. Also, you aren't required to use rapier engines. More of my successful space planes didn't incorporate rapier engines. One of the cons is, it's the only engine that can act as a jet and rocket engine, and there is also a max thrust of 175 or so, I get better performance in the aatmosphere with regular jet engines. When you're in space, not much thrust is needed.

[Pecan]

Why two decouplers in the middle? As Bearsh says, lose the LES - it's heavy and pretty pointless. Just stick a radial parachute on the cockpit if you want an ejection system.

Building a simple spaceplane is actually a lot easier than flying it! Use a 180-unit fuel tank for your jet, tweaked to remove all the oxidiser, that way it's lighter than the fuselage part. Attach more 180-unit tanks either side of that for your rockets - 48-7Ss behind each one. You need ram-intakes for high flight and performance so put one of those on each of the rocket-fuel tanks.

Fly it high and fast. Climb as fast as you like to c10km then start to flatten out - you do not want to go too much above 15km too quickly because ... in thinning atmosphere the jet will be starved of oxygen and the plane will start to 'wander' and become a bit uncontrollable. If you don't do anything the jet will 'flameout' and you'll fall out of the sky. What you do is a) reduce the throttle slightly until the jet keeps working and accelerating the plane, when the throttle is so low the jet is no longer able to accelerate you - turn it off, turn the rockets on and point up to go to space! (Cut throttle when you have a 75 - 80km apoapsis and then circularise as you would with a rocket).

Successful flight to orbit - particularly balancing how quickly you climb at what altitude to get the most from the jet - is something of an art that you'll just have to practice. That jet + 2x48-7Ss with 180-unit tanks will work though. Keep everything else to a minimum to keep it light until you've got the hang of it.

[Magnet_man16]

Ah ok thanks. Before reading your relies I gave it a shot altering my plane.... Ran out of oxidiser...

Crashing back to kerbin

[Magnet_man16]

Lol yea heres me using that useless decoupler

[Hodo]

I have been building SSTO spaceplanes for a long long time. And you can build some pretty small simple ones that have no real purpose other than to say "Ha I did it!" but you can also build some pretty functional massive space planes that have a job.

Here is one I built with 1 B9 part it has no purpose other than to test out the RAPIER when it came out.

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This was a SSTO spacefighter that has the capability to be armed and kill things.

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And the crowd favorite, my heavy hauler SSTO spaceplane with its 108ton lifting capacity.

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If you look at each one of them you can see they are different, they each have different goals and design theories in mind. The trick is to find what you want it to do before you build it. If you have it do to much it will never work, or will just work poorly.

[Grumman]

Here is my first successful spaceplane.

My advice would be to perform a test flight and work out what the maximum sustainable height is for your plane - the highest you can go before it becomes unstable or suffers from flame-outs. For example, for mine that's approximately 23,000 meters.

Once you know what that height is, you should perform another flight, and use up as much of your jet fuel as you can flying at that height. The higher you are the faster you can go, so building up horizontal velocity is a lot cheaper at that height than above (using inefficient rocket engines) or below (too much air resistance). Once you're almost out of jet fuel, you tip your nose up to about 40 degrees, switch to the rocket engine, and perform a burn to get you above the atmosphere - say to 80,000 meters. Then you just coast until you're out of the atmosphere and perform your circularising burn.

[Jouni]

There are two main challenges in building spaceplanes that can reach orbit: finding a good ascent path to use with air-breathing engines, and building a plane that remains balanced, regardless of the amount of fuel left. These are mostly independent from each other, so it can make sense to practice for them separately.

While the precise ascent path depends on the particular plane design, the paths are usually very similar for different planes. A good way to practice the ascent is to build a training vehicle that doesn't have to worry about aerodynamics. A simple rocket with a probe core, a ram intake, reaction wheels, an FL-T800 fuel tank, and a RAPIER engine suits for the task. You can also replace the RAPIER with a turbojet and some 24-77 radial engines.

[Othuyeg]

Start by building a plane with a turbo jet + ram intakes and fly around the globe. This will teach you how to gain speed and altitude. You'll learn how to speed up to maintain air flow. This will get you easily into a suborbital trajectory with an apoapsis that is well beyond the atmosphere. Then you'll just need to add one small engine.

[O-Doc]

Dang, I had once upon a time written out a minimum parts list for a space plane. I'll see if I can dig that up.

It looks like your plane should go to space if it has a rocket on the back. Just remember to level out when you start running out of air and get more speed to increase your airflow. when you stop accelerating, pull up a bit and start throttling down. Engage rockets when you are throttled down to about 50% and keep throttling down as your climb. Then, if your jet/s run out of air and you're appoapsis is not into space yet, throttle up on your rocket/s to get your appoapsis high enough for circularization burn.

[Magnet_man16]

Thats at 75,000 right?

[Grumman]

Thats at 75,000 right?

More or less. I usually get my apogee a bit higher, both to allow for air resistance and so that I have a bit more time to get up to orbital speed.