Your most ambitious SSTO mission

[Rocket Farmer]

Like most of you I dabbled in SSTO plane designs to see what I could do. I play totally stock (no, not even mechjeb) with no part clipping.

First I learned construction for low level flying.

Then it was sub-orbital jumps.

Then I learned to build to allow rendezvous with my space station.

Then I learned how to land and return from my mun and minmas bases without refueling.

Lastly I even got a SSTO without refueling to Duna and back to the landing strip. I was only able to land on Ike as Duna's atmosphere was just plain too thin to use my lift in any meaningful manner.

Recently that same SSTO has been useful for hauling smaller payloads to orbit in style.

My question is what other things are people doing with their SSTOs? My Duna one was quite large and while I figured Gilly might be in range otherwise I'm kinda at a lack for options. I know with refueling Laythe is an option but I expect landing would be difficult as i have never mastered a large vertical lander SSTO so I need some space in atmosphere.

[sumrex]

Building varied SSTO's (as well as rocket configurations) for future contract use in .24. Some for people movers, some for cargo handling. Rescue vehicles and satellite carriers are the mainstay right now Personally I am trying to build one that the entire middle is the payload, which separates into 3 pieces, then the front part and engines redock into a smaller one leaving a large payload. Going for a superlift variety this way so I am not constrained by payload bay sizes.

Edited June 11, 2014 by sumrex

[Kasuha]

Surprisingly these three missions meant very similar dv usage (although they employed different dv saving techniques):

No savings - nothing to save on.

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Saved dv on unpowered landing.

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Gravity slingshots all around.

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[gchristopher]

Anything from the Affordable Space Program Challenge entry. Composite SSTO's that delivered awkwardly-shaped payloads, combined in orbit to return together, then were refueled and loaded with new payloads without recovering.

[katateochi]

The danger with "dabbling" with SSTO's is sooner or later it becomes a full blown addiction and you just can't stop (at least that's what I found!). But I've still not managed some of the feats that I've seen others do, like going interplanetary without refuelling, I've always needed to top up in LKO before departing.

So my most ambitious (but as yet un-realised) goal with them is to take heavy payloads (ie an orange tank) to other planets. The most ambitious thing I've succeeded at was doing stock career mode with only suborbital and SSTO planes, but that was many different craft and took ages!!

My main goal with them is to have a SSTO that can go to another planet (without refuelling) and has a lander section that can go down and return to orbit, redock and have the whole thing return home. I've made these for Mun (I call them SSTMLAB's (single stage to Mun lander and back)) but I've not managed to get them further than that.

[Hodo]

Went to Duna, landed on Ike, and returned. This was before .23 I think.

It only had minor issues.

[RocketPilot573]

From a while back:

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[eempc]

I usually make self-refuelling SSTOs equipped with a kethane drill, converter and storage tank but I decided to try to make a completely stock SSTO, that still looked somewhat like an aeroplane, to get to Laythe and back without refuelling and using only 3 intakes per engine, i.e. no ridiculous airhogging.

It was pretty close as I had only 240 m/s DV left when I got back to Kerbin. The worst part was having to wait a long time for the perfect alignment, which allowed me to eject from Laythe orbit directly into an intercept course for Kerbin using only ~1100 m/s.

[LethalDose]

My most ambitious SSTO mission was get to orbit and return in one piece...

I'm shooting about a 5% success rate.

[Spatzimaus]

My most ambitious is probably Laythe and back on a spaceplane, using ion engines to provide the majority of the interplanetary delta-V. While the plane isn't stock (several B9 parts), the changes are basically cosmetic and the stock design it evolved from would be capable of the same thing. I use the same plane for most of my miscellaneous missions, since it's capable of landing on its tail on airless moons like Mun, Minmus, or Ike, so with a few refueling stations (already in place) I could almost do a Grand Tour again; Duna, Eve, and Tylo would be the only problems.

The thing is, I use SSTO rockets for pretty much everything since I hate debris. My heavy lifters are not asparagus; the biggest is a 12000 ton rocket, which can put ~1000 tons in a circular low Kerbin orbit and still safely de-orbit itself. The things it lifts wouldn't count as SSTOs, of course, but the booster itself is still pretty impressive.

[xcorps]

My most ambitious SSTO mission was get to orbit and return in one piece...

I'm shooting about a 5% success rate.

Sounds like me. I'd be happy to roll across minmus.

[Pecan]

Blah, SSTO:

Yeah Single Stage To Orbit. Disambiguation - did you mean Spaceplane? Single Stage To (Somewhere)? Scottish students Trampolining (follow the link, I'm not making it up!).

With ARM parts you can single-stage to Laythe quite easily.

[LethalDose]

So, there seems to be a lot of snark on these forums about SSTO != space planes. And while that's true, the wiki page on SSTOs states:

"The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles."

This seems to support the way the term is very, very widely used on these forums: A vehicle that make orbit and doesn't shed stages and can be recovered for reuse (at least in theory). Yeah, the rocket posted above takes one stage to get to orbit, but doesn't appear to be reusable. That would seem to disqualify it in my mind.

To those who like to post the "lol my rocket is SSTO", what term would you propose be used for clarity, since the term SSTO obviously doesn't seem to be clear enough for your liking.

[Pecan]

what term would you propose be used for clarity, since the term SSTO obviously doesn't seem to be clear enough for your liking.

There isn't meant to be too much snark (I admit some!). There is meant to be disambiguation - what exactly do you mean! EG;

What term would I propose for what, as I can't understand your confusion? Single Stage To Orbit seems clear enough.

You now introduce a new term, 'Reusable'. Given that my SSTO rocket parachutes back to land, in what way are you changing the meaning of 'SSTO'? If someone means a vehicle that relies on wings or other shape for aerodynamic lift I think the term is 'spaceplane'. If any vehicle (theoretically) just needs a 'splash and dash' to be ready for another mission then SSTO still doesn't mean spaceplane, however you mis-define it.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Pecan

[Duke23]

I'm pretty new to SSTOs, I recently built my largest and heaviest SSTO spaceplane to date with cargo bays and ~3.5t payload capacity with the Spaceplane Plus mod (this stuff should seriously be stock). I know that isn't much, but it's relatively small and also carries ~1.5t in reaction wheels, RTGs, and KAS stuff to actually do anything worthwhile, not to mention the .8t inline docking port with RCS. My previous SSTOs consisted of a cockpit, a fuel tank, and a rapier basically so this is a step forward and I'm getting the hang of it. You can see its evolution and a couple missions in this post and this post.

I've been using it for various LKO tasks that would IMO be a waste of a rocket like bringing a small amount of fuel to a craft that ran out to finish its mission, putting a Scansat in polar LKO and attempting to bring back the old one.

This is its latest and most stable iteration (v3) during its 200km orbital payload capacity test; this shows all its goodies except the docking port. My immediate goal is to extend the program to bring small payloads to Mun / Minmus since if I refuel, it's got a fair amount of DV to play with. First priority is more Scansats. I just unlocked the rest of my tech tree with my mission to the Jool system so my next goal is to start finding some anomalies which I may also visit with the SSTO. Long term goal is to build a bigger SSTO that could hope to replace my reusable interplanetary ship for regular trips to Duna and back, as I want to restart colonization efforts there. Why fly up massive amounts of fuel and extra pieces to attach in orbit when I can just modify the craft on the ground and send it on its way with a top off at a fueling station?

[Pecan]

Lovely looking ship. Feel like writing more about it, especially placing the SCANSats in polar orbit? That's a perfect early task for a spaceplanes and I'd love to add/attach a detailed account to my tutorial (Chapter 4).

ETA: And chapters 7/8 where I do resuable stuff instead of 'one shot' (not yet published). While we're at it though - I can't understand "Why fly up massive amounts of fuel and extra pieces to attach in orbit when I can just modify the craft on the ground and send it on its way with a top off at a fueling station?" Are you saying that launching and carrying all that structural-but-useless mass around the system is worth it instead of just leaving it in space? Probably best to discuss in PM if you're interested.

Edited June 12, 2014 by Pecan

[Moss]

My most ambitious SSTO set out to complete the epic task of leaving the runway. And it didn't.

[LethalDose]

There isn't meant to be too much snark (I admit some!). There is meant to be disambiguation - what exactly do you mean! EG;

What term would I propose for what, as I can't understand your confusion? Single Stage To Orbit seems clear enough.

You now introduce a new term, 'Reusable'. Given that my SSTO rocket parachutes back to land, in what way are you changing the meaning of 'SSTO'? If someone means a vehicle that relies on wings or other shape for aerodynamic lift I think the term is 'spaceplane'. If any vehicle (theoretically) just needs a 'splash and dash' to be ready for another mission then SSTO still doesn't mean spaceplane, however you mis-define it.

I agree that SSTO isn't synonymous spaceplane. That was my first statement in my previous post.

I'm providing the definition from wikipedia to avoid being accused of "mis-defining" the term SSTO, and that definition points out that it's typical to use the term in reference to reusable vehicles. I'm not introducing the term. Reusable is, as pointed out in the wiki, typically part of the definition.

However, the fact that this use is typical doesn't seem enough to avoid the snark on the forums. Do posters that want to avoid the trolls really have to say "Reusable" in front of every instance "SSTO"? Even though it's obviously what is meant by vast majority of posters using the term?

ANd yes, if you can get the vehicle back to the surface in one piece, then it's reusable. You posted a rocket that you claim is SSTO. Can it be reused? Do you have a way to get it back to the surface? Does it have chutes or some other way to survive impact? Does it have an RGU or automatically firing separatrons to deorbit it?

I can't see any of those from your pic. It looks like a standard, disposable rocket stage.

tl;dr - Being literal and dissecting a term to find some obnoxious technicality doesn't make you clever and shouldn't be used as an excuse to be condescending to other posters.

[Pipcard]

Scottish students Trampolining (follow the link, I'm not making it up!).

Pre-KSP, any time I tried to search SSTO on Youtube brought up trampolining videos.

This is the only spaceplane SSTO I ever made (for the K-Prize), and it only went to low Kerbin orbit and back.

The kind of SSTO I'm using right now is a vertical launch vehicle which uses nine aerospikes to carry up to 10 tons into LKO, then lands back at KSC with MechJeb. Multiple solid rocket boosters can be appended to it for extra capacity, but it wouldn't be an SSTO anymore.

[Pecan]

tl;dr - Being literal and dissecting a term to find some obnoxious technicality doesn't make you clever and shouldn't be used as an excuse to be condescending to other posters.

You are right that it doesn't and I'm not trying to 'find some obnoxious technicality' for any reason. I'm trying to define - for agreement - specific terminology. It is not too clever to try to shoot someone else down for trying to be accurate either. The fact that a term is typically mis-used is not enough to make that usage correct. I shall leave it to you to decide by what trolls might best be deterred, but saying 'SSTO' after 'reusable' would seem tautological to me, in that to be reusable a vehicle would necessarily need to be SSTO, but not vice-versa.

We are agreed to start from "'SSTO' and 'spaceplane' are not synonymous". Good.

You introduced the term 'reusable' to this particular thread, I I know you didn't 'just make it up' or anything and never intended to suggest you did. To quote your quote though, "The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles." So, if SSTO and resuable are not the same things, can we agree "'SSTO' is a sub-set of 'reusable'"? If so we have six different things*:

• Disposable rockets
  
• Disposable planes (I think these are the ones that I can't fly!)
  
• SSTO rockets
  
• SSTO planes (these must be the ones I can fly but not land)
  
• Reusable rockets
  
• Reusable planes
  

(*I also need a decent word for vehicles that don't use wing/shape for aerodynamic lift! I'm using 'rocket' but that's a type of engine (like 'jet'), not vehicle. Anyone got a word for a flying-not-aeroplane vehicle?)

Now I'm pretty sure we'd agree that the typical rocket is disposable and the typical spaceplane is reusable. So if someone talks about 'a rocket' I'd expect not to get much back after the mission, whereas I'd expect to get everything except the fuel back from 'a (space)plane'. If that's the case I have no problem with 'rocket' vs 'plane'. 'Reusable' or 'SSTO' does not limit form however, only function and I think it's as important as anything in a sandbox game to be clear if you mean one rather than the other.

It is true that my history includes a fair bit of pedantry but I'm trying to find out what terminology is acceptable - I want to write about this stuff; accurately! You may call 'snark', I call 'vague'.

[The rocket in that picture has a probe core (between the fuel tanks, next to the SAS unit) and sufficient fuel to de-orbit after delivering its rated payload to a 100km orbit. In that particular picture it doesn't have parachutes so is not resuable - a requirement you introduced after I posted it, as SSTO - but 6 radials don't stop it from achieving its designed mission and do stop it from catastrophic lithobrakng].

[Rocket Farmer]

To be fair as the OP in my first sentence I did refer to SSTO planes which should dispel all doubt as to what I meant and Gould preclude any rockets being posted.......

[LordFjord]

Anything from the Affordable Space Program Challenge entry. Composite SSTO's that delivered awkwardly-shaped payloads, combined in orbit to return together, then were refueled and loaded with new payloads without recovering.

Exactly this.

Even though my current attemt is on hold due to slight frustration involving some claws and krakens... but I have no doubts that I'll pick up the mission again and finish it.

I just love building these SSTOs

[Overfloater]

Here's my most ambitious SSTO trip - to Laythe, Duna & back in one go,

on Astroliner IV Comet:

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[Jouni]

My most ambitious SSTO missions have been the test flights of my reusable heavy lifters:

The unmanned version lifts around 100 tonnes to LKO with payload fraction over 12.5%.

The manned version carries a 12-kerbal crew just because it can, but its payload fraction is only around 10.5%.

Landing is a bit difficult, because tall rockets require level ground to land.

[eempc]

To be fair as the OP in my first sentence I did refer to SSTO planes which should dispel all doubt as to what I meant and Gould preclude any rockets being posted.......

Most people don't read anything except your title though. It seems every thread with ambiguous SSTO in the title has some smartie pants talking about SSTO rockets (which I found unchallenging to get into orbit and therefore not really ambitious). You really need to specify "SSTO space plane with an air breathing phase" or "SSTO rockets-only" in your title. I think that would clarify the difference.