Kerbodyne Velociraptor: light cargo express SSTO for Spaceplane Plus and FAR

[goldenpsp]

First attempt with your second iteration

Took off, all good until around 25000m started getting a bit squirrelly. Hit 30k lost air, fired up rockets

got into 80km orbit without trouble.

Did some science (science around kerbin contract).

Landed at KSC (well next to KSC)

Drove up onto runway, recovered for 100%

[Wanderfound]

First attempt with your second iteration

Took off, all good until around 25000m started getting a bit squirrelly. Hit 30k lost air, fired up rockets

got into 80km orbit without trouble.

Did some science (science around kerbin contract).

Landed at KSC (well next to KSC)

Drove up onto runway, recovered for 100%

Always good to see a happy customer.

Was that with NEAR or FAR?

The reason that you're finding things harder to control at high altitude with FAR is probably because FAR more realistically models the effects of supersonic drag. In the real world, the behaviour of the air changes substantially at supersonic speeds. Drag increases, and conventional control surfaces lose much of their effectiveness. This is why I always tend to put some all-moving surfaces on the nose.

It's worth using quicksave/quickload while you're adapting to FAR. Save every 1,000m or so, and when it goes wrong just reload and try again until you figure out how to get through it. Think of it as spending some time in the flight simulator training.

There's a good reason why fighter pilots get lots of training; supersonic jets are tricky to fly, and when stuff goes wrong it does so very rapidly. It's just the nature of the beast.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Wanderfound

[goldenpsp]

Always good to see a happy customer.

Was that with NEAR or FAR?

The reason that you're finding things harder to control at high altitude with FAR is probably because FAR more realistically models the effects of supersonic drag. In the real world, the behaviour of the air changes substantially at supersonic speeds. Drag increases, and conventional control surfaces lose much of their effectiveness. This is why I always tend to put some all-moving surfaces on the nose.

It's worth using quicksave/quickload while you're adapting to FAR. Save every 1,000m or so, and when it goes wrong just reload and try again until you figure out how to get through it. Think of it as spending some time in the flight simulator training.

There's a good reason why fighter pilots get lots of training; supersonic jets are tricky to fly, and when stuff goes wrong it does so very rapidly. It's just the nature of the beast.

It was it was with NEAR. I figured I wanted to try it out with the atmospheric mod I'm used to first before trying to learn FAR again with an untried plane