From Hangar to Landing; an illustrated tutorial for FAR/DRE spaceplanes

[Wanderfound]

Okay folks; I've put together a little slideshow tutorial. It goes all the way through the construction of a spaceplane, to taking it to orbit, bringing it through reentry and landing back at KSC. There are just under 200 slides, but they're all JPEGs so it shouldn't be too bandwidth hungry.

I deliberately left the mistakes and revisions in the sequence in order to give people an idea of how the process works.

See http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/cr...0Landing/story for the slideshow. All pictures have captions.

[Hodo]

Ok having watched your slide show, I didn't get to see any of the notations which is a shame. But I did watch it for the most part. I have a few questions.

Why didn't you strut your wings?

Why do you have your shock cone intakes set to a different actiong group then the RAPIERs switch mode action group? I have found it a bit better and simpler to tie the two together, that way I don't have to worry about closing them, they automatically close when the SABRE/RAPIER changes from open cycle to closed.

[Wanderfound]

Ok having watched your slide show, I didn't get to see any of the notations which is a shame. But I did watch it for the most part. I have a few questions.

Why didn't you strut your wings?

Why do you have your shock cone intakes set to a different actiong group then the RAPIERs switch mode action group? I have found it a bit better and simpler to tie the two together, that way I don't have to worry about closing them, they automatically close when the SABRE/RAPIER changes from open cycle to closed.

There are captions on every image, and I've fiddled with the setup to try and make them visible by default. They should be okay on the link now, hopefully.

The wings are unstrutted because they don't need strutting; they're strong enough as is to handle anything except for actively suicidal piloting. No need to inflate the part count without cause.

The RAPIER mode action group is separated from intakes because I don't necessarily always want them to switch together. The RAPIERs are still set to automatic switching (for thrust asymmetry peace of mind), so they may change modes on their own. Having the mode switch and intake toggle on the same action group could result in them going out of sync after an auto-switch.

Plus there are times when I want to flick RAPIER modes for just a moment (e.g. takeoff boosters) or toggle the intakes on their own (e.g. fine tuning drag during an engines-off glide).

[Hodo]

There are captions on every image, and I've fiddled with the setup to try and make them visible by default. They should be okay on the link now, hopefully.

The wings are unstrutted because they don't need strutting; they're strong enough as is to handle anything except for actively suicidal piloting. No need to inflate the part count without cause.

The RAPIER mode action group is separated from intakes because I don't necessarily always want them to switch together. The RAPIERs are still set to automatic switching (for thrust asymmetry peace of mind), so they may change modes on their own. Having the mode switch and intake toggle on the same action group could result in them going out of sync after an auto-switch.

Plus there are times when I want to flick RAPIER modes for just a moment (e.g. takeoff boosters) or toggle the intakes on their own (e.g. fine tuning drag during an engines-off glide).

Ok I see, just seems a bit overly complicated to me, but it works. As for leaving the RAPIERs to autoswitch is a problem with them in pairs, they tend to flameout asymetrically. So I set them to an action group and do it manually. I leave them set to auto, but I just do it manually once the air requirement drops to 110% in the FAR display.

As for struting the wings, I do it out of habbit now, and because I occassionally like my small craft to be able to pull a sustained 9G turn.

[Wanderfound]

This one wasn't designed as an aerobicist, but given that it held this posture and sustained G-level for several minutes during descent...

...I'm happy enough with how it flies.

If I was going for an aerobatics specialist these days, I still wouldn't strut much, I'd instead crank up the mass/strength ratings in FAR:

Yeah, either of them could be strengthened further at no mass penalty with some struts. But I just don't like the look of them when exposed, or the hassle of hiding them and dealing with symmetry bugs.

[Hodo]

Very true on the hiding them issues. It is a bit easier for me, because of Procedural Wings and the B9 invisible struts. I just decrease the thickness of the wings and attach the struts then increase the thickness over them so they are hidden. One of these days I will mess around with the wing mass/strength settings in FAR, but for the most part I just reduce them down to .6 and leave them there.

[Threadsinger]

Thanks very much for this easy to follow tutorial; I installed FAR because I liked the idea of forcing myself to do better re-entries (I noticed I could enter atmo at full impulse and still airbrake before impact, and wanted something a little more challenging), but I've been struggling with anything bigger than my F-14 Tomcat-inspired SSTO, which itself needs a lot of attention not to crash nose-first into the ground. The fun-to-frustration ratio was rapidly dropping to 1, so I'm glad I found this!