KSP and Simple Rockets2 Stuff.
- Thread starter Astro
- Start date
That too. I own both these games. I was a bit upset with SR2 because I barely knew how to do stuff in that game but KSP(Matt Lowne) taught me some orbital stuff and now I’m a little bit better at flying. I recently tried to land on Luna but kept tipping over when I landed. Honestly KSP is more my style, I like to stack tanks not size them and I like the variety of parts.
One of my favourite things in KSP has been making spaceplanes. I hope you don't mind if I share a few!
Here are the first two I managed to get to orbit and back to the runway. Both use a Whiplash engine for atmosphere and two Terriers for vacuum. They have no payload, science gear, or crew capacity other than pilot. I was just figuring out the principles of building and flying a spaceplane:
Here's my first useful spaceplane. This is actually one of a series of planes all modifying this basic design. Some have full science kit, some use an interstage fairing for a small "cargo bay," and some carry crew. I think the largest crew capacity one was 12 kerbals plus pilot. This series of planes uses RAPIER engines for atmosphere and initial vacuum burn, and then a nuclear engine for circularisation and vacuum flight. Capable of getting to Mun or Minmus orbit and then back to KSC runway.
Next is my first mk 3 spaceplane. (I've never made a mk 2, actually). This one is all RAPIER and LKO only.
Next is my most useful spaceplane ever. It has two full-length mk 3 bays for cargo capacity. It's all RAPIER and intended for LKO only, but can carry an interplanetary rocket to LKO, and has done so! It's pictured here with its biggest cargo, a transfer stage for a Mun ship. The second payload is the Mun lander, rover, and orbital refueler for the lander.
Finally, my latest spaceplane on a new save. This is my first all-liquid fuel spaceplane (i.e., no oxidiser), using a single RAPIER in atmospheric mode to get up to 1700+ m/s at somewhere between 25 and 20 km altitude, then using two nukes to complete orbit with about 1900 m/s dV left. It has a full science kit and is usually probe-controlled so that I can put a scientist in the cockpit. Here it is flying over some mountains after coming out of a suborbital hop to check out an anomaly one of my satellites detected on Kerbin. Presently it's outfitted with parachutes to land in odd places, like in the middle of these mountains where I found a monolith.
Here are the first two I managed to get to orbit and back to the runway. Both use a Whiplash engine for atmosphere and two Terriers for vacuum. They have no payload, science gear, or crew capacity other than pilot. I was just figuring out the principles of building and flying a spaceplane:
Here's my first useful spaceplane. This is actually one of a series of planes all modifying this basic design. Some have full science kit, some use an interstage fairing for a small "cargo bay," and some carry crew. I think the largest crew capacity one was 12 kerbals plus pilot. This series of planes uses RAPIER engines for atmosphere and initial vacuum burn, and then a nuclear engine for circularisation and vacuum flight. Capable of getting to Mun or Minmus orbit and then back to KSC runway.
Next is my first mk 3 spaceplane. (I've never made a mk 2, actually). This one is all RAPIER and LKO only.
Next is my most useful spaceplane ever. It has two full-length mk 3 bays for cargo capacity. It's all RAPIER and intended for LKO only, but can carry an interplanetary rocket to LKO, and has done so! It's pictured here with its biggest cargo, a transfer stage for a Mun ship. The second payload is the Mun lander, rover, and orbital refueler for the lander.
Finally, my latest spaceplane on a new save. This is my first all-liquid fuel spaceplane (i.e., no oxidiser), using a single RAPIER in atmospheric mode to get up to 1700+ m/s at somewhere between 25 and 20 km altitude, then using two nukes to complete orbit with about 1900 m/s dV left. It has a full science kit and is usually probe-controlled so that I can put a scientist in the cockpit. Here it is flying over some mountains after coming out of a suborbital hop to check out an anomaly one of my satellites detected on Kerbin. Presently it's outfitted with parachutes to land in odd places, like in the middle of these mountains where I found a monolith.
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I've been slowly playing around with stuff, science equipment, getting used to how things fly (and wobble).
Firstly, a pair of LISS science craft.
This one is for orbital survey and commnet. Fitted with an array of wide and narrow field surveillance equipment, a magnetometer and plenty of up/downlink comms firepower.
Next, my orbital telescope. More than capable of viewing the current system and a few things beyond.
Both LISS were launched on 2 stage rockets, the second stage is visible still attached. It also has its own Xenon drive system for movement in Kerbin orbit and (when I can be bothered) elsewhere besides.
I've also been playing with spaceplane designs (more so than rockets if i'm honest) and the current model is Wryvern. So called because everytime it'd crash/flip over/explode, i'd shout Wwrrrryyyyyyy! and then rebuild it.
This is the first 'stable' iteration, the mk.1. Powered by a pair of afterburning turbojets and a good hard ramjet in the centre, it was my first foray into winged flight and uses various test pieces to do with power, engines, fuel, air intakes, wing configurations, pilots, remote operations, cargo packages and wheel layouts.
after many many crashes and WRRRYYYYYY!!! I eventually got one off the ground and let it loose
But, the mk.1 just wasn't a decent flight platform and you had to fight it, especially on take off (It would disco step down the runway and you'd have to boot it and get it off the ground as fast as possible before it rolled over)
This led to the Mk.II which never flew. Cos it was turd.
And then, after many youtube videos on real wing design, supersonic airflow and AoA, came the mk.III.
I like this one.
Have a guess which aircraft I copied a 'few' design tips from...
Everything has a slight upwards tilt, from the tall nose wheel, the wing chord and even the air intakes are rotated slightly upwards to work more efficiently in flight.
She's fitted with working flaps, a proper airbrake set up (the rudder points inwards as well), an all moving tail, tricycle carriage and a shit ton of fuel.
It comes with a pair of turbojets with adjustable re-heat and a pair of RAPIER. Not for any SSTO dreams, it doesn't carry anywhere near enough oxygen for that, but for high altitude capability and can do sub-orbital zoom climbs (I've cracked 50,000m) after flame out.
It also gives enough thrust to cruise on 2 engines at 30% throttle at just over 110m/s.
How does it fly? Well, thanks to the nose up attitude, it does want to go nose up a bit and i use SAS to keep a trim since i'm using a keyboard.
However, it will take off by itself without re-heat or any input except to bring the wheels and flaps up and because of the wing design will come off the ground at 60-70m/s nice and gentle.
Power wise, it isn't capable of supercruise, but will sit just below mach 1 without re-heat.
Lighting the burners will nudge it past transonic to roughly Mach 2+
And then turn the RAPIERs on air cycle and watch it go
I'm speed limited by structural heat build up rather than thrust. This was taken nose up, still on air cycle just before the turbojets flamed out. I had to back off at Mach 4.1 before the nose exploded.
Firstly, a pair of LISS science craft.
This one is for orbital survey and commnet. Fitted with an array of wide and narrow field surveillance equipment, a magnetometer and plenty of up/downlink comms firepower.
Next, my orbital telescope. More than capable of viewing the current system and a few things beyond.
Both LISS were launched on 2 stage rockets, the second stage is visible still attached. It also has its own Xenon drive system for movement in Kerbin orbit and (when I can be bothered) elsewhere besides.
I've also been playing with spaceplane designs (more so than rockets if i'm honest) and the current model is Wryvern. So called because everytime it'd crash/flip over/explode, i'd shout Wwrrrryyyyyyy! and then rebuild it.
This is the first 'stable' iteration, the mk.1. Powered by a pair of afterburning turbojets and a good hard ramjet in the centre, it was my first foray into winged flight and uses various test pieces to do with power, engines, fuel, air intakes, wing configurations, pilots, remote operations, cargo packages and wheel layouts.
after many many crashes and WRRRYYYYYY!!! I eventually got one off the ground and let it loose
But, the mk.1 just wasn't a decent flight platform and you had to fight it, especially on take off (It would disco step down the runway and you'd have to boot it and get it off the ground as fast as possible before it rolled over)
This led to the Mk.II which never flew. Cos it was turd.
And then, after many youtube videos on real wing design, supersonic airflow and AoA, came the mk.III.
I like this one.
Have a guess which aircraft I copied a 'few' design tips from...
Everything has a slight upwards tilt, from the tall nose wheel, the wing chord and even the air intakes are rotated slightly upwards to work more efficiently in flight.
She's fitted with working flaps, a proper airbrake set up (the rudder points inwards as well), an all moving tail, tricycle carriage and a shit ton of fuel.
It comes with a pair of turbojets with adjustable re-heat and a pair of RAPIER. Not for any SSTO dreams, it doesn't carry anywhere near enough oxygen for that, but for high altitude capability and can do sub-orbital zoom climbs (I've cracked 50,000m) after flame out.
It also gives enough thrust to cruise on 2 engines at 30% throttle at just over 110m/s.
How does it fly? Well, thanks to the nose up attitude, it does want to go nose up a bit and i use SAS to keep a trim since i'm using a keyboard.
However, it will take off by itself without re-heat or any input except to bring the wheels and flaps up and because of the wing design will come off the ground at 60-70m/s nice and gentle.
Power wise, it isn't capable of supercruise, but will sit just below mach 1 without re-heat.
Lighting the burners will nudge it past transonic to roughly Mach 2+
And then turn the RAPIERs on air cycle and watch it go
I'm speed limited by structural heat build up rather than thrust. This was taken nose up, still on air cycle just before the turbojets flamed out. I had to back off at Mach 4.1 before the nose exploded.
4KidsOneCamera
Alliance’s New President // Likes SpaceX replicas
Staff member
Team Valiant
Swingin' on a Star
Atlas
Deja Vu
Fly me to the Moon
Under Pressure
My best KSP achievement to date is land-and-return from Moho in a single launch with full science kit, all stock, no ISRU. It's not much to look at, but screenshot below. Moho is one of the toughest destinations in the game. My next focus is probably the Jool system and in particular a land-and-return trip to Tylo.
Horus Lupercal
Primarch - Warmaster
Professor
Swingin' on a Star
Deja Vu
Biker Mice from Mars
ET phone home
Floater
Copycat
Registered
Yeah, I've seen them but I'm not a fan and would rather it stay together non-cheat. I just need to start sewing I think.
The onscreen data is KSP engineer. I don't use it to its full potential as I've not been further than LKO yet but the amount of data it can provide is staggering especially during building
The onscreen data is KSP engineer. I don't use it to its full potential as I've not been further than LKO yet but the amount of data it can provide is staggering especially during building
That one is on my list of mods to try one day, probably. As for autostrut and rigid attachment, I don’t consider them cheaty at all, but to each his own. In particular, rigid attachment is provided in particular for putting together wing parts into larger wings.
Interesting about rigid attachment, it can hurt. I was using it habitually during my space plane phase. Went back to rockets and had a booster mysteriously shattering at staging. It was in the inner layer of three layers of asparagus staging, so took a while to troubleshoot. Turns out that turning off rigid attachment on all the booster parts fixed it.
Interesting about rigid attachment, it can hurt. I was using it habitually during my space plane phase. Went back to rockets and had a booster mysteriously shattering at staging. It was in the inner layer of three layers of asparagus staging, so took a while to troubleshoot. Turns out that turning off rigid attachment on all the booster parts fixed it.
Horus Lupercal
Primarch - Warmaster
Professor
Swingin' on a Star
Deja Vu
Biker Mice from Mars
ET phone home
Floater
Copycat
Registered
I agree, the game is a bit overly floppy and it is annoying that it doesn't tell or show you if something is going to be structurally sound enough, you just find out the hard way when it folds over on the launch pad.
That's probably the hardest part of building I've found and easily the most time consuming part, is constantly trial and error testing for in-flight weaknesses
I've got an STS / Buran parts mod, it's visually really good but ridiculous to build considering the parts are made for each other and even that still needs sewing to keep the SRBs attached.
That's probably the hardest part of building I've found and easily the most time consuming part, is constantly trial and error testing for in-flight weaknesses
I've got an STS / Buran parts mod, it's visually really good but ridiculous to build considering the parts are made for each other and even that still needs sewing to keep the SRBs attached.
I just think of autostrut and rigid attachment (henceforth AS and RA) as in-game representations of the processes we use in real life (like welding) to make things not floppy even without visible, external struts.
But even with them, you'll often need manual struts too. For example, my two-bay mk 3 cargo plane above needed some manual struts in addition to AS/RA. And even then it can fall apart if you pitch up too hard at speed. And every cargo I put in those bays would have at least a couple manual struts, in addition to AS/RA.
Certainly, though, AS/RA help. One of their best advantages is reducing part count, which is a real issue for my computer with some of my launches.
But even with them, you'll often need manual struts too. For example, my two-bay mk 3 cargo plane above needed some manual struts in addition to AS/RA. And even then it can fall apart if you pitch up too hard at speed. And every cargo I put in those bays would have at least a couple manual struts, in addition to AS/RA.
Certainly, though, AS/RA help. One of their best advantages is reducing part count, which is a real issue for my computer with some of my launches.
I've done a Tylo landing and return now. That was pretty tough. Navigating there is easier than to Moho, but piloting the landing is much more challenging.
Next up is Laythe. For Laythe I've bundled a small space plane into a fairing on a rocket. First stage and boosters should get LKO. Second stage should handle the transfer to Laythe and insertion. Then the payload includes a return ship and the space plane. The plane can de-orbit, land, take off, re-orbit, and rendezvous with the return ship. Everything's been tested, so I'll probably do the launch tomorrow night.
Next up is Laythe. For Laythe I've bundled a small space plane into a fairing on a rocket. First stage and boosters should get LKO. Second stage should handle the transfer to Laythe and insertion. Then the payload includes a return ship and the space plane. The plane can de-orbit, land, take off, re-orbit, and rendezvous with the return ship. Everything's been tested, so I'll probably do the launch tomorrow night.
4KidsOneCamera
Alliance’s New President // Likes SpaceX replicas
Staff member
Team Valiant
Swingin' on a Star
Atlas
Deja Vu
Fly me to the Moon
Under Pressure
4KidsOneCamera
Alliance’s New President // Likes SpaceX replicas
Staff member
Team Valiant
Swingin' on a Star
Atlas
Deja Vu
Fly me to the Moon
Under Pressure
