Kerbal Space Program - Page 9

On February 06 2014 05:39 felisconcolori wrote:


Well, I may actually get off my metaphorical ass and dig out some headphones so I can run a "quality" stream with some form of interaction later tonight or tomorrow in which case you could watch me flailing, but here's the trick as I understand it:

As many intakes as you can with as few engines as you can get away with and enough lift to get off the ground. There are... ways... of mounting more intakes than you would think is possible. (My orbit capable space plane has 25 ram intakes for 2 turbojet engines. My second revision, not shown, uses 24 intakes as the front one is swapped for a shielded docking port.)
Pics:
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There's two small fuel tanks with rocket engines on them for the final circularization burn and space maneuvers as well as some RCS. Also, lots of inline stabilizers and that thing moves with authoritah.

So the sequence is like this - activate turbojets and throttle up (with SCS on), take off, and climb out at about 30 degrees angle of attack. Watch intake air like a hawk once altitude tops 15km. Level out to about 5 degrees above 20km altitude, continue monitoring intake air while speed (and altitude) continues to build. Keep on keeping on, throttling down if necessary as intake air drops to 0.1. The way the turbojets are set up, it will not flat spin if one flames out, but by the time it hits that altitude it should already be going pretty damn near orbital speed and around 40km altitude. (The red bow-wave is pretty.) Watch my apoapsis rise as speed rises, until it gets outside of atmosphere. To continue building speed, I may need to switch over to the rocket motors (I use action groups which toggle the engines on or off) but only at a low thrust. I'm kinda already in an orbit at that point, although the apoapsis is ~100km and the periapsis is ~30km. I try to not use any engines in the atmosphere, and set up a circularization burn at apoapsis to circularize the orbit. The model pictured can get to orbit with around 900 dV left - not good for much but crew transfers, and not even that since it has a crew of 1. It is however the first plane I've put into a stable orbit, so I was pretty excited.

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I'm kindof fond of biplane designs although I've made some planes that are large glider-type aircraft, and one oddity that breaks physics but is not quite infiniglide.



Not incredibly difficult, but you have to use docking ports which can create some issues. (Or, there are mods.) It's all fun and games until you apply thrust and watch your baby shake itself to pieces and create a giant debris field in orbit. That said, I've got a ship orbiting Duna after a landing on Ike waiting for its return window, and I've dropped a rover on Eve. Something like Kerbal Engineer Redux or MechJeb are useful for getting delta V information although of course MechJeb can do a lot more, and some purists hate it. My take is, if it's okay for Scott Manley, it's okay with me.