IDK what people mean when they trash talk the Skipper. It's one of the most all around good engines. I use it for almost every launch as a center stage paired with two SRBs in career mode.
I used it for a Missile that included the Skipper, later the Mainsail designed to be sub-orbital, or at least, only circumnavigate Kerbin, but instead, it got into a stable orbit around 70-90km orbit…so in my subtle opinion they are quite good engines…yet somehow I never use them.
Besides it has BEAUTIFUL waterfall plumes. Idk if it's only with restock waterfall, or the video is old, but it looks beautiful. Reminds me of the MAKS spaceplane and how it's engines were supposed to be kero-hydrolox!
It's the definition of mid, which is why it's so great. The Skipper works great for its role. Unfortunately, it takes a refined pallet to appreciate a jack-of-all-trades.
Engine tips: The Wheesley actually has a worse thrust curve than the Juno, despite its higher total thrust. Also, the altitude that the game starts using an engine's vacuum ISP at is 30km, meaning that's the altitude where using Terriers becomes viable, so if you can get an SSTO with them there, you can light them at that point, and still get max efficiency. Also, I think Tier 7 gives you the NERV and Whiplash engines, and I know for a fact (because I've done it) that you can make an SSTO with that combo (and you can even do it in-line by using the interior nodes of the service bay, to make a ghetto Rapier).
Good points! Terriers and Nervs become much lower viable. At 30km you have the max ISP, but even a couple kilometers lower it is still quite close to the max. I start my Wolfhounds, Terriers and Nervs close to 20km.
You can start at 10-12km and not being losing too much efficiency. But you still want to have high speed and climb. Both Nervs and Terriers have both horrible isp and horrible thrust lower than 10km.
10:33 yeah, I agree. Those strut wheels are ATROCIOUS. The maximum tolerance is so low... 125 m/s max... what makes it worse is the fact that they are the only wheels at that tier that have BRAKES. I personally hate those wheels.
The problem with adding MOAR BOOSTERS at tier 0 is that you can never have a better mass ratio (and thus delta V) than your fuel (SRB) tank alone. The only potential solutions I can think of is starting on a mountain and building it so big it doesen't have to go as far.
Actually doing the math: stats according to KSP wiki (in vaccum for extra optimism): Isp = 165s m_wet = 1.5t m_dry = 0.45t Δv = v_exhaust * ln(m_wet / m_dry) v_ehaust = Isp * g = 165s * 9.81m/s² = 1619m/s Δv = v_exhaust * ln(m_wet / m_dry) = 1619m/s * ln(1.5t/0.45t) = 1949m/s the maximum Δv a single stage craft can have using the flea is less than the velocity needed to stay in LKO. That means that a tier 0 SSTO is impossible without some very physics defying magic.
Yeah, it definitely is impossible to make an SSTO with only Fleas, or even with only Hammers - a Flea on its own has 1949 m/s of vacuum delta-V, and a Hammer has 2979 m/s, and no single-stage arrangement using only those respective boosters can ever get more delta-V than that. It is maybe possible to make an all-solid SSTO with the Kickback though, that has 3613 m/s of vacuum delta-V/3202 m/s at sea level. Though the ascent profile will be very tricky.
It always nice to see you experimenting. The stuff with fairings and intercoolers was quite interesting to me. Did you know, that engine plates also shield the part IN FRONT of them as well, when the shroud is active? I knew you can shield parts attached to the variable amounts of nodes, but for reasons unknown, the part it is attached to is also shielded from drag. Also, you use multiple sets of nodes on the same engine plate: - select a number of nodes, attach stuff to it. - select another number of nodes, and attach more stuff to it. :) Keep on your work and have fun! :)
not sure what you mean by in front, but for the second trick it's exactly the same as having the front nodes of part inside an occluded area, except with the added weight of several engine plates, so very bad and inefficient
@@anonymous-rb2sr Hi, thanks for the feedback. There are some things to make it worthwhile fiddling with that. Remember that you can use up to 10 nodes on a single engine plate to shield stuff from drag. Offsetting things is always possible. Engine plates have three different nodes: - the front node, where the engine plate is usually attached to a fuel tank - the "variable" nodes, where you can select 1, 2, 3, 4, 4+1, 6+1, 8+1 nodes - the back node, which position is dependant on the length of the shroud. If the back node is occupied, the shroud is active. The shielding properties of the "variable" nodes is activated as well as the shielding of the front node. This is completely independant of the length of the shroud or the size of the engine plate. Or more if you reselect the number of nodes. So, if the back node is occupied, the fuel tank at the front as well as the engines (or any other part there) are completely shielded from drag and thermal influences. As you can use 8+1 "variable" nodes and the front nodes, you can have ten items shielded. This works independent of the size of the engine plate. You can use a 1.25m engine plate to shield much larger things. Engine plates are much lighter than fairings: a 1.25m engine plate with short shroud only weighs 52kg. And you can still offset things anywhere with the shielding active. Is use a combination of fairings (like in a previous video from vaos) and engine plates on my SSTOs in JNSQ. The fairing allows me to shield the center body with only small mass penalty, the engine plates are used to shield parts with high drag, usually at the front or the back. My favorite thing is a dragless docking port sr at the back, which would otherwise have horrendous plate drag. These techniques allow me to have crafts were the mass per rapier is well beyond 40t. I estimate that for a 400t SSTO, I will have about 2t in Fairings and engine plates. This is the mass penalty of a single rapier. A good benchmark for my earlier crafts was about 30t per Rapier, that would be 13.3 Rapiers for a 400t craft. With the body occluded from drag, I am only using 8-10 Rapiers, so the net benefit in mass is about 6.6t less engine weight minus the 2t for drag occlusion fairings and engine plates. This is not much in Stock, but in JNSQ the difference is quite noticable. The drawback is a lower initial TWR, so I need to take of besides the runway. :)
@@mephisto8101 It's pretty cool but I still don't quite understand how the front thing works, my question is this, does it occlude the BACK node of whatever is attached to the front of the engine plate or does it occlude ALL faces of the drag cube? Because if it does it's basically a major glitch, that you could used for, oh I don't know, let's say attach a FAIRING directly to the front of an engine plate, which, if what you say work (about anything attached to the front having the same properties as anything attached to the nodes inside the plate segment), then the fairing, that is on the outside, would have no drag, as itself is considered occluded by the game, normally fairings have a huge ammount of drag (to offset the drag fo the many things you put inside them), so if engine plates were coded wrong and the code for the nodes inside the engine plane stage was copy and pasted to the front node as well, you could make near dragless crafts, witht he only drag existing being the literal surface drag of a tiny (vertically) engine plate though I don't know if the different lenghs of plate change the surface area of the sides lenghs in the drag cube equation anyways, something to look into, a bit too glitch exploitative for me, I prefer to keep things realistic, but kinda intresting for pushing the boundaries with stock parts in a glitch allowed category
@@mephisto8101 also for your dragless craftst that you said you enjoyed, try putting node occluded shields at the front, the heating is applied by the unity engine in flight, the value of the heating is literally the exposed surface in the prograde direction of travel through the atmosphere, the way the game calculates this is literally the red light from the reentry heating, it shines a light source directly in front, and then takes the area of the parts that are being touched by the light and multiplies it by speed and air density to get heating all that to say that the heating of re entry is on a per surface basis in flight, no node mechanics involved, so you can put hundreds of heat shields that only expose a tiny part of each of them and you will get hundreds of times the performance of a regular airstream for your crafts you only need to survive ~ orbital speed at the lower levels of the atmosphere, so you should only need between 1 and 4 heat shields at the front, but I was telling you this because the most efficient ascent trajectory is directly horizontal at takeoff (like on moons), normally you cant do that on kerbin because of drag losses, but if you use glitches to remove drag you already have that problem taken care off, so I assume you run into the issue of burning up on ascent, so this post was me explaining how to survive very high ammounts of atmopsheric heat without adding any drag, by just putting node occluded heat shields in front of the airstream, you should be able to make your SSTOs fly directly horizontal, increasing their Dv to orbit
@@anonymous-rb2sr Yeah, I am completely with you here. I consider this a glitch. I would expect the engine plate to shield all things inside the shroud, but not outside of it. Apparently position does not matter much, as you can offset the shielded parts pretty much anywhere. As I understand it, the game applies the "occluded" tag to the parts attached to the frontal and variable nodes on the engine plate when the shroud is visible and active. So yes, you can make a complete fairing dragless and immune to temperature. The content inside of the fairing is then made "occluded" by the fairing itself. As VAOS showed, this can be a quite small fairing indeed. There are some caveats to the fairing trick with a very small fairing: it does not seem to work for an Kerbodyne S3-14400 tank, but works perfectly fine for two Kerbodyne S3-7200 tanks. Strange. Also, using to many engine plates in a row did create confusion for KSP and Kerbal Engineer dV computations when using the engine plates between parts. The solution for me was to build my plane normally and attach radially an advanced nose cone Type A or B. Attach an engine plate backwards with the shroud node to the nose cone. This activates the shroud. Fairing is attached to the frontal node of the engine plate. The fairing is then shielded and can be build normally. plus, all variable nodes are still ready to use for further parts. The radial attachment avoids the calculation errors for dV. That took me a while to figure out how to solve it. :) Also radial attachment of moveable parts like pistons and hinges avoids being them accidentally strutted to by another part. As I use "autostrut to grandparent part" a lot, this happens more often than I like.
Each one was artful, of course. Even in tier 2, you made it look like gravy, while mine look like a log truck. And then you go and sneak in little awesome features like a prototype docking pier and miniature Skylab!
Just a tip, the engine plate is a great way to get lots of linear attachment nodes for little extra mass cost. Very useful for when you unlock the Juno engine.
From all the landings none of them were on the runway. The way I am reentering is quit easy. What you want to do is burn retrograde until your periapsis is in the mountains or a bit further, then point up your ssto and while you reenter it will automatically increase your apoapsis. But you have to be careful to check the map a couple of times to see your your apoapsis is so you can raise or straighten your aircraft for a precise point of landing. While you get through reentry you want your apoapsis to be at the start of the runway becouse after you reenter you will slow down and you will glide from the mountains to the runway, or you could shoot for the end of the runway if your aircraft is not a good glider. You will have to mess around with this depending with your ssto but it works every time. It is very much of a micro managing sort of thing which can be annoying but it is way more prrcised, used it as you wish. Anyways great video VAOS looking foword for the advanced ssto video I forgot to say that I ussuly burn retrograde at the end pr middle of the dessert.
@@NickBDesigns I watched your 6 degrees of control video. It was cool, how did you make the engines all switch to keep the thrust going upwards when you rolled around
@@susfungus I utilize the rcs key commands up down, forward back, left right translation. So when I flipped 90degrees I just adjusted my rcs translation keys from up to forward.
the tie fighter has no hyperdrive because the empire wanted it to be expendable and cheap to manufacture and it requires a mothership to do any ftl activity at all and even it is an ssto
@@vaos3712 to specify, an SSTO that uses air breathing engines, takes off from a runway, and you do the opposite of all of your aerodynamic findings, the stuff from the testing campaign. Stuff like no aerodynamic coverings for the front of any exposed pieces, only using radially mounted intakes, not putting nosecones on the back of RAPIERS. If you want to take it a step further, use unnecessarily heavy parts. Basically try and do the most un optimization you can. I'd also like it if it still looks vaguely planelike, but you do you. In summary, Look at aero overlay, Haha drag arrow go BRRRRRRR
Yeah, it's superior in many practical ways, but SSTOs are a challenge and... well, I grew up on sci-fi, so I like to dream of owning a spacecraft like you'd own a car or at least an RV.
Short :( but great video! :) :) :). Next video for each tier: highest deltaV possible (from orbit of Kerbin - without drop tanks or stages) interplanetary spacecraft that can take a pilot, scientist and engineer and all the science of its specific tier.
SPACE PYRAMID! XD These tests interest me because, going by the numbers, I see vacuum-optimized engines like the Terrier start to look good from 20km altitude or even lower, but if you get better numbers by using the Swivel, I've obviously overlooked something. Maybe it's TWR. _calculate..._ Yes, it is. The swivel has a TWR of 143, the Terrier only 100. (Vacuum/Kerbin TWR figures.) If you used 7 Terriers, you'd have 2% less thrust but 17% more engine mass. The Poodle compares better to the Swivel, but at 17% more mass and 9% more thrust, it still has worse TWR. I think the Terrier and Poodle are best used like nuclear engines: fit relatively few so the craft has to make long burns. I don't always follow that advice though. The delta-V readout in SPH/VAB defaults to Kerbin sea level, but it's governed by the delta-V app. (Or is it the TWR app? It does both.) The app gives you a drop-down for body, buttons and a slider for altitude, and checkboxes for extra things to display when you click the stage thingies. This is what I use to see how rocket engines perform at different altitudes, but I evidently haven't used it enough to realize the big TWR difference between engines until now. :) Yey! Tiny extensible docking port! Weighs much less than the inline Clamp-o-Tron, doesn't it? I made one with flags to hide the bay interior and got the entire weight of the modifications (to the stock Dove), with RCS, solar panels, and a bigger battery, down to hardly more than the inline CoT alone. The Wheesley runs out of puff around 10km altitude. Unlike the Juno, it's a turbofan engine. I guess turbofans need a certain air pressure. I tried to use it in my first high-altitude plane; it was hopeless. Uh... you're using the Engine Nacelle part as an intake? That has incredible drag at supersonic speeds, and its intake air also falls off drastically. Oh, you're not... or are you? I'm sure it drags less with its nose covered. Anyway, apart from as an intake, you don't need one for Wheesleys at all. See for example the stock Learstar A1 in the VAB. But anyway, accelerating to orbital velocity takes more delta-V than getting to altitude, so it's good to go supersonic on jet power, and the Wheesley is hardly capable of it. (I wish I knew how to get the Juno to go supersonic. I probably need like a million rounds of drag testing or something.) Panther nice :3 Oof twitchycam! Ah, music! Tho now, it always makes me think of the heoric survival of Duna colony. ;) BTW VAOS, I'm using tricks from your SSTO how-to to balance my latest big SSTO. I don't know if it'll fly yet, but it's about 1000 times easier to keep COL from moving as the fuel drains. 👍
Tier 1 SSTO : Piramid of SRBs Tier 2 SSTO : Long boiiiiiiiiii Tier 3 SSTO : Weird looking rocket plane Tier 4 SSTO : Spaceplane Tier 5 SSTO : Looks like a space fither In ressume SSTOs whiout high tech are very challenching but really cool
Who was doing the lying? (I guess it could have been me, but I'm more cautious these days.) The wiki casually mentions low-tier SSTOs using Juno engines as if everybody knows that. I wish I knew how though.
I dont know much about KSP, but isnt your tier1 build extremely drag inefficient? Plus, stages would help you some, since you would get additional efficiency from your boosters. Keep burning a level after a level and shed the one that got used up lowering your mass as you go, what would let you lower your drag
Lol, stages means that it wouldn’t be an SSTO. (Single stage to orbit) Also, if you offset parts they still act as if they are still inline with each other. Therefore no drag. (Expect for the end part) 😎
Can't get anything reasonable into orbit without a RAPIER :( Not sure what's wrong, guess drag is too high. I got panthers unlocked and adjustable ram intake. I ended up with SSTO with much more wings than in your designs and in other videos around. In that case I at least was able to point craft more or less prograde and barely made an orbit. What's good lift/drag ratio? Did you measure drag during flight, what are good numbers?
I notice you put small structural wings underneath engines I assume to minimize their drag, move center of lift, increase lift, etc. It would be cool if you did tests comparing this to no structural wing underneath, compare cons, and make a video about if that is worth it! Anyone agree?
the only thing that wing could possibly do is shield the engine from reentry, how would adding a wing decrease drag?? wings literally work by adding directional drag, it's the entire point of a wing
tier 1 is obliviously possible, but vaos doesnt exactly have the skill level to pull it off he didn't even use node occlusion, his rocket had the aerodynamics of a pancake on top of the looks (he could check how much he lost to drag by turning it off), and he just stacked a bunch of boosters randomly, he didn't do maths, you're supposed to do maths when trying anything remotely challenging you do the equations backwards and it gives you the exact number of boosters you need also he added a bunch of capsules "for their reaction wheels" lol, he literally doesnt understand that 5 times more capsule means he needs a rocket 5 times bigger
I thought you could stack fleas on top of each other and have the one on top blow up the one underneath it to stage before you get decouples, was that changed?
VAOS VAOS, Bruh I got the solution for Tier I now, you ain't need decouplers as the second booster burns with upper's boost,.Pyramid was worth watching tho Cheers!
In Star Wars, ships don't obey Orbital Mechanics. which is scum. And their energy source is just magic. And ships magically *stops* when they reach destination. If they have the power to decelerate in just a second without the use of engines, they should have power to accelerate the same way -WITHOUT USING THE ENGINES. They also don't suffer reentry heatings, which is weird. as if all the planets lack atmosphere. In Star Trek though, ships park in orbit instead of hanging like a f**ing millenium falcon. They use anti-matter cores to power Warp coils to enter transwarp conduit. There are factors of Warp Speeds, in a logarithmic scale based on C. For example, Warp 1 = c (speed of light) And distances are properly calculated, for example, some trips cost months even at Warp Factor 9. ENTERPRISE FOR THE FEDERATION!! VIVA LA JEAN LUC PICARD!
With that said, I was a fan of Star Wars when i was a kid. But when I learned about KSP, orbital mechanics, Newton's laws of force (for example spaceships don't have brakes) and stuff, I started adoring Star Trek more.. But I'm not saying to criticize SW, just saying it's a child's universe, if you grow up, you end up a Trek fan.
It would be nice to focus on designs that carry payloads above 40t if you ever do a follow up. Early ssto are cool, but not really worth the time, an expendable small rocket is cheap anyway. Heavy cargo SSTOs are the ones saving tons of bucks.
IDK what people mean when they trash talk the Skipper. It's one of the most all around good engines. I use it for almost every launch as a center stage paired with two SRBs in career mode.
I used it for a Missile that included the Skipper, later the Mainsail designed to be sub-orbital, or at least, only circumnavigate Kerbin, but instead, it got into a stable orbit around 70-90km orbit…so in my subtle opinion they are quite good engines…yet somehow I never use them.
It is basically the Atlas sustainer engine equivalent.
Its a decent efficiency decent thrust engine i really like it
Besides it has BEAUTIFUL waterfall plumes. Idk if it's only with restock waterfall, or the video is old, but it looks beautiful. Reminds me of the MAKS spaceplane and how it's engines were supposed to be kero-hydrolox!
It's the definition of mid, which is why it's so great. The Skipper works great for its role. Unfortunately, it takes a refined pallet to appreciate a jack-of-all-trades.
Engine tips: The Wheesley actually has a worse thrust curve than the Juno, despite its higher total thrust. Also, the altitude that the game starts using an engine's vacuum ISP at is 30km, meaning that's the altitude where using Terriers becomes viable, so if you can get an SSTO with them there, you can light them at that point, and still get max efficiency.
Also, I think Tier 7 gives you the NERV and Whiplash engines, and I know for a fact (because I've done it) that you can make an SSTO with that combo (and you can even do it in-line by using the interior nodes of the service bay, to make a ghetto Rapier).
Good points! Terriers and Nervs become much lower viable. At 30km you have the max ISP, but even a couple kilometers lower it is still quite close to the max. I start my Wolfhounds, Terriers and Nervs close to 20km.
You can start at 10-12km and not being losing too much efficiency. But you still want to have high speed and climb. Both Nervs and Terriers have both horrible isp and horrible thrust lower than 10km.
That tiny station you put in the orbt at the end looks really cool ngl
yea, it totally is lol
I really liked it. It looked kind of like skylab
@@coffemug630 it looked more soviet to me
@@ryan_n05 I mean, it is an almost exact replica of skylab
10:33 yeah, I agree. Those strut wheels are ATROCIOUS. The maximum tolerance is so low... 125 m/s max... what makes it worse is the fact that they are the only wheels at that tier that have BRAKES. I personally hate those wheels.
The problem with adding MOAR BOOSTERS at tier 0 is that you can never have a better mass ratio (and thus delta V) than your fuel (SRB) tank alone. The only potential solutions I can think of is starting on a mountain and building it so big it doesen't have to go as far.
Actually doing the math:
stats according to KSP wiki (in vaccum for extra optimism):
Isp = 165s
m_wet = 1.5t
m_dry = 0.45t
Δv = v_exhaust * ln(m_wet / m_dry)
v_ehaust = Isp * g = 165s * 9.81m/s² = 1619m/s
Δv = v_exhaust * ln(m_wet / m_dry) = 1619m/s * ln(1.5t/0.45t) = 1949m/s
the maximum Δv a single stage craft can have using the flea is less than the velocity needed to stay in LKO.
That means that a tier 0 SSTO is impossible without some very physics defying magic.
Yeah, it definitely is impossible to make an SSTO with only Fleas, or even with only Hammers - a Flea on its own has 1949 m/s of vacuum delta-V, and a Hammer has 2979 m/s, and no single-stage arrangement using only those respective boosters can ever get more delta-V than that. It is maybe possible to make an all-solid SSTO with the Kickback though, that has 3613 m/s of vacuum delta-V/3202 m/s at sea level. Though the ascent profile will be very tricky.
Iddea ZSTO
8:28
I’ve seen Kerbals do that before when I’m building and it is freaking hilarious.
Your Skipper engine plume has an issue, 15:17 WaterfallRestock should fix it.
These cargo with terrier idea is the air launch, another interesting concept.
ever since I first saw you in the ssto tutorial, I've loved every video that you've made and hope u find great success!
Exciting to have KSP videos from 2022!
It always nice to see you experimenting. The stuff with fairings and intercoolers was quite interesting to me.
Did you know, that engine plates also shield the part IN FRONT of them as well, when the shroud is active?
I knew you can shield parts attached to the variable amounts of nodes, but for reasons unknown, the part it is attached to is also shielded from drag.
Also, you use multiple sets of nodes on the same engine plate:
- select a number of nodes, attach stuff to it.
- select another number of nodes, and attach more stuff to it. :)
Keep on your work and have fun! :)
not sure what you mean by in front, but for the second trick it's exactly the same as having the front nodes of part inside an occluded area, except with the added weight of several engine plates, so very bad and inefficient
@@anonymous-rb2sr
Hi, thanks for the feedback. There are some things to make it worthwhile fiddling with that. Remember that you can use up to 10 nodes on a single engine plate to shield stuff from drag. Offsetting things is always possible.
Engine plates have three different nodes:
- the front node, where the engine plate is usually attached to a fuel tank
- the "variable" nodes, where you can select 1, 2, 3, 4, 4+1, 6+1, 8+1 nodes
- the back node, which position is dependant on the length of the shroud.
If the back node is occupied, the shroud is active. The shielding properties of the "variable" nodes is activated as well as the shielding of the front node.
This is completely independant of the length of the shroud or the size of the engine plate. Or more if you reselect the number of nodes.
So, if the back node is occupied, the fuel tank at the front as well as the engines (or any other part there) are completely shielded from drag and thermal influences. As you can use 8+1 "variable" nodes and the front nodes, you can have ten items shielded.
This works independent of the size of the engine plate. You can use a 1.25m engine plate to shield much larger things. Engine plates are much lighter than fairings: a 1.25m engine plate with short shroud only weighs 52kg. And you can still offset things anywhere with the shielding active.
Is use a combination of fairings (like in a previous video from vaos) and engine plates on my SSTOs in JNSQ.
The fairing allows me to shield the center body with only small mass penalty, the engine plates are used to shield parts with high drag, usually at the front or the back. My favorite thing is a dragless docking port sr at the back, which would otherwise have horrendous plate drag.
These techniques allow me to have crafts were the mass per rapier is well beyond 40t. I estimate that for a 400t SSTO, I will have about 2t in Fairings and engine plates. This is the mass penalty of a single rapier.
A good benchmark for my earlier crafts was about 30t per Rapier, that would be 13.3 Rapiers for a 400t craft. With the body occluded from drag, I am only using 8-10 Rapiers, so the net benefit in mass is about 6.6t less engine weight minus the 2t for drag occlusion fairings and engine plates.
This is not much in Stock, but in JNSQ the difference is quite noticable.
The drawback is a lower initial TWR, so I need to take of besides the runway. :)
@@mephisto8101 It's pretty cool but I still don't quite understand how the front thing works, my question is this, does it occlude the BACK node of whatever is attached to the front of the engine plate or does it occlude ALL faces of the drag cube?
Because if it does it's basically a major glitch, that you could used for, oh I don't know, let's say attach a FAIRING directly to the front of an engine plate, which, if what you say work (about anything attached to the front having the same properties as anything attached to the nodes inside the plate segment), then the fairing, that is on the outside, would have no drag, as itself is considered occluded by the game, normally fairings have a huge ammount of drag (to offset the drag fo the many things you put inside them), so if engine plates were coded wrong and the code for the nodes inside the engine plane stage was copy and pasted to the front node as well, you could make near dragless crafts, witht he only drag existing being the literal surface drag of a tiny (vertically) engine plate
though I don't know if the different lenghs of plate change the surface area of the sides lenghs in the drag cube equation
anyways, something to look into, a bit too glitch exploitative for me, I prefer to keep things realistic, but kinda intresting for pushing the boundaries with stock parts in a glitch allowed category
@@mephisto8101 also for your dragless craftst that you said you enjoyed, try putting node occluded shields at the front, the heating is applied by the unity engine in flight, the value of the heating is literally the exposed surface in the prograde direction of travel through the atmosphere, the way the game calculates this is literally the red light from the reentry heating, it shines a light source directly in front, and then takes the area of the parts that are being touched by the light and multiplies it by speed and air density to get heating
all that to say that the heating of re entry is on a per surface basis in flight, no node mechanics involved, so you can put hundreds of heat shields that only expose a tiny part of each of them and you will get hundreds of times the performance of a regular airstream
for your crafts you only need to survive ~ orbital speed at the lower levels of the atmosphere, so you should only need between 1 and 4 heat shields at the front, but I was telling you this because the most efficient ascent trajectory is directly horizontal at takeoff (like on moons), normally you cant do that on kerbin because of drag losses, but if you use glitches to remove drag you already have that problem taken care off, so I assume you run into the issue of burning up on ascent, so this post was me explaining how to survive very high ammounts of atmopsheric heat without adding any drag, by just putting node occluded heat shields in front of the airstream, you should be able to make your SSTOs fly directly horizontal, increasing their Dv to orbit
@@anonymous-rb2sr
Yeah, I am completely with you here. I consider this a glitch. I would expect the engine plate to shield all things inside the shroud, but not outside of it. Apparently position does not matter much, as you can offset the shielded parts pretty much anywhere.
As I understand it, the game applies the "occluded" tag to the parts attached to the frontal and variable nodes on the engine plate when the shroud is visible and active.
So yes, you can make a complete fairing dragless and immune to temperature. The content inside of the fairing is then made "occluded" by the fairing itself. As VAOS showed, this can be a quite small fairing indeed.
There are some caveats to the fairing trick with a very small fairing: it does not seem to work for an Kerbodyne S3-14400 tank, but works perfectly fine for two Kerbodyne S3-7200 tanks. Strange.
Also, using to many engine plates in a row did create confusion for KSP and Kerbal Engineer dV computations when using the engine plates between parts.
The solution for me was to build my plane normally and attach radially an advanced nose cone Type A or B.
Attach an engine plate backwards with the shroud node to the nose cone. This activates the shroud.
Fairing is attached to the frontal node of the engine plate. The fairing is then shielded and can be build normally.
plus, all variable nodes are still ready to use for further parts.
The radial attachment avoids the calculation errors for dV. That took me a while to figure out how to solve it. :)
Also radial attachment of moveable parts like pistons and hinges avoids being them accidentally strutted to by another part. As I use "autostrut to grandparent part" a lot, this happens more often than I like.
Each one was artful, of course. Even in tier 2, you made it look like gravy, while mine look like a log truck. And then you go and sneak in little awesome features like a prototype docking pier and miniature Skylab!
Another amazing video. I’ve learned so much from your videos! Keep up the good work!
Just a tip, the engine plate is a great way to get lots of linear attachment nodes for little extra mass cost. Very useful for when you unlock the Juno engine.
The Mk0 fuel tanks have by far the best wet:dry mass ratio of any tank, so they're very good too.
From all the landings none of them were on the runway. The way I am reentering is quit easy. What you want to do is burn retrograde until your periapsis is in the mountains or a bit further, then point up your ssto and while you reenter it will automatically increase your apoapsis. But you have to be careful to check the map a couple of times to see your your apoapsis is so you can raise or straighten your aircraft for a precise point of landing. While you get through reentry you want your apoapsis to be at the start of the runway becouse after you reenter you will slow down and you will glide from the mountains to the runway, or you could shoot for the end of the runway if your aircraft is not a good glider. You will have to mess around with this depending with your ssto but it works every time. It is very much of a micro managing sort of thing which can be annoying but it is way more prrcised, used it as you wish. Anyways great video VAOS looking foword for the advanced ssto video I forgot to say that I ussuly burn retrograde at the end pr middle of the dessert.
Good stuff! Tier 7 would be great
It took me a whole year or so to figure out how to build a plane,and this guy in 20 minutes does planes without problems
Great video. Very entertaining please keep making videos as often as possible. Notifications are on so I don't miss one.
Awesome stuff. The higher tiers sound interesting, though I’m not sure what advancements you’d make use of in each tier.
In always down for more Vaos. So yea, more SSTO!!
Would be awesome to see the rest of the tiers!
Great content here to boost that algorithm m8 :))
I can’t build an SSTO unless you count single stage to ocean…
The pyramid launch was cool
I like level 5 and 6 the best since they’re more like what we have available today
Hello again
@@susfungus hello again to you as well,
How’s the day been for ya?
@@NickBDesigns I watched your 6 degrees of control video. It was cool, how did you make the engines all switch to keep the thrust going upwards when you rolled around
@@susfungus I utilize the rcs key commands up down, forward back, left right translation. So when I flipped 90degrees I just adjusted my rcs translation keys from up to forward.
@@NickBDesigns oh I thought it was automatic and you were a genius LOL
Nice video, I'd like to see one for tier Sprite... I mean 7up
All the way up! Please.
the tie fighter has no hyperdrive because the empire wanted it to be expendable and cheap to manufacture and it requires a mothership to do any ftl activity at all and even it is an ssto
19:24
*The Kerbal looks dissatisfied.*
Thanks for the knowledge
Awesome video 👍🏼
Of course we want more!
Video 5 of petitioning VAOS to make the least aerodynamically efficient, air breathing SSTO Possible. Like the Skylab recreation too.
Can you be more specific? I can make a cube SSTO but that’s easy.
@@vaos3712 to specify, an SSTO that uses air breathing engines, takes off from a runway, and you do the opposite of all of your aerodynamic findings, the stuff from the testing campaign. Stuff like no aerodynamic coverings for the front of any exposed pieces, only using radially mounted intakes, not putting nosecones on the back of RAPIERS. If you want to take it a step further, use unnecessarily heavy parts. Basically try and do the most un optimization you can. I'd also like it if it still looks vaguely planelike, but you do you.
In summary, Look at aero overlay, Haha drag arrow go BRRRRRRR
tier 4 reminds me of the Altamira, the first SSTO made in SN by Histalonia like 2 or 3 years ago
very nice video😄 BUT... I have a question: Why U put some wing under the engine?
It’s a secret 🤫
Please tell me what visual mods you are using for the planet and the thrusters. They look amazing!
Description 😎
I've always thought the dual-ship piggyback design is superior to both the Orbiter and SSTO design (in the real world anyway)
More like it's easier to implement. Especially since payload size came smaller instead the opposite as was predicted when shuttles were designed.
@@mytiliss682 Also you get the mass saving from not having a massive TPS, and vacuum-optimised engines on your upper stage
Yeah, it's superior in many practical ways, but SSTOs are a challenge and... well, I grew up on sci-fi, so I like to dream of owning a spacecraft like you'd own a car or at least an RV.
So.. that's where the flying pyramid pictures originated from?
P.S. the editing is great!
Short :( but great video! :) :) :).
Next video for each tier: highest deltaV possible (from orbit of Kerbin - without drop tanks or stages) interplanetary spacecraft that can take a pilot, scientist and engineer and all the science of its specific tier.
Oh man, awesome engine bursts, what mod you installed can you please green us, I want to install!
Description 😎
SPACE PYRAMID! XD
These tests interest me because, going by the numbers, I see vacuum-optimized engines like the Terrier start to look good from 20km altitude or even lower, but if you get better numbers by using the Swivel, I've obviously overlooked something. Maybe it's TWR. _calculate..._ Yes, it is. The swivel has a TWR of 143, the Terrier only 100. (Vacuum/Kerbin TWR figures.) If you used 7 Terriers, you'd have 2% less thrust but 17% more engine mass. The Poodle compares better to the Swivel, but at 17% more mass and 9% more thrust, it still has worse TWR. I think the Terrier and Poodle are best used like nuclear engines: fit relatively few so the craft has to make long burns. I don't always follow that advice though.
The delta-V readout in SPH/VAB defaults to Kerbin sea level, but it's governed by the delta-V app. (Or is it the TWR app? It does both.) The app gives you a drop-down for body, buttons and a slider for altitude, and checkboxes for extra things to display when you click the stage thingies. This is what I use to see how rocket engines perform at different altitudes, but I evidently haven't used it enough to realize the big TWR difference between engines until now. :)
Yey! Tiny extensible docking port! Weighs much less than the inline Clamp-o-Tron, doesn't it? I made one with flags to hide the bay interior and got the entire weight of the modifications (to the stock Dove), with RCS, solar panels, and a bigger battery, down to hardly more than the inline CoT alone.
The Wheesley runs out of puff around 10km altitude. Unlike the Juno, it's a turbofan engine. I guess turbofans need a certain air pressure. I tried to use it in my first high-altitude plane; it was hopeless.
Uh... you're using the Engine Nacelle part as an intake? That has incredible drag at supersonic speeds, and its intake air also falls off drastically. Oh, you're not... or are you? I'm sure it drags less with its nose covered. Anyway, apart from as an intake, you don't need one for Wheesleys at all. See for example the stock Learstar A1 in the VAB. But anyway, accelerating to orbital velocity takes more delta-V than getting to altitude, so it's good to go supersonic on jet power, and the Wheesley is hardly capable of it. (I wish I knew how to get the Juno to go supersonic. I probably need like a million rounds of drag testing or something.)
Panther nice :3
Oof twitchycam!
Ah, music! Tho now, it always makes me think of the heoric survival of Duna colony. ;)
BTW VAOS, I'm using tricks from your SSTO how-to to balance my latest big SSTO. I don't know if it'll fly yet, but it's about 1000 times easier to keep COL from moving as the fuel drains. 👍
The rk-7 is based of the rusian rd-107 from the soyuz rocket. good video!
1:44 you seem to have approximated ancient Egyptian pyramid style space craft! 😂 Tier 1 is OLDSCHOOL!
This is fun stuff. Yes please to higher tiers - I don’t usually play at higher tech levels
i am thoroughly enjoying this format, and so into it.
thank you so much for the content and stay safe,
- spacederg out
you have way more patients than me on this game LOL.
This is not Surgeon Simulator
you should try making a rover that can walk like a dog
Tier 1 SSTO : Piramid of SRBs
Tier 2 SSTO : Long boiiiiiiiiii
Tier 3 SSTO : Weird looking rocket plane
Tier 4 SSTO : Spaceplane
Tier 5 SSTO : Looks like a space fither
In ressume SSTOs whiout high tech are very challenching but really cool
You give me good ideas for my SRTO,s
We need Bradley and stratzenblitz here to try tier 1
Tier 7 and up please! great video!
So an SSTO with Junos is possible... We have been lied to for too long.
Who was doing the lying? (I guess it could have been me, but I'm more cautious these days.) The wiki casually mentions low-tier SSTOs using Juno engines as if everybody knows that. I wish I knew how though.
@@eekee6034 Most mainstream KSP youtubers who always use Whiplash and Rapiers. And myself of course.
an ssto without any jet engine is possible why in the hell would it be impossible with jet engines?
worst case scenario it just acts as payload mass
all the way. poggers
What's the music at 17:43?
will you do the other tiers?
Maybe
obama prism: tier 1
by how specific impulse works it's imposible to have a ssto for tier 1 tech
I dont know much about KSP, but isnt your tier1 build extremely drag inefficient? Plus, stages would help you some, since you would get additional efficiency from your boosters. Keep burning a level after a level and shed the one that got used up lowering your mass as you go, what would let you lower your drag
Lol, stages means that it wouldn’t be an SSTO. (Single stage to orbit) Also, if you offset parts they still act as if they are still inline with each other. Therefore no drag. (Expect for the end part) 😎
@@vaos3712 Aah. That explains it. Dont really know what those acronyms are...
Can't get anything reasonable into orbit without a RAPIER :( Not sure what's wrong, guess drag is too high. I got panthers unlocked and adjustable ram intake. I ended up with SSTO with much more wings than in your designs and in other videos around. In that case I at least was able to point craft more or less prograde and barely made an orbit. What's good lift/drag ratio? Did you measure drag during flight, what are good numbers?
how did you do the transparent window thing at 10:46?
Couldn't you have used the SRBs to destroy the one below it and act as a decoupler?
Then it wouldn't be an ssto
Would the reliant not have worked for the tier 5?
Maybe
@@vaos3712 come to think of it, people seem to really not like using it, wonder if it might be worth doing a video on?
no es posible hacer un ssto en tier uno, pero su es posible alcanzar orbita
I notice you put small structural wings underneath engines I assume to minimize their drag, move center of lift, increase lift, etc. It would be cool if you did tests comparing this to no structural wing underneath, compare cons, and make a video about if that is worth it!
Anyone agree?
the only thing that wing could possibly do is shield the engine from reentry, how would adding a wing decrease drag?? wings literally work by adding directional drag, it's the entire point of a wing
Tier 1 SSTO didnt utilize enough of the kraken potential
tier 1 is obliviously possible, but vaos doesnt exactly have the skill level to pull it off
he didn't even use node occlusion, his rocket had the aerodynamics of a pancake on top of the looks (he could check how much he lost to drag by turning it off), and he just stacked a bunch of boosters randomly, he didn't do maths, you're supposed to do maths when trying anything remotely challenging
you do the equations backwards and it gives you the exact number of boosters you need
also he added a bunch of capsules "for their reaction wheels" lol, he literally doesnt understand that 5 times more capsule means he needs a rocket 5 times bigger
@@anonymous-rb2sr lol your too funny 😂
@@anonymous-rb2sr when u doing the video how to ?
Fun fact:you can get t space with only the mk1 size command pod and the RT-10 “Hammer”.
th-cam.com/video/HW_Z--thm4s/w-d-xo.html 😎👍
Can you make a vid on how to download mods. I cant get any of them to work. Great vid tho!
I thought you could stack fleas on top of each other and have the one on top blow up the one underneath it to stage before you get decouples, was that changed?
@@lastfirst5863 You can do that, sure. But if you do, then it won’t be an ssto. 😎
Yoooooooooooo. It’s here!!!!!!
does self destroying part of the rocket, still count as ssto o.O?
cool video
Chuck Norris did tier 0 SSTO
This was cool. I would enjoy higher tiers.
Reply for a link to the new VAOS unofficial discord
Really underrated channel :/ :U :/
VAOS VAOS, Bruh I got the solution for Tier I now, you ain't need decouplers as the second booster burns with upper's boost,.Pyramid was worth watching tho
Cheers!
I can use flea boosters to go to high orbit if I want
Use a mod called FMRS if you're planning to have piggy back cargo.
Why do you remind me of This Old Tony?
we have tier 1 sstos
U sound kinda like High Boi. Just less high, but high in another wat.
oh yeah, new video
oh yeah, new video
the flying pyramid
All the way.
Sssshhh, it'll be ok
Lmao
🤫
Jaffa kree!
all the tiers, please?
you using mods or dlc?
15:20
Nea, that’s not interesting no more.
Were the egyptians trying to build an ssto with the pyramids? Its kinda sus bro, ngl
cool
so that's what the egyptian pyramids were for
launch rail hypersonic rocket payload
rail gun normal rocket em-rail booster
ie plasma rail gun booster extender, less mass, more speed, ion rail gun
18:03 Dew it
In Star Wars, ships don't obey Orbital Mechanics. which is scum. And their energy source is just magic. And ships magically *stops* when they reach destination.
If they have the power to decelerate in just a second without the use of engines, they should have power to accelerate the same way -WITHOUT USING THE ENGINES. They also don't suffer reentry heatings, which is weird. as if all the planets lack atmosphere.
In Star Trek though, ships park in orbit instead of hanging like a f**ing millenium falcon. They use anti-matter cores to power Warp coils to enter transwarp conduit.
There are factors of Warp Speeds, in a logarithmic scale based on C. For example, Warp 1 = c (speed of light)
And distances are properly calculated, for example, some trips cost months even at Warp Factor 9.
ENTERPRISE FOR THE FEDERATION!! VIVA LA JEAN LUC PICARD!
With that said,
I was a fan of Star Wars when i was a kid. But when I learned about KSP, orbital mechanics, Newton's laws of force (for example spaceships don't have brakes) and stuff, I started adoring Star Trek more.. But I'm not saying to criticize SW, just saying it's a child's universe, if you grow up, you end up a Trek fan.
Expanse tho, is well thought sci-fi, not a futuristic-fantasy like SW
But I still love Star Wars, just telling these to point out it's not proper science-fiction, it lacks the science part in it as well as physics rules.
It would be nice to focus on designs that carry payloads above 40t if you ever do a follow up. Early ssto are cool, but not really worth the time, an expendable small rocket is cheap anyway. Heavy cargo SSTOs are the ones saving tons of bucks.
Egypt model
7 please tier 7
S S T O
b i t s o f w i n g s