Can I build a MACH 9 PLANE in Modded KSP 1!? (Aircraft Only: Ep 3)

I set out in this episode to FINALLY reach orbit using my first SSTO of the series, but there's a catch... I got a contract to fly all the way to MACH 9 within the atmosphere and then land safely, a contract that pays far to well to turn down. NOW this is a challenge!
Download the "modpack" I use here : / discord
Check out the official playlist for the aircraft only series: • KSP Aircraft Only (All...
Check out the ongoing KSP2 version of this series! (13 episodes!!): • KSP 2 Aircraft Only! (...
Alphabetical Modlist:
Advanced Fly-By-Wire (Windows), ASET Consolidated Agency, ASET Consolidated Avionics Pack, ASET Consolidated Props Pack, Astrogator, ballisticfox's lukewarm TUFX, ballisticfox's neutral TUFX profile, ballisticfox's vintage TUFX profile, BetterTimeWarpContinued, Camera Tools continued, Chatterer, Contract Pack: Bases and Stations Reborn, Contract Pack: Tourism Plus, Custom Asteroids (Kuiper belt analog for OPM), Custom Asteroids (stockalike config), Custom Barn Kit, DE_IVAExtension, Distant Object Enhancement, Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux, Extraplanetary Launchpads, Extreme Plane Contracts, Far Future Technologies, FreeIva, Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes, HUD Replacer, HullcamVDS Continued, Kcalbeloh System, Kerbal Engineer Redux, Kerbal Konstructs, Kerbin Side GAP, Kerbin Side Remastered, Kerbin Side Remastered - The Life Aquatic, Kerbin Side Remastered GAP, KSC Harbor, KSP Community Fixes, Minor Planet Sampling, Minor Planets Expansion, Near Future Suite ( Aeronautics, Construction, Electrical, Exploration, IVA Props, Launch Vehicles, Propulsion, Solar) Outer Planets Mod, Outer Planets Mod - Parallax with Scatters, Outer Planets Mod - Visual Overhaul, Parallax, Planes With Purposes, PlanetShine, Pood's Deep Star Map Skybox, Probe Control Room Recontrolled, RasterPropMonitor, REPOSoftTech-Agencies, Reviva, Scatterer, Stock Waterfall Effects, Textures Unlimited, Through The Eyes of a Kerbal, TooManyOrbits, Trajectories, TUFX, Vessel Viewer Continued, VesselView-UI-RasterPropMonitor, Warp Everywhere, Water Launch Sites, Waterfall Core, WaypointManager, ZTheme
Music by: steviasphere.b..., Karl Casey @ White bat audio
Outro Song: steviasphere.b...

[@Bloodknight7567]

Contractors in this series “oh you went mach 4? Almost died? Try 9! Almost died again? 12 it is!”

[@Trainsntoys-ck4zq]

Great comment

[@rpcr6580]

That modded KSP 1 has the best of KSP 2 inside of it. Like it is the game that was supposed to be xd. Good vid btw

[@miscme6046]

yea i want to find the mods (Edit: found it but holy thats a list)

[@smooneychad]

@@miscme6046 Yeah it’s a pretty brutal list, gonna work on breaking it up into parts for future descriptions!

[@smooneychad]

Yep, all we needed was a nice polished ksp 1 modpack all along! 😂 and thanks! :D

[@PuncakeLena]

They could've just made their own version of an x amount of popular mods and published it as KSP 2 and we'd have eaten it up Start development of 3 from scratch at the same time and you'd have had an excellent game with lots of devtime for that too

[@MinecraftRader]

Regarding the wings, Enable autostrut and you can autostrut things midflight that should be stable but are not.

[@victor_silva6142]

Pretty much what I thought.

[@smooneychad]

I won’t have access to autostrut until I get the actual strut part unlocked, (advanced tweakables is on) makes for some interesting engineering challenges in the mean time though since I usually lean hard into using autostrut lol

[@DavidEdwards9801]

@@smooneychad I usually autostrut to "grandparent part" I have run into an issue where all my wings and tanks were all auto-strutted to the same part, made for some really impressive wobble tbh =)

[@Allthegoodhandlesaretakenlmao]

@@DavidEdwards9801 I just alternate root and heaviest and it seems to keep it relatively stable

[@DavidEdwards9801]

@@Allthegoodhandlesaretakenlmao hey, thanks for the tip I should try that out =)

[@wokix88]

I do believe that the contracts for speed records, and that whole mod is assuming that you are using RSS, that’s probably why the numbers exceed escape velocities

[@eleypvr7294]

Haaappy birthday ! Great video, loved it. Your plane kinda reminded me of the Xb-70 or the XF-108

[@smooneychad]

Thank you!! Big inspos there, sometimes I feel like half of the stuff I build is xb-70 related in some way lol

[@eleypvr7294]

@@smooneychad lol i feel that, it would be fun to see you try to make something inspired by an old mig like the fishbed or ever the foxbat

[@pilots_VR]

i love how the ksc has enough funds to make a proper taxiway, but they leave the runway a patch of dirt

[@smooneychad]

I can’t even think of a stupid excuse why they’d do that lol insurance or something???

[@glovely4119]

This series is something I can see myself watch over the long term, please keep going! Also happy birthday lol.

[@smooneychad]

That’s awesome, much more on the way! And thanks!! :D

[@elhsgiuloigtn]

For the overcorrecting that the planes have, you could use Atmospheric Autopilot, it limits AoA and G forces and has some pretty nice features in it like cruise control.

[@smooneychad]

I believe that might be the one final mod I add too the series, immensely helpful!

[@jamesbullard5226]

i love your countryish accent, it just makes the whole vide so much more enjoyable

[@Monn2754]

I loved this video, this series has seriously shown high hopes. And happy birthday!

[@spooxer]

i love this series SO MUCH thank you thank you thank you edit: also happy birthday!!

[@smooneychad]

Glad you love it! :D and thank YOU for watching!

[@fakiAZer]

Man ! I was litteraly on your channel page to see if it had been released yet ! Love this playthrough

[@smooneychad]

Hope you enjoyed! :D had a bit of trouble getting this one uploaded but it ended up being perfect timing i guess! lol

[@fakiAZer]

@@smooneychad Enjoyed it a lot ! Though i wish it was longer, it felt way too short in my opinion

[@Andersam]

Loving the series man keep it up!!! One thing I noticed is that "

[@americanhat3766]

Whenever you eventually start making SSTO's with payload, I recommend looking at another KSP youtuber named VAOS and seeing his "Low tech cargo SSTO" video where he makes a flatbed SSTO for carrying fairly heavy cargo into space with only the whezley and reliant engines

[@thekeithfulbarrums]

Cool video! Love to see the ‘Canard TSR2’ in action!

[@An_M4A3]

Continue the great work, bro. The videos are amazing, and the editing is just "cheff kiss"

[@AhrimanVII]

Thank you for the amazing series and Happy Birthday! Can't wait for the explosive Mach 12 experiments 🤣

[@smooneychad]

I just got done recording and it was INTENSE lol

[@Metriximor]

I adore this series, it's a good fun recap that surely took a ton of work and time to make, great work! Keep it up can't wait for ep4

[@smooneychad]

Thanks a ton! Already working on ep4 :D

[@janYefi]

The yawing oscillation may be due to the edges of the wings being folded downwards instead of upwards. If you imagine lift vectors you can see that rolling to a one side makes such a wing produce even more lift to the side of roll, instead of back to the stable orientation.

[@smooneychad]

That’s a really good point, another consequence of me always putting aesthetics first lol

[@DaraelDraconis]

I'm pretty sure the "cape" effect is less because you initially placed the wings forward and more because you built your wings beginning with the frontmost piece. The issue is _which wing-piece_ is connected to the fuselage, at least as much as where _on_ the fuselage it's connected. Notice how when you shifted them, you were attaching from the central rectangular section.

[@yan_ixx23]

You motivated me to play modded KSP1

[@Concavenator_corcovatus]

Things about a be crazy at Mach 12

[@smooneychad]

Recording the next episode has been insane, pretty much a straight line trajectory out of kerbin orbit lol

[@gdutfulkbhh7537]

You make some beautiful planes! I sometimes put fixed undercarriage wheels on radial decouplers when attempting an early speed run... but it makes the landings a bit dicey.

[@smooneychad]

That’s a great idea! Well if you have EVA unlocked I suppose Jeb could bail out before landing! lol

[@owngamesgamer4030]

I'm following this series cause I'm really bad at sstos and after installing this mod pack i edned up just making rockets anyway but i do like making pasanger planes and other plane contracts just to earn money at the beginning. but the fact that you make videos on it means i can also learn

[@smooneychad]

I’m hoping to finally start doing some SSTOs and general ksp tutorials again soon, in the meantime hopefully you can pick up some stuff from my contraptions in this series! Thanks for watching!!

[@ghostyminer2]

New favorit series for me

[@smooneychad]

That’s awesome! More on the way

[@marekvalachprg]

Hey, try adding KSP interstellar extended to your list, it adds amount of content comparable to the game itself and offers great new ways to build spaceplanes too. You can have planes running on only air intake or stuff like liquid nitrogen or carbon dioxide.

[@smooneychad]

I ended up going with all of the near future mods along with far future tech, has some cool nuclear jet engines and different types of rapiers later on, it's gonna be awesome!

[@gllherme]

Happy biryhday!! This series is great!!

[@smooneychad]

Thanks!!

[@duboiplayswert4641]

Love these,so happy when you upload!!

[@smooneychad]

Glad you like em’ and thanks so much for watching!!

[@brycedonfrancisco2926]

Top tier editing. Thank you for making KSP1 content.

[@smooneychad]

Thank you for watching it! :D

[@lazarmin6763]

Happy Bday my dude! Awsome vid as usual

[@thelouro_0783]

Impressive flying!

[@awildwightappeared3685]

Happy Bday, thanks for the vid!

[@smooneychad]

Thanks, and thank you for watching!!

[@oversecus833]

Enable autostrut. (Also still waiting for the feet cam.) (Also happy birthday.)

[@smooneychad]

Haven’t quite unlocked it yet sadly Sold the cam for one of those asmr mics with ears on them, so I can whisper SSTO propaganda at everyone And thanks! Lmao

[@oversecus833]

@@smooneychad Ight, I'll take that as you promising to do KSP ASMR! Can't wait!

[@josephchanley7228]

Really enjoying these! Happy birthday day as well!

[@smooneychad]

Glad you like em, thanks! (And thanks for watching!)

[@Grayham14]

happy b-day! Loving this seris, always been a huge fan of space planes!

[@smooneychad]

Thanks!! :D and same here (though that is probably very obvious at this point lol)

[@colegustafson199]

The yawning oscillation actually kinda makes sense for an airbrake, it helps create more drag while staying generally in the same nominal direction

[@smooneychad]

It may look kinda sketchy but that’s a good point, funny how it quite literally looks like it’s a car slamming on the brakes at high speed too lol

[@_Niktar_]

Happy birthday, found you just yesterday and I'm impressed.

[@thespectre5403]

Happy birthday!!!

[@Sqealyum]

I enjoy this series and I love your designs, keep it up.

[@smooneychad]

Will do! And thanks for watching! :D

[@unqool]

Happy birthday dude!

[@curious_ksp_]

New video! Wohoo!

[@Nikarus2370]

The fishtailing behavior is being caused by the angled "brakes" on the outer quarter of the wings. Basically if there's anything but perfect airflow 1 catches the air better and pulls you left driving the right hand one into the airstream more which then pulls you back right. A much more effective approach for using the low tech control surfaces like these is to instead make "duckarons" (is what we call them in the RC aircraft community). In KSP it'd be the 2 controls are overlapped on eachother, 1 moves up while braking, the other moves down. But it keeps the airflow perfectly balanced.

[@diotcoke-yr6im]

Happy birthday, Smooney

[@smooneychad]

Thank you!! :)

[@ГенералГавс-х4к]

Keep going bro

[@MrLM002]

Happy birthday man!

[@wuttho]

Happy birthday big man!!

[@smooneychad]

thanks! :D

[@Overlycomplicatedswede]

Didn’t think I’d see a Dorito go 9 times the speed of sound

[@Ramon-pm3wi]

Happy Birthday 🥳

[@Idkmynameikr]

happy birthday my guy

[@BadnewsBenji]

Happy birthday!

[@BjjjStorm]

loving this series. Keep it up :)

[@smooneychad]

Absolutely, working on the next ep rn! :D

[@felmagfer-notalt]

use autostrut when wings are odd, i recommend setting it to the heaviest part

[@smooneychad]

Definitely, just haven’t unlocked it yet (comes with the regular struts node)

[@DylanPeng-c6w]

How does this guy not have more subscribers

[@Thefoxbat14]

I love this series

[@Akotski-ys9rr]

For some reason whenever I build an ssto, I can get it to the mun and stuff but when I take it back into the atmosphere, I can never get it to stabilize and it corkscrews all the way down to the ground and blows up

[@alexb-mc4jo]

Pump fuel forward, and there is this thing where the faster ur going, the more your centre of lift shifts backwards and includes an rcs system, maybe?

[@Akotski-ys9rr]

@ that is correct. Though it’s not based on speed. It’s because when you’re reentering atmosphere, you’re low on fuel and nuclear engine are very heavy so all the weight goes to the back. In space it’s fine but not for airplanes. So just pump fuel to the more forward fuel tank or design the craft so the center of lift in behind the center of mass even with empty fuel tanks

[@1.blazeIT]

Happy birthday, thanks for still playing and the good content. Do you have a list of the mods you use?

[@smooneychad]

There’s a rough list in the description and a ckan modpack file if you want to easily get all the mods at once, let me know if those help!

[@lordporkchop0]

Happy Birthday good Video

[@smooneychad]

Thank you!!! :)

[@lordporkchop0]

@@smooneychad You‘re welcome

[@rachelpurity1]

Happy birthday slightly after the fact, man!

[@smooneychad]

Hey, thanks!!!

[@TheTripleAce3]

Mach 12 is what, 4,000m/s? That's above kerbin's orbital velocity at 70km. Have fun.

[@finnokeefe189]

the darkstar shall tremble under the wrath of the mach 12 thingamadoodle

[@smooneychad]

It’s actually nearly enough to get to Moho as it turns out…. (nervous laugh) best/worst contract ever lol

[@TheTripleAce3]

​​@@smooneychadI shall take notes then for my future scramjets to deliver probes to jool (close enough to the same dv, right?).

[@miscme6046]

just found your yt and i must say this is a very neat build its very b-56/ xb-70 and i am deff gonna build it.

[@DavidEdwards9801]

I am so happy to see your channel grow. Thanks Smoony, please keep these up ! =) How do I send you my Firehawk? it's a 2 stage to orbit if you don't do the action groups 2 raipiers and 1 nuke gets to LKO with the ability to be refueled with over 1400 Dv when it gets there

[@wavedrag]

Great vid. Could use KJR tho to fix that annoying wobble :)

[@smooneychad]

I won’t be using KJR in this series just to keep the planes as stock as possible, but it’s extremely useful for some of the really massive builds like giant SSTOs, and thanks!! :)

[@CrispiestBubble]

more more more pls i love this series!

[@afatcatfromsweden]

Hope you have fun with your Kerbal hypersonics program!

[@smooneychad]

That really sums it up so far! lol

[@sirseriously]

Happy birthday! Have a sub!

[@smooneychad]

Thanks!! And welcome! :)

[@ambermusenbrock6655]

Happy birthday

[@SharkyKSP]

amazing

[@Meatloaf_TV]

Happy birthday 🎂🎂🎂

[@Tupolev.114]

Lol happy birthday! It was mine on the 24th

[@smooneychad]

Mine is actually on the 24th too! the video upload process just took a bit longer than expected… lol happy late birthday! :D

[@Tupolev.114]

@@smooneychadYooo Thanks

[@BamsyTheSergal]

what mod adds all the extra places to kerbal konstructs? :o

[@smooneychad]

That’d be kerbinside remastered, also possibly a few more from the other kerbinside mods I have (GAP, extras and The Life Aquatic) I hope that helps! :)

[@BamsyTheSergal]

@@smooneychad thank you sir, amazing videos by the way!!!!!

[@djw7141]

happy bday

[@Энджино]

The cockpit was still hot because there was Jeb in there

[@smooneychad]

He’s a man on fire

[@rockyclimbs418]

I know you have the mod list in the description and the discord, but what is the mod that overhauls the ksp?

[@smooneychad]

For the UI overhaul: HUDreplacer and Ztheme. For the clouds, atmosphere: True volumetric cloud (Eve redux), scatterer, planet shine, For the part recolour: TURD, Lazy Painter For the plumes: Waterfall with stick configs that’s all my visual mods, my apologies if you meant part mods or planet ones, I hope this is helpful :)

[@Gaming1Doge]

late, but happy birthday!

[@Gaming1Doge]

also, if at some point you could make something resembling the lockheed or boeing space shuttle concept designs, that would look awesome and fit well in this series. I also recommend using OPT spaceplane parts, but B9 Part switch, a dependency for it is outdated, but it works just fine.

[@smooneychad]

I’m actually really looking forward to doing some irl spaceplane concepts, one of the big ones (both figuratively and literally) once we have the right parts is the Boeing space freighter, it’d be awesome to get that working!

[@MrBmnmtfk]

Lesgooooo!

[@rebel6301]

happy birthday smooney :D

[@smooneychad]

Ayyy thank you!!

[@NickBDesigns]

Nice work! Happy birthday As you level up do you see yourself using atmosphere autopilot mode? I absolutely love using it

[@smooneychad]

Thanks :D I was just thinking about this! I’m realizing that I’m gonna really need autopilot for future plans like electric planes on duna and eve, or whatever other long flights end up coming my way. So definitely! (would allow me to probably get some much better shots as well!)

[@NickBDesigns]

@@smooneychad sweet, ya i feel is should be a stock item as most advanced planes have some some sort of autopilot

[@TT_PLEB]

What mod is adding your speed contracts? All mine have the stipulation of air-breathing engines only

[@smooneychad]

I added all the mods at once so it’s been pretty hard pinning it down, kerbinside remastered GAP, Extremely plane contracts, and Planes with Purpose, are the possible ones let me know if any of those help

[@Jeremythetornadofan]

Happy birthday to you buddy

[@smooneychad]

Ayyy thank you! :D

[@Jeremythetornadofan]

@@smooneychad you’re very much welcome

[@SpaceBoiProot]

positive gongradulatory date of birth

[@lcasbdr254]

pog

[@Toastedguyig]

I like this better than the Ksp aircraft only

[@firefly2806]

Great video! Which mod are u using for plane recoloring?

[@smooneychad]

TURD (the best mod acronym) along with lazy painter to make things easier, fair warning though turd is not on ckan, it's manual install only

[@firefly2806]

@@smooneychad okay, thank you!

[@e.hellbrand9707]

you need Kerbal Joint re-inforcement

[@douglasdtlltd]

Does the repaint mod only work without restock?

[@smooneychad]

I believe there might be a config available for restock (you could look up TURD restock config) I’m just not using restock because of personal preference and keeping the mod pack as light as possible.

[@CheeseBits.]

SAS might be causing the fish tailing

[@smooneychad]

I really want to try it with sas off now, I bet that’s definitely the culprit!

[@TreyWernicke]

I have a question. What is the mod called? Also happy birthday i love the work!

[@TreyWernicke]

Also, I believe turning on rigid attachment should solve the hinge problem. I don't know if you need to unlock it though, as I've never played career mode for very long.

[@ImmortalAbsol]

Happy birthday 🎂🎈🥳 Do you have a mixed accent?

[@smooneychad]

Thanks!!! :D And I would definitely say so. Very strong Appalachian being my original accent, but moving all over the eastern US has left me sounding pretty different from my family

[@ImmortalAbsol]

Thanks aha, very interesting.

[@pr0hobo]

mini xb37

[@combinetheelite]

I suggest adding a .ckan file download for your mods if you can!

[@smooneychad]

Already a clan file up in my discord for all the mods (link is in the description) :D

[@Jo-Heike]

KSP is dead, long live KSP.

[@smooneychad]

This really sums up the community rn lol

[@duhdardar624]

how does your modded KSP1 compare to KSP2 i haven’t played in years and i’m looking to get back into it

[@smooneychad]

With the exception of much faster load times and better physics timewarp, there’s almost nothing else KSP2 does that can’t be replicated with mods in KSP1. I really loved the idea of ksp2 being an out-of-the box deal but as my missions got more complicated I found I had to keep manually fixing the game and running into game breaking glitches, and that just outweighed the hassle of setting up a ksp mod pack for me. It’s extremely sad seeing that ksp2 is probably abandoned now, as most of the problems it had would have been fixed down the line and I genuinely really enjoyed the uniformity of the game’s “story” and art style compared to ksp1. But right now you just can’t beat modded ksp1 for sheer freedom to do whatever and play however you want.

[@AssidiousBlue-ul2fo]

Sadly in KSP2 there are/were some truly hobbling bugs, that a simple “stack to the Mun” player might not encounter but made anything outside Kerbin’s SOI futile. Two off the top of my head; 1) physics breaking / recalculating every 1km on land (including the runway) making rovers and planes impossible 2) Immense lag once more than one craft (such as relay satellites, bases etc) making a fresh save mandatory for every mission Have a look at Shadowzone’s video for some clues as to why these “solved” issues might have become unsolved.

[@duhdardar624]

@@smooneychadThank you that’s exactly what i needed to hear, do you think you’ll ever do a rundown of all your mods basically a definitive way to play Ksp1 and how Ksp2 shouldve been?

[@angelmarinarenas5626]

So sad how there IS si little science and things to do inside of the atmosphere in ksp2,if the gamee was still getting updated,i think It should get an atmosphere update

[@smooneychad]

Yeah there’s only a few normal plane worthy contracts in both games stock, I was really looking forward to checking out duna and flying around in KSP2 though lots of hidden stuff there (will he doing a vid on this when ksp2 stuff hopefully chills out)

[@Pingvin-wx6sm]

There is krakens in KSP????

[@smooneychad]

There be krakens!

[@twDrex]

hapy borthdau

[@RpattoYT]

Looks a little like a TSR2 to me.

[@Not_Dane_Heart]

Hbd

[@kaboooom2000uk]

build an actual wasp :D

[@smooneychad]

Now there’s any idea lol

[@kaboooom2000uk]

@@smooneychad it would be epic XD an engineering marvel. :)

[@Budget_Monkey]

Mach 9? dats Fast almost as fast as this comment

[@Budget_Monkey]

happy birthday smooney!

[@Wilderweincd]

>modded ksp. title kinda sucks if you don't clarify the mods. to me you can make anything in modded Ksp, for all I know you could have a 0 gravity 0 atmospheres 0 terrain mods.

[@smooneychad]

"Can I build a MACH 9 PLANE in KSP + NTF, FFT, Kcalbeloh, OPM, MPE, TURD, KK, Kerbinside Remastered, FreeIVA, DEIVA" etc. just doesn't have the same ring to it, all aerodynamics and parts here are stock, and the mod list and ckan modpack are in the description