How to Build and Fly an SSTO Spaceplane | KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM Contract Tutorials

[@MikeAben]

Up Next: Building & Inserting a Low Tech Relay - kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJmVp6SQfMqFkJYsi=gIWUlVSBGfQkausL

[@neoroggensack1244]

just wanted to say that I'm checking in after a good couple years of not playing KSP, and it's really heartwarming to see this channel starting to get SOME of the recognition it deserves. Thanks Mike :)

[@MikeAben]

Welcome back!

[@neoroggensack1244]

@@MikeAben :)

[@Merchant_Admiral]

Hi Mike, I started playing this game 6 months ago and I would like to thank you for the tutorials you do! You definitely have the most easy to follow tutorials on KZbin. Before watching your videos I wasn’t able to get tonnage into orbit and now I’ve landed and retuned from Duna for the first time. Right now, I’m trying to design a high delta v ship to explore Jool and its moons in one big voyage. I’ve made a starship style two stage cargo rocket that I’m planning to build the Jool ship with in orbit. I just need to figure out how to make a ship out of smaller pieces while in orbit.

[@MikeAben]

The Dock-o-tron Sr. is great for putting ships together. Also, an engineer can attach struts via EVA which can stiffen the craft. Good luck.

[@jaredmh90]

This is perfect. I am unlocking the tech node with the panther and aerospike engines today for the first time.

[@thespacedinos4037]

TYSM Mike! You make all of your tutorials like a lesson in school, and I really like that! Hope to see more in the future!

[@emmettraymond8058]

Fantastic! I always love a good SSTO, efficiency be darned.

[@neoroggensack1244]

EVEN more food for the algorithm :O

[@eROCKaustin]

i cant believe i never thought to move all my fuel to the front of the craft for re-entry! duhhhhh! lol thanks for the tip

[@shelbycome8398]

Got into KSP during this years summer sale and you are an invaluable teacher, my friend. I know this is an old video, but how did you get your navball off center like that? Appreciate youre time and hard work, brother.

[@MikeAben]

You can move the Navball in the game settings.

[@stenterjefalnes9628]

Takk!

[@MikeAben]

Thank you.

[@doubel9245]

Hi Mike, the tip at 5:30 that 'air intakes create more drag when they are active/open' is false; closing air intakes has no affect on drag or anything else for that matter, besides disabling the intake. The only possible use for it is to store a small amount of air in the intakes, which you can then use like an oxidiser for a rocket (e.g. using jet engines in space), but otherwise there is no need to enable nor disable them.

[@nathanmyers2483]

Thanks for this tutorial! Are you planning to make tutorials for duna contracts?

[@MikeAben]

It's a bit older, but I have one. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o5-5o6ClnNKbfbMsi=oqpMPgV7cSv4c8uX

[@mr.nihilist1069]

I'm a relative noob to the game and your videos are a true blessing! Any chance you have one coming up on the "observational survey of the mun" contract? I'm having some trouble figuring out how to move around the mun efficiently and safely... I managed to launch a modified lander from my space station in mun-orbit and bumble around the coordinates before a brief landing and redocking, but i crashed a couple of times while figuring it out and felt like i wasted tons of fuel :(

[@MikeAben]

If these are below a certain altitude, I would recommend doing them with a craft from orbit, tough they can get a little hairy. If they're on the surface, I'd use a rover. I don't have a tutorial on this, but it is coming up in my next live stream game. You can watch for that.

[@MrrVlad]

A couple of other useful tweaks: pitching wings up by 3-4 degrees will make the lift of the whole plane more drag-efficient. When switching from air to rockets, it's not advisable to have high angle of attack - keeping shallow ascent (8-12 degreed) and maintaining vertical speed above 100m/s would be more efficient.

[@Spacewalker1870]

for me I deorbit sstos/spaceplanes where the big crater is and i usually do around a 80m/s deorbit where periapsis is really close or passing surface, that usually gets me to the ksc

[@christinaedwards5084]

Wonder what would happen if you slightly camber the rear wheels inward ever so slightly? 🤔 Gives F1 cars stability, would it gives kerbal planes the same?

[@MikeAben]

Interesting idea, but in my experience wheels other than dead straight ahead lead to problems.

[@christinaedwards5084]

@@MikeAben kerbals left in my care lead to problems, despite your best efforts 😂

[@spacesciencelab]

26:42 That's epic.

[@scottwilliams846]

I think single stage everything in career is a very cost-effective way to do things. Single stage to orbit, separate the payload that is another single stage to landing on the Mun (or maybe a two stage thing that you return both the lander and the ship), then bring everything back down at or near the KSC. I use boats to haul spent boosters back to the runway where they can be recovered for 100% value. Then I hook the boat up to a mining refueler and send it back out when there is another booster or ship.

[@eekee6034]

Cool, but recovering boosters must require careful flight planning if you don't have mods. Objects not in physics range just get deleted below a certain altitude; I think it's 22km.

[@scottwilliams846]

@@eekee6034 I like following a flight path that makes my orbital imsertion burn doable with just the force from a decoupler. So liken80 by 67, 68 or something.

[@eekee6034]

@@scottwilliams846 Oh, that would make it easy! :) It reminds me of my orbital tankers. There's no point ditching the tanks of the first stage when they could contribute to the tanker's capacity, so the first stage is just an engine. It gets dropped at roughly 80x60km too.

[@scottwilliams846]

@@eekee6034 I get that trajectory before getting out of the atmosphere. Basically I get an orbit inside the atmosphere and then raise it.

[@eekee6034]

@@scottwilliams846 If I understand rightly, that's very efficient.

[@coffeeAddict74]

I think these two tutorials were great. I'm still not able to make my SSTO work with two Wheesley's and one Bobcat. I'm going to try a trick i learned from VAOS about clipping a fairing through the hull to reduce drag. Otherwise, I think I need to wait for the panthers or maybe craft it into an SSRT?

[@spacesciencelab]

Thanks for tip on putting CoM in front of le space plane.

[@luke0421]

Mike just for future reference the ratio for lf to oxidizer is 9:11.

[@MikeAben]

Cool. Thanks. This one's closer to 12:9, but perhaps that's because I deliberately left more LF to give the option to use the jet engines during descent.

[@neoroggensack1244]

more food for the algorithm :D

[@risingsun9595]

Airbrakes definitely would've helped with slowing the aircraft down and adjusting your descent path, but I like that you showed it works fine without them

[@neoroggensack1244]

food for the algorithm :)

[@Th3Mafia]

i had angled wing tips and i found they gave me pitch up/down issues, how did you avoid that ? or did you plan that?

[@MikeAben]

I've never encountered that problem.

[@Sphinxery101]

@@MikeAbenwhen will new episodes come out

[@MikeAben]

@@Sphinxery101 If you asked a couple of weeks ago, I would have replied likely never as I was waiting for KSP2 to be stable enough to get it's own tutorial series. That looks like it will not happen now, so the door has been openned. Right now, my RP-1 series is taking the bulk of my time, but I could come to a point where I'll put that on a hiatus and do more tutorials. I don't want to repeat myself. Do you have any particular contracts in mind?

[@Sphinxery101]

@@MikeAben maybe like a Duna or Dres tutorial. It’s been a while since you have done a contract guide series

[@Sphinxery101]

@@MikeAben what’s rp-1?

[@friedec3622]

Could we use panther/terrier instead?

[@MikeAben]

Sure. Heck, I've built them with Wheeslys.

[@tomking5216]

Could you do a layethe mission please, maybe with a jet plane to land

[@MikeAben]

I did it in a live stream as part of a Jool 5 mission. It went badly and they had to be rescued, so I built another Laythe mission. Here's the rescue. kzbin.infou7IG_4Q4TOg?feature=share

[@alexb-mc4jo]

Its actually not recommended to use MK2 spaceplane parts for SSTOS as they create a TON of drag due to the way ksp codes physics, theres a mod out there called:Mk2 rebalance thats sorts that out

[@John_Gillman]

Tip for SSTOs: 1 single Ramjet air intake has enough Air intake to power 6 RAPIER Engines in airbreathing mode if flying at sufficient speeds

[@nikwalz3429]

awsome

[@fertileplanet7756]

Me when building ssto spaceplanes: Just smile and copy Matt Lowne boys! Smile and copy Matt Lowne!

[@annieolder2159]

What does SSTO stand for?

[@MikeAben]

Single Stage To Orbit

[@scottwilliams846]

5:30 you do _NOT_ need that many air intakes. Take the aft two off.

[@eekee6034]

The savings would be very small. In terms of mass, replacing a Shock Cone Intake with an Aerodynamic Nose Cone saves the equivalent of 22.5 units of monopropellant or 18 units of liquid fuel. I don't know what it would do to drag, but I'll be surprised if the rounded Aerodynamic Nose Cone has less drag than the Shock Cone Intake. Replacing a Shock Cone Intake with an Advanced Nose Cone only saves half as much mass.

[@christinaedwards5084]

@@eekee6034pretty sure you can action group to toggle shock cones and intakes to close. Drag savings doing that are noticable

[@Sphinxery101]

What happened to the new episodes 😢 I want new ones

[@idea1407]

Nice tutorial. But I'm not able to get to 1000m/s. I don't know what's wrong.

[@idea1407]

I mean just on whiplash engines.

[@MikeAben]

At a guess, you may be ascending too quickly. If you don't carry enough speed into the higher atmosphere, then the Whiplashes won't be able to generate the necessary thrust. Also, if you're in KSP2, this won't work with the RCS blocks as the drag model is broken.

[@TheSpaceDude-Space_RKT]

@@MikeAben Bro I'm waited an hour and my ssto still haven't 20km

[@TheSpaceDude-Space_RKT]

and it's so slow

[@alexb-mc4jo]

Its actually not recommended to use MK2 spaceplane parts for SSTOS as they create a TON of drag due to the way ksp codes physics, theres a mod out there called:Mk2 rebalance thats sorts that out

[@maxthelast]

was your last job a teacher? becase your way of teaching is professional compared to all teachers

[@MikeAben]

You got me. Retired math teacher.

[@Brunonito2212]

create ssrt tutorial

[@witko7460]

i'm just not gaining that much speed

[@alexb-mc4jo]

MK2 spaceplane parts are actually super draggy due to the way they're coded, the mod mk2 rebalance helps with that and also rebalances the mk2 spaceplane fuel tanks to store the correct amount of fuel

[@K.O240]

Never pitch up that hard. It doesn't matter if you're in "rocket mode." If you had the aeroGUI open you'd see that your ridiculous pitch up causes an equally ridiculous amount of drag as well as a ridiculous increase in gravity losses. It's lose lose. Just keep your pitch low, to the point where your plane is on the verge of blowing up from heating. THAT is the most efficient ascent. Edit: All that dancing around with the throttle trying to maintain 1 minute to apoapsis is completely useless. Go full throttle until you reach orbital velocity. If your apoapsis goes past your target before you reach orbital velocity, then, surprise, you pitched up too hard. As I'm typing this there's just so much more wrong with your video that I can't keep up.