Conquering KSP Brainstorming Stream – #03 – Meet The PII Broadsword! (Live 4/12/2017)
Support Charlie on Patreon: patreon.com/charliepryor CONQUERING KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM: BRAINSTORMING STREAMS. This stream series is meant to give the “brainstorming” and “craft building” content to the people that want it, while still allowing me to prepare for episodes for the official Conquering Kerbal Space Program series on YouTube. The playlist for the main series is […]
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I'm a physics student and your introduction to orbital mechanics was great don't worry
Your ascent profile is pretty inefficient. You want to go as fast as possible (1400 – 1800 m/s) horizontally once you are above 10k and climb at max 10 – 15 degrees. Going close to the thermal limit on air-breathing engines is the key to an efficient SSTO ascent. Reason being is the Isp advantage obviously – every m/s you can go faster on air is about 10-20 m/s saved for orbital manouvers.
I know you said you don't like kOS but I just want to point out that scripting the ascent for SSTOs has s.i.g.n.i.f.i.c.a.n.t. advantages when designing them. It will save you ridiculous amounts of time because you can take your flying out of the equation when trimming it to get max performance. Each change can be properly evaluated whether its beneficial or not and you can use physics timewarp during 'development' (if it can't go up with a script on 3x physics warp its too instable for actual use)… This is obviously saving a whole lot of time ~ my guess is 75% at least.
Recently I built a stock SSTO that is able to take a 200t payload into orbit (and land again) in a few hours (like 4h max)
I believe you know where to find it if you need it – else let me know and I will post the link – in case you change your mind 😉
(My script has been tweaked to work with anything that uses dual-mode engines and nukes out of the box. Rocket engines are currently not support but I could add that easily)
The hilt is the handle of the sword which includes the crossguard and the pommel.