Another killer plane from KSP. · 6:19am Jun 16th, 2020
This one needs a little more explanation.
I'm not sure this one even flies much short of supersonic. I do know that at 300 m/s or higher the thing is nearly unsteerable- probably due to the canards I put on the nose to move the center of lift forward a bit. I'm pretty sure those were a bad idea, at least without control surfaces.
But that's not what killed a kerbal.
What killed a kerbal is that, for reasons I do not understand, this plane simply would not taxi straight. It started out slightly curving left on the runway... and then, whichever yaw control I touched, left or right, it would stay stuck slightly left or right, just enough to make it impossible to go in a straight line. It was not far short of luck that I got it into the air the one time I DID get it into the air (via probe core, after killing yet another pilot on a failed takeoff). I tried all sorts of things, but nothing worked to straighten the ship out.
Here's the file. Those of you who Kerbal are free to try to exorcise the demons. Just tell me how you did it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wwt8J808RPJ0Pepzam9ZWn3ANOvsalYF/view?usp=sharing
I haven't looked at the plane yet (phone), but it sounds like you are trying to use a keyboard to pilot the thing. This is a sketchy notion at the best of times.
ETA: The primary culprit was having your rear wheels attached to the wings that were overloaded; another possibility that I couldn't see was that the pair was not perfectly parallel, which can cause similar problems. It was trivial to move those wheels to the outer fuselage and forward (closer to CoM), and also move the wings a bit – mostly upward for better in-flight stability.
Additionally, I am 95% sure that this plane will not (stay in) space. Even with culling the extra LiquidFuel from the tanks, it looks like at best 700m/s dV with the aerospike – I'm pretty sure that you simply can't go fast enough with the jets for this kick to get you to stable orbit. You'll need to swap out some of the (now-unused) LiquidFuel tanks for LFO and mind the balance. Look at the Aeris 4A stock plane for some guidance?
Disclaimer: I am running ReStock and ReStock+, so there is a tiny probability that the patches messed up some of what you had going on with the tanks and their configurations, as I received them.
Craft File Download
Image showing structural tweaks
Kris I'm interested to see what his plane does you going to give it a whirl on your next stream?
5286633 I'm going to attempt a few minor tweaks based on Kwirkj's comments, but the plane I posted is the one that flew about mid-stream on Monday. And tonight's stream is going to focus first on saving the Duna mission, which it turns out is in pretty serious trouble...
5286797
Well hope all goes well! Will this make it into a chapter of CSP? If all goes well? What time is the stream tonight?
5287096 Different game play. Stream begins at 7 PM (ideally- currently waiting on A/C repair)