KSP 2: Micro-scale Skylon SSTO!

hello everyone today I want to talk about one of the most Innovative and exciting spacecraft Concepts in recent history skylon skylon is a single staged orbit space plane design developed by British company reaction engines limited and it's probably the closest thing that we have to a real life ssto and ever since I found out that Kerbal Space Program 2 has large cylindrical cargo Bays I really wanted to try and recreate it unfortunately attempting to make a real scale version of skylon resulted in this bug that causes highly complex vehicles to just collapse into an unusable pile on the floor of the VAB and after my Val Mission I really just I couldn't so instead we're gonna go ahead and make a micro scale skylon which actually works a little bit better for the engine scale the Rapier engine in ksd1 and 2 is actually based upon skylon's engine the engine that would make ssto possible the saber skylons saber which stands for synthetic air breathing rocket engine is a unique engine design that can power the skyline to Hypersonic speed both in the the atmosphere and in the vacuum of space and it can do this by using a hybrid propulsion system that can function both as a rocket engine and a jet engine so at low speeds and altitudes the engine draws in air from the atmosphere and burning it with onboard hydrogen fuel to generate thrust I.E liquid Fuel and intake air function like a jet engine however at higher altitudes whether it's insufficient air the engine then switches to Rocket mode where it takes in liquid oxygen from on-board tanks and mixes it with the hydrogen fuel for combustion functioning just like a rocket engine one other key function of the saber is its pre-cooler this cools incoming air in less than 1 100th of a second using a network of tubes that are filled with a lightweight metal hydride and it's this rapid cooling that prevents the engine from overheating allowing it to operate efficiently at high speeds and altitudes now the saber in real life hypothetically none of this actually exists it's all on paper design the saber is capable of propelling skylon up to mach five and a half in the atmosphere and then transition to Rocket mode to reach orbital velocity we can't get quite as much mileage from the Rapier engine in KSP but we can still make its orbit without a problem but as you can see the uh the vehicle is now largely complete we can go to orbit soon and let's see how I did does it look uh it doesn't really look uh anything like uh skylon but when I was talking about scale you know the real Skyline only has two saber engines this spacecraft only has two Rapier engines building this vehicle to have the same sized fuselage as skylon we'd need to have lots and lots of Rapier engines so it's kind of a compromise of a build really I really hope maybe in a ksp2 update we'll have bigger Rapier engines so we could actually recreate skylon accurately I think I will uh revisit the skylon project and do a A Better Effort making a bigger version so I'll use the large sized cylindrical cargo bay and then just use a bunch of rapiers and kind of dress them up to look like a single Rapier engine at the wingtips but what I will say is that we have a very cool fight jet style uh cockpit at the front of this vehicle so I'm really happy with how this turned out I think it's got a really nice sort of sleek look to it but there we are that was the test flight there to confirm that we could in fact get this thing to orbit let's go ahead and now we'll just I'll fill it up with some cargo the real Skyline I think could take 15 Tons to orbit uh this can only take like just over one ton total bit so it's a bit of a smaller but it's a smaller scale vehicle so it's fine I won't spoil the surprise about what the cargo is though so we'll just uh get on with the with the flight so I switched up my color scheme to uh Match the black of the real skylon concept although I added some go faster Racing Stripes because you've got to add go faster Racing Stripes to make your spacecraft go faster speaking of going faster let's make the footage go faster because the frame rate is not great as is the as is the way with cardboard space program too so I can speed the footage up to make it a little bit smoother you guys watching at home and uh well you might be watching anywhere really where are you watching this from are you watching this on a spacecraft on the International Space Station then do let me know I would be very interested and also let me know can you play Kerbal Space Program 2 on the laptops on the International Space Station I'm guessing it's a no actually because you guys I don't know this did you know all the laptops on the International Space Station they're only Linux and Mac OS so they probably wouldn't be able to run ksb2 because ksp2 only runs on Microsoft stuff and the reason why the laptops on the International Space Station only run Mac OS or Linux is because it's dangerous to open Windows in space but um [Laughter] anyway Let's uh let's talk about the uh the flight again so um we're beginning our Ascend by just uh holding a nice sort of shallow angle of attack maybe 10 degrees on the nav ball we really want to try and get those rapiers into high power mode so after about 450 meters per second they start outputting a lot more thrust so now we're just gonna fly flat until we hit that magic number now we have as you can see our surface velocity is rapidly rising at a much faster rate than it was before and we can start really nosing up not too aggressively again because we want to try and get as much speed built up in the atmosphere well we don't in the atmosphere where there is sufficient air for the rapist to function in jet engine mode because jet engine mode is much much much more efficient than closed cycle mode which is the uh the rocket powered mode for the Rapier engine I know I'm kind of saying all of this as if you guys have never used the Rapier or heard of it before even though it's like a Mainstay on this channel but I'm guessing I've had a lot of new subscribers I think we've had like nearly 20 000 new subscribers since the release of ksb2 I'm aware some of you might not know what the Rapier is and that it's based on the saber so there you are that's what the Rapier is and that's what the saber was and is you know uh here we are coasting up uh we're nearly at the point where we're gonna lose the intake here I'm gonna have to switch over to closed cycle mode so you'll see our stats just above the green Go Button we're going to switch from using air to oxidizer three two one how was that for timings yeah now we're outputting a lot more thrust but the fuel is now draining much faster so I'm pitching up much more aggressively I'm gonna fire up that Terror engine at the back of the plane there that doesn't really work at ground level but it works really well in the vacuum of space it's not a very powerful engine so we still kind of need the supplemental power of the rapiers both for that initial part of the ascent and when we perform our circularization but the terrier engine is great for sort of on-orbit maneuvering because it is a lot more efficient than the rapiers so we can kind of squeeze a little more Delta V out of this craft by using this engine and the real skylon has a vacuum optimized engine as well it's much smaller than the terrier engine on this one I think I probably should have used oh is it the spark the extra small sized vacuum optimized engine but I didn't want to I just wanted a more powerful engine so I stuck the terrier on in hindsight uh it's not it does look a bit funny doesn't it this all black and white space plane and then that weird gold cone at the back uh but whatever it's fine so as you can see right now I'm just trying to raise my pair very abscess but I'm aware our Apple apps is not that far away We're not gonna be able to circularize in time we'll end up re-entering the atmosphere so when we hit Apple abscess I'm gonna fire up their apias very briefly just to complete our circularization burn and there they go and oh my gosh guys I literally just paused because I thought I was seeing things I realize now at this moment editing the video that I massively made a mistake this hole for the whole Ascent that we just watched which was now is now over the payload has had its engine fire yet to satellite there's like a little spacecraft inside the cargo bay and I unbeknownst me I'd accidentally turned that engine on when I fired up the rapiers on the runway so we had another engine burning inside the cargo bay of the skylon so that was a bit of a whoopsie wasn't it good thing it didn't rupture a I don't know a liquid oxygen tank during the ascent these are the tanks they build of strong stuff uh yeah I realize here that um you know the fuel had drained obviously it's drained because the engine has been firing for the entire and I assume this was just some weird fuel bug with the games I'm like oh we need to refill it because the engines are not pulled from the correct stage but I think ksp2 I'll let it slide this one time because this was clearly uh user error so here you can see me deploying the payload I'm I generally at the moment I'm using the stack separators to separate stages of rocket and in this case remove payloads from cargo Bays because I've tried using docking ports in space shuttle builds and undocking the docking port just causes the whole vest to be destroyed and I've tried using just the decouplers so they don't leave the mother ship it stays attached but it doesn't stay attached it ends up just drifting off but it's still attached to the main craft so when you initiate Time Warp or something it then freezes in place and looks ridiculous stack separators I feel like are the most reliable it's a shame because then it leaves permanent debris in space and also they are heavier than decoupulars so it's less efficient to use them but it also means that the Kraken is less likely to just destroy all our hopes and dreams so that's why I use stack separators anyway we have deployed the payload so before we can go ahead and do the mission that the satellite is going to undertake what's going I do it's really exciting but I won't spoil the surprise get the fewer attention up and all that good stuff uh first of all we need to perform a deal bit burn and land back at the runway and the Kraken reared its ugly head once again here I'm not quite sure what happened because I'm burning retrograde but my Apple appsis is increasing like I think it was it to do with Time Warp because I dropped out of time warp and then it started behaving normally like the apparatus started going down but by that point I'd like used my fuel up so I had to just reload a quick save and I tried again this time not initiating physics Time Warp we'll just burn at real time speed obviously you guys it's fine I can speed it up but for me I was playing a real time speed wasn't taking no chances and uh yeah I try and sort of aim it's in my trajectory is sort of I guess you can't see it because on the dark side of the planet but it's sort of aiming for I aim to put our like Collision trajectory marker on that landmass to the east of the Kerbal Space Center that's usually a pretty reliable spot to aim for for kind of a good space plane re-entry that takes you to the runway o parts manager it's really annoying like I don't really like the parts manager but the thing I don't like about it the most is the fact that when you right click apart it like freezes the game for up to five seconds and it's like oh my gosh please just show me the action that I need so uh yeah hopefully that speeds up with all the optimization patches that are coming in and hopefully I mean I know I'm aware there's lots of mods for Kerbal Space Program too which is amazing really when you think about the fact that the game has not really been out for even a month yet and we already have mods and I'm aware I think there is a mod that actually adds back right click options when you right click apart I don't know I just I've been to like space Dock and I've just seen the list I'm pretty sure I saw a mod that adds right click actions so yeah if you want right click actions then go ahead and install that I'm trying to keep my game as close to stock as possible and that includes you know not modifying the part rigidity and stuff not because I think that's the way you should play play however you want in my opinion but uh because I'm in kind of like active talks with the developers I'm seen as a air quotes power user so I'm just sending them tons of bug reports and save files and screenshots and videos of all the bugs I'm encountering just to help them sort of help steer the process of repairing Kerbal Space Program too and so for that I kind of need my game to be as close to stock as possible so that the issues I'm encountering are not associated with any modifications I've made to part values or rigidity settings and it's not some mod playing Havoc with the game's code so that's the reason and also because I want my videos to be representative of what you can just do in Kerbal Space Program 2 when you just get the game and you haven't got to mess around with anything I think stuff like if we ever get a Kerbal engineer maybe we already have a couple urgent here I don't know but if I'll have a look I'll have a little look and I'll see if we've got a Kerbal engineer and if we have got Kerbal engineer mod then I'll probably add that so you guys can see a constant stream of information about what exactly my flight statistics are so if you're trying to match or if you're trying to play along with me and emulate my mission you can kind of see what values I had for each stage make sure you're staying on track or if you're ahead of me or behind me handles so the Delta V readout in this game I think could be a bit hit and miss so it'd be nice to have a more reliable one in the form of a Kerbal engineer Redux 2. anyway we are arriving at the Space Center what I generally do in order to make sure I'm heading in the right direction is I look for the island in the distance there I just follow that and that's how I know where to sort of point my plane on re-entry it's not too bad coming in from an equatorial bit like this but from a like a polar orbit or just any kind of tilted orbit really it can be a little bit more tricky to find the KSC I've been told that navigation points are coming so you can mark the Kerbal Space Center on your nav ball and you can just follow the nav Ball but until that happens uh that's the strategy that I use I just follow the island there we are we have touched down we have a beautiful sunrise in the distance it was at a sunset sunrise in the East and sets in the wet it's the sunset as a Sun is setting in the sky Bill Carmen Can Say Goodbye well actually we're just sort of taxiing down to the space plane Hangar if we had one so I guess he's taxing to the VAB I don't know I just put I just put the brakes on here uh but yeah the mission the main mission is done but obviously we've still got our probe in space and that's got a very exciting mission to do as well but I almost clicked destroy When selecting it that was fun there really needs to be an option doesn't they're saying are you sure anyway we're going to go to the mum and I've said ad nausea on this channel many times now that ksp2 is really annoying in that creating maneuver plans you can't see your trajectory past celestial objects so actually the easiest way to get to the man is to not bother with making a maneuver plan instead I rewind the footage if you want to see a visual example of what I'm about to say uh just basically watch the spacecraft in orbit and as soon as you see the man pop up behind kerbin burn prograde and that'll point you on a really really nice trajectory that takes issue on an equatorial orbit past the man from there sort of burn until your orbit leaving the man's state of influence is much bigger than your orbit going in because that means the man has given you a gravity assist means you're very close to the surface of the man and that's what I did and I think you'll agree hopefully that I got it that's a pretty good month of it well I say man orbit I'm only speaking hypothetically of course because I decided you know what let's just continue burning retrograde to put ourselves on a landing trajectory because we only need to circularize we're just going to go ahead and land and I swear guys I did not plan this I'm like oh it's the Monarch so I'm like let's now there's a month we've seen the Monarch we gotta land on the Monarch right so yeah I've not done many man missions in ksp2 and uh already I've accidentally managed to land exactly pretty much at a monarch by accident like I didn't I didn't plan this I know I've done a video of me landing at this manage so I technically know where it is but like I don't remember off the top of my head I'd have to go and check but if you've seen that video you know that I had a lot of problems with the Kraken thwarting my plans so States for high I'm like right it's round two let's see if we can land on the Monarch and have no bugs whatsoever and we're not got that much Delta V I only got 220 meters per second which is obviously plenty to just land here but if we're doing lots of little Maneuvers and hops it can run out quite quickly so let's see are we gonna do it just trying to line myself up quickly as possible pointing sort of I'm going to sort of switch between radial out and retrograde relative to the surface in order to get the landing and oh just under shooting so quickly burn up again there we are trying to get nice and high and then we can just very gently start shuffling our way towards the arch being really careful not to overshoot I did try and make things a bit more tricky for myself because I wanted to land right in the middle of the uh the top bit where the sun is which is obviously not as flat as the other part so had took a bit of finesse hey how about that first time I didn't have to load any quick sales or anything so I'm pretty pretty proud of that and there we are in that good in that good vibe to end the video on it doesn't end it's a ksp2 video that has not ended in sadness so uh yeah that's the Monarch there and those names on screen well then my patreon supporters and my channel members and it's their generosity that allows me to keep making this content they help support the channel if you want to join their ranks you can do this by clicking the links in the description there's also a card to my patreon directly on the screen as well as two other videos from the channel don't know what they are they're kind of selected by YouTube for you so hoping that they're good picks and I hope you enjoyed this Mission I it was a lot of fun this Mission because relatively speaking not many things went wrong so that made it fun

Channel: Matt Lowne

Views: 132,367

Keywords: ksp, kerbal space program, kerbal, space, program, jebediah, kerman, matt, lowne, matt lowne, nerd, british, funny, epic, commentary, abridged, amazing, gameplay, ksp2, ksp 2 gameplay, kerbal space program 2, skylon, ssto, matt lowne ssto, ksp 2 ssto, skylon recreation, skylord

Id: W5QXjOjASxE

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023