FlyMeToTheMinmus

Russian section is Tantares, International Docking Adapters can be found here (still works in w/r the current version is); https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/118922-105-cst-100-starliner-375m-7-seat-crew-vehicle-v076-nosecone-fix-and-more/

Based on my experience with shuttles in KSP: 1: Your ascent profile may have been better in the first mission, if you spent too long in the atmosphere (pitching too early for example) then you waste a lot of delta v overcoming drag. 2: The Trajectories mod is veeeery helpful for landing a shuttle at this accuracy, it's hard to judge without it. 3: The shuttle in-game seems to have better aerodynamics than the real thing, but it nonetheless is more like a flying brick than anything else. As was done IRL, you need to maintain a higher vertical speed than usual for aircraft until you are very close to the ground, and you should expect a higher landing speed than usual. The shuttle wings don't produce a lot of lift, and with no propulsion you will stall quickly in near-horizontal flight. Aim for a steep re-entry just short of the runway and then start to pull up somewhere around or below 5000 m. This will give you enough speed from the shuttle's falling energy that you can make it to a landing safely. Your nose pitches down when you don't have enough horizontal velocity.

The folders you showed in your download folder (Airplane Plus, Firespitter, Module Manager) need to be in the same folder as your Squad folder for KSP, which should be found in the Gamedata folder.

I recently had the same issue; if you own a copy of KSP through steam, make sure that you have the right version. You may have to opt in or out of beta updates for KSP, I can't remember which it was. Long story short, it's not so much that all mods must be up to date (although that helps greatly), just make sure that your game is definitely 1.3 if you are using any 1.3 mods at all - this can be checked in the readme amongst the game files.

Perhaps you could look into parts for some larger satellite busses and structures, like Hubble, JWST or KH11 Hexagon parts? I've been trying to figure out payloads for my shuttle flights that aren't space station parts for a while.

Space Shuttle Systems provides a photo-realistic recreation of STS, whereas this mod provides stock-a-like parts modeled off of Space Shuttle payloads like spacelab and experiment pallets to both work with the stock Mk3 parts, and also to possibly used with other non-shuttle crafts.

Did you actually kill Andrew Sachs or something? That's quite coincidential timing

It is in fact a soyuz spacecraft equipped with an APAS docking port instead of the normal probe port; it was launched to test the APAS port on Kristall in anticipation of future Buran flights.

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22235 A poster in this topic states that the APAS 95 used on the ISS is non-androgynous, and you can see this as well in photos of the ports from approachint shuttles; the passive port is visibly missing the spring assemblies under each petal that on an active port would extend the docking ring. As a result, the station-side port is physically unable to perform the active role. It does appear that the APAS 89 port used on Mir, which was very similae to 95, was fully androgynous however, if that's any help.

There is in fact a mod that does that on spacedock

The only way I've managed to maintain stability from re-entry to landing (altho this is in a 4x scale kerbol system) is by using an angled probe core in the back at about 20-30 degrees locked to prograde, making sure plenty of RCS is left and not touching the controls except to help nudge back towards prograde if needed until velocity is down to about 500 m/s, then switch control to cockpit and pitch down sharply, then carefully, using prograde snap to stay close to prograde, as if I don't I will enter a flat spin, and slowly bring the shuttle to horizontal for landing. This doesn't even really work half the time though.

I believe for the legs they are referring to the FASA LEM, which required you to place three regular legs without symmetry as the ladder leg was a distinct part

I can't remember the exact dimensions, but the real scale boosters mod with stock configs has been working quite well for me, especially with your SM and CM, if that's any help?

What about a mission based on the Chinese Long March and Shenzhou family?

Really like the look of what you've done there, hopefully it does work well in practice