babaton

ok, my two attempts.....first one was just way too heavy at the rear..... Second one wasn't much better tbh, i originally had only two outriggers( whats the proper name for them?) This is just after I got annoyed and added another two..... SO, I'll be switching over to rapiers and taking far less fuel with me, a smaller faster ship is what I need....actually looking at it now, my first attempt was probably closer to the mark. This one does look awesome at full thrust!

Didn't get home intime to play last night so no images of my spaceplane today WIll def check out the RCSbuild mod, thats' exactly what I need, emptying out all your fuel tanks in the VAB is a pain. Also I think I'll switch ove to rapiers and pesevere with them. In my pursuit of higher speed at altitude i kept increasing engine size....at the moment it's got the big ass Rhino engine on the back of it so yeah, not good in terms of weight distribution. It does look good when you open the throttle up though!

Kerikbalm, that's the plan I've been workign on...having the payload balance the plane and hoping the airs thin enough at high altitude that it doesn' matter by then. I think my ship is judt too heavy though and I'm not gettign quite highe enough (just barely into the third dark segment on the scale) must be about 15 - 17k? I'd be ineterested to se any working spaceplanes you have that work using this payload ballast method.

That'd work (the klaw) I'd need robotic parts so it could slide up and down the bay to accomodate short or long parts.....I used to use quantum struts too which were cool but unrealistic. I'm not running many mods right now not enough ram in my current PC Nice idea though it'd def work, will gie it a go when I eventually get some RAM.

ah yes, already had trouble with that..... Whats' the best way to connect the payload, decoupler or docking port? I've got a docking port then a decoupler then my payload....which is also held in place with a few struts. When the decoupler blows the struts do too, leaving me a usable docking port although I'm not sure I could take anything sizable through rentry without any struts to hold it in place. It'd be nice if you could have some sort of grabber.....

See, I'm not sure what to do about wings....I was thinking that my plane was flipping because the wings, esp the canards were too large. So just deviating from the direction of travel even a tiny amount flips the plane.... Will post pics later but I think I need to lose a lot of fuel weight, rebalance so the fuel is front and back. If it's balanced properly I can probably control any sloppy handling at high speed.

Nice one, I'll have a look now....I'll post up the two main designs I've been trying out later, maybe there are some glaring errors showing. I got frustrated with it last night and just stuck on ANOTHER two "outrigger" engine packs....went pretty fast, too fast for the air, flipped and failed. I'm having issues keeping it slow enough down in the thick atmos then picking up enough speed higher up to achieve orbit. It's got enough power I think but when I'm up at 15000 or so cruising and picking up speed it'll eventually flip even in that thin air..... - - - Updated - - - WOW!.... If this can achieve orbit I think I can sum up my problem in three words....too much fuel. I notice you're using the rapiers, i'm not fond of them maybe I should try them out again. My current plane has turbo jets and a single great big rocket engine which adds a lot of weight.....a lot of weight.....you have the nuke engines for interplanetary burns or do you use them for achieving orbit too? - - - Updated - - - Yep, I've seen a few of those. I'm specifically lokking for designs with large cargo bays. Ships that are balanced enough to fly laden and unladen.....

Arthur Russell - This is how we walk on the moon

The goal is to build a huge spaceplane with a huge cargo bay so I can carry component pieces up to orbit....assemble then off into the void... Originally I had a basic single fuselage design.....cargo bay directly behind cockpit...fuel at the back...it was hopelessy heavy at the rar end.....esp with no cargo.... I tried with the cargo at the back....flies fine until fuel runs low then flips due to being heavy at the back. Maybe I should have cockpit, small fuel tank, cargo bay, more fuel....? I tried a 2nd design....central fuselage.....two outrigger style fuselages with loads of engines and fuel.....this design means all the fuesl is more central, it's a wider shorter plane. STILL FILPS AT HIGH ALT AND SPEED!?!? But, I just can't get the damn thing balanced, I suspect it may just be too damn heavy to have even the slightest bit of instability. I'm using the large cockpit size plane pieces, can anyone post up some pics of large spaceplanes that have successfully made it to orbit?

Precise node looks like a very handy tool. That's the issue I have, I forward time and might overshoot my window slightly, then I run out of fuel for the return trip.

- - - Updated - - - Really? I've found the opposite. I always used to start the turn at 10k but sincce 1.0 any turning while down in the thick atmosphere tends to flip my rocket all over the place. I've been blasting straight up to over 20k then starting my turn aggressvively in the thinner air up high. I'll have to ive early turns a try as I alwasy feel like I'm wasting power on altitude when I should be using it for latral velocity.

Hi, I think I'm missing something here, I've been playing a while now, been to Mun, Minmus, Duna and Eve. However I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with plotting launch trajectories though. I use olex's launch window calculator which is fine, however I then have to guess at my launch angles etc as KSP doesn't show them, so it's all done by eye. It can take ages to wait for the planet to come into alignment and if you overshoot you have to wait even longer even at full timewarp. There has to be a quicker way? I toyed about with kerbal alarm clock but that didnt' seem to do what I wanted, no zoom to launch window feature..... Please someone, fil me in, what do you do to make planetary launches viable? mods? tricks? I think I had a mod a while back that showed teh launch angles etc....engineer I think!? But it'd be extra nice if I could zoom automatically to that point. Thanks, Kev

Ditched the wings and stuck some stock ones on.....much better, no issues at all now.....I'm sure the procedural wings are fine, think I mangled some struts stretching the wings around while trying to balance CoL and CoM. When you've got wings made up of 2 or 3 wing parts, is there a way to weld the 3 together so you can slide back and forth as one? It's a pain setting the CoL when your wing is made up of 3 separate bits.

On minmus perhaps.....love the idea of gently touching down hoping my lander isn't going to break through, do I have enough legs, is the weight distributed enough? Or taking a rover across the ice......drilling through maybe....it'd be kool.

This is the first I've heard of F12 and the debug menu if that's what you're referring to. (I'll check that out tonight, gonna get me in more trouble I reckon) but no I didn't use that. I did heavily mess around with the wings during construction though. There could well be a few stray struts hidden in there still, they stretc with the wings so I can see how that might cause probems. I'll try to get a pic later but I'm not sure what it'll tell you, it looks like a fairly standard SR-71 looking spaceplane to me. Think I'll try again and replace with stock wings, if that works ok I'll try some new procedural wings but this time no faffing.