Drethon

They've probably tried this but sounds like a situation for having physics gear while landing, but once touched down transition to a non physics gear that doesn't flex.

My first bit of time with KSP I kept flipping rockets and crashing until I did a little reading about SAS and finally got one to fly the right direction. Then I kept flying straight up to orbit, then doing a 90 degree turn and trying to burn to an orbit. Spent a while wondering why I kept running out of fuel with rockets other people got into orbit with until I read about the gravity turn. Next I flew a rocket so low tech it had no landing legs to the Mun, after pointing straight at it and burning a few times until I got captured by the Mun. Deorbited and landed on the engine on the first try (these days that would probably take a bunch of attempt to reproduce). Left the SOI of the mun and corrected my terrible return orbit to point almost straight at Kerbin. Had to f9 a few times until I found a survivable reentry angle and landed. Then spent quite some time wondering how the heck I actually got an orbit to intersect with the Mun and then return. In short, trial and error can be painful if you underestimate the amount there is to learn in KSP. But it feels like a massive accomplishment at each step when it goes right.

I might have enough space on the big tank under the ISRU, I'll try that to keep stuff out of the way of the rockets.

Yeah, that layout is great for the miners but less so for the converter. Even four small foldable radiators don't quite cover the converter, so I'll probably be putting in four medium. The design is intended to leave the miner on the surface while the fuel is brought up to orbit, then the tanks are flown back to the surface. IF I can make this work, bringing the tanks back down without hitting or burning up the radiators should be entertaining.

Perfect! I had read that the radiators work from anywhere but I didn't realize that was just the foldable ones. I went with moving the drills to the smaller tanks I use more for landing gear attachment so I could keep the non foldable radiators. This setup keeps things away from the exhaust of the LV-Ns (I blew up the little solar panels attached in that area and need to test if the new position will avoid that). I might go to foldable but at the moment I think this works good. Thanks guys!

After travelling most of the Kerbol system I'm finally diving into ISRU. I've done some reading but what I found seemed to be a small radiator per drill was all you need. So I put two large radiators per drill on my test ship as I start with overkill, but I can't seem to keep my drills cool. Here is a shot of the ISRU ship in work, any direction of what I'm doing wrong? (Edit: Answered)Also, can I embed imgur anymore or should I go looking for a different image hosting site? Yes I haven't posted an image here for quite some time.

Some interesting designs I may have to "appropriate" for my own use

I think this is a pretty good way of looking at it. Using KSP as purely graphical simulation to kind of show in the background as you discuss the real physics will probably work. Using it for a physics simulation, needs a very careful analysis. If you can show where KSP works for real world and doesn't, you could have something neat, you could also have a lot of tangential work that doesn't really add much value to the project

Heh, I have a career story in mind around using MechJeb for most everything (You actually trust flesh Jeb TO FLY A SPACESHIP?!) if I ever find time to write it. But it is also less about flying skills and more about the design of the space program. I flew a non lander to the Jool system without MechJeb or maneuver nodes, so I know I can fly it. But while I like flying, I seem to be more engineer than pilot so once I prove to myself I can do something, I tend move onto proving I can build something bigger and better, knowing I could fly it if I wanted to. That and I usually have MechJeb flying the next node in the background while I'm working on my next PHD paper and don't have time to fly manually.

Mostly tumbled until I figured out what SAS was.

Impressive how long this discussion is. I'll just toss in my own thoughts to extend it longer, if you have a front wheel drive car with the rear wheels on a treadmill and the front wheels on solid ground, could it drive away? This may have been brought up but I gave up reading after the first few pages.

Up to 170 yet?

What's bad is keeping count, this obsession is unhealthy. Let Jebs 1-159 rest in peace.

Playing stock provides a leveled playing field so a player's accomplishments can seem to mean something when compared to another player's. When playing modded, comparisons (and competitions) start becoming pointless without extra work to level the playing field again. My $0.02 anyway, I'm usually content competing with the game and myself, so stock or mods don't matter much

Heavy congrats! Those things look like a beast to fly, keep up the good work!