Somtaaw

One of the issues I have, related to this, is that suspension is usually an all-or-nothing proposition. Excluding damage from an overly hard landing, lander gear either deploys fully, or retracts fully. So even if you can rotate to try put a landing gear exactly along the angle, and manually deploy or retract, you can't stop it's deployment halfway to act as a quasi gear. Even though normally I never install any kind of mod for anything, until I prove I can do it with stock, a mod for landing gear to stop these sort of "aw crap, this landing zone wasn't supposed to be mountains" would be quickly installed.

aw, now I'm sad. Apparently RemoteTech doesn't like being built via ExtraPlanetary Launchpads. Built a nice little satellite in LKO, and even docked to the station, or to a manned tug, it doesn't want to connect to the KSC. Do I absolutely have to launch from KSC? or did I make a traditional newb mistake? Edit: Elaboration, I have zero existing comsat's in orbit and the first gen satellite I produced via EPL is refusing to connect to the KSC. Disregard, I'm an idiot, and after reading the tutorial and dropping a DP-10 equipped probe onto the launchpad, suddenly my station had a connection. My first gen comsat didn't have one of those, simply 4 Communotron 32's, and a large dish.

For the ModuleManager.dll included with the zip... when I have other modulemanager.dll's from other mods, and it wants to over-write how compatible is it? Off-hand, I'm pretty sure I got other modulemanagers from FAR, RT, and I think at least one of my other mods tries to bring its own. Am I interfering by overwriting, or does it really matter which mod's MM.dll I have in my gamedata folder, as long as it's uptodate?

Just about to snag this mod too since so far what you've recommended has been spot on. Was the OOPS mk 3K saved with goodspeed fuel balancing in addition to the expert fuel lines, or just the fuel lines? Additionally, have you considered updating the OP to include a list of mods that you believe are required, and then a list of highly recommended for SSTO pilots, both new and experienced.

I also went and re-grabbed the mk3K just in case I'd accidentally moved wings or something. This is the result of the FAR analysis. And what I did, for what I'm designating the n variant, lateral RAPIERs pulled away. Docking clamp 1.5m attached, RAPIER attached directly to the clamp, and re-did the action group to ensure both engines toggle off when told to. edit: so the lateral engines move back by only a few inches, whatever the distance of a docking clamp is. And for flight, I've been managing to get to the 20-24km height before my velocity starts to drop like a stone with only 2 RAPIERs running in jet mode. if I toggle them over early and restart the lateral engines I start gaining velocity again but I couldn't get into even a suborbital flight before running out of fuel.

Thinking it might be the differences in FAR. you're running a newer version, perhaps there was a tweak, because even the stock OOPS Mk.3K chart with the Cd/Cl/Cm lines goes absolutely berserk. Uploading a picture shortly

nevermind my previous post, found out about FAR's flight assistance toggles, and thats made it much easier to get an acceptable climb without mashing the S button, and then praying I don't tip so far upwards I flip the jet. I do, now have the question as to how you got a HUD for mach speed, stall, etc, that you used on your tutorial pictures for the Kerbodyned shuttle of mine. The data along the very bottom on either side of the navball.

Do have one question Wanderfound, for the OOPS Mk 3K, is it supposed to be kind of sluggish in a vertical manner? While doing takeoff, and trying to climb to 15km it was all I could do to get her to nose up to ~40 degrees. And it kept trying to nose down to stay on a flat trajectory. Or is that only because I'm trying to have docking ports on the laterals, in preparation for the orbital nukes.

the blue thing on top is part of ExtraPlanetary Launchpads (I think), and it's a recycle bin. Turn it on, and anything that comes close to the bin vanishes. Technically I should have another piece of EPL attached to the recycle bin so it helps manufacture rocket parts, but :effort:. I'll get to it when I get to it. I should get around to building a better docking ring, but at its core.... uhh, Docking Ring in VAB. Simplicity at its best, although I'd tweaked it slightly to halve the available lighting on the ring itself. So for it's mark 3 iteration, I'm likely going to add at least one or two more brackets to extend how far out they reach. Hopefully enough so it won't interfere with the neat Assembly Ring mod I found. As an avid Trekkie fan, I just had to have it, and it comes in 1.5m, 2.5m and 3.5m assembly. That's only the medium, because I don't need to build 3.5m rockets in space.

Posted a link to mine. Currently the only docking ring is sticking out on its own, so easier to dock to. But eventually I'll be building out beyond each docking ring, and/or sticking more spacedocks to build upto 4 additional rockets or planes directly in orbit. Then I'll have to start really worrying, but better to design the base design now, and only have to fine tune later. Currently each piece of my station is somewhere between the mark 3 and mark 5, depending on the refit cycle.

Might give it a try then, and call it the OOPS Mk 4. Turn the lateral RAPIERs into ready to nuke propulsion. I especially like that you helped keep my design very streamlined and tight, because if you look at my space station, which is still being produced and docked together, the location of my docking ring is eventually going to be fairly cluttered. I needed a plane that could slide in, dock, pick up what it needed, and then either back out or rotate and slide through like a stiletto. I'll post a screenie after I get the mildly redesigned Mk 3K up.

I can understand that, but what I meant is more for after I hit my station. I designed my SSTO to primarily actually fill the role very much like the US shuttles. It lifts cargo and crew to my station, performs general operations, and then brings crew back to the ground. Emphasis on my shuttle is the general workhorse in space. My Space Station in the bottom right hand, is where my shuttle would dock, refuel, potentially pick up probes or satellites for it to move around. So if I use two of those docking rings to park say: docking clamp Remote control ring small small rcs fuel block with a ring of rcs thrusters LV-N engine Then attach 2 of my RAPIER engines through docking clamps, so after I hit orbit/dock, I just eject the rapiers, swap in the LV-Ns and now it's a space workhorse, until such time as I need to land. Park the nukes back on the station, and land purely using 2 RAPIER engines. at that point I recover the plane, and if I relaunch it, it goes up with 4 RAPIER again. Or am I thinking like an idiot, and need to roll up a newspaper to hit myself for being bad?

Now the only tricky part is figuring out how to adjust my recently completed space station mark 2, code named Hephaestus, to include a good docking section for this beauty of a plane. Now would you say I over muscled the base design, by going with 4 RAPIERs for the core weight? Also, would you say that swapping out 2 of the RAPIER engines for say LV-909's or another variant of interplanetary engine would be easily done? Or would that require considerably redesign? I'm a big fan of modular, so perhaps slide 2 docking clamps in likely onto the wings, for interchangable engine assemblies? I think in the end it might be very similar to your latest Impatienze design, just with twin expanded engines over the one.

[1] Sontaaw, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. It's not intended as a criticism of the original design; I just thought that it made a useful teaching moment. The original was much closer to flyable than most stock-aero based designs are. The post was well done, and I'm man enough to take constructive criticism about things, which is why I came here to the forum SSTO guru. I'd actually set aside the OOPS shuttle plane aside while I got my station refit completed but I had already gone and added a vertical stabilizer. I'll have to poke through the rest of your advice and see where some of the already updated model might need to be tweaked (pretty sure I'd moved the lateral engines and wings forward a fair bit. Edit: And looked back a page to see the OOPS Mk 3 kerbotuned, and love it. My FAR doesn't seem to be pulling up the same analyses as yours, so I'll have to fiddle so I can start looking at that important information. And save the jpegs or hell that entire post for reference material.

My shuttle, meets extended range probe launcher, meets KSC lander mark 3. I still have to add in all the rcs thrusters, and possibly a tail assembly, but also uploading the .craft file so its easier for you to manipulate. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jolxda8n0ggqbxp/OOPS%20Mk_3.craft?dl=0 - the shuttle itself https://www.dropbox.com/s/4c262ao41fmtqux/Probe%201.5m.craft?dl=0 <- a probe I've been trying to get to attack to the cargo bay's clamps. A note, that the cargo bay's clamps (both jr and medium) are both air attached to the cargobay itself, which might be the reason I'm unable to actually get the 2 to connect.

The piece directly behind the crew cabin is a docking port, angled downwards. I was aiming somewhat for a spaceplane similar to the 'Armageddon' Bruce Willis movie, the X-71, which had side mounted docking rings. I went ahead and grabbed FAR, and the only gripe I have about it, is a few of my key re-entry rockets come in hard and fast, and alot of my internally mounted batteries, RNGs, MechJeb control panel, etc get torn off by sheer stresses, and since some of them rely entirely upon MJ tweaking the re-entry to land exactly at KSC thats a mild problem, compared to getting my Spaceplanes to handle properly. And I had indeed gone for RAPIERs, although I had kept the Aerospikes, originally it looked like they had good performance, but the more I browse spaceplane threads, the less I like them. I had a nice Mk2 jet, but then I accidentally deleted it so I'm re-assembling it, and bringing in some of the changes I liked from Ashlain's Aquila enterprise aircraft. I'll upload a picture and craft file, for your expert FAR lookover, right after I finish a reboot. Installed Dropbox on my desktop and laptop to better transfer my KSP between them.

Second generation fuelhub, will be built using EPL, directly at the station. Once it docks to the main hubs, the only reason the station parts undock is because I'm assembling an interplanetary rocket. Otherwise it stays in my 150km apo/peri, 0 inclination station acting as a link up point.

This is an older set of images of my station, but shows the general idea I had, which is correct street. It's entirely modular, flown up in sections of approximately 30-50t pieces that total under 50 parts, and then docked together. Most of these were done both pre-MechJeb, and pre-RCS build aid, so things like RCS were eye placed. Now I'm starting to redesign, both to reduce part count, and increased effiency. If you look closely on the first station shot, each of my designated "fuel hubs" is actually 2 subcomponents, each subcomponent having 2 ASAS modules and 2 RCS thruster rings on either end near the docking clamps. Originally designed when I wanted as little color as possible on my station, but I realised the price I pay in performance, so I'm redesigning to second generation fuel rings with 1 Rockomax orange tank, which coupled with the need for reduced clamps and RCS, have reduced the fuel hub part count by almost 50%. I'm grabbing the new fuel hub picture off the laptop I use to actually play KSP while I'm nominally supposed to be doing work.

I tend to eyeball, and use the commonly mentioned "pro/retrograde escape maneuvers", with a slightly overbuilt rocket. I'm usually doing my deceleration and orbital burn with the stage intended to start me going.

Been building rockets for a while now, and I used to follow a simple rule of thumb that served me well. a 4-pack somewhere near the front, a 4 pack near the back, and that was the end of it. Once I picked up and started using RCS Build Aid, I realised my instinctive placement was always very close to good. But lately I started using the RCS Build Aid to try and make my station components, and started making them as close to torque-less as I possible could. Did I want the torque, or is achieving goals of 0.00XX levels of torque good for the rcs thrusters.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I can't seem to find it in thread so I'll ask anyways. While using Blizzy's toolbar, Mechjeb icon is not disappearing from the stock applauncher/toolbar, and the icon stays on the right side of screen. Is this intended, or did I mess up a file somewhere so it's not properly migrating off the stock toolbar to blizzys. To clarify slightly further, MJ is sitting on blizzy toolbar, and works when I click anything I want from there, Im just wondering why the other icons are not disappearing like other mods do when placed onto the blizzy toolbar.

Crap, could have sworn I saw somewhere that if you dont have Kethane installed, it should yield rocket parts directly.

Isn't the recycling bin supposed to yield yocket parts, if you don't have Kethane installed? Had a recycling bin mounted directly to the hex-huge rocket part container (the 11.2k storage), and nothing has been yielding. Do I need to link it any specific parts? Build order is just recycle bin, directly mounted to the rocket part container, an rcs ring, docking clamp, attached to the space dock. Chews up my parts when I send them in, but no yield of parts.

If that works, thats exactly what I was looking for. Danke, time to test it

Looking to see if anyone can create a lightswitch, for the assembly buildings. I'm sure I'm not alone in going OCD about the exact placement & angling of any lights I put on my rockets and planes. And then clicking launch, and timewarping into KSC night so you can check placement; go back to the assembly and adjusting. Rinse and repeat a few (dozen) times, and then even going so far as to be in LKO and you did a full hohmann transfer to your space station to refuel.... only to find out your lights are not angled quite how you thought. Due to not being able to check light distance while sitting on the launch pad, or runway. So.... any coders want to try figuring out a nifty lightswitch? Jeb accidently kicks the powercord to all those stadium tower lights or something... puts the whole assembly building into darkness, and you can finally adjust your lights to your heart's content without launching, and returning, and tweaking, and launching, and so on.