FleshJeb

I would use a combination of the Breaking Ground DLC and the Kerbal Attachment System mod. BG has robotic and moving parts, and KAS has winches and cables. The alternate to BG is the Infernal Robotics mod. I'm not very familiar with either mod, otherwise I'd be more specific.

Do the new textures still load into RAM at any point? Stock 1.9.1 already takes 10min to start on my 4GB laptop.

The amount of whitespace relative to useful area is a tad excessive. For perspective, I browse old.reddit.com on my phone and it's fine. That was a link. This is an underline. <-- Basic usability anyone? I think this is what I have on my home machine: https://userstyles.org/styles/147582/kat-s-kerbal-space-program-ksp-forum-tweak The rest are here: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=kerbal&type=false

@Reinhart Mk.1 @Spricigo Thank you. Knowing me, the range was probably at least Minmus, but it has the cargo capacity for self-refueling. I tend to design spaceplanes, make sure they can get to orbit, and then never look at them again. Tax?: I'd have to rebuild it. I lost something like 2000 craft files when work upgraded my workstation. I'll be happy to do that this weekend if you like.

I've gone to 85km and back out on a single stage with no heatshields or fairings. Heatshields and fairings have a high absolute temperature tolerance but they transfer heat extremely slowly, so once they're hot, you die. The trick is radiating heat at a rate that allows you to survive. Parts such as most nosecones, structural wings, control surfaces, and precoolers radiate heat at 95% perfect emissivity (default 60% for most parts), and they transfer it extremely quickly. (Big-S parts transfer heat at 1/2 the rate of structural wings, so if you use them, you usually die.) Some parts

Never, EVER use Rigid Attachment, it turns your craft into glass--Hard but brittle. The only justifiable use case is for mechanical contraptions using Same Vessel Interaction that require tight, consistent tolerances to function. The issue in this case is that the full ore tanks are so dense that they overcome the attachment strength. They're not really suitable for structural uses. It would be better to build a chassis out of girders and hang the tanks from that chassis.

Allow me to disagree ;-)

Do you mind if I build you a sample plane when I get home from work? If you tell me what you'd like it to be able to do, I can design to those parameters. I can explain why I make the design choices I do, and how to pilot it. Where is it supposed to go, what does it do (science, refuel, passengers) when it gets there? In the meantime, read this. Gav doesn't cover Mk3 planes, but it's got very good general spaceplaning information:

That gear should be more than enough. Also, Bewing is correct. Set the Spring to 0.5, and the Damper to 2.0 on all gear. It will land more gently and bounce less. The rear gear should be closer to the COM. If you do that, set the Spring on the front gear to 1.0. The plane should be sitting lower to the ground for stability. Unless you need to get into a downward facing cargo bay or something. Autostrut Grandparent everything. It should help against the landing impact. All the wheels are automatically forced to Heaviest, so don’t worry about them. Those Matt Lowne style

I have a standard fuel tank, driven by a standard starship drive section: It refuels by sitting on top of the miner: I've since redesigned the tanker to survive deep aerobraking into LKO from Minmus. Which means it can also do Vall to Laythe.

Lock the pivot on the claw if you haven't. If it's still floppy, I think you can turn on Autostrut: Grandparent for the 'roid. The way I always used to do it was bring landing legs to stabilize and set up some tension against the asteroid, once it was clawed. Nowadays, i think you have to turn on Same Vessel Interaction for the asteroid and the legs. It was always a challenging problem, the trick is to use basic principles of engineering and geometry to make the connection more robust. KSP has flaws as a simulation, but I've never encountered a situation where making something fundam

I make MechJeb do the burn, and I stare at the screen angrily until it's done.

(Sorry to jump on OP's thread) In this case, I'd build the props with the blade edge facing forward in the UNdeployed position, and an action group to toggle it. As soon as you light the rocket, hit the AG and they're in the minimal drag configuration.

My rule of thumb for Kerbin spaceplane SSTOs is 0.33 to 1.0 "lift units" (see part descriptions) per ton of craft. A lot of people will find that rather high, but it makes them easy to fly and land while fully loaded. Since gravity on Eve is 1.7x Kerbin, but the air pressure at sea level is 5x, that translates to 0.11 to 0.34 "lift units" per ton for the same flight characteristics (if my assumptions are correct). Since you're new to planes, I can HIGHLY recommend this as a primer: You've chosen a very challenging task, so my advice is to keep it as simple and symmetric