RizzoTheRat

It gets complicated really quickly. Force = Mass x Acceleration; but your mass changes as you use fuel Drag (real world) = 0.5 x air density x Velocity^2 x Drag coefficient x Area; but density changes with altitude, and KSP's standard model uses a bodge for drag coefficient x area. I the real world (and I guess in FAR) that changes again when you hit transonic speeds. I have a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and that document Mhoram produced makes my head swim, I need to work through it properly at some point I do all my atmospheric testing with planes rather than rockets, much easier to get the required height and speed, and with the new parts in 0.25 I'm managing to make some better aircraft too.

Downloaded 0.25 and started a new career, I've now unlocked about as much technology without leaving kerbin orbit as I had in my previous game after 3 or 4 probes each to Mun and Minimus. Also built my most stable space plane yet... Using a BACC booster as the body for a test contact.

Well given the download logjam I'm now quite glad that I didn't get time to fire up my PC last night. Hopefully by the time I get home tonight the Canadians will have stopped stealing all our British bandwidth and I download it I'm thinking it'll probably be sensible to backup my current install and install a new version from scratch, not made it past Minimus yet so it won't be too big a hardship to start from the beginning again and put some of the things I've learned from my current game in to practice. Can anyone confirm if NEAR or FAR work with 0.25? If I'm starting again now seems like the sensible time to experiment with proper aerodynamics.

Is the shuttle/Soyuz/ISS pressure really that high? Most commercial airliners run at about 11psi, equivalent to about 6000-8000 feet. ETA: Interesting, shuttle cabin pressure was kept at 14.7 psi but they dropped the airlock to 10.2 when pre-breathing oxygen prior to EVA http://www.colorado.edu/ASEN/asen3036/EVAOverview.pdf

To be fair the premis was that the moon had managed to gain enough mass to have earth like gravity, in which case presumably it would gradually attract a bit of an atmosphere, but in the space of 10 years (think that's what they said) I doubt it would have gained enough to fly the shuttle in, and prevent their suits inflating when they exit, but you don't need that thick an atmosphere to hear sound. Surely the bigger plot holes are how the hell an egg managed to gain several billion tonnes in weight, how the creature managed to move in space by flapping its wings, and how a newborn creature managed to lay an egg the same size as the one it's just been born from! I'm not that impressed with the new series to be honest.

Look up Scott Manley's videos on youtube, lots of really good ones. Docking confused the hell out of me to start with but once you get the hang of it it's pretty easy (apart from the last few feet where I lose all co-ordination and forget which keys I'm supposed to be pressing).

I get through a couple of 400g loaves a week, rather than cutting back I took up running to keep the weight down Usually make a 50/50 white/granary mix for sandwiches for work, but make the occasional focaccia, pizza dough or rolls and tried some breakfast rolls (egg in the dough and then mushrooms and bacon added before proving) the other week which were great.

I've never heard of Twitch, does that make me old?

I tried making a lander for Minimus with a lab, 4 materials and 4 goo. The idea being it lands, collects 4 sets of data (diminishing returns but I believe the 4th time is the last attempt you'll get any science for), processes it all, stores it, resets all the canisters, and then flies to another location. In practice it was heavy (only really need 1 goo and 1 materials if the lab's with you) used more fuel than I anticipated and I don't think ended up being any better than my previous trip of 2 landers that separated from a single booster/transfer stage and each carried 4 goo and 4 materials. I was thinking next time I'd try the lab in orbit and a lander that docks with it to offload science, but I'm liking the idea of a lab on a rover. Presumably though it needs to be pretty heavy duty as it'll need fuel and engines to get it back to orbit or kerbin. How long does it take to circumnavigate Minimus in a rover?

Made some mods based on Redshift's assessment last night, moved the wings and engines back, ditched the winglets and radial intakes, added another 4 ram intakes...and took it to about 35km and 1800m/s before switching engines. Successfully put it in a 80km orbit with enough fuel left to refuel a craft that's just returned to Kerbin orbit ready to go on another mission. Still not got the CoM/CoL relationship quite right as with not much fuel left it was a bit unstable in pitch, if I let the nose get too high or low it was very difficult to recover, and resulted in a hairy moment about 2km out from the runway meaning I ended up landing it on the grass not the runway. Bit it achieved its mission and Bill got it back on the ground in piece. Still needs some work but I think I'm getting the hang of it, thanks for all the input.

Get yourself a Kenwood Chef or similar and bread and pasta become really easy. The dough hooks mean I can do all the kneading in the bowl, so no mess, and the powered pasta extruder means spaghetti or tagliatelle are quick to do. Ravioli is a time consuming and messy job whatever you use though.

After Jeb rescued him last week when he managed to get stuck in orbit in just his space suit (despite not even being an employee of the company!), Thombur was quick to volunteer to rescue Jeb from a precarious situation last night. Having landed in the wrong crater on the Mun, Jeb had done a quick hop to a different crater, which used more fuel than he anticipated. On leaving Mun he managed to get in to a highly elliptical orbit from about 200km above Kerbin to around Mun orbit distance before running out of fuel, with the resultant danger that he could get caught in the Mun gravitational sphere of influence and flung out of the system. Thombur successfully piloted the rescue craft, testing the new Nuclear engine in orbit in the process, and was able to attach The KlawTM to Jeb's ship in the first ever docking outside low Kerbin or Mun orbit, transferring enough fuel for the 2 second burn Jeb needed to be able to aerobrake to a safe Kerbin landing. With the SSTO refuelling tanker still suffering from technical difficulties and budget overruns, Thombur has returned to Kerbin orbit to await a rendezvous with a conventionally launched tanker before he attempts to dock with an unkerbaled probe in an attempt to reactivate it by deploying its solar panel. Unfortunately the additional stress this rescue mission has put on the budget means that Jeb, Bill and Bob's planned scientific mission to Minimus has been put on hold in favour of some equipment testing for our suppliers.

Never considered the CoT being an issue, interesting. Weird that the intakes could be different though. I'm certainly learning a fair bit playing with this, thanks. When you say add more intakes, in an earlier version I had 3 or 4 radial intakes on each engine too, but took them off as they just seemed to cause drag and not give me any more airflow at high altitude/speed where I needed it. Presumably I could add a third Ram intake on the nose and bin the docking port for now.

I had the horizontal planes on the back of the central tank originally and the thing wouldn't move on the runway at full thrust, I think the model reckoned the drag on the tailplanes being in the jet exhaust was as much as the jets were providing in thrust! Just tried it with a single engine on the centreline and having only just managed to get it off the runway, nursed it to 26km and over 1200m/s, so it looks like it is asymmetric thrust, despite the engines not flaming out completely

I hadn't realised the radial intake bodies also contain fuel, so a bigger impact on my CoM than I anticipated, but even with the intake bodies and Mk1 fuselages drained of fuel and the central FL-T800's full (not used the rocket by the point of loss of control, and no fuel pipes to cross feed so they're still full) the CoM is still ahead of the CoL I've tried a 10 degree climb which got me 20km at about 700-800 m/s and had the same control difficulties. As an experiment I've tried dropping the rocket motor off the back and putting on a tail boom to shift the rudder and tailplane further back, this seemed a lot more controllable and I got to well over 1000m/s at about 22km before I lost control, and I'm pretty sure that time it was because I wasn't watching the air intakes and started getting thrust issues. I'll have a go later with a single engine on the centreline to check if that is my problem. I appreciate the offer thanks. I'm currently reading Eric "Winkle" Brown's autobiography and that fits nicely with the test pilot ethos of if you can't figure out what's wrong, find a more experienced pilot to get a second opinion https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12134283/KSP/SSTO1.craft

Ah, hadn't twigged the fuel was the same, that would explain why I'd seen some posts saying about reducing the level of oxidant in the tanks before takeoff.

LFO? I'm guessing that's somthgin I've not researched yet. At the moment I've just got jet fuel in the engine pods and rocket fuel/oxidiser in the centre tanks

In the real world the wing provides more lift than the aircraft weight, the CoM is forward of the wing CoL, and the tail provides downforce to balance it. Surely the same has to happen in KSP to cope with the CoM/CoL offset? No rudder but the cockpit torque seems to manage that bit ok so I didn't bother. I turned the ailerons to roll only but didn't change the tail or canards, I'll give that a go too. CoM>dryCoM doesn't seem to be be an issue, if I drain the fuel in the hanger the CoM is still ahead of the CoL

Not researched the Rapier yet. Both engines are still running at the point I lose control so I don't think it's asymmetric thrust, I'd put the intakes on before the engines and was keeping an eye on the intake figures. I'll give it a go with a shallower climb, and compare with that other aircraft too, and report back, thanks.

Think I did both radial intakes, both ram intakes, then both engines. Couldn't quite get my head around the best order. Re the tail plane, in the real world it would be providing downforce, and I assume it must in KSP as the COM is forward of the COL, so the tail has to push town to prevent it nose diving, the tail I'm using the all flying one (not that compressibility is issue in KSP presumably ) so you can see it change angle of attack I've tried draining the fuel in the hanger and with the rocket tank full and the jet tanks empty the COL is about on the back edge of the COM ball I'd assumed I wanted to keep the speed down below 10k in the same way i do with rockets, I'll try a shallower full power climb and see what happens.

I appreciate there's a couple of other spaceplane threads on the go at the moment, but don't want to send one off on a tangent hence another one. I'm having my first go with space planes and having some trouble, so I've read a couple of threads on here and am still not too sure where I'm going wrong. My current design is a bit over powered and can climb at 70-80 degrees nose up at lower altitudes, I'm getting up to 20km or so and leveling off to pick up speed, with the intention of shutting off the turbojets and switching to the rocket once I've got plenty of speed on and before the turbojets run out of air. However it seems to lose control somewhere around 20-25km and 800-900m/s, without the engines running out of air and conking out, and go in to a slow spin which can't seem to recover until I get in to thicker air Design philosophy so far Centre of mass ahead of centre of lift (COL high though which seems silly as tail gives down force not lift) Centre of mass aligned with the middle of the fuel tank so it doesn't vary much with fuel usage (moves back a bit as jet fuel depletes but stays ahead of CoL Biplane design gives lift/mass approx 0.5 Ram air and radial intakes seem to give plenty of air air to 25+km Canards added as I was struggling to get enough pitch up before Winglets added to get more area behind the CoM to see if that helped with the loss of control, it didn't Way more rocket fuel than needed as my goal is to end up with some form of tanker so I wanted a bit of weight on board the prototype Any suggestions what I'm doing wrong?

In the bar celebrating their successful return from a 2 lander and mothership mission to Minimus to gather vital scientific data.

On the other hand it gives those of us who are starting to think we're getting the hang of it a swift reality calibration... I scored 1 (Orbit, Mun, Minimus and docking)

I was a newbie last week, recruitment seems to be going well, Jeb takes his coffee white with one sugar Sounding rockets as in meteorological research/survey work?

Ok that's weird, just retried it how I had it set up before and it seems to be snapping to the centre point quite happily and not wobbling as badly. No idea what happened before. I've only got the standard and shielded Clamp-o-trons so far which are a bit narrow for the purpose but 3 struts to the main tank seems to do the trick.