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As others mentioned they reduce drag. Structurally, if you look closely you will see that different parts have different sizes of attachment node, i.e. the green sphere that appears when you pick up the part. Bigger green spheres mean a stronger attachment node. Bigger parts tend to have bigger/stronger nodes. Adaptors tend to have stronger nodes that fit the bigger side. This may or may not be useful for you, but I thought it's good to know.

How do you even make a stock propellor? (j/k)

How do you even make a perpetual flying machine?

Most planes in KSP drift slightly to one side or the other during takeoff. There's been ample discussion on this for ages but I can't recall now what the cause is. That said, you can mitigate the effect as others have said by using (auto)struts and making sure your gear is large enough to support your weight and is properly aligned in on all axis.

@AeroGav Obviously you know what you're talking about, but I wanted to point out that's not entirely accurate. The later versions of KSP give body lift to capsules, and while the cross range capabilities of a capsule are nowhere near those of a spaceplane, you still have some margin for maneuvering, especially if you do your maneuvers while still in the higher atmo.

Use the Trajectories mod, it will show you a red 'X' marker where you are predicted to land. If you want to keep it stock, trial and error is the only real way. This is because your landing spot will be influenced by a bunch of factors including the shape and size of your orbit and that of your craft. For a LKO, I usually burn over the deserts west of the KSC continent and aim for my orbit to touch the ground east of KSC on the peninsula that looks like Korea. Additionally, if you're using a spaceplane, you have the advantage that you can significantly alter your landing spot by maneuvering in the air during descent. So keep switching to map view to see how your trajectory is behaving and adjust accordingly. As others mention, increasing your AoA (that is, pitching up or down, or sideways while banking) creates drag and slows you down. If you're overshooting, increase your AoA and if you're undershooting point more prograde to reduce drag. In the upper atmosphere it's all about drag. But as you hit the light blue part of the atmosphere meter, you'll start generating lift, so flexibility increases. Here you can make significant trajectory changes by maneuvering like a plane as needed. Or you can land on the island runway!

Oh the joys and wonders of being a novice space explorer. Those were the good old days. Anyway, here’s an alternate method I always used: Get into a circular LKO and time warp in staging view (i.e. not map view) and wait until the Mun rises over the horizon. As soon as it does (you can be off by a bit, don't worry about being exactly accurate), stop time warp and start burning prograde. While you burn, switch to map view, pull up your navball (so you can continue controlling your craft with the keyboard), and watch your orbit rise until it hits the Mun’s orbit, then cut your throttle. If you did it right, you should have an encounter. As mentioned, you'll know there's an encounter because a bunch of new orbit line will appear, plus you'll have a small marker in the shape of a circle with an arrow, which will be labeled as 'Mun Encounter' when you mouse over it. At this point you can tweak your encounter to be more accurate by focusing your view on the Mun. While in map view, double click it, or single click it and select ‘Focus View’. As mentioned above, this show what your trajectory relative to the Mun will be during the encounter. Once you’re focusing on the moon (still in map view), use your Navball markers to give yourself very tiny nudges in one direction or the other until you find the direction(s) which will bring you closer. This is not the most efficient way to fine tune your approach but it does wonders in terms of giving you a real understanding on how burning in different directions will move your orbit. The most efficient way to correct your course is to do a mid-course burn (about half way out to the Mun encounter, again you can be a bit off it doesn’t need to be exactly half way) assisted by a maneuver node so that you can combine different directions of burning in a single maneuver. Make sure your approach is at least a few Km high over the Mun’s surface, otherwise you will find yourself crashing into its mountains. Hope this helps and feel free to ask more!

I've been playing KSP since the "good old days" and still find myself coming here quite often for help and advice. Welcome aboard.

It's absolutely great used in clusters for super heavy lifters. One in the middle and a ring of 8 around and BOOM you have the equivalent of two Mammoths and then some.

We all assume it has water, but all we know is there's a liquid.

Any chance we can have this on CKAN?

You and I must be playing different games . I'm at work so I can’t look at the pics, but there can be any number of reasons why OP prefers to have a monster craft. My Kerbals for example like to travel in style and will only travel interplanetary with proper habitation space, which means a minimum of one hitchhiker per Kerbal. Making things smaller might solve the problem, but not if you want your design to be a certain way for a reason.

I’m currently building a rocket SSTO, similar to a Falcon 9 booster but it goes all the way into orbit with its payload. For practical, aesthetic and role playing purposes, I really want to the thing to reenter “nose” first with an inflatable heat shield on the front. Problem is, the heat shield produces tons of drag and makes the rocket want to flip during reentry. I’ve partially corrected the problem by: -Pumping all remaining fuel to the front to act as ballast -Adding RCS thrusters for attitude control -Adding larger fins at the back for steering -Adding airbrakes on the back to offset the heat shield’s drag However, even with these measures taken sometimes I make it and others I won’t. In particular, there seems to be a zone in the higher atmosphere where the heat shield produces lots of drag but the fins and airbrakes don’t, and that is where the flipping happens. Once in the lower atmosphere, it seems the fins can bite on the air hard enough to keep me straight, but not higher up. I was wondering what solutions you have found to this kind of problem.

I believe hyperedit has the function to refuel your craft.

If I may hijack this thread, a I have noobish question since I usually do manned. If I were to send a probe to Duna, I would need a comm network there for my probe to be controllable. But how do I control the probes that will set up the comm network in the first place?

I can go on for hours on end, but I usually try to keep it to a couple hours or so.

I recommend you just download CKAN and let it do the work for you

Like the title says, would a planet with oxygen and liquid water be possible IRL, say, in orbit around Jupiter?

You might want to skip the Jool aerobrake. I'm not entirely sure if that’s still the case, but it used to be that even grazing Jool’s atmo at interplanetary speeds would mean instant death. Plus, Tylo and Laythe have enough gravity to let you capture without the need to even touch Jool. I’m sure there are fancy ways to set up your gravity assists, but honestly what I do is, once I have a Jool encounter, I set up a mid-course correction burn (at around Duna’s orbit) and just fiddle around with the maneuver node until I get a Tylo or Laythe encounter that will capture me. It’s fairly easy to do from far away since it takes only small burns to move around your Jool trajectory all over the system until you find a point that gives you the encounter. Just remember the rule of thumb tat passing in front = slowing down and passing behind = speeding up, and the closer your Pe is the larger the effect. You’ll end up with a highly eccentric orbit that will pass through most of the moons’ orbits, so once you’re captured its easy to set up a second assist to further lower yourself around Jool. Set up a maneuver at your Jool Ap (without pulling on the levers, but just as a place marker) and use the next orbit button to find your next encounter and adjust your Pe accordingly to get the orbit you want. As for electricity, despite the distance to the sun, the regular size deployable panels are enough to keep you going (unless you’re going to be mining or using ion engines or something very energy expensive like that). You can slap on a small fuel cell for emergencies, but honestly you won’t need it.

I’m currently designing a Tylo mission. Let's assume I have myself a Tylo intercept straight from Kerbin with a nice and low Pe. My logic indicates that if I try to land directly from my interplanetary trajectory, since I’m going so fast, it will be more expensive than if I use gravity assists to first capture around Jool and lower my Jool orbit as much as possible. Is my logic sound? Is there any gravity assist trickery that can make my Tylo landing cheaper?

Hey, I've been away for a while, sorry. I will test again and report back. Thanks!

Thank you for the awesome mod. Any chance we can have this on CKAN?

This is probably it. It usually happens at higher altitudes.

@Diazo I uploaded some screenshots, let me know if you have any questions: http://imgur.com/a/gm62z Edit: Forgot to mention, I don't have any mods that change the planets or solar system.

Amazing mod. Helps with planes, boats, any kind of lander. Very clean design, almost invisible. Saves me lots of headaches. I do have one comment/suggestion: When I'm flying over the ocean in Surface Mode, the altimeter defaults to showing me altitude above ground (the ground under the water that is). This is not useful for trying to not crash into the water. Obvious answer: click the altimeter to change it to ASL and problem solved. And that is exactly what I've been doing so far. Thing is, I'm annoyed by the "ASL" text that partially obscures view of the atmosphere gauge. I could also switch to Orbit Mode, but since I'm flying in the atmo I need Surface. Anyway, it would be great to either: (1) have the mod know if you're flying above water and show ASL (Surface Mode), or (2) have a way to hide the text, maybe make it so it goes away with a right click, or after 3 seconds of not clicking it.