lordcirth

What exactly is the difference between the Kitten and Munkitty? I can't tell from the screenshots.

Oh yeah, they did nerf the sea level thrust in 1.0, I forgot. So much for Ion SS-to-Duna. A while ago Wanderfound did post that jet/ion hybrid which was cool, but Ion TWR was really low.

Here's a challenge for you, Wanderfound. Can you make a pure Ion-powered SSTO? Doesn't have to carry any cargo, but awesome if it could. The real point of such a thing would be to fly to Duna or something, but SSTO would be impressive enough.

Thanks, that works much better. Got that payload to orbit with almost 1 km/s to spare!

I landed the Astrotaxi III ! I ended up having to come down too sharply at the last minute, and rolled off the runway while deploying chutes. But the rest of reentry was actually really easy, it's a great plane. Thanks so much for your help. 568,068 Funds in one trip! I just got the first equipment recovery contract, I didn't know these existed. Is that why you made the Salvager with the Klaw? I'm trying to fly my Light Cargo 1.8, but as I reach 10km, ascending steeply, I get yaw instability. The SAS slows it, but if I try to keep it on target, the plane promptly disintegrates, since I'm at 80 kPa dynamic pressure. I have to climb over 50 degrees if I go full throttle. I tried throttling down to 2/3 as soon as I took off, but I still lost control at 13km or so. All the numbers in FAR seem good, so I'm not sure what the problem is. It gets really wobbly, kinda like you're going too slow, but at 40kPa? Also, the wings are tuned to 0.7 mass and controls to 0.6. Since I'm not good at flying, I kept it conservative. Rocket TWR is pretty low at 0.57 (with a light payload I'm testing with), but I've never gotten this plane to rocket phase yet anyway. EDIT: I did actually, it actually had decent Dv left, it just took a dozen tries to land it, and it wasn't the runway either. That was before I added airbrakes, but I'm still having trouble on ascent. https://www.dropbox.com/s/24i7wtpfoh12cbi/Light%20Cargo%201_8.craft?dl=0

Can't wait to try both planes out with the changes, but it'll have to wait till morning. I just docked a lander to Kerbin Station with 2 rescued scientists from Minmus, and I have a bus docked as well with 3 Kerbin rescues. With just a pilot, I can take all 5 down in the Astrotaxi III in a single, enormously profitable trip! And not a single piece of hardware consumed since they were launched up there! I love SSTOs & orbital refueling. Soon I will have a refinery on Minmus, and the Grand Armada will begin assembly for their trip to Duna. You've shown several SSTO's with ISRU onboard, but do you use traditional lander refineries as well? I've been thinking of installing KAS just for the fuel hoses, which seem the easiest and most realistic way to refuel on the ground. I'd like to know what you think the best ways are to transfer fuel while landed.

I landed the Light Cargo 1.5 after considerable quickloading. I added airbrakes set for yaw as you suggest, but there was also a roll instability. I'm not sure if it's a result of the yaw or not, we'll see. It also ran out of liquid fuel coming over the mountains, with quite a bit of oxidizer remaining. I landed it on the grasslands with the drag chutes. Here's the .craft and screenshots if you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/paahbt1avprcc8y/Light%20Cargo%201_6.craft?dl=0 http://imgur.com/a/6fryC Also, could you post the .craft for the Astrotaxi mk2?

Well, I just overshot KSC at 28km going 1300m/s. Not sure how I keep managing to screw this up with such an easy plane. I tried to come down but my cockpit hit 99% heat at 25km. I slowed down to transonic, at which point I went from 1000m/s to 600 almost instantly (engines still off). I couldn't turn, rolling did nothing and pitching up just wobbled, I guess I was going to slow for once lol. Ended up ditching safely in a field on the next continent, thanks to the drag chutes. It's probably just bad piloting, but I was always better at designing than controlling craft. Do you think adding Airbrakes would help a lot? Do they generate much heat if you use them during shock heating? Somehow I was on the edge of exploding the whole time after 28km, despite not generating much drag. If I can get this working, it will be great - 72,000 Funds from the 4 Tourists aboard, and I have 2 Tourists and 2 Rescues waiting, which are very lucrative if I can do them all in one launch. I had >800m/s in orbit, so I don't see why not.

Nevermind, found the problem. I just had to pump the remaining fuel from the rear adapter to the nose adapter. You didn't have that problem? You still using Goodspeed?

Thanks for the tips! I have 2 spaceplanes, an Astrotaxi with 4 tourists and a Light Cargo v1.5 (Great name, I know) in LKO waiting to come down. I'm rather liking the Light Cargo, I'll post it after I tweak it once more after it's first full test flight. I'm still having trouble on reentry with the Astrotaxi though. You said 20km Ap, 5-15 deg pitch, right? Well, holding 10 deg, by the time I get to 40km I lose control. It doesn't twitch suddenly, it just starts getting slowly less stable. I think the craft still has the control authority to hold it, it's just too hard to manage all 3 axes at once. I tried SAS tuning stock/your settings, FAR assist, Pilot Assistant's pitch hold (which I am probably using wrong because I don't understand the interface very well). What system do you use to keep it steady? Just tuned SAS? And I think I will mod the Astrotaxi with a docking port as you suggest - it looks like I will soon need a shuttle to de/orbit crew & experiments from lab stations.

Thanks so much to both of you, I've learned a lot. It seems that outriggers are indeed the way to go for anything with a payload, even a 2t crew cabin. Transonic drag with the Astrotaxi maxes out around 450kN, which is huge, but each turbo is doing 440kN at that point, so like you said, not a problem. I tried some outrigger designs, but I was using 2x Lv45 & 1 turbo, partly because that lets you ride turbo till flameout and partly because the turbo seems so powerful now. But with the transonic drag of outriggers, it seems that 2 turbos works better. I notice the Astrotaxi only has ~0.8 TWR on the LV-45, which I thought would be way too low, but apparently I'm wrong. My 1-jet 2-rocket craft would struggle to 25km then burn out all their fuel getting 70km Ap, since I thought you needed >1 TWR for the rocket phase. More rocket TWR does increase efficiency to some degree, right? Also, I'm still not good at reentry - what's the rule of thumb for nuFAR? Still retro opposite from KSC, 30km Ap? EDIT: I think that's working ok, but I can't keep it steady on reentry - if I Hold Prograde, I dive too low, get overheat bars, and lose control. But I'm not sure how to keep it on course at a given AoA with just SAS. I have Pilot Assistant to tweak SAS, using the numbers you posted a while ago that worked great in 0.90. I had similar problems in 0.90 so it's probably just piloting.

I had to put a ridiculously large tailfin to get green NB at 25km/mach 3-4, which is where the problem is. I'm not sure this is practical - it actually meshes with the engines and doesn't increase wave drag, but it must have a lot of normal drag. Removing the wingtips and replacing the fins with a Structural Wing Type A did help, but it's not enough. It could be that the tail just isn't far enough from CoM for this design to work. If I had more Dv to work with, I'd add a docking port or something at the front, but 2km/s is low enough already with a low TWR. What's the lowest rocket TWR that is efficient? Most of my designs in 0.90 aimed for 1.2-1.4 like rockets.

Not sure what to do about the CoM/dCoM, the whole point of the design was to have as little dry mass as possible, which makes it hard to balance. I tried +100 AoA, helped a little. I replaced the Elevon 1's with 3's for more surface, it looks a little odd but whatever. I set them to +100 AoA as well. Btw, through all revisions the inner elevons have been pitch, and the outer pitch+roll. Is that correct? The graph is much more stable now at mach 7: The other problem I'm having is during ascent, as the turbo loses power I lose control. It seems to be on all axes at once, but it could be that one is causing the others. I'm not sure if it's the wrong ascent profile, kicking the rockets in too early/late, or bad airframe. I get a temperature bar on the nose intake just before it starts to founder. EDIT: It's always between 25km-30km, with speed anywhere from 900m/s to 1300m/s. The faster I go the higher I generally get before losing control - do I just need more intakes to power through it? I'm aiming fairly steep because I'm on rockets by that time and my nose intake is on fire. Stability Derivatives at 30km don't go green before mach 5. TWR on the twin Thuds is only 1.02 at 25km - this plane is heavier than I'd like. The wings are already tuned down to 0.7, which can survive 80kPa last I tested.

Thanks for the tips, I've been primarily using Stability Derivatives and making the numbers green in common scenarios. I'm trying static analysis now, Cm is great at Mach 1 and steadily flattens out until it's almost flat at Mach 4. Setting elevators to AoA +10 makes a very small difference. Moving the wings back one offset notch as well gives a barely stable graph: The plane is a bit short on pitch authority, I guess that's the problem. It does not have canards, and I can't really add them because the wings are as far back as they can go, as the screenshots show. I replaced the AV-T1 Winglets at the tail with AV-R8 Winglets for more control surface, and added vertical AV-T1's on the wingtips to add vertical stabilizer so I could rotate the AV-R8's flatter: Mach 7, as you suggested: This didn't help the area ruling though, it went from 1.04 to 1.58 m sq. Will that make a big difference? the turbo has a lot of thrust between mach 0.7 - mach 2, so it might be well worth the drag.

I guess I wasn't too clear about what I meant. I'm playing in Career mode, so Rapier's aren't an option for a while. I'm mostly using Turbos, and Thuds or LV-45 Swivels for now. And I was looking for 4-person or so tourist shuttles that are fast and easy to fly to Kerbin orbit, farther can wait for now. I have a backlog of early tourist contracts that I took while I didn't have turbos, and I figured it would be a good intro to nuFAR spaceplanes. I'm working on one right now that's shaping up, but still having my usual problems with unstable reentry. Wave drag is pretty low, but it's barely stable in pitch. It seems nuFAR pitch stability is no longer simply a matter of CoL behind CoM. On one draft, adding canards apparently helped stability! I still don't understand exactly how that works now. Also, I ran into a bug, an interaction between FAR and Trajectories - hit map and your wings fall off, even if you're in orbit or aero failures are off. So I have to reenter without Trajectories. I came in on Hold Prograde, it looked like I was still in space, then my fins got heat bars. Pulling up 1 deg flipped me. The spaceplane: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=450412999 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=450414313 https://www.dropbox.com/s/jfhp1waygftlg0e/probe%20orbiter.craft?dl=0

Just a tip for anyone else who's been trying to ages to make an SSTO with a crew cabin for tourists: Forget the 2100kg cockpit, put a probe core & reaction wheels in the 1/2 cargo bay you'll want anyway. Same size as an in-line cockpit, but 250+100+100=450kg total. It's the only way I've found so far to make good passenger SSTO's.

Frankly I'd be happy if you could publish a vacuum-only 1.0 version for now. Just something that can compensate for rotation. Hitting a survey landing spot on a rotating Mun is tricky - I landed 4km away after several adjustments.

The Xenu idea is epic - but is there a good way to increase TWR? 0.07 TWR sounds really boring even for ions. For example, would it be practical to cut the liquid fuel fuselage and reaction wheels? I'm guessing the fuselage is there as much for length as fuel. Edit: or why not use the body that has an intake? would the 3rd intake increase the jet ceiling?

Linux is not harder, only different. Personally I find it more intuitive. A Segmentation Fault is a pretty generic error type that can happen on many programs, on any OS. The difference is that on Windows you will just get a crash, whereas on Linux you may be told "Segmentation Fault". Odds are you have seen many segfaults before on Windows, you just weren't told what it was. You certainly don't need to be a programmer to get Linux working. Just install Linux Mint or some other newbie-friendly distrobution and everything should work fine. The installers are actually much better and easier than Microsoft's. You will also have lower CPU + RAM overhead to run KSP. I actually haven't switched to the 64bit version, as I have not yet needed the RAM. I run linux as my daily driver, not just for KSP, but I'm happy to see so many people giving Linux a try because of KSP. Cutting 500MB off your RAM usage can also help a lot for people with <4GB of RAM, I bet.

I've done 1-5, nothing fixed it. But I just realized, the radial engine bodies clip through the cargo bay. I remember you said in a guide that cargo clipping through the bay can cause odd problems, so I replaced the radials with engine nacelles facing outwards. It no longer pulls so hard on the runway! There's still a little drift, but it's random & the same as most of my planes and it's easy to get off the ground using Capslock fine controls to hold course. One problem remains, though: When I get off the runway, I have to pull up very hard to get off the runway before running out. Even with fine controls on, when I pull up, the nose shoots up, then falls again. It's hard to settle into a steady climb, with or w/o SAS (tweaked). Could just be a change in CoM/CoL from swapping the nacelles, I'll have to fiddle later. Thanks for your help!

Hi Wanderfound, thanks so much for all the great spaceplane ideas. I have a problem though: I downloaded the Kerbodyne Initiale, as I am in career mode, but when I launch it, it often pulls sharply to the right on the runway. I can keep it on course with manual steering but it's tricky to get to takeoff speed without tipping and smashing a wing. Clearly this wasn't happening for you when you made it, so I'm wondering if a new FAR version changed something? I am in career mode, and only have basic action groups, which will change the jet>rocket transition, but shouldn't change runway performance. I am using the Level 2 Runway in career mode, but I've tried the same .craft in Sandbox and it has the same problem. If I can get it off the runway with decent speed, it flies ok, but this is rare. Planes I've made recently, although they have plenty of other problems, don't yaw so hard on the runway. I know that normally a pull to the side would mean too much weight on landing gear, but wouldn't that pull in random directions? Also this plane isn't too heavy. Reseating the landing gear with angle snap on doesn't change anything, so it's certainly on vertically. I just tried putting a T800 in the cargo bay in Sandbox. It pulls to the left as it starts, then at 50m/s it starts pulling right again. This is very confusing behaviour. Also, possibly unrelated, most planes I make get very unstable around 20km-25km even though their stability derivatives at similar altitude and speed show green. They change attitude with controls, but this seems to have no effect on their course until I pitch so high that they suddenly flip and explode. Am I just piloting wrong? The few times I've been able to try the Initiale at 20km it worked fairly well. In both scenarios, I'm usually using FAR's flight assists, but I have tried all combinations of SAS, FAR, and no assist. I haven't tweaked SAS.