KarateF22

Can now confirm the shield docking port works too. It really does seem that the only number that matters is max temperature; at 2600 the shielded docking port and fairings have such a larger advantage over nose-cones which are limited to 2400.

I know it doesn't work with intakes, haven't tried the shielded docking port yet.

As the title says, fairing nosecones allow much higher than normal speeds when compared to a regular nosecone before things start getting explodey. If i use a standard nosecone I am usually just able to get my aircraft to 1300-1400 m/s on RAPIERs, but with a fairing in front the cockpit seems much more heat resistant. If I use a very small Fairing nosecone? a face-melting 1550 m/s at 10k, or 1625 at 20k (sadly much faster is impossible as even RAPIERs lose thrust at such high speeds). Things do get QUITE warm, but no explosions. This seems a tad unintended. Proof: What do you guys think, intended or no? I'm leaning towards not, but would be interesting to know what others think.

[quote name='Frozen_Heart']I still haven't found a way to solve this properly. Move CoL forward and it tumbles, backwards and it lawn darts. In the middle it does both. I had a barely controllable shuttle at one point but trying to make any changes made it unflyable again.[/QUOTE] I fixed it by moving the fuel tank to behind the cockpit instead of the cargo bay. Only issue is then its actually a little bit too stable, meaning it has some issues burning off speed during reentry, but it is able to pull it off eventually if I pull up for the entirety of reentry; only downside to that is pinpointing KSC is a bit harder. Today I'm experimenting to see if air brakes at the very tail of the craft right next to the Tail Fin might help with this a bit, I'm hoping that their additional pull upwards in tandem with their straight speed bleed will be enough for the job.

Your thread on the matter answers this for me, thanks Frozen.

[quote name='Venusgate']Upper atmosphere doesn't affect lift as much as your CoM is behind the "middle" of your craft.[/QUOTE] That didn't seem to matter before this patch, did they make drag better translate to lift or something? And if so, its odd that they didn't make it take that into account when displaying CoL.

I have a space shuttle replica which launches relatively fine, but during attempts at reentry it always tries to flip tail first, instead of nose first, despite a Center of Lift which is clearly behind the Center of Mass (and yes, i accounted for potential shifting mass). This makes accurate reentry to KSP virtually impossible due to the tumbling craft causing unpredictable amounts of drag. Does anyone know why this might be happening? Craft file [URL="http://www./download/q17h0b7qh3nymx6/Space+Shuttle+Mk+3.craft"]here[/URL], if anyone wants it for examination.

Vector is better for atmospheric or high gravity bodies, Aerospike is superior for lighter ones or deep space.

I did. I angle all the vectors 10 degrees upwards (towards the external tank), which seems to be enough if you have a couple kickbacks attached to the external tank early on. Like the real shuttle ascending top down (cockpit facing Kerbin) seems to be the way to go.

I did find a solution, found out that the poles of Laythe are extremely flat, allowing landings at very high speed. I guess I will just have to locate my refueling station on a polar orbit... its not that bad though considering laythe's rotational speed is only 60 m/s or so at the equator compared to Kerbin's near 200 m/s, so I am not wasting much Delta-V when you also factor in the insane efficiency of air breathing SSTOs.

I guess chutes are always an option, I just preferred to have my refueling SSTO be unmanned; chutes would necessitate crew if I want this thing to be reusable. Even with chutes to make landing easy takeoffs are still nailbaiting, seems there is a 50/50 success rate even with strutted large landing gears to absorb the shock.

Thats insane consider my 233 ton Refueling SSTO only requires about 25 units of lift to get into the air on Kerbin. That means I need 14 times more lift to land at a reasonable speed on Laythe? That sounds a bit too high.

Laythe's atmosphere behaves very oddly and I do not understand why. Unlike Kerbin's atmosphere air breathing seems to be possible up to 36k with RAPIERs, yet the atmospheric height is only 50k and the pressure at sea level is well under that seen at Kerbin. The latter caused one of my recent SSTO builds to fail after I worked off a (what I believe to be reasonable) assumption that an air breathing height of 36k would mean the atmosphere would be at least equal to that of Kerbin's at sea level. Unfortunately this turned out to be false, with the atmosphere being considerably thinner... resulting in one of my SSTO builds to crash due to insufficient lift to land at a low enough speed. Getting to the point, how much additional lift (preferably as a ratio for a given mass) should I probably expect to land horizontally on Laythe near sea level when compared to Kerbin?

If you only need to get suborbital a single Kickback with thrust limited should do the job, and be cheaper.

From what I understand they added a mechanic where if you go too fast at a certain atmospheric density airflow simulation switches from laminar to turbulent, causing a gigantic spike in heating. This gigantic spike in heating is instantaneous and usually is enough to outright destroy the craft.

Cruising at 1550 m/s at 24,000 meters is just fantastic and makes for a ridiculously quick and efficient transition period into orbit, SSTOs just became a lot more practical from what I can see. Turbojets also became similarly improved, i was noticing them capping out between 1300 and 1400 m/s at 22,000 meters; their new graphic effect is major eye candy too.

The most drag is experienced at the sound barrier, which is between 300 to 400 m/s. This in tandem with RAPIERs having very poor subsonic thrust is why you are experiencing this barrier. This can be fixed by adding turbojets or simply more RAPIERs or perhaps even a booster of sorts; typically once you are past the barrier you are fine.

If all you want is Duna orbit the easiest way to get there is with an ion Microprobe, their tiny mass and sky high delta-v essentially lets them do laps around the solar system, let alone Duna.

Fairings can be decent in situations where its too hot for even heat shields, such as slamming into Jool or Eve without an optimal descent profile. I've slammed a couple suicide probes into Jool before, the heat shield typically fails them but if they are encased in a fairing they survive.

One reason for this is because the Mun is moving. You do not need to shift your plane a full 90 degrees relative to Kerbin to achieve a polar Munar orbit, you only have to shift your plane between 10 and 20 degrees in tandem with an entry into the Mun's SOI while at maximum deviation from its plane distance-wise. Additionally, plane changes are cheaper the closer to the Apoapsis you are as plane changes are a percentage modification of your total speed, you are slowest at your Apoapsis so it is cheapest there. This is why it seems cheapest to do as you enter the Mun's SOI, because it effectively is. The only time a plane change is guaranteed to be cheaper in tandem with a rendezvous setup burn is when at Apoapsis, however the closer to it you are the more likely it is that this is the case.

I am having a bug similar to this, happens reliably with a certain ship when i time warp to apoapsis during launch. When I activate time warp physics continues to simulate (and no, its NOT the separate physical warp) and, strangely, my speed becomes constant and does not decrease as my orbit heightens towards Apoapsis. The constant speed causes my ship to pretty much continue in a straight line until it exits Kerbin SOI without any thrust applied. Very strange behavior.

Adding airbrakes would pretty much solve your reentry issues, just ensure that their control surface functionality is disabled or you will get a ton of drag when maneuvering.

When it comes to SSTOs, Turbojets have kinda fallen by the wayside. Their best use is helping break the sound barrier, as RAPIERs sometimes have difficulty doing that. Once you're supersonic though, RAPIERs are far superior.

So does this mean the axial tilt for Minmus is perpendicular to Kerbin's orbital plane or its own?

I am aware that the game has no variant axial tilt, but I am still a bit unclear on what that exactly means. Does this mean that all celestial bodies rotate in the same tilt as the Sun and Kerbin (0 degrees), or do they all rotate in line with their orbital inclination (which makes more logical sense)?