Edax

Essentially, the plane use to split in two right at the front bicoupler so all the weight of each half of the ship is hanging from those reaction wheels, which meant each side of the ship would dangle independently depending on drag forces.

Even if the two points aren't technically joined (yes, I could attach a fuel tank on the right side), it still dramatically increase stability, compared to before when I had both sides hanging, with a bunch of struts holding it together (stability was so good, I removed all the central struts). Do the fuel lines even hold thing together like struts? (Not running KJR)

Maybe this image will help. The tail section bicoupler joins both sections together.

I used to think that (in fact, I think that may have been true last patch), but it when I was tweaking my flying wing design, it had a tendency to flop apart at around 800 m/s (the two ends of the ship were joined together by a knitting of struts. It wasn't until I stuck the bicouplers at the end to join the two halfs of the ship together that stability dramatically improved and the spaceplane no longer ripped itself in two, and could reach orbit.

One way to increase fuel capacity is to use a MK2 bicoupler, then attach MK1 fuel tanks at the attach points, then close the other end with another MK2 bicoupler. You'll be able to carry twice the amount of fuel for the equivalent MK2 length.

My combie Refueling Space Station/ Ore Harvester has: MonoPropellant 840 Ore 6900 LF 12030 Oxidizer 1870 Most of the fuel is stored via "ore" and processed into the needed fuel after the fill up. I've got 2 of them in the moment, one currently in orbit around Kerbin and the other around Minmus. Once they run dry, they just head on to the Minmus flats and refill the tanks.

SSTO rule of thumb. People on the forums will try to guilt you into designing efficient SSTOs. Don't let them! High-thrust, moderate efficiency is no sin! Some of us like having our SSTOs reach mach 4.7 in 30 seconds, it's wicked awesome and we don't have all minute! You don't have to worry about your carbon footprint on Kerbin and gas is cheap and certainly not going to burn itself! If it's K-Prize capable, then you've succeeded in my book!

A simple rule of thumb is that the inside of a crater will be flatter then normal, because some rock in the past flattened whatever geography was in that location before. Aiming for the center of a crater, even on a planet like Duna, will result in smoother terrain overall.

I'll admit, I designed this thing much earlier in the tech tree and in a different incarnation of KSP [1.0.2] (as if having 4 shockcones for 4 turbojets wasn't a dead giveaway). I've only slightly modernized it, but it still flies well, looks cool, lands easily, and still does it's job of getting a crew to my station and landing back at KSC, so I've never saw the point of giving it an overhaul to increase efficiency. (Plus, my space program only has 8 Kerbals in it, so a 6-seater is already plenty). I only dug this thing out because it look similar to the OP's ship to do a comparison. And anyway, if Mad Max has taught us anything, MOAR ENGINES is never a sin.

In my experience, "swept wings" are the among the sturdiest. I would try and avoid attaching any wing part to another wing part. A solution I have found to increase lift using "swept wings" is to stack them on top of each other to create a bi-plane of sorts. I'm questioning the amount of wings pieces you've got there anyway, I think you have more then enough lift there. The closest analog I've got is my orbital crew shuttle, and it's only using the one wing, and it has enough lift to safely land on the island runway fully loaded. I think your problem is the lack of control surfaces that makes control difficult [notice I'm using double winglets on the back of my ship for extra pitch control] (you don't need much lift to take off into space anyway, it's landing where lift become extremely important.) When looking at your ship, I'm not seeing any tailplane at all, just control surfaces at the edges of the main wing (which best control roll, just 2 of those small control surfaces are not enough to control pitch on such a large plane in my opinion)

Don't forget that that the large ore tank and large ISRU can function as a very large LF fuel tank. The downside is that you can't actually use the ore during a burn or take-off, but the upside is that pound for pound, the large ore tank can store a very large amount of "potential" liquid fuel, more then the equivalent sized fuel tank (because ore is more dense.) You just need to carry enough LF fuel tanks to complete a burn, then refine some more liquid fuel when your on the go. Great for saving space when you need to use size 2 parts.

Well, I've run another test with a backwards control module, all the control surfaces reverse themselves the backwards control module has the "control from here" selected. Have you tried that yet?

Capsules...aren't heroic. Coming back from the another planet in a tiny pod that landed in a puddle or wasteland underscores the awesomeness of the achievement. Coming back, in your fully intact spaceplane, on the runway, doing your Right Stuff slow mo walk is just so much more epic. Sure maybe you had to send up a fuel tank in a rocket to refuel it on it's journey, but unmanned fuel tanks are hardly worth mentioning in the grand scheme of space exploration.

I've not experienced reversed control imputs on the Indagatrix , (but I haven't tested it yet with the reversed command probe yet for when I use manuver nodes with the LV-N) but I think I know what your talking about. In other ships, when I put some tail fins on a strut (placed at the back of the plane) or FAT-445 flaps on a wing, they'd inexplicably work backwards creating downforce when I'm trying to get off the runway, and inverting them doesn't help at all. Here's an example I made where the tail control surfaces just wouldn't work in the proper direction.

Looks like I got a MK1 spaceplane with a front LV-N to finally work. I've dubbed it The Indagatrix. Figured out that the MK0 LF fuel tanks are very handy at keeping the plane nice and short. Whiplash engines and oxidizer fuel tanks are detachable (and cheap), they'll feed oxidizer to the RAPIER until I hit 1800m/s. The flip over. Takes about 20-30 seconds to stabilize. Once in orbit, the tanks at detached. (And self-destructed, for the environment!) And I'm left with a rather impressive amount of LF fuel, though I'm doubtful that Mechjeb is giving me accurate readings, the Dv was the same before and after the stage detachment.

Yeah, I found a steeper descent necessary, which meant the air-engines need an generous amount of acceleration to achieve it (hence why I'm checking for reasons on how to reduce drag). The crux of my problem is that the LV-N is suppose to be the main engine for travel once the tanks have been refilled, but every oxidizer tank I add seriously reduces the Dv efficiency (but is very useful for actually getting out of the atmosphere), so I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the right balance. In essence, the spaceplane with the LF tanks and LV-N is the main payload I'm trying to get into space. I suppose I could try and make the oxidizer tanks detachable so they can be detached in orbit whilst still maintaining SSTO status. I'm trying to get better then 4000 vacuum Dv with MK1 parts.

This sounds like the solution to my problem, mounting a LV-N facing the back, but I have a heck of a time trying to keep an non-vectored engine balanced enough not to cause spinning. I've only manged to do it with rapiers on a quadruplane, and I expect it's the vector control that keeps it from spinning out of control.

I see that the very old picture of my non-SSTO is throwing people off (it was towed in orbit and designed to fly backwards 98% of the time [It had detachable fuel tanks because it was 1.0.2 and LF tanks back then were super light and carried little fuel], and only aerobreak and reentry in the forwards position, with the 1.0.5 update, I'm trying to see if I can make an SSTO variant since I don't need too many air intakes), so here is a different example that I've manged to get to SSTO, Still needs refinement, but I'm working on a MK1 version at the moment, and I'm trying to kill as much drag as possible, while also trying to keep the spaceplane from getting too long that it'll be too difficult to land on other moons. The example below can get into space so that I can safely flip it backwards to use the LV-N, (but as I'm noticing with 1.0.5, you can't flip over anymore around the 30000-40000 meter zone).

I've designed spaceplanes with the LV-N in the front for the sake of streamlining and thrust alignment, and I've had some success with it, but the nagging question in my head is, does the engine bell act like a giant air scoop producing massive amounts of drag? Reality would tell me yes, but I'm not sure if the game models engine bell drag or not. I could easily stick a air intake or nose cone with decoupler in front of the LV-N, but my spaceplanes would then lose the SSTO status, so I'm wondering if that step is necessary at all? Picture below, not actual SSTO.

Calculating Delta V for that is easy, it's zero. Your front engines and rear engines will negate each other, and you will fail to move in any direction. That's what happens when you let Sir Issac Newton design a ship.

The great thing about the foldable radiators is that you can start using them from 30000 meters on up in Kerbal's atmosphere. 30000-70000 meters is where any heating problem will probably occur, from either taxing the engine or reentry. I haven't tested them in the atmosphere at interplanetary intercept speeds yet though, so any panels extended is an unknown to me past 2500 m/s. [I also did the test during 1.0.4, so it's possible they changed it since then]

Canards also make a very handy stepping platform for the pilot when they exit the cockpit. Without it, they might just accidentally fall off the side or have trouble re-entering the cabin. It's also useful in this instance in the video where you need the extra pitch authority to keep the nose up and the extra lift to make sure you land at a slower speed.

Oh yeah, I forgot Jool has no biomes. I was thinking you could send a plane in to all the different cloud layers on Jool to gather science but I guess that's not in the game. Thought it would be cool to achieve a perma-glide with a nuke turbojet and travel from south-to-north through all the different cloud layers, then jettison the turbojet when the mission was done and rocket back out.

So why isn't a nuclear turbojet effective on Duna, Jool, or Laythe?

For me in my career playthrough, Jeb represents the old Kerbal Space Program, he's all for rocketry and rockets. Valentina is the new blood, a huge advocate for spaceplanes and SSTOs. Between them; a great rivalry over how space should be explored, through powerful, disposable rockets or through a reusable spaceplane fleet supported by orbital fueling stations.