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Pretty much exactly what I do. Main column has liquid engines that run at 25-50% during take-off with SRB's. The SRB's give it the lift, while the Liquid engine acts as a means of control. Once I'm higher in the atmosphere and have shed the SRB's, then the thrust on the Liquid engine stack gets increased to 75% - 100%.

Something trivial/minor level for me that annoys the .... out of me is the "Contracts" menu. Specifically a few things: - Menu cannot open as large as your screen is tall(this would be nice considering how many contracts you can have). - It doesn't save it's state between screens/flights: - - - Minimized/Compressed Contracts reopen between screens. - - - Menu closes between screens. - - - Minimized/Compressed contracts open when conditions are met, affecting organization. - Re-entry heat affects don't show sometimes, the vessel will just explode and reference "X exploded due to heat." These are pretty low level trivial/minor issues when it comes to usability, but so far in my progress through the career mode it's annoying me quite a bit, as I'll set up that menu so that I can see the specific contracts I'm currently going for out of my accepted contracts, but the list will fight against me. EDIT: Also it's worth mentioning even though it's been mentioned earlier that Heatshields don't have a significant weight to them? So when you re-enter the atmosphere your capsule will sometimes flip over and explode. I corrected for that issue by having a "drag" or "drogue chute" in order to keep in the right orientation. Unfortunately, from this I've discovered that I don't even need a heatshield, as the parachute is so efficient at bleeding off speed long before the heat effects become dangerous to the craft or parachute.

Trial and Error for the most part. There was a video that helped me greatly on how to land on the moon. There wasn't even any instruction in the video. Just a video of the persons trip. I can vividly remember the craft and how to construct it, since it was before 0.13, before the Space Planes hanger was introduced. Before actual landing gear. In order to land on the moon in the video(and subsequently I) used stabilizing tail fins for landing on, attached in a precarious way with the very old style side separators. I think I learned docking through a Scott Manley video, but I honestly don't remember.

Same. Confession: - I don't use mods, at all, ever. I tried a parts mod in the past, didn't feel like it worked as well or looked as good as I hoped it would, reverted, never did it again. Not even MechJeb. - I can't make a decent space plane that can leave the atmosphere and return to it and land. Every one that I've created, as soon as I hit atmo would immediately become an uncontrollable mess that usually crashed in some sort of spectacular glory.(I did make them go decently fast in the past, like 1500m/s+) - I guesstimate fuel to the point where in some situations I need to perform emergency aero-brake maneuvers in order to not get lost to the space between worlds. This has led to me using more robotic missions instead of kerbal manned missions.

You know, I've never used this part. Not out of hate, but always because I was making larger space craft. After seeing some of the designs on this page, I really feel like I need to give it a go before it's gone.

The only thing I\'ve noticed so far(during a failed landing on the Mun in 0.16) is that there is a small 'Artifact' object on the ridge of this crater. I\'ve yet to investigate it, but I plan on it tonight. If you do a low fly-by pass over it, you\'ll be able to see it from an orbit of 40,000m - 120,000m. It looked fairly large, and this was on a fresh play of the game, so I didn\'t have anything landed near there.

Maybe it\'s totally me, but I found something that helped your design a little bit(Sinstrite) is that if you included an Adv SAS directly behind the cockpit it improved stability in your craft greatly. Without it, I found it kinda hard to fly it. Just me though, I\'m not that good at using these planes yet.

It\'s not terribly fancy, but it\'s the first plane I\'ve built that I actually like how it flies/it doesn\'t seem to tailspin like crazy.

Beautiful. Being able to look at so many different rocket designs has definitely given me ideas about my own design. Especially with implementing things like a single stack of fuel tri-coupled to 3 boosters. I had no idea that could be done until now. Thanks!