ComradeGoat

Thanks for doing this. Will wait for a version without the toolbar spamming, as that's somewhat of a show stopper (have to restart the game after a few launches), but this has always been one of my favourite mods, and I'm just getting back into KSP after something of a hiatus.

I often clip stuff into empty spaces, so the Rocomax to Kerbodyne adapter is basically a big empty cone, which can be used to hide stuff like RCS tanks, etc. Have also been known to clip things like RTGs and probe cores into nosecones as well.

My current spaceplane is limited in its ascent profile by the ram intakes overheating. Any tips for helping to cool them?

Quite. That's called a "Laythe lander", and they're rather useful.

The plane I got into 100k orbit in 1.0.0 with 800 m/s remaining, with a new flight profile and a bit of oxidiser level tweaking now gets there with 550m/s left. Now hopefully this won't happen all over again for 1.0.3

Cracked it. Keeping a high TWR was key for me. Two RAPIER engines, lots of fuel, but light enough to punch through the sound barrier in a sustained climb. Designed so that fragile things are shielded from the airflow as much as possible. Climb away from the runway at Mach 1 (300ish m/s), at 10,000m drop to a 20º climb and go to full power. The plane gets VERY hot during this next bit, but it's over quickly and control surfaces are safely tucked behind rigid lifting surfaces (NO CANARDS!) The plane is doing about 1,200 m/s as it hits 23,000m, and will accelerate to around 1,300m/s by the time it starts to lose speed/air at 25,000m. The key here is to power through this part, keeping your apoapsis climbing. The old tactic of getting as high as possible and levelling off to gain speed doesn't seem to work; you just burn up. Once I'm at 30,000m and the flames are gone, level off, reduce thrust to a trickle to keep pushing the apoapsis slowly out to 100,000m, while bringing the periapsis up towards zero (or maybe a bit above). At 50-60 K, once apoapsis is where I want it, kill power and glide to apoapsis. Circularise. Reentry is easy and no airbrakes are needed. Burn retrograde to get the orbit line to intersect the ground roughly where I want to land, warp until below 70k, put the plane in a nose up attitude at 20º and leave it there. At somewhere between 35 and 40k, before the flames start, the wings will create enough lift to slow the descent while scrubbing off speed. Hold the nose up attitude all the way down to about Mach 2 at 25k ish, and land at your leisure. 100K orbit, 600m/s delta V left, docking port, RCS. Now just got to get a couple refuelled and shipped off to Laythe!

I managed to get a single seat RAPIER craft into orbit. Coming down was the easy bit. You need to kill as much speed as possible while still above about 40K. To do this, set up an entry angle that intersects the surface, and as you come in pitch up to about 20º. This will trade speed for altitude. Keep your nose up and you should be able to drop to 1.5km/s or so while still above 40K. Descend slowly, nose-up, washing off speed as you go, and if you do it right you will never even see reentry flames.

Manned landing on Tylo and returning to orbit on my first attempt with no casualties.

After reading all of this, it sounds like ARM is basically unbalanced. I haven't downloaded it yet. Perhaps I'll stick with 0.23 for a while.

Not up there with some of the other creations in this thread, but this is my Endurance Explorer. I built it for direct ascent missions to Moho. It has 17km/s dV on the pad. With some care, the last booster stage can be retained to orbit and refuelled there to propel it beyond escape velocity at >1g acceleration.

I'm very daunted by this prospect, so I'm looking for almost anything else to do to put it off. I can land on Tylo and return to orbit without difficulty, but Eve just intimidates me.

I remember those, but as I had a VIC-20 with its Atari compatible port, I never owned one. Friends did though. Fun times!

Check your tanks at the bottom. I built a lander where one of the radial tanks simply would not drain, even though nothing was obstructing the fuel line. No idea why. Something similar may be happening here: fuel from the centre not getting to one of the engines. Check all those radial tanks to make sure they have the same amount of fuel in them.

Fine tune your approach so that you absolutely *nail* Jool's orbital inclination, and get your periapsis down to zero. When you enter Jool's SOI, burn at 90º to give you the preferred direction of orbit.

You really have to nail the plane correction for Jool. If you have something like Engineer Redux, it will help, otherwise you'll end up with an inclined orbit. If you aerobrake at about 114k, you should end up with an apoapsis somewhere near Laythe's orbit. You can then fine tune your orbit round Jool to get an encounter, and then aerocapture at Laythe, with an altitude of 23-25k. Don't try and go straight to Laythe from a Kerbin transfer. Even if you get an intercept, your encounter velocity will be absurdly high and you will be unlikely to successfully aerocapture.

You've said you don't like multi docking, but there are ways to make it easier. I have a spaceplane cradle which I use multi docking to make a single rigid vehicle. It has one clamp o tron and one JR, with a pairing on my planes (got the idea from someone else on here). To dock, I align both vehicles to point precisely north and then just bring the plane in under the carrier. As the ports align, the magnets take over. Pointing them both north before starting is the key: it makes sure the docking ports will be aligned for the multi dock, and using two different sizes means the wrong ports won't be attracted to each other. Good luck!

Or just use the protractor mod.

Not much. Macbook Air, which means I have the graphics turned way down, but the SSD makes it load like greased lightning.

On leaving Eeloo: Oh look, there's Jool. If I burn towards it, I bet I can get an intercept! Followed by... Oh crap, I'm exceeded solar escape velocity, missed Jool, and have no fuel left.

I just use mods which help with information and scheduling: Engineer Redux, Protractor, Alarm Clock, Fuel Balancer/Mixer and Toolbar

Click on Staging UI. Yes, it's confusing.

Are the bottom engines reducing power, thus casting asymmetric thrust, causing you to pitch forward?

Is that an engine way up there on top? I see your COT is about right, but I wonder if the RAPIER on the bottom is giving a misleading impression. Does the pitching stop if you cut thrust to zero? If so, it's your engine placement.

You're carrying two LV-Ns. Those things are *heavy*. Build light. Two turbojets and an LV-N. Once you're at a decent speed and a decent height (say 1700 m/s and 25,000m), run them at the same time to push you to orbit if your plane is too heavy for the jets to do it. Check out this guy: stock, except for Engineer Redux and a Protractor. I got Engineer Redux to show the delta V in space by thrust limiting the jets in the VAB to 0 (handy trick). That's the heaviest single pilot SSTO I have, and it has an embarrassment of delta V in space. (there are some radial intakes under the engines that you can't see in this view too) Another way to do it is to build light and then dock your plane to a carrier rocket in space, which has enough delta V to get to Laythe and back.

Also worth pointing out that the reverse of this procedure, burn as close to horizontal as close to the ground as possible, is a very efficient way to land. Especially on Tylo.