Raptor9

Ha ha, I thought about adding spectators, but I'm sure it would look a little odd to see all the people walking around in identical spacesuits...like some sort of Kerbal comic-con cult or something, lol. Honestly though, the frames were getting a little choppy with all that, and I didn't want to spend all weekend moving Kerbals in slow-motion around the SPH. Just consider these press photos taken before the gates opened...

With the imminent tightening of the Kerbal Space Program budget [0.24 ] the KSP directors and Kerbin Air Force officials have teamed together to raise money by hosting an airshow at the Kerbal Space Center. Original plans for balloons were ruined when the vendor filled the balloons with hydrogen instead of helium...needless to say, the morning fireworks display to kick off the festivities was a little more bang for the buck than expected. From left to right in the foreground: F-3B 'Eagle' high-speed interceptor, FB-3C 'Eagle' two-seat fighter-bomber, F/A-12 'Raptor' two-seat advanced strike fighter. From left to right in the back: R-2A 'Condor' high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, WR-2B 'Condor' two-seat weather observation aircraft. Foreground: SR-6A 'Dragon' high-speed reconnaissance aircraft. From left to right: SR-6A 'Dragon', SR-9A 'Phoenix' multi-role spaceplane, SR-7A 'Valkyrie' two-seat spaceplane. Center view: UR-11 'Hawkeye' unmanned reconnaissance drone. From left to right: F-10A 'Sparrow' advanced light fighter, F/A-5A 'Falcon' STOVL strike fighter, TF-1B 'Skyhawk' two-seat jet trainer, F-1A 'Skyhawk' light fighter. Most of these aircraft/spaceplanes are constructed using only stock parts, with a couple exceptions... A big thanks to TouhouTorpedo for his work on the following parts: Pitch Vector 3 mod for the lift-fans and gimbaled jet nozzle on the F/A-5A 'Falcon', Mk3 Expansion pack/Mk3 Crew Cabin for the crew cabins, bomb bays, cargo bays, docking ports and LFO tanks on the SR-9A/B/C 'Phoenix' variants, as well as the Mk3 Cockpit Internals which I also use. IMHO, these parts should be implemented into the stock parts listing. I also want to thank BigNose and his contributors for the Aviation Lights mod, which I use on all my aircraft, spaceplanes, and most of my spacecraft.

This is my first successful spaceplane using just stock parts. (It does have Aviation Lights, a mod by BigNose, but it's purely for aesthetics and has no function on the spaceplane except to look pretty) By successful, I mean it took off under it's own power from the runway, rendezvoused with a fuel depot in a 150km equatorial orbit, and was still able to return to KSC without taking any fuel from the station. The fuel curve was tight though, the rendezvous was more aggressive than I should have done. EDIT: Curseforge Project Link: http://kerbal.curseforge.com/shareables/220916-sr-7a-valkyrie

Is there a third mode that you don't consider cheating...? I don't understand.

EDIT: Ah, Captain Sierra already pointed out Munar gravity-assists, my bad. If you plan it properly, you can use the Mun to gravity assist your transfer trajectory. My first attempt I designed a interplanetary ship with five NTR engines for a transfer to Duna, and used Kerbal Alarm Clock to get the right transfer window. I used what I thought was a "reasonably low" amount of fuel to eject from Kerbin orbit, but used up almost all of the rest trying to slow down to insert into Duna. While I got to Duna in a short amount of time, it took too much fuel to slow down. I had about 7% of onboard fuel left by the time I got into a 150km circular orbit around Duna's equator, and that was after I went into some of my lander's fuel reserves. My second attempt, I used the Mun to slingshot (10km altitude fly-by ) out of Kerbin's orbit, and used a trajectory that entered Duna's SOI at a much more shallow angle. It's gonna take 100 days longer to get there, but it'll use less fuel to brake into Duna's orbit. My ship is still en-route, but I'm already well above the fuel curve. I'll try to slingshot around Ike on my way out, too. The gravity-assist requires some more maneuver node planning and timing with the Munar orbital period vs Duna transfer window, but the pay-off is worth it in my opinion from a fuel reserves standpoint.

This is true. Since the KSP models orbital mechanics using a patched conics approximation instead of a full n-body simulation, Lagrange points aren't possible unless Squad would fudge it somehow. I personally would love it if they coded in a sort of "physics cheat" and added the ability to set up Lagrangian-based space stations. I'd seed fuel depots all over the place, ha ha.

I voted for Sandbox simply because that's what I play most and that's what I get the most enjoyment out of. I like the concept of the career, but I'll wait until more substance is added through contracts and such before I try it again. My main complaint with career mode is that it's made to ease a new player into KSP like a long tutorial, but I absolutely love the R&D and Science part. I wish that upon starting a new career save game, you have the option of choosing a career path of a tutorial structure, or one that seems a little more logical in part availability. (That's just my opinion, I know a lot if not most other people disagree. And yes, I also know there are mods out there that load different tech tree structures) Just my two cents addressing the current structure of the stock game. Again, I'm looking forward to the contracts and funding aspects, and I'll be trying career again with the 0.24 update.

That's not the Kerbal way, lol...more boosters!

LMFAO! "(Sigh) Alright Kevin, you're up." "AWW YEAH!" Too much

This mod is bugged in 23.5 (ARM Patch). When launching a spaceplane from the runway there will be no Kerbal cockpit view on the bottom right, IVA isn't available, and there is no staging column. I could still right click on the engine and start it that way. I reinstalled the stock part.cfg file, and everything worked fine again. Hopefully SH is still on the forums, maybe he will have a solution

A1catraz, I've done two techniques to solve this problem: Jettisonable descent pods or skycranes. The first one, which I don't recommend, is to mount on the top and bottom of the module an engine/rcs control pods. I say top and bottom to reference the vertical stack at launch. When you begin your descent to the Mun surface, with the module horizontal, the engine/rcs "pods" will be on each end. After touching down, I pushed one of the grouped action buttons to jettison the descent pods. It's simpler to design and execute, but it leaves debris scattered all around your projected colony site. The configuration of the descent pods will be up to you, but mine included small rocket/mono tanks, rockets, RCS thrusters, and used the small solid rocket boosters to separate during jettison. If your module doesn't have a control pod/probe core, you'll need to mount one of those to at least one of the descent pods as well. One more tip: I mounted the descent pods to each module end with docking modules instead of decouplers for two reasons. Due to the low gravity of moons, I wasn't sure what kind of decoupler force effects would have on my module...the last thing I wanted to do was tip it on it's side after placing it on the surface. The other reason is that you now have two docking ports on each side of the module to assemble follow-on modules. The second, and seemingly most popular technique, that I recommand using is the "skycrane" concept. If you search the spacecraft exchange section for skycranes you'll find an endless supply of examples. Basically a lander designed to carry a payload below it, hover over the surface, drop it, and then ascend back into orbit (or land nearby, or crash, whatever). The good thing about this approach is that (if you design the skycrane properly) you can accurately place the module next to others, and then ascend and grab others to bring down. It can be tricky in the fact that you will need to be fairly proficient at rendezvous and docking, and hovering over a zero-atmosphere body (unless you use MechJeb). One more thing to remember: whatever you use as the connection point (ie docking ports are what most people use), it needs to be placed over the center of gravity of your payload. Otherwise the payload will be dragging one side of your skycrane down the entire descent, using all your RCS fuel just to maintain attitude. In a little while, I'll post some pictures of each that I built as a concept. My KSP computer isn't what I'm using to type this, so I'll have to get the screenshots from that. But hopefully this can get your gears turning about how you want to approach this problem. Great thing about KSP, people come up with all kinds of ways to solve problems.

The engines are simply called "Radial Nuclear Engines" on Spaceport. They come in several sizes too. I use them on almost every lander and skycrane I have due to their compactness and efficiency. Captain Sierra and KhaosCorp, I've uploaded the craft file to Spaceport at the following URL: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/uv-5abear/

I've never posted a craft file before, but I'll see what I can do. One thing I forgot to do is add fuel lines from the converter to the LFO tanks. So I need to get those installed and tested before posting. I'll send you a PM when I do if you'd like.

This isn't my first Kethane miner, but it is my first combination lander/miner. My others were rover-based and placed on the surface by skycrane-style landers. This is the UV-5A 'Bear'. I called it the Bear because it weighed 86tons without any Kethane on board. And it looks all muscle. Mods used were Kethane 0.7.7 of course, rotation servos from Infernal Robotics, Radial Nuclear Engines, grappling hooks/winches from Kerbal Attachment System, hand railings from LackLusterLabs, Aviation Lights and RLA Stockalike RCS thrusters. Final approach. MechJeb 2.0.9 plugin was used for the landing trajectory, but final descent had to be under manual control since the engine pods orientation was now vertical. Even the translation helper wasn't able to calculate the different engine orientation. But no matter, MechJeb getting the lander into the area was extremely helpful. The TAC Fuel Balancer plugin was also used to maintain CG. [ Jeb standing on the observation platform. You can see the grappling hooks deployed. I only tested this on the Mun, but I designed it for Minmus. It's purpose is to carry Kethane up to an orbital refinery around Minmus, so the grappling hooks can help maintain ground contact on low-gravity moons. I took back off with 50% in the LFO tanks, and 7800/16000 units of Kethane in my reservoir, and by the time I got back to a 50km orbit around the Mun, I was down to 20% in my LFO tanks. I'm confident this will easily be able to make a round trip to the Minmus surface for a full Kethane payload. But if not, it has an integrated converter. Gear up with engines in flight mode and swinging around to the east for climbout. The Bear is pretty stable in flight mode with the engines vertical. I was able to relocate along the Mun surface a good distance at half throttle with ability to maintain altitude, airspeed and control with ease. Engine pods back in orbit mode and the throttle against the stops. The Bear isn't as responsive as the usual orbiters I use. But for what it's for, it's not bad.

Bobcat, you are The Man!

I think I may have narrowed down the problem. I think through a combination of graphics settings all the way up and a too many parts/mods installed, I'm breaking the RAM limit of the game. I think what happened was when I installed your parts, it pushed me over the hard limit during game loading. After I removed it and played for a while, I think the graphics pushed up against the limit again and caused a few more crashes. Since your mod was the most recent I installed, I just assumed it was the new HL plugin. Sorry. Having said that, if I did need to send a crash log to a mod developer, how would I go about doing it? I don't think posting it in a forum post would be prudent and/or possible, lol.

Has anyone else had a game crash with the latest version of HL Airships? It happens at the very end of the loading cycle. I removed and inserted the mod several times to confirm, and each time only crashed when it was in the Gamedata folder. I don't have any airships in my persistence file or anything. HL Runway/Pad is also installed, but was running ok with the previous version of HL Airships. When I installed it, I removed the HL folder from Gamedata and inserted the fresh folder from the download zip from the previous page in this forum.

Semni & Bluegoblin, First of all, thanks for the parts. Every one of my space stations and interplanetary ships have your parts on them. While I was updating my KSP to 0.20, I noticed that the plumbing on the new parts are different. I know the fuel lines are a small detail (awesome detail, I mean) but are the lines being reworked? For example, I notice that some of the tri-strut parts like the large Xenon tank have just 1 orange line, while the small Xenon tank tri-strut piece has 3. The tri-strut mono tank piece has 3 orange lines, while the normal-size LFO tri-strut has 1 beige line...was this intentional, or am I mixing and matching different THSS mod versions. Either way, doesn't bother me, just curious.