Jarin

It helps if you think of batteries as good capacitors.

Am I blind, or does that spreadsheet not have 1.25m or 2.5m fuel tanks at all? Wonderfully useful otherwise though. Looks like structural fuselages might be the way to go for a proper pontoon. Wouldn't have called that one, with the open ends, but it seems like it's a rough model anyway.

Empty fuel tanks, I'm pretty sure. But honestly, your typical problem is not floating, but sinking. Just about everything floats, to the point where negative buoyancy is rather difficult to achieve.

Oh yeah, absolutely. But if you're not trying to push the theoretical RAPIER maximum velocity, the faring-nose trick really isn't necessary.

Okay, firstly, the Mk2 has a significantly higher heat threshold than the Mk1. And from the album linked in the above post: 1450+ on ascent. Secondly: are you sure you aren't running 150% heat or something? Those are both at roughly the same altitude, a bit under 20km.

Like so many others, I'm still holding out for a good career mode overhaul. Not holding my breath for a fully stock solution, but hopefully the new tools with the expansion will include letting modders play with some lower-level game mechanics.

They're a lifting surface in stock, too. They're just way draggier than they should be compared to any other lifting surface. Posted on this a few days ago: I really don't know what people are doing to have such heat troubles. Unless you're trying to hit 1600m/s+ on air-breathing thrust, anyway.

Yeah, that is one major note. A newbie can get to the mun without even creating a maneuver node. "Burn prograde at Munrise" is basically foolproof. It's just the major landing/takeoff dV requirement that makes Mun difficult. I have lost count of the number of kerbals I've stranded on Mun now.

Fully. Like, nothing above-ground. If it had just been the wheels, it'd probably have exploded, not fallen into the core of the planet.

What I want is the RoveMax Model M1 to be rebalanced as a bushplane wheel; non-motorized but good speed and impact tolerance. Then make ALL wheels go skippy-bouncy if you're not on a runway-like surface, but have "offroad" wheels handle it better with shocks.

Okay, this has come up in multiple threads in the past couple days, so I really feel like I need to weigh in. There's nothing wrong with regular mk1 cockpit for re-entry. I just went back and tested this, throwing some rapiers on my old panther SSTO (because there's no kill like overkill) flight album here Aggressive direct re-entry from LKO No problems. I do shed my heat in orbit with a thermal control unit, but even that's not necessary. I tested again without heat-dumping and got a bit toastier on re-entry, but a bit of intentional tumbling shed enough heat to keep from anything going boom. I had more issues with overheating going UP than coming back down. 3 rapiers on this is about 2.5 two many, I think. The problem with what everyone's suggesting? You're spending too much time in the upper atmosphere. You don't need a higher PE, you need a lower one. Hit the thick air sooner, and you shed speed before you build up too much internal heat. If your PE is positive on re-entry, you're just slow-cooking yourself.

I just wanna see an official SQUAD hole-shot

Two mk1s do the same job better for crew (the mk1 crew cabin is the most efficient crew transport part in the game). And I keep hearing people talk about heat tolerance issues, but I had an entire line of mk1 SSTOs that could do direct-drop re-entry onto KSC without burning. Shed your ascent heat in orbit, people. Honestly, the only difference I've ever gotten any real benefit from is impact tolerance. Mk2 fuselages are a lot likely to go kaboom if you flub something. - I feel the need to clarify here, I'm not actually arguing against using Mk2s. I'm willing enough to make minor performance sacrifices for appearance that every light SSTO in my current fleet has a Mk2 core; the mk1 lines have been almost completely retired. I'm just grumpy about game balance anyway.

Oh trust me, wing incidence and I are old friends. But even dead-on to the airflow, Mk2s are strictly worse than a mk1 of the same length, in all respects other than "ability to fit a cargo bay" and "looking pretty".

I believe there's a decent river canyon on the eastern continent. I recall Kerbin-Side having a helipad near it.

People are talking about mid-course correction burns, but honestly? You'd still save a ton of dV, and a headache, if you just wait until you cross into Duna's SoI, then - while still at the very edge of its space - burn radial-in until your PE is low enough. The edge of SOI is far enough out that this is still pretty easy to do. I mean, no, it's not nearly as efficient as doing this correction a couple months earlier, but it's still waaay better than trying to circularize at the edge of SOI. And if you play around a bit, you might get a gravity-braking assist from Ike.

Really? I tend to have hard-descent re-entries, with my retro-burn at 100km over the east end of the desert, and my orbit line intersecting the ground at KSC. So, a very negative PE value. Never had any real overheating problems on re-entry. I just adjust pitch up or down to push my glide slope to keep the orbit intersecting the ground at about the same point. I've been doing this from Mk1 onward. I get hotter on ascent than I do on re-entry. Shot-in-the-dark theory here... do you have any thermal control systems onboard to dump your ascent heat? If you re-enter within a couple LKO orbits, I think you can still be carrying a lot of that internal heat, making re-entry a lot tougher.

I'm just hoping it's a 'feature' of the current runway. Looking forward to testing the new one.

First problem I see would be "lost in Mk2 hell". You're eating drag all over the place with that design. That ship would probably fly 100% better if you completely replaced those outer mk2 nacelles with 2 mk1 nacelles each (half the drag with double the fuel). I know, I know, I love the way the Mk2s look, too, but the numbers are terrible. Nowhere near enough lift to justify the drag, and no bonus fuel at all. You really only want to use them where necessary for things like cargo bays. A central mk2 fuselage is fine, but there's never a good reason to make secondary fuselages mk2 where a mk1 would do the job just as well. Other than that, just make sure to restrict the axes of control on those control surfaces. The leading-edge pieces need to be restricted to roll-only and have their control authority value set to negative. The back ones should be fine, though I'd consider restricting them to pitch (not necessary, but possibly helpful on turn stability). I can't tell what's going on at the back of the engine fuselages, but it looks draggy. Make sure you're not leaving any attachment nodes open, and don't have any mis-sized matchups (mk1 points attached to mk2 without an adapter, etc) Unless you're morally opposed to them, use autostruts rather than manually strutting parts together. Struts are draggy as hell for some reason and drag is SSTO death.

You got unlucky. This is rare, but Ike's SOI is so dang huge that it screws with a lot of things. You'll have similar issues if you try contracts around Jool. Just get into the proper orbit, then alt-f12 and find the "missions" entry and mark it complete manually. It's not a cheat if you really did do it.

It looks like it decouples just above the parachutes, with separatrons to carry the whole assembly away.

All stock, except for the RCS blisters. And yes, I'm building a plane on minmus where wings are useless. <.< (it's a high-speed return shuttle, in an all-aircraft career) This materialized level and facing the direction I expected... except that it was fully underground and fell into the depths of the planetary void.

Pretty solid info. On the other hand, I asked that question eight months ago in a previous game version, and have run an entire spaceplane career in the interim. Edit: Ah, m3m bumped the thread, I see.

Two out of three tested so far, I believe. One was something I'd built several of on the same spot previously, though.

Sadly it's happened on every design I've tested. The tailsitter was upright, but clipped through the ground. I've built a couple mk1 shuttles (airplane shaped) since then, and they appear properly horizontal and *below* the ground because they're significantly shorter. The only way I've had any success is removing the stakes entirely and launching in "no survey area found, explosions likely!" mode, which has the craft appear in midair slightly above and behind the survey station. These appear rotated 90 degrees, but it's Minmus so I can deal with flipping them upright before fueling. Edit: I wouldn't think any of my mods would cause conflict, and I removed the only thing I'd added recently, but maybe you can see a potential issue: (Patches is just a couple MM files for things like deflating heat-shield and RCS defaults)