theend3r

Maybe it can land with some designs but surely not with mine. All goes well until I'm just a few meters above surface where it tries to slow down to landing speed. At that time it starts to spin uncontrollably whereas I can land it just fine. Maybe if I added a sas module and tweaked the MJ sas options (Tf?) it would work better but that shouldn't be necessary.

No, they're not. I visited them this version.

It has the best ISP of all the radial engines...

Try finding some of the anomalies, especially the flying saucer and pyramids.

Mechjeb's Smart A.S.S. If your craft is too slow I suggest adding more control surfaces for atmosphere and more RCS thrusters (and tanks if needed) for space.

Just read your sig, didn't know you tried it already. That's pretty impressive.

Not entirely true as I can land with my SSTO on Kerbin and get into orbit again which is something multistages can't do. You're right though that there are usually more practical ways of doing things but that may change with the introduction of money.

No. If there was an empty space behind a part (thus hardly nosecones) there would be an air torrent behind it = resetting the drag for that part. But as I said it doesn't really sound feasible.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zykui01mc2tm4nx/Raven%20CX.craft Landing it is really easy but getting getting it into LKO is not. I suggest clipping another turboengine through the LV/N as currently you need to use those 48-7S's to reliably achieve orbit (still lot of fuel remaining though, enough to get to mun, no problem there). This craft was designed to get to Laythe and is thus great in space, worse in atmosphere. To hop around in Kerbin's SOI it's far better to use this craft: Over 2300 m/s in atmosphere, easy to fly. In both cases I HIGHLY recommend using Mechjeb to hold your direction. EDIT: And I probably forgot removing it so if you don't have it then get it and in case you hate MJ I could probably reupload them.

This is my advanced three stage design: The first stage are turbojets, second stage is LV-N + 2x 48-7S's for emergencies in case one LV-N is not enough and the third is nuclear only. I could've added a third turbojet but it works just fine this way.

Sounds well thought out. Working with drag similary as with shadows is a neat idea. True if there was only one source of "light". What if each part generated another behind it after occluding itself? That sounds too complicated though.

I don't know if they are hard but they sure are useless. Want to take a huge cargo up? Rocket is your only rational (*cough*Whackjob*cough*) option. Want to be cost effective? Build a SSTO. Mine can land on Mun and back at KSP without refuelling. With refuelling it can get to Laythe and back.

I posted before reading, my bad. The rocket looks good though.

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Now try landing on Mun and landing back at KSP with SSTO without refuelling. One of the achievements I'm most proud about.

I didn't really need MJ before the SAS nerf but now I use it to at least keep direction. The node editor (not planner) and dv table are nice extras too.

I'm pretty sure you already know this but your kraken drive works by pushing the SAS module away from the structural piece while the game tries to bring them together again. Remove the SAS and it won't work anymore. Replace it with another 2,5m part and it will.

Looks a bit unwieldy and difficult to (re)distribute fuel. I have something similar but in a more linear formation: Other than that, your design is pretty awesome, keeping the tips of the boosters is an interesting idea.

1) Diagonal fuselages Who never wanted to mount a quadcoupler on a quacoupler? Well a 2,5m to a 2,5m coupler would be obviously too big and would find little to no use but this could be solved by diagonal parts. Unfortunately we have none. Of course it's solvable by making various workarounds but that only increases the part count, wobbliness and ugliness of the craft. Another solution could be some variation of the following: 2) Structural fuselage struts I understand that it's a limitation of the engine using a hierarchic part structure which doesn't allow connecting two parts by more than one connection. But then there are struts and fuel ducts, so why not use the same principle with procedural versions of some parts e.g. structural fuselages or girders? They would offer more rigid connection and better looks in exchange for heavier weight and would have enabled collisions.

You don't have to use docking ports, you can use the strut trick.

This is awesome! Even Jeb was afraid of this magic!

You could always refocus it with a few satellites...

Placing rockets on the Moon isn't the brightest idea but what about a laser? Nothing could come close to it and the strikes would be immediate.

I always overbuild and make the ships completely modular with contingency plans. No need to send probes, if I fail it's only because of my piloting.

It never even crossed my mind to make a spaceplane without LV-N and for that the RAPIERs are obviously useless.