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So it seems that every time I launch anything on top of a vector engine the rocket goes all wonky (sorry for the technical jargon) for a few seconds before the gimballing kicks in and straightens it out... Is this a known bug? Or is it by design and just thrown in to make life exciting? Or is it one of those things that I'm the only one experiencing? Danny

Launch Clamp How-To (Tutorial) I'll probably add detail later, but I wanted to at least get this started. Launch Clamps are one of the more tricky things to make, second only to landing gear/legs, but not nearly as hard. However, you do have to get a lot of the details right. Positions and orientations of transforms matter a lot, and nothing will work right if you get some of the details wrong. An excellent starting point is the FASA Launch tower tutorial by @frizzank, and in fact that's where I learned to make them. At the time that I made the launch clamps for SpaceY, I followed that pretty closely and ended up moving things around in Unity to make it work. Today I rearranged it in Blender so that nothing has to be done in Unity afterward. So this is a "How-To" using my "new method", from Blender. There are probably other ways of doing this, and in some minor ways it differs from the FASA setup, slightly. However just like the FASA tutorial, let's look at the CFG setup first, then what you need to make in Blender afterward. MODULE { name = LaunchClamp // Module name. DO NOT CHANGE. trf_towerPivot_name = Cap // Rotation transform that the tower connects to. trf_towerStretch_name = Tower // Transform that gets stretched to make the tower. trf_anchor_name = Base // Transform that connects to the ground. trf_animationRoot_name = SYclamp1new // Transform that contains the animation // and all animated parts, at some level. anim_decouple_name = clamp // Name of the retraction animation itself. } This is pretty straightforward. The "Cap" is the top of the tower, the part that connects to the clamp itself. The "Tower" is a transform that contains all of the stretchy tower meshes. The "Base" is what sits on the ground, and it will need to contain a collider. The Base's collider acts like a foot and keeps the clamp from twisting, however the clamp's "attachment" to the planet is actually at the Cap's origin, or close to it. Yes, it's a hovering object, technically. So first, in Blender, create four (4) empty transforms. You can hit Shift-A and select "add empty" for each one. Then give them these names: Cap, Base, Tower, Clamp The "Clamp" transform is really just a place to group your animated and non-animated meshes for the clamp itself. Now we'll talk about each one, and what goes in it. Each mesh object you make needs to be a child of one of these transforms (though like I said, "Clamp" is just for organizational use in this case). In Blender, I'm assuming you're working in the default orientation with +Z going up. I do the export as an animated FBX, to import into Unity. Let's start at the bottom and work up: (After importing, the Cap, Base, and Tower transforms will need to have a rotation of 0,0,0 or something "close" to it, either with floating point rounding errors, or some "360" or "-360" values. The "X=90" rotations below are for Blender, so that it gets rotated properly during import to Unity). Base This transform's position must stay at 0,0,0, and it needs a rotation of X=90. As children of it, you will need two mesh objects: One for the base artwork itself, most of which will extend into the ground, but with the visible "foot" of the tower included. Usually this mesh should be designed to have several meters worth that extends into the launch pad, so that if you build a large rocket, and the clamp is placed outside of the pad, the length still reaches the ground outside of the launchpad. Extending down to -6m is probably sufficient. A simple mesh collider that corresponds to only the part of the base/foot that should be above the surface of the launch pad. You can add this later in Unity as a box collider or something if you want, but I use a custom mesh collider here. If you try to make this collider too tall, and encompass the part of the Base that is meant to extend under the launch pad, then the entire thing will "jump" upward to make sure the entire collider is above the pad when it spawns. The bottom of the collider should be at a height of exactly zero (0). Keep in mind that 0,0,0 is the surface of the launch pad. The visible part of the base/foot needs to be above Z=0, and the rest of the base that's hidden inside the pad will be below Z=0. (Note: The Base, Tower, and Cap transforms will never be rotated relative to the launch pad. They do not rotate with your clamp's deployment orientation.) Tower This transform's origin position will be at the bottom of the cap's mesh, and the top of the tower's mesh, centered over the base, at 0,0,Z, where Z is a height that you will define. It has a rotation of X=90. This transform moves with the Clamp and Cap, but is scaled in height so that it can always reach the ground. You can add the visible mesh directly to this transform, probably, but I make a separate mesh object that is a child of it. The Z coordinate for the Tower transform should be above the origin by some number of meters, with enough height to create a tower mesh object from there toward the ground, extending below 0,0,0 a little bit. This mesh's top edge must terminate exactly at the Tower transform's origin. That is, the top edges must not be above or below the Z height of the Tower transform. This is very important, since the mesh is being stretched by scaling it from the Tower transform's origin coordinates, any errors with regard to the top of the mesh will be amplified when the launch clamps are used high off the pad, and will not line up with the Cap. The texture used by the Tower's mesh needs to be repeating along the Y-axis. As the mesh gets stretched, the texture does not get stretched, but rather "tiled" vertically. It's OK to have UVs that use different X positions for different things, but the entire Y-height of the texture needs to be a vertically repeating pattern. (Note: The Base, Tower, and Cap transforms will never be rotated relative to the launch pad. They do not rotate with your clamp's deployment orientation.) Cap This transform's origin needs to be at 0,0,Z (Rotation is X=90), centered over the Tower and Base, with Z at a height that you define. This height should correspond to the attachment point at the front of your clamp, for sanity, since this is where your clamp's head will pivot. The Cap will have two main things as children of it: A mesh object that acts as the "cap" to the Tower stretchy-mesh. It should look like it's a part of the same object, artwork-wise. The bottom of this mesh should match up with the origin of the Tower transform, and extend high enough that no matter which way the Clamp's head gets turned around (on any or all three axes) that there's never a gap or missing or hollow mesh visible. When you attach the launch clamps to a rocket or plane, by default the clamp's head is rotated to correspond to the part it's attaching to, even if that means the clamp sits sideways or upside-down. The Tower transform and its children. The Tower transform is a child of the Cap transform. (Note: The Base, Tower, and Cap transforms will never be rotated relative to the launch pad. They do not rotate with your clamp's deployment orientation.) Clamp This can contain all of the mesh objects and colliders needed for the actual clamp. All animated parts for the clamp retraction will be in here. The colliders that you will "grab" in the VAB will be here. This is the easiest part, since it functions just like a normal animated part in KSP. I usually orient the transform/meshes such that the clamp is oriented with the +Y direction toward the back of the clamp, and -Y in the direction toward the rocket. As far as I can tell it doesn't appear as though KSP cares as much about the positions and orientations of anything other than Cap, Tower, and Base, and therefore you can pretty much do what you want with the head/clamp components. This part of the clamp will function like a surface-attached part, with the Cap/Tower/Base hanging down from the clamp. Putting it together Export from Blender, import into Unity like you would for any other part. In Unity's assets, select the model, set it to Legacy animation (as usual), scale of "1", and name your animation to match the name you used in the part module for the CFG. Export as a MU as normal. Screenshots of the SpaceY launch clamp:

Hi! I still pretty much a KSP beginner, I played a bit before the official release. Now I'm playing on Science Mode and I want to land a Kerbal on the Mun, but I have a problem. I've built a rocket that can easily reach Orbit and even the Mun. But as soon as I add landing struts to the "landing part" I can't seem to launch the rocket from the launchpad straight up. Without the struts reaching orbit is easy, with them I just can't manage because the rocket starts tipping straight away... Is it normal that the landing struts have such a large impact? And what can I do to fix the problem? Maybe I am attaching them wrong, but I tried to balance them out and everything. Below some screenshots of my rocket with and without landing struts. Thanks for your help!! Without landing struts: With 3 landing struts: With 6 landing struts, symmetrical to the tanks below:

Sometimes, after I load a saved game, KSC shows up at a vantage point near the ground by the VAB. Pressing ESC does nothing, pressing the Pause Menu button does nothing. Mod popups all work OK. I have to close and re-launch the game. Screen shot of Loading problem

Does anyone know a mod that has good looking launch towers (that is not FASA)? If not, can anyone make one? Thanks!

Hi. I was wondering if anyone knew any mods (besides FASA) that added launch towers/clamps. Thanks!

When i did my first launch I got to space but then came back and burned up, so Jeb died. What happened to you?

problem: try's to launch and it stays in VAB/SPH and all buttons become unclick-able. step 1 launch step 2 all buttons become unclick able mods: log:https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7y2vay2s055kf5/output_log.txt?dl=0 EDIT:my save file was croupt

Can Squad add some more launch pads at KSC and some more switchable launch sites. I dont want to use any mod like Kerbal Konstructs for it. I want them KSP Stock. And yes some launch pads should have lightning rods.

I launched the pre assembled stock satellite launcher.

There are two YouTube channels hosting the event. Looks like they offer different views of the launch. Both are included below. Thankful for dual screens. Launch is scheduled for 1:42 PM Eastern.

We get a lot of players believing that their parachutes have been destroyed during launch, so I made this to help explain.

Watch it here: http://www.roscosmos.ru/317/ Liftoff confirmed!