Cirocco

congrats on the paper! Also, how much does that monster weigh?! o_0

HOCgaming probably. Scott Manley is very informative and certainly has his moments, but I just really like Harv's sense of humor. Plus he's the one who really got me into the game and I get quite a few base ideas for crafts from him. Danny is also extremely funny but HOCgaming is the only one I really check daily. EDIT: also, 100th post! whoooooooooooooo!:cool:

wow, pretty impressive. Wonder what will happen if you put on a quad-coupler and replace that 1 turbojet by 4 do it! for science!

Holy crap I totally missed that when I watched that video the first time! That totally is Bobak, he even has lettering (I think it's lettering?)shaved into his hair on the side of his head (visible when he turns to leave just after the high-five) I can't make out what it says though (if it says anything) ...

Holy mother of Kraken that's impressive. I've messed around with stock, no (or at least very minimal) clipping, interplanetary SSTO spaceplanes as well (though I have only done Duna surface so far) but only with 1 or 3 man crews. Never did I dream that a 25 crew interplanetary transporter could be done in a stock SSTO spaceplane without part clipping. Very, very impressive.

I went with the "scatter a couple SAS modules along the roid surface" method and a simple push ship with about 8 atomic engines when I pushed my E-class into kerbin orbit. It was hell getting that thing to go in the direction I wanted it to go. I've very much been considering doing a pull mission, especially on the larger ones because a single claw wobbles like crazy when you're trying to push 100 tons of spacerock even super slightly off center. How long does the tail need to be (approximately) to avoid the exhaust hitting the rock? angling the engines slightly might also be a good idea: trade a little lost thrust for a lot of structural simplification.

Allright, ready annnndddd... STAGE! .... oh s***. or is that real rocket science where you're never supposed to say that?

As mentioned before, I also tend to go with description, bad pun or mythological figure + iteration number. examples: To the Mun! To the Mun (and way beyond)! Potato grabber Mk I The Argo (massive crew transport and capital colony ship) The Orpheus Mk IV (an Eve return lander named such because it's going to hell and coming back) The KSS (Kerbal Space Ship) Intrepid Mk IV. A bit of a deciation from the norm, this spaceplane was made to do runway-duna surface-runway. I tried to go with the NASA way of naming spaceplanes and because this thing was pretty experimental, Intrepid seemed apt.

I might reload to a previous save and try again later, but I was just soooooo fed up with the game giving me ?*^! all the time and constantly throwing phantom forces and kraken attacks at me for hours on end. Turns out physics go a bit wonky when you try to push a few hundred tons of pace potato around. Especially when all that's holding a ton of thrust to said space potato is a single measly claw. Maybe I should install KAS and strut the bloody thing up because redirecting E-classes with a single claw attachment point is a nightmare.

I spent hours trying to bring my captured E class asteroid into a circular and equatorial 200km orbit because I want to build an asteroid base on it. After hours of incredible wobble, failed aerobrakes, electricity problems, kraken attacks, structural lankage failure, etc; I just gave up and hyperedited the damn thing in place. I feel so ashamed right now.

Being an engineer, I had some notions of orbital mechanics before I played KSP, but playing this game really made them a lot more intuitive. I also learned a lot about aerodynamics (yes even with the aerodynamics model being what it is . I looked up the real-life equivalents because it peaked my interest) and got a lot more appreciation of the HUGE amount of power required to put even small payloads into orbit. KSP is also the reason I now have a subscription to ESA's newsletter and any new job positions because you never know

On my second asteroid redirect mission (first one was plagued by bugs and ultimately eaten by the kraken) I had finally gotten my E-class asteroid close to Kerbin, but due to circumstances (mostly FAR being installed), aerobraking it was not an option. So I was relying on pure gravity brake and engine power. Because of a bug (or misunderstanding of some game mechanics on my part) I was burning super inefficiently and would not have enough fuel to capture the asteroid in a stable orbit. (Pro tip guys: do NOT attach multiple probe cores at different points on a single asteroid and then try to target center of mass. The navball goes crazy. Or maybe I do, not sure about that one). I was so enraged/disappointed that I was going to fail two redirect missions in a row. And then a completely unplanned Mun encounter popped up. My heart leaped . One additional gravity brake later courtesy of the Mun, Kerbin had a third moon. One of these days I'm planning to send up another redirect craft (with a SINGLE probe core this time) to bring it to either LKO or KEO (not sure which one yet) and then it will be time to start building the Aleph asteroid station. Man I really want a station on an E-class space potato.

career: ARM mode sandbox: mess around mode

If I remember correctly my first attempted landing was in the tutorial. Crashed horribly. My first "real" landing ended up with me using waaaaaaaaay too much fuel on the powered landing (had to try like 3-4 times because I made a poor lander design which kept falling over) resulting in not being able to make it back to Kerbin. Terminated the flight, terminated the flag because I wanted my Mün landing to be a proper one dammit! third attempt was the successful one. Made it there and back again with a full load of science.

Christ dude, where are you doing that re-entry? Tartarus?

Thanks! It really does have to be a large tank of gas if you want to attempt a Duna landing. About 80% or so of all that fuel is spent purely on making orbit around Kerbin and Duna. Also, you have to fight that plane tooth nail and claw all the way down on re-entry at Kerbin because all those engines and no counterweight fuel means she is REALLY heavy in the back and wants to flip over constantly, but it's manageable. And don't worry about the G forces, my guys took a short 15+ G hit as well when opening chutes on Duna. Could have mitigated that considerably by staging the height at which they open but like you said, they seem to grin and bear it quite well.

Runway - Duna surface - Runway. This felt awesome once completed

Went to Duna in an SSTO spaceplane with a single tank of gas. So proud!!!!!

Alright there are definitely a few tips I can give you regarding larger and heavier spaceplanes. This is gonna be a long post so I included a TLDR at the end The most important thing I am not seeing on the spaceplane you show in the pictures is canards. Why do heavy planes almost always need canards and light planes don’t? Because of the way pitch control works in relation to your center of mass. Think of it this way: there’s two ways of pitching up (and down, but up is what you need to get off the runway). You either push down the back of the plane or pull up the nose. Canards will pull up the nose, ailerons will push down the back. Now also remember that a plane will ALWAYS try to rotate around its center of mass. If you look at your pictures, you can already tell that the center of mass lies more to the back of the plane. This is very typical for heavy planes and only increases the heavier the plane gets because you need more engines, which often need at least one fuel tank to attach to, which makes the plane very back-heavy (at least that’s the case if you use the standard all-engines-in-the-back triangular shape configuration). It’s a LOT harder to pitch up when you have to push down so close to the center of mass. This is due to leverage: the longer the lever distance, the easier lifting (or lowering) something is. The shorter the lever distance, the harder it gets. By the same principle, the further back the CoM lies, the more effective canards become. So add canards to your heavy planes to help with pitch control. Note that this will shift the center of lift forward by quite a lot though. Keeping the center of mass in front of or on the center of lift is one of the biggest challenges in building heavy planes. On a side note, pitching up on the runway gets easier the closer your rear landing gear is to the CoM. But putting them too far inward means you’ll smash the engines into the runway. That’s also a balance you need to find with experience. In short: Having pitch controlling surfaces only on the back of the wings works well for light planes because their center of mass lies pretty central of the entire plane. For heavy planes which have a center of mass that lies much more to the back, canards or other pitch control near the front of the plane are very often if not always a requirement. Other improvements I would suggest: smaller wings. You have a huge wing there, you really don’t need THAT much wing surface, even in stock. Wings provide lift, but also drag and mass. Don’t go overboard on them. Secondly: more engines. Heavy spaceplanes need a lot more than 2 engines. My latest creation - which is an SSTDuna - has 4 rapiers, 4 turbojets and 3 nuclear engines. Obviously you don’t need nuclear engines until you want to go interplanetary, but you do need quite a bit of thrust to get to orbit efficiently in order to counteract aerodynamic and (perhaps more importantly) gravity losses. Easiest way to add engines without losing symmetry or smashing them into the runway on take-off/landing is to add a 1,25m tank on either side of the main tank in the same plane as the engines you already have (get it? Same plane? As in mathematical plane versus aircraft? … I need more friends…) and put more engines and air intakes on those. So yeah, TLDR: add canards, add more engines, don’t go with such a long wing, keep an eye on your CoM and CoL. Keep all that in mind and you should be able to upscale quite well.

re-usable transfer stages don't really give you a benefit right now because economics aren't implemented yet. They aren't really a bad idea though since they do save you the hassle of putting big stages up in orbit every time. You do have to refuel them, but that can be done with re-usable refuelers as well. Modular transfer stages on the other hand I am not too sure of. Swapping out large tanks and heavy engines on docking ports means they won't have any struts to connect them to each other. That means low structural integrity and a TON of wobble when burning. You might not notice it on Duna transfer stages (because those are still pretty light) but trust me, you'll notice on the heavy duty ones when you want to push large cargo further out. Personally I think it's best to (if you have the skill an patience for it) make one big really powerful transfer stage with a variety of docking ports and re-use that all the time. Sure it will be overpowered for the lower delta-V transfer burns, but you'll be able to use it for (almost) everything. And too much delta-V is always better than too little. I personally haven't gone past Duna and Ike yet so I don't have a big interplanetary transfer stage (yet), I still custom build each one (or go full on single stage ). I plan to build one when I finally get around to flying my Eve lander/ascent vehicle over to that purple hellhole but until then: custom built one-time only transfer stages.

This made me laugh. Meme joke of the day

Nothing wrong with staying in kerbin's SOI. I remember my first Mun landing, I think I actually cheered out loud. While you probably won't get exactly the same feeling of fulfillement as your first successful landings, you'll get very similar ones every time you achieve a major goal you set for yourself. So get out there and go achieve 'em

Visit and return from every planet/moon. so far I've only been out as far as Duna and Ike, but I have an Eve lander/ascender ready which has been tested and proven to work. Moho is actually the one that scares me the most. The retroburn I'm going need to insert myself into orbit after the interplanetary transfer seems like it's going to be HUGE.

I completed my tech tree fully after a trip to Duna I believe, so I'm guessing around year 3. But if I'm not mistaken if you farm efficiently enough you can complete the entire tree without ever leaving Kerbin's SOI (minmus especially is a science treasure trove) so you could (I think) theoretically do it within the year.

Hmmmm. those are probably some design decisions and on-the-fly (attempted) solutions to unforeseen problems. some examples: "hmm, this spaceplane is having trouble getting off the runway. Once we're in the air it's fine, but getting her there is a tiny bit dicey .... Let's strap some SRB's on decouplers under the wings!" (this turned out to work really well and I'm actually using this in over half of my heavy spaceplane launches now) "hmm, I'm trying to land this spaceplane on Duna but I don't have enough lift so I have to come in way too hard. The terrain is nasty as well... Let's strap parachutes onto it, land it on its engines and then tip it over on the wheels!" (again, turns out this is actually the best way I found to land spaceplanes on Duna which weren't specifically designed to have silly high lift.) other examples include bumping a craft into a spent stage/other piece of debris without docking port in an attempt to de-orbit it, (This was prior to the claw of course) and deciding after I got to grips with the basics of the game that my next goal should be a return mission to eve because taking it easy is for wimps (this was a spectacularly bad idead. Taking it easy was definitely the way to go).