Claw

Yeah, very true. I have an incredibly old version of Paint Shop Pro that I'm still very attached to.

Remember, quicksave (F5) and quickload (F9) is your friend. You'll probably learn a lot from trying it repeatedly.

If you haven't, give the in-game scenario a try. It has a rendezvous mostly set up that you finish off. Might give you an idea how to start. Also, there's a second tutorial where the claw is close to the asteroid, so you can practice clamping on.

Also, make sure your file name doesn't have any spaces in it. KSP parses text in the save files, so I noticed if there is a space in the flag file name, KSP doesn't read it correctly from the SFS file.

This is exactly what this thread says. Even for shorter burns, you harness more Oberth with multiple burns at the PE. That's not because multiple burns are better for Oberth, but because the reality of TWR means you can't instantaneously apply dV at the theoretical optimum point.

What he is saying is that with the Mk1 pod, radially mounted chutes are oversizes. But using the escape tower makes it impossible to yse the top mounted, in-line parachute. Yeah, it's a bummer. Most capsule parachutes are actually stored in capsule. So when you separate the escape tower, the parachute have a path to deploy. KSP isn't quite set up that way. But you can kind of fake it.

The GUI slider when you are in-game (not from the main start menu -> settings) is for GUI audio. It controls things like staging sounds and when you click on parts in the editor. (You have to exit out of flight mode, then go back to notice the change.) The only place to change the GUI size is in the main start menu under settings. (Flight GUI slider) Oddly enough, I've reported a bug where changing the GUI audio setting messes up graphics when the Flight GUI size is set to Huge.

Hmm. More details would be nice. I have seen this question several times although I did not have the same problem. I was able to get asteroid tracks in both old save games and new save games...

While this is certainly a true statement, it would also depend on the educational goals. Using FAR (as someone else said) can be just as misleading. Stock areo drag models are unreliable, but then again I wouldn't use KSP to model an actual water rocket's drag (Stock or FAR). However, concepts like fin lift and directional stability are modeled well enough to teach with (IMO). And the demo excels at demonstrating concepts, even if it's "broken stock aero." Things like: Put fins only at the top of the rocket = bad results, it works great. Things like: If I add more fins how much more drag will my water rocket have? does not work as well. KSP is an awesome demonstration tool, but not a very good "real-world" modeler if you are looking for actual real world test results. I have used the demo as a private teaching tool where we built various real-world aerodynamic demonstrations, then built on those concepts in KSP. It works wonderfully and absolutely enthralls kids. In that case, however, individuals downloaded and installed the demo on personal machines. (Which is a bit different than installing on public school computers.)

There is a separate NASA directory with all the parts in the KSP/Gamedata directory. Ninjahhhhhh

*sadface* I've become so immune to those that I didn't even think of that...

NASA doesn't usually "endorse" but KSP has gained some mention by NASA. Also, most notably, NASA collaborated with SQUAD for the ARM/Asteroid update. Which, among other things, explains why there is now a NASA meatball flag in the game.

If you aren't a fan of mods (neither am I), then I would say sending another rescue vehicle is the best bet. Just make sure no one hitchikes in the rescue pod. Kerbals have a tendency to do that...

If you are playing in stock KSP, then the only way to transfer fuel between two vehicles is by docking them. From the sound of your description (landed 20 feet away), I'm guessing they are not docked. If you are trying to rescue a stranded Kerbal, then you have two basic options (without getting "cheaty"). 1) If you want to stick with stock KSP, send a rescue vehicle. One with enough fuel to get back, and space to store your hitchhiking kerbal. EDIT: By the way... If you received a PM in the forum, you can get to it by going to the top of the page, clicking on "Notifications" and selecting "Inbox." From there you can click on the message like you would in most email programs. 2) Install a mod, such as KAS, which will allow you to hook up a fuel line from your rescue fuel ship to the stranded ship. That will require you to rebuild and launch a new rocket after you've installed the mod.

Also, while real world autopilots are capable of attitude-hold modes, nearly all autopilot usage is in an altitude-hold mode. So curvature of the Earth is automatically accounted for when flying barometric or gps altitudes. Attitude-hold modes that are based off an inertial navigation system also compensate for curvature.

That is true, but it causes a craft to look like it is slowly pitching up. The original craft was rapidly pitching up because the CoL was behind the CoM. The OP subsequently fixed it and was then having some pitch down tendency, which is usually a CoL design or flight control problem.

I remember stumbling upon my first one (I won't spoil which) on the Mun. Strangely enough, it just happened to be a few km from my first successful Mun landing after I bought the game.

Duh, makes sense. I suppose you can disregard that. haha

Honestly, slightly in front is not a big deal as long as you know it's there and are prepared to deal with it. If you're doing space plane design and you have that at reentry, it'll be a problem. But if you have a regular plane with enough pitch control, and you aren't being crazy with it, it's usually fine. You can still run a fuel line forward or lock out the front tank to keep the fuel forward. But if you're happy with it then good enough.

When you say "wobbly in flight," is it wobbly in pitch or yaw? - Yes, your landing gear definitely looks angled out to the sides. You'll want them straight up and down or else your craft will fishtail wildly. The rapier engine has a bit more vectoring which makes the problem a bit worse. Use SHIFT+WASDQE as GDJ pointed out above. - It looks like you might have angled your wings down in the front (hard for me to tell in the picture). I'm not talking about the dihedral, but you have negative AoA on your wings. That will cause downforce as you accelerate, which will make the bending on the angled landing gear worse. - Your CoL is also below your CoM. And I suspect it's even worse than it looks because of the landing gear causing the CoM to be lower. This will cause your plane to be a bit unstable. - There is a bug with stock aerodynamics and flight control surfaces (not wings). As AoA increases, lift from the flight control surfaces continues to increase. For your design, this will cause your aircraft to pitch down which is okay, but might be contributing to your wobbly nature because you're using an angled twin-V tail design. Try disabling the pitch and roll axes for the V-tail. - Also, the landing gear causes the CoM marker in the SPH to lie. Although landing gear has mass in the SPH, it is considered massless in flight by the physics engine. Remove your landing gear and tweak your CoM/CoL markers. It's probably okay, but it's hard to tell from the pictures. If it's too far forward then it will cause problems when you try to pitch up. - It also looks like you could remove the I-beams. The only thing I see attached to them is the monopro tank, but you could attach that to the underside of your probe core. Your landing gear is probably better attached to the body. That's mostly personal opinion so if you want the I-beam there then have at it.

I got ninja'd a bit while writing my giant post. The ASAS + SAS modules used to be different. The SAS only provided torque while the ASAS provided torque and the ability to use flight controls for stability. That's no longer needed as the flight control stability functionality is now included. So the difference is purely cosmetic as of now.

Keptin's article is very good. And here's a shameless promotion for my own hands on demo that goes along with Keptin's article. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial Like Amaroq said, Stock or FAR will also greatly effect the answers you get from this forum. And Capi's rules of thumb work well if you're aiming for a space plane.

In v0.23, the SAS/ASAS units are no longer different in functionality. So SAS vs. ASAS doesn't do much since most capsules, cockpits, and probe cores come with the ASAS functionality. What does help is more SAS (or ASAS) units, simply because it adds more torque. Putting a fuel line from the rear tank forward is an okay way to deal with CoM movement in flight. As you discovered from someone else's comment, you can then change the fuel config in the SPH to see where the CoM moves. (So empty the rear tank, etc...) Don't be too reluctant to try things out, worse thing that will happen is you'll learn not what to do. Here are my comments for your pictures. There's only two things I would say you "need" to fix, but the rest of the comments are up to you. 1) Typically you'll want to put the rear landing gear wheels slightly behind the CoM. - This will allow your plane to actually rotate for takeoff, and will also prevent excessive stress on the rear gear (causing them to bend and crash). Watch out for tail strikes... 2) For most designs, the CoL should be a little behind the CoM (as you discovered) and slightly above. - If it's ahead, your plane will be negatively stable. Which means if it gets off the prograde marker too far (pitch or yaw), it will go out of control. (As you discovered.) - If the CoL is too far behind your CoM, your plane will be overly stable. Which means it can be difficult to control and will exhibit lawn-dart behavior (constantly wants to pitch down). (If you want to know why it should be slightly above, let me know and I'll get into that also. Or you can check out this article by Keptin, and this hands on demo by me. They explain a lot of these concepts including landing gear.) The SAS is capable of compensating for a lot of things, but if your craft gets too far off of neutral the SAS can be slow to respond. You can see how much the SAS is working by looking at the trim indicators on the bottom left of the screen. Other things to think about: - You have a lot of aileron area. I would guess that you don't know about tweakables yet, so they probably also respond in pitch. (I.e. when you pull up or push down, they deflect.) This is okay if you want your ailerons to act as elevons, but if not it hurts your lift. If you do want to use elevons (they control roll and pitch), then you'll want to move them back some. Otherwise you can disable the pitch response by right clicking on the aileron and turning off pitch/yaw. Landing Gear! - The SPH lies about CoM with the landing gear on. Landing gear are labeled with mass in the SPH, but in flight they are considered massless by the physics engine. So, as such, if you're making fine tune adjustments of your CoL/CoM, remove your landing gear first. Otherwise you will almost certainly end up with a CoM that is more aft in flight than what the SPH indicates (sometimes putting it behind the CoL). - Avoid tilting landing gear like you did. As your plane designs get a bit heavier, tilted landing gear will cause you problems. Yes, you can transfer fuel between tanks in flight. You do this by right clicking on one tank. Then hold ALT while right clicking on the second tank. You can then select Transfer "IN" or "OUT" as appropriate. This only works if there's empty space available in your destination tank. I'm not sure why the CoL would drift forward when the front tank is empty. Unless you mean the CoM moves aft (which has the same effect). If your plane wants to pitch down, then it's probably one of two things: 1) your CoM is probably starting too far forward or 2) you don't have enough pitch authority. Move your wings slightly forward or swap out your horizontal stab/canard for one of the canard style flight controls. If you design your CoL to be just ever so slightly aft of the CoM with your most aft fuel setting (probably with the front and middle tanks empty), that will likely be the best starting spot for your wings. Hopefully it keeps the CoL close enough to the CoM when the tanks are full. If not, then you'll have to mess with fuel lines. There's a ton of other rules of thumb, but if you're wondering about wings, you can usually get away with something around 0.5 to 1.0 lift rating per ton of aircraft. You can feel free to go well outside of that, but it's an okay place to start. So to me it looks like the plane in the pictures has enough wing/mass as it is. Just needs a few tweaks to help with takeoff/CoM control.

I see your problem is different, but in case it helps... I did an experiment in a previous thread (can't find it at the moment). It turns out that sometimes, even with perfect symmetry (4 engines in my case), some ships will rotate. Possibly due to some bug, but I don't know for sure what the problem is. I built a cylindrical rocket in the VAB and put 4x symmetric engines on it. Some engines, such as LVT-30s and 45s, caused rotation while other engines did not. Even more bizzare, if I rotated the engine itself (and nothing else on the rocket) the rotation behaved differently. This was especially noticable when pitching/yawing the rocket. So you could perhaps try different engine types or try rotating the engines in 90 deg increments. Adding more reaction wheels may help, but aerodynamic controls might not help based on how it looks like you will fly it. If I find that thread later I'll link to it. I think I wrote which engines did not cause rotation and which orientation worked best for the 30s vs 45s (the angle was different). Not sure if that'll help.

Sorry, I guess since I haven't used the asteroid mod I assumed you couldn't just attach a docking port with stock KSP.