Claw

Both the Mk2 and Mk3 fuselages are roughly as wide as the large parts (rockomax tanks) at the widest point. The Mk-3 is almost the same height, but the Mk-2 is slightly over half as high. The thing to watch out for though is that the connection points on Mk-3 components are not in the center. So the portion above the connection point is longer than the portion below.

Thanks! I figured the claw system was appropriate given my name. Also, I've used this technique on several rescue missions where I wanted the craft back so it seemed like a good place to start. (And I fly stock, so I'm unfamiliar with KAS which I assume would be ideal for this.) Anyway... It takes a bit of practice to get the docking lined up, especially since I didn't include any RCS to keep the weight down. The drones still have probe cores which made it a bit easier. Under acceleration it's actually pretty stable, provided you get a good alignment of the payload (the tank, in this case). If the payload alignment is off too much, the center of mass is too far off to the side and it causes the whole mess to skew wildly off course. Hence, pushing the elephant. If you get a good alignment, it's all hands off. MJ wasn't cooperating for a couple reasons. First, I don't think it liked being ejected from the mothership. Sometimes it did a poor job of tracking dV and TWR of the nukes. Also, the dV and TWR is a lie since the payload isn't actually attached. So MJ doesn't know about this extra weight. This, in turn, caused MJ to have problems determining when to start firing the engines and they would come on way to late. Second, I found the ships were much more stable if I just set the course, got a good payload alignment, accelerated the engines, then left it alone. If the tank alignment was a little off and the rocket wasn't pointed right at the maneuver node guidance, I just left it alone. Adding input sometimes caused too much other motion that just made the steering worse. MJ likes to keep adjusting, which can make the payload tank wiggle more. Don't worry about the score. I sort of spotted this as the best bet for me simply because I've done the grapple design in stock before. Sending them on solar escape seemed easier to me than trying to land them safely at KSC 2, because I can't really do that in stock. Especially since they don't have docking ports. What I didn't anticipate was just how close I shaved the dV for the tanks with fuel. I think I tried more than a dozen attempts at a single burn before I had to split it into two burns. The Kraken doesn't like having two ships like this, and time warping invariably messes everything up. Ships without fuel were eject-able with a single burn.

I see that someone did post how to put up an album. But how do you find the identifier? Look at the album's URL in your browser. There will be a five letter identifier at the end of the address. Copy that and put it in brackets that say IMGUR. For example, here's the address of an album. http://imgur.com/a/nW4eO#0 To post the album, you would type [imgUR]nW4eO[//IMGUR] (with only one '/' )

Also, I can't stress enough that Oberth is not predicated on an elliptical orbit. It isn't like Oberth ceases to function if the orbit is circular. Oberth is Oberth. It turns out that the best place to capitalize on it is where your speed is the fastest. That doesn't mean that the orbit must be elliptical.

Pretty much, yes.

Oberth effect is always present, whether in circular LKO or not. Because engines cannot instantaneously apply dV, you can improve the ability to harness Oberth by doing two burns. One to establishing the ellipse, and a second to do the rest of the burn.

Well, that's not entirely true if you're referencing Oberth. When you get to the Mun, your speed is a lot slower than in Kerbin LKO. The large difference in velocity greatly reduces the Oberth effect. That's why people reduce altitude back to LKO before interplanetery burns.

Oh boy, that's a big question that will probably get a lot of response. First off, if MJ was executing nodes that you set up, it may have warped past the SOI transition at a high rate, which sometimes leads to wacky game errors. Or if you set up more than one node, then it probably didn't execute correctly. Oberth and gravity sling shots are different but overlapping concepts. Without getting bogged down in math and details... Gravity slingshots are based on your approacing and departing trajectories from a body. The craft basically steals some of the planet's (or moon's) momentum to gain speed (or leaves momentum to lose speed). As such, slingshots only require dV to set up, but need none to execute. Oberth is a byproduct of expending fuel. A craft always steals kinetic energy from engine exhaust. However, because of how the physics works, the higher the craft speed, the more kinetic energy the craft can steal. Your orbital speed is faster when you are closer to the planet/moon than when further away. So efficiency here isn't necessarily directly comparable because they are using different effects. However, there is generally only so much dV you can steal from slingshotting. So if you need more than that, you have to burn an engine. If you're going to burn, taking advantage of Oberth gets the most bang for the buck. Ideally you would combine those gravity assist and Oberth when possible. Edit: Lots of ninjas here. Probably because I'm such a slow typer, ha.

Kasuha is indeed right. It took me forever to do this. I only focused on the main tanks. And after the first mission of eight tanks, I'm calling it complete... Here's my entry. I sent 8 (yes Eight) Drone I tanks on solar escape orbits with 1 mothership. So 8 x 300 = 2400 for me. (I'll leave the other 8 for someone else, because holy crud, I can't do that again.) Turns out I way overplanned fuel for the mothership. I ended up on orbit with 3/4 of an orange tank MORE than I was planning. So I ended up using it to help with rejoins on the tanks that still had fuel. I planned on using small detachable probes with just enough dV to send the tanks on escape. Turns out it was just barely enough for the fullest fueled tank. So close in fact that I had to do the burn in two parts. This was needed because I'm using nukes, and the burn time is 8 minutes. It's a bit too long and misses out on a lot of help from Oberth. The first burn was about 700 dV and put the tank into an elliptical orbit. The second burn was for the rest, and used up all but about 15dV for the heaviest tank. By the way, this is all stock except MechJeb. This was one of the few missions I was planning on using Jeb heavily to reduce the tedium. Turns out MJ doesn't do well with stock craft smash-pushing other stock craft. So I had to control the burns by hand. 8 minute burns are fun when you're pushing an elephant. Enjoy. EDIT: It's a lot of pictures. Proof of 8 drones on solar escape is at the end, along with Jeb's hero shot.

No need to apologize. Welcome to the forums. I hope you never hesitate to poke around or ask a question if you want to know something. There isn't exactly a manual for the game yet, so don't be afraid to ask (or experiment yourself!) Good luck

Real life. Actually I haven't tried them in this manner in game as I had assumed they weren't really implemented yet. Might be worth trying out just to see.

Those are probably generally accepted with the community, but I still must say that it depends on you. If you feel those are reasonable limitations, then stick with them. For me personally, intake clipping is okay. This may be slightly misleading. The intercooler helps high speed (mach 3+) engines improve efficiency. Cooler air improves performance because of density, but for nearly all TurboJets (or high bypass turbofans), precooling isn't required for combustion.

My understanding is that 0.23 changed a bit of the way intakes work, but it doesn't do any throttle modulating at all. What does happen is that an engine that isn't getting enough air will start to "roll back." Basically at a certain level of intake air, the thrust output will gradually decrease with a continued reduction of intake air. The engine will roll back a certain amount, but eventually not enough air is available and that engine will flame out. You can reduce the air that engine requires by reducing the throttle and, hence, keep it running a bit longer. This becomes more obvious when flying multi-engine designs. At some point one of the engines won't have enough intake air because one engine gobbles up all it needs, then the second engine doesn't have its full requirement. That's why multi-engine designs will begin to yaw before an engine actually flames out. So in some regard, KSP does "auto-throttle" in a very limited sense. The engine isn't "on/off," but the effect isn't quite the same as actually reducing throttles. At high altitude, you can sometimes run on less than one notch of throttle and it's enough thrust to overcome aerodynamic drag as you leave the atmosphere. If I'm feeling aggressive about it with multi-engines, I watch the trim axes for when the SAS inputs yaw, then begin throttle reductions. For single engine I've done enough profiles to know about how long after air intake goes to 0.0 to start reducing throttles. Like Capi, I keep running TurboJets till I'm no longer accelerating. Unlike Capi, that might be less than 1/3 thrust. Also, you can get away with starting the rockets but still flying your TurboJet profile for a while. Acceleration due to the rockets will keep the intake air higher, but the usefulness of that kind of profile depends on the craft.

There is a similar thread about rovers going on here. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/72045-Delivering-Rovers As for separating them, you can connect your rover with things like the standard decouplers or use docking ports if you want to be able to reattach the rover. Decouplers can provide unwanted forces on your rover so be careful. Also, if the brakes are locked and you separate them with too much force, they might explode. Some people connect them to the side, on bottom, or on top with a skycrane for delivery.

I'm glad you found something that helps you out. If your plane is small (around 10 tons or less) and you have ten intakes, you can probably get an even higher AP than what you posted. I usually aim to be close to 2km/sec at 30-32km. (Actually, the last "hard" airspeed I aim for is 1000m/sec at 24km.) Also, if you didn't already know, after flameout you can throttle the engine down and it will re-light. So you can continue to run the TurboJet for a while (just keep slowly throttling down). With small space planes and the right ascent, I found that three intakes can let me run the engine (at reduced throttle) to over 60km. An AP over 200km is achievable. Note that this is why people consider air-hogging as cheating.

I doubt you need 2 front gear unless you're hiding some massive weight in that plane somewhere. I'm sure people will disagree with me, but the stock plane landing gear are actually pretty stout. I also believe that you're using symmetry and angle snap, so the parts should be sitting correctly on the plane. Okay, so if that's the case, the same bending phenomenon applies to fuel tanks and pylons as well. I'm going to guess you're not actually using the "structural pylon" piece because it would show up in the staging stack. Even if you are using the small hardpoint, the added lever arm can cause the FL-T800 tanks to flex. I'm not saying this IS the problem, I'm just saying it often causes what you're describing. Your pictures are helpful, but it's hard for me to guesstimate how much it weighs because I can't see your center stack. With the FL-T800s mounted the way I see in picture, you're getting two bending connections. Plus, if you're using hardpoints, they will cause more sideways torque than can amplify this. The actual "structural pylon" part is worse for this than the hardpoint. You can check if this is indeed the problem by launching your craft. Roll your camera angle around to look at the front of your plane, but slightly off to the side (so you can see down one of the gear). Launch your plane and snake it back and forth in yaw. It may look like your main gear is "skating" on the runway. Watch as the speed builds up and you keep snaking. If the gear bends under, then the hardpoint/pylon isn't helping. There are a few ways to fix that, but I won't bore you if it's not the problem.

I guess what I'm trying to say is if you look at fighter jet designs, they don't usually wrap the engine's compressor section with fuel. In my mind, the ram/circular intake is the compressor section. This may not be what KSP intends at all, but that's what my comment was based on. This is a different view than if the ram/circular intake is simply an inlet. In which case ducting is less of a problem. (Which is also what I said.) Regardless, I'll take the simplistic KSP approach to having overly complex build rules. In my opinion, being able to put something like intakes anywhere, while maybe not "realistic," makes for more diverse designs.

Agreed. I especially enjoy making small ones. They are fun to play and see what kind of wacky or interesting designs come out.

I'm sure you will get a wide variety of responses. I see nowhere in your post about "realistic" which is probably good because realistic KSP is not, and I'm not just talking about all the complaints about the aerodynamic model. What I mean is that your typical airplane doesn't fill the fuselage with fuel, it fills the wings. There may also be tanks inside the fuselage, but it depends on the plane. Also, the compressor section of intakes are always inline with the engines. The only parts of intakes that don't have to be inline would be the actual inlet and ducting. Also, most planes don't duct hot intake air through a fuel tank (i.e. putting an intake on the front of a Mk-1 with an engine on the back). I can continue on but like I said, a bit of realism needs to be suspended for KSP (or just about any game for that matter). In either case as far as "cheaty" goes, my personal opinion is that is entirely up to you. I can share my own cutoffs for you, but with an open ended game like KSP cheating is all relative. That being said, 30:1 intake ratio seems very excessive to me. I typically aim for about 3:1, but certainly you can even get away with 1:1. In my experimenting, I found that going past 3:1 starts to degrade things I care about (such as time). It also gets to the point where you have to start doubling the intakes to get much performance increase. So the next descent step after 3:1 is 6:1, then 12:1. So that's really what I based my 3:1 decision on (rather than arbitrarily picking a number). Either way, there is no strict definition of "air hogging" and it becomes a matter of someone looking at a design and saying, "Holy cow, look at all those intakes!" As for clipping, I usually only do what the editor allows me to get away with. With maybe the exception that I won't try to fold tanks back in on themselves. Some fuel tanks will let you do that, even with the default editor clipping. I guess I avoid things that are physically unrealistic, but you could justify just about any design choice. Most of the other clipping I do is for cosmetics, such as using the tail boom fuselage piece to blend an engine or intake into the side of a fuselage. Again, any level of "cheating" is really what limitations you care to impose upon yourself (or what the Kraken will impose on you). Edit: Ninja'd by Taki and Kasuha. At least I agreed with them.

(BTW, This thread dates back to November.) All of what you say is valid, but KSP has a few quirks. Such as the fact that landing gear actually have no mass or drag. So the landing gear isn't going to cause pitch stability issues, except that it will cause the CoM in the SPH to lie, since the CoM marker takes landing gear mass into account. In flight, landing gear have no mass or drag effects so if you plan very little margin between CoM and CoL (likely for a small plane), KSP will bite you because the in-flight CoM usually ends up slightly aft of the SPH position. Edit: Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This thing supposedly weighs 35 tons.

It looks like your landing gear is attached to the wings. If your wings are flexing during takeoff roll (which they probably are as you go faster), then it will cause your landing gear to flex. Try either attaching them to a more structural member or strengthen your wings with struts. Also, make sure your landing gear aren't too far behind the CoM. Otherwise when you try to rotate the downforce from your control surfaces will cause additional force on the wings and gear, making them warp further.

Yeah, space planes require a little bit different care. Once I got used to them, I came to love building planes more than rockets. Glad to see Vanamonde was able to clear up KSP part attachment for you. Space planes/airplanes/shuttles are a bit more finicky about CoL, CoT, and CoM placement. Make sure you're checking the CoM in relation to the CoL not just when fully refueled, but for the fuel load at any atmospheric phase of flight. Usually what bites people is after they've transferred all the payload fuel to a space station, then deorbit and go out of control because the CoM has moved behind the CoL. Nothing wrong with this. There's really no point in having any particular craft type. Each is custom made to fit into your vision of the game, which is why KSP is so awesome. Making a glider got me nothing in this game, but it sure was fun. Good luck!

If you use Alt-F12 part clipping, beware that you can end up with unstable designs and exploding ships if not done carefully.

If you orient the next part in the same direction (using WASD) then angle the camera so you're looking at the side of the fuselage (or whatever part you're attaching to), you can simply aim the mouse behind the attachment point and it'll stick. Yep. Usually around 3 intakes works well, but it kinda depends on what you're doing. Some people will suggest up to 10 or so. SPH is designed that way. Most airplanes are 2x symmetrical so that's what the SPH is based off of. If you would like more than that, you'll have to stick with vertical construction in the VAB (for stock anyway). Not sure if there's a mod for this. Same thing as I mentioned in the first part. Orient the next part to align, then aim aft of your first part. Aim the mouse so it isn't on another fuselage part. Unless you're trying to attach engines at the back end of another engine... I think all of your comments are surmountable. If I missed your point, perhaps post a picture of what you're trying to do. That might make it easier for us to help out. Good luck!

I must missed this post previously. I haven't used procedural wings (or B9, another aerospace add on), but when I hear people talk about either mod they are usually also discussing FAR. I'm not sure how reliable procedural wings is in stock KSP. If I recall correctly, there are people who successful use B9 with stock KSP aero. Wing selection is pretty limited in stock KSP parts. Realize you can also use control surfaces, many of which have a lift rating of 0.7. They're a bit easier to hide than delta wings but still provide a good deal of lift. If you use them, make sure to disable the control surface using tweakables, unless you want them on. Just watch out because if you get too many control surfaces fighting each other, it makes your craft jittery (that's a SAS problem).