Claw

I also think part of the proble with physics warp is that some things (like thrust) are multiplied while other things (like joint stiffness) don't seem to be. So ships that arent overdesigned tend to experience unplanned disassembly.

If you haven't figured it out yet and are able to post a picture, it will likely help us figure out what's happening.

I'm not certain what you're asking for Capi. If it's just placement of the node to escape Kerbin (for Solar "escape"), then it's just short of the Kerbin midnight point (not the midnight terminator). So almost the straight opposite side than the sun, but slightly "back" toward the midnight terminator. Basically you're pulling the prograde marker tangent to Kerbin's orbit. Yeah, from a 75km circular orbit, it takes about 2800 m/s.

Due to physics, you can't make a satellite always face Kerbin unless you're constantly flying it (everything flies inertially). This is different than geostationary, which will keep the satellite over a specific point on the ground. That being said, as Taki pointed out, the game doesn't require you to constantly point the antenna in a particular direction.

How much roll/yaw are you talking about? And are you flying with SAS on? I would fly your craft but I don't have B9 installed. So if you have more details about how much roll/yaw, what you're doing before/after, that sort of thing. Dihedral will help out, but if you have SAS on it shouldn't really be rolling at all unless you happen to be in the very fine NULL zone where SAS messes up and makes your plane "twitchy." If it's bobbling around a lot then you can try disabling some of the control surfaces via tweakables. This keeps them from fighting each other. Alternatively, if your plane is still experiencing a bit of yaw, you might be getting roll because of the upturned/swept wingtips. (Just depends on what kind of roll you're getting.) As for your yaw problems, sometimes airplanes that have long wings will have yaw stability issues. As you see, adding a more effective tail helps this out. You can make the tail area bigger (as you did), or put the tail back further (as Vanamonde suggested).

Very true, but I like it better than being limited to one node and one conic patch. I'm sure it'll get better as development progresses. Right now I'm hoping they add a delta V readout to more nodes than just the next one.

(points at avatar) Would that be a banana split?

After shifting around the view and/or zooming in, I find that sometimes I still can't add a node where I want. But it will let me add a node further down on blue line (near the transition). In which case I can add the node there, grab the white circle, and slide it back where I want.

Okay, so I went ahead and tried this out on the Mun. I had been wanting to try having a station or something like this, but I had (in my head) already settled on leaving whatever it was in Munar orbit. Instead of Munar orbit, I aimed for L4. (I chose the Mun because I didn't feel like dealing with Minmus' inclination and it's easier to deal with transfer timing.) I set myself up in front of the Mun, just outside of it's SOI (2.4Mkm). I ended up about 2.6Mkm. I started playing with the maneuver node, thinking as if I was trying to slide out of L4 (which KSP doesn't really simulate). I figured this was probably inefficient and I verified my thought above. If I really wanted to slide out of L4 it was going to be too much dV. It was cheaper to just burn and drop straight back onto Kerbin. You might be able to just slide out the back if you can get the station just in front of the SOI, but that's tough in addition to getting a perfect orbit. So I sought a better way. Instead of thinking like Lagrange points, I thought about it like I was trying to rendezvous with the Mun. Instead of sliding out the back of L4, I misaligned the orbit slightly so that my craft swung outside the Mun's orbit. (It actually took about a 45deg burn to slow and go wide.) I spent about 30 dV and ended up in what would have been an elliptical orbit, except the Mun was there to catch me. This caused the craft to enter the Mun's SOI slightly outside the Mun's orbit and pass in front. This actually set up for a bit of a retro slingshot inbound with a prograde slingshot outbound to ~30Mkm (think like an elliptical horseshoe). So this ended up behaving as if I had simply slid out the back of L4. It took a little while though, something like 1/3 to 1/2 of a Mun orbital period, which could be sped up with more dV. From there, it was a burn much like leaving Munar orbit for Kerbin. Roughly 150ish dV for a 13 hr return flight in prep for a slingshot, which could be reduced by spending more dV. (So inline with my Lagrange guess in the above post.) So while the physics isn't perfect, it is reasonably possible to simulate. There are still some hurdles to overcome, such as getting the craft orbit perfect so it doesn't decay into or away from the Mun/Minmus (especially when time warping). I think the Mun is a bit easier to manage, but is probably less economical for Kethane. If you mine it from Minmus, you could potentially tug it to the Mun station when the orbits align. I'm not saying don't do Minmus. I think it would be a bit more challenging if you're looking for that. That being said, while the above dV numbers aren't for Minmus, you could probably get a rough guess. I suppose after having flown it, I think I understand what you're after a little bit better. Given KSP's physics, you might be better off in L5 where you can drop inside the Mun/Minmus' orbit to catch up. This would cause you to "horseshoe" retro-slingshot around the Mun/Minmus back toward Kerbin and potentially reduce the dV requirement further. (Just a thought.) (Edit: I'm using the term L4 pretty loosely here, so don't beat me up to hard.)

(Edit: Some of this info is updated in the next post.) Yep, sorry. I've been trying not to dump too much info at once into my postings. I was aiming at your first two questions. Sounds like you already know to get the answer to your first question then. And for your second question, I didn't know exactly what your goal was, Since achieving escape from Minmus is a slightly different question than getting "from Minmus to specific place." Ballistic escape launch to where? If you're just looking to break SOI, then I would guess the delta V chart can get you some rough idea (and escape velocity is ~243 m/s). Minmus' rotation isn't synchronous with it's orbital period. So there's no best launch location to constantly point at an L4/5. Delta V to slingshot past Minmus back to Kerbin will depend on a variety of things how low you want to slingshot. If your goal is to hit Kerbin's atmosphere, you can calculate all that out (as there would be an optimal Mun altitude) but this one is probably easier to just try out and see. My guess is that it would be in the neighborhood of 150 m/s. But the reality is that it will probably take a lot more than that because KSP doesn't really support Lagrange points. You can sort of simulate L4/5 by being there, but you're not actually in a Lagrange point from a physics standpoint. So since Minmus has an orbital velocity of about 274 m/s, you would need twice that to reverse your orbit for a retrograde slingshot back to Kerbin. Then whatever dV to correct the slingshot velocity. (So I suppose my guess without math is around 650 to 700m/s.) Depends on how fast you want to get there. Returning from Minmus with minimum dV is around 56 hours. You can knock it down quite a bit, but I don't know how that lines up with coming back from L4. I haven't calculated where the Kerbin-Minmus L5 is, but if you're 60 deg ahead in the arc, you would need a little over a day to get from L4 to Minmus, then roughly two days to get from Minmus back to Kerbin for a burn. I think the bigger problem is waiting for Minmus' orbit to line up so that it's on the right trajectory for an interplanetary transfer. Plus Minmus' inclination is going to play havoc.

Perhaps this is a good place to start. You can use the wiki page for calculating delta V and combine with the delta V map below (or this one if you prefer it a little simpler). where: mu = GM is the standard gravitational parameter of the primary body (Kerbin) Therefore the delta-v required for the Hohmann transfer can be computed as follows, under the assumption of instantaneous impulses: (from your "inner" orbit) to enter the elliptical orbit at r=r_1 from the r_1 circular orbit (to circularize your "outer" orbit) to leave the elliptical orbit at r=r_2 to the r_2 circular orbit where r_1 and r_2 are, respectively, the radii of the departure and arrival circular orbits; the smaller (greater) of r_1 and r_2 corresponds to the periapsis distance (apoapsis distance) of the Hohmann elliptical transfer orbit. The total \Delta v is then: You can do this math backwards to figure out how much it costs to lower your orbit. Here's the delta V map. It might save you some math getting to/from Minmus or into Minmus orbit. BTW: I haven't done much with Lagrange points myself, but I hear they don't work very well yet. Good luck.

Yeah, to permanently stay in orbit on TurboJets is a problem. However, it's completely possible to obtain an AP in excess of 200km without "air-hogging" on just TurboJets. In fact, I think I went over 300km on my Machingbird challenge. I would maybe recommend seeing if you can think up a rule that would make your challenge unique. Like kerbal passenger carried per fuel used (I'm not sure if that one has been done). That sort of thing.

I think this has been done, a few times, but that's okay. It's also often a subset of other competitions. I would caution about saying "space plane" because for most people that implies I can have rockets and go orbital. Unless you mean airplane (which I'm gathering from the engine rules). Some people also add altitude limits to prevent going orbital (as you discovered) unless you're not really worried about that.

The landers should not disappear. There are other methods in stock KSP v0.23 to prevent data spam (such as limiting the amount of science earned by transmission). I run stock KSP (except for MechJeb and KER) and I've not run into data transmission = craft gone. It looks like you have a few mods installed so I don't know if there's a problem with one of those. I'm not familiar with all of what you have installed, so it's hard to tell how much battery power you have. When you say it disappears, do you mean that you're looking at it, you transmit data, and it disappears? Or are you somewhere else when you transmit the data? (Like in the Tracking Station or Map mode?) Or are you "flying" the probe, you transmit the data, then exit to the space center, go to the tracking station and it's gone? EDIT: I launched a probe and let it run out of electrical charge. It didn't disappear, or turn into debris. It was still a "probe." So unless there's something wacky with a mod, I don't think lack of electricity would cause it to turn into debris.

Unless JtPB is referring to g (such as in the delta V equation), which I have seen some claims that it's 9.82 m/s^2 instead of 9.81m/s^2. Whichever one is correct, the 0.1% difference is usually not a factor.

I am also suspicious of it running out of power, although I can't recall off hand what happens to a craft in the map when it runs out of power. I didn't think it disappeared, but... In any case, you can check if it's running out of power by opening the resource tab in the top right of your screen. It will show your electrical charge. If it hits zero, your probe will sometimes die even if you have solar panels if there isn't enough charge to complete the transmission. If your probe is disappearing from the map mode (or tracking station), you can see if it's still actually there somewhere by moving your mouse to the top center of the screen. A series of buttons will pop up (as mentioned above). These filter the view to show you probes, manned missions, and a host of other types. You can click on each type to show their map icons, and each button has a little number to tell you how many of that kind of craft are active in your game. If your probe is showing up as debris for some reason, you can find it here (with the left most button). If you could be more specific about what you're doing just before and after the transmission, or provide a screenshot of your craft, it will probably be easier for us to help you figure out if it's a craft design problem or a bug.

I apologize if I misunderstood. Merely saying "unset target" and "set target" is different than "set the target to the docking port." So I didn't know if that particular nuance was known.

Okay, so I will start off with a new question because I want to be clear. You said your craft goes unstable as soon as you load any Kerbals. When you say that, do you mean even after you load the first passenger kerbal? And no matter how many kerbals you add, it goes crazy? I ask because I flew your VTOL and it was rock solid. I then loaded it up with 8 kerbals and proceeded to land on top of the VAB, and managed to do so on the first try. Your craft has 10 jump seats so I tried various configs of 2, 4, 6, and 8 Kerbals. I flew with the front most seats empty, and the back most seats empty. (I landed on the VAB with the back seats empty.) The one gotcha to that though (and I'm hoping your problem is this), is that when you load a kerbal into the command seat, his position becomes the new orientation for your navball. So, for instance, if you load a kerbal in the left side seats, take off, and try to roll left you might end up pitching forward. So I can see if the craft starts to sway, and you counteract but it's not in the intended direction, the whole craft will quickly flip over. If it is this, (after you've loaded your passengers) right click on your MK-1 cockpit at the front and select "Control From Here". That should fix your navball/control issues. If that's not your problem, then you might be having some other issue such as clipping or just a plain bug. Your kerbals at the very back clip a little into the pods you have hanging off the back, and they clip into the kerbals in the seats right behind them. It's such a small amount of clipping that I don't suspect this is the problem. BTW: I'm running completely stock KSP except for MechJeb and KER. Not sure if you're running any mods.

I didn't load your craft in KSP (which I might shortly), but I've designed a VTOL with 8 seats on it. It's all symmetric and completely stable. So my guess (before looking at your design) is that it isn't the seat itself.

This thread looks like it has potential to turn into a "look at the stupid thing I did" thread. I've done the same "space bar" staging thing. Ended up splitting a ship in half in Munar orbit instead of firing the engines to deorbit for landing. At least he wasn't stuck on the surface. So next time I locked out the staging. "I'm not going to do that again!" Shortly after I crashed while repeatedly slamming on the space bar to separate my deorbit stage after it ran out of gas at low altitude... Not funny at the time, but it is now.

Also, if SAS is on, trim might not act how you want. It will allow you to trim but as soon as you stop trimming, SAS will take over again. However, your trim inputs will remain so when you turn off SAS it will set whatever trim state you input.

For ships this small I don't usually put on RCS either unless I have need for some other reason than docking. You can just hop between the two ships for alignment (so no translation required) and approach slowly enough for docking using the engine. Anyway, that's my personal preference. Yes, this. I suspect "set as target" to the docking port will fix your problem. You can do it in the visual mode once you get within range such as your picture there. You won't be able to do it from out in map mode. Click on the target docking port itself, just like when you select "control from here" on the ship you are currently controlling.

This was actually one of the primary early plans for getting to the Moon because it was going to be the fastest plan to accomplish. It was scrapped when they told the president it would be a one-way trip.

You can get around that by building the one tank/engine stack. When you're happy, turn on symmetry and pick the whole piece up and set it down. Also, sometimes rotating the engines a little (using Shift) until they turn green, then rotating them back helps.

I have had instances where ghost parts show up on my craft (although not a solar panel). I once had a phantom strut follow my space station all the way to orbit, 200m off the left side. When it did happen, it was usually after I either copied a part with Alt-F12 part clip active, or because I made a mistake and tried to ctrl-z and undo it. The end result was extra parts which were technically attached in the game's mind, but were nowhere near the right places when looking at the craft in the VAB. Sometimes these parts were many meters away, sometimes they were on the vehicle but invisible. I have had craft this way that look like they are made of maybe 20 parts in the VAB/SPH, but when you save and look at the load screen, it showed with excess parts, sometimes as much as 100+. I don't know if you use ctrl-z much or ever had debug part clipping on, but I found that once my craft corrupted in this manner, the VAB/SPH editor is incapable of fixing it and I simply have to start over. So for the most part I no longer do any debug clipping. If I have to do large-scale undo, I usually just reload the craft and try again. Frequent saves have become my friend.