Claw

The mouse pointer Taki mentioned was the thing I messed up when I first started fiddling with them. You have to put your mouse arrow on the decoupler, not just some portion of the booster. Also, make sure your boosters aren't bumping into anything. That will prevent you from being able to place them, but doesn't usually look like the snap problem you're describing.

If you run into bugs with the mods, you can also try making a new craft with the action group you want and put it on the launch pad. Then edit the save file to copy over the action group to your craft around Eve.

Dang. This looks similar to what I am working on. Now I need to think of something else...

This is very possible. Here are some pictures of The Scorpion. It's capable of launching the space plane into orbit and returning. The space plane establishes in an on-rails stable orbit before leaving physics range. (It nearly gets there with the lifter.) After landing the carrier, you can switch back to the orbiter and circularize the orbit. Although I don't have all the proof you're asking for. Just showing it's possible.

Haha, thanks. Mine is about 200 parts with cargo. I was going to go with a four leg version, but figured why not go for eight! Sorry for all the MJ crazy, I was planning on delivering an orange tank. That's a bit hard for me without the extra data. But this one was fun too.

If you come in too steep during a reentry in KSP you can still run the risk of ripping off a parachute. I haven't done this on a return from Minmus, but even in stock it's important to not come in tooooo steep. From Minmus I do like Dudester. 30k-ish for reentry or 45k for returning to Kerbin orbit.

Good gravy. I didn't even look at the date. Just saw that it was bumped to the top... I wish these would age out a little sooner. Haha

I toyed with a Mun slingshot to Minmus once, it just happened to line up the right way. Usually I find it's also annoying to wait for the timing to line up the Mun with some other body to sling after.

By the way, if one of your landers breaks up but the pieces are still there, you can "recover" them if you go to the tracking station. You will have to move the mouse up to the top of the screen and some buttons will pop up. The left most button is the "Debris" button. You can click this button and it will highlight the debris. Then you can recover and still obtain the science.

Just for my future info, what mod was that?

I have also heard of cases where the shielded docking port thinks it's still locked. In that case, I think your fixes are to fiddle with the save file or relaunch the ship.

To be honest, there are so many things to talk about that it's hard to give tips/hints without a specific question. Especially when "SSTO" means different things to different people. If you're asking about spaceplanes and are unfamiliar with aerodynamics, check out Keptin's aero article. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures I wrote an airborne tutorial that goes along with it. The demo craft is not a space plane, but can be easily converted and demonstrates basic aero. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial If you're familiar with all that, check out the tutorial subforum. It's full of a variety of tutorials. If videos are your thing, here are some from Cruzan and others that are a little more advanced without being overwhelming. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54903-KSP-Quick-Guides-Plane-SSTO-Tutorials!-*SSTO-Video-Just-Released* http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43693-Tutorial-Advanced-SSTO-Design

Yes, this (your wheels). A few people have mentioned it. Place your rear wheels slighly aft of the CoM. If you put them too close to the CoM, your plane will sit on its tail. Too far back, and it won't rotate for takeoff. Also, your CoL should typically not be in front of your CoM.

Your pencil analogy would work if your spinner device was massless and allowed to rotate freely with the pencil. Unfortunately it is not as I think you subsequently pointed out. You also can't use a helicopter as an example either, because the rotation point is fixed and when you lose a blade, the CoM of the blades is no longer coincident with the point of rotation. Application of torque is different than forcing the center of rotation on an arbitrary point. If you look back a couple pages in this thread you might see my example of torque on a rigid beam. Moments only impart vectored force if there is a fixed point which is not coincident with the center of rotation, which as you pointed out, the space craft isn't fixed when it's in space.

Induced drag from wings is (AFAIK) the cosine version of the lift equation. The stock KSP parasite drag model is a weighted function so I can't just give you a number for the wings, and I don't remember the weighting function off hand. The control surfaces are bugged such that the lift will continue to increase all the way till 90 deg AoA. This isn't usually a problem unless you build an airplane that only uses a canard for pitch control, or you build a craft that only uses control surfaces for lift generation. If you build a balanced design it isn't usually a problem.

Also, the thing most people gloss over, is that in the real world if you wait till you're traveling at high speed and yank your rocket over to 45 deg of AoA, the aerodynamic loads would cause it to structurally fail. So rockets in the real world tend to tip over earlier so that your effective AoA is zero as a balancing act against the parasitic drag. Also, I see lots of complaints about how "suddenly" the KSP atmosphere changes at 10km. There certainly is a marked change in performance, but the Earth experiences a similar Earth: Kerbin: The scales of the planet are different, but the basic idea of the curves are the same. Kerbin's atmospheric pressure drops off faster than Earth, but it's also scaled differently. I don't know anything about FAR, so I didn't look into comparing with that. It's not ideal, but it isn't a horrific mess either. The Earth atmosphere experiences a sudden change at 14km-ish, illustrated below. Effectively making flight above 42,000-ish feet a different experience. Maybe someone can point me to the error of my ways?

I can see this too. Although I'm not sure RCS was meant to be a means of propulsion. Whereas ion engines were created for the purpose of propulsion, although they can serve control purposes as well.

I'd have to disagree with moving xenon and ion engines into Control. They are still propulsion devices (although I get that they are a very different kind). I certainly agree that the propulsion tab needs redone. Maybe even just an "engines" tab and a "tanks" tab would help. Or perhaps by type (nuclear, liquid/oxidizer, monopro, ion), but I don't think there's enough of each type yet to justify that many tabs.

Okay, so I'm finally in a position to check this out and fix my own thoughts. Clamp-O-Tron Jr. - Radially attachable and does not need rotating Clamp-O-Tron - Radially attachable and does not need rotating Clamp-O-Tron Sr. - Not directly radially attachable. Can attach to other radial objects with a connection point (such as the plates, struts, attachment point, etc.) Needs to be rotated to match orientation of the connection point when attaching. Inline Clamp-O-Tron - Strangely enough, this is radially attachable and doesn't need to be rotated (well, except to point the port the way you want). Clamp-O-Tron Shielded - Works like the Sr. Needs a connection point and needs to be rotated to match orientation. Edit: To the OP, if you have any mods installed they may have changed the attachment rules in the part files for the ports. Or maybe you're trying to radially attach to something that won't allow.

Let me know how the RCS works out. My suspicion is that you would be better off adding more SAS units before RCS because of the fuel, but I've never tried it the RCS way.

I'll have to try that. I get really frustrated sometimes when they don't want to orient rotationally "up/down" and you end up pointing head first at the hatch.

I'm still a big fan of small craft. I like the challenge of having to pick and packing on all the stuff I need for a trip without just adding moar.

Yeah, I guess I was assuming attaching Sr radially. I don't typically do that so I was assuming you can't. You can mount the Jrs and Regular radially. I have used the inline clamp but there's nothing special about it. It's more for docking craft and keeping them looking sleek, and less for long term connections. But that's just my play style.

There is a radial hardpoint (looks like the underside of a docking port) that you can stick on radially. That will then allow you to attach a docking port. Edit: Here, looks like this WIKI.

Awesome thread. This has inspired me to do the same. I did a free return with 2xSciJr and 2xGoo around the Mun before doing the Sci Jr around Kerbin and that was a bit of a challenge to balance out the power. Nice job! And thanks for the idea.