Claw

Yeah, you just need any probe core, cockpit, or seat oriented the right way. Unfortunately orienting external seats to get the straight up nav focus makes the kerbal face straight up, which looks odd. Not that any of this is on topic.

Haha, awesome! I find for VTOLs it helps to have a probe core on top, so you can orient the navball to point straight up for takeoff/landing. And if you're up at 50km, I find I need to cut off the engines for reentry when I'm about straight south of KSC2. Edit: Here was mine that I was referring to.

They will let go on their own if you move around too much on the ladder. Also, some of the capsules are more prone to kerbals unintentionally letting go. Especially if you have anything attached next to the hatch/ladder (as mentioned above). The other thing that is annoying is how they sometimes orient themselves up/down on the wrong axis in relation to the hatch/ladder making it more difficult to grab on. If you press space bar, the kerbal will orient to the camera view.

I don't mean to be overly obvious, but also make sure you loaded kerbals into the pods before launch. They do not load by default. I don't know about the mac version, but on the pc version you can right click on the pod and it will tell you if there is crew onboard. It says something like "1/1 crewmembers". Also on the pc version, if you hover the mouse over the hatch, it will highlight and tell you that you are actually on the hatch. Then you can left click. Good luck

Yes, this. For me it seems much more noticeable at 32km. At that point, wings don't matter and it's all about having a bit of thrust fed by 3 or so intakes per engine. I just completed a challenge with a wingless SSTO VTOL that circumnavigated Kerbin (below 68km) on about 72 units of fuel including a VAB landing. Most of that fuel was used up getting to altitude.

KSP's drag model (in 0.23 anyway) is pretty basic. Usually slightly asymmetric drag will be much less of a factor than asymmetric mass for small craft. Asymmetric mass will haunt you for the entire voyage. Asymmetric drag from science parts will likely be unnoticeable when launching from Kerbin. I'm sure you can prove me wrong here, but I'm talking about basic designs like you describe. Not attaching multiple copies of everything to one side. Even at that, you'll suffer more from the asymmetric CoM.

Ahh. I was trying to use scansat to find some of that stuff, but it kept crashing KSP. I finally gave up and uninstalled it.

Yes and no. You can use wings to get a craft airborne that otherwise would not have been able to. (i.e. TWR less than 1) So in one regard they do let you get more use out of the dV you have, but that shouldn't be confused with needing less dV.

Lift equation for Control Surfaces: sin(AoA)*pressure*speed*lift Lift equation for Wings: sin(AoA)*(1-|sin(AoA)|)*cos(AoA)*pressure*speed*lift

Yeah, I think so. I went and found it again. It's a couple km northeast of KSC. It was a couple meters off the ground. But now I'm guessing that's not the one you're talking about.

That's because you need to left click on the hatch. Then you can select who to EVA.

I found one by accident the other day, I didn't even know it existed. I think it was north, not too far from KSC. My detail is on default and it was sitting properly on the ground.

Looks pretty good. It still looks like your CoL is pretty far behind your CoM, but if it's working then leave it alone. 1600 m/s at 27km is pretty fast. If you can manage to tweak your design enough to get up to 32km, then your speed/efficiency will really bump up. The CoT not inline with the CoL isn't really a problem. The CoT not inline with the CoM is, but can be overcome to some extent as shown below.

Transport Tycoon = 2 thumbs up. You should check out Open-TTD. Good luck with your craft!

Lift is generated primarily as a function of airspeed, air density, and Angle of Attack (the angle between your prograde marker and the yellow "V" line). To say a wing has 1.9 lift rating is somewhat useful, but doesn't tell you how much weight it can carry because it depends on a lot of things. I could spam you with the lift and drag equations, but it doesn't feel like that will answer your question. I feel like your real question is something along the lines of "How much wing do I need for my plane?" If that's the case, then typically around 0.5 to 1.0 lift rating per ton of craft works as a starting point for space planes. If you have a high TWR (more than about 1 on takeoff), then you don't need as much wing. If you have a low TWR (0.7-1.0 on takeoff), then you'll want more wing. If you have a higher TWR (2 or higher), then you almost don't need any wing at all, except enough to get off the ground if taking off horizontally. EDIT: Also, if you start to place wings with funny angles, it reduces their effective lift rating and can increase induced drag. If that doesn't answer your question let me know.

The concept here is correct, but the numbers aren't. Wings can aid in lowering deltaV requirements because of a variety of things they enable. Such as taking off with a TWR of < 1.0. However, they do not generate 1 newton of drag for every 1.9 newtons of lift. It isn't a direct correlation like that. The lift equation increases lift produced until about 25 AoA, at which point the lift force generated begins to decrease. The induced drag caused by the wing increases as a cosine which will peak out at 90 AoA. The raw drag value of the part is also misleading. There is inherent parasite drag due to the part, but KSP's current drag model is a weighted scheme.

No. Your surface speed will be faster for a given orbital speed, but you will find it's harder to get orbital velocity with a TurboJet going west than going east. These numbers aren't exact, but if you're going 2200m/s surface speed eastbound, you're going >2300m/s orbital. If you are going 2200m/s surface speed westbound, you're going <2100m/s orbital.

In fact, I just removed the split from your hidden MK1 and connected it with a single fuel line to the bulkhead in front of it (inside the clipping). That fixed the asymmetric fuel feeding, although I didn't look to see what that does to your CoM during flight. EDIT: Nice bird btw.

I think it's because you're trying to split that hidden MK1 fuel tank. When you have an odd number of engines firing, and the fuel rules, your odd engine is causing your plane to draw fuel from the right inboard and hidden MK1 tanks and leaving your left inboard tank untouched (or less touched as the case may be). You can shut down this center engine or lock out the hidden MK1 tank as a mid-term solution. You might need to rework your fuel lines a little so they aren't feeding backward and forward so much. As a minimum, try to change how your hidden MK1 is tied into your fuel system. It's usually less confusing to combine multiple tanks to a single point and redistribute, than to try to take single tanks and split or cross connect multiple times. This might help too, although the fuel rules can be a bit complex.

2:1 couplers do not feed fuel correctly when flipped around. The problem is that only one connector on the dual side connects. So half your fuel stack isn't feeding the NERVA. You'll have to find a place to route fuel lines if you use the multi-couplers like that. BTW, even with separate tanks, MJ assumes you use all the fuel of a stage before activating the next stage. So the numbers are better but still tend to underestimate dV.

I usually get more creative with how I flow the oxy and the fuel so MJ give better numbers, but this isn't always ideal since you may want all fuel available to all engines. If you want accurate dV numbers from MJ for your space plane, your best bet is configure the fuel the way it would be when you use a particular engine. Then put that engine at the bottom of the staging stack. MJ will then output a dV number for you for that engine/staging point in your profile. So for the example you posted, your NERVA has more than 2600 dV available. It's just showing that because it's trying to push all that extra liquid fuel that your TurboJets would eat up. So adjust your liquid fuel to levels you normally see once you're in orbit (after your TurboJets have gotten you there). You can leave your engine staging the way it is, or move your lander stage up higher to be more accurate. Then the bottom line of MJ will tell you the NERVA dV available for your trip.

Here's mine: The Spiderweb... Since I didn't want to use MJ or Engineer, I went with a smaller, more rugged design. It is all stock with no mods. The part count is kind of a killer, but it works. I wanted a design that wouldn't change at all for the challenges. I ended up removing the extra passenger seats for the Minmus trip, but it ended up not being required. Other than that, the only change to the ship was fuel load or the addition of passengers/cargo. I think I hit all the challenges. There's a lot of pictures, but here's the breakdown in order. I used MJ to highlight all the weights, then removed for flight. DARPA & AirJeep Challenge: Took 3 passengers and their luggage to the Island. - Fueled Weight: 3.504t - Cargo Weight: 2.600t - Total Weight: 6.104t - Cargo Fraction: 42% - 3 Passengers & 1 Crew (I didn't count their weight as cargo. About 0.3t more.) Dornier & Osprey Challenge: Took 7 passengers and their luggage to KSC2. (And landed on the KSC2 roof after. Bedstead2 if you will...) - Fueled Weight: 3.684t - Cargo Weight: 2.600t - Total Weight: 6.284t - Cargo Fraction: 41% - 7 Passengers & 1 Crew (I didn't count their weight either. About 0.8t more.) Harrier, Clipper, and MLRV Challenge: SSTO trip to Minmus and back. - Pilot: Bill, Copilot: Jeb Moller & Bedstead Challenge: Around the world and roof landing using 72 units of fuel. - Pilot: Bob, Copilot: Billy-Boblorf Thanks for the challenge!!!

I don't think you can remap the debug menu as there isn't an option for it in the settings.cfg file (or at least I haven't found it). If you're actually trying to get the debug menu up, the key is Alt-F12 (not just F12). Maybe that will help.

I dunno what this is, but it looks pretty sweet. Nice job.

I haven't built any like yours, but I have used them radially. They can turn into SSTOs if you let them.