Claw

I don't know about FAR, but stock wings are all symmetric airfoils (no camber). Symmetric airfoils need AoA to generate lift. I'm not sure if KSP is actually modeling all this in bank, or if it's just coincedental. Anyway, when you fly a symmetric airfoil craft (such as a T-38, F-15, F-16, etc) you do indeed have to pull back on the stick after you roll into bank. Otherwise the nose just drops because of the lift loss. (Swept wings do other wacky stuff too, but that's a whole separate topic.) When you want to stop turning, you have to stop pulling then roll out. It works the same way for cambered wing aircraft too, except that you can get some turn without having to pull back. If you don't pull back, the nose will still want to drop some. If you do pull back, you will turn faster. EDIT: Oh, I forgot. Also, even if you do design a craft that is capable of turning on it's own in bank (which is possible in stock), if the SAS is on, it isn't going to turn anyway. So this could also be what you're running into. SAS is trying to hold a set attitude, so normal aerodynamic behavior of the aircraft sometimes gets nullified. Like rolling into bank, often your nose will stay up (or only drop slightly) but your prograde marker will sink. Realize this one example assumes you have enough yaw control authority to actually hold the nose up in a bank.

Yep, my bad. I didn't explicitly say you had to program it since that's what others in the the thread have already said. (Oh wait, I did say program...) Anyway, my point was that you can't shut down engines using the space bar. You CAN shut down engines using the action groups. You are indeed correct, you must program them to do those things.

That looks nice! I like it. I haven't made a high engine design like that yet. Sounds like a good time to get started.

Hmm, I tried both things. I built a rocket in the SPH and launched it from the runway, vertically. I then built an airplane in the VAB and launched it from the launch pad, vertically and horizontally. I didn't experience any more/less lag than normal. Can you provide any more details? Like DeMatt said, are you doing any .craft file transfers? Any mods? How big of a craft are you talking about? Thanks EDIT: That bulldozer looks pretty intensive. Is that maybe part of the problem?

You can also store only one kind of each experiment done under the same conditions in your capsule. So for example, you can't take two high orbit Mystery Goo samples into your pod. But you could take a high orbit Mystery Goo and another Mystery Goo from any other location with you. If you try to take two of the same samples with you, it says something to the effect that you can't bring it in the capsule. I've seen people confused by this. You are still bringing one of the samples, you just can't bring two. (I hope at least some of that explanation made sense... )

Arg. The OP is landing on Laythe last because he/she isn't planning on returning to Kerbin. Which probably also means he/she isn't going to bother taking off from Laythe. Here's a better version of the dV chart. http://i.imgur.com/jGxK1zG.png Also, nobody has mentioned some things like: -Don't forget that if you're sending an unmanned probe, that you'll only get one use out of some of the science instruments. So make sure you bring enough. If you're going to put all of them on one probe, then make sure you plan a large enough core probe to handle all that. -Sure, you can also do this by sending a mother ship and dispersing a cloud of probes. But if that's not what you want to do, you could make it so you can jettison the used science containers after you transmit the data. -Don't forget to bring enough batteries. It can take up a lot of juice to send off all those packets at once. (and solar panels or NUK!) -Quicksave is your friend... Like Mobjack said, Just do it! If you have something like Engineer or MechJeb installed, that can help out your dV planning during the flight. Again, like Mobjack said, if you find yourself running out of dV, you can change the priorities of your mission to get those things you want. At least you will have learned something.

I'm sorry syfyguy. If it isn't a mod then the only other thing I can suggest is re-downloading or re-unzipping a fresh copy. You can make copies of your "saves" directory and put them in your fresh install. I would test it out maybe before and after moving your saves, but I would definitely test it before reinstalling mods. Unless someone else knows why this is happening??

Well that's the whole point of being able to program the abort button, so you don't have to space bar through everything. Although if you like it that way, then by all means stick with it. The nice thing about programming the abort button (or any action group can substitute), is that it also shuts down engines, deploys legs, and all those other things you can't do by staging (if you need it).

Although realize the OP never said anything about returning to Kerbin. Just that the probe was going to land at Laythe last (presumably because it isn't going to be taking off). Sounds like he/she's planning on several fly-bys. Perhaps the delta-v chart will help a little. Although it will overestimate since I doubt you will want to return to Jool after every fly-by.

This seems likely to me. If you say it drives off on its own after hitting the ground, then it sounds like there is a lot of force that is being sent into the wheels on landing (especially with sepratrons). If the brakes are locked, it might be too much for them to take, but just shy of causing catastrophy without them. You can try testing your rover by itself, without the touchdown. Launch it, lock the brakes and activate sepratrons. It'll probably rip the gear off, but I don't know. You can also try turning on brakes after you hit the ground. If you're doing this landing with two ships, you can hop between the two of them. Have a probe core on the rover (or a kerbal), switch to it right before/after it touches down and activate the brakes after the sepratrons are done. Then you can switch craft again while it stops itself. (Watch out for going beyond 2.5km from your ship in flight.) You can switch craft with the bracket keys.

Also, if you end up in the situation where you have fuel but it can't get to the engines, you can manually move fuel around. You would still need a tank connected to the engine, but if you mess up a secondary tank, you can fix it in flight. Right click on one of your tanks to bring up the fuel readout. Hold ALT and right click on the second fuel tank. You can now transfer fuel into or out of either tank.

The lift force generated is dependent upon a lot of things, including airspeed, air density, and Angle of Attack. So, that being said, this thread discusses how to calculate the lift. It might be more complicated than what you're looking for. If you want a rule of thumb as to how much wing to use for an airplane, then you can aim for somewhere around 0.5 to 1.0 lift rating per ton of aircraft. Go on the 0.5 side for smaller craft or higher thrust to weight ratios, or on the 1.0 side for lower thrust to weight ratios. There isn't a "required" number, so play around a bit and see what kind of setups fit your personal design style. Good luck

Except that you can lock the gimbals and still cause the rocket to roll by pitching/yawing with just the reaction wheels. In fact, it's worse. The engines are going to gimbal around because the SAS is trying to maintain a set attitude. This could also be causing some roll, but I think in the case of the quad coupler it's something else. I think it might actually be some minor programming bug or artifact since it only affects some engines, is pretty sporadic, and is affected by rotating engines.

I think your rocket looks great. It's a bit long for the amount of control that's on it, so what it looks like when it's in the gravity turn it has a bit of yaw wander to it. (I don't think you need to change anything about it to "fix" that.) It seemed like when the SAS was trying to counter the yaw and you do your gravity turn, the controls get saturated and it can't stop the resulting roll. It also looks like that yaw is still somehow associated with the weird engine characteristics. I also rotated the engines and noticed a big difference. Seemed like the roll was nearly gone, and it matched what I saw on my tests. It didn't want to roll at all unless I was actively turning at full rate. (Not sure if that's what you also saw.) Now that I think about it, I've seen similar rolls with long rockets controlled by MechJeb during the initial part of the gravity turn, but never really thought about what it was caused by. So I would say if you're happy with how it controls, I wouldn't bother adding anything else. It didn't seem like much roll to counter after I rotated the engines and it was pretty easy to control.

Now you're making me think of the orbital trajectory that pops up when your maneuver node orbit crosses an SOI. Is this a fairly large arrow? I'm also starting to wonder what we all mean by "front" and "behind." Looking forward to your pictures. You have made me very curious.

I have heard throughout the forum and in many videos that nosecones are useless because the drag coefficients simply add together. I have noticed radial drag coefficient factors in some .cfg files so I don't know if/how those are used. That being said, I haven't experienced the random exploding SRB that related to speed (and not say, an overheat). I have seen ascent profiles affect the overheat of an engine, so there is some kind of connection. Anyway, I think I know what I will be testing tonight. As for fins, placement is very important. It also depends on what kind you use, so I wouldn't necessarily say they add to general instability. But they can also make a reasonably stable rocket go out of control if not done right.

I finally broke down and removed all mods except MechJeb and Engineer (for designing). I have a lot fewer crashes now.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong (since I'm not at my computer atm), but don't you get a little ghost Mun when you hover the mouse between the encounter nodes? Maybe that's just when you're doing the initial injection burn. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I think the ghost appears when playing with maneuver nodes.

If you are just looking for a rule of thumb to get you started, the lower your target is in orbit, the sooner you should launch when it passes over KSC. If it is higher in orbit, then you should wait for it to be further past KSC. Imagine a target in a 100km orbit. If it is straight overhead when you launch, you will be only slightly behind it when you reach an 80km orbit because of the curved trajectory of the launch. Since you are lower, your relative speed will be slightly faster and you will slowly catch up until it is time to burn and match APs. Now imagine something in geostationary orbit on the other side of Kerbin. That target stays 180 degrees on the other side of Kerbin from KSC. When you launch from KSC, you will end up slightly past your ideal burn time to match your apoapsis (because you are slighly downrange from KSC). It's a rough start, but from there you can get some experience and do some trial and error like others have suggested. I'm sure someone created a mod or online app for that, but I don't know of any myself. Edit: incline orbits are another challenge in themselves. I'm sure there is a host of techniques for that, but your biggest concern is launching when KSC is nearing the inclined orbit. The position of the target will be a second consideration if you can also match up the rule of thumb above.

Yeah, I agree that the stem on the 30s & 45s really has noting to do with it. It was just a convienent way to reference rotations. The poodle has similar side graphic pipes but it is solid as a rock. The TurboJets are symmetric but also rolled. So I don't know if that will fix your issues, but I thought it was pretty strange. You might try rotating them in different ways if the direction I suggested doesn't work.

And you're not an idiot. It's a new feature. Lots of items have tweakable features. Try right clicking on everything and see what you find.

...with the same kerbal...before his respawn timer expires...

This is all true if you're at the equator. But as you approach the poles, the longitude lines become closer together and you have to account for that (with the handy equation posted above).

Do the above if you are within 2.5 km. It is by far the easiest. If you are further, than do what ThinkOutsideTheHangar said, except after you go to the map, left click (instead of right click) and select "Switch To"

Perhaps I should qualify my statement a little. This is in reference to launching a rocket using the large to small quad adapter. Since no pictures have been provided, I was going off of the various descriptions Streetwind posted. Most specifically, he said: So I used a quad adapter, with perfectly even engine alignment. I used LVT-30s (which have no thrust vectoring) and it rolled around the vertical axis. I then tried LVT-45s with gimbals free and gimbals locked. It still rolled around the vertical axis in both conditions. (Yes, gimbals free or locked for all four engines.) I then rotated the engines as described, and the rolling stopped. This happened with both the 30s and the 45s (gimbals locked and gimbals free). I have also experienced rockets that rolled with control surfaces on, and when I locked those it stopped rolling. So there is certainly a lot of things interacting here, but I thought I would post my findings on the limited information Streetwind provided. None of that is meant to say that you CAN'T experience a similar rotational problem on an asparagus staged rocket with gimballing.