DunaRocketeer

Peridot! Definitely huge crossover potential here

I'm flattered that you would use a design based on my rocket . I find it really interesting how you've adapted the design to make it your own: From the looks of things your first stage is a bit more capable than mine - this is useful since you appear to fly a steeper trajectory than I usually do. From what I can tell from your album your first stage provides a great deal of velocity but doesn't venture very far from KSC. This is very different from what my first stage does, which pitches over as early as possible: On my heaviest cargo missions, my first stage re-enters on the other side of the next continent to the east - lighter cargo's allow a degree of boost-back. I will test out your design method in my next design iteration. Your upper stage design choices are also very interesting: Whereas I've been steadily increasing wing sizes as the design has evolved, you've eliminated them entirely in favour of a base-first re-entry approach using a heatshield. I have no heatshield, but use the wings to control the vehicle's angle-of-attack (and therefore drag) during a nose-first re-entry. Without the wings I'd probably burn up . I also find wings useful for gliding down to my landing point - I don't know how you've managed to land on the runway without them!

I've got a couple of examples that I found particularly easy to fly - First is the upper-stage shuttle shown in the image below. The thing drops like a rock until the last twenty seconds of flight, when I trade velocity for lift. Flairing vehicles can sometimes be a little dramatic, but this thing's handling becomes incredibly neutral - no drifting about or unwanted pitch and yaw. Landing has never been easier. Next is a much lower performance aircraft I use for early career survey contracts. You can chuck it about with reckless abandon - something I don't dare do with my higher performance vehicles. It will also land anywhere; a proper rugged bushplane.

I made a collection of pics showing Val and Neldon Kerman's trip to the surface of Laythe. A little rover deployed from the base of the lander let them see the sights and collect additional science. This was the highlight of the trip for the two intrepid kerbonauts. After years of hopping around airless moons, a couple of weeks on an ocean world was just the ticket. The Jool Mothership is too valuable to discard, so I'm making a station for it and other vehicles to dock with. It will serve as a waystation for all interplanetary journeys. The core station is complete, save for extra life support and an escape pod. Now I just need to add a string of propellant tanks for all of those visiting vehicles...

I don't know you, but this is probably untrue. Welcome back to the foum. Go fly some rockets

Jeb must be so bored in my game - just a blue collar hauler doing LEO runs again and again... In the meantime Val is in the Jool system having a great time

Hehe, I thought I was the only player left still on 1.0

Ooh nasty Well that rules out this version for me then - again. Can't play until the fundamentals get fixed.

Anyone know how the landing legs are holding up? Some say they are fixed, others say they may be a little iffy?

I gave my trusty TSTO lifter a capability upgrade. The booster-stage has had a tank stretch, and a jet engine upgrade. Both of these changes improve the performance of the ascent phase, as well as shortening the time needed to fly the thing back to the runway. This has allowed a stretch of the upper-stage cargo bay and a commensurate increase in mass deliverable into orbit. The upper stage has also been given large wings. Before they were just small winglets used to control angle-of-attack during reentry. Now it can glide a bit, making landing on KSC grounds much easier, which gives me a better recovery bonus. The basic design of the vehicle shown above has formed the backbone of nearly all my missions in 2016 (with the upper stage also serving as a great way of landing cargo on Duna, once it is refuelled in LKO). It has had gradual upgrades over time, and has come a long way since January: I might move onto something different soon, but for now it is still fun to fly.

I don't have as much experience as others in this thread with flights to Laythe, but I have recently finished a Laythe exploration mission and I agree that a small spaceplane with rapiers is a great way to go about landing there. One of my favourite recent experiences in KSP has been spiralling down to an island on Laythe, managing the glide whilst scoping out good landing opportunities. Here's how I managed my flight - I hope there will be some helpful ideas and tips : First off, have you considered a spaceplane that lands on its tail? I found vertical landings useful when you want to touch down in a tight spot (Laythe's terrain can be a bit bothersome when it comes to finding smooth flat areas for horizontal landings.) It also makes sense from a role-play perspective; no pre-prepared runways exist on unexplored moons . I found a couple of radially mounted parachutes useful for stalling the aircraft once I chose a landing spot. This sort of design also lends itself to utilising the 2.5m service bay, which I find to be a great container for small rovers (and other important stuff like life support and other utilities). After all, once you've made it to the surface, you're going to want to get science from a couple of different biomes - and see the view from one of the island peaks! Finally, think about folding in additional roles for your lander - it takes a lot of effort to haul stuff out to Jool, so the more you can do with one lander the better. For example, here's an image of my Laythe lander using its mining equipment on Pol. Good luck on your mission!

Rovers are delivered the same way as any other surface cargo - either via service bays, or if it's too big, by building a ramp up to a cargo bay: This is an old image, and I have since created a more substantial 'roving ramp' that can be wheeled into place. One of many reasons why KIS is a great mod.

It has to look 'right' - something that I feel could conceivably fly in real life. That means I do not do multiple asparagus boosters, for example. Whenever I see someone slap together 10x Mammoth engines with 20x Kickbacks, it irks me. It's completely irrational, of course - the strength of the game is you can play however you damned well please, but it doesn't stop my inner voice shouting; NO! WRONG!

One of the nicest designed bases I've seen in a long time.

I either have an on board mining/storing/refining capability, or the destination base has the same capability. This is necessary since most of my vehicles are not capable of returning without a refuel.

What state are landing gear, landing legs and wheels in for 1.2? I haven't been keeping up with the latest changes, but I'm given to understand that the gear skitters around on runways and the legs slide on terrain. I've heard of odd behaviour with rover wheels as well. I'm thinking of finally upgrading from 1.0 to 1.2, but would like to know if these issues are resolved first. Thanks.

I love this station design.

It's called Kerbal Launch failure, and yes it blows up an engine very fifty flights. I don't know if it's fifty + or - a random amount though. There are more complex failure mods out there, but this one suits me fine.

I use a mod that blows up an engine every 50 flights - long enough to be lulled into a false sense of security. This is how it ususally goes. Step 1: Panic Step 2: Use action groups to shut down engines and to separate the vehicle from the exploding booster. Step 3: If I do Step 2 fast enough, make a judgement call whether I am able to return to KSC or conduct a landing on the next continent. Step 4: Panic some more.

Replying to a thread created in 2013 seems appropriate for me because I started playing ksp in early 2013 - there's a lot of things I would do differently if I had known what I know now. The thing that springs to mind more than anything else is getting the thrust to weight ratio correct on my early launchers - they were either limping into orbit or falling back to Kerbin. Can't for the life of me work out why it was such a big problem. I ended up overcompensating when I bought the full game. Case in point: ^ An engine arrangement ugly in both design and aesthetics (not to mention the ridiculous payload...), but over the years KSP has taught me much.

My Jool exploration craft is coming to the end of its stay in the Jool system. Most of its time was spent exploring Laythe, which is a very interesting place to land on - On the Mun I don't get to pick my landing site by gliding around! It's also an interesting place drive around on, the view from some of the dune peaks is great, it's just a pity that it takes such an effort to get a ship out there . The ship is currently in orbit of Pol - the lander can take advantage of that moon's low gravity to conduct a mining operation. One more landing should provide enough ore to finish refuelling the mothership. I'm looking forward to bring this crew home, it's been a very long journey for them!

Last night I completed a series of test flights for a new, more capable version of my usual launch system. I like developing vehicles through a series of test flights in sandbox - fixing the bugs and improving areas of underperformance. Now that is complete it will be transferred over to my career save, and I think I'll be using it for construction of a large space station.

For me the time split is highly variable. Right now it's highly skewed towards VAB, but that's because I'm ironing the bugs out of a new launch vehicle. Once that's done it'll become my new standardised lifter, and the split will then favour flying time.

My first screenshot was of this hideous contraption. Thankfully I've improved.

I'm sure there are ways of creating heavy-lift SSTO's that don't look like an ugly mess of tanks, engines and wings, but I haven't been able to make one yet, so I make do with TSTO. Most of my payloads are launched on TSTO's that reuse at least the boost stage via a runway landing. As the OP mentions, it offers flexibility for upper stage designs, and adds an element of complexity to otherwise routine launches. Variations on the vehicles shown below are the basis of my entire space program for all of 2016.