cantab

-1 to -27. What game was that?

*facepalm* the trouble with being on Team Minus is you start to see negative numbers as positive and forget that little minus sign. Down to -27.

A control surface has a certain maximum deflection. Suppose you have one pair of control surfaces at the back doing pitch and roll. Full pitch up = both control surfaces move up to their maximum deflection. Full roll right = left control surface down, right control surface up. Full pitch up AND full roll left = left control surface stays still, right control surface goes full up. You can see that the pitch and roll will be less when combined than when used separately.

KER in atmospheric mode will let you choose an altitude and speed. That can be useful for getting an idea of how the engines will perform before you leave the SPH. The RAPIER and the Whiplash both have a strong ramjet effect, producing more thrust at high speeds. That means you don't want to slow down too much as you climb. Typically I look to steadily accelerate as I climb, and IIRC I'll be supersonic below 10 km, then around 15 km I start reducing my climb rate aiming for level acceleration around 20-22. That's in FAR though, stock aero is a bit different. If that doesn't work, three other things you can try. Break the sound barrier low then climb without losing speed, but you'll be fighting a lot of drag. Climb to a decent altitude then break the sound barrier in a shallow dive, but you will have to regain that high. Or light the rockets as an ad-hoc afterburner to get past Mach 1, but that will use a chunk of fuel.

5000 posts - plus another 5000 in this thread it feels like Down to 30

Well rockets are normally pretty cylindrical anyway. Just make sure you have smooth lines - use fairings or service/cargo bays where needed, and nosecones on your boosters. Since rockets also have a lot of thrust any transonic drag hump doesn't matter as much either, you can just blast through it. Personally I've virtually never used the FAR analysis tools for a rocket, the design, flight profile, and stability requirements are much simpler than a plane.

drop to -30

Provided everything matches with the default orientation in the VAB you should be fine, but it's even easier to mix the orientations up and confuse FAR. Design the gliding part in the SPH if you can.

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So I think wrong Zw means that as your angle of attack increases you're generating less lift instead of more. That suggests you're doing something odd. I advise having your fuselage level when doing FAR analyses, beyond that a picture would help.

Ahem-hem Same timestamp, in response to same post. Rule 7, the last one counts, so your revert is invalid.

-26 (-) It's on a good run.

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No bottom node I think would just be plain annoying, we already had the aerospike spoiled by that (changed in 1.0.5, hurrah!) A model that actually shows the engine would be good, not just for balance but also for a more consistent art style. But it can't be too long or it would cause problems for Shuttles, and the real SSME has a big bell on relatively small machinery - which is simply a feature of a vacuum-optimised engine. I wonder if it could have simply been made a little wider? And then it could be a 2.5 m engine, fitting nicely between the Skipper and Mainsail in performance, and that bit trickier to put in a 1.25m stack (you'd need a bulging interstage fairing) or make such compact clusters out of (assuming you avoid clippingness).

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-16 (-) and this is the seventh in sequence

Onwards and downwards, -14.

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