cantab

Remember that the current stock aerodynamics is going away in the next release of KSP. With that out of the way: The drag on a part that isn't a wing, air intake, or control surface is dead simple. It is directly proportional to the mass of the part, including any fuel or other resources in it, and the atmospheric density, and proportional to the square of speed. Orientation makes no difference, whether it's in a cargo bay makes no difference, a nosecone on a booster doesn't reduce the drag of the booster and does add the drag of the nosecone. There is a drag coefficient that's multiplied in but almost all parts have that as the same value, except for deployed parachutes that have a drag coefficient thousands of times higher to work. This is behind most of the unrealism in the aerodynamics model. For example almost all craft have the same rather low terminal velocity, the fuselage on a plane or body of a rocket will contribute nothing to stability, and the centre of mass and centre of drag will almost always coincide. It explains why picking up speed in a dive doesn't really work - the plane's "streamlined" fuselage offers no advantage compared to a block of fuel tanks, and the overall drag level is so high it robs the speed. Lift is better. Wings behave largely as you'd expect, giving maximum lift at a certain angle of attack, though they don't really stall beyond that. Nearby wings don't interact at all, so don't worry about that. If you want more lift from the same wing span just slap two copies of the wing right on top of each other! Control surfaces, on the other hand, gain maximum lift at 90 degree angle of attack and can create thrust when deflected - the so called "infiniglide" bug. This especially affects lightweight and/or low-powered craft, but it might account for your unexpected speedups. Despite all the issues people do fly planes in stock, but if you want a more realistic experience get FAR. Besides a vastly better aerodynamic model (albeit with its own quirks), it includes analysis tools to inform you about your plane's stability before it even leaves the hangar, and the ability to set control surfaces as flaps or spoilers. If you get annoyed by your planes breaking apart in FAR just turn aerodynamic failures off. PS: One more thing. SAS tries to hold your heading in space. That can be helpful for level flight but is counterproductive when turning an aeroplane. If you hold down Alt (or RShift on Linux) and press WASDQE, you can set trim on the controls, which is my preferred way to fly. Neutralise trim with Alt+X.

You scared the bejeezus out of me with that title! It made it sound like it's broken down just now. Yeesh.

My understanding is that the British usage of dd/mm/yy versus the American mm/dd/yy reflects how people in the different countries say dates. Here in Britain we normally say "14th of February" rather than "February the 14th" - I believe Americans normally say the latter.

A missile or a missile launcher?

And it uses, by default, the same gosh darned approach Squad are advocating of requiring an Engineer kerbal.(Or you can use the chip part, or turn off the requirement altogether. But nothing indicates Squad won't do both of those too.)

In fact, I'll give all the people who think any old Kerbal should be able to work out delta-V an exercise: A one-stage core masses 10 tons wet, 3 tons dry, and has an engine delivering 100 kN of thrust with an Isp of 400 s. Attached to it are two solid boosters, each massing 4 tons wet and 0.5 tons dry, each delivering 300 kN of thrust with an Isp of 250 s. All three engines ignite at launch and run at full throttle. The boosters are decoupled immediately after burnout. Calculate the delta-V of this rocket. For extra credit, assume the pilot throttles the core engine back to 2/3rds throttle when the boosters have used up half their fuel. Work out the new delta-v in less time than it takes the boosters to deplete their remaining fuel.

They aren't really equivalent. Delta-v of a manoeuvre is fundamental to define that manoeuvre. It's the most straightforward number for the game to show relating to it. Delta-v of a ship on the other hand is a derived quantity, depending on the wet and dry masses, and the game does show those.And delta-v of a rocket is *not* simple. One engine on one fuel tank is easy enough, but you start having things like different engine models active, parallel staging, Apollo style landers, and it gets complicated fast. That's why KER has been actively developed for so long, and justifies needing a trained engineer.

That I disagree with. The proportional overlap or offset indicates how far misaligned things are absolutely.

Exactly what I'd expect. And, you know, the same bleeding way the Kerbal Engineer mod does it.If the KSP community are seriously bashing Squad for doing what probably the game's most popular mod does, than the mindset in the community is just plain dysfunctional now.

More controllable and more stable aren't the same thing. For a rocket to be stable it needs to have the lift and drag behind the Centre of Mass, same as for a plane. But not too far behind, or it may lawn dart. In stock the CoM and CoD will almost always nearly coincide, so you only need to worry about fins giving you a CoL. FAR is more complicated, and a draggy fairing or payload may need compensating for with oversize fins at the back, or accept the instability and use SAS and loads of control authority to keep it in check.

That's in the game menu. I don't know what the corresponding lines in settings.cfg are.

Career mode does have game balance issues. The developers know that, and that's why they are working on a complete rebalance of the game for the next update. For now, I would say it's playable and enjoyable despite the issues but it really is the game mode for experienced players. Spaceflight is hard enough without having to worry about money as well, so novices will be better off in Science or Sandbox mode. As for specifics. If you don't like flying without SAS, then don't! Unless you're attempting super-hard difficulty there's absolutely no need to. Just use a pilot in a command pod on every mission until you unlock the OKTO. For gravity turns, if your rocket is losing control in response to a small pitch input then you have made it aerodynamically unstable. SAS may be able to handle that but you can't, so you need to design a rocket that is aerodynamically stable. In either stock or FAR this can be accomplished by adding fins, which you can easily unlock before attempting a launch to orbit. As for money, yes the building upgrades are expensive, but they're expensive because they're powerful. The solution is twofold. Firstly, learn the tricks to making money in career mode. Some contracts give loads of money for hardly any effort. Secondly, build to your constraints instead of thinking you must upgrade. You can go to the Mun without upgrading a single building.

It depends on the Render Quality setting. I think "Simple" is the lowest that gives shadows. Shadow Cascades determines quality of the shadows but won't make them come or go. Pixel Light Count is unimportant to shadows.

If I don't want something around any more, I terminate it from the Tracking Station. I like to thing they have a big laser there for it.

Let's get back to the core question. You want to build a realistic plane to go to Laythe and back. Step 1: Install FAR and DRE, or wait for the 1.0 KSP release. FAR isn't perfect and it has its oddities, but it's a LOT better than stock aerodynamics. Step 2: Install a mod for realistic jets such as AJE. Or if you must use the stock engines, use the Basic Jet. You can certainly build an LKO spaceplane with it. Step 3: Sort your in space engine out. The LV-N has realistic ISP if it were using hydrogen, but hydrogen is much bulkier than KSP fuel and boils off over time. The ions have reasonable Isp but excessive thrust, so I would say use them to transfer where it doesn't matter much but not to circularise since real ions wouldn't have the thrust for that.

I'm like tomf. I'm rubbish at lining up with the runway, so I just come down anywhere at KSC. That whole peninsula, that looks light green from high up, is nice and flat. Now as for the actual landing, one thing is to start your descent nice and early. If you try and nosedive above KSC you'll build up too much speed to land. This is especially important if you're using FAR or another aerodynamics mod, because it's much harder to shed speed than in the stock "soup". In real life, if you were flying an airliner at 33,000 feet (10 km) you would start your descent around 150-200 km from the runway. That's several times as far from KSC as the island runway is. In KSP you probably can do steeper, but still you get the idea. Once you're getting fairly low you can also back off the throttle. It depends on the plane and the aerodynamics mod (if any), but I tend to find just a little above zero works well. I don't like to outright cut the engine but some planes do warrant that. If you're making an out landing - ie one not at KSC - then you should by now be looking for a landing site. Lower your landing gear and let the plane steadily descend until it's just above the runway or landing site. The Small Gear Bay comes with a light, turn that on using U and it will help you judge the distance. Then pitch up to maintain near-level flight and slow down further, and gently let the wheels touch the ground. Apply the brakes but be careful not to flip end over. If your plane's controls are too twitchy, use fine controls by hitting Caps Lock. Or, if applicable, reduce the number of control surfaces in the relevant axis.

As far as stock goes, a fuel line from each tank to the engines, or to a small "buffer" tank somewhere that then feeds the engines.

If you know how to get to orbit, why are you falling out? Are you familiar with basic orbital manouvres like changing your apoapsis and periapsis?

I've had this issue as well. Noticed it sometimes more than others, depending on the KSP version and the mods in use. It never bothered me much in the VAB - though maybe it's the root cause of clicks not being registered immediately and thus clicking on a different part. But when it's bad it's very obnoxious in flight, especially at timewarp. Always been playing on Ubuntu 14.04.

8/10. You forgot Pol Let's have an interior shot.

Waves? 10char

Err, what's the difference? Since absent any changes in mass momentum is just mass times velocity. The exotic matter and xenon consumed at warp is negligible mass is it not.

Granted. Zimbabwe Dollars. I wish I had a googol. Of, well, anything really, as long as it's not on top of me or about to fall on top of me.

I think they should be called kuid, but I usually use funds. Incidentally, I realised a while ago that the symbol isn't meant to be a square root sign. It's a graph, as might show money changing over time.

Granted. Humans typically need to sleep for 46-47 of them. I wish I had more biscuits.