Jens Lyn IV

Based on your description, the craft has negative static stability in the yaw axis. The SPH shows centre of lift in the pitch axis, so you can't rely on it for yaw stability. I don't use mods, so I'm not familiar with many of these parts, but: I see a vertical surface clipped inside the nose; remove it. The horizontal canards are fine, but vertical fins should be at the rear only. Your tail fins are at a severe angle; this makes them contribute lift, but also lessens their stabilising effect. Try making them vertical. Alternatively, since you clearly don't mind clipping, you could hide vertical tail surfaces inside the rear fuselage, just ahead of the engine nozzles. The cupola appears to be attached radially; if so, you have a source of severe drag far in front of the centre of mass, possibly enough to destabilise the vehicle. If the above suggestions aren't enough, try removing the cupola. Good luck.

Yo dawg, heard you like toroidal fuel tanks, so we made a toroidal fuel tank out of toroidal fuel tanks so you can land your lander while the tanks tank your framerate. But it looks cool.

I made a tailsitting VTOL SSTO reusable lander for Laythe some time ago; it ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.

Sounds like a filthy, heretical staging event to me! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Hm, I seem to only get a bitness prompt when launching from the Steam library, not from the taskbar menu (which is how I usually launch). However, this means I have accidentally been running KSP 32-bit at least some of the time ever since the 64-bit client was released for Windows, yet it has never crashed like this until 1.3. Edit: looking at the error logs I have, all are from KSP.exe, not KSP_x64.exe. I'll post again if the 64-bit client is stable (although an unmodded x86 client really shouldn't crash).

KSP crashes within an hour of starting, sometimes silently, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I've seen it happen mid-flight on Kerbin, when reverting, and in the SPH. I have verified my cache in Steam to no avail. The error is always either KSP.exe caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005) in module KSP.exe or mono.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005) in module mono.dll This looks a lot like bug #15646.

How the Kraken did this thread end up on page four?! Allow me to bump this back to the front page with Yet Another Skylon Clone™ (sorry): meet Sturgeon, so named because its canards remind me of a sturgeon's barbels. Sturgeon is an efficient unmanned design, lifting a full orange tank to 100x100 km and/or deorbiting same cargo. It generally handles well, but roll control tends to revert during reentry; I'm not sure why as it's fine during ascent and when subsonic. Aw, look at those cute canards. My favourite feature: the beautiful shadow Sturgeon casts. Canards and main wing have 5 degrees AoA. Approximate service ceiling at full load. The usual suspect in the payload bay.

I mostly play sand, but I keep telling myself that one of these days I'll give box an honest attempt. Sorry.

This is the embodiment of derp. I love it!

I'll just go ahead and assume there's also a kitchen sink in there somewhere. What's that? It'll reach Laythe?! I don't even... And I thought the submacopter was silly.

Well here's a reusable Duna lander, designed to ferry 6 Kerbals between the surface and a nuclear powered mothership. The air brakes lower terminal velocity to ~200 m/s fully fueled, a load state it will not normally be in during descent. Air brakes shown extended. Not shown: refueling port. And I guess this also counts as a "lander", though its scope goes somewhat beyond that. This will take a crew of 6 on a round trip between the surface of the Mun and LKO, transferring to and from a simple SSTO for launch and landing. The awkward layout is dictated by the unreasonable mass of the Mk2 Lander Can and PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container (5 t without monopropellant); 3 Mk1 Crew Cabins and BZ-52 Radial Attachment Points are much lighter (3.12 t), though they require a probe core for control. The radially attached parts also help increase drag for aerobraking. Still not shown: refueling port.

The rightmost button (paper sheet under a magnifying glass) should give you a preview.

Wow, you're right, the 2005 version is very similar. I'd heard of Kliper, but never really looked into it and didn't have it in mind at all during construction.

Searching this forum for 'chibi' brings up a few tiny shuttle designs, but most are just scaled down, so I set out to build something with "proper" chibi/SD proportions. I quickly gave up trying to make an external tank and solid boosters work, so the orbiter sits on top of a liquid booster instead. Nonetheless, I think the result is kawaii: Shuttle-chan on the pad. Sayonara, Kerbin-san. Stage 1 separation. Circularising. Landing; engine bell hot from burning off excess fuel. Shuttle-chan parked in front of Tower-senpai. Shuttle-chan comes complete with an abort sequence and emergency parachutes: "Baka!" "Geez, Val, no need to get all tsundere." "Bill, you okay back there?" "Um, I guess..." "Bob? Bob! Bob, look at me. Use the bag. No, the bag!" If you're interested in boring technicalities, this next section is for you: The booster fins are too small to achieve static aerodynamic stability in the pitch axis; SAS prograde hold is mandatory during ascent. Planform of the orbiter. Stability is marginal* with full tanks... ...But improves as fuel is consumed. And finally, if you must have a copy of Shuttle-chan for yourself: Download *Not as suicidal as it looks here, thanks to a draggy fuel cell mounted high on the rear bulkhead.

Derp derp herp* derp, derp hurr herp (durr) derp derp; durr hurr derp. Herp, herp derp herp hurr, derp-derp derp. Derp. Herp derp. Hurr durr. Derp derp derp. *Derp.

I've been on a quest to design an efficient SSTO to get a crew of six to LKO and back, and it took me in a few different directions, so here are three rather different results: The reasonable solution; not the smallest, not the cheapest, but the fuel margin is very comfortable, and reentry is a cakewalk. The efficient solution. Slim fuel margin, scary reentry, high stall speed - but it'll hit 1650 m/s on the jet. The unreasonable solution: A triple-fuselage joke* of a spaceplane that performs a lot better than it has any right to. Seriously, how do three Mk1 fuselages generate less aerodynamic drag than a single Mk2 fuselage at zero angle of attack?! *Good luck reaching that docking port...

The front page (not the forum home page) fails to load in Firefox, with a warning about an expired certificate.

@HarvesteR was last seen puttering around the Gold Fields of Goat MMO Simulator. This isn't even his final form.

But I'd still have to do it manually, and I'd rather keep my attention where it's needed. Airbreathers respond very sluggishly to throttle changes, and that can quickly get "interesting" when hovering...

Here's my VTOL SSTO lifting body Laythe lander again, this time in a configuration that actually works on Laythe. As it turns out, Laythe's thinner atmosphere (60% of Kerbin's) reduces static thrust enough to require a third engine; hacking Kerbin's gravity to 0.8 g failed to account for this. The original version had insufficient thrust for hovering, but also carried excess oxidiser, so total mass remains 20 tonnes. The added forward control surfaces provide negative static stability at low fuel loads, easing the transition to retrograde flight. Tail-first handling is still a bit awkward since the control surfaces move the wrong way, but below 40 m/s the thrust vectoring and reaction wheels provide sufficient control authority. Finally, a small docking port allows refueling on the surface of Laythe. Thanks to the third engine, all that's needed for the initial launch to LKO is a pair of LF+O drop tanks. Not shown: drop tanks required for Kerbin launch. Forward control surfaces aid retrograde transition in dense air.

This is still a WIP, but it works well enough. VTOL SSTO lifting body Laythe lander, 20 tonnes fully fueled, crew of six. Aerodynamically stable, which is bloody annoying when trying to go retrograde for the final descent and landing, but with some "inelegant" control inputs it goes tail-first with little difficulty. T/W is too low for Kerbin, but with gravity hacked to 0.8 g it achieves orbit and returns with fuel to spare for a precision landing.

Are you implying that my piloting skills are inadequate?

In this case, the fairing absolutely, indisputably increases drag. I built a replica based on your screenshots and tested it. Frontal area with fairing. Frontal area without fairing. Stable at high speed and high angle of attack. I know you already got this one to orbit, but next time you launch a girder structure, try without a fairing first.

I made a taildragger. Not because that layout makes a lot of practical sense, but because it lets me place the cockpit downstream of the engines. This gives the pilot a very... Kerbal view. Yeehaw! Taxiing involves considerable guesswork... ...But it looks cool. Profile. Planform. Cargo bay and docking port opened, solar panels extended.

Now that 1.1.3 is out, I have tested on a fresh KSP install with default settings, as well as with my preferred settings reinstated. I can no longer reproduce this bug. I see no direct mention of this in the patch notes, but Squad did fiddle with the orbit code in several ways. Whatever they did works for me. Marking as solved unless/until someone reproduces this in 1.1.3