Hattivat

Perfect, just how I imagined it from these old drawings <3

I think RVE pretty explicitly instructs you not to use the RSS version of Scaterrer in its readme.

You have to go into smokescreen settings and reduce particle count. Details on how to do that should be easily available in the Real Plume thread.

Neither is necessary for rockets, close them. They are mostly only useful for designing airplanes. Rockets are fairly straightforward - if it looks like the rockets that fly in real life, it will fly with FAR. In case of problems, add some (rigid) fins or spin-stabilize. Oh, and a rocket-building tip based on that imgur album: It is generally better to build interstages where the "fairing base" is below the engine (ie. at the top of the stage below), not above it. Also, it would probably help your stability if the bottom stage was not narrower than the second stage, this might let you get away with smaller (and thus lighter) fins.

Mechjeb's "limit acceleration" function, most likely.

Apologies for assuming you didn't know the basics then. I have checked on my install, and an identical SRB lifts itself off the pad without a problem, even if staged together with the launch clamps, as the thrust is 15 MN almost right away. So something else has to be wrong with your setup.

SRBs have thrust curves, meaning that their thrust is not constant with time, and RO simulates this pretty well. So your SRBs will only get to their "correct thrust values" about a second after being fired, and after reaching this peak value the thrust will gradually decrease. Liquid-fueled rocket engines also need a little time to get going, which is why you should always fire your engines before releasing the launch clamps, as they do in real life. Example thrust curves depending on the shape of the channel carved in the solid fuel:

edit: The first two pictures look quite good! old post, I missed the update: Well, that KSC terrain certainly has a foreboding, alien colour And as for the Martian sky, this is obviously a conscientious topic, and I am not going to pretend that I am an expert who knows exactly what the "correct" true colour for it is. All I know from looking at hundreds of pictures is that it is definitely less red and generally less vividly coloured than the surface, so that is what I would personally stick to. If "being alien" is the aim, then perhaps this sort of pinkish brown would work? http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/images/Curiosity-Rover-Portrait-Mars-Mojave-Selfie-pia19142-MALHI-full.jpg

Are Hubble pics white-balanced? http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2005/10/4986bbeb5a541b9a59f6d5d09e290340.jpg Or ground telescopes? http://www.damianpeach.com/mars1112.htm Sure, there is variation due to innumerable variables, but I have never seen a non-altered picture of Mars where the atmosphere was redder than the surface. edit: Great job on making it less shiny though, that is a major improvement.

I don't want to spoil the fun, but the Martian atmosphere is not reddish. The pictures I have seen show it range from bluish white to brownish yellow, presumably depending on position relative to the sun and the seasonal variation in dust levels. I any case, I don't think it was that red even on those ridiculous old pictures when NASA was applying a red filter to everything to cater to the popular imagination of "the red planet". Here's some recent orbital pics from ISRO's Mars Orbiter: http://www.isro.gov.in/sites/default/files/article-files/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission/celebrating-one-year-of-mars-orbiter-mission-orbit-release-of-mars/Mars-atlas-MOM.pdf Here's pictures of Mars taken by Hubble: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/solar_system/mars/ And here's a ton of ground-level images from Curiosity: http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/

Plus, in real life reaction wheels only came into use in space-shuttle-era, and RP-0 for late-stage career is as of yet pretty far from being fully polished.

Interesting idea, I'm scrubscribing.

You will have to experiment and compare your results with real-world examples. My guess would be: Balloon tanks at ~95% utilization.

The x-planes only come in the second node, which is so cheap as to be almost free (1 science IIRC).

Felbourn, I think that you should report this to NathanKell in the RSS thread and ask for the normal map of Earth to be corrected. This way the ground will be risen in this one point, instead of the water being lowered all around the globe.