TrooperCooper

Continued work on my spaceplane fleet. Next design that I created was the PSP-1 Crossfire, a simple orbital passenger craft that can be used to transfer crews of up to 6 Kerbals to stations or ships in LKO. It consists of heatshielded parts only for easy re-entries. Its succcessor, the Crossfire Mk.II received a front-winglet for better controls, a re-designed main-wing and, most importantly, four additional external fuel tanks (unshielded) for extended range. Unlike its predecessor, this one can make the trip from the KSC runway to Duna orbit and still have spare fuel. Then I launched me a basic tanker for upcoming logistical tasks and as a test-target for spaceplanes... Next up was the MCSP-2 Mammoth, a heavy carrier to lift 40 tons of modular cargo from the KSC to the next planets. Powered by four small and two large Sabres, the Mammoth' wingspan even exceeds the runway width. Taking of with that plane certainly isnt easy, but about eight out of ten launches go successfully. That could be acceptable by Kerbal-standards... And once it gets into the air in one piece, moving its cargo into orbit and beyond is no problem. If the take off with the Mammoth was difficult... landing her intact turned out to be nearly impossible. The extreme wing length ment, that even the slightest roll angle on touch down clipped the wingtips into the ground. Adding additional landing gears that far out was not an option, as this caused extreme structural instability. After another failure landing, even Jebediah had to accept, that this plane was hopelessly overengineered. A prior flight also indicated this, as some Kerbal engineer forgot to put one pair of engines on the craft and this mistake was not recognized until after the plane made it successfully into orbit. Either way, it was time to return to the drawing board. The result was the MCSP-3 Pelican. It shares many similarities with the Mammoth, but is a much smaller and lighter craft. The shorter wings eliminated the main problems of its predecessor and the tilted attachement guarantees excellent low speed behaviour. The payloads size and weight is the same as the Mammoth' and thanks to an improved fuel layout, it has interplanetary range as well.

^ the upper side of the docking port in this image has to connect to the next port (of the ship that you want to dock with).

That docking port is fitted the wrong way.

Working on a cargo lifter to ship stuff like rovers around Kerbin / Mun / Minmus and possibly beyond...

Thats Scott Manley quality right there. +1 for you, Sir.

A series of re-entry tests of the Myrmidon tanker SSTO revealed some minor design flaws... So the imperial engineers went back to the drawingboard and came up with this: The new Myrmidon version features additional tail fins for better low speed / low alt yaw controls, an improved fuel flow system, an extended front wing for increased lift and, most importantly, a set of heavy air brakes at the rear end for speed control during descend. On the first test-run, the ascend was easy and soon the tanker docked with the IKSS next to the older sattelite carrier. While the fuel cargo was transferred into the stations depots, the view of the complex set into perspective how big this plane really is... Shortly afterwards the descend began and the brakes instantly demonstrated their value. Their massive drag and a shallow approach resulted in no re-entry effects at all. And they also allowed me to pretty much pinpoint the descend to come down near the KSC. The actual landing approach is still kinda messy. While low speed lift and controls overall got improved with this version, it is still very floppy. I need a very strong pitch authority during the descend. But that makes it difficult to keep the nose where its supposed to be during the landing approach, even in precision control mode. Prolly still needs a little more balancing... Nontheless, it came down in one piece and is ready for the next run.

At the rear end of course. So you can use it like a parachute for aero-braking, no?

Yeah... I missed it. Revert to launch please.

I had the same problem, (see here) and Nathan pointed me to the Editor Extensions mod, which (among many other cool features) allows you to turn off the automatic surface attaching by pressing ALT+R. Thus you are able to easily put stuff at the main connector nodes only. Works perfectly.

Installed the B9 Aerospace mod and trying it out for the first time. Created an SSTO tanker plane with it that will refuel my space stations for cheap. The M3 Myrmidon is able to lift me about 3.5k units of fuel plus oxydizer into space.

Jeb finished his Minmus mission and got me enough science to unlock everything what was left of the tech-tree (again). So now I am back to goofing arround in space for fun and laughs. As a start, I went up to the IKSS, just to say hello... Well, hello there... Awesome! Just today I was taking a brief look at the RT mod and figured... well... it would be nice if there was a better guide for this. And now you post this. Perfect timing! I'll make sure to read it tomorrow.

Oh, sure... try opening this bottle with it...

Jebediah preparing to launch his Minmus exploration mission with the Moon Jumper II. Under the fairings sits the actual lander, protected from aerodynamics. It can do a few hops on Minmus and re-fuel at a pre-positioned depot with labs in orbit. And of course it will function as return-vehicle as well...

The new version 1.x looks great. Love the new options. But I am missing a few things, most important the "time to ascending / descending node" in the rendevousz-window and the burn time of each stage in the vessel-window. Or maybe I am just blind and cant find it in the new menus. Anyway, keep up the great work. And many thanks!

Eat that... if you can.

Started a new career while still waiting for a few mods to be updated... The decoupler bug almost killed him, but a successful suicide burn allowed Jeb to land on the Mun in one piece and claim it for IKSA, the Imperial Kerbal Space Authority...

Working on a new sattelite carrier, this time with FAR + DRE... EDIT: took a couple attempts and fixes, but now its able to achieve orbit.