XtensionCord

Initially, I was going to buy it for the parachutes, and I was surprised to find that those were added to the base game. I know parachute mod have been available, but I feel like parachutes are one of the best candidates for being added to the stock game. I wasn’t sure if I was going the get Making History given that the parachutes were in the main game, but I saw today that they are adding new tank diameters. I often find myself wanting a diameter in between the medium and large tanks when playing stock, so I think I’ll get the DLC on release. The extra parts will add some good variety to stock anyway, and I’m sure people will come up with neat missions. And I really like KSP and want them to keep adding new items to it. I can’t wait to see what modders can do with the mission system.

Both of them it is! I wasn't quite sure where KIS ended and KAS began, but there doesn't seem to be any detriment to using both of them. Thanks.

I was about to try out KAS when I saw that this got released. This is… impressive. What’s the recommended setup for learning the system now? KAS, KIS or both KAS and KIS?

I really like the look of the MK1 Inline. It seems to have good side visibility, and one of my biggest annoyances flying with other IVAs was the lack of visibility. It also has a great jet-fighter look with the large canopy and the HUD.

That’s a really clean-looking spaceplane. I think it looks so smooth because it only has the main wing. The single wing gives it a nice space shuttle look. I was looking over the spaceplanes I’ve made and crashed and it seems I generally do three things to keep the tail from hitting on takeoff and landing. 1: Landing gear far back on the plane. A lot of my planes have landing gear behind the center of mass and rely on canards near the nose for takeoff. However, this is a pretty inelegant solution and wouldn’t work with your smooth single-wing design. 2: High ground clearance. Having high ground clearance gives the plane more room to pivot when taking off and landing. However, I’m again not sure if you could do this without hurting the aesthetics of your airplane. 3: Extra landing gear at the tail. This idea would probably work best for you. Some of my aircraft have landing gear high up on the tail that don’t touch the ground during normal operations but protect the tail from the ground if the plane pivots too far. I think you could probably do this with any high-impact part such as an I-Beam if you didn’t want to use landing gear. Warning: I’m not sure how these ideas will interact with FAR.

That’s a nice looking Ares 1 you have there. Does it have to use any of the Orion Capsule’s fuel while getting to orbit? I would imagine that having an extra SRB would dramatically improve performance. I think I will try clipping. Did you surface-attach the two SRBs to the second-stage separator with some structural pieces and then put the large-to-medium adapter on afterwards?

Today I’ve been trying to make a launch vehicle using only one of the long S1 SRB-KD25k solid rockets that came with the ARM update on the first stage. This gives the rocket a really nice Ares I look, but my upper stage and capsule are far too heavy for the single SRB to lift. I guess I’ll have to find some way to greatly decrease the mass of the upper stage and Orion-replica capsule for a booster using only one SRB to work.

I like how you chose a meaningful name for your vehicle. I normally end up calling the first few versions of a new vehicle some weird acronym before I can come up with a decent name for it. Was your shuttle vertically launched or horizontally launched? I haven’t experimented with a lot of vertically-launched spaceplanes yet. Side mounting the vehicle like the Space Shuttle was configured is really, really hard, and putting the spaceplane on top of the rocket tends to cause stability issues for me. I could put bigger fins on the booster, but that makes the booster look bad… I should probably make a dedicated supply vehicle for my own space station sometime. Currently, it gets all of its fuel from experimental vehicles that I send to the station once I’m done experimenting with them. It has a bunch of orange tanks, but only one of them is filled. Hearing about spaceplanes being difficult to design makes me think of how long it took me just to figure out how to get around fuel flow issues when I started building spaceplanes. They are really fun to fly though. Also, I just bookmarked your Frequently Asked Problems thread.

Hey there forum-goers! I’ve been playing KSP for about a year now, and it has been a very, very fun rocket-fueled ride. I’ve flown a lot of the more ubiquitous missions, building a space station and sending a few rockets to the Mun and Minmus. I’ve also launched an interplanetary probe to Duna in my career-mode save in desperate pursuit of science! I’ve been spending most of my time playing with spaceplanes though. I didn’t think too much of spaceplanes while I was struggling through my first few SSTOs, but I’ve come to really appreciate them. I even got the idea to try to make a spaceplane that carries cargo. I’d seen a few spaceplanes that could carry cargo on the forum, but it seems like they are uncommon for a reason. Wow, that was a hard project. It took me a long time to get a spaceplane that could carry small probes to orbit. Have any of you had the urge to experiment with crazy spaceplanes? I’m always amazed by the things people on this forum come up with, so I’d be really interested to hear about any crazy designs you’ve been working with.