GoSlash27

RedShirt, I had always assumed that everybody saw these from time to time. I know they've been reported before. Maybe it's got something to do with how particles are rendered? I'm running a pair of crossfired Radeon 6800s. Most often I get disembodied light sources and puffballs. They're always along my flight path, but not attached to me. Best, -Slashy *edit* LitaAlto, Mine look way different from that. Mine look like what Vaporo shows.

Nich, Don't alter your scoring on my account! Put me on top of the pilot's board. I'm sure I won't be there long. Best, -Slashy

Vaporo, Those are what I'm talking about! I'm 100% stock, but I still have them hanging around during launch. *edit* Turns out it was just some light from Venus that bounced off some swamp gas. Best, -Slashy

A couple pics of a "wake angel" trapped in the runway: I want to believe, -Slashy - - - Updated - - - Red Shirt, Negatory. I run 100% stock. Best, -Slashy

Funny... I encounter these on every flight, but I have almost no pics of them. Here's one captured during a shuttle launch: I think they are lighting effects from my own ship that are confused about where they're supposed to be. They will often appear ahead of me and smack into my ship. No damage, but they cause minor turbulence. Sometimes they shoot out in front of me like I'm launching a missile, and other times they'll just follow me. If you look closely, you can usually see one trapped in the runway directly under your plane when it spawns. Best, -Slashy

Fireblade, A few pointers I can give you from looking at your picture: #1 Less is more. Simpler designs require fewer parallel stacks, intakes, pipes, and struts (especially struts). All of this conspires to make a spaceplane that doesn't want to go to space. If it ain't workin', look for what you can eliminate instead of what you can add. #2 Don't use more intakes than you need. They add nothing but more weight and drag. #3 Don't use radial scoops unless you have no choice. They're incredibly draggy. #4 the Reliant isn't an ideal spaceplane engine. You don't need high thrust to make orbit in the closed cycle portion, you need high efficiency. The LV-N, Poodle, Aerospike, and Terrier are good candidates for add-on rockets, or you can simplify and use the RAPIER in closed cycle. A couple examples of simpler designs that have the same payload capacity: A high-efficiency "all fuel" design A low- tech "early spaceplane" Good luck! -Slashy *edit* I think this post should really be in the questions and tutorials forum.

Successful flight! I had a good reentry, but overshot (pilot error). It was cleaner than I had expected. I disabled roll on the ailerons and enabled it on the canards. Jeb approves! Recovery price $47,850 Total expenditure including development $2,122 Total points 7.88 http://s52.photobucket.com/user/GoSlash27/slideshow/KSP/Danob Congrats on a very good design! You've got your master's badge. Best, -Slashy

Halfway through the mission. Just waiting for reentry window now. Some notes while we wait... - Don't like the ailerons (too twitchy), but the airframe is stable. - There's definitely no shortage of thrust. It blew right through Mach 1. - Switched to closed cycle at 1480 m/sec - I didn't need to worry about launching late. Arrived in orbit well ahead of the station. - Handling for docking was very nice. Offloaded 5 kerbals to the station in LKO. Best, -Slashy

Nich, Sure, why not? I'll give it a go... I dragged it into the hangar before the flight, looked it over, and made a few changes: -removed the monoprop from the docking port (I don't need that much) -disabled the active rudders (personal preference) -disabled the nosewheel braking -set the engines to manual switching Here's hoping I didn't screw it up! Launch cost $48,800 Best, -Slashy

I get these all the time. I call them "wake angels" The truth is out there -Slashy

Pecan, I about did a spit- take when I saw you had mentioned me Actually, that's about how I do it as well. I don't bother with the math during the execution phase because (as you point out) maneuver nodes do that. The number- crunching is just for mission planning and ship design. AKA "Where it's helpful". I'm way too lazy to compute stuff I don't need to compute Thanks for the chuckle (must spread some rep around) -Slashy

I'm picturing John F. Kerman giving that speech backwards in Spanish... Best, -Slashy

This is true. Any other way is going to work out cheaper and easier, especially ssto spaceplanes. But it's the very fact that shuttles are so difficult that makes them rewarding. Best, -Slashy

I find them useful for gauging how others play the game. If I make a new vehicle and a lot of other players would find it cheaty, I don't bother sharing it for download. Best, -Slashy

It's a fact of life that the CoM is going to shift. The trick is to design it "crooked" to account for that. The SRBs are aligned to thrust through the CoM when full. For the engines, you plot 2 points: 1 when the tank is full and 1 when the tank is empty. Draw an imaginary line between these 2 points and align the engines so that they thrust through the center of this line. You design the orbiter first, then the stack. Shuttles are difficult, but a lot of fun. Best, -Slashy

I will happily clip to get my stuff to blend together the way I want it, but I won't do it to the point where I have competing masses in the same location. If I have an engine clipped into a tank, I remove fuel to make room for it. That sort of stuff. Best, -Slashy

noname117, First of all, you should not attempt to steer with yaw. That's just there to coordinate your turns. Second, a suggestion: Try disabling the rudder from responding to yaw inputs. You have plenty of authority from the reaction wheels. Good luck, -Slashy

Doslidnyk, Congrats and glad I could be of assistance. Fuel missions are do-able in the same fashion, but you want to scale way up to make the trip worthwhile. This one does 30t of fuel and oxidizer to station in LKO. Best, -Slashy

Doslidnyk, The profile varies greatly with the t/w and engine type. That one's a heavy-ish jet, so there's a slow climb (20° or so) to 10km. The plane should go supersonic at 10 km and exceed 360 m/sec before resuming the climb. Reduce pitch to 5° at 16 km altitude and build speed as you work up to 20km. Speed of this example tops out around 1100 m/sec. When acceleration stops, engage the rockets but leave the engines running and intakes open. I don't close intakes anymore. I haven't seen any benefit in doing that. Best, -Slashy

I definitely prefer having my vertical stabilizers uncontrolled. If your wings aren't perfectly level, SAS will cross-control. The longer you leave it in that state, the larger the yaw input becomes. This is not only inefficient, but also unstable. Whenever you touch a control, the SAS resets and the rudder goes temporarily neutral. This causes an overcorrection in both yaw and roll. In some cases, it can throw you out of control entirely. If you leave the rudder uncontrolled, the plane will naturally weathervane into line so long as you have sufficient tail surface and leverage. Best, -Slashy

cantab, That's a solid solution for people who use mods. I run 100% stock, so that wouldn't work for me. Best, -Slashy

All, Apologies for not checking back in on this thread. RIC is absolutely correct. Full fuel tanks weigh 9 times as much as empty tanks when dealing with LF&O tanks (and the small jet fuel tanks as well). RIC is a KSP greybeard who's been there, done that AFA how it's derived, it's all algebra. Unfortunately, the forum doesn't support easy-to-follow math formatting. Basically, you take the basic rocket equation DV= 9.81Isp*ln(Mw/Md) and reverse it to get into the "Mw/Md" part. Then you define Mw as "Md+Mf". Md would equal the mass of the payload + mass of empty tanks + mass of engines( number of engines). Since the mass of a full tank is 9x the mass of an empty tank, it's easy to make one the function of the other. Walking through the entire process provides a messy wall of text, but I've outlined it in my tutorial on the reverse rocket equation here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/102809-The-reverse-rocket-equation-explained Best, -Slashy

Mythbusters844, If that's the case then I can't do this and wouldn't be inclined to try. I never fly missions I haven't planned out first and I never build stages I haven't thoroughly engineered beforehand. I consider that approach to be recklessly irresponsible to the safety of my Kerbonauts, and their safety is my #1 priority. YMMV. Best, -Slashy

^ The Pecan is good, the Pecan is wise. While I'm personally an advocate of learning the math and applying it instead of using KER or MJ, I also know that not everyone can realistically just jump in and do that. So if that's not your thing, then do yourself a favor and make use of these tools. Best, -Slashy

I almost always disable my rudders completely so that they don't respond to yaw inputs. With SAS on, any roll that's not precisely wings level will result in an increasing automatic "crab" yaw command to the rudders. Since they are not mirrored below the plane's centerline, the yaw correction will also induce roll. If the nose is sufficiently offset in crab yaw, it will induce a roll that is unrecoverable. Since the yaw command itself can't be turned off, the only recourse is to either a) fly without SAS or disable the yaw response in the rudders and steer with pitch and roll only. So long as you have sufficient vertical stabilizer area and leverage, it will still naturally track in commanded turns and these problems tend to disappear. Full disclosure: I have noticed that some other pilots don't like how my planes fly when I do this. It makes them feel a bit vague in roll and they prefer to have more positive yaw response. So caveat emptor, ask your doctor if disabling the rudders is right for you, etc. Best, -Slashy *edit* Addendum: I also tend to use a lot less active control surface than most pilots in my spaceplanes. I hate the laggy, excessive response that KSP's stability assist gives and I find that it interferes with the stability, making it twitchy and erratic IMO. Reducing (or in some cases eliminating) the active control surfaces gives a lot less control authority, but IMO makes it much more stable, reassured, and pleasant to fly. YMMV. As an example, my "Shuttle Kourageous" Shuttles are notoriously ill-tempered. While this one is festooned with all the normal control surfaces, the only ones that are actually *active* are the little outboard elevons.