Wanderfound

No hate, just a strong reluctance to download and install a megasized parts pack (that has a reputation for being a RAM hog as well as sometimes a bit buggy) in order to throw 95% of it away. Have the B9 guys ever considered making some pre-stripped versions available? I.e. "if you want the whole package, here's the link; if you just want the aircraft bits, use this other link instead".

Yup; any time that I can intercept a question so that Ferram or Porkjet or Arsonide or whoever don't have to deal with it, I do. It's a bit of a fine line between "helpful" and "know-it-all git" at times, though.

You were optimised for safety rather than speed. Keep the 20° pitch only until you halt your initial descent, then pitch up or down to control your descent rate from then on. You don't want to be regaining altitude unless you're in danger of overheat/overpressure. Usually, you want about 30,000m altitude until you're below Mach 5, and 5,000m until you're subsonic. The lower you go, the faster you slow. See post #2 in the Kerbodyne thread linked below. Also see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-25-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-14-3-2-10-21-14?p=1522117&viewfull=1#post1522117 for another way to speed things up.

1) Google up "nuclear winter". You don't have to be anywhere near the bombs for them to kill you. 2) Central Australia contains a substantial chunk of the U.S.'s SIGINT infrastructure (Pine Gap and other facilities), and the major players have plenty of nukes to spare. Total human extinction? Probably not. Total collapse of technological society? Probably.

See the link in #17... That was done with the normal rather than inline cockpit, but the IVA is the same.

In line with others: if you're launching with partial throttle you have more engine than you need. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

FAR, DRE, all stock, failures on. Try it for yourself: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1515356&viewfull=1#post1515356

Ooh, nice trick; hadn't thought of that. That'll save me a couple of action groups.

And pray that your cameras don't burn off on the way down... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97802-Fun-with-IVA-reentry-%28lotsa-images%29

That'd be fun to land IVA; not a lot of forward visibility when you're pitched up. I don't think a Concorde-esque droop snoot is gonna cut it...

I thought that was Jeb's motto. If you push the limits, you can get from the KSC runway to a circular 70km orbit in under five minutes, and back down to the KSC runway in another ten. Doing that takes you a very long way from optimum fuel efficiency and safety, however. Incidentally, airbrakes can accelerate the reentry process a great deal. You don't need B9 for this; just use pairs of opposing flaps and spoilers.

And for other purposes:

Unfortunately though, Sagan is wrong in this case. Interplanetary colonisation is not a remotely practical thing at present, and is not going to be so any time in the near future. Off-Earth human settlement provides no insurance against global catastrophe unless it is self-sufficient; that's even further away than colonisation itself. Centuries, at an absolute minimum. It does us no good to have a handful of people in a space station or Moonbase if they're all going to die a week after their resupply ship fails to arrive. And, if rather than burning all of those resources on keeping a handful of people temporarily alive off-Earth, we'd instead spent our effort on telescope monitoring and impactor diversion tech (i.e. send up a robotic spacecraft and give that comet a nudge; it's actually not that hard to do. The tricky bit is seeing them in time) then we might have been able to avert that planetary catastrophe altogether. It's an opportunity cost thing: every dollar that you spend on pointless boots and flags missions is a dollar that you aren't spending on telescopes, or another Mars rover, or the Large Hadron Collider, or climate monitoring satellites, or... Manned spaceflight is great for national propaganda, but it's lethal to science. Sure, Chris Hadfield is a way cool dude and I like his song, but the scientific output of the I.S.S. is essentially zero. For the cost of building the I.S.S., we could've put rovers on every planet in the solar system. As always in these sorts of threads, I'd encourage y'all to have a read of this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html There is a strong tendency amongst space fans (of whom I am one, incidentally; there are assorted schools around the world using telescopes and other scientific equipment paid for by me) to massively underestimate the impracticality of human existence in space. From a human survival point of view, the most horrible place on Earth is an absolute paradise in comparison to anything off Earth in this solar system.

Well, that's one way to do it. The alternative is to just dive to 30,000m before levelling off and ride the edge of overheating and aerodynamic failure all the way down. Option 1 is safer, option 2 is a great deal faster.

Sure you're not missing a zero there?

Perhaps a slightly shallower reentry. And get some practice in before you try DRE...

Lots of RCS, basically. They used a thruster system to maintain pitch during the early stages of reentry. Also, the pitch-up reentry thing is a high-altitude only tactic; pull the nose back close to prograde once you start to feel the air through your controls.

Nice... Anyone tried a direct comparison of this vs Hyomoto's MFD? If so, a comparative review?

Cool. Next step, NEAR/FAR; after that, RPM and IVA flying...

I can bash computers about if I have to, but it's about as much fun as doing a tax return. When possible, I much prefer to just dump it on the IT guys and let them sort it.

Not quite; a few years ago some guys managed to get a shot of the ISS through an iPhone camera, clear enough to see the shuttle docked to it. It was, as you say, shooting through a telescope at the time, however.

Yup, that'll happen. But you have to keep in mind that an atmospheric apoapsis is a very movable thing; as soon as you get the plane climbing again, your apoapsis will be right in front of you. Firstly, the nose drop is probably largely due to losing the vectoring ability of the RAPIERs when you turn them off. You can counter this by just pulling back on the stick and holding the nose up with the canards and other control surfaces; that's what they're for. A Vernor or two under the nose can also help to brute-force it if you're having trouble keeping the nose up. Secondly. the climb rate of a plane is chiefly dependent on three factors: Angle of Attack (AoA), altitude and speed. As you go faster, the AoA required to maintain a given climb rate decreases. However, as you go higher, the AoA required to maintain a given climb rate increases. Your plane is descending because you have insufficient speed to maintain a climb at that altitude and AoA. So, either increase the AoA (by pulling the nose up, as described in the above paragraph) or increase the speed. Fortunately for you, planes tend to accelerate quite easily when they're in a dive... If you keep the 10° pitch, your descent should eventually level out and turn back into a climb as you speed up. The drop is only really a problem if you end up descending so far that the atmospheric drag starts to slow you down again. Incidentally, "turn the RAPIERs off when they switch modes" is a simplified version that isn't as efficient as possible. A bit more complicated (but better) is to toggle off the turbojet as soon as the RAPIERs begin to sputter but before they switch modes. Then run the RAPIERs alone until they do switch modes, then disable the RAPIERs and reengage the turbojet. Then, when the turbojet begins to stutter, leave the RAPIERs off and gradually throttle down in order to keep the air intake requirement just below what is available. Once you can't throttle down any more without completely throttling off, fly like that until the turbo dies or the plane starts to slow. Then turn the RAPIERs back on. Basically, constantly adjust the number of engines to match the intake air available, and get every last metre of speed and altitude before switching to rockets. Also, keep the turbojet on for the final ascent: even if it's already choked from lack of air, the rockets will drive a ram-air effect that should let you get a bit more thrust out of it. After that, once the turbojet finally chokes for good, close your intakes to minimise drag. BTW: as you may have heard many folks say, if you're getting into aircraft then it is very much worth giving NEAR or FAR a try. Aircraft are vastly more fun to fly with a sensible drag model and realistically thin and slippery air. A lot of the drawn-out plowing through the atmosphere that characterises a stock spaceplane ascent is caused by the soupmosphere rather than anything innate to spaceplanes. With more realistic aero, it's quite easy to get from runway to orbit in five minutes.

It is a nice trick. I wonder what else you can do with it? You could probably stash twenty-odd command chairs along the girders, for some extreme open-air space tourism...

Glad to hear you're having fun. Give up on using Mechjeb in atmosphere (MJ is good in space, but it's a lousy airplane pilot) and fly it manually as per the instructions in the piloting guide I mentioned. It should be able to hit orbit with plenty left in the tanks. It's all about extracting as much speed and altitude from the jets as possible before you switch to rocket mode. Turn the RAPIERs off the second that they switch to closed cycle, and don't turn them back on again until the turbojet starts to die as well. If you do it right, you should be able to get it over 30,000m and 2,000m/s before you start burning oxidiser.

Only if you're starting from a dead stop. Landing from orbit is about neutralising two velocities: horizontal and vertical. You need 'em both near zero at touchdown. Point retrograde, fire up the thrusters, and tweak your pitch up and down to control your vertical drop rate while you're zeroing out your horizontal velocity. Ideally, you want to spend as little as possible fuel on the vertical (because you'll just get it back from gravity if you kill it too soon) and focus as much as possible on the horizontal (once that's gone it's gone for good). The shallower an angle that you come in at, the less fuel you waste fighting gravity. However, it takes a bit of finesse to keep things cheerful when you're 500m off the deck but still whizzing sideways at 500m/s. Especially when there are hills around.