Wanderfound

Let me put it another way: Would a vertically rotated lifting fuselage like the sidepods in the earlier screenshot tend to contribute relatively more to yaw stability and less to lift than a horizontal fuselage like the core? Does the tall and narrow fuselage on this one below have a significant effect on aerodynamic behaviour compared to a conventional flatter equivalent, or is the difference largely cosmetic?

Get the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtrack. They used a different version of Fly Me To The Moon ​over the closing credits of each episode.

The original claim was that if you model jets accurately you can't build spaceplanes. AJE is an attempt to model jets accurately; its users fly spaceplanes. The reduced size of Kerbin has a large effect on the ease with which you can construct an effective spaceplane. SABREs or staging may be necessary on Earth, but they aren't on Kerbin. Even with realistic jets.

And a dozen rockets and only three jets. Nerf the turbo, give us some rams and scrams. At the moment it's pretty much 100% RAPIER or turbo/minirocket combos. There's more variety in design to be had. I'm less bothered by how they do it, but we need some way of getting rovers in and out of cargo bays. Landing gear is on the way (sometime...); PJ is working on it.

On the latest version of FAR? Double check.

Most fun previously? An aerial survey waypoint at a maximum altitude of 2,500m in the middle of the west KSC mountains. Found a slot valley with a 2,450m floor. Currently? Sending this out to turn it into a Kerbol observatory mounted on an E-class asteroid:

Off to hunt down a class E asteroid and build a Kerbol observation station... A large crew to get the job done, and plenty of windows for them to observe through. Wouldn't want to miss the views, after all.

Roughly on the Lightning, yes. I have a vague memory of something else with a really chunky rearset underslung chin intake like this, but I can't remember what it was. Probably an early MiG or Sukhoi. High wing would create landing gear placement issues; it's sufficiently stable as is for hands-off 4x physics timewarp for virtually all of the flight anyway.

While we're at it: jumbo landing legs so we can do the Thunderbird 2 trick:

...is how I usually do it. Use a Mk2 -> 1.25m adaptor, then a 1.25m - 2.5m cone. I'd be surprised if a Mk2 -> 2.5m adaptor doesn't show up in .90.

General rule: any time that you're asking for advice on an aircraft build, provide screenshots. We can't diagnose what we can't see, and you'll get better answers if you provide the needed information. TWR of 0.9 is actually quite high in aircraft terms. Only a handful of fighter jets do better than that in the real world. How much wing is always a "how long is a piece of string" thing; it depends on too many other factors. In stock aero, generally speaking, the more wing the better. In more realistic aero (FAR/NEAR), you rapidly hit a point where it becomes counterproductive. The Centre of Lift is also known as the Centre of Drag, and it needs to go behind Centre of Mass. An object moving through the air tends to rotate so that its centre of drag is behind its centre of mass; think of the feathers on the back of a heavy-tipped dart. In KSP, overpowered SAS units let you get away with a bit of CoL/CoM misalignment, but especially for a heavy lift vehicle you want CoL behind CoM. Hit the Spacecraft Exchange (or the Akademy Awards: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93779-SSTO-Spaceplane-Airplane-Design-Contest-II-Akademy-Awards), grab some other people's craft files, take 'em to the SPH and rip 'em apart to see how they manage to put things together with weight and drag in the right places. Then use that knowledge when you're building your own. Have a look through the illustrated tutorial at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures We can't be certain without screenshots, but from the sound of it you're placing your landing gear too far towards the rear. Apart from special cases like high-set tailstrike guards or ships that are build with strong static pitch, your rearmost landing gear should be just behind your CoM.

Been having some fun with non-traditional rockets:

The high tailplane and relatively long fuselage helps. Try it with the tailplane shifted to the same level as the wings: you'll be lucky to make it 50m. Tweakable wing weights make this sort of plane easier in terms of engine balance, too; you can fine-tune the weight of your vertical stabiliser to counteract a CoM/CoT offset.

DaMichel: I have another request for a data addition that you might not want to do. I'm finding that the only thing which I still need Mechjeb data for is distance to target (and to a lesser degree, bearing to target, although you can get that approximately from the navball). When I'm cruising back to KSC at Mach 5, I need to know when to ditch altitude and hit the brakes (which you can also guess a bit from the navball, but nowhere near accurately enough) Any chance? It wouldn't clutter things up if it only showed when a target was selected. It'd make the data useful for docking, too.

Raster Prop Monitor, possibly.

Want a spaceplane that doesn't look like everyone else's? Want to get those orbital rescue contracts done fast? You want a Kerbodyne Tigershark. Lightning speed, remote drone ability and exceptional handling and safety. Able to fly on either engine in air-breathing mode. Exceptionally sleek aerodynamic profile. Enthusiastic climber. Stable enough for maximum time acceleration. Hits orbit with plenty of fuel in reserve. Actively stable at extreme AoA's. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek89dorzunmcbyt/Kerbodyne%20Tigershark.craft?dl=0

How does FAR treat angled body lift? When I build something like this, are the side pods acting as wings or fins?

Anyone know how to do this in a way that would play nicely with FAR's existing tweaks to thrust curves? I could build a demonstration ship.

Yup, that's the whole point. It would motivate more diversity in spaceplane design and allow builders to adjust their level of challenge to taste by deciding on whether or not to use RAPIERs. It would make mothership/parasite and shuttle-style designs more valuable, while still maintaining the Skylon option. And the impetus for horizontal takeoff is still there for the RAPIER and ram/scram designs, as HOTOL permits much lower TWR at launch. Spaceplanes already carry sometimes redundant gear; it's their defining feature. This is no different from carrying control surfaces and existing turbojets into orbit. The rocket crew have over a dozen engines to choose from. Why should jets be limited to three, one of which is nearly useless?

There is a complicating factor. As I understood it, different types of intake are supposed to have different efficiencies at various speeds and altitudes. It's possible that a flatter, faster ascent may return different results.

Sounds pretty good. I'd put the piloting bonus onto rover stability rather than speed, though; less obviously physics warping.

Actually, the one in the OP is the view from clicking the outer frame of the rearmost window: Instead of the one from the centre front windows:

Wait until you've got two or three survey contracts in the same area, then get there high and fast and do them all. Manoeuvring at speed in order to get from point to point can be quite entertaining:

Go to the target menu, select the docking port as reference part. Then in the camera menu there'll be a docking option at bottom of screen.

Also endorsed. Apart from giving a bit more variety to the science clickfest (can we have a default "trigger science payload" action group please?), it's an obvious way to stretch out the endgame techtree. A lengthy succession of increasingly expensive (in both science and √) science tools would give an endgame goal and turn total science into a means of keeping "score" for those who care about such things.