Wanderfound

I don't bother much with the extreme AoA stall-braking stuff; at the high altitudes where you can get away with that, the air is so thin that you get very little braking effect out of it anyway. If you're stable and cooled enough to pitch up and stall, then you can afford to fly lower. (although Mach 6 is more of a 25,000m speed than a sea level one...) Each to their own, though.

Besides Earth.

Yup. On a fast reentry, it's often a fight to hold the nose down enough to prevent reexit. The line between "too deep, fry" and "too shallow, bounce" is fairly thin at Mach 12.

Google up regex's PID controller mod. You can eliminate pitch bounce by cutting the default pitch values to about 1/3rd. And, yes, FAR makes it more obvious, and excessive pitch authority will aggravate the issue.

Basic spaceplane reentry sequence for FAR: 1) Make your deorbit burn. If you're coming in fast, keep it shallow; if you've got enough DV to scrub most of your orbital speed in advance, you can get away with something steeper. 2) Your first job is to halt the initial drop. Forget about ditching speed or anything else, just pull the nose up so you can level out again. Pull up too hard and you'll flip out of control and/or break your wings, but too slow and you'll cook. I usually keep an AoA of 15° or so throughout the process, gradually pulling up as I go (actual recommended AoA varies based on aircraft, altitude and speed; you need to experiment for yourself). Aim to have it levelled out by 30,000m. 3) Now, watch the VSI and your temperature gauges (DaMichel's Kerbal Flight Data is very good for temperature monitoring). Gradually descend until the temperature is just shy of lethal (usually around 1,300°C on my planes), then hold that altitude until it cools. Once the temperature drops, drop with it. Stay alert and be ready to pull the nose up quickly if the temperature spikes; there's a fair lag between lifting the nose and stopping the heating, so if you leave it too late you're toast. 4) You'll probably find that you need to stay above 25,000m until you get down to Mach 5 or so. Decelerating above 25,000m is slow; decelerating below 25,000m is fast. As well as greater drag, the lower air provides enough grip to get some useful S-turns happening. If you can get your reentry speed below hypersonic and avoid the initial high-altitude cooling phase, reentry and landing is a much faster process.

Are you adjusting your wing weight tweakables? Default is heavy fighter strength; sane high-g aerobatics planes want it around 0.5-0.7, spaceplanes somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5. Ultralight gliders may require less than 0.2.

Each to their own, but my general approach is that as soon as you're above the drag zone (~30,000m), the more sideways the better. Why lift with thrust when you can do it with wings?

What exactly is the problem? A gradual tilt where you keep your AoA below 10° at all times should see you up without difficulty.

See above: manoeuvring thrusters. RCS/Vernors, basically.

While I endorse the desire not to have too much repetitive stuff, you're missing a lot of possible variety here. Each contract type could be tweaked into several related variations, expanding the possibilities without necessarily inducing any more repetition. Satellite placement contracts: differing equipment requirements, self-propelled or not, differing scientific payloads, leave-in-place vs place-then-retrieve. Aerial survey: you're already varying location and height (a bit, I'd like to see individual altitudes per waypoint). Adding time requirements and equipment delivery/retrieval can expand these into racing, rescue, firefighting, urgent supply, emergency delivery, etc. Rover survey: similar variability to above. Adding the requirement for heavy equipment delivery or retrieval could turn these into trucking contracts. "Deliver this 100t rocket by ground to the final testing workshop". You get the idea. Pushing an asteroid out of the solar system is fun. So is firing off an interstellar probe. Why not have both? - - - Updated - - - I had no problem rescuing kerbals from orbit with TAC-LS. Just don't dawdle.

MasseFlieger: thanks. It actually was Ferram; it took a week or two post-25 to get the bugs out of FAR.

Or a KR-2L: While efficiency isn't the prime consideration, it isn't totally irrelevant either. With non-aerospike rockets, I have to lug around big tanks if I want to run them more than a few seconds in atmosphere. With the 'spikes, I have the option of sustained atmospheric burns while still flying an ultralight ship: Each to their own, if you don't like 'em, don't use 'em. But there are valid reasons why other folks might.

Testing nil2work's way cool prototype: Very nice looking. And good clear right-way-up pictures. Let's see how it copes with a bit of speed. All good so far. More speed. Oops. Didn't I use to have two wings? Note, however, what isn't on this list: cameras. All good. Wanderfound like.

It ain't all about efficiency. Sure, by the time I need rocketry, I'm at 35,000m and Mach 5.5 and a wet sneeze can get me to orbit. But my spaceplanes have enough slack in their performance envelope that I don't need to sacrifice everything to efficiency. Aerospikes make good, high-efficiency orbital thrusters when I need them, but they also function well as atmospheric afterburners when I'm playing around. 4g thrust at treetop height is way fun, and there's something to be said for orbital burns that don't take ten minutes to do. The 48-7's give better efficiency, but the 'spikes give better performance.

Well, if you can tolerate a few more parts, some structural panels or wing pieces surrounding the loops with lights shining on them would help the visibility a lot.

Definitely doable, but extremely not easy: Glad to hear that larger loops are on the way. Better illumination on the loops would help, too; they're very hard to see from distance against the bright sky and sea. Try to make it so that the lights make obvious which bit is the loop and which bit is the support pylon.

Actually, your Needle works surprisingly well as-is in FAR. See https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyl1nouisi8oyc5/The%20Needle%20Mk1%20FAR.craft?dl=0 for a very lightly tweaked version (unlocked steering and disabled brakes on front gear, set control surfaces to appropriate axes, added action groups to toggle engine and intake) that should work fine in FAR/NEAR. I'd still like to see a track with larger loops that allowed broad-winged aerobatic planes and supersonic speeds, though.

Okay: the loops are too small for anything with a real wingspan. I'll whip up a FAR microplane.

Having a run now.

No, that's one of these: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1481656&viewfull=1#post1481656 It's not designed for AJE, but it should work fine with it. If you have a look at the third post in my Kerbodyne thread, you'll find a guide on how to design in FAR that might be of use.

It looks like your Needle is a stock aero design. Would you mind if I provided something appropriate for FAR? I'm thinking of this ship: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1493009&viewfull=1#post1493009

At 40,000m, airhogging is counterproductive: you're just adding weight and drag. One intake is enough to keep a turbojet running, and running is all you need. Minimise part count, maximise in-flight patience.

How do the results stack up if you go for a drag-inducing equivalence (i.e., if a structural induces 1/4 the drag of a shock cone, compare 4 to 1) or mass equivalence?

Slows the exit of the payload from the bay.

Talking about radial decouplers, one aimed out through the open top of the bay, the other connected to the floor. Nothing to hit going up. The mothership will get some push down, but only a little due to relative mass.