Wanderfound

Yup, struts pretty much all the time; from wingtip to fuselage, usually along the leading and trailing edges of each wing piece, hidden underneath to keep them out of sight. Most of my planes use SP+ wings, which are notorious eggshells because of this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80796-0-24-Spaceplane-Plus-1-3?p=1377054&viewfull=1#post1377054 I'd be more likely to go strutless on a stock-wing plane like the Evangelist, but I designed that specifically as an aerobatic trainer so I wanted to toughen it up a bit.

BTW, I'd recommended grabbing something like the Evangelist II TJ (the plane shown in that pic, all stock) and doing some atmospheric flying to get practice at pushing the limits of exactly what you can get away with in terms of heat, dynamic pressure and G forces. Fine Print aerial survey contracts are good if you want some targets to aim for. That one's a pure jet jobbie, but you can easily convert it to a spaceplane by swapping the two rear tanks for an FLT-800 and the turbojet for a RAPIER.

Have a look at the altitude, sink rate, speed, angle of attack and G-meter. This is a plane that only has two struts per wing. You let the lift of the wings do the turning for you; there's barely any pitching involved at all. Watch the G meter as you do it, and back off the instant it gets too high. And, as always with planes: curves, not angles. No sudden moves. (note: 12G not actually recommended, I was having fun. A constant 4G or so is plenty.)

This is key. Match inclination, then match altitude. Higher = cheaper for inclination shifts. I've been playing around with Fine Print satellite delivery contracts, using a not-super-long-ranged spaceplane to do 'em. You can get three or four Munar satellites into sharply differing orbits on a single trip if you do things in the right order.

While we're having a whinge: what lunatic decided that having different camera controls in VAB vs SPH was a good idea? I'm constantly trying to do SPH-style zooming in the VAB and vice-versa.

Keys for me: * Don't overdo the "pitch up on reentry" stuff. Yeah, sure, you bleed off speed faster while doing that, but you can only get away with it in the upper atmosphere where there's sod-all drag anyway. It's usually quicker to dive to 30,000m, keep your angle of attack close to 0°, and toast your plane as close as you dare to burning up. Keep descending as fast as you can get away with. A sacrificial battery or something near the nose acting as a coalmine canary may help you learn the limits. * Circularise first. It's a lot easier coming in at Mach 7 than Mach 12. * Open your intakes as soon as you hit air. * Think about using spoilers and flaps to enhance drag. Make sure you balance 'em right if you do, though; involuntary pitching at hypersonic speed is not a long term survival strategy. * S-turns. Not yawing, but a proper 90° bank and a very delicate pitch-up. Just keep an eye on your sink rate while doing it; not a lot of vertical lift when you're standing on a wingtip. * Get your aero design smooth enough that your plane can cruise with 3x or 4x physics acceleration, in both descent and level flight. Just remember to turn it back down to 1x before you touch the controls, and keep an eye on things while cruising. Return to 1x and restabilise if the plane starts to oscillate. I've lost plenty of planes to Ferram on reentry, but I've never lost one to overheating. I have melted off quite a few sets of canards, though. You can get away with a surprising amount of high-G high-temp high-speed daftness at relatively low altitudes, but it is a matter of riding the limits.

Incidentally, there's an easy way to settle this question: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91544-Spaceplane-economy-challenge

Incidentally, if read sufficiently literally, the rules don't explicitly forbid Hyperedit. Ain't nothing "physics-breaking" about simulated teleportation.

There is one situation that leads me to use the "up and bounce" approach. With some of my planes, if I use a flat enough approach from launch to be hitting max speed and altitude at the same time, I end up losing my canards to Deadly Reentry on the way up. So with those ones, I deliberately use an overly-steep approach to start with, flatten out at 30,000m, "bounce" off the thicker stuff at 25,000m and then climb again once I'm up to speed. At 30,000m/Mach1, trying to pitch up enough to hold altitude while accelerating often puts the plane into a stall, increasing drag; better to let it drop and build speed and resume climbing once I'm fast enough to do it with minimal angle of attack. Instead of trying to hold climb rate or pitch constant, I try to hold angle of attack as constant (and low) as possible. So long as your plane is right and you aren't actively diving, you'll start climbing again eventually once you get fast enough without having to touch the controls. Drag is the enemy, and angle of attack and control surface deflection are its allies. I could probably avoid the "bounce" by gradually reducing pitch at exactly the right rate on the initial climb, but it doesn't seem worth the effort.

I've been futzing about all today, not doing anything KSP-wise, because of the approaching Hypetrain. I don't want to put a lot of time into my career save, because I'll probably start from scratch as soon as .25 drops. And I don't want to spend a lot of time designing a new plane, because I'm probably going to want to revise all of my designs once the stockified SP+ parts show up. But it just occured to me: now is the perfect time to have a bash at all of those mods that I'd been avoiding on the grounds that my computer couldn't cope with them. If they break my save and/or make my game terminally crash-happy, so what? I'm going to be scrubbing and reinstalling everything in a couple of weeks anyway. Kerbtown here we come!

Maybe the secret feature is that they're making stock aero even worse? Extra thick and chunky soupmosphere...

So you think they're overhyped, then?

Sorry to see you go. You're welcome back if you change your mind later.

I suggest that the whole "auto symmetry" thing be sent to the pits of hell where it belongs. Not being able to e.g. symmetrically place a pair of goo pods on two of four quad-symmetry tanks is intensely annoying. As with most of the editor problems, it ultimately comes down to "Y U NO DO WHAT I TELL YOU?!". Give the control to the builder, don't try to force us into what a half-witted computer thinks we "should" do.

I've also had several occurences of "tell MJ to go to Duna, okay, it's half a year away, time accelerate half a year to the node, reset the manoeuvre 'cos they go screwy if you leave them that long, oh great, apparently the window was yesterday and now the new manoeuvre node is again half a year away". Aaargh. Basically gave up on using MJ for interplanetary stuff after that. (note to Sarbian: as always, hugely grateful for your work and I appreciate that you're busy getting ready for .25. I think that the rapid response to my post shows that I'm not alone on this one, though)

Found another potentially useful mod for flyers: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90034-WIP-PLUGIN-Aeroplane-Mode-a-small-plugin-to-swap-roll-and-yaw-axes-on-the-fly Along with my standards: Kerbal Flight Data http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80842-Kerbal-Flight-Data-R8-%2805-08-2014%29 Kerbal Flight Indicators http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80277-Kerbal-Flight-Indicators-%2808-08-2014%29

Liking it so far; kudos for the easy toggle and default to "off". Too many of these sorts of mods have a habit of intruding when you don't want them to.

Already there:

Woot! Yay! Any spoilers as to circular bays for rockets, or are the fireworks boys just going to have to continue to be jealous of the spaceplane crew?

O ye of little faith: Mind you, it could use a bit of aerodynamic polishing:

Yup, 'tis rather vague at the moment. You can certainly hit escape velocity without any orbital thrust, though:

Cargo bays are confirmed as in, although possibly not until .26. Probably there for .25, though.

No Iain M. Banks? The GSV No More Mr Nice Guy ​probably wouldn't fit on the poster...

It's certainly an effective demonstration of the, um, possibilities of stock aero. I'll have to give it a go and see if I can get it off the ground in FAR.

This reminds me of the old days on Usenet. Can we get back to having fun designing spaceplanes now?