Wanderfound

Oh, and just from a quick eyeball: that's a very high-drag design, and a bit unnecessarily heavy. Ditch half of the intakes and two thirds of the SAS units. Pulling the fuel mass in closer to the fuselage wouldn't hurt either.

Firstly: have a dig through https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/wiki/An-Example-SSTO-Design-Process Reading that while you play around in the SPH should help you make sense of the data provided by FAR. You don't need to use the aerodynamic analysis tools (my first few dozen designs were done purely by eyeball and flight testing, and they worked just fine), but they do make it easier once you get your head around them. In particular, pay attention to the part of the link above that discusses how to work out what speed and angle of attack you need for liftoff. You want the speed to be within what you can reach before the end of the runway, and the required angle of attack below 10°. Very short flaps/spoilers tutorial: Flaps and spoilers are both ways of temporarily enhancing the deflection of control surfaces. Flaps deflect down; they increase both drag and lift. Spoilers deflect up; they increase drag but reduce lift. Flaps ease takeoffs and allow your craft to fly at a slower speed without stalling. Spoilers ease landings by pushing the plane down onto the runway and enhancing braking on the ground. Either can also be used to increase drag during reentry. Control surfaces can be set to work as flaps or spoilers, but not both. By default, spoiler activation is linked to the "B" key, with the spoilers off unless triggered. By default, flaps are on unless deactivated through action groups or right-click menus. If you're using flaps, it's generally a good idea to set one action group to increase flap deflection and another to reduce flap deflection. You may find it helpful to have a well set up example craft to reverse engineer. Have a go with http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1398173&viewfull=1#post1398173 That one uses both flaps and spoilers, and takes off very easily if flown right, despite its large size and relatively low air-breathing thrust.

Looks like you CoT is slightly below your CoM. You've got a massive amount of torque generated by this. Rearrange mass and/or engines until the torque figure displayed by RCS Build Aid reduces to sensible levels. These figures update live in the SPH as you build. Grab any heavy part from the parts list and move it around the surface of the craft while watching the torque figure change. Alternately, grab this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77710

Look at the support forums for oh, five seconds or so. Half of the modded install support threads begin with "we can't help you unless you give us your mod list", often repeated several times as clueless newbies give a succession of inadequate responses. Particularly in a tech support context, user-friendliness matters.

Same here. You can resize the in-flight UI in settings, but for a lot of other stuff I need to get up and stick my face a foot away from my not-small monitor.

Here you go...

I've been trying to vary the colour schemes, but most of the other Kerbpaint defaults are a bit on the garish side. Besides, everyone knows that red wuns go fasta.

Got a lot of stuff? Need to send that stuff a long way away? Meet the Kerbodyne Albatross. Fully-featured, long-ranged, and able to lift a ridiculous load of snacks. As always, check the action groups; this one has plenty of tricks. Easy takeoffs: High efficiency Aerospike propulsion: Generous cargo bay: Craft file available from https://www.dropbox.com/s/wo2r7t7duwfmexq/Kerbodyne%20Albatross.craft?dl=0 Requires Spaceplane Plus and FAR/NEAR. Optional paintjob courtesy of Kerbpaint.

Well, the serious answer is to delete it in the Tracking Station. The more fun answer is to get better at aiming missiles. Try this one... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1368623&viewfull=1#post1368623

If you're flying FAR/NEAR with keyboard, don't hold the buttons down: tap tap tap. Using the shift lock to engage precision control may be useful as well, although that does introduce a bit of variability into the control inputs. I don't use a joystick (can't, at the moment; med-induced fine motor control problems). You need to lead the plane, not try to force it; particularly with high-performance craft, treat them like a racehorse. Wait for the prograde marker to catch up with you before you increase the angle of attack too much. If they're designed decently, they shouldn't be bad-tempered, but they may be a bit "proud". Treat 'em with respect and they'll do the same for you. FAR also allows you to adjust the maximum deflection of control surfaces, and most of my planes have them wound up to fairly extreme levels: I like responsive planes, but the price of that is if you tell the plane to kill you, it will happily oblige. Cranking them back down to default may be helpful. As you may notice, most of my stuff is designed with high-performance in mind. This is fun once you've got the knack, but a Ferrari isn't the best car for a learner driver. If you have a poke at the Better SSTO Design Challenge thread (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86202-Better-SSTO-Spaceplane-Challenge-(0-23-5-0-24)-Extended), you'll find some easy-to-fly things. DaMichel's Laythe Wing in particular is exceptionally stable. There's an optional FAR plugin for Mechjeb (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/60933-Optional-MechJeb-Modules) that helps them to get along better, but even with that Mechjeb is a bit wobbly for planes under power at the moment. It hasn't yet been updated to account for the roll-gimballing ability introduced in .24, so it tends to give planes an oscillating roll when the engines are on. Sarbian is working on a patch as we speak. With the Epinephrine, the frontmost tank is locked off as an emergency reserve (I use a similar trick on probe core batteries). As well as avoiding out-of-fuel whoopsies, it also prevents the front tank from upsetting the weight balance by draining prematurely. You can also prevent this by careful fuel hose arrangement, but I didn't want to clutter up the Epinephrine's aesthetics with too many fuel lines. Right-clicking the tank will allow you to unlock the fuel flow. I'm not surprised that Longreach doesn't work in stock. Soupmosphere drag is particularly punishing on high mass / high wing loading craft. PS: if you want to see what they can really do, have a look at the challenge posts linked below.

As Voculus says: FAR, NEAR or stock? Good advice for one set of aero is very bad advice for the others. Your SPH picture looks like you don't have FAR installed, though. Also, if you can, give us screenshots in the SPH with indicators on (like the one you've already shown), but directly from the side and above. It's hard to see exactly what's going on from a 3/4 angle. I'd also recommend that you grab the RCS Build Aid mod; as well as helping to balance your RCS, it also adds another indicator for dry (i.e. unfuelled) CoM, which is immensely useful when designing spaceplanes. One thing missing from your ascent profile: after you shut down the last air-breathing engine, close the intakes. They create a lot of drag. For the same reason, once you've shut down the rockets to coast to apoapsis, point prograde to make your profile to the wind as narrow as possible.

One of us, one of us... You'll find your planes a lot quicker and slicker with FAR in effect. Don't be surprised if you rip the wings off a few times while you're getting used to it, though. I tend to use Mechjeb as a cruise control; if I'm coming in for a shallow gliding reentry from halfway around Kerbin, I'll switch it to surface mode, set the heading to 90° and control my descent by tweaking the pitch setting a few degrees above and below horizontal. This doesn't feel "cheaty" at all to me; the last time anybody in the real world flew a large plane without that sort of autopilot installed was a hundred years ago. BTW, other very good utility mods for spaceplane pilots: Kerbal Flight Data Kerbal Flight Indicators Extended Trim RCS Build Aid And, if your computer can handle it, grab one of the E.V.E. packs. Zooming down through the clouds only to find yourself face-to-face with a mountain is way fun.

Not quite; see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80796-0-24-Spaceplane-Plus-1-3?p=1377054&viewfull=1#post1377054 That's an issue with SP+ in general rather than FAR in particular, though. Aerodynamic failures exacerbate the problem, however.

Weirdly enough, something that easily generated a list of currently installed mods and their versions probably wouldn't be a bad mod itself. It'd save a lot of aggravation on the support forum...

Could anyone recommend a large-font MFD? I'm currently using the KSI version, and it's gorgeous, but my eyes aren't great and the fonts are small enough that I can't read them unless I zoom right in on that screen. The multi-screen displays in my SP+ cockpits aren't a whole lot of use if you can only ever see one at a time.

True. There are some benefits, though. If you don't have enough grunt to tear your wings off in level flight, then your aircraft is insufficiently Kerbal.

What would be the best EVE pack to use for a somewhat crash-happy computer? Just the standard LR one (which is what I'm using currently), or something else? I'm not already overstressing my RAM with part packs (SP+, EVE, ATM and a bunch of utility mods is pretty much it), but it's an old and slightly battered laptop (used to be my laboratory computer, has had a fair bit of blood and rat pee wiped off it) that was never intended as a games machine. I love the clouds and I like my pretty, and I wonder if I'm limiting my aesthetics more than I need to be.

I like this too. Currently I'm achieving a similar effect by flicking between Sandbox and Career, but it'd be nice not to have to. (and, before anyone pops in with this: yes, I know that you can get the same effect with self-imposed F5/F9 discipline. If self-imposed discipline was that easy, human society would look a lot different than it does) Integrating it into the contracts and tech tree system would be a big bonus, though. A small financial cost to run simulations, limitations on how well you can simulate early in the test tree, "run simulation" contracts, etc. For the super-shiny-but-probably-too-hard version, integrate with Hyperedit so you can easily simulate Mun landings without launch and transit etc.

Nah, just get the passengers to blow into the intakes and you'll be set.

I think that was aimed at me (quoting relevant text = good), but again, see sig: FAR assumed. Batteries etc do affect drag in realistic aero. And, even in the soupmosphere, the cargo bay trick still has aesthetic value, and a short cargo bay is a fairly low-mass way of enhancing stability with a lengthened fuselage.

Gah, sorry: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1374206&viewfull=1#post1374206

Actually, I had folks tell me that the craft wouldn't load at all. Once I gave them a version with control surface tweakables reset to default, the issue went away. See the comments on http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88628-Kerbodyne-D7-Heavy-X5-a-heavy-lift-SSTO-spaceplane for an example. Something strange going on? I'm wishing I could drop that plane down the memory hole, BTW. I was hugely proud of it when I first built it, but now it's an embarrassment. - While I'm bothering you with daft questions (thanks as always; you have the patience of a saint), is there any known issue with interaction between FAR and Hot Rockets? I've got a vertical-lift SSTO (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...=1#post1374206) that I designed a few weeks ago. At the time I designed it, I had both Hot Rockets and FAR installed. It launched just fine on air-breathers alone. Then I got sick of long-running constant crashes (nothing to do with FAR), so I completely scrubbed KSP from my computer and reinstalled from scratch. Initially, I had FAR reinstalled, but not Hot Rockets. When I tried to take the SSTO for a spin, I found that it was no longer able to get off the ground without turning the oxidiser on. But when I reinstalled Hot Rockets, the SSTO went back to easy air-breathing liftoffs like it had been before. Is there some known interaction between Hot Rockets and FAR? My first suspicion was that HR was somehow reversing the the FAR engine nerf, but the kN thrust values look the same with or without HR. Any clues? Is it at all plausible for HR to be doing this? And if so, which version of the spacecraft is the "correct" one?

That does always make me wonder how they got in there in the first place...

Decided to have a go with the Benchmark just to get a time on the board for it. 4 minutes, 5 seconds. There's definitely still time to be shaved off that. Think you can do it?

If you like test pilot stuff, I can't recommend highly enough Jeffrey Quill's Spitfire and Alex Henshaw's Sigh for a Merlin. Quill was the lead development test pilot for the Spitfire; Henshaw was the head production test pilot. Brilliant pilots both of them, and gripping books. Incidentally, the Spitfire was named after a Spanish ship captured by Francis Drake named Cagafuego. "Spitfire" isn't quite an exact translation...