Wanderfound

Invalid parts (probably the IR/RPM stuff) on Iolite, BTW. Strip it down to no more than SP+ and Mechjeb and I'd be happy to give it a review, but otherwise it's no go.

That one's gonna have to rely on the stock aero flyers, I'm afraid. It's a nifty looking thing, but I don't think it will work in FAR. BTW: Scarecrow88. I tried to take SSTO One for a spin, but it froze up my SPH when I tried to load it. I suspect that there's something up with your craft file.

I'm still a partisan of the engine shutdown approach, though. Regardless of build order, one engine fed by x number of intakes will always flame out at a higher altitude than more than one engine being fed by x number of intakes. If you want to go high without burning oxidiser, you want a single air-breather on the centreline and enough lift and pitch authority to maintain altitude with minimal thrust in thin air.

Not disagreeing with you, each to their own, but: I use Deadly Reentry as well. Unshielded spaceplanes can handle Mach 6 at ~20,000m and a single-pass descent from that just fine if you build and fly 'em right, and it isn't too hard to get your speed down to low hypersonic on a normal reentry. If you're going for a direct-from-interplanetary aerobrake, then it should take multiple cautious passes at higher altitude, IMO.

I'd default it the other way around. If it goes wrong, you want to be facing forwards, not back.

Last minute reviews: Hodo's SP-10. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86202-Better-SSTO-Spaceplane-Challenge-%280-23-5-0-24%29-Polling-Started%21%281st-Part%29?p=1387320&viewfull=1#post1387320 Fairly neat aesthetics for a stock parts plane. I'm never gonna like those 1950's cockpits, though. The gear setup makes tailstrike a definite risk. Fortunately, the airframe geometry makes pitching up on takeoff unnecessary. Launches easily. Climbs easy. Plenty of speed, although not a specialist drag racer. The lightweight single-turbo design allows for safe air breathing operation at extreme altitudes. It does get a little squirrely at these altitudes, though. A touch of yaw instability and requires RCS or constant control inputs to maintain pitch. Casually able to reach orbital speeds with plenty of fuel remaining. Tolerates a warm reentry. Abort system functions well, although I’d be inclined to include parachute deployment in the backspace action group. There isn’t always time to run through the staging when things go wrong at low altitude. Capable of vigorous aerobatics. Although everything has its limits. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by this plane. I should have known better, seeing as it’s one of Hodo’s, but I’d lost track of whose plane was which by the time it came to testing it and the stock-parts nature didn’t lead me to expect much. A fine little craft, capable of both recreational use and some light work duties. As with O-Doc’s Robin, the lack of serious cargo capacity or extended range is an impediment to winning out against more practically focused craft. But it’s a good demonstration of what can be achieved with relatively low-tech stock parts, and it’s definitely in the running for my vote. Worth the test flight.

To be honest, I have exactly 0% care factor about where the mods are hosted. I'm interested in the mail, not the letterbox.

While it's true that the victors write the history, there is such a thing as false equivalency. All sides did horrible things in WWII, but the Nazis were playing in a different league.

Seek and ye shall find: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/50008-0-23-KerbPaint-Paint-layering-for-parts-(September-23rd)-(Same-Old-Still-Works!)/page37?p=1343276#post1343276

How long is a piece of string? It depends on the rocket. Small rockets want few control surfaces, large rockets want many control surfaces (or a few very big ones). Generally speaking. Y'just gotta experiment a bit. Go to the sandbox, control all but this variable, test and see what happens. Scientific method for the win.

The poll needs a "meh" option, BTW. I don't want an auto thrust balancer for myself, but I'm not bothered if anyone else chooses to use such a thing. Managing issues like this is fun for me, but my fun ain't necessarily the same as your fun.

Yes, it does happen in real life. It was the major safety issue affecting the SR-71. As soon as the engines start to sputter from lack of oxygen, a bit of yaw was induced which in turn leads to a positive feedback loop as the intake of the lower-thrust engine rotates away from the airstream. There are an assortment of ways to deal with it. Placing your intakes and engines in the right order can reduce thrust asymmetry; using RCS or Vernors for vectored thrust can counteract the yaw; building a plane with an odd number of engines and shutting down all but the central jet at extreme altitudes can eliminate asymmetry altogether. And, as you mention, keeping an eye on the situation and throttling down or switching to rocketry at the right time can also manage the issue. Hypersonic aircraft are supposed to be a bit tricky to fly; it's just part of the deal. Klockheed Martian has a flameout detector part that can shut down a pair of engines as soon as one begins to sputter, BTW.

I think that you're overestimating the abilities of a lot of undergrads there. In my experience, most of 'em think that "substantia nigra" is a bit racist and "globus pallidus" has something to do with a Monty Python sketch.

Incidentally, my favourite bit of classically nonsensical scientific nomenclature is "chromosome". They named it before they knew what it was; they just noticed that there was a lot of it in every cell, and it soaked up the microscopy staining dyes really well. So, as a result, this fundamental element of genetic transmission throughout the biological world has a name that roughly translates as "the easily coloured bit".

Retired neuroscientist here, BTW. Yes, I know a bit of Latin; you pick it up as you go along. As well as some tortured Greek and a fair bit of misinterpreted Arabic. A lot of the anatomical terminology is just plain ridiculous when you get into it (substantia nigra, globus pallidus, etc), and it doesn't even make sense to someone who is a fluent classicist. It's an unholy mishmash of several classical languages, filtered through a Chinese Whispers history of translation and retranslation by an assortment of archivists who often didn't understand what they were reading, even on the rare occasions when they were properly fluent in the language they were reading it from. Look into the etymology of the brain's protective membranes someday; the outer one literally translates as "the tough mother", all because a medieval European monk translating an Arabic text that he didn't understand couldn't recognise a metaphor when he saw it. There is a value in precision and consistency with scientific language, to be sure. But a lot of the more archaic parts of it are nothing but mindless traditionalism, academic pretension and needlessly exclusionary jargon. Forcing the necessary language skills into our students wasted a fair bit of time that could have instead been spent on actual science and medicine.

How tightly are we defining "manned pod"? Spaceplane cockpits okay? What about FAR and DR?

Other tricks: if you want a better chance of getting away with high-speed asymmetric thrust, a pair of Vernors on either side of the nose do wonders. Bind them to an action group and keep them toggled off until you need them, though, or you'll waste a fair bit of fuel. Also good for lower speed aerobatic hijinks.

Starting to get the scenery into place: The first half of the start line / referee's observation post. It would have been nice to get some shots of the descent, but I was a bit preoccupied at the time. Not the easiest of things to land in the dark.

Aww, shucks. Thanks, Hodo.

I'd add Kerbpaint to that one. Plain white may do for utilitarian things, but when you're hooning around in a racing spaceplane, you've gotta have a cool paintjob available. It would also allow much nicer looking mix and match builds for the rocketry folks; no more hideous orange Rockomax / white LFB combos.

It's a VAB/SPH utility mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/35996-0-24-x-RCS-Build-Aid-v0-5 The basic function is in balancing RCS. Tell it what direction you're interested in, and it will tell you how much RCS thrust you have in that direction and how many kN of torque is being generated by any asymmetry. It also gives easy visual cues, and updates live while you're placing thrusters. Place one set of linear thrusters on one side of CoM, pick up another pair with your mouse and wiggle them about in vaguely the right position until the torque value is as close to zero as you can get it. It also does the same trick for non-RCS thrust. Plus it gives you an extra spherical marker for dry CoM (i.e. unfuelled) and measures the distance between wet and dry CoM, also updating this figure live while you move parts about. Very, very, very useful.

Perhaps one of these might be of use: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1368623&viewfull=1#post1368623

Still afloat! Tough little ship, that.

RCS Build Aid and spreading your fuel load laterally instead of longitudinally. It's not too hard to get the CoM -> dCoM distance down to below one metre. Fine tune by shuffling the lateral tanks forwards and backwards small amounts.

Ha; tell that to the biologists and historians. In bioscience papers, rodents don't have whiskers, they have "vibrissae". In history of science papers, it's routine for authors to throw in quotations from half a dozen archaic languages without bothering to provide translations; they just assume that their readers should all be fluent in Latin/Ancient Greek/Medieval French etc. And then there's the statisticians. "Heteroskedasticity". Aargh.