Wanderfound

Unfortunately, it appears that Kerbpaint makes my laptop cry. The UI could use a bit of polishing, too; having to colour each part individually is a nuisance.

Why push up? Try this: Note alignment of Sepratrons. One pair per booster. Launch: Decouple: Spinny:

No shame in a bit of aesthetic clipping; been known to use it myself occasionally. (yes, I know it's not a spaceplane. But it is a 100% recoverable SSTO...)

Parallel evolution That's essentially the same plane as the one I posted upthread, cracking Mach 11 and escape velocity while still well inside Kerbin's atmosphere. Streamlining works.

Don't restrict it to SP+, tweakable colours on everything. Finally get rid of those hideous LFB / Orange Rockomax combinations.

Why limit it to the bottom? Toggle black everything; instant stealth bomber. Gah. Hurry up and make Kerbpaint stock already, Squad.

I considered entering this idea, but then decided against on the grounds that it was insufficiently creative. But it's a good enough image to share: Shimmy's Throne (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/66220-Bond-Aerotech-Shimmy-s-Throne-1-3-1-F100-jet-engine-Updated-15-AUG-14?p=910859&viewfull=1#post910859) with a few infinite-fuel Sepratrons strapped to the legs.

Even if you can't get action shots, just an image of the setup in the VAB would be useful. It could potentially be a construction issue rather than a bug.

It depends heavily on whether you're in stock aero or FAR. By the time the RAPIERs swap over to oxidising mode, I'm usually on the edge of hypersonic (Mach 5+). Due to the way FAR has altered the speed/thrust curves on air-breathing engines, turbojets (and air-breathing RAPIERs) are virtually useless at those speeds (realistically; there are limits to how fast you can effectively spin a turbine, which is why scramjets exist). Even at full throttle and with a generous air supply, they're only going to put out about 15kN each. I still have turbos on a fair few designs, but that's mostly because I like the look and sound of them. RAPIERs sound awful. Pretty much all of mine can reach orbit with tanks half full. The Longreach can do KSC to Minmus and back, unrefuelled, with a VTOL landing on Minmus in the middle. The Wedgetail can hit orbit with over 4,000 units of oxidiser left in the tanks. These are both normal-sized and very fast planes, not lumbering Whackjob-style monsters. There just isn't any need to sacrifice performance for the sake of maximum fuel efficiency.

Yes. Exhaust torching. Nothing at all to do with the decoupler bug, everything to do with not placing the Sepratrons right.

Manley's taken it for a test drive:

We'd need as least some clues as to theme, though. Personally, I quite like Principia [1]. Or Salviati [2]. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica [2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems

Also fun for sportsplanes in general. Stick as many RAPIERs as you can fit on the back of the smallest airframe that can carry them, give it just enough wing to take off and land, and you get something that is ludicrously quick in both air and space. If you're using Deadly Reentry, torching your plane on the way up is a definite possibility.

RAPIERs can handle bulk loads just fine. This one is 48 tons wet, powered by four RAPIERs and two Aerospikes. Note the Mach number and periapsis altitude. As well as piloting, low-drag aerodynamics matter.

Seconded. If your sense of self-worth has anything to do with the style in which you play a computer game, then you've got bigger issues than whether or not you should use an autopilot. If you want to brag, go do something that matters first. Publish some research papers, save some lives, raise a family, bake a cake. Games are fun, and KSP is a lot more fun than most, but it's still just a game.

I'm afraid it's probably you. The trick with spaceplanes is to get as much speed and altitude as possible out of the air-breathers before you start burning oxidiser. It's mostly about piloting. Do it right, and it takes very little fuel. Do it wrong, and You Will Not Go To Space Today. Wanderfound's Spaceplane Piloting Guide (written with FAR/NEAR in mind, but the technique in stock is basically the same) 1) Get to 20,000m however you like. Around a 45 degree climb is probably most fuel efficient, but jet engines use so little fuel that it doesn't matter much. If the plane has enough power, I usually climb at 75 degrees or so just to get it done quickly. 2) When you get to 20,000m, level off and build some speed. You want to pile on as much horizontal velocity as possible while you make a slow ascent to 30,000m. Keep your angle of attack (the angle between where your nose is pointing and the direction in which the plane is actually moving, shown by the prograde marker when in surface mode) and climb rate low; by the time you hit 30,000m, they should both be around 10 or so. A low angle of attack reduces drag and helps your intakes work better. The low angle makes you climb slower, but that's okay; you need that time to get up to speed. As you go faster, the angle of attack required to maintain a given climb rate reduces, but as you go higher, the thinner air means that the angle of attack required to maintain a given climb rate increases. If you do it right, these two factors will roughly balance each other out and you should gain the necessary speed and altitude in a single smooth climb. However, a plane with some aerodynamic or piloting flaws may need to bounce up and down between 20,000 and 30,000m a couple of times while building speed before the final push. 3) Somewhere between 20,000m and 35,000m (exactly when depends on both plane and piloting), you'll start to run short of air. Don't switch to rockets immediately. If you've got multiple engines going, shut some down to concentrate the available oxygen into the ones you keep running. If you've already shut down as many as you can, throttle back a bit. You can dramatically increase your jet-only altitude by doing this, and once you get up to serious height the thin atmosphere means that you only need a tiny amount of thrust to accelerate. 4) Keep this going for as long as your plane and your patience can tolerate. A well-built and -flown plane should be able to get over Mach 4.5 and 30,000m in a single attempt on jets alone. Once you've wrung as much speed and altitude out of the jets as possible (you want at least Mach 4 and 30,000m), force the nose up to 45 degrees and light the rockets. If you have both jets and rockets, don't shut down the jets immediately; the thrust of the rockets will drive a ram-air effect that kicks the jets back into life for a while. Keep the rockets burning until your apoapsis exceeds 70,000m, then shut off and coast until it's time to circularise. Point prograde and close your intakes while coasting to minimise drag A good plane and pilot should be able to get the apoapsis to 70,000m with less than a minute of rocket power. Done properly, it requires very little fuel. But if you try to brute-force it from lower speeds and altitudes, the atmospheric drag is going to drain your oxidiser tanks before you get anywhere near orbit. If you're having trouble with design rather than piloting, have a poke at the designs linked in my .sig. They're all tuned for FAR (and if you're getting into spaceplanes, I highly recommend that you give FAR/NEAR a try; stock aero is a joke), but the Benchmark is certainly able to reach orbit in stock with tanks better than half-full. Just try to keep the angle of attack below 20° or you'll spin out.

Coal? We had to make do with carefully-polished sheep droppings! -- If we're not careful, this could go on for some time... (I was actually serious about the bread and dripping sandwiches, BTW; it's what happens when you're fed by people who grew up during the Great Depression. But nevermind...)

Teaser: I've been working on my Minmus iceracer, and I think I've got a good one: Nimble, solid, and very very quick. Should make a decent specialist downforce skater, but switch the Vernors off and you've also got a helluva sportsplane. Me like.

I'm choosing to look on the bright side: you just proved that the Migration is good enough to make it to orbit even when it's massively out of tune. Given the repeated action group weirdnesses and such, it's probably worthwhile checking the tweakables in the hangar before you go. If anything except the rudders are set to influence yaw, something is amiss.

Haven't the foggiest. On a related note, though: if they start making reputation matter in .25, they're going to have to do something about the obvious ways to cheat it. At the moment, you can build masses of rep just by driving a bus full of Kerbals onto the launchpad and then recovering it.

See my post above; angle 'em out just a few degrees and you can eliminate the exhaust damage issue entirely.

Nice. Creative use of the tail pieces, there. Much prettier than most stock-part planes. Debug menu clipping for the intakes, or just careful fiddling?

Huh? Not familiar with that one.

Other creative Sepratron uses: * Emergency landing brakes on large spaceplanes. * Rapid cockpit/fuselage separation as part of an abort system. * Cheap and light deorbiting thrusters. * Downforce generators for ground racers. * Short-burn Kerbal jetpacks. * Surplus crew disposal system. * Last moment suicide burn correctors. * Spinny-thing makers (Kurtjmac is fond of this one). * Fireworks. Anything else?

He's gone a bit overboard on that scaling, though; you could shave 10% off that and still fit the tank in. Large cargo bays would be great, but they don't have to be that generous. I don't mind if there's a bit of delicate wiggling involved in getting the payload back out again. It's all part of the fun; easing a probe out of a tight bay without snapping off its solar panels etc. can be quite entertaining.