Wanderfound

If you're really having trouble: Build a rover. Strap the test part on top. Drive it off the end of the runway into the ocean. Test. A mostly-defuelled and thrust-limited RT-10 with a parachute and a Stayputnik is usually quicker, though.

On the population issue, my point isn't that it's impossible for us to stuff it up. It's that it is an issue that appears to be solving itself, and that even if it does go bad, space colonisation is not a useful solution. Throwing resources (which doesn't just mean money; it includes brainpower, i.e. scientists and engineers) at a futile attempt to colonise makes the solvable problems here more likely to go wrong. We need those resources here. And I still don't think that you properly appreciate the impracticality of settling Mars. I'd strongly recommend that you have a read of the links I posted upthread, particularly the first one.

Like this:

Peelable bananas.

Okay; although the scoring is biased to bulk, I figured I'd have a go just so that the spaceplane crew weren't entirely unrepresented. Flying with FAR, of course. My spaceplane of choice is the Kerbodyne Wedgetail: (this is my personal model with Mechjeb and TAC-LS bits on, but you can find a version with those parts removed at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1353934&viewfull=1#post1353934) Off we go: Shock heating on the way up: Just after the RAPIERs switch to closed cycle: Coasting to apoapsis: Circularisation burn: And we're in orbit: Plenty of gas in the tanks: Just kept what was in the rear bicoupler to get home: Reentry was a little on the toasty side: Skipping over the mountains west of KSC: Final approach: And back on the runway, just after using the last of the fuel: Unfortunately, I'd been flying in sandbox mode, and hadn't realised that this meant that I got no funds screen on recovery. So, I went into my career save, took the exact same plane out on the runway, and used TAC Fuel Balancer to dump all the fuel. I also emptied the RCS tanks, although I'd actually used barely any of that. The "resources recovered" are the food/water/oxygen and waste products from TAC-LS. Anyway: Wet cost: √149322 Recovered: √143321.7 LF delivered: 3727.9 O delivered: 4186.4 Cost: √6000.3 Score: 10438.8 Splitting the bill evenly between the LF and O portions: Price per unit of LF: √0.8 Price per unit of O: √0.7 -- Edited to add: just saw DundraL's effort. Nicely done.

Woo! Any chance that they're sorting the cargo bay attachment wiggles while they're at it? Or that thing where sometimes the fuselage and cargo bay pieces attach with one a smidgeon lower than the other? BTW: I found a bit of weirdness yesterday while I was building something. I wanted to construct a rear section from three bicouplers; one forwards, two reversed, in a W-shape, then another two on back to give me four engine mounting spots and a pair of forward facing nodes for tanks and intakes. However, trying to use symmetry on this caused the mirrored piece to constantly flick back and forwards between the occupied and unoccupied nodes, flashing from green to red. If you kept clicking, it would eventually attach...but on the wrong node: And if you do it with engines on, they'll clip into each other without the debug menu: I worked around it by not using symmetry, but that meant that I then couldn't use symmetry for the wings. Not impossible to deal with, but a bit awkward. Is this a known issue?

Incidentally, y'all would be more than welcome to have a go at my spaceplane speed challenge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90354-Spaceplane-speed-challenge-shortest-elapsed-time-from-runway-to-orbit?p=1346130#post1346130 FAR, NEAR and stock aero all welcome; bring your own plane or use the one provided if you'd like to show off your piloting skills.

I may have just the plane you're after... Which is more important, range or speed? They can both manage Minmus return trips with a VTOL landing on the flats, but the faster (and prettier) one needs to refuel in Kerbin orbit while the other can do it on a single tank.

Good advice in general, but problematic if you're aiming for a low 70km-ish orbit; you may not have time to do the burn if you leave it that late, particularly if you used a fairly vertical ascent. By the time you're over 60,000m the drag losses should be slow enough not to matter much.

Any guidance on what y'all are looking for here? Practical cargo haulers, speedsters, aesthetics, most ridiculous, all rounders? I've got a stack of equally shiny candidates, but choosing which to submit is giving me difficulty.

While all of the answers above me are correct and contain good advice, you can still get where you want to go even if you suck at designing efficient rockets. Put a docking port on the biggest fuel tank you can lift (as unburnt cargo, not using its fuel). Fling that into orbit. Then, build your interplanetary vehicle, making sure that it also has a docking port, empty most of the fuel out of it (this will hugely reduce its mass), and fling that into orbit as well. Dock the two vehicles together, use the first tank to fill the vehicle from the second launch, ditch the first tank and head off. Even when you're only sending out one vehicle, you don't have to launch it all at once.

Simple version: during ascent, monitor your apoapsis. Once it reaches the height of the orbit you want, kill the engines. Go to map view, set a prograde manoeuvre at your apoapsis that raises periapsis to the same altitude. Wait until it is time to perform that manoeuvre (look at the navball, next to it will be figures for "estimated burn" and "time to node"; divide the burn time by half and start the rockets that long before the node so that the middle of the burn happens at the node) and then do it. Point at the blue symbol on the navball, crank the engines to max, and be ready to shut down as soon as the required ÃŽâ€V (the bar to the right of the navball) hits zero. Flashy (and more fuel efficient) version: Monitor your "time to apoapsis". Once your apoapsis height starts getting close to where you want it (a fair bit before or you'll overshoot while turning), pull the nose down to the horizon and keep it down until the time to apoapsis figure reduces to 10-20 seconds. Keep burning, adjusting your pitch to hold that figure constant; pitching down reduces it, pitching up increases it. The amount of pitch-up required will reduce as your velocity increases. Continue burning until both apoapsis and periapsis are where you want them, but keep an eye on the apoapsis; at high velocity, you only need to pitch a fraction too high for a short time to hugely increase the apoapsis. Mods that provide basic in-flight instrumentation (Mechjeb, KER etc) so that you can monitor the needed information without switching to map view make the flashy version much easier to do.

I wonder if Hugo was working on a MkIII cargo bay...

Yay! Congrats, Porkjet; thoroughly deserved. You raised the bar.

Although it's not ideal (100m/s is closer to the mark), 200m/s is a perfectly survivable landing speed. It's your vertical velocity that you need to control, not the horizontal. Excess horizontal is only a problem if you run out of runway or paddock before your ground-brakes finish doing their thing (and you can help them along with spoilers, RCS, Vernors and, in extreme cases, Sepratrons). Coming on to the strip fast but shallow is usually a better option than trying to bleed off huge amounts of speed over the runway when you need to be concentrating on getting your wheels down gently and level. The behaviour you're describing all sounds normal to me. You want to get down below 1,000m with the throttle off when you're still at least 10km out. A 40 ton hypersonic spaceplane isn't a Cessna; you can't expect to land it like one. What sort of angle are you folks thinking of as a "modest AoA", BTW?

Strut from underneath, and start from the wingtip in so you don't get the ugly bit showing out there. A pair of struts per wing piece usually does me; one along the leading edge, one along the trailing edge. It helps that I prefer streamlined delta-based designs that rarely have more than a few pieces per wing (and that's on the big planes; my small ones use single deltas). Most of the KSP plane designs I see around are massively over-winged, IMO. See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1353924&viewfull=1#post1353924 for an example of what works for me.

In the interests of avoiding mod-annoyance, I'll decline to answer here. PM me if you're curious.

I think DR is ruled out by the "very well done mod" comments. DR is more "good idea, but the execution needs some polish".

Are you strutting your wings? It's pretty much compulsory with FAR, whether you're using stock parts or SP+. I don't have trouble getting my SP+ planes to land, and they don't pop their wings any more often than my stock planes, but they do seem to take longer to slow during reentry than stock. I think it's just because SP+ parts let me create much sleeker designs; they should be lower drag. For me, the solution is just to set my descent westwards of where I'd do it in stock. Don't aim straight for KSC, try to get down far enough that you just clear the mountains and then do a series of dive/flare manoeuvres as soon as you get past them. Lined up, low and slow as early as possible is the trick for easy landings.

Yeah, but the NASA bananas are terribly overpowered. Squad really screwed up on that one.

The boys in the engine lab were so happy with all the solid booster orders that they're getting for the Munacy that they asked us if we could feature some of the Kerbodyne liquid engines as well. Possibly the engineers had been around some other adult-themed liquids immediately before designing this. Enjoy the Kerbodyne Dementia. Exactly as daft as it looks; beware of tearing the landing gear off due to excessive low altitude speed. I've got some pics of what this looks like with the main engine fired up, but I think it's better that I let you find that out for yourself. Requires Spaceplane Plus and FAR/NEAR. Craft file available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ty2ij83r3d0bb8b/Kerbodyne%20Dementia.craft

I realise that I'm saying this over and over, but...coming in for reentry with FAR you can glide halfway around the planet and control your descent purely by altering pitch a few degrees above or below the horizontal. I normally leave the engines off all the way from orbit to runway; they only get switched on if I accidentally overshoot and need to turn around. Stock aero planes glide only slightly better than bricks. What altitude was this, BTW? If you're still up in the stratosphere, there's not a lot of air for the wings to grip on; it gets easier as you descend. Probably a FAR vs stock issue, by the looks of it. Sorry; nothing I can do about that. One thing that may help, though: maximise takeoff speed. Keep the brakes on until the engines have spooled up to full power (this takes quite a while; right click and watch if you don't have a Mechjeb data readout or similar) and don't try to pull up until just before the end of the runway. Use the Vernors to help lift the nose when you do, and climb as gradually as you can until you've gained some speed. BTW: if you've got the brakes on already when you start the engines, the game will automatically keep them on until the engines have spooled up. And I don't know if you use Mechjeb or other informational mods, but with MJ you can set up a custom flight data window that will give you things like climb rate, angle of attack, current thrust, intake air available/required, bearing to target, etc. It's worth having even if you never use an autopilot.

To make it work better: when the RAPIERs switch modes, turn them off. By that time you should be high enough that you can continue accelerating on the turbojet alone (so long as you're flying fairly level). Wait until you stop accelerating, start losing altitude or the turbojet chokes, then turn the RAPIERs back on. Was it a nose-up flip during reentry? What sort of angle of attack were you using at the time? Adding some Vernors around the nose will let you recover from a lot of high-altitude whoopsies, BTW. Is this in flight or on takeoff? Might just be a "designed for FAR" issue. The stock drag model is radically different, and it's particularly punishing on higher part-count planes. Under FAR, it climbs happily at a 30°-50° pitch and shouldn't flip unless you try to climb vertically or use crazy high angles of attack. Try to keep the nose within 15° of the prograde vector. Also, and I only mention this because it's happened to me once or twice: are you certain that the game hadn't reset your throttle to 50%?

Just as many canards with the stock wings; it's a consequence of the rear-biased lift of aft delta designs. Higher lift deltas would increase that issue, not reduce it. I like having plenty of all-moving surfaces up front for stratospheric/hypersonic pitch authority; they're there for control, not lift. I usually shuffle the wings back as far as I can and pull the CoM forwards as far as I can specifically to allow me to squeeze another set of AV-R8s etc on without upsetting the CoL/CoM relationship. If I had a tweakable to slightly reduce the lift of the deltas, I'd probably use it quite often. Big wings are primarily for heavy loads and low stall speeds (the U2 is an obvious counterexample, but those things are fragile skinny razors); Skylon has stubby little winglets (and canards) for a reason. If I wanted to lose most of the canards, all that needs to be done is shift a bit of weight around and shuffle the deltas forwards a smidge.

I don't have any problems with fragility or lack of lift, and I find the variety of structural and strake pieces immensely useful. And, like everything SP+, they look a lot better than stock. Aesthetics come down to individual taste of course, but: