Wanderfound

What the hell is the point of making that change? There are a heap of different situations that make you want to retract your solar; reentry, docking, payload deployment... Oh well, shielded panels on everything from now on then.

A quick demo of how to fly to orbit and back in the new aero: - - - Updated - - - Feel free to do whatever you want [1]. Welcome to KSP... [1] This thread is basically all my own designs; the "Kerbodyne SSTO Division" thing is just for fun. But if y'wanna borrow part or all of the name, that's fine; I've got no exclusive rights to anything.

It's a "how long is a piece of string" thing; there are too many other factors. But even in NuStock you should be well over 1,000m/s before lighting the rockets. You want to climb as fast as you can to 15,000m, then level off and build speed as you slowly ascend. I'll post a basic NuStock demonstrator tomorrow.

Stock, NuStock, NEAR, FAR or NuFAR? Why from Mach 2? That's an extremely slow speed for that altitude. You want to be over Mach 4 before you light the rockets.

Do the KFD temperature warnings work properly with the new heating system?

There's nothing wrong with physicless parts in general adding their weight to the parent object; it's a reasonable approximation that saves a lot of processing. But the idea that a heat shield should be treated that way is daft. They're heavy, and their mass is a fundamental part of how they work.

1) There doesn't seem to an option to unlock steering on the new medium landing gear. 2) RAPIER glow stays on even when the engine is throttled off.

It's just bad building; the stock ships are awful. I don't use KJR, and my stuff doesn't flap.

I just had a play with new aero, taking a basic single RAPIER Mk1 up and down. It's easy to accidentally pop above your jet altitude, and stock aero makes it hard to pull out of a dive without losing huge amounts of speed so a FAR-style climb & bounce doesn't work. So, take it to 15,000m and then flatten off to cut your climb rate to 10m/s or so. Stock ships can casually pull extended 15+G manouevres, but they lose a lot of speed in doing so. It's possible to lose control if you try very, very hard to do so, but it's easy to regain control. Stock ships cannot easily fly at low speed and high altitude; they lose too much speed at high AoA to manage it. Reentry is easy, but you have to do it stock-style: huge AoA and high-G S-turns. Stock aero ships still glide like bricks; if you run out of fuel, you're coming down fast. The newly increased jet fuel consumption is noticeable, but it's not a huge issue. I love the new landing gear (although you can't unlock the steering on it...) but it's annoying that the new wing parts aren't designed to be modular and don't come with a full set of matching control surfaces. - - - Updated - - - It's very altitude dependent (as it should be). Get up over 20,000m and you can go as fast as you like. - - - Updated - - - Also noticed: RAPIER glow stays on when the throttle is off.

Squee! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-90-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-14-7-4-2-15?p=1870281&viewfull=1#post1870281

Adding to the choir: I just had a play with the new stock aero, and while it is a large improvement for stock, FAR is in no danger of becoming obsolete. I'll probably be leaving KSP largely unplayed until FAR updates.

Playing Windward. ​Much of fun.

All your base are belong to you!

Not yet... Prize for the first person to create an asteroid-based Dyson shell around Dres?

Based on what I've seen of the previews, FAR will still have a large fanbase. The new aero looks better, but it's nowhere near FAR grade.

Kerbal Flight Data ​to stock ASAP. And let us move and resize the navball while they're at it.

Try this one:

I was thinking of something with skinny wings (for minimal drag in stall), canards as stabilators and as canards, with some hefty -AoA on both sets of pitch surfaces. Not worth designing anything until Monday, though... Windward is keeping me busy this weekend.

Watching the previews, and happily noting that the ISRU refinery parts will fit inside a Mk3 cargo bay. Self-refuelling spaceplane with drills hidden inside the bomb bay...

Most of my ridiculous AoA jobbies are small-winged deltas (often reverse delta) with AoA-sensitive canards and excessive TWR. Throw it into a major stall, high-speed VTOL on the tail.

In the meantime: RCS Build Aid includes markers for dry CoM and average CoM, and the FAR analysis screens include an option for "empty". - - - Updated - - - Seconded.

Not large at all if you've got nukes and don't load it up with tons of junk. Duna is only about 1,000m/s ÃŽâ€V to get to, you can aerobrake and parachute so capture and landing is free, and getting back up and home again is only a couple of thousand. A couple of FL-T800's will do it with a single nuke to push them. Without nukes, whatever it takes you to have 3,500+m/s ÃŽâ€V in LKO. Still not a huge rocket if you build efficiently.

I'm tempted to set up parallel design threads, one for stock and one for FAR.

The plane is asymmetrical for the same reason as all planes are: it has a tailfin. The CoM is likely a tiny bit above the CoT, resulting in pitch-up torque. You can zero this out (almost, anyway) by just angling the rocket motor a tiny bit. However, from your description it sounds like you might be getting yaw wobbles as well. The yaw stuff is aerodynamically caused, rather than being an offset thrust issue. As you ascend above 30,000m, the air becomes thinner. As the air thins, the tailfin has less to push against, reducing its power to stabilise the ship. With sufficient aerodynamic polishing you can eliminate those wobbles, but for now: vectored thrust, torque, piloting. A Vernor or a couple of linear RCS ports either side of the nose provides a lot of stability, and if you keep them toggled off except when needed they don't use that much fuel. Adding more torque can also help, as can ascending with a flatter profile so as to be moving at a faster speed at a lower altitude (using speed to compensate for thin air; the strength of the tailfin's stabilisation effect is all about how many air molecules hit it over a given span of time). I'd recommend having a look at my build videos. These are probably the most relevant: For the PID tuner: before takeoff, open up Kerbal Pilot Assistant. Change it over to Stock SAS mode, then open up the SAS presets. You should see something like this: Change Kp to 5,000 for pitch and yaw, 3,000 for roll. Change Scalar to 500 in pitch, roll and yaw. The purpose of this is to reduce the sensitivity of the SAS so that it doesn't overreact, forcing the plane into continuous pitch wobbles (as it tends to do when left untuned).

Hey, now you get to do it twice. Extended gameplay value!