Wanderfound

Pitch-up problems imply not enough horizontal stability. Beef up the horizontal tailplane, shift canards rearwards, pull CoM forwards. Not sure about V*(L/D). Velocity times Lift over Drag, but I can't think of what it would imply apart from general high speed slickness.

I've been wanting to do a vid on how to use FAR analyses to correct aerodynamic flaws, but I actually have a really hard time designing deliberately bad planes. Anyone feel like anonymously (or not, your call) donating a "broken" plane to be fixed on video? Preferably something that can be fixed while still at least vaguely resembling the original, but with as much diverse red (i.e. spread out throughout the analysis, not just in one area) as possible in the numbers.

Wing pieces.

Can I push it a bit harder? Good to go... Starting from the edge of the flats, to give me as much room as possible... Downforce thrusters on at 200m/s. Lined up to miss the hills... Still good. Is that horizon still level? 500m/s... Uh-oh... Might be time to try and climb... Oops.

This:

Full album at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Iceracing/Take%205/story

To agree and disagree: If we take action of appropriate magnitude in the near future we still have a decent prospect of making ourselves substantially less screwed. The house being on fire already is not a good reason to continue pouring petrol on it. But the barriers to having that action occur are political, not scientific. And hence beyond the scope of this forum; the inevitably political discussion around barriers to climate action would not be suited to the social norms here. Apart from anything else, the usually beneficial rules of enforced politeness here prohibit treating denialist misinformation with the contempt it deserves. Compulsory civility can be used to manufacture false equivalency, and as the recent debate around vaccination shows, there are times when massed withering scorn is the most appropriate and effective response to harmful nonsense. So I mostly stay out of these threads apart from providing an occasional reference. Discussing climate change, and advocating for responses to it, is extremely important. But doing it here will achieve little apart from ruining the civility of the forums, and it is an issue of sufficient importance that it's worth advocating for in venues where it can be given the full-throated support it deserves. So thinks me, anyway. YMMV.

We did one: http://mudancasclimaticas.cptec.inpe.br/~rmclima/pdfs/destaques/sternreview_report_complete.pdf Cost of transition to sustainable energy: about 1% of global GDP. Consequence of not acting: catastrophic. Of course, that was nine years ago, and all we've done since then is to accelerate carbon production. And the catastrophes are starting to occur. There's methane bubbling out of Siberia much faster than expected (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis#Current_outlook), and there's some suggestion that we're already seeing climate-driven wars (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/03/02/study_climate_change_helped_spark_syrian_civil_war.html). That's the big danger; the chance that we're going to trash ourselves by more traditional means before runaway warming has the chance to do it for us. Climate change is a threat multiplier; it makes all of the existing problems of the world more volatile. Water shortages, food shortages, refugee flows; these are all factors that are known triggers for war. Desperate people do desperate things. BTW, for population, see: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies?language=en Things aren't quite as bad as they seem on that issue.

Something else that has a docking port, antenna, power and variable passenger capacity: spaceplane. Send it up, bring it down, cost = fuel. I've been pretending that they're actually space tourism contracts. Handy for training up bulk numbers of Kerbals, too.

Some examples... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1610271&viewfull=1#post1610271 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1626248&viewfull=1#post1626248 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1636232&viewfull=1#post1636232 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1766813&viewfull=1#post1766813 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1739701&viewfull=1#post1739701

You're definitely the leader on style points, though. I may have to send up a Mk2 design; the current one becomes rather hard to control after 300m/s. Somebody has to crack the 500m/s mark...

Start stationary on an ice sheet; finish stationary on an ice sheet. Within those limits, it's all cool. There's speed to be had with an orbital skim, but the relatively fast rotation of Minmus makes it difficult to target your periapsis onto an ice sheet from the heavily elliptical orbits that you'd need for serious speed. For the real performance tip [1], however: remember that it's a speed run, not a drag race. Acceleration is irrelevant: ground handling and fuel supply have a much greater impact. [1] I hate giving this clue, because the SRB/KR-2L powered ships are so much fun to watch. But top speed and acceleration are largely orthogonal in this situation.

Vernors = stability during flight, budget low-grav VTOL. RCS = docking. Vernor thrusters are much too powerful for docking use.

The competition is getting close, I'd better build some buffer zone... 361.1m/s. Full album at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Iceracing/Take%204/story

My favourite quickie sat-launcher, BTW: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Satshot/story

It ain't just satellites; if you can't pull half a dozen contracts out of a single mission, you just ain't trying. Spaceplane to Minmus? That's "science from..." Kerbin and Minmus, station contracts above/on Kerbin/Minmus, rescue a Kerbal from orbit, plant flag on Minmus, survey contracts at Minmus, etc etc. And, of course, you can drop off some satellites on the way, each of which can fulfil several satellite contracts (and act as Scansat probes afterwards, or Remotetech relays, or...). See http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Spaceplane%20economics/story for an example.

Any cargo bay with a ramp is not a stock part. You probably need to ask in the thread of the mod the part came from.

Small roverage: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1504987&viewfull=1#post1504987

Efficient enables aesthetic; it's a lot easier to sacrifice a few ÃŽâ€V for the appearance's sake when you know that you've got 1,000ÃŽâ€V to spare.

Another run: A good top speed... That almost ended in disaster... But was saved by the always-calm(ish) Ferton: And came back to a safe landing: Full album at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Iceracing/Take%203/story - - - Updated - - - Nice recovery on the second one.

I'd rather do it with shielded panels and inline batteries, but the weight penalty is too punishing on a microprobe. The sooner they eliminate massless parts the better.

A better run: 252m/s. Full album at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Iceracing/Take%202/story

Clip away; any clipping advantage will be primarily cosmetic, anyway.

Revival of an old challenge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/112497-Spaceplane-Speed-Challenge-Redux-Minmus-Ice-Races

Okay; this was one of my more popular challenges last year, so I thought I'd revive it. The challenge: 1) Build an SSTO spaceplane (winged, HOTOL, at least partially air-breathing, doesn't drop any parts). 2) Fly it to Minmus (no refueling). 3) From a standing start, see how fast you can get moving while in contact with the Minmus iceflats. 4) Bring your ship back to stationary on the surface of the iceflats. Stock parts only, FAR/NEAR/Stock all allowed. If you're planning on using a mod and you aren't sure if it's allowed, ask. Do it as a pure surface skate or take off, go to orbit and skim the ice at periapsis; whatever tactics you like, so long as you start and finish stationary on the ice and do it all with the fuel load you started with. Post screenshots of yourself stopped on the ice before and after, a screenshot of your maximum speed and a couple of shots proving that you did fly it from KSC to Minmus. Minmus Ice Racing Championship: Leaderboard Wanderfound, 503.5m/s eddiew, 457.9m/s UnusualAttitude, 300.6m/s Kuzzter, 207.5m/s LordFjord, 129m/s - - - Updated - - - Demonstration run: 142.1m/s. Can go a lot faster, but this is just a demo run. Full flight at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Iceracing/story