Wanderfound

The most recent changes to FAR (improved skin drag) have made DRE rather pointless unless you mess around with the back end settings to crank up the difficulty a great deal. Even when using DRE's "hard" setting, craft tend to slow down to safe speeds long before reentry heating becomes an issue. It's not that there's anything wrong with either mod, it's just that the combination of realistic drag with Kerbin's low orbital speed makes reentry non-threatening unless you heavily modify things. So, for now, I've given up on DRE. Fortunately, there will be stock reentry heating in the soon-to-be-released KSP 1.0.

Howdy. There's an interstellar mod, but I wouldn't expect to see anything like it in the stock game. KSP aims to be a realistic-ish spaceflight game, not SF. Unfortunately, Einstein was right: FTL is not something that is realistically achievable within our current understanding of the universe. Interstellar travel in human (or Kerbal) timescales is not practical without it. But there's plenty of fun to be had within the Kerbol system, so it ain't a problem. As for mods, well, that depends a lot upon what sort of game you want to play, and how much difficulty/complexity you want to deal with. But this is my current list: AKI's Modified IVA Antenna Range ALCOR landing capsule + ASET props Aviation Lights Better Buoyancy Chatterer Contracts Window + Distant Object Enhancement Enhanced Navball Environmental Visual Enhancements FAR Firespitter (dll only) Goodspeed Hyomoto's MFD Raster Prop Monitor Kerbal Attachment System Kerbal Flight Data Kerbal Flight Indicators Kerbal Science Foundation's Mk3 Cockpit internal Hyperedit Kerbinside/Kerbal Konstructs (all of it) Kronal Vessel Viewer Infernal Robotics Mechjeb (w/FAR plugin and Mechjeb Embedded) Final Frontier Kerbal Pilot Assistant Planetshine RCS Build Aid Realchute Retro Future Sane Strategies Scansat Stage Recovery Station Science Stock Bug Fix TAC-LS Kerbal Alarm Clock Wernher Checker

Latest bit of Mk3 sillyness... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1704195&viewfull=1#post1704195

It's controllable enough as is, so long as you make sure to keep it below 30,000m until the SRBs burn out. Toggling the radials on and off works surprisingly well. I was expecting to have to mess about with the thrust limiters, but that isn't required. And if it gets out of hand, flicking one of the KR-2Ls off for a second or two rapidly brings it back on line, unless the SRBs are overpowering things at an altitude where the control surfaces don't work well. But a Shuttle-style orbiter is never going to be a sensible way to get to orbit. It was a daft thing in reality, and it's a daft thing in KSP. - - - Updated - - - 1) Are you using the PID tuner from Kerbal Pilot Assistant? Stock SAS does not work well with FAR unless you tune its sensitivity down a fair way. 2) If you could post some screenshots from immediately before/during/after the plane goes out of control, it would help in figuring out what's going on.

Do you have a bizarre attachment to retro-80's space tech? Would you like to get to orbit in the most overcomplicated and inefficient way possible? Then the Kerbodyne Titan Shuttle is just what you're looking for... Annotated test flight at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Titan%20Shuttle/story Alternate format at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/slideshow/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Titan%20Shuttle Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/jnpfrcb5rdeqn6l/Kerbodyne%20Titan%20Shuttle.craft?dl=0 (note: this does require some piloting skill to fly. Not recommended for serious use; built it just to prove I can)

Retro Future. The default camera that comes with RPM works fine, but the Retro Future ones look a lot nicer. Nice streamlined housing.

Interplanetary spaceplanery part IV:

As a mod-free option to help with interplanetary transfers, see http://ksp.olex.biz

Orbital delivery at high speed for trivial cost: Kerbodyne Econoboost. Easy and fast climber, fully stable at maximum acceleration. Get up to speed and altitude on the jets. Then kick in the boosters. Make use of the ram-air effect, but shut down the RAPIERs as soon as they switch modes. Don't climb too shallow if you want to avoid large drag losses. Circularise on the RAPIERs. Plenty of room for a satellite or probe. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/py728btexwbsj2w/Kerbodyne%20Econoboost.craft?dl=0

Gah; just recorded part IV of the Duna trip, only to have the OBS software crash and corrupt the video file as I reentered Kerbin. Slight delay...

I'd certainly be a customer for that. A multiplayer competitive build-your-own flight sim could be fun; Microsoft Flight Simulator meets Gratuitous Space Battles​.

Done right, it massively enhances stability at high angles of attack, which comes in particularly handy during the rocketry phase of a spaceplane ascent. It helps the plane resist the tendency to flip out of control when steeply pitched up. You'll notice a few occasions in the Labrys test flight video where I mention that I'm flying hands-off despite having the nose pitched up very steeply (look about the 7:30 mark, as well as around 17:50). It is a bit tricky to tune however, and seems to work best on rearset winged craft (Labrys, Stratos, Aero R). Get it wrong and you'll just have something that violently rebounds from pitch inputs, but get it right and it works very well. IIRC, the Labrys canards are set with -100% AoA, Max Deflection 40 and Pitch influence 50%. So, when they're acting as elevators, you effectively get a max deflection of 20 (40 would be too much for this ship), but they're able to rotate all the way to 40 in response to AoA. I'm fairly new to it myself, so I'm no expert on the AoA settings. I'd suggest just building some test ships (a basic delta wing design with some canards and a turbojet will do) and experimenting.

Duna isn't really any harder to get to than the Mun. The transfer burn is only about 1,000ÃŽâ€V, and the ability to land on parachutes makes touchdown a breeze. Getting back to orbit isn't quite as easy as the Mun, but it's still not hard; thin atmosphere, low gravity. I suspect that you'll be going a bit more conventionally than this, but the demonstration may be useful anyway:

Yup. Eight Turbojets, two RAPIERs, one Mainsail. The Mk3 stuff could definitely make use of 2.5m jets if they were available.

Sounds like you'd enjoy Kerbal Construction Time​.

137m/s, not 197; about 265 knots. Concorde lifted at about 220kn, but Concorde didn't have oxidiser tanks or a Mainsail strapped on the back. Kerbal aircraft tend to be substantially heavier than real-world equivalents, generally requiring higher take off speeds. Around Mach 0.35 is when I tend to lift the nose for most things, large or small. But if you can hit that speed halfway down the runway, it ain't a problem. Regardless, the point stands: that plane is lifting off, without a stall, with minimal control inputs, halfway down the runway. Chop the wings in half and it'll still lift off, just with a bit more effort.

Basic rule: unless you're building a WWI replica designed for extremely low-speed low-altitude aerobatics, forget about biplanes. For spaceplanes, a monoplane will always be better. And even heavy lifters may bot need as much wing as you think: Notice the easy takeoff? You could probably halve the wings on that and still get it to work.

Interplanetary spaceplanery part III: landing time.

It was more piloting incompetence than engineering failure; I could control attitude just fine, I just didn't do so. (partly for video comedy value, partly because I suck at flying VTOLs)

Keyboard flyer, with a movement disorder that makes even hitting the keyboard accurately a bit tricky at times. I do okay...

I can't believe that I was ever proud of the D7... And I never did find out how Google defined "shucks" in German. - - - Updated - - - Quick little VTOL demo:

Interplanetary spaceplanery part 2:

Don't forget to vote, peoples; every submission must be accompanied by a vote for someone else's ship.

Demonstration Gull VTOL conversion: Same old Gull airframe. With an added trick. Balanced VTOL thrust with Vernor stability assist sees you up cleanly. Just tilt forwards to begin motion. Or kick in the flight jets. Effortless transition. Turns easy. And still climbs well. Orbit with juice to spare. Still has plenty of cargo room. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6vyypofij2bh9g/Demonstration%20Gull%20VTOL.craft?dl=0

Yes yes yes yes yes. And add some sorting options while you're at it;'KerbalX has the right idea.