Wanderfound

You can, but "should"...that depends. Dihedral increases roll stability, anhedral increases roll agility. Both also add a bit of longitudinal stability, increasing with distance from CoM. Balancing anhedral vs dihedral on wings and tailplanes (horizontal) can provide a bit of longitudinal stability at the cost of a bit of lift. Angling vertical stabilisers (tailfins) outwards gets a reduced version of the dihedral tailplane effect, but trades longitudinal stability for lift. Everything in airframe design is a matter of competing tradeoffs. If you're having roll stability issues, what you want is either longer wings or more dihedral (wing, tailplane, or both). But balancing the two against each other for weight distribution or lateral stability reasons can work well:

Cool. Make sure you collect some pretty screenshots for us.

1) As mentioned already, hijack the Lights or Abort action groups. I generally use Abort to close intakes and Lights to toggle Turbojets. I'll also set up the landing lights to toggle on and off with the Landing Gear hotkey, so they're always on when lowered. 2) Keep an eye on your available air and you never need to flame out by surprise. ​Kerbal Flight Data to the rescue once again:

That's how I do Buran-ish vertical launch shuttle designs, BTW; one engine under the shuttle, one under the disposable tank, tweak thrust limiters in flight to maintain balance.

I was bored. Not an original concept, though; stole it from the RAF...

I do a fair bit of fine-tuning with engine angle and position, but I'm typically aiming at minimising thrust torque in vacuum so that I don't waste RCS or need to carry excess SAS units to maintain heading during interplanetary burns. Nothing as annoying as taking your spaceplane to orbit and then finding that it likes to do loops whenever you open the throttle. Due to the ability of aerodynamic control surfaces to compensate, you can get away with quite a lot of thrust asymmetry while flying in atmosphere. For example: ...flies fine on either engine or both. As suggested above: if your CoM is shifting significantly in flight, you'd probably be better off getting that facet of the design sorted out directly. Spread the fuel load laterally and centre it around CoM, use fuel lines to control the order in which the fuel drains. There are times when this isn't possible due to practical or aesthetic reasons; this is where temporarily locking off tanks with tweakables comes into play. Even a purely linear fuselage plane can maintain balance if you build it right. If you can, keep the CoM/dCoM offset at less than one metre. It isn't absolutely necessary, but RCS Build Aid does make this task a lot simpler.

If you're getting pitch oscillation, you probably need to lower the pitch kp value in the PID tuner. The SAS is overcorrecting in pitch, causing the oscillation; reducing kp will make it less prone to doing that. I haven't been giving specific numbers as KPA uses different PID scales depending on whether you're using it in "stock SAS" mode or "surface SAS" mode. Stock mode is purely a tuner for the standard SAS; surface mode adds some extra KPA trickery. I tend to use it in stock mode, with the settings as described above: pitch and yaw kp cut to 5000, roll kp to 3000. Scalar values for all three set to 500. Other values left at default. The numbers are different in Surface mode, but the principle is the same: if you're getting oscillation, cut kp on that axis. If doing so causes the plane to gradually drift off course, lower the scalar.

Don't just use the rotation tools; the offset tool is also very useful for balancing spaceplanes. Shifting lateral engine pods and wings up or down a smidgeon can neutralise the CoM/CoT misalignment issues that often trouble spaceplanes. It also lets you get away with offset engines like this: Fire up RCS Build Aid, switch it to engine mode, make sure only the active engines are in the first stage and then wiggle things about until you get the torque figure as close as possible to zero. Works for offset engines as well as neutralising the nose-up torque frequently caused by the off-centre mass of the vertical stabiliser.

If you're planning on messing with spaceplanes, I would strongly recommend Kerbal Flight Data, Kerbal Flight Indicators and Kerbal Pilot Assistant. KPA provides, amongst other things, a PID tuner: absolutely essential to make SAS function properly within FAR/NEAR. KFD provides the data displays seen beside the navball in the image below; KFI gives the horizon/direction/vector markers you can see in the main view.

Nope, no huge launch. Build one station (they aren't that big, generally just a few Hitchhikers or Mk2 cabins plus a docking port, sometimes a research lab) and launch it to LKO (virtually free if you build it as a spaceplane, medium expense if launched as a rocket). Turn off SAS for five seconds, Kerbin Orbital Station contract done. Then fly the whole thing to Minmus (an LV-N can get it there for very little fuel). Minmus Orbital Station done. Then land it on Minmus (not hard, Minmus has sod-all gravity and perfectly flat landing zones). Minmus Planetary Base done. That'll add up to half a million √ or so, and there's nothing to stop you from dropping off a couple of satellites on the way, doing some "science from..." contracts, etc. - - - Updated - - - Rocket launch example: this was a station with a lab, that held eight Kerbals, which I used for a "station in solar orbit" contract. It also doubles as a tug. Build: Launch: Flight: Dropping the booster: Acting as a tug, moving my fuel depot around: As always, though, you can do this a lot cheaper if you do it with spaceplanes instead of rockets. Like so:

Satellites won't do anything except fulfil contracts unless you install mods such as Scansat or RemoteTech. But you can launch an ultralight satellite into any Kerbin/Mun/Minmus orbit for √15,000 or less, and you don't have to leave them in place afterwards. Your contract satellite can fulfil a sat contract or two, then zoom off as an interplanetary probe or whatever. The key to making station contracts (all contracts, really) work is to combine multiple high-value contracts into a single mission. That "Base on Minmus" mission can also be an orbital station, and launch a satelite or rescue a Kerbal on the way there, and plant a flag when it lands, and... For a couple of demonstrations of how to do profitable satellite or station launches, see http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Satshot/story and http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Spaceplane%20economics/story There's also a nice little demonstration of the power of ultralight satellites in this one: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Stratos%20N/story (most of the above is spaceplane and FAR based, but the basic principles illustrated work just as well for vertical rockets and stock aero)

Looks like a well-built plane to me; once you get the PID tuning right it should fly cleanly. Exactly how to set up the PID tuner [1] varies a bit based on ship design and personal preference [1], but I usually get good results from cutting all kp values to 1/3rd of default and scalar values to 1/2 default. [1] For those that don't know already, this is a thingie that allows you to adjust the sensitivity of your SAS. [2] Basically, more control authority = needs lower kp values.

"Not rolling at all" is not a beneficial design feature for planes; they need to be able to roll in order to make banked turns. "Doesn't roll unless I tell it to, but then rolls quickly and stably holds a desired bank angle" is what you're after. The image provided is a bit too unclear to be useful; much better would be to post FAR stability analysis screens at the speeds and altitudes in which the problem occurs, and images from directly above and to the side in the SPH with CoM/CoL/CoT indicators turned on. We also need to know if any of your control surfaces are set as ailerons or elevons (i.e. tweakables set to influence roll). It'd also be good to know if you're using a PID tuner (you should; Kerbal Pilot Assistant is a good mod that includes a PID tuner).

Today? The original version of Civilisation had a built-in feature where a quick click and drag from the top of screen would pull a fake spreadsheet image over your game. Much appreciated by office drones everywhere.

Yellow plane = Kerbpaint. For me, to build airbrakes I use nornal FAR control surfaces set as maximised opposed spoilers. Place them behind CoM for stability, make them the same strength as the rest of your wings. Haven't torn one off yet. If they're too far forwards they may cause instability problems at hypersonic speeds, but they'll still generally be usable at subsonic speeds. Stick 'em up back and you can use them at whatever speed and altitude you like.

You've got the speed (1,400m/s is close to top speed for a FAR jet) but not the altitude; take it to 30,000m before switching to rocketry.

You can't reach orbit with a point-source thrust; you need a circularisation burn. Enough decouplers will do for a direct exit, though; for example... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/39947-From-the-launchpad-to-the-Mun-in-13-seconds

As Jovus says, it's due to the changes in FAR. Unless you adjust the back-end settings to substantially crank the difficulty (just selecting the hard toggle is not enough), DRE is basically irrelevant. I used to have fun melting canards on a regular basis; since the changes to FAR, I haven't even managed to generate a high temperature warning. They're both acting realistically, it's just that Kerbin is too small to generate serious reentry heating without the soupmosphere.

Another option for budget Kerbal crew delivery: 1) Launch any of the light-cargo spaceplanes to LKO. 2) In the cargo bay, stick together a few Mk1 lander cans or capsules, along with an RCS tank and a pair of monoprop engines. A crewed version of my standard satellite, basically. 3) After taking your spaceplane to LKO, send your passengers off to their final destination in the minimalist space taxi.

Non-nuke spaceplanes to Minmus or the Mun aren't too hard; just shave the jets down to the minimum required for take off, and use the weight saved for extra fuel tanks. Having an Aerospike or LV-909 on board for high-efficiency space thrust doesn't hurt, either. It's massively out of date now, but the Longreach was built to do KSC-Minmus-KSC without refuelling (back when I was playing with my own self-imposed nuke ban). If you add a fuel stop in LKO, all but the smallest ships here should be able to visit Minmus. But if you want to go interplanetary without nukes, you either need a gigantic ship that's horrible to fly or drop tanks. Personally, I prefer drop tanks. Both the Impatienze and the Cacafeugo are designed to use drop tanks. The Impatienze demonstrates the conventional way to do it (and was also built to be able to lift its own tanks into orbit, albeit over a few trips), while the Cacafeugo was designed to show off some more complicated tricks. The basic key is to set the droptanks in line with CoM (so as not to disrupt the CoM/CoT alignment) and trailing behind the thrust (so that acceleration pulls them straight, allowing you to use an arbitrarily long line of docked tanks).

Parts are the lag makers, not mass. If you like the pylons, have you tried hardpoints instead? Similar effect, but no risk of decoupling. They worked well on this sailing ship design: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92653-K-S-S-Kraken-three-masted-sailing-ship Those radial engines on the central tank are intended to be purely decorative? They won't give you any thrust where they're placed.

"Big and heavy" is not compulsory: The last one is arguably a bit big, but it is carrying 26 Kerbals... There is a bit of an efficiency cost in hauling your wings through space, but there's enough range available to a nuke ship that there's usually plenty of ÃŽâ€V to spare. And given the hefty cost of interplanetary ships, the benefit of 100% recovery is nothing to sneeze at. And with DRE in play, bringing a large non-winged ship through reentry is extremely challenging. Besides, interplanetary spaceplanery pays for itself in style and cool.

A simple and easy stock design that works: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbnz9s8k9h7gwgb/Kerbodyne%20Benchmark%20StockAir.craft?dl=0 Give that a shot and report back; it will help us figure out if the problem is in design or piloting.

I'd recommend giving career a go for now; play for too long in Sandbox and you'll never learn how to build small and efficient. Going to the Mun with infinite mass and money is one thing; doing it on the cheap within a 30pt/18t limit with no manoeuvre nodes is a whole 'nother thing. Or learn to build spaceplanes.

We'd need more details: what parts, what speed, what altitude, what were the FAR mass tweakables set to, etc. Offset spoiler/flaps (one up, one down) work well as stock-FAR airbrakes: