Wanderfound

Go to strategy building, fire up one of the "convert science to funds" strategies. Sorted. (and, of course, all of the old funds-gathering tricks: probes in orbit for "science from..." contracts, etc)

Yes. If you look at your FAR analysis screens, you'd likely have bucketloads of red on the longitudinal numbers. You need stabilisers in vertical and horizontal axes. Use a tailfin (AKA "vertical stabiliser"), just like real aircraft do. Have a poke at the third post in the Kerbodyne thread linked below if you need some clues on how to use the analyses.

Just put a Stayputnik probe into a Munar orbit. Spin stabilisation works.

A bit of VTOL helps a great deal, and the 1/3 gravity on Duna means that a handful of ventral Vernors will do the job.

As a datapoint, I've been having no trouble slowing down during FAR/DRE reentries, even during near-vertical suborbital hops up to 150km or so. Are you folks keeping the heatshield side pointed the right way? Are you brinng down more than just a capsule?

I usually try to take a crew with a wide range of courage and stupidity ratings; makes for good screenshots.

There's nothing as smooth as the KSC runway or Minmus iceflats, but there are plenty of areas smooth enough to land on. See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/101944-Kerboduna-Part-1 for a demonstration.

* The tweakables are generally not measured in degrees. * You can see what the settings do in the SPH if you run an analysis with them activated (i.e. use one of the FAR analysis screens with the "spoilers on" button ticked, and you'll see the spoilers deflect). * Pitch/yaw/roll: usually you want to set a control surface to do one thing only. Set elevators to 100% pitch and 0% yaw/roll; rudders to 100% yaw and 0% pitch/roll; etc. * Control Deflection is the maximum range of a control surface; think of it as the throttle limiter for your elevators/ailerons/etc. Wind it down if the plane is overly twitchy, wind it up if you're struggling to get it to do what you want it to. * Flap/spoiler in FAR doesn't mean quite the same thing as flap/spoiler in reality. In FAR, both flaps and spoilers can deflect up or down; spoilers default to up, flaps default to down, but both of them can be set to negative values to deflect the other way. The key difference is that spoilers use a single action group to toggle between full deflection and no deflection, while flaps use a pair of action groups to deflect more or less in a four-step range. Spoilers default to being linked to the brakes action group, but you don't need to leave them there. Setting a control surface as both a flap and a spoiler doesn't work; it has to be one or the other. * AoA is a bit complicated to explain, but it's a control surface setting that causes them to react to the plane's Angle of Attack (the angle between where the nose is pointing and the direction in which the plane is actually moving, shown by the surface prograde vector). It's what you'd use if you wanted a control surface to stay parallel to the airflow regardless of how hard you pull the nose up. * Wing mass: default strength of 1 represents fighter-strength wings: almost unbreakable, but very heavy. 0.5 is plenty strong enough for anything that a sensible pilot should do; 0.25 is strong enough to go to space if flown carefully. The mass tweakable does affect connection strength.

Another here. Having the message onscreen throughout launch is especially irritating. I know that you got plenty of complaints about parachute failure, but really: anyone who pops a chute while supersonic deserves to have an educational lithobrake.

It's good for early part tests; you don't need SAS if you're just flying straight up on a suborbital trajectory. Just strap some tailfins on to keep it flying straight-ish.

It wasn't?

And larger wings. I'm hanging out for some chunkier stock jets, personally; having to strap 8+ turbojets on just to get off the runway isn't the best. Stock 2.5m jets, maybe?

As suggested by others: don't just focus on repair. Engineers build stuff. So, when they finally get around to introducing KAS-style functionality, that's what engineers are good for. Setting up fuel lines and struts, constructing orbital and planetary bases, etc.

While I'm generally a fan of the new career limitations I do think that the action group one should be reconsidered. The inability to e.g. raise and lower landing legs all at once is neither realistic or fun. Edit to add: disregard, see Sal's post above.

You don't need intakes to test; just strap a jet engine or two on the side of an SRB and go for it.

Those are all designed for FAR, BTW; no guarantees that they'll work in stock aero.

RCS Build Aid is absolutely essential for VTOL design; it is very tricky to get the thrust properly balanced without it. For some example designs, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1527285&viewfull=1#post1527285 and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1557239&viewfull=1#post1557239 and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1527539&viewfull=1#post1527539 and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1529447&viewfull=1#post1529447

Yup. With ye olde version, the Constellation works but is a bit of a pig to fly. With the new one, it should fly like a proper Kerbodyne design. My design output is likely to slow down for a while: combination of holiday nonsense and an urge to focus on career mode for a bit. I might get some useful low-tech designs from that, though.

I tend to get overheating issues if I pack 'em in that tight; space 'em out with girders.

Testing a large SRB in orbit is one of the easiest missions around; empty the fuel and it's a featherweight payload, or trigger it via action groups / right click and lift to orbit on the SRB itself, keeping the staging for when the test is due. What's the problem? Part-test contracts aren't the best source of √, but they frequently provide easy access to useful amounts of science.

The engine torque measuring ability of RCS Build Aid is very valuable for designing for vertical shuttle launches. The new widgets are a big help, too: tweaking part placement with precision is the key to making this work. Even if you're balanced at launch, a shuttle-style design is almost certain to become unbalanced during flight as the fuel load burns off. But you can predict ahead of time which way your shuttle is going to tip, and can maintain balance in flight by monitoring pitch deflection and adjusting thrust limiter tweakables. Try to have either the booster or the shuttle's main engine as a single-engine setup: fiddling thrust limiters in flight on engine clusters is a pain. Basic design (Energia-based, no side boosters for simplicity): 1) Shuttle, designed to fly straight on its own engines without any external tank attached. Build it like a conventional rocket plane. 2) Large disposable fuel tank with a chunky engine (Mainsail, KR-2L, etc) stuck on it. Attach the tank with decouplers to the shuttle's ventral surface. Fiddle the position of the tank and engines so that the vehicle has neutral engine torque when fully fuelled. If you can't achieve this through positioning, you need to use a bigger or smaller engine on either the tank or the shuttle. 3) Use fuel hoses so that all engines begin by drawing from the disposable tank. 4) As this tank drains and the CoM shifts, the shuttle will increasingly pitch up. Gradually tweak down the thrust limiter of the tank engine during flight to compensate; monitor pitch deflection to guide how much to tweak. A few Vernors are helpful to cover imperfections, too.

Noticed it while I was tweaking the position of the lateral pods on this one: I'm not sure if it'd occur when selecting a central piece.

There appears to be some weirdness involving the new gizmos: when using RCS Build Aid to measure engine torque, the torque figure reported changes substantially (i.e. +/- 100 or more kN) when you select a part using the position offset gizmo, even before you do anything to move the part. It goes back (to what I think is the correct figure) when you stop using the gizmo, but it's a bit of a pain: while you're using the repositioning tool to shift your engines about is exactly when you most need to see an accurate torque figure.

The first of the new Mk 3 range: the Kerbodyne Constellation. Story at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Constellation/story Alternate format at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/slideshow/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Constellation Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/cy2rq02dnp71mys/Kerbodyne%20Constellation.craft?dl=0 (warning: first attempt at one of these. Smooth handling, but not quite as effortless to orbit as I'd like)

Had to wait for the (just updated) RCS Build Aid. The first one up has some funky offset thrust things going on...