Wanderfound

BTW: As a demo of how to load and unload rovers on the Mun. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1558757&viewfull=1#post1558757

Looking okay so far. The cargo bay docking ports should work where they are, although turning off radial attachment while mounting the payload would make it easier. The first tweak I'd do is to shift the lateral tanks forwards until CoM and dCoM coincide. It also needs some sort of vertical stabiliser.

On the flats, but bonus points for size:

Thanks. Loving the new Surface Smart ASS modes, by the way. The horizontal velocity is very handy for VTOL flight and zero-atmosphere horizontal landings.

Build and fly it right and you can get a conventional SSTO spaceplane to orbit in under four minutes: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90354-Spaceplane-speed-challenge-shortest-elapsed-time-from-runway-to-orbit JATO boosters are fun, though. Strap some RT-10s on near CoM and whoosh.

If you run fuel lines from a tank direct to engines, they will always draw fuel via that tank. If there's no input to that tank, that's the limit of those engine's fuel supply. We could give better advice if you included a screenshot.

"Level Flight" does need to be defined. Even in a fully committed zoom climb, there's still a moment of level flight at the top of the arc.

Might be finally time to get that lab-carrying spaceplane done...

To protect stuff from the wind in FAR, you need to do it properly: fairings and cargo bays. Just part clipping it under the surface won't work; FAR will still treat it as externally mounted. If you right click on parts, you should see a message saying "shielded=false" or "shielded=true". If it ain't shielded, then it's subject to aerodynamic failure. It's possible to build a rocket that can cope with hitting the lower atmosphere at Mach 6, but it's usually not worth the bother. If you're not in a spaceplane, you generally want to be reentering in a bare capsule. Especially if DRE is in play.

You'd probably get some use from http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1353891&viewfull=1#post1353891 and http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing/story

Quibbling rather than disagreeing (), but you don't actually need to reach space. The higher the altitude the better, but you can start the "stone-skimming" technique from as low as 40,000m. The friction is low enough up there that there is very little speed lost to drag, especially if you keep your AoA minimised. It's basically the technique that the Silbervogel was designed to use: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel You do want to be up around Mach 5 at the start, though.

Off-axis ("tilted") orbits aren't caused by poor design, they're caused by poor piloting. For an equatorial orbit, you need to keep your bearing on 90° the whole way up. Low-orbit inclination changes are very ÃŽâ€V expensive, but you don't need to do them if you keep it in the right direction during ascent. The rocket design may alter the difficulty of doing that, however. Some tailfins with control surfaces (e.g. AV-R8 or Delta Deluxe) may help.

Engine runtime doesn't really do it either, though. If you want to travel long distance on Kerbin, the quickest and most fuel efficient way to do it is as a suborbital hop, with the engines shut down for a significant portion of the trip. Once you've got some speed and altitude built up, it's not too hard to glide around Kerbin with no thrust at all. You bounce off the lower atmosphere like a rock skimming over a pond. In FAR, anyway; stock aero planes glide more like bricks.

Depends on situation and preference. The key to a multipurpose cargo spaceplane is to place the cargo bay directly on CoM; that way you can alter the cargo mass as much as you like while having minimal impact on the aerodynamic balance.

Other SAS solutions: * Wind your control authority down to the bare minimum required. * Turn off SAS and rely on the FAR flight assistance toggles alone. Either of these solutions can work, but neither is ideal. Go the PID tuner if you can. Edit to add: I just realised that the SAS correction stuff wasn't actually in the piloting guide. Sorry about that; fixed now.

I prefer IVA to external view, but it's totally impractical without RPM. Yet another mod that should be stockified ASAP.

DRE and maximum speed dives make a fun mix:

They also have a better speed/thrust curve in FAR. Turbojets accelerate faster, but RAPIERs have a better top speed.

Not that I know of. As rules of thumb, though: * Elevators at extreme back and/or front, ailerons spread laterally near CoM, elevons only if you don't have a good spot for ailerons. * More pitch authority at the back than the front. * Enough control authority to make the plane do what you want it to, but no more than that; how much is too much is largely a matter of taste. Enough control authority to pull out of a steep dive at high altitude is also enough control authority to tear your plane in half at low altitude. High performance comes with an inevitable cost in tolerance for clumsy piloting; there's a reason we don't put learner drivers in Dodge Vipers.

I think the coming biome completion should reduce this a fair bit. When there's more science available for exploration, there's less motivation to grind Kerbinside science. The increasingly Tycoon-ish nature of the main game is inevitably going to make it a bit less sandboxy, but that's why sandbox mode will always remain available.

Ladders. You can do airport buses if you want, but the simplest way is to just spawn a few Hitchhiker pods onto the runway, exit the Kerbals and recover the pods. And, as mentioned by others: land on the runway, taxi to your parking spot.

Once you've arrested your initial descent, you need to pull the nose down to hold that altitude. If you're too high and too fast you may not be able to, but Mach 6 at 25,000m shouldn't present any problems.

A key point here: why are nodes bundled at all? Why not have each tech advance unlock a single part?

It doesn't help. You can deorbit a spaceplane direct from interplanetary if you do it right, but if you're already struggling it's worthwhile starting from the easiest spot possible. Begin in a 70x70 orbit, and drop your periapsis as little as possible (about 25km is good). Don't worry about reaching KSC for now, just try and make it alive to sea level. Your primary job during reentry is to level off; once that's done, you're in control of your own fate. If you can't level off, you're essentially just reentering in a very poorly shielded capsule.

Speaking of rebalancing...I would like to see the LF-N nerfed in some way. Not necessarily through ISP or thrust; a major price increase would probably do the job. At the moment, there is very little reason to use the high-efficiency LFO vacuum engines outside of landers; they just can't compete with the LV-N. Keeping the ISP characteristics of the LV-N but beefing up the cost to make it a very expensive option would give some viability to Poodles and LV-909's.