PaladinFoster

Boosters basically are obsolete the second you unlock jet engines. They get you higher, albeit slower, and are guaranteed to not run out of fuel before they run out of atmosphere. I'm sure this will no longer be true once you actually start having to pay for parts in Career Mode though.

Maybe we should pressurize the cabin?

Personally I like the stability of the tilted engine configuration. It keeps the craft pretty stable while pitching downward, so moving around with it isn't so much of a balancing act. With a vertical setup the craft has a tendency to nosedive into the ground when you pitch down.

I'm glad you like it....I think.

So after doing some experimenting with parts in B9 Aerospace, I ended up building this strange little airplane....VTOL....thing. It can take off vertically for sure, but I haven't been able to land it vertically yet. I have landed it though, so I dubbed it a VTOSL(Vertical Take-Off, Short Landing) for its concise use of runway space during landings. I'm a terrible pilot, so I'm hoping someone more skilled than I can fly it more gracefully. Video Demonstration: Modparts Used: B9 Aerospace Download Craft File: http://www./view/useq3ea23f33ras/VTOSL.craft

Wow thanks, I never thought that would be even remotely similar.

When in doubt, put struts all over it.

I'll give it a shot.

Never made it further out than Minmus before. I would have no idea what I'm even doing attempting to go to another planet.

B9, KW Rocketry, and KAS.

Wow, that's really incredible! I bet it flies like a dream once you get used to it! I wonder if there's a way you could set up some little vibrationy things like the ones they have in console game controllers to go off inside the board when you crash? Just for that extra bit of realism.

So far a thread already helped me think of a couple new ideas for exploring the Mun, so I think I'm off to a good start!

Today I learned a hard lesson in lander design. I attempted to land on the Mun and I realized that there was just barely enough fuel in the lander stage to actually slow down enough for a safe descent. Me, being a not so great pilot, managed to wait just a touch too long before burning and crashed into the surface at roughly 45mps. The whole thing exploded, but the command module bounced up into the "air" again for some reason. I realized it would hit the ground pretty hard when it did come back down, so I instructed Jebediah to bail out, and then guided him down with his thruster pack. So Jeb is now on the surface of the Mun with only his space suit to keep him alive, and only a few small pieces of the vehicle that was supposed to bring him home left. Nonetheless, he proudly planted a flag.

Well, yes, but I expect it would be a very boring one with only stock parts. I think the most useful thing you could build is a kind of recharge and resupply station for rovers. It would have a lot of large solar panels, a massive battery bank, and a few RTGs for generating lots of electricity to transfer into rovers, which can connect via a ring of small docking ports on the bottom. On top of this is a mobile processing lab and antenna array for processing surface samples gathered by the rovers and transmitting them back to Kerbin. It would actually be a pretty sweet science farm if you had the patience to set it up and then drive rovers all over the Mun to gather the samples and reports. Here's some screenshots of some examples I constructed on Kerbin to better visualize. Here we have the whole setup near the shore at KSC. Next is a close-up of the rover design. It's got a nice futuristic look if I do say so myself. It comes equipt with various scientific instruments for taking readings all over the Mun, as well as some RCS tanks and thruster blocks for jumping over those hills, craters, and canyons that are just impractical to drive through. A few RTGs extend the range, but can't quite keep up with the demands of the rover wheels forever. That's why we have a Clampotron Jr on the front. As you can see here, the Clampotrons don't quite link up properly on Kerbin with all it's powerful gravity pulling the base down. However, in the Mun's lesser gravity it should link up and allow for fuel transfer from that large RCS tank. Now let's take a closer look at the base. It has those large solar panel arrays to get all the juice it needs to run the mobile processing lab and communications array at the same time. A ring of RTGs along the top provide backup power during the Munar nights, and the massive battery banks provide plenty of storage for reserve power. The RCS tank should have enough monopropellant for many rover jaunts across the grey landscape, and resupply missions can be made easily with a specially designed rover to link up with the existing docking ports. The only problem is that this thing is HUGE and HEAVY. I got it out by the shore via some side-mounted SRB's and 4 big old parachutes, though landing it safely on the Mun will be a whole other ordeal. It would take a skilled pilot and some inventive engineering to build a lander that could lug it there. Have a detail shot on those parachutes for fun.

Thank you, I hope I'll be able to contribute something interesting.