Mister Spock

Glad you asked, because I have Steam, and I'm also planning to start a game with "Better than Starting Manned." Plus I want to make an install with dozens of mods installed. I assume the folder we copy over is ... steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program.

Duna Base Alpha has been established! It was surprisingly easy. My first ship to arrive in orbit was a refueler; it did a little aerobraking but had to burn some to get captured by Duna. The second ship was an orbiter, holding 3 Kerbals, two of whom will staff my science station, which I cleverly forgot to staff with Kerbals when it left home. This ship did a more aggressive aerobrake and established orbit using only a little fuel. The third ship to arrive was my science station, but I made a course correction, then forgot to adjust my Kerbal Alarm Clock, so the station warped through the SOI change -- which messed up the course correction. So this ship had to do a major burn to make it into Duna orbit. Successful, though. Finally, my lander arrived, and it did an aggressive aerobrake -- too aggressive! To my chagrin, I started going down. So I went into landing mode, stopped my horizontal velocity, slowed vertical velocity, deployed two radial chutes, and ... landed smoothly. It was almost anticlimactic, it was so easy. I'm sure it's not always so easy there, but the descent was straightforward (though I'm not sure how much the chutes really helped). The only complication was that I didn't have time to plan *where* I would land, and I ended up on the dark side of the planet, so I couldn't see where I was landing until I was a few meters off the ground. I guess I got a bit lucky.

/daydream mode on: I'd make a mod that added a competitive endgame of some sort. Maybe you meet an alien race during your interplanetary exploration, and you have to compete to establish the best colonies, to extract resources most efficiently, maybe build up the best defenses, who knows. I know it's not a realistic idea, but since the OP asked, why not. I do have a little experience with C# and 3D modeling -- just enough to be dangerous or mediocre or both.

Yesterday I made my first successful SSTO vehicle, a single-engine spaceplane. (There are pictures at the end of my thread on spaceplane questions in the questions forum, so I won't repost them here.) It achieved a circular orbit around Kerbin, did a couple orbits for fun, and returned to Kerbin with no fuss, landing on an empty field. After that experience, I sent a rover out near the KSC to plant a flag so that I can more easily find KSC on the map for spaceplane landings. After that, I did course corrections for my fleet heading to Duna. I used PreciseNode's ability to change to conic option 0, which let me fine-tune each course while focused on Duna itself. I guess one can change to 0 by editing a config file in the stock game, but even if I'd thought to do that, I can't imagine dragging the stock maneuver nodes around accurately enough to make these 0.6 m/s course corrections I needed to get close to Duna. There's no way to make small increments to node values in stock, is there? I wonder about this because I'd like to try Better Than Starting Manned soon, but he says he supports no mods other than Deadly Reentry. Hmm. Anyway, Duna pics to come, today or tomorrow. Kinda busy in RL today, but we'll see.

Thanks. I did spend some time reading about both NEAR and FAR today. I will try one or both in due course. People in this thread have also mentioned some of the spaceplane and aerospace parts mods; those sound fun as well. And I hear ya about instrumentation. I've spent my share of time in computer flight sims (X-Plane, FSX), and I miss the instruments. Incidentally, I just put my new spaceplane to good use: a contract to test a radial decoupler. Activated the decoupler at 20,000 meters and 400 m/s, then turn around and flew due west -- and landed right on runway 27. Even with a perfect landing, though, I got only about 95% of my parts cost back. Still made a profit on the contract, though, plus (more importantly) some science. I know money is easy to come by in stock 24.2, but I plan to try something like Better than Starting Manned soon, maybe with no quickloading/reverting, so it will be nice to have reusable spacecraft.

Woot, I was able to repeat my success, and this time land, thanks to the installation of a nuclear generator, better-placed solar panels, and a larger battery. Here's the plane in the hangar. How's that COM/COL look? I tried to keep COM at the same height as COL, and to keep COM slightly ahead of COL. The plane seemed stable in both my flights. In flight, I paid particular attention to the drag numbers on the four ram scoops. Even though many parts in the assembly building carry a "drag" rating, only the ram scoops seem to generate a "drag" number dynamically during flight. The rear scoops usually showed a bit more drag than the front scoops, but not a lot. (In my earlier designs, the rear scoops were higher up, and they generated more drag, and I had trouble keeping the nose down. At first, I thought my nose-up trouble was because of mass imbalance, but it dawned on me that it was drag. I think.) Again, I'm playing stock; I gather FAR and NEAR improve on how drag works. Anyway, I was pleased that drag seemed pretty balanced throughout the flight. I made orbit easily, with plenty of oxidizer to spare. Although fuel was a bit touch and go by the end. I did a few joy-ride orbits. Nice circular orbit. More circular than some of my orbits obtained via rocketry, I'll tell ya! Again I saw no re-entry effects on the way down. I did the Scott Manley slalom, which he says the actual space shuttle used to do. I still don't know if it helps, but it gives me something interesting to do on the way down. Unfortunately, I had no idea where KSC is. I haven't marked KSC on my map; I suppose I should drive a rover past the runway and plant a flag or something so that I can spot it on the "M" map while trying to land. So I just aimed to land on, you know, land. Thanks again for all your help. Obviously I'm not done; my next goal is to design something that can carry a payload. (Accordingly, I may leave this thread "unanswered," although being new here, I'm not sure of the etiquette about that, since I've received so many helpful answers!) But I also need to earn some more science to buy the end of the tech tree, so I may spend some time with my fleet now approaching Duna before I return to the SPH.

Thanks, Slashy. OK, I modified the design, and it worked much better. It had CoL in line with, and directly behind, the CoM. And I divided the ramscoops, two in front, two in back, feeding air to the single RAPIER, still mounted in the rear. Big success! I took off with the front two ram scoops closed to reduce drag, and I achieved a faster takeoff speed, but I don't know if closing the front two was optimal. Once I was airborne, the nose wanted to go down a tad, with the CoM slightly ahead, but it was still a stable ride. I adopted a shallow angle of attack around 20,000 meters, and I climbed gradually and easily got over Mach 3. I opened the front ram scoops in the thinner air -- again, I'm not sure when is optimal. I got to orbit with just a few units of oxidizer to spare -- oxidizer, not fuel, was the only concern. Still, that tiny bit of oxidizer was enough to make it home. I burned a little retrograde to lower periapsis to around 40-45,000 meters (is burning retrograde still the right thing to do to de-orbit a spaceplane?), and then I tried Scott Manley's technique of doing slalom turns on the way down. I don't know if the slaloming helped, but for once, I kept control of the aircraft. With a shallow, slaloming descent, I never saw any re-entry effects at all! This is stock, not Deadly Re-entry, but it was still a new experience for me to re-enter without any red flames at all. That was great! I descended smoothly to about 2,000 meters, and then...I realized I'd placed my solar panels in a stupid place, blocked by fuselage, and I ran out of power, lol. It would've been an easy landing if I coulda just gotten the landing gear down! Even as it was, I had hopes I might survive, but nope. I am trying not to "revert to launchpad," so it was a total loss, but these planes I'm building are relatively cheap, and I have 5 million roots in my career bank. I'll post a pic after I tweak the design. It worked fine, but I obviously need to improve my power situation. Back to the drawing board *again.*

Thanks for the explanation. OK, back to the drawing board.

Don't worry, allmhuran, I'm not trolling -- just trying to learn from my mistakes, and I appreciate the time you and others have taken to help me. You're certainly right about my center of drag; that's why I wrote in my previous post that "I suspect I had too much drag up front and not enough in back." As I mentioned, I wasn't sure, because there's no visual indicator of center of drag in the SPH. I gather, then, that the all-important factor is where the air intakes are? In any case, I do intend to move some of them aft. That's why I'm posting here -- to learn from my errors. I didn't think my center of lift was ahead of CoM; they seem to be in the same spot to me. But yes, CoM should be slightly ahead of CoL, so I'll try moving the CoM forward a tad. For what it's worth, the plane seemed well-balanced when I flew it; it responded well to input. The main issue seemed to be drag, and my piloting skill. Wanderfound, thanks for the helpful tips on getting to orbit. I hadn't realized that I should flatten out at around 20,000 meters. I'll try that and your other suggestions.

I made more progress yesterday. First I tried a twin-hulled P-38 style fuselage, with lots of struts, but I didn't put enough ramscoops on it; I'll revisit that today. I had more success just designing a simple aircraft just to practice getting to orbit and home safely. I *almost* got this one into orbit, but I ran out of oxidizer and had to return home. (Pics below.) I put the fuel tanks along the centerline, with the outer ones feeding the inner one, and lots of ramscoops. I wish there were some visual guide to drag in the SPH; I suspect I had too much drag up front and not enough in back, and too much drag altogether at lower altitudes. I might try disabling a couple ramscoops at lower altitudes, as one of you guys suggested. Not sure of the optimal angle of ascent from KSC. Again, I think drag was slowing me down. I only just managed to reach takeoff speed, and my prograde vector was always below my nose. Here it is on the factory floor. Also, I had lots of trouble on re-entry: I basically lost control over the aircraft. Should I be trying to re-enter on a shallow glide path? As it was, I basically shut off my engines until I could get enough air intake, as I'd almost run out of oxidizer, and by the time I had air, I was already tumbling toward Kerbin. I gather that some people regard it as an abomination to include chutes on aircraft, but I try not to "revert" my designs, so I want to recover something. This is, incidentally, the main reason I keep designing aircraft with ugly unmanned pods instead of elegant cockpits.

Hey Wanderfound, I downloaded this .craft, but KSP won't load any spaceplanes when I have this .craft in my planes subfolder. Does it require FAR or some other mod?

Looks like fun! I look forward to reading more. I know BTSM requires Deadly Reentry. Are you using any other mods? I noticed nice fairings on your early ships; do those come with BTSM? I'm curious because I'd like to try BTSM soon myself.

After some debate, I sent this Kerbal into orbit to rescue my disabled ship. I'm still new to docking, but I'm getting the hang of it. In this shot, you can see that the ship on the right has a decoupler that is "stuck" over the engine, blocking it from firing properly. So the engine on the left will push the whole shebang home. And here's splashdown. I'm not using Deadly Reentry, and I doubt I would've gotten away with this caper in that mod. But I'm using mostly stock, so I made it through the atmosphere unscathed.

Thanks for the link. That's a beautiful plane! I've been using the nacelles for engines, but hadn't thought of putting ramscoops in the front half. Thanks for the suggestion. Incidentally, I have trouble getting the nacelles to "look" right on the (or under) the wing. They seem to attach in only one place, and they almost hover over the wing. It's the same almost cosmetic issue I have with control surfaces, which hover a couple inches above the wing. But I'll keep at it.

Spaceplanes are also more fun to fly, often. I've spent the day buzzing around Kerbin. "Flight over Kerbin" contracts are generally a lot easier with spaceplanes than rockets. A further question: I find myself using the little cube struts to attach ram scoops. And I've used a plate, or a long thin stick, to attach the rear landing gear. Are these sort of kludges unusual? I kinda wish there were a ram-intake-attacher part. Along the same lines, my small control surfaces seem to hover about six inches over the wing. They work; they just look strange. Maybe I'll post a pic later to show you what I mean. Gotta run right now.

Here's my Kerbal on the Mun. We landed near a big crater, so I took 10 minutes to hike up to it, with help from RCS, to see if it had a different biome. No luck. But I peered over the edge, hoping I might see a 2001 black monolith or something. No dice there, either. Still pretty.

Thanks, allmhuran -- now I get it! Now I'm ready to go design a better plane! So I'm curious -- what percentage of your launches (or those of other posters in this thread) are spaceplane launches? Can planes do the lion's share of the lifting work of a space agency? Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions.

Well, I had a bit of an Apollo 13 situation en route to the moon. I had an Apollo-style mission set up, with an orbital probe linked to a manned lander. But when it came time to decouple the probe from the lander, the decoupler wouldn't work! I'm not sure what has gone wrong. I don't have "Dang it" or any such failure mod installed. No doubt it's my faulty engineering. So the lander can't land with this big ol' nuclear engine sticking out its behind. Nor can it do a safe re-entry and landing on Kerbin. So I'm thinking I'll dock it with Mun Station (my science outpost there) and EVA the pilot into an empty capsule for a trip home. A side benefit is that this will let me refuel Mun Station. While I was pondering that, I went ahead and sent out a new manned mission to the Mun, and landed successfully there. But I landed in Midlands, rather than my intended target, Highlands or a crater, so the science haul was just okay (as I've visited the Midlands before). I may refuel this lander and try again. Or I may just send it home, because I'm anxious to get its science so I can buy a "stack separator" -- a two-sided decoupler, rather than the one-sided decoupler that is causing me trouble.

Allmhuran, thanks for that extremely helpful diagram. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't understand what "crossfeed capable" meant until I read your post. Now I understand why I see "not crossfeed capable" on decouplers and such. Anyway, that's a really enlightening diagram. I think I understand why you need the fuel lines running radially from the central tank to the wings: by default, KSP engines look for fuel sources "above" them, not to the side, yes? But I don't see fuel lines running from the front fuel tank to the center tank, or from the rear fuel tank to the center tank. Are such fuel lines unnecessary, or do you have hidden fuel lines leading from the rear tank to the middle tank, and from the forward tank to the middle tank? (In my experiments with asparagus staging, I've had to run fuel lines from "outer" tanks to the central tank to ensure that fuel drains from the outer ranks first.) Thanks again for a great post -- and a great video.

Laie: Thanks for the link. I think I'd read some of Kasuha's findings before, particularly his comment that air intake is processed depending on when the intake part was added in the Space Plane Hangar (or VAB). That is, that the order of construction influences air flow. I gather from your link that some of the same is true of fuel flow? Allmhuran: Awesome video! I like the idea of fuel tanks in the middle of the plane, with fuel lines feeding the middle tank. But what if one needs both jet and rocket fuel? The two different types of fuel presumably can't be pumped into each others' containers, can they?

Thanks for the comments! My four-ship Duna fleet has now left Kerbin's sphere of influence, so for the first time in my KSP career, I'm in orbit around the sun. Phoned in some nice sun-science from my science lab. But Duna itself is still a couple months away. In the meantime, tonight I'm re-visiting the Mun to harvest more biomes for science. Then I may take another stab at designing space planes. More pictures and news to follow.

Thanks for the further replies. Yeah, I noticed lots of struts on the back of the D7. I will follow suit.

Thank you for all the very useful replies! I've found rocket design pretty intuitive, but spaceplane design seems much more challenging. So I appreciate the help. MarvinKitFox and Wanderfound: I hadn't thought of creating a twin-boom fuselage. Marvin's plane, and the one linked by Wanderfound, both have this feature, like the old P-38 Lightning. Looks great, and a good solution for carrying payload on the same plane as the center of mass. MarvinKitFox, how does the jet fuel get from your center fuselage to the engines in the rear side fuselages? I can't tell if there are fuel lines connecting them. I assume the fuel in the rear tanks is rocket fuel? Slashy, I'll work more on my wings. Yeah, mine have no dihedral angle at all -- straight parallel to the ground. I'll try tilting them up a tad. Also, I had trouble attaching the standard control surfaces to wings -- they seem to want to go on at crazy angles, not parallel to the ground as one would expect. I had no trouble attaching small control surfaces, though. Maybe the standard surface is designed for a larger wing than the one I was using?

I spent much of today making spaceplane after spaceplane, and I had a great time with it. At first I was scared of trying to land, but by the end I was landing on the KSC runway, rough terrain, islands, you name it. I now see why people say the stock KSP aerodynamics are like pea soup: my multi-ton jet glides to a perfect landing every time, with all engines off. Anyway, I didn't achieve my goal, which was to carry a large payload into space and then land back on Kerbin. I have four specific questions, followed by pictures of various designs, as to which please feel free to comment. 1. I had trouble marrying engines to fuel. Does every engine have to be directly behind its fuel sources? It seems maybe jet fuel is pumped anywhere on the plane, but rocket fuel has to be directly over the receiving engine? 2. I also had trouble with the center of mass shifting as fuel was consumed. Radial fuel tanks would seem to be the answer, but when I tried these, I got more unstable flight. 3. I made hilarious attempts to lift an 11t payload into space. I got as far as 30,000m once. Is 11t out of the question for a spaceplane? What is a reasonable payload? I actually was able to strap the payload on okay; my trouble was keeping my engines fueled and my aircraft balanced. (See questions 1 and 2 above.) 4. I've read older posts suggesting there's no cargo bay in stock. Is this still true? I don't have one yet, but I haven't unlocked the whole tree. 5. Finally, I hope this is the appropriate forum to ask for advice to improve my designs. My starter designs were single-engine jets, just to get me used to flying and landing. Even with the Basic Jet Engine, these work great for exploring Kerbin. Here's an example: Then I tried turbojets plus the spike rocket. This plane didn't make it to space; it sucked down fuel fast. Then again, I may have given up on it too quickly. Next I fired up the RAPIER, first in a single-engine configuration, to see how far it would get. It got pretty far, though I don't think I had enough air intake. So I optimistically strapped on a big ol' 8 ton payload. That barely made it off the runway. Here's a look: Finally, I tried strapping on three RAPIERS, in various configurations, with fuel tanks inline at first, then arranged radially. Most of these designs were unstable. The most successful is here, but the two outer engines lost power once the inline jet fuel was exhausted, and I went into a spin. (Managed to recover and make a nice landing, though.) Any comments or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I lightened the lander and shipped it off toward Duna. Then I had a busy afternoon of multitasking, as my ships at Minmus and the Mun competed with the Duna fleet for attention. Gotta love Kerbal Alarm Clock. After that, I spent a fair bit of time making my own space planes. I got a couple into space, and one could have made LKO if I'd felt like it. Then I tried strapping a huge 10t payload on one, and that was a comedy of errors. I did eventually get it to the edge of space, but then my engines starting blowing up. Here's a look.