Jovus

Maybe, but what do I get for it? Just warm fuzzies? Nah. Toss me some rep, at least. (In-game; I'm not begging for forum points. That's crass.)

They're potentially less controllable. That's pretty much it. The $$/dV can't be beat.

As Eddiew has said, aerobraking is always advantageous. There are theoretical arrangements where it might not be, maybe, but none of those exist in KSP.

There's nothing to say to this except congratulations. Oh, and I'm jealous. I'm trying to get into a PhD program myself at the moment. (For observational astronomy, but I'm sorely tempted to switch to aerospace...)

Unrealistic? Nah. It's a gas core engine that they're running RP-1 through. It gets ISP similar to solid core NERVAs because of the massively increased core temperature (ISP also being proportional to the square root of the exhaust temp, naturally). Why are they doing this? Because Kerbals haven't discovered hydrogen yet. (Water is insufficiently explosive for them to be particularly interested.) So yes, the LV-N overheats, because in order to get the required ISP it runs at higher than designed temperature. They probably found the specs somewhere on the Mun; possibly near the Neil Armstrong memorial. Yes, this is a joke post.

Well?! You can't just say stuff like that without sharing!

This is fixed in 1.0.2. (I had the same problem, but the KSP.x86 and KSP.x86_64 executables work fine if you just run them directly.)

Yep, I found it in the new file.

Somehow the MODIFIER_KEY field doesn't even exist in my settings.cfg. Interesting. However, completely deleting my settings.cfg seems to have fixed the issue. (MODIFIER_KEY now exists as a field, of course.) Wonder how that happened? I'll poke around with it a bit more and report anything I find, but don't expect this thread to see much more traction. Thanks everyone!

Bird strike! ...now that seems like a particularly evil add-on for the Dang-It! mod...

I generally approve of this idea. I am, however, not in a position to take advantage of it.

Yes, it does work like that. However, in order to be able to calculate delta-V by eyeball based on your own rocket design you'd have to be some kind of savant. At best you're going to get a gut feeling 'this needs more' or 'this has enough' and that will probably be wrong. Trust me, use a mod that displays it. The game's purely better that way.

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were many ways to optimize this to work much better. For one thing, there's going to be an LFO imbalance for most flight paths. For another, you're right about the intakes and possibly the wheels. I just threw this together in about 45 minutes to see if it could be done after seeing that people were having trouble with it, and thought I'd show the fruits of my labor in case it helps anyone. If I were making this thing serious, I'd probably also put a smidge of dihedral on the wings. It tends to show a bit of corkscrew instability at high altitudes. As for the canards, I think even in an optimized design I'd keep them. For one, they add some pitch authority, and I'm not comfortable just leaving that to the horizontal stabilizer on a beast this big. For another, they make it look like it has eyebrows. Everything needs a small touch of flair when it can get away with it, no?

Using KSP 1.0.2, on an Arch Linux x64 install, it seems the Mod key (right Shift) simply no longer works in any scene in any capacity. I'm running from the Launcher (Launcher.x86_64) on Enlightenment 0.19.4. Details of my hardware can be obtained if necessary. Is this a known bug? Am I just being stupid (e.g. the Mod key changed)?

I found this to be the case with the Mk 3 proof of concept SSTO I just built. It has six engines; if all of those are RAPIERs, it can't break the sound barrier. Replace a pair with a pair of turbojets and getting to orbit is a breeze. (You still have to dive a bit, but that's as it should be.)

I made this craft as a potential learning guide for those who are having trouble using Mk 3 parts to make an SSTO spaceplane in KSP 1.02. She doesn't fly pretty, but she'll get the job done, and bring 16 passengers along for the ride. (Alternatively, you can replace the cabin with a cargo bay.) Download: http://kerbalx.com/Jovus/Trial-Mk-3-SSTO.craft To fly to space, hit the staging button for take-off. Leave the runway at around 80m/s, promptly put the gear up and pull into a 30 degree climb. Continue climbing until you get to 10km, then level off until you reach ~ Mach 1. (Probably more like Mach 0.93 or something; don't sweat exactitudes.) Once you get there, climb to ~14km without losing too much speed. Then, enter a ~10 degree dive to punch through the Mach barrier. Once you're going something like Mach 1.4 or 1.5, pull up and begin climbing again. Around 18km, level off and ride the power curve. You'll start to overheat from atmospheric effects; that's fine. Once you hit Mach 3.5 or so, pull up gently until you get to 20km, then ride the air level until your airbreathers die down to around 400kN of thrust. (You do have a thrust readout, right?) Finally, switch to rockets by pressing 1 (which also toggles the air intakes) and pull up sharply to get above the drag. Level out once your Ap is around 45 or 50 for a more efficient right to orbit. WARNING: this is intended as a proof of concept, not as a workhorse. In order to become a truly useful spaceplane, it needs some modifications, such as solar panels, and probably a little tweaking of the flight surface placement to aid stability. It is my hope that if you're having trouble using Mk 3 parts for SSTO spaceplanes, this design will offer you a starting point for getting it right.

The biggest I foresee is a potential uptick in "I hate aerodynamic disassembly" type support requests because people didn't RTFM.

Would it be possible to use the voxelized shape to calculate mass based on total supported distance from center-line in a cross-sectional manner? That might allow two wings with the exact same geometry but different construction methods to mass the same. It would also still preserve low-mass tiny canards. At first glance it seems like a huge headache and potentially a slow-down during assembly, especially if you have to recalculate and then apply the voxel after every part-change.

Wanderfound, you have that exactly right. If the green line were straight (regardless of slope), which is what you want, the yellow line would be a horizontal line through the origin.

Are you playing with resource frequency reduced? If so, to what level? ETA: Looking in the part.cfg for asteroids reveals this: MODULE { name = ModuleAsteroidResource highRange = 95 lowRange = 50 presenceChance = 100 resourceName = Ore } I suspect you hit close to the lowRange, aka got unlucky. Send tiny prospecting probes to locate asteroids that are actually worthwhile. (This is a guess, not an authoritative claim.)

Nice blended wing design! Are you using those airbrakes for dynamic yaw stability, or what?

Try using the LV-T45 instead of T-30. Those fins don't move, so the stability they give you is purely passive - no control. The LV-T30 has no gimbal, so the only control you're getting is from the reaction wheel in the pod. Now, with a low TWR, you're going to naturally begin to tip west, because the world is curved and KSC is flat. Since you don't have any real way to correct for this in that rocket, it will quickly go in a direction you don't want it to and eventually turn right on over to a nose-down attitude.

Speaking of variation of outline, does the new system take into account the shape of undeployed landing gear? I hope not. In real aircraft landing gear actually fold right into the body of the craft so that there is no break or bump in the outline, but in KSP we don't have that choice, and even undeployed landing gear make a profile change.

Squad, I demand you un-nerf the load times. All my previous designs are completely unviable and flip out all over the place as soon as the music comes on.

More than you might think.