Jovus

Also, it depends on injection angle. Even assuming a capture star of exactly the same mass and no loss of speed, a planet can still be captured by another star if it cuts across the system in the right fashion. Viz. gravity is a lot more coplicated than KSP gives it credit for.

So then do both flaps and spoilers steepen the glide angle?

One other thing I've noticed is that while spoilers are supposed to decrease lift, depending on your speed and their strength (i.e. their size and deflection angle) they can incidentally increase your angle of attack, which increases your lift...

Interesting. Without fine controls on descent I pretty reliably rip the wings off due to trying to make tiny adjustments (while going, say, Mach 0.98 @ 1100 meters) and way overdoing it. My 'advice' above (which was really just reporting) wasn't to do with distance from the strip, but distance on the altimeter, though they are loosely related.

EdFred, thank you, that was extremely helpful. By the way, in case you all are curious, have a picture: I've found that, very roughly, a good rule of thumb is: if you're below 1000m, your velocity needs to be below 200m/s (preferably below 175m/s) - if not, wave off, you're doing it wrong. Complementarily, if you're above 3000m, your velocity needs to be above 250m/s. Of course this all varies with airframe. Oh, and fine controls are necessary unless you want to just return the cockpit. ETA: I forgot to add, because I just figured this out: the position of your velocity vector below the horizon is important. When you're making final approach for landing, it should be ~2-4 degrees below - not more, not much less (again depending on approach path - if you're going to the middle or end of the runway, a velocity vector pointing too shallow will cause you to miss, but one pointing too steep will always cause you to crash. That's velocity vector, not nose indicator. The latter's also obviously important, but the velocity vector is what determines whether you're going to belly-flop or miss or actually make a sensible landing. (This is the bit I think I was missing most - it should be obvious, and it is in retrospect.)

For your first extraplanetary foray you might want to try Minimus instead of the Mun. It's about 20-30 dv further away, but because the gravity is so much lower landing (and escaping once you have) are much much easier.

I figure I'm going to have to put in 10-20 hours of solid practice to actually consistently land without exploding or waving off until I get impatient (at which point, see previous). My problem so far hasn't been lining up over the runway - it's been coming down fast enough without doing it too fast once I have. Thanks for your suggestions, though. The flags will be especially helpful when I'm trying to figure out how to get down after a Mun run (presuming I ever get there).

So I've done a lot of reading about how to build planes, and I daresay I have a decent, if not absolute grasp on the basics of the subject. I can get my planes to take off. I can trim them and fly straight, or turn about, and with some even do loops - all with or without SAS (though with is usually easier, of course). What I can't seem to do is land them on the runway. (I can fairly often land somewhat near the runway, on the beach or the grasslands beyond.) I end up either overshooting and having to fly back, or dive-bombing the runway with predictably hilarious results. To that end, are there any tutorials in existence for how to land your plane? I understand that much of the answer depends on the individual airframe, but are there some broad guidelines on approach profiles I should be looking for? For example, if I'm 1km laterally away from the runway but 5km up and moving at 200m/s, I know I'm definitely flying back for another pass. Are there any tips for how to get those approach profiles? Thanks in advance! (FYI, I'm using FAR and DR.)

Yep, that was it. Thanks.

Huh. That doesn't seem to work for me - it might have something to do with the fact that my mouse is in fact a touchpad.

When you right click on a part in the VAB or SPH, it shows you more information about that part. Some parts, especially with mods installed, have more information than can appear by default in that right-click section, and these show a scroll-bar for access to the rest of it. Is there any way to actually use this scrollbar? (I can provide pictures if that is unclear.)

This is a beautiful thread and very useful to those of us who can't seem to get plane design just right. I'm downloading a number of your designs, both for use and analysis. Thank you.

Of course that's Jeb in the cockpit. He snuck in right before launch. Good thing, too. Yes, I'm still a KSP newbie.

Do you have RemoteTech2 installed? That mod handles antennae itself, and intentionally rips them off in atmo if they're extended.

This video might help you. It helped me:

Personally, I would prefer otherwise. I in fact have lowered the heat multiplier to about 15 instead of 25, though I've only flown a couple missions with DRC installed as of yet. Best of all I should think would be if you left it as it is, but included instructions and sample values for configuring things to be harder or easier. (You've already done this a bit, but a couple complete example profiles would be nice, and so would instructions on how to modify the heat-shield parts for harder/easier reentries.) This is all of course because you asked; I'm very happy with the mod as it currently is. Thanks!

I can get to orbit (semi)reliably for between 3100 and 3900 dv, so I'm fairly sure I'm doing it right(ish) now.

I seem to be having the common problem with rockets. To be clear, I can get them to space reliably, and I know about the basic design principles. My problem is that whenever I try to do a proper gravity turn, one of two things happens: 1) If I try to do it according to the principle of 'start low, go slow', keeping my TWR near 1.2, I turn the rocket at, say, 100m/s 10deg east, which is usually around 2-3k. This invariably causes me to turn too quickly. 2) The way I'm launching now is to start turning the rocket at about 150 m/s with a TWR of around 1.4, but this means that I do things like hit a 30deg angle to the surface by 20k, which is much too steep - like I said, I can get to space, but I have to severely overbuild my rockets to do so. Does anyone either have advice or links to help? Videos are especially appreciated, since they would allow me to look at the whole situation and see if there are other factors that the poster is unconsciously assuming. (I already know about this one: )I suspect in case 1) above I'm tipping the rocket over a little harder than I should, but I swear I'm aiming for the 5-10 deg mark on the navball. Do you do something like use fine controls to hit it exactly and hold the nose there until the prograde vector tips onto it, or something else? Is that probably not my problem? I can reply with example craft that I know can get to space, and even pictures of both of these procedures, if that would help. And thank you for your time.

I went into the Squad parts and added the Ferram Aerospace changes manually to the files. (Yes, that took me a while.) It works fine now. I'm certain I did something wrong before, but I couldn't really tell you what, since I did religiously follow the installation instructions. I'm guessing at having some difficulties with the changeover to x64, and I'm going to do a completely clean install some time today (including cleaning the registry and deleting saves and things).

Yep. I found the problem; for some reason the FAR stuff wasn't overwriting the stock drag model for Squad-released parts. Figures I would 'give up' and post half an hour too soon.

If I should put this somewhere else, please let me know. I seem to be having serious trouble with FAR. I'm running the latest release (14.1.1) on KSP 0.24.2. I'm also running KW Rocketry 2.6 for the fairings (though I have all the parts) and some other mods like Interstellar, Docking Port Alignment, Kerbal Alarm Clock, TAC Life Support and the Enhanced NavBall. I am not running MechJeb at all. I understand that in order to have a stable rocket you need to get your center of lift below your center of mass so that the rocket will naturally swing itself back to point toward the prograde vector while in atmosphere. However, I seem entirely unable to drop the center of lift below the center of mass, even with rocket designs that are imminently sensible. Here's an example, built in three steps, showing the CoM and CoL at each step: http://imgur.com/3wDRNG4,XAbURb3,XFYHgCg#0 I have also tried exact copies of other rockets I've seen in Youtube videos as examples of good rockets with FAR, and no luck. I suspect this means my installation is borked somehow, but I've un-installed and re-installed KSP, FAR, and all my other mods multiple times. Can anyone offer some advice? Thank you.