RCgothic

Which isn't possible without Whiplash engines. I'd do a hybrid. Stick a plane on top of a rocket and use your wings to pull out of the dive on re-entry and then fine tune in flight. Unfortunately without a manoeuvre node you'll just need to guess and adjust during launch. I'd start out with something around the 2000dv mark. Due to atmospheric losses, any detailed maths probably wouldn't be useful enough for the effort required.

That does sound really similar to my issue, though I was orbital rather than roving. A totally polar 90deg inclined orbit always detonated over the south pole. My workaround was not going within 0.5deg of it. It may be possible to get closer, but I haven't tried. Do you have KER? You'd be pretty well placed to find out exactly what southern latitude triggers it.

Finished lofting the last of my 18-sat short-ranged relay network for global Reflectron DP-10 coverage. Next up is a Kerbin-system dish network. Also I have no clue how to make Imgur work properly.

Remote Tech and FAR are the ones I can't do without for technical challenge. FAR is better than stock because it analyses your entire craft simultaneously rather than as a collection of individual parts. Tac Life Support also good for the challenge.

Escaped the South Pole Sarlacc (spacecraft passing over 90'S invariably destroyed) by using an 89.5deg orbit instead to get the first six satellites in my low altitude relay network launched. http://imgur.com/a/xumSn

Turns out 89.5deg inclination is good enough to survive the kraken, and I was able to save my first launch from a prior quicksave by burning immediately normal. The first six are lofted and positioned! The orbits are a slightly scrappy +/-50m from 180km, but the orbital periods are correct to about 2 thousandths of a second per orbit which should keep them nicely in line! http://imgur.com/a/xumSn Apparently I can't figure out how to embed an Imgur album in a post.

I used Inventor to physically model the situation. The options to work around the polar kraken: Various Walker Deltas are actually less efficient because you end up with more seams. I don't think complete coverage can be done with a standard delta and fewer sats. It's possible to make a Walker Star with the crossing over the equator and the seam directly over the poles and use less DV (one orbit inclination zero, two orbits inclination +/- 63.5 deg), but it's less aesthetic than the other options. A hybrid Star/Delta with inclination 85deg will probably avoid the kraken whilst providing total coverage and almost as good coverage as the 63.5/54deg 180km described above. It's just a little harder to phase the separate planes.

In the Vehicle Assembly Building make sure every atmospheric stage is aerodynamically stable. Click the toggles to the right of the symmetry selector to bring up the centre of mass (yellow) and centre of lift (blue) balls. The centre of mass must be ahead of the centre of lift at all times. It's possible to pilot an unstable ship to orbit, but it requires a lot of control authority and a very cautious flight profile. Be aware that the centre of mass will move backwards as the top tanks in a stage drain whilst the bottom tanks stay full. Move the centre of lift by putting fins on the back of the rocket or taking draggy bits off of the front. Move the centre of mass by putting heavy things up top. When you launch a rocket, never deviate more than 5deg from prograde. Start turning pretty much straight off the pad and aim for 45' by 10km. By 35km you should be burning pretty much at the horizon or just above. Gradual change is the order of the day.

It's not just the launcher. It hates the relays too. Even separate any vessel in the physics bubble going over 90'S chain detonates. And I just now discovered two flaws in my maths. The first was just a transcription error, substantive portions unaffected. But my street widths are wrong. I assumed I'd get the full 500km range of the transmitters, but Kerbin blocks line of sight before that. This means the streets are narrower than stated. An 18 sat 3-plane solution does exist, but for a slightly higher orbit and unequal plane angles. I'm running the numbers now. - - - Updated - - - 180km orbit, 63.5deg between regular planes, 53deg seam angle. Now having a look at slightly inclined planes as a work around for having to fly over the pole.

6x polar probe launcher in a 150km x 205km orbit at 90 degree inclination over Kerbin explodes for no reason over the south pole. (Happens at 90'S as best I can tell.) I have a save about half an orbit beforehand and it happens every time. Basically every part goes from cold to the temperature of Stellar Plasma instantly and the craft explodes. At first I thought it was a service bay bug, because that was the first part to overheat on the incident report. But if I detach a probe with no service bay, still happens, only a battery is first listed. It happens to every vehicle in the active physics bubble. Whether one complete craft or 6probes, launcher and associated debris in formation. The only time anything survives is if I get it far enough away from the active craft in time, such as when I De-orbited the launcher. I don't think this is mod related, but I don't have system space to run multiple installs (small SSD) to test. Only modded parts on the craft that I'm aware of are KER circuit boards, DP-10 Antenna (RT2) and procedural fairings. Mods: FAR, Chatterer, Planetshine, RCS build aid, Procedural Fairings, Remote Tech 2, Tac Life Support, DMagic Orbital Science. May be a couple others. Highly doubt mods are responsible anyway. I think this may be a replication of this bug. I suspect there may be some work arounds - switching to another craft whilst passing the pole, or using a slightly lesser inclination for instance. But that's pretty inconvenient. Files/Saves/Pics available on request.

Built a rocket to deploy 6 sats to polar orbit. Watched it get consumed by a kraken again and again directly over the poles. Even launching the sats just got them all devoured in a cluster. Now considering whether an 85 deg orbit might work.

What's to stop someone walking into the launch pad, planting a flag and calling it quits after 5s for a nigh unbeatable Tier 2 180,000 Science per hour?

So I'm getting hit by an overheating kraken - everything overheats suddenly all at once. My launcher explodes about at about 8 min MET in a 90deg 205km x 150km parking orbit at almost exactly 90'S every time. Ideas?

Sounds like it's ripe to be beaten then!

As mentioned, it's only an apparent discontinuity caused by changing reference frames. Currently displayed are your flyby path relative to the Mün and your orbit around Kerbin (relative to Kerbin) once you complete your flyby. The two will precisely intersect when you get to the point of changeover. Any change in velocity vector at that point is illusionary.

Very curious how multistage air-breather is only 2% better than ssto. Is this because anything staged is a fraction loss? The rocket multistage performance is ~2.5x the ssto entry!

After an aborted Mün landing with Val on Monday, Apollo 4 piloted by Jeb touched down successfully in a Midlands Crater (wish I'd found a less steep one!) and brought back a ton of science. My next mission is an 18-sat relay constellation for polar 150km orbit to complement my existing relay trio in equatorial 700km. The idea is to provide complete surface coverage for DP-10 transmitters. It'll look gorgeous when it's done! The launcher vehicle is designed, and I'm looking forward to its maiden flight tonight. This morning I double checked on paper to make sure that my existing equatorial trio have line of sight to 150km above the poles where I'll be doing must of this mission's manoeuvring. All good, so flight is green-lit.

Mucked up a lunar insertion. Burnt too much dv going for a low-altitude crew report in a highly polar orbit whilst coming in for a landing. Luckily I realised this early enough and managed a successful abort to orbit with enough fuel to return to Kerbin.

From any random starting orbit, first you need to match orbital inclination. Set your target in the map view and it'll plot ascending and descending nodes. Burn normal/anti-normal at one of these nodes to reduce your relative inclination to zero. Next you need to get your apoapsis and periapsis in phase with your target (ie get both apoapsis on a line through the centre of Kerbin). This is accomplished by burning radial-out or radial-in. This step can be skipped if your target is in a nearly-circular orbit, but is necessary if your target is highly elliptical. Third you need to catch up to or wait for your target. If you are ahead of your target you need to be in a higher (slower) orbit. If you are behind it you need to be in a lower (faster) orbit. If you're approx 180 deg away it doesn't matter. If you're not concerned about it taking longer you can wait to go the long way round (for example you are ahead of target in a lower orbit) for a dv saving. Fourth, you match periapsis to perapsis (you are higher) or apoapsis to apoapsis (you are lower). This is accomplished by burning pro/retrograde at the opposite node until the altitudes match. This will slow your rate of catching/waiting, so feel free to leave this until you're nearly caught up. Or you can do this immediately if you don't mind waiting a little longer. At this stage you should start getting intercept markers that show your closest approach to the target. If your orbit crosses your target you will get a closest approach for each crossing. For this reason when acomplishing step 4 I make sure I don't cross the orbits because I find dealing with a single intercept marker makes things clearer. You can now adjust the closeness of your intercept by burning pro/retrograde at either apoapsis or apoapsis (whichever you earlier matched with your target) to adjust your orbital period. You can usually do thus in one burn to get a rendezvous on your next orbit, but it may be cheaper in dv to wait a few orbits do that you don't have to adjust as much, or you may be constrained in how much you can adjust by a planetary surface, atmosphere or lunar sphere of influence. Don't de-orbit yourself by accident! If you did all the previous steps accurately you should easily be able to get an intercept >0.5km. Hover the mouse over an intercept marker to see the separation at that point. To complete the rendezvous match target velocity at closest approach. The nav-ball should automatically switch to target mode when you get close. It may also accidentally switch to target mode if you pass within visual range of your target at any earlier stage. If this happens don't let it screw up your orbital manoeuvres! Target prograde != orbital prograde! Switch between nav-ball modes by clicking on your velocity. Burn retrograde to target velocity to match. Congratulations! You should now be rendezvoused within 500m! You're close enough now to manoeuvre directly at the target, but keep your velocity low (>10m/s) so as not to mess up your orbit. Docking is now relatively straightforward if you've got the rcs controls down.

Currently researching the 90 tier of science and planning a Mün landing. All so mundane. But I'm also far along in the planning stages for a low-altitude relay network to provide complete surface coverage of Kerbin for DP-10 omni equipped probes. I've already built and tested the 6x launcher that will be required. 18 relays in three orbital planes should do it! I'm only really waiting for the in-stack monoprop tank before launching (next science tier). The launcher will boost each sextuplet into a 150 by 205.05 km 90deg polar parking orbit and the relays will circularize under own power on each third orbit (gives me a few for fine tuning each sat and is conveniently the same parking orbit as will be required for phase adjustment of other planes) to form an equally spaced ring of six in a 150km circular orbit. Two further launches will be required into 90deg polar orbits at 60deg inclinations to the orbit of the first. After achieving a 150km periapsis over a pole the launcher orbit will be adjusted firstly to get precisely in phase with existing rings (Intercept of >0.5km with existing sat), and secondly to a parking orbit of 150 by 205.05km. This will initially drop each sat 1/3 phase behind those in existing rings and subsequently on every third orbit a sat can circularize to 150km. The final result should be total coverage of Kevin by 18 probes in 3 orbits crossing the poles in turn and should be glorious to behold! After this, no point on Kevin will ever be more than 500km from a satellite relay. I'm ridiculously excited about this.

Retrod the Gemini Program, then Munar flyby followed my Munar low orbit trial. Designed a low-tech launcher that could lift 6s relays into Kerbin polar orbits at once.

Today I got a little further in career mode. My final mission was temperature scans of Kerbin, which my dinky little 2-wheesely/1-terrier plane accomplished flawlessly. But I didn't stick the landing.

That's definitely a philosophy I can appreciate! The thought of a hands-off autopilot for atmospheric flight is kind of terrifying though!

I think you've got it now.

A payload is whatever is being transported to accomplish a mission. The craft doing the transporting is not the payload, but may have been the payload of an earlier stage. It's a little fuzzy whether you count crew as payload, but passengers definitely are. To go through your examples: 1) Cargo is plainly payload. It's going to be used for a purpose that wasn't simply getting into space. 2) The shuttle by itself is not payload, it is the transfer vehicle. It may never have been payload (spaceplane SSTO or STS), or it may have piggybacked as a rocket's payload previously (Buran). Cargo is again plainly payload, whether being taken up or brought down. The forward command section is not payload unless it later detaches for some purpose, but the Kerbals inside may be if they're being taken somewhere for a purpose. 3) The Apollo CM is the payload of the CSM and Saturn, The CSM is also part of the Saturn's payload. The LM is another part of it.