Fearless Son

I expect most of my craft would continue to work in 1.1. Some of my more distant probes might stop responding, but they are safely parked (in orbit or on a surface, depending on the probe) and should reactivate when they come within range of an appropriate antenna.

I have said before and I will say again: in any social experience, 90% of your enjoyment will come from the people you are with. This goes for workplaces, schools, multiplayer games, and yes, single player games with active player communities.

Same with T-Bouw, inexpensive stationary stabilizing fins near the bottom of the boosters creates a very similar effect. Further, it lowers the center of drag which helps the craft from spinning out on ascent. As long as the boosters are mirrored across the hull, the fins create a symmetrical drag. But once they are decoupled, the drag on each booster is now asymmetrical, and it tilts them gently to the side as they fall away from the hull.

You did not run into the kronosynclasticinfandibulum on the trip, did you? Wait, in this context would that be the space kraken?

RTGs have a bad weight-to-electricity ratio though. Great if you only have a small draw and need to be sunlight-independent, but ion engines are a pretty dang big draw. It does make me wonder what the efficiency of using fuel cells would be for ion engines. Yeah, it means you need to take rocket fuel too which would normally defeat the point of using ions, but I wonder if the fuel consumption for the fuel cells would be low enough that you would still get better efficiency for the mass from using those to power ion engines.

I am less concerned with the rover rolling over than I am with it damaging potentially delicate equipment that might be mounted on it. The need to slow down to turn would also be less of an issue for me if the brakes on the wheels worked as they were advertised to. I need to go fast to traverse land at a reasonable rate, but even a little hillock can crush me if it forces me into a turn I cannot slow down fast enough to make.

I want to see the underside of the Evie. I imagine there might be enough room to place a third hull down there, maybe with cargo bays?

I feel quite pedestrian. I have gone as far as crewed Duna orbits and uncrewed Duna landings, but never a crewed Duna landing or any return from its surface. Mostly because I get quite conservative with my Kerbal's lives, and I try to tackle my targets one at a time in career mode.

I found that SRBs are good for those low thrust-to-weight ratio rockets, where you need a cheap way of imparting some extra starting acceleration on the first stage, something to get it to cruising ascent speed without spending an inordinate amount of liquid fuel just getting off the ground. That said, I find it a good balance of cost and efficiency that, rather than using liquid fuel boosters, I just use radially-mounted drop tanks that feed into the main engine. Gives me extra liquid fuel to burn in the lower atmosphere, then I can jettison them when empty to save fuel. It also helps me lower the center of mass in the lower stage, which helps keep the rocket stable. Stabilizing fins on the drop tanks help that stability too, as well as causing the tanks to angle away from the rocket's hull when they detach due to their individually asymmetric drag.

Send one craft in two-parts. One of those parts is as small and light as you can make it transmission relay. Detach it well ahead of your normal burn point and start its burn early. Get it into a high elliptical orbit, so it has enough distance to trace line-of-sight to both Kerbin and the other probe. Once you have both settled into relatively stable orbits, you can do some correction burns on the relay to get it into an ideal position. Better yet, send two relay probes with your explorer probe and have each end up on opposite ends of your orbit, so you have at least one in sight of Kerbin at all times.

I use the Mk. 2 Inline Clamp-o-tron frequently, for the reasons people have laid out before. Low-drag docking port, and also has built-in monopropellant tanks. Like you said earlier, the large monopropellant spaceplane tanks are a bit too big with too much weight and monopropellant for spaceplane use, but the Mk. 2 Inline Clamp-o-tron has just the right amount without the drag of radial tanks. I also find it useful to put it near the front of the craft as a "spacer" since it is relatively light, it puts the heavier cockpit a bit forward and shifts the center of mass toward the front. That in turn gives me a better range for placing the wings, without having to fiddle too much with fuel distribution near the front. And since the front usually has the most clearance around it (fewer wings and tails and gear and the like) it seems a logical place to put the docking point anyway.- - - Updated - - - It also depends on what you are using it for. For example, I have a small probe I use as a tug for maneuvering other large, uncontrolled pieces into docking ports to form larger craft. The wheel provides way too much torque for the probe alone, which is why I disable it most of the time. But when I have it latched onto another piece that it needs to maneuver, I turn the wheel back on so it can rotate the additional mass effectively.

I use the same idea as xtoro. With almost all my spaceplane designs, I keep a small(ish) tank of fuel near the front of the craft, which is locked down so no fuel will be drained out of it without specific instructions on my part. I usually try to get to orbit on the tanks further toward the back, then once I am secure with my engines idling, I transfer the fuel from the locked front tank to the rear tanks. It helps keep the center of mass forward for most of the flight, but without reducing the total amount of fuel I have to operate on.

Depends on how you build them. The optimal design patterns are different in this post-1.0 era, but they are doable. The hard part is unlearning all the little tricks that used to work in the older versions so you can learn all the tricks in the newer versions.

That makes me think, "I should really make a boat with a big keel..."

My first thought is, "Do you have something clipping?" Because a ring like this has to have some non-standard attachment points somewhere. I am wondering if what is happening is there is a bit of a "bounce" happening from clipped parts trying to separate, and it is introducing a harmonic physics response. That is, as it tries to bounce apart, it pushes the parts next to it, which then try to snap back against it, which then makes it bounce harder, etc. It would be a little physics glitch that would turn a minor force into a major one, given enough time. The aerodynamic and thrust forces might have been enough to overwhelm the harmonic forces while it was on ascent to orbit, but once it was parked and idle, well...

Grats! Do you have any pics? Milestones like this should be shared and celebrated!

Does your drill rig and processing plant have a command module of some sort associated with it? Like a crewed control cabin or a probe core? Because my first thought is "this sounds like a probe-driven craft that has run out of electricity." The drills and processing plant are really energy-hungry when active, they might have been draining your batteries faster than your setup could replenish them.

Partly I did it to give it more total lift, partly to store extra jet fuel. But then I am probably still thinking in old-school heavy spaceplane design mentality where I could never seem to get enough lift for what I needed to do. It probably needs less lifting surface area now than it did before, and maybe the lighter weight and reduced drag will enable a more aggressive ascent that needs less fuel? Crap, well that explains why I have been having so much trouble with them then. I only ever used them in cargo bays prior 1.0 when I assumed aerodynamics and heating would make them super-delicate exposed in atmosphere, while the cowling-laden ones would be more survivable and less drag-inducing.

Built a heavy cargo spaceplane. Made an empty ascent to orbit on its first test flight, but the ascent was a little difficult. I may need to make some more tweaks and adjustments to optimize it for carrying some tons. I hope to use it to bring modular components of surface bases to orbit so I can hook them onto my transport. Seems more efficient than trying to send them all up in one gigantic rocket. By the way, does anyone know how to get these solar panels to retract without a specific action group? I can right-click on them, but all it gives me is information about the panels, no toggle option. I thought I might have to click on the "root" of the panel, but I only ever seem to get the part behind it. This does not seem to be an issue on panels that have protective cowling over them, but since these panels are inside a cargo bay that remains shut during ascent and descent, I figured why add the unnecessary bulk and mass when the bay doors will protect them.

In another thread, some people were complaining about the new parts coming out in 1.1 as being too spaceplane-specific when they felt that additional rocket parts were being neglected. To that I have to say, recovering debris from the surface of an extra-Kerbin body is something the new cargo ramp would be ideal for. Have a little rover inside with an advanced grabber unit on one side and a docking port on the other, have it nab the part, drag it back into the cargo bay, dock, then close the ramp and liftoff back to Kerbin.

That is what science mode is for. Essentially sandbox, but with science gathering and the tech-tree unlocks. Might be a good balance between the overwhelming of sandbox and the challenge of career.

Also, I wanted to address the intake thing. First of all, older designs tended to require huge numbers of intakes to catch as much air as possible on their ascent. Sometimes people would make a tightly fitted "stack" of air intakes to get lots of intakes worth of air in only one intake's worth of space. This technique, known as "air hogging", is no longer necessary or beneficial in the new aerodynamic system after the 1.0 version, so do not try it here or you just make the spaceplane more difficult for no additional gain. That having been said, the new aerodynamic model makes it so that a few intakes can power all your jet engines. The faster you go, the more air they catch, so there is no benefit for having an unbalanced number of intakes. In this regard, there is some difference between intake types as far as efficiency goes. Another list: -Circular Intake: Regular jet intake, works best at high pressure and low speed. If you have an aircraft that needs to fly slowly, this intake will insure the jets have plenty of air to breath even if it has to hover. Ideal compliment to the Wheesley engine. -Ram Air Intake: Hypersonic jet intake, works best at low pressure and high speed. It becomes more efficient at pulling in air the faster and higher your plane goes, making it a good choice for spaceplanes. More massive than the Circular Intake, so it works against you if you are going for low speed flight. Ideal compliment to the Whiplash engine. -Shock Cone Intake: Hypersonic jet intake, works best at low pressure and high speed. Like the Ram Air Intake, but with more intake capacity and more mass. In fact, one of these has about twice the air intake capacity of the Circular Intake. Also has one of the lowest drag coefficients of any "cap" part. This makes it almost ideal for spaceplanes. -Radial Intakes: Comes in "fat" and "streamlined" varieties. The former is good for lower speed applications where drag is less of a concern, the later is better for higher speed applications where its smaller cross section is less of an issue. In either case, you would need several of these to feed any of the engines. Enough of them can be used as a replacement for the "cap" style intakes in a pinch, but generally used as a supplement more than a primary source of air. -Integrated Intakes: Some structural parts have intakes built into them, like the Engine Nacelle or the Engine Pre-cooler. These parts also generally have some liquid fuel capacity built into them as well. However, both their intake capacity and their liquid fuel capacity are fairly small. As such, they are rarely used as a primary source of either intake air or liquid fuel, but they are frequently used to supplement things that are already there. An oxidizer-burning spaceplane generally requires a bit more liquid fuel than its rocket fuel tanks will accommodate, and these are one way of getting that extra liquid fuel for the jets and supplementing the intake air at the same time without the excessive mass a dedicated liquid fuel tank might require. In general, do not try to make a spaceplane with jets fed by circular intakes, they have too much drag at high speed compared to the amount of air they take in. A few ram air intakes will work and many designs use them, especially ones in the mid-range of the tech tree. Shock cone intakes are very popular for their great capacity and low drag, but the mass-to-intake-to-engine ratio can be a little more tricky to balance. Also, common wisdom holds that once the jets are completely offline you should toggle all your air intakes closed to shave off a little more drag, but last I heard the jury is still out on how effective this is in the new version.

Alright, alright, the R.A.I.P.I.E.R. is very powerful within the constraints of its performance envelope, and yes, that description could apply to any jet engine. However, that envelope is quite narrow, being very high and very fast, and its performance is quite less than the Whiplash lower and slower than that. I was trying to communicate that in a quick summery, and maybe I stumbled on that bit. What I wanted to get across is that it is rarely used as a primary lifting engine to get off the ground and into its own ideal envelope. You could say similar things about the Whiplash, but it usually has enough power below its ideal envelope to serve in that capacity that adding Wheesleys would be a bad tradeoff for the additional mass they would bring. As for the aerospike, yeah, I admit most of my experience with it is pre-1.0. Still one of the better rocket engines at high pressure, just no longer perfect. I do recall people saying that it is a fairly good space engine now though, comparing thrust and efficiency to other rockets for its size and mass, which still makes it a decent spaceplane rocket engine.

Yeah, the aerodynamic changes in 1.0 have rendered a lot of the old spaceplane information obsolete. If you see blue intakes, that is a sure sign it is an older design and I would not trust it to work in the newer version without serious vetting. That having been said, there are many different engines that can be used for spaceplanes, but you will rarely find a spaceplane that only uses one type of engine. Most use at least two types of engine, some use three. The reason for this is that different engines are optimal in different conditions, and spaceplanes go through a lot of different conditions. Let us go over a bit of a list, shall we? - Wheesley: Small jet engine, optimal at high atmospheric pressure and low speed, very fuel-efficient. Good for small planes and things that need to fly slowly, but rarely used in spaceplanes. - Whiplash: Turbojet engine, optimal at low atmospheric pressure and high speed, liquid-fuel gas guzzler. Most spaceplanes use this engine as part of their design because it is ideal for building up speed while still in the atmosphere, and thanks it to being a jet instead of a rocket, even as liquid-fuel hungry as it is, it is still much more efficient than virtually any rocket. They might take a little effort to get off the ground, but are great once you are above 10K. - R.A.I.P.I.E.R.: Hybrid jet/rocket engine, generally less powerful than the Whiplash, but also capable of running at altitudes that would cause the Whiplash to flame out, can switch to rocket mode to take it up into space. A popular option for ecking that last little bit of speed out of your atmospheric-breathing flight, but usually not powerful enough to get most spaceplanes to the threshold where they become ideal. Also only moderately efficient for their thrust as rocket engines, so you cannot expect to go past Low Kerbin Orbit if these are your primary spaceflight engines. Requires oxidizer to burn in rocket mode, so you have to bring some to use them. - LV-N Nerv: Nuclear thermal engine, only burns liquid fuel, heavy but very efficient, poor thrust. An option on some spaceplanes, and a popular option for the final stages of rockets as well. It has its drawbacks (the poor thrust, large size, heavy weight) but also its advantages (can go far, potentially simplifies the craft design if you have no other oxidizer burning engines you need to make fuel for which makes all your reaction mass usable in all conditions.) -Other LV series: Liquid fuel and oxidizer burning rocket engines, only activated at high altitude for your final push to orbit. The LV-45 is sometimes used as it is low in the tech tree so it is accessible, reasonably good mix of thrust and efficiency, and is not too heavy. Other options usually replace it as they get unlocked though. -Aerospike Engine: Liquid fuel and oxidizer burning rocket engine, virtually unaffected by atmospheric pressure, small, and with reasonably good efficiency and thrust. Another popular engine for spaceplanes, again used only for that last push to orbit after the jets have done all they can. Exploits aside, it does not stage with other things behind it, but since an SSTO by definition does not have more than one stage that is not a design concern here. Again, most spaceplanes will have a mix of more than one of these engine types, usually jets followed by rockets. The R.A.I.P.I.E.R. can pull double-duty there, but is not quite as good at either task as more dedicated engines, but can still be useful for certain kinds of craft depending on their flight characteristics. They are also the only type of engine that a spaceplane can realistically use without any other engine type complicating the design.