A_name

Amazing mod. Helps with planes, boats, any kind of lander. Very clean design, almost invisible. Saves me lots of headaches. I do have one comment/suggestion: When I'm flying over the ocean in Surface Mode, the altimeter defaults to showing me altitude above ground (the ground under the water that is). This is not useful for trying to not crash into the water. Obvious answer: click the altimeter to change it to ASL and problem solved. And that is exactly what I've been doing so far. Thing is, I'm annoyed by the "ASL" text that partially obscures view of the atmosphere gauge. I could also switch to Orbit Mode, but since I'm flying in the atmo I need Surface. Anyway, it would be great to either: (1) have the mod know if you're flying above water and show ASL (Surface Mode), or (2) have a way to hide the text, maybe make it so it goes away with a right click, or after 3 seconds of not clicking it.

Kerbin is beautiful. Explore it. I recommend the rare science contracts pack if you're doing career. It will send you all over Kerbin exploring and you'll see how much you've been missing.

Use map view, click on the ship > set as target.

Well I was able to sole this by using hydrofoils. All it took was two small structural pylons mounted along the center of the fuselage, one just in front of the COM and the other further front near the cockpit, with two control surfaces radially on each pylon. It's still able to SSTO with the hydrofoils so the added drag was negligible. I also tried the SRB approach. The Flea was too weak to push me out of the water and the next size (is it the Thump?) was too big. I also tried the submersion approach, but sadly the plane was to buoyant to go under even though it was able to nose down. Thanks again everyone!

Thank you all for your replies. First off, I want to share a few things I tried that didn't work: I placed radial intakes, four at the back and two one at the front, hoping it would give me some floatability. They didn't, and only dragged me down reducing my top speed to about 25 m/s. Then I used the large Big-S elevons placed in front of the COM and bound their deploy function to action groups to use as flaps to temporarily shift the COL forwards and force the nose up. This helped a little bit, the nose did pitch up like one degree, and I was actually able to hit about 35 m/s but sadly not enough to become airborne. I tried these with and without the intake floats, neither worked. Minimum takeoff speed on the runway is 45 m/s. I am able to land in the water without breaking. I get it down to just under 50 m at around 100-150 m/s, put on the air brakes and just hang out there keeping my vertical speed to -1 or 2 m/s while my horizontal speed dies out until I stall and fall in. It usually happens at about 50 m/s (my takeoff speed is slightly lower, but I attribute that to the RAPIER's thrust when pitching up. I'll consider the SRB. Since I want to keep it stock, I'll have to attach it to the belly of the craft, which may or may not kill my aerodynamics when SSTOing. I'll have to try it. Yes, I also thought it was nuts! It's indeed a Mk2 craft. It weighs about 50 tons. I'll consider the pylons, again, it may or may not kill my aero. But I do definitely look forward to trying the underwater launch approach! The aero . This thing is meant to SSTO and reenter the atmosphere. What kind of aerofoil design do you have in mind? Please keep the suggestions coming!

So I have an SSTO plane that I want to be able to land on the ground or the water. I haven't played for a while so the water is new to me. I managed to land in one piece consistently now, but taking off is another thing. Despite 4 RAPIERS, my top speed in the water is 30 m/s. I must be dragging a lot, although my underside is made of nothing but fuselage, wings and landing gear (which of course I have retracted), so there's nothing I can get rid of. And even if I could go faster, there's the problem of pitching up, it just won't. I suspect this is because my "fulcrum" is way behind my COM at the back edge of the wings (it's a delta wing design). So that's my problem, I'm hoping to hear some ideas on how to solve it.

You can check out the welding mod: It wont work for batteries as far as I recall, nor other movable or "interactive"(?) parts like engines, docking ports, etc. But it's great for structural pieces. You also might want to consider working on your part count, try to downscale your projects. KSP is very demanding on your PC and since it simulates physics individually for each part, there's a limit to how fast all these calculations can happen at once, and you get lag. Optimize your designs to be more minimalist, do more with less, etc. Use a big battery instead of two small ones, to give a very basic example. Or buy a better PC.

Like the title says. We all know the navball is collapsed by default when entering map view for the first time on a flight. If you bring it up, next time you enter map view on the same flight the navball will already be up. But for me, it's always collapsed each time I enter map view on the same flight even after bringing it up. I haven't played for a long time so I don't know if this is now normal behavior, or if I have a malfunctioning mod.

To add, although not compatible with Claw's GimbalPlus module, this solves all your SAS problems forever, I cannot state how well it works for planes as well as spacecraft despite it being presented as an atmospheric tool:

Correct. This way you spend more time burning lower (faster), thus making the most of Oberth. I know you were asking about formulating this, but why not make a test? Save a quicksave right after entering SOI and have a go with each method, see how much fuel you end up with each time. Edit: I think I misunderstood the question: As long as with option 1 you make your first circularization at Pe (as opposed to "anywhere else"), these two methods should yield the same result, as you spend exactly the same amount of time burning at a given altitude (and thus orbital speed).

Thanks guys!

Yes, The Kraken was merciful this time! I was talking about Kerbal Alarm Clock, I'll let them know, thanks.

So I had a ship with Val in the captain's seat and two tourists who wanted a Minmus flyby. I have my flyby set up and a node at Minmus Pe to bring me back to a Kerbin reentry trajectory. The node wasn't for a couple of days so I set an alarm and go do stuff with my other ships. Then, thanks to the "Warp Here" feature, which totally ignored my alarm and immediately went back to full time warp as soon as the alarm fired, I overshoot my Minmus maneuver on the tourist ship by a couple hours. When I finally cancel the warp and switch over to the ship with Val and the tourists, to my horror IT WAS EMPTY! The Astronaut Complex listed her as MIA and there was no trace of the tourists. Needless to say, apart from losing a top pilot, my contract was botched. Fortunately, I had a quicksave from right before I had clicked Warp Here and Val and the tourists were safe, but it was a close call. Fear The Kraken.

The idea of taking the lab originally was to get some free science from spent experiments in and around Kerbin and in solar orbit on my way there. For spent experiments, there's really no question about it. But what 'm not sure of is whether you can actually get more science out of the, erm, science, when it's a fress experiment, by processing it vs. recovering it.

Alternatively, use KER or Mechjeb, they show your orbital inclination among other useful stats.

So I'm going to be picking up some fresh, sweet science when I arrive at Duna in my career. My transfer ship has a science lab. With the new science lab, if you process an experiment you don't "get it back" to be recovered like before. My question is, should I keep this science and recover it or process it in the lab on my way home?

Well, the most important part is to have your COL behind your COM. Not too far behind, otherwise it'll be uncontrollable, just touching it. Then you need to make sure it stays that way. Drain the fuel from your tanks and see how your COM moves. If it ever moves behind the COL you need to adjust so that it doesn't. Now to your specific issues: "incredibly hard to control " Assuming you already balanced your COL and COM as described above, you need more control surfaces. Also, make sure you use the right click menu on each control surface so that they only control the direction of movement they're supposed to. This means, for example, for your rudder deactivate pith and roll and only leave yaw, or for elevators deactivate roll and yaw and leave pitch. "pretty much impossible to land" This can also be due to not enough control surfaces, or due to not enough lift. Add more control surfaces and/or more wing parts. "my planes explode on the runway" Use struts. "they take off then crash into the ground after flying for 5 meters" Not enough control surfaces or incorrect COL - COM balance. Planes in KSP aren't supposed to be hard. Keep it simple at first and work your way up. Learn to walk before running. Happy to answer follow up questions.

*I've read the FAQ* Hi there, wanted to ask for some help because I'm not getting the contracts. I have no space stations in orbit and I've unlocked the science lab, the docking ports and the solar panels. My rep is 52%. I should note I also installed the Tourims Plus contract that tells you to launch a space camp for 16 Kerbals, which this mod could interpret as a space station. But the Tourism Plus contract asked for the mission to be 40 days long, after which I deorbited the space camp/station. Yet, I've never had a Bases and Stations contract, neither before or after launching the space camp. A further question, if I already have some sort of space station in orbit (I don't , hypothetically), will this mod not give me contracts to add modules or do other stuff with it? What even qualifies as a station? Thanks in advance.

Just a heads-up, the CKAN link for this mod is broken.

If I understand you correctly, your problem is not related to the gravity turn but to your rockets deviating from the 90° heading. If this is the case, you will indeed need more stabilizers, unless there is an inherent design "feature" in your rocket that is causing an offset between center of mass, center of lift/drag and/or center of thrust. My choice is usually the Tail Fin; plenty of lift and deflection angle. If the Tail Fin doesn't cut it, use the Big-S Spaceplane Tail Fin; it'll look goofy but will work. You want to put 4 on the base of the rocket, making sure they are aligned with the cardinal directions (i.e. not 45° to them). Alternatively, instead of turning off SAS when starting the gravity turn keep it on but on prograde hold; I do that with particularly unwieldy rockets. I'd like to add I do not advise on waiting to start the gravity turn. The main criteria for WHEN to start a gravity turn should be your speed, and 50 m/s is my rule of thumb. HOWEVER, if you have a lower TWR, you'll want to do a less aggressive gravity turn, that is only tip over a few degrees at the begining, 5 degrees tops. So TWR should affect HOW MUCH you tip over for the gravity turn, but not WHEN. This is in my experience of course, results may vary. Great recap, I'll edit it into the OP if you don't mind

Any chance we can have this on CKAN again?

Despite your experiences, I find gimbal useful both during launch and for orbital maneuvers, essentially to have more control over my attitude. During launch, I agree that aerodynamic control surfaces could do the job, but sometimes you just need an extra bit of control, for instance in the upper atmosphere. For orbital maneuvers, it also helps when your craft doesn't have RCS or a bunch of reaction wheels.

So I was reentering a Minmus lander into Kerbin when I noticed the atmosphere seemed to be accelerating my craft. Note this was not a case of my speed increasing during descent due to gravity. The acceleration was much more significant than that. When I finally blew up at around 8 km altitude, I was on a Kerbin escape trajectory and going well over 4,000 m/s. The effect seemed to get worse the further down I fell into the atmo. Luckily I had a quicksave before reentering so I was able to try again several times, doing this and that differently, but still experiencing the issue. I even tried firing my engines retrograde but that actually seemed to make the problem worse (i.e. craft would speed up even more despite burning retro). Curiously enough, the problem seemed to fix itself by extending my landing gear (medium sized landing struts) before reentering, so I suspect this was some phantom force caused by the gear clipping slightly into the body of the lander (the “butt” of the lander to which the legs were attached was a Mk2-Mk1 adapter, which is slanted, so the legs had to clip slightly into it in order to deploy with the “feet” parallel to the ground; I don’t have a screenshot at the moment, sorry). Anyway, the problem was solved in this instance and I was able to land safely but I still wanted to post here in case others or I have this problem again (or in case someone wants to explore this as a Kraken Drive possibility!). Any input is greatly appreciated.

Any idea why this only works on MechJeb and not KER? I mean when launch a new vessel it will only have the MechJeb but not KER.

I've placed my first space station in orbit on my new 1.1 career. I have a science lab crunching away at some data and I noticed that apparently in 1.1 once you put an experiment in the lab you don't get it back to be recovered or transmitted. My question is, once the lab finishes processing the data from these experiments, should I transmit it or recover the lab? What made me doubtful about this is the following note in the changelog: "Labs with science can now be recovered for science." So will i get the typical penalty if I transmit the generated science instead of recovering it, or does this just refer to recovering experiments that weren't processed? Thanks in advance.