Captain H@dock

I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear. KSP Trim is not working as trim does work on real aircrafts. In KSP, Trim is an offset on control input but only so long as you give no input. As soon as you're giving an input, trim is ignored, until you stop giving inputs. On real planes, Trim in an offset on neutral control input even when you are giving inputs, it adds up to your input. For instance: In KSP you could be half trim aft, hands off the control: control surfaces are at a 50% deflection to pitch up. Apply a little back pressure (5% of max back pressure) on the stick, and the trim setting is currently ignored until you release the stick. Which means by pulling back, the control surfaces reduced their deflection (to 5% pitch up), and are pitching less up, instead of going to 55%. Let go of the stick, and they're back to 50%. Note: This won't be visible if you're using binary inputs (keyboard). But I'm using a joystick for planes, and this means I can't use control surface trim because it produces discontinuous inputs by being ignored except when crossing the neutral input area... Note2: I know what the trim tab looks like on a small aircraft. What KSP is doing surely isn't emulating that. Note3: There's a small chance this might be a side-effect of AFBW, but I really don't think so, I'll try to confirm that tonight.

Trim does do something, just as long as there are no control inputs. Which is not what planes trim is supposed to do, but it might make sense for rocket (it's not because I can't think of any reason for it that it makes no sense). However, it makes Trim pretty useless for planes, which by definition require constant inputs. And I second that "plane holds" would be nice to have, yet they would probably complexify the interface, meaning this is probably better left to a mod for those of us who want to do plane things.

Same as above. Perfect for when you want to point at a direction relative to your craft: docking, flying a plane... Unlike chase which often drift for no real reasons. On top of it, RCS burns always make sense in locked mode, because the vertical and horizontal axis are matching the navball one. If you go to locked and put yourself behind your craft, I/K will do vertical burns that will move your craft toward the top (K) or the bottom (I) of your screen. Likewise for J/L (though looking at your craft from the front in locked mode will look like J/L are reversed).

There's a chance the angles are in radian. :wink:

[quote name='vixr']Jeb takes one last look at his stranded lander, fires up the MMU and flies home without it... That scene just makes me smile.[/QUOTE] Except that in 1.0.5 Jeb now catches fire quite high in the atmosphere even after a suborbital hop. So I would say these days are gone (and rightly so). :wink:

Same here, my ascent profile doesn't work anymore. You don't seem to cool down until 18ish km, which is fine with decent TWR/TDR spaceplane, but might prove a problem for the more optimised ones. But if you climb earlier, and settle for less air breathing speed (1400 instead of 1500 in my case), you can still do it with the same fuel load. However, getting more than 1450 m/s from the air-breathing will probably be difficult now... What I've been using for that quick run (fuel loads are from 1.0.2, fill everything for a lot of margin):

So that's confirmed! Thanks you so much for that fix. This deserve so much more publicity (I follow the dev notes and the squad cast minutes and I only remember hearing about the distance and marker now being on the target, but not the indicator being fixed). So many good things in 1.0.5, but this is one I've really been longing for.

I just stumbled on this when going through the full Change Log: [COLOR=#333333]* Fix vector to target (on navball) to calculate from current control-from-here transform to target transform, rather than vessel root transform to target transform.[/COLOR] source: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/138798-The-Grand-KSP-1-0-5-Discussion-Thread%21 Now, it will be another 2 hours until I'm able to run 1.0.5, but could this mean the Navball target indicator bug (for off-centered docking ports) has been fixed? :) For context on that bug : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/131879-Radial-Attached-Docking-ports?p=2144650&viewfull=1#post2144650

That exploit was fixed in 1.0.3 if I'm not mistaken. Only the scientist manning the lab now count for science generation speed.

In 1.0.4 I was doing all my rapier runs at a constant altitude somewhere between 15.2 and 15.8 km. Anything lower and I was overheating when reaching 1100m/s. Upon reaching 1450-1520 m/s, I was starting a constant speed pitch up, aiming for a 10-12 degrees climb (prograde marker) at 19 km. Speed was usually starting to decay between 22 and 24 km, where I would usually switch. I haven't had the opportunity to play 1.0.5 yet, but I should be able to 6 hours or so.

But as the air is getting thinner, you also loose thrust. Try to climb at a constant speed, and check the tooltip of the engine: Thrust is decreasing. To gain speed, you need drag to decrease faster than thrust does, which is dependent on several parameters (on top of which i'm not).

It has a TWR of less than 1. Source: You can't lift off Kerbin using it. Nor Tylo. In fact the wiki quotes the jet pack as capable of providing a 3.2 m/s² acceleration. That would make it a .4 TWR compared to Tylo surface gravity, or 0.33 compared to Kerbin.

LV-n isn't possible with a reasonable size according to my planning. The only engine in 1.0.4 (apart from the super big ones) with enough TWR and ISP is the aerospike. Payload fraction is about ridiculous and dV is marginal (5.2K dV), but TWR is higher than 1.0 from orbit, and above 2.0 from take-off. Except if my math/data are wrong.

Well, the equation is always that simple. Also, nobody should have to guesstimate natural log in the 21th century. Just prepare a spreadsheet with dry weight, fuel weight (or wet weight), and Isp as inputs, and voila, you get dV for single stage ships. It's then up to you to enrich it with spreadsheet wizardry (using id and vlookup for quick tanks and engines referencing, options for extra tanks or payload) for what your use cases are. Also, this thread is making me slightly nervous regarding my Tylo re-usable lander (no ISRU). Luckily, I won't know if I've made a terrible mistake until 2 kerbal years from now...

I'm fairly sure the 3.7x he's mentionning is a scale factor, not a version number. kerbol A.Bx refers to the Kerbol System where all distances are multiplied by the A.B decimal number. I'm assuming other physical properties are scaled appropriatly, hence the higher dV requirement to orbit. edit: Also, considering how much I've struggled to make a Tylo chemical re-usable lander with an aerospike (which is similar to your dV requirement => 5,000 ish dV), I suspect OP won't be able to get any decent payload fraction with KSP default parts.

Would deploying them at the very last second help, or is your TDR (Thust/Drag Ratio) in dirty wing configuration that bad?

Like you said, KSP doesn't model camber, so flaps will obviously hurt drag a lot (since they just are metal plate you put against the airflow). Deploying them quickly puts you quite behind the power curve, so it's powered landing required. I had opposite experiences. See my link above (though the main wings were mounted with zero incidence): Take off was really improved (shortest distance to lift-off), and deploying them too fast produced excessive wind loading (RUD) and ballooning (not great when you're trying to follow the glide path). Except for the touchdown speed: I agree this is obviously improved too. I'd guesstimate you can reduce your landing speed by about 30% with a proper flap setup.

I have. For instance I'm about to send a such a spaceplane to Laythe. This SSTO will be capable of touching down at around 30 m/s with tank full (on Kerbin testing). Refer to this post for details on flaps configuration for KSP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/131184-The-Art-of-landing?p=2134481&viewfull=1#post2134481 Val mentionned that KSP wings provide zero lift with an AoA of zero degrees. If they also provide zero drag under such conditions, this would mean adding flaps to spaceplanes could have almost no side effects. Still, I don't equip my regular spaceplanes with them since I don't need Short Take off and Landing Capabilities on Kerbin. Also, these flaps don't work very well with gliding landings.

I think you have to stop thinking in term of punctual burns. Such engines force you to use spiral orbits. So I'm assuming you'll continuously burn prograde which will make your circular orbit grow bigger and bigger (yet still circular) until you're out of the earth gravity well. Granted, I don't know how that would allow you to use the earth orbital velocity (sound like you'd be wasting it since you can't eject...)... He says in that (another?) interview that he really wanted this to be a fight against nature.

I've had 81 before, so you should troubleshoot what's wrong with your install of KSP.

The key is that dV is a uniform measurement of your craft capability to change speed. It is therefore taking into account the mass of your craft. Saying "it saves no dV" doesn't really make sense if you're comparing two chips of widely different masses, because dV isn't a mesure of cost. dV*Mass is the real mesure of cost. So you only accelerate once that huge ship (the cycler) which will contains all the nice systems required for long duration space travel, and when it swings by the body you are at, you take a smaller ship to accelerate to the cycler speed (same dV, much lower fuel/engines requirements. Also, not intended for long period of use, so reduced life support systems and crew accomodation). You dock to the cycler, transfer the crew and the supplies. The smaller ship undocks and slows back down to orbit. You sit in the cycler until you reach destination with all the luxury of an interplanetary cruise boat. Once there you repeat the process with another smaller chip. SOI probably render the concept very un-efficient since cycler trajectories rely on n-body. You would need to compensate with big correction burn, make it pointless. Also, cost doesn't really limit you in KSP... If you're going to duna several times, you have millions

4 seats mk2 crew compartement is lighter than said cockpit...AS for SSTO refueling being time consuming: Well, that's the reason why it's cheaper... Time is money.

I don't see how that's different from any of the others 3 design families listed by Red Iron Crown... As long as your payload/part-that-reaches-orbit has a crew compartment, you get this no matter what the vehicle lifting it to orbit is... And as far as crew compartment parts go, cockpits aren't the most weight effective ones*. So that's yet another feature of the STS that is not helping with efficiency. * in order: mk3 crew (400kg per seat), mk2 crew (500kg per seat), mk1 can (860kg per seat). 1.1 might change that a bit with the mk1 crew cabin. I think all cockpits are above 1Ton per seat.

Prograde stability assit engaged with the game automatically switching to target mode?

I'm not on top of how lift changes with AoA on different wing parts, but could the delta wing lift increase faster than the airliner ones? IF this is the case (someone would have to confirm), your craft CoL would tend to move forward when the absolute value of the AoA increases. The mk2 fuselages on the side might also contribute in such a way. F12 might be able to confirm/infirm this theory.