Captain H@dock

The re-root tool is your solution here. That's the only sane solution for assembling several sub-assembly. I've only recently understood how to use it (or so I think). Apparently after selecting it, you should select an adjacent part to the new root you want, then the part you want to become the root.

For Kerbin ground locations, I navigate with a plane and use the navball. I do an approach pass (several) and watch the "you've entered/left area ...." to have a general idea of where to land. On landing I taxi until I see the "you've entered...". Some location might require terrain permissive aircrafts... I've never had a plane stranded but you better be able to do short takeoff and landings... Worst case, you can try a touch an go science reading, but without action groups it is very tricky (I was using tier 1 SPH and runway anyway). For Kerbin Air locations, most are fine, but for the highest I approach them from cruise altitude and zoom climb into them. Again watch for the "Entering ..." and to get the reading right away. For other body ground location, the lack of retrograde navigation marker is really a pain. You have to flip around your craft to check where you're going to land, no very safe IMO. So i send a target probe first, which is light and can hop around to the exact location, then I target it with my lander... As for EVA (think multiple ground sample location), this if dead reckoning (estimate where the N is using the milky way, go in the general direction of the navigation point according to map view), ... Quite a pain indeed, and you might get short on monoprop. Doing these on the dark side of a body is only adding to the difficulty. I then once lost all ship marker in the main view (game bug, I guess). Getting back to the ship wasn't nice...

Same. Trying ballistic launches to complete "crew report from above site Alpha" is something I definitely won't miss...

Exactly. Concurrent missions (especially once you go inter-planetary, where missions last months....) will force you to have more than one crew. But even Minmus / Mun can do this (your minmus mission will last enough to complete 4 or 5 mun missions in a row)

I think he was interpreting the first post as in "considering the same ship at different orbit". Since LFO is pretty much free, I'd say refueling makes that interpretation relevant.

I finished planning my first interplanetary trip. This should bring 6 lvl3 kerbals (3 for each body) to the duna system and fullfil 4 contracts (duna base, ike station, seismic on each surfaces) with re-usable landers and rovers. Also bringing an ion drone plane but it's a bit of a gamble (lift to weight Kerbin ratio is 4.8). I reckon the two Scientists will return to KSC, and the remaining 4 will be stationned in Duna/Ike Orbit/surface to handle any future contracts (engineer on the ground, pilots in orbit). I've been spending the past week in the VAB and on dV spreadsheets, so hopefully some of the designs will work... (not that I will know any soon, there are Eve, Moho and Dres planetary windows between the departure and the arrival of this fleet to Duna...) Anyway, time to launch all these to orbit (as well as their respective interplanetary tugs) and to fuel them up. Disclaimer, there might be errors in part or all of these cells. Don't re-use them blindly.

However, as a side question (if I may) would anyone know how important is the dV gain between starting from a very LKO and a higher one, assuming your tanks would be full anyway (by being able to re-fuel on the final orbit before transferring, which with an SSTO tanker plane is pretty much free)?

Landed another base on minmus using my re-usable base landing system. Works on Minmus and the Mun (TWR makes it trickier there, burn early). My base are on wheels because my first contract required it (19 spots on wheel on minmus). I decided to go modular and a bit reusable. This means you can assemble sections on the ground. I've made differents sections with (side) cupolas, labs... depending on contract requirements. All you pay for is the launcher(s) and the base(s) (i don't SSTO my modules up to LKO). A reusable transfer stage takes the base from LKO to target orbit (opt. refills the tugs) and returns empty to LKO. The tug system orbiting the target takes the base down and goes back up.

robopilot99 On the throttle issues, i found that i had the same issue on 1.5 (very nice update by the way, except for the WSAD, got to try that 1.5.1), while not having it on a previous version (1.4.6 ???). So i got annoyed and tried re-calibrating. It turns out the initial position of my throttle slider has an influence on that problem: I could use full course only if the slider was at the bottom position upon hitting calibrate, but not if it was in the middle, or at the top. In all three cases I move it across the entire range during the calibration process. i think displayed range values were different too [-1;1[ against [-1;0[. Possibly this involved checking the invert axis radio button. If you think this is relevant, I can reproduce more professionally this weekend and send you whatever resource you think could help you (log file?). As for where the settings are saved, that's in the big xml in the main folder AFBW. I tend to back this file up in case I start KSP without the joystick connected, which seems to make AFBW forget about the settings. That doesn't seem to include calibration data though, and I can't figure out where this is going.... And congrats on the mod, I could not do without it. And I say that having played with no WSAD when no SAS and half throttle range for the past week. 1.5.0 installed through CKAN, Win 7, Alarm clock + AFBW, Microsoft Sidewinder ForceFeeback.

It actually is a bit nose heavy when full, but nothing a bit of trim can't fix. First fuel transfer should come from fore-front tank to correct that and from there you can balance perfectly through the burn*. Roll authority is not as good as pitch since only outer elevons are allocated to roll when all of them are pitch enabled, so it's intentional. All in all, i'd say it is quite easy, as in 100% landing success rate where my previous design was less than 10%. (level flight at flare did require 105 m/s to stay out of tail strike territory, but at this speed it would wheelbarrow upon touching down, so you had to flare up to 20-30 degrees a couple of meters above the runway until the speed decayed to 60 then slam the nose down when sink started in order to touch down at a lower pitch angle... I decided this wasn't worth the effort as it wouldn't be fun to consistently fly and I scrapped the concept) As for the bay, like I said it should be easy enough to create a cargo and a transport version, these mk2 sections are interchangeable after all (I haven't looked up the weights, but that should be manageable as you'd need less fuel). However, my career is about to get inter-planetary, so my payloads are way bigger than a mk2 cargo bay as I'm routinely using a 24t to LKO launcher. I used to have 12 millions when returning from my multi-landing science farming mun and minmus missions, which yielded around 5K each thus opening my options in the science tree but forcing me to spend quite a bit in R&D and building upgrates. Then all I had left was 2 to 3 millions. So ATM I'm trying to save funds where I easily can and SSTO plane re-fuelling (thus launching half empty, and re-using transfer stages) seemed to me like the obvious answer here. At my level, fuel is easily SSTOed up LKO, big structures aren't. This is also due to the fact that I run concurrent missions (don't wait for the end of a launch to do the next one) which is easy enough in kerbin SOI as the longer you have to wait for a minmus mission to pay off is 6/7 days. But starting day 200 I have three or four inter-planetary windows opening, and none of these will pay back until they're all launched. So I suspect I might need to be careful with funds. Cause I intend to go manned on all of these (not saying they all land kerbals), I can't be bothered waiting another year.... As for Kerbals, I might end up ferrying them up and down using this plane too. Not sure it's worth it though, as they weight nothing and you need to send their craft up anyway... Hence, I went for a tanker. *(well, it's my guess since I've never burned more than half of it, and testing/real landings have been conducted in the almost empty configuration. But with tanks so far aft and forward, it is reasonable to assume that if you can find an empty and a full stable configuration, you can do so for the entire burn envelope)

TL / DR : A small mk2 SSTO tanker that ended up looking like a flying wing. Tried out my second attempt at stock SSTO refueling drone using mk2 parts. Not initially knowing about radial intake effectiveness, it though I had to go for the triple body design to have enough forward attachment points. This ended up being kind-of a flying wing. It aims at cheaply refueling my LKO parked transfer stages for the mid career (outside of Kerbin SOI exploration) game. It probably could still use refinement, but the concept works and behaves quite like a plane in my opinion (except for crazy glide performances, and the going-to-orbit part, obviously). According to guides I've read, it's probably 'under-winged' (24 lift for 30 t) and overpowered, but it seems to work this way. It could also probably use some tank re-factoring to end up with a balanced LF and O mix once in orbit, but I'm still working on the flying profile. That should allow for delivering 1500 units of LF and matching O to 75K orbit, for 600 worth of LF + 200 O. So that's about half an orange tank? Fuel flow and balancing is fully manual. Only the Full liquid fuel tank aft of the probe-core and Clamp-O-Tron is ever enabled when air-breathing, and I manually top it from side tanks (either aft or front to keep the plane balanced) to not run out of LF. When in rocket mode, I tend to enable the tank aft of it as well as the center bi-coupler, to reduce fuel management related work-load. I'm able to rotate it easily off the run-way at full load, though full back elevon will lead to tail (prop) strike, so I aim for 7-10 degree pitch until establishing vertical speed. Landing is way easier. You have to keep the front bi-coupler about full to keep it balanced enough (see dry configuration pic), but it flies slow and forever. I tend to align at 100-120 m/s, cross the threshold at 60 and glide from there until 30, which allows for gentle touch down and plenty of runway left. Pilot correction is required past 27K to prevent yaw drift, but nothing unmanageable. Playing with a joystick, for what it's worth. It's pretty slow to turn in orbit due to no additional reaction wheels and only 4 vernor engines (radial and normal axis), but it's supposed to be a plane anyway. And i reckon it could be easily derived into cargo or transport by swapping some of the tanks for bay / crew sections.