Hotel26

Pretty excited. The 1.2/1.3 upgrades knocked me for six. Everything now squared away with refurbished equipment, especially mining... And so I have finally rebooted my mainline Orbit world. Yay. Formation flying?? No. This is Operation Beach Head on the way to the Mun. Two Aquila(*) joined by a double orange tank/monoprop "barrel" taken from a Minotaur Supertanker... If this works on the Mun, then Duna and Laythe are next in line. Yay. * warm thanks to @swjr-swis for rebuilding Aquila!! Yay.

Yep. I started with 2 Twitches on Foxbat and then went to 3 Sparks. With R2, I went from the 5 T400 tanks on the Foxbat to 5 T800, so I had to go 5 Sparks on the underbelly. (It started to look like a sow at feeding time when it was on the ground, wheels up and wing down...) Then I came across the Thuds in the engine catalog and my eyes bulged out on stalks somewhere across the row at about the Thrust (Vac) column. I had briefly thought about engines in bays... hmm, it's still possible because I don't have the NP-complete CoM balancing problem any more, due to the infinitely-adjustible wing tanks and wing tips. One thing I am not too worried about on Duna is drag! Last note is that the Thuds are close to double the power required. However, that's a good safety margin for VTOL, particularly when you can also pitch up and use them as very beefy horizontal arresters if say, a big hill suddenly looms out of the Martian dust storm! If I could get one in a Mk1 bay, I'd have one of them right at the CoM, but it's a big sucker, all 900 Kg of it. Thanks for the suggestions, though, which I'll think on, coz I haven't finished learning by a long shot!!

I didn't want to go to bed last night without one more fling, so I took a Foxbat for a leisurely cruise, hoping to find the Midland Sea biome [I did]. I flicked the SAS switch off and got her trimmed to fly, unattended, at a lazy 186 m/s on just two clicks of throttle. Her turn radius seems tightest at about 135 m/s but I haven't charted it yet. I have a confession to make: I made a plane. Her name was Foxbat. I fell in love with her shape. That last is definitely a sin!! So, in repentance, I focused back on my objective: to make a reconnaissance plane for Duna with good endurance. And I got back to my roots, which are Ugliness and Iniquity... So here is Foxbat R2. And I think I am going to love both these planes, equally; which is why the R2 is not a supercessor to Foxbat but a companion. The R2 solves the problem of slowing down to land in a way any Kerbal pilot is going to relish -- come roaring toward the target and throw a chute. It takes about 20 seconds to slow to a crawl. Cut the chute. Descend on the Verts like an elevator. "Bing! Ground floor!"

Thanks for the correction!

Sounds like he erroneously used the words "Flight Level" in reporting. Technically, flight levels start from FL018 (18K' and higher). So GA (general aviation) aircraft would usually be reporting altitude in feet.

Yep! Well, the perfect landing site for VTOL craft is a flat, tall mesa where you can perform the penultimate deceleration by swooping out of of a deep valley. I haven't gone looking for those exact specifications, though. For VTOL, you don't strictly need a flat area, but you have your fuel trucks, your admin block, support staff, cafeteria etc...

That looks like Laythe. [an old shot] I found a pretty flat one recently on Duna, though:

The stock KSP world is a cleverly-graded series of exercises that get harder and harder and more and more challenging and interesting. So you have to choose your missions judiciously as your own skill and understanding increases. I gather that Eve is one of the hardest challenges there is...

Kraft.1.3.1.3 remedies a problem with craft files that have been infamously rerooted any time in their history. The symptom would be an incomplete list of parts, displaying only some subtree of the craft. Please update your copy of Kraft. Please report any problems or difficulties in using Kraft right here in this note or contact the Illustrious Author, (Hotel26), via PM.

This is what you claim. But what many people don't realize is that thousands of people around the world are not only allergic to cats, but just the sight of a cat can cause the throat to tighten and the lungs to fill with mucus. Breathing becomes difficult and then the medics must be called for an expensive ambulance ride (for those uninsured) followed by a long, gasping, agonizing wait in a hospital emergency room. This is no laughing matter and I think that people should better educate themselves about the plight of feline-allergic sufferers. Personally, I wish people wouldn't joke about this serious affliction... it's not funny. being allergic to cats... the skin crawls. then the fur on the back of the neck stands up. Then the involuntary hissing...

Do you have a KerbalX account? You could auction it...? It looks pretty nice. (I myself have been looking for a yellow one...)

I believe the KSP limit for wing span is 256 kilometers. Anything larger than that is likely to cause hyperbolic ejection... followed closely by universe impaction (black pinhole with unusually painful X-rays).

Congratulations, because this looks beautiful and quite realistic. (You are too prolific, sir! I hadn't finished playing on Duna yet!) I enjoy pumping fuel around, much like some people enjoy gardening. It's relaxing, or can be. Then I discovered it's probably OK to warp on each transfer! You probably already do this, in which case, you have a mighty BIG ship.

"What do you get when you take a cockpit and add wings, fuel tanks, engines, reaction wheel, undercarriage, control surfaces and the best silk money can buy?" When my chirpiest Kerbals accosted me with this question in the KSC cafeteria yesterday, I thought it was a riddle. But they were bored and wanted something new to play with... (Who am I? Santa?) The answer is Foxbat [link]: It is half airplane, half spaceplane, half glider, half bicycle and a whole lot of fun. Landing it is like landing a pancake in a pizza kitchen! It's so barebones, it could only have come from the makers of the [Hotel26] MiG 15! What's it good for? Well, that's the riddle, isn't it!? [Phone in with your vote, but keep it polite, OK?]

Well, that didn't last long. I've decided it looks more like: A DRAGONFLY!! Hence, the name will be Gossamer Anisoptera. This is the final version. It's Lepidoptera with tricycle gear for better stability, an ion drive toggle (to prevent draining the battery while driving hard prograde with the Vernors for orbital velocity) and the matter of the final name change. Action Groups: AG6: ladder AG7: sails AG8: toggle Dawn AG9: Hover mode AG0: Flight mode Download it from KerbalX...

Without a shadow of a doubt, I summon forth @RizzoTheRat

Moi! "Shameless self-promoter"!? Jamais! (Although I do like the sound of it quite well.) I might be a bit lazy, though. I believe this predicament, this contretemps has now been resolved... Thanks for mentioning it.

I had this happen recently and I got to the bottom of it using the excellent Kraft.1.3.1.2 tool. There was a cycle in the parts tree (courtesy (excessive compulsive use of) the infamous Reroot tool) which was exhibited by Kraft infinitely looping on the two parts in question. Deleting a link then solved the problem... And, were you using the infamous Reroot tool on the craft with all those many, many, very numerous sparky little engines, perchance, to tell...?

I, Hotel26, with some considerably evil glee, now inform all lunatic aviators of the world that the long-awaited Gossamer Lepidoptera is now available... https://kerbalx.com/Hotel26/Gossamer-Lepidoptera UPDATE: superseded by Gossamer Anisoptera ...for 150 quadrillion dollars!!!!! Get yours now, before they're all sold out!

Oops... ...alive but dignity shaken, Valentina was to receive a one month suspension without pay. (And ordered to take swimming lessons during the time off duty.)

(What a great topic! I am going to comb through this...) Shift-translate-gizmo to attach things and drag them further away has changed my life [SPH]. Octagonal struts to make connection points! Shift-left-click to clone a part appears to neutralize the symmetry on the clone[*] * just discovered. If this is true, it's revolutionary. You can put things on a part in 6-way symmetry [ABBBBBB], clone-replace it and then take some of the attached parts off [ABB-BB-]. Or you can add heterogeneous parts to e.g. 6-way connection points one at a time!

It's been a good evening so far. I landed Wangari Maathai again, but this time re-entering prograde, as it was designed, not back-assward. And!!!! Is this the first glimpse of Gossamer Lepidoptera to come out of wraps? Name Gossamer Lepidoptera Gossamer Albatross xenon 10,500 5,250 dV 5,830 m/s (30m 2s) xenon 2,329 m/s (20m 1s) xenon Mass 7,955 Kg 9,551 Thrust 24 KN 18 KN TWR (Mun) 1.93 1.2 Accel 3.02 m/s 1.88 m/s Part count 56 69 Lepidoptera has switched to LF/OX Vernors for horizontal propulsion. It carries twice the xenon. Lepidoptera packs 12 Dawn engines compared to Albatross' 9. It only has 4 (luxury) seats instead of 24 (economy). Unlike Albatross, it is steerable on the ground and, thus, can be taxied. Lepidoptera provides a ladder for embarkation. [No more jet-packers!] Big acknowledgement to @Brikoleur for his input and enthusiasm.

After delivering a supar-secrit payload to LKO... the Wangari has landed. Figuring out how to bring it back was fun. [Hint: ablator 50/50]

I just repeated [twice more] Challenge 3 in the Gossamer Albatross Academy training course. Landed 59m from the flag after traversing 137 deg arc across the Mun's equator. Because I bounced, one of those stupid little dinky toy fixed landing gear made of @#$! explodium [TM] detonated, but the craft, listing to one side, was otherwise unhurt, all occupants hale and hearty, and the craft still serviceable. Bear with me for a few seconds, fellow Kerbonauts! Imagine the world's best pilots -- Chuck Yeager material -- getting in to a tin can and claiming, " I can pilot this! I can fly anything...!" Can you feel the intense bravado!? Being a conventional pilot, in terms of experience, has got about nothing (except pulling Gs and wearing a pressure suit) in common with "flying" in zero atmosphere. But what makes a great pilot is someone who can figure out anything in real-time -- under extreme pressure. And about a hundred other items, too, such as attention to detail; resourcefulness; planning ahead... --- The Gossamer Albatross is actually a fecal piece of engineering. That's because I am a hopeless klutz in the VAB/SPH. I have NO sense of aesthetics. And I'm such a red-neck, I'm actually proud of it... But what ion drive on a lo-grav body represents -- and correct me if someone has done this in KSP beforehand -- is a third kind of flying: you have aviation through the air [SPH]. you have rocketry through the void [VAB]. Albatross is a third metaphor for parting those "surly bonds of gravity", quite unlike its other two predecessors. This is Chuck Yeager invited to sit in an Apollo capsule. This is Robert Lindbergh invited to lock grip with the joystick of one of the early Sikorksy helicopters. [He did and had to sleep on it overnight to figure it out!] This is Neil Armstrong invited to strap in to a 21st century lo-grav flitter. This is -- a paradigm shift. --- I've been persuaded that Albatross needs to be rebuilt to federal standards. It does. I've produced Lepidoptera in response. It's nice. But Albatross was so well-balanced, personality-wise, and the Challenges (not so strenuously aforethought) were so serendipitously tuned to Albatross that the result, the Gossamer Albatross Academy, is a Mozart symphony. If you consider yourself a Yeager; a Lindbergh; an Armstrong; or just a lover of all aviation, please take this challenge. I'd like to see a hundred new designs for lo-grav "flitters" coming out of this and G.A. thus assigned to the dustbin of history, forgotten! [Now quite verklempt...]

Kraft.1.3.1.2 fixes a small bug in which the abbreviation "lady" would work for Ladybug.craft, but "bug" would not because it abutted the .craft file extension.