Hotel26

Very nice. (The wing/engine tanks in the original were all locked to make only the forward fuselage tank supply all engines at departure to begin shifting the CoM backward. Not needed now!) Flaps are good. Very, very easy to land anywhere. The chutes are arguably not required now: they were there just to get the beast stopped in a hurry. (In the staging order, they were supposed to be between the engines and the rover undock.) In 1.2.1, have you checked the chutes will deploy on landing? I'm trying to stage them with the Space Bar but they don't deploy. Nor can I get the Kerbal to the top of the ladder and re-enter the cockpit. Sidrigh exits the top of the ladder and simply falls back to the cargo bay floor in a heap. I don't think I quite know how to make him Board the cockpit once reaching the top of the ladder. Looks like they are going to have to buckle on to the rover and fly from there. Hope they can land blind at KSC simply talked down by KSC Tower!! (This craft has some personality about leveling off at cruise but I think that is my piloting skills rather than the machine. EDIT: my second flight went better; just some very patient micro-trimming. Back-taxi on R27 @ KSC and, 19m later, the Inland KSC is in sight.) Thanks for all the craft notes detailing the Action Groups and providing lots of those. Life is good!

I've imported it and christened it "Aquila Ursa swjr-swis" [let me know your official choice for that third component of the nomenclature and it will stand]. It's on the runway for take-off. Given it'st payload ad short-field mission, this looks so much more a propos. "Pirep" back here after extensive flight testing! Merci beaucoup.

Wonderful. Meanwhile, I watched your IslandSpeeder1 video: amazingly creative. I love KSP and I can tell you do too. Kudos!

You are a champion. I'm pretty much speechless. I am on 1.2.1.1604 (LinuxPlayer) 64-bit (In the very early 1980s, Microsoft pretty much invented single-handed Version Incompatibility and made a business out of Planned Obsolescence. I know because I worked for a large computer manufacturer in the 80s and Compatibility was our God.)

I guess I am going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade to 1.3! I am on 1.2 and had sworn never to upgrade again. Oh well. (It took me a year to get over the last upgrade after I had found all the mod versions.) My mods are 1. Kerbal Alarm Clock, 2. Docking Port, 3. MechJeb and 4. Haystack. For this: it will be worth it!

Daniel Prates: thank you sir. swjr-swis: swesome, I am not worthy!!

Gotcha.

I cruise at 20km at about 1140 m/sec. I don't' need 75% circ; 50% is enough to get anywhere. I do like the idea of "reconnoitre range", though. "Rigid attachment" is another new term to me. Thank you! I'll look into that one. Note this is before I deleted the short fuel fuselage (with MechJeb and solar panel) and the inboard ailerons. This works and it's pretty clean. NB: I haven't completely finished testing its rough field performance.

Thanks. The tip about the inner ailerons in pitch mode being useless is noted. I'm going to remove them. Remembering that the problem description is landing impact breaking the wing roots (seems to be solved but still testing), the CoM issue is secondary. 7K units of fuel are over the wings and make no difference to the CoM in flight. It's the 3K units of fuel in the short fuel fuselage ahead of the wings that make the issue. Simply removing this module and shifting the wings back to match the CoM would "solve" that issue. Then I'd have an airplane that could take off in 25% of the runway at KSC, climb hard and be simpler to fly. The only penalty would be losing 3K units fuel of flight range. EDIT: So I did that and the fully-laden take-off certainly works better. A shorter aircraft length might improve unladen performance (yet to be tested). And I guess it's a 25% reduction in range. (I'll have to weigh the decision.) For anyone who has downloaded the craft file, take it into the SPH and set the fuel in the for'ard fuselage to 0 and watch where the CoM moves. Presto! STOL machine. This is the way I test: for'ard tanks full and for'ard tanks empty. Lots of great lessons in all of the above replies to my post; thank you all.

Incidentally, the conversation about CoM is interesting. This is a long-range airplane and, now especially with Bewing's advice about fuel tanks on the wings, it carries most of the fuel along the wing-line, but there is a short fuel fuselage ahead of the wings and before the Mk-3 cockpit. It carries 2,500 units of fuel. Full, this moves the Com quite far forward which is why the long wait until rotation. Given the mission profile, this is NOT a bad thing. Once I have positive climb, I turn off flow from all the other tanks. (In fact, I should do this in the SPH!) Once this tank has burned off, the airplane becomes quite responsive. In the earlier versions, I found that pumping fuel back and for'ard was the most accurate way to trim flight. And did you know, Concorde had no trim tabs. Its pilots simply pumped fuel around to trim the aircraft, particularly in level flight while accelerating to Mach 1, anticipating the sudden move in center-of-lift that occurs at Mach 1 going supersonic. (If I recall, the CoL moves aft causing a pitch-down that has to be pre-empted earlier by trimming. http://www.concordesst.com/fuelsys.html Here's a screenshot of the modified version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XNmue2O98twPiddUCAOjTNqQAdZC2HpG And the craft file (contains a MechJeb; hand-edit it out if you don't use MechJeb): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bpXQ5xMW44TyU7UfhHXw2uHNlKiUvNEN Thanks for all the help. Further suggestions to improve welcome. (I just wish I could get that Prospector back into the cargo bay after sending it out!)

Thanks Helmetman. The mission profile always starts at either KSC or the Inland KSC where a 3km runway is available. As long as I get rotation before the end of runway, establish positive climb, make a turn onto heading and reach a 20km cruising altitude within 10 minutes (all accomplished), I am cool. In addition, the mission objective is to be able to do a short-field landing on possibly uneven/unknown terrain using twin chutes and that actually was easily done because of the chutes (until I added the cargo bay extension). Then a short-field take-off to get out is required and I've been testing that at KSC on the runway with half fuel and the runway use is much much shorter and the climb is nearly 50 degrees. Thanks for all the tips, especially about strutting. I'll try to post more/better photos shortly, but there's one above.

Wow. Looking forward to your feedback! I moved two of the Whiplashes to the fuselage. I found this counter-intuituve because it is *more* weight on the wing root, but I just tested it with half fuel and landed it first time. Plus, I have more fuel onboard now. The twin engines mounted higher on the fuselage resist take-off rotation a tad but it was still close to 40. And it looks a whole lot more wicked! Please do continue your analysis, because this is educational! But thanks already.

(I'm starting to like the idea of just putting a parachute on the rover, dropping the rear cargo door in flight and just pushing it out over the target, James Bond style...)

I'm a noob in the SPH and working on only my second (2nd) airplane. This one is a supersonic transporter (named Aquila Ursa) All was going well with previous development versions including a number of short-field landings and take-offs, which is its primary mission. Then I extended its body to insert a short cargo bay in which to load the Prospector 1 (stock) rover. Gross weight is now 75t. It takes the whole 3km to reach Vr = 120m/sec, but with half tanks it will do it at 40 m/s and climb solidly. Cruise is Mach 3+ and range is 75% Kerbin circumference. Problem is that I cannot land it any more without the wings breaking off. (Maybe I just need to get better at landing but this one is palpably fussy about it compare to my SSTO (which is a good deal lighter)). I've moved the engine close and equally-spaced to the gear and moved all closer to the wing root. I tried aligning the main gear as best I could. I tried using Toggle Snap for alignment as well. I can accept not being able to land it with full fuel and that's fine. (Do the mission or don't come back!) But I want to be able to land it reliably on half tanks or less. I will really appreciate any help on this because I am so EXCITED: who needs to go into space when there is all of Kerbin to explore!!?

And the change (around 1.2) that meant you can't even flick a switch to activate an emergency battery once all other active sources of elec are exhausted... That's an immediate "cheat rule" for me!

The only thing more frustrating than the Vehicle Assembly Building editor is the Spaceplane Hangar Assembly editor. I know they are hard to do and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but frustrated isn't the right word for spending ten minutes with these pieces of software: try livid. EDIT: I have to admit though that I can be my own worst enemy: I keep forgetting the trick in the spaceplane hangar with just placing the part very approximately and then using the RGB-XYZ-rotator-translator control to fine-tune it. [A plug for Kerbal Alarm Clock: best mod and my household has a no-mods policy. Could not manage missions without it!]

OK, thank you; I did not know that. My objective is to "teleport" personnel to the Inland KSC. I guess I will make a 16 pax cabin with a control pod and deploy it (with crew) on the runway and then teleport that. (Then "recover" the "vehicle" after disembarking the crew.) Danke schoen.

I tried to deploy a KSP standard-issue Prospector Rover on the KSC runway with crew, but couldn't do it. There's a crew menu in the Spaceplane Hangar and the equivalent if you click the runway from the space center menu and select the craft and then try to crew it. I couldn't deploy crew by selecting the Green Tick on each crew member, nor by dragging the bod to the crew manifest on the left side. Is there a trick? All expert advice appreciated!

Actually, I really do apologize for the confusion! (And KerikBalm: spot on and well done! "Irving Asimov" is one of my many nommes des plumes.) I guess there are definitely two schools of thought about rocketry. And I admit I have a bee in the bonnet about "architecture". I read ArchGeek's opinion and example above with respect but was not at all convinced -- in fact I want to use his example as my own!! When I reach my 90x90km fuel dump, any excess fuel is siphoned into the dump for future use. As he says though, "Law" 3 is definitely an ergo conclusion. Here's a thought: my space dump is actually put together from parts scavenged from the first two super-tankers that come up to establish the dump. The super-tanker has a hex-connector and a small lander mounted atop and that is enough for the tanker itself to perform some gymnastics to shed some orange tanks that then become a giant ten-dock rig constructed purely of 24 orange tanks about 10 monoprop tanks and the 2 hex connectors. In other words, I think my motto is "never do anything in space that doesn't achieve at least two objectives". You can quote me on that! (Just spell it correctly: "Irving Asimov")

Ion drives are great. (I use them in packs of 24.) The amount of delta-V you can pack on a flight is almost like cheating. Yes, technically, xenon does not provide energy, yet it is an essential consumable. Ion drives will also not get you off Kerbin as they are just payload for that first half of the journey. It doesn't change the thesis: especially as, unfortunately, you cannot mine/refine xenon in KSP: the only source is Kerbin. The thesis is that launches are expensive (on time) and should achieve multiple objectives and be designed for a standard lift-off weight, not tailored to the payload or to a mission. I use almost exclusively nukes and ion after just shortly before reaching LKO. The exceptions would be a small lo-grav lander used as personnel/ore carrier and that space-plane, if I ever send it somewhere else. I am sure that there are many Kerbonauts who have gone this same route: assembly/fueling in LKO. I'd wonder what the percentage is, especially amongst the grizzled veterans? Additionally, I want to invite sharing of ideas by any who have gone the route of assembling expedition vehicles in LKO. P.S. I was quoting Irving Asimov, just to avoid confusion...

Erratum: Falcon is a recent addition and is a space-plane capable of taking 4 crew and 16 pax to LKO. It's also believed capable for deployment on Duna, Laythe and, in some limited manner, maybe on Eve(?). So, OK, three. Falcon was just for fun and not considered essential. It might get a promotion subject to successful testing on Laythe.

[I realize the following is going to be somewhat polemical...] Asimov's Three Laws are: Nothing accelerates (artificially) without fuel. All fuel comes from Earth (Kerbin).* Every launch from Earth MUST carry the maximum load of fuel possible. * Asimov wrote this before the advent of "mining/refining" in KSP [whichever version that was...] There's a catch-cry joke in space-jock circles, "moaah boosters!!!"... [subtext: "you don't even know what your delta-V is, nor how to use a slide-rule."] Somebody long ago in this forum asked about standardizing an orbit delivery system [the gist]. The answer was an emphatic, resounding, "you cannot. every [keyhole, bespoke] mission is different!"!. I'd like to opine this has been the NASA 1960s vision and it is the reason that space is now being privatized and modularized. My goal has been to conquer the Kerbolar system using a tightly-coupled architecture employing the minimum number of components. There are about seven components in it so far, covering a wide panopoly of purposes. Launch vehicles from Kerbin: just two. Two. Minotaur super-tanker is designed to blast 35 tonnes of fuel up to an LKO space dump (yes, it is nothing but a fuel dump and a rendez-vous for assembly of interplanetary expeditions). Aquila is a general-purpose payload deck (7 slots) that triples as a gangable interplanetary injection booster and orbital fuel tender. I build whatever payload I need on top of Aquila and then top up its payload with extra fuel to deliver to the Kerbin space dump for assembly and fueling of interplanetary missions. As R.A. Heinlein put it: "once you reach Low Kerbin Orbit, you are halfway to anywhere..." Or as the sign on George H.W. Bush' desk stated: "It's the fuel, dummy."

OBSOLETE -- PLEASE SKIP (OR MODERATOR DELETE) Sorry if this is stale and covered long ago. I took a break from KSP last September just as 1.2 came out. It took a while to upgrade mods etc but I am fionally back and trying to sort out compatibility problems. I had to upgrade my mining rig from 10 small radiators to 22 to get it to operate sustainably (although an advantage is that I can now operate all 3 excavators simultaneously without overheating). Now I notice that my fuel truck will no longer steer reliably. All of the docking ports are vertically oriented and motor and steering directions were all, once set, consistent. Now, I find that steering direction seems to depend on the terrain and going over a rise can cause everything to discombobulate. Rather than debug or analyze this change, can someone point me to a HowTo for rovers oriented toward how to control and steer them in a set-and-forget manner? (It's also worth mentioning that fuel pipes I had previously connected from tank to *engine* no longer function reliably. I'd love to get more information on any changes that may have impacted that.) UPDATE: Apologies: I mounted an Okto on a forward-facing surface, and it's all fine regardless of terrain, including it now gives me an accurate compass heading. Sorry for shooting too quick.

The UT time in my mainline "production" world reads Y10,D207,3:08:58. Easy to beat. I'm working on getting a mining colony established on every planetary system with a lo-grav target. (Which is all of them) What's your UT and what mainly has taken you this long to get this far from the starting point? What are your happiest/proudest moments? Are you a Time Juggler or a Time Warper? How many flights in progress?

Very topical as I have the problem that I have never gotten trim to make any discernible difference. I'm on Linux expecting to use R-shift in combination with the usual control key. The yaw/pitch/roll indicators do not move and the attitude doesn't change, even holding the key down to repeat. The only thing I haven't done is gone in to Key Settings and verified the deal nor forced the issue. I guess trim must work but unsure what's happening? Looks like nothing.