Octa

Ahhh darn, i totally forgot about that feature of the mod. So it's without KAS/KIS then. Good thing i asked before i started with the design.

How much can i mod the game so the entry is still considered "stock"? I design my craft with stock parts only, apart from a BTDT-Scanner. The rest of my mods which i would use for this challenge would be ScanSat: for the BTDT-Scanner and well, i need a map for navigation. KAS/KIS: Fuel Transfer, iirc, my rover can still be pure stock but can still be refuelled by another craft with a fuel hose (or do i need docking?) Mechjeb/Pilot Assistant: This is rather tricky. I guess the informational stuff from MJ shouldn't be a real problem. Then we have the autopilot from PA and the rover autopilot. I'd use them to lock heading or speed for some parts of the ride, so KSP does not need 100% of my attention during this challenge.

I feel kinda positive today. -28 (+)

If you know how much fuel was left in the plane when you did the re-entry AND in which tank that was, check the CoM/CoL-Alignement with that fuel in SPH (you can also check if it's able to fly with that at all by launching it with the emptied tanks and flying around KSC a bit. Fuel amount in SPH can be changed with tweakables: rightclick on the tank and click&drag on the green bar to change the amount of fuel Most likely it's that issue. My only working SSTO has elevons on the wings, a rudder at the back (yaw only), canards and 4 airbrakes, so its a bit different from your design. i managed to did re-entry by a 100m/s retro-burn from a circular 80km orbit (just to get an idea of the re-entry speed). I pitched up at 30-45 degree and i enabled my airbreaks and intakes, to get as much drag as possible. I pitched up all the time and got some heat warnings, but nothing exploded. Worked like a charm.

I managed to let it snap without hotkeys, by moving the camera at almost 90° to the mounting plate (=view from left, right, above or beyond on the plate), but the engines realls tend to snap on the central node, if they snap at all. I tried to test the vectors, took me 10 tries to place 3 of them on the plate.

Is that displayed by the info "Intake air provided"/Intake air needed" (both kg/s^2) by Mechjeb? Can't remember my mach numbers (must be mach 4 or 6), but at 20-24km and 1200-1400km/s, my thrust startet to decrease. 4 Rapiers, 6 Shock-Cones and a few structural radial intakes, because i had no attachment nodes left and needed to counteract a bit on the fact that 2 engines were lacking one shock-cone. Since SSTOs have high speed at high altitudes, i can't see chances that other intakes perform somewhat better for this.

That's the very thing the OP was complaining about. Not even one day after 1.0.5 was released.

I uninstalled FAR after 10 minutes and to not plan to give it 2nd try.

Do some poeple expect that modders all live together in some fire department-like building? When a new release is out, everything goes "ALARM!!!!!", sirens, blinking red lights everywhere. Then the modders jump out of their beds, slide down a pole to the floor below (thats where the computers are) and get cracking to update the mods asap.

Thanks for your answer! From 1st thought, the Noise created by other programs than KSP can be ignored. When i start KSP, usually no other Program (apart from the always running background applications like steam) is running. Or the design/ascent path must be bleeding edge with no margin of error/variation. So after digging a bit more in the documentation, i found that that stuff like vertical speed and heading are RO parameters, so i'd have to write the loop that read the current values and and adjust the control (pitch, roll, yaw) if theres a difference. So no pre-programmed auto-pilot where i can set "waypoints" of the ascent. I haven't yet decided if this goes too deep into material for me or not. I already spend much time on playing KSC or messing around with computers/servers, with scripting in KSP/kOS there would much less free time left for other things

Is this the right mod if i want to automate a SSTO flight profile? Right now i'm using Pilot Assistant to keep heading, height or vertical speed at a constant level while it also stabilizes the plane (keeping roll at 0 and adjusting pitch/yaw for heading and climb. Can i do the same here or is there more manual work required in the script? In Pseudo-Code, what i imagine looks like this: - Start rapiers, disable other engine, full throttle, roll=0, hdg=90 - If speed=100m/s, pitch up a bit (liftoff), retract gear - pitch=30 degree until 10.000m - keep vertical speed of 50 m/s until 20.000m - keep vertical speed of 10 m/s until 25.000m (asuming i run out of intake air at this height) - switch to closed cycle, close intakes, pitch 45° until Ap is 75.000 - stop engines, turn prograde As said, right now i'm typing in new numbers into pilot assistant during flight, which handles the actual controls. With a scripted ascend, i want to take most unreliable thing out of the equation (=me) and have something of a comparison between different vessel designs/configuration or flight profiles. ("Hmmm, i have plenty of Oxygen left after i got in orbit, which my nuke does not need, how much can be removed while i still get to space"). This mod offers a huge amount of things that can be configured/scripted, is this sort of automated control possible or do i need to script more things explicitly? For example the sections of keeping vertical speed. Does kOS automatically adjust pitch to keep the climb rate like pilot assistant or do have to scripts the pitch itself (which i think would be a bit more complicated )? Also, do 2 launches look exactly the same?

On the last 2 screens the Laser hits the SPH, not the Launchpad. Isn't that the smoke used for SRBs?

I uninstalled almost all of my mods (20 of 25) because the game kept crashing. I did a few months break and after upgrading all my mods to the latest release, the game crashed regularly when reverting a flight to SPH. Now, 2 flights went "well", the game was not the thing that crashed at least. Can't say the same about my SSTO...it went well, until i discovered the engine toggle was not configured in a action group. I hope after 2-3 more flights that thing finally hits space. It still bugs me that i once managed to build a successfull SSTO only to find it useless because 1.0 was released shortly after. And i tried FAR, but somehow we don't like each other.

Weren't you able to able to scale the Windows UI? In Win7, it's in "Control Panel" -> "Display" (Well, if i translated correctly), where you can change from 100% Scale to 2 larger one (for me, it's 125% and 150%, but it depends on display resolution). Expect Webpages to look slightly different. Also, as this modifies the OS font size, it could work for OP as well.

A thew things considering this entry: - mechjeb was used for the surface info panel only, otherwise, no mods were utilized - i used pilot assistance for a stead flight at about 18km - 21km height at 800-1000m/s (i was afraid of overheating stuff, so i changed height or speed settings once in a while) This took 1 hour realtime, i used the autopilot to keep more or less stable settings while doing other stuff, don't expect me to control the flight the whole time Plane before takeoff Liftoff, ascending to cruising alitude Somewhere during flight Quite a relief to see KSC again: Touchdown! (i took complete controls once it got over the mountains) final stats: my calculations: 150 Points to start with extra kerbals (4 mk3 pods): (4*16-8) * 4 = 224 (374 points) duration penalty 1:12:05 MET = 73 minutes 374 - 74 = 301 no parts left behind no kerbals left behind 301 total decide yourself whether to accept this entry or not

I haven't heard of any changes in 1.0. These 2 characteristics and the badS-Flag of the kerbal control the facial expressions in IVA-(Cam). Unfortunately i'm not using any of them. As far as i see, only Deadly Reentry features new parts from your list. Most mods integrate themselves in the tech tree so their parts are not available from the start, but have to unlocked one after another. Also, the parts costs funds. Mods also feature contracts, or at least there's another mod that includes contracts for a mod (say mod one more time, i dare you!) Personally, i remember seeing a mod that adds contracts to feature the parts and function from ScanSat, but this is certainly not available for everything. I recommend CKAN which is more of an external tool, but for me, it made managing the whole update stuff a lot easier and way more comfortable. Many mods are included in CKAN, so from the popular ones there just a few left that have to managed manually. Stuff i find interesting is: ScanSat Dmagic Orbital Science Station Science Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Inventory System Hullcam VDS Kerbal Alarm Clock Transfer Window Planner Rasterpropmonitor Kerbal Engineer DockingPort Alignment Indicator

Are mods like mechjeb or pilot assistance allowed? I dunno if an autopilot is a "change in game mechanic".

The only thing that might contradict the challenge is that it's called "airline challenge", but from the rules, his approach is valid. It's up the challenger to state more or less waterproof rules for his intented way the challenge needs to be done. Spaceplane-SSTOs might be a bit less stretched out interpretation for this. Some points that need clarification: - Should the craft the plane-like? (and even then it's possible to have that much engines that it's basically a horizontal flown rocket with some wings as decoration that do nothing) - Can the Apoapsis escape the atmosphere (suborbital hops?) - Should the Periapsis stay below the ground, below 70km or are fully orbital flights possible? - Can the plane contain rocket engines? What about RAPIERs? Can they be used in airbreathing mode only?

Does anyone know how to deplete 200 Units of ablative shielding yet? o.O

56 certainly not

That's not what's intended with dual monitor support. You will have the same situation as before (= need to switch between display modes), but the screen will be extended to an ultra wide-screen version across all monitors. With 2 monitors, the "logical" middle is right at the monitor frames. Then you have a huge blank space in the center of your setup. This gets enjoyable with 3 monitors, but then again this needs further optimization than "rendering the game in (3*1920)*1200", because the HUD should stay in the center screen. The constant headshaking caused by having the staging on the left, the navball in the middle and the ressources on the right screen may cause others to think you might not like this game. Thats the "more correct" solution. 2 logical seperated spaces/windows with differerent sets of information on 2 different screens. Yeah, many games don't really support that, which is a shame for RTS, RPGs (map view) or simulations (information display). Dual monitor support for KSP is very good idea.

There are new users like me who'd like to express their opinion on the topic, old or closed threads don't help there.

Not cheating, but good for stuff that's gotten "boring". I like to build my rockets compatible to the mechjeb autopilot. If MJ can launch it to space, i assume it's a good design and a manual flight is possible. Also, it helped me a lot with landings, i havent figured out where to burn yet for a rather efficient landing. I mean..i can get to the ground, but with some of my manual landings i ran out of fuel for the departure. Also, the informational panels, I LOVE THEM.

This could be a very good addition to the science mode! A bit like the campaigns on the wiki, a set of goals would add more motivation in science mode besides unlocking the tech tree and "getz all zhe science!!!"

I did something like this in sandbox: 1 larger rocket piggybacked 4 lander probes to duna into a polar orbit. Once the orbit was above the landing site, i de-orbited the whole thing, decoupled one lander and then burned prograde again so the main rocket stays in space. The landers where then on a trajectory which brought them down to duna. Why didn't i thought of that in my current science mode game for kerbin!?!?! Jeb would have much fun with that, waving the fellow kerbal scientist goodbye as he throws them into re-entry Problem could be the required technology for that ship. And this needs to repeated after new science parts where unlocked (1 thing that really bugs me with the experiments is the early grinding phase)