Octa

If your spacecraft that wants to dock with your station is behind it, lower your orbit, so it will catch up. Raise your orbit if it's in front of your station. All is assuming that the orbit of the station and the spacecraft which wants to dock is the same at the moment. For the final roundevouz, control the spacecraft, select the spacestation as target and set up a maneuver-node that intersects the orbit of the station. You'll get the separation distance displayed. Try to set up a node to get a seperation of 5km (more is still possible if you can't get it tight on first time) and then try to get burn right. There are plenty of tutorials out there for roundevouz (gettings 2 ships close to each other) and docking itself. My first docking mission was the one described in the wiki, the re-enacting of gimini 6A and gemini 7. Edit: added link

More place to storage tools in it. at 1:05.

A Duna Mission i did in september last year. 4 small landers shipped by one spacecraft. Tip: Never ever try to de-orbit 2 Landers simultaneously

I just got my first SSTO into space....see my thread in the "Gameplay Questions" Section. The flight took while, but i managed to get an orbit AND was able to land. In past tries, i got into an 80km orbit...without fuel left.

Ok, guys, had no time to play during the weekend, but i kept an eye on this thread. Thank you for you feedback, today managed to implement your suggestions I use mods to add new parts, mostly. Mechjeb for convinience . Stuff like Interstellar, FAR or Kethane just modify the gameplay itself too much for me. The Wings were not rotated in SPH. I know about the Lift issue if the wigs are rotated. So much theoretical knowledge about KSP from reading in the forums, the wiki and watching Scott Manley play, but not enough skill to actually use that knowledge About the last paragraph...read below. Done that in the X8. Kerbals were supposed to take a nap in the crew module if there's no maneuver to fly. Well, since my kerbals already managed to fly to Duna with the tiny and uncomfortable 3 man capsule, any development for increasing the quality of comfort during flight was therefore ditched due to resolve the now conflicting goals (managing to get into orbit vs. a nice flight wasn't much of a choice for me) Machjeb was only used to control keep pitch, heading and roll steady. Also, i used this intake mod to assign the intakes to the engines, so there are no suprises or assymentric flame outs. all left intakes are aligned to the left engine and vice versa. Now, here's what i did today: - removed the crew module - added another LF-Tank for the Jets - re-did the wings, as CoF/CoM was messed up - re-aligned the RCS-Thrusters The the rear landing gear was also moved a bit forwards and i fixed the action groups, because a few intakes where not toggled. These 2 things never bothered me me very much and i kept forgetting about it in the SPH. This time, i used the thottle to adjust my vertical speed, something i never did before. I always kept the throttle at 100% and used the pitch for this, which was not very accurate. Now, I had an eye on my ascend rate, acceleration and intake air and adjusted the trottle to keep it all in control. I was _so_ surprised by this: 1600m/s at 30 km with 0.20 intake air left iirc. I did 2 mistakes during the kick-out burn and quickloaded, but then i managed to get into an 260km circular orbit. YAY!!!!!! In space, i transferred a bit fuel back to the jets to have reserve, because i thought "you certainly mess up the timing to land!" I did. Re-Entry was somewhere above the desert west of KSC, during the flight back to the runway, fuel was about the run out, so i throttled up and down to keep my consumption rather low. After a while i thought "Well, now you don't need that much fuel....but your speed is as slow as your consumption!". Just before the runway, i got a surprise flameout on one jet and i landed nearby. I just 50m away from the runway. Cause of the Flameout: Assymetric fuel transfer. The other engine had 0.95 LF left, the flamed out one was dry. Who thought that this tiny amount of fuel might get important anyway? But hey, all survived and the did not end up at the other side of the planet! 1 flaw i still have: I needed to transfer fuel from my rocket to the jets during ascend, but before overhauling the design once again, i'll just experiment with more agressive flight profiles. I think i kept the vertical speed to 10-20 m/s to early. But once again, thank you for you tipps . God knows which revision of my SSTO would have made it into space if i wasn't asking you... the X40 could've become a christmas '15 present from me to myself

Could it be that the parachutes are just below the threshold at 1x time speed and physik accelarion pushes them over the edge? Have you tried that with other (simpler) crafts? Like just a pod with the chutes?

I only found quite vague tips or guides for that on the forum, and i don't know if you guys were referring to FAR/NEAR or stock aero. I try to make this this design fly to space for quite a while, with so much changes and flights that i lost track of it (i once started with X1 and now i'm at X7...with all the changes included it'd be X30 i guess) Now, i've finally documented a whole flight to get some feedback from others. The numbers stay roughly the same on every flight/design, i start my kick-out burn at 1000-1200m/s surace speed because of the lack of intake air or fuel for the jets, is that too slow? I hope all necessary information for this is in the screenshots. At least, i managed to land on the ground (intact! ) It's stock aero, or soupero. Are there any major flaws that i can improve?