Goomblah

I put half of the inline components on one end of the converter, and half on the other so I have radial/surface mounting points on either end: Regarding motherships and anything that will be pulling heavy loads around: Avoid mounting docking ports radially, unless you are double- or triple-docking along the main axis of acceleration. I learned this with my first cargo hauler: This was not a good idea. Those fuel tanks bend and flop all over the place while the ship is under acceleration, and docking ports do not like torque forces very much. Whenever possible, connect payloads so they are parallel to the direction of thrust; docking ports are much more resistant to tension and compression forces than angular ones.

Testing how cargo bays respond to payloads clipping through them: Not very well, it seems.

My badS kerbals: Jenchel Kerman (killed by the kraken ) Female Courage = 0.97 Stupidity = 0.65 Burlas Kerman Male Courage = 0.35 Stupidity = 0.67 Henfen Kerman Male Courage = 0.69 Stupidity = 0.80 Kerlee Kerman Female Courage = 0.89 Stupidity = 0.95

Still having kraken problems over by Minmus: This was an orbital tug I was sending over to help recover some rocket bits that got staged accidentally, in order to drain the fuel from the tanks, but it randomly exploded while I was trying to synchronize orbits. No physics acceleration, no wacky part clipping or potentially glitchy bits, just BOOM, there goes half of my ship. Also, Thomfield Kerman crashes the game every time he steps on Minmus' surface for some reason, so he is no longer allowed to go on EVA missions.

Once you start accelerating wildly after breaking Mach 1 (340 m/s), you need to begin slowly pulling up so your prograde is at about 30 degrees by the time you hit Mach 3. Pulling up too fast will cost you velocity, and not getting to a safe altitude fast enough will make you overheat and explode at such high speeds. I usually break the sound barrier at an altitude near 15km, then pull up so I hit 1200m/s or so at 25km, switching over to rocket propulsion shortly after, as the air thins out. The main issue is making sure you get out of the lower atmosphere before drag from hypersonic flight pulls your spaceplane apart.

I use mining trucks that contain solar panels and fuel cells, a small LF+O tank, a large ore container, an ISRU unit, and four drills. With an engineer on board, it can mine and refine ore efficiently enough to keep itself running constantly off of part of its fuel production via the fuel cells, while still churning out fuel at a pretty fast rate. It is wheeled for mobility, and has four "Thud" radial thrusters to allow it to land safely from orbit. It's designed to dock with a special fuel carrier which is essentially a flying orange tank; that orange tank then uses part of the produced fuel to reach orbit and dock with a waiting space station, where it offloads almost all of its fuel, leaving just enough to deorbit. It then lands as close as possible to a miner, which drives up to it and docks, then begins to fill the tank up all over again. The main advantage with surface refining is that you can use the fuel production capabilities of the lander alongside fuel cells to keep the miner running constantly; day/night is no longer even an issue. Just keep churning endlessly, filling up orange tank after orange tank. I don't think anyone is advocating that you should land your ships to refuel them; especially with interplanetary ships with low TWR, it's simply not possible. I think the main discussion is: Haul fuel up to orbit, already refined; or carry up the ore and refine it in orbit.

For anyone who feels that there is insufficient desire / financial motivation / technology for humanity to expand beyond Earth: http://www.mars-one.com/ Mars One is a foundation that intends to build a permanent Mars colony, with the first humans leaving for Mars in 2026. Unmanned missions will assemble infrastructure and land necessary equipment in place for when people arrive. They plan to pay for the mission primarily through media; such an audacious goal as landing a permanent colony on Mars is going to attract a lot of attention, so naturally, Mars One plans on taking full advantage of that hype by forming deals with television producers and advertisers to make money through sponsorship deals and a TV series based around the candidate selection process, training, and the mission itself. Building a Mars colony on ad revenue is probably just crazy enough to work, haha

I haven't left the Kerbin system yet XD I'm still refining my spacecraft designs, so I don't feel like sending out inefficient, over-engineered rockets to other planets when I can test out more efficient reusable interplanetary craft by hopping between Kerbin and its moons. That's for my sandbox mode, though; in sandbox the only real motivation for progression is "because it's there" and "build a cooler rocket". I don't think my rockets are good enough yet, so no interplanetary travel for me. However, on Science mode, I'm going anywhere I can possibly send a rocket to with my current tech; Kerbin recently got a third moon (a captured asteroid!) which I'm going to investigate; I'm also planning a Duna mission.

I found this pulled up on a school computer today: http://omfgdogs.com I don't even

The payload was intended to be a few kerbals (in the passenger module) and fuel; I realized that shipping a separate orange tank in a Mk3 cargo bay didn't make any sense when I could just dock and transfer fuel straight from the plane's tanks to my station. In this case the fuel balance was way off; as you can see in the top screenshot, I reached orbit with tons of liquid fuel and almost no remaining oxidizer, and I barely touched the MP until re-entry, and there was far more than enough for docking anyways. Having this much wing surface generates a ton of drag (with a TWR of 1.68 it's still really slow to accelerate in denser air), and gives really poor control (except for roll, which is hyper-sensitive). The whole design was horribly overbuilt and draggy; I would not recommend building spaceplanes out of only lifting-body fuselage parts, as it makes it difficult to keep your CoM ahead of your CoL, particularly when the tanks are drained. I usually have some lifting body surface, but also have some regular non-lifting fuselage to help pull the CoM forwards without moving the CoL too.

All of my workable SSTOs to this point have been essentially just a Mk2 fuselage with control surfaces and RAPIERS slapped on; so, naturally, I took this to the extreme and kerballed it way up: Presenting the Flying Slab, proof that with enough RAPIERS, intakes, and body lift you can get even the ugliest, most un-aerodynamic contraptions into space. Returning to atmo, on the other hand... Having a massive, highly draggy and lightweight (when empty of fuel) body does not do so well against air drag.

I'm going to keep a running report of all my projects in my Sandbox save here! Active: Kerbin Flight Center A refueling station in LKO, and my main base of operations in space. If any kerbals tell you that you can buy fried space chicken there, they are not in any way associated with Goomblah Aerospace Industries and should be ignored. ICT-01 Atlas A heavy cargo carrier capable of hauling heavy loads into orbit around any planetary body closer than Jool. This image shows it with two fuel shuttles docked, waiting to be released to land and get fuel from the miner(s) on Minmus. Currently is helping set up a mining and refueling operation on Minmus. Minmus Mining Lander A small mining vehicle as part of the refueling operation on Minmus. MEaRL "Minmus Exploration and Resource Lander" Part of an earlier attempt at a mining colony on Minmus, MEaRL performed the initial survey of Minmus to identify ideal landing sites. It was originally intended to serve as a miner as well, but due to a design error (No ore tanks!) it is more or less useless at this point, though it is capable of ferrying Kerbals around. Currently active as a shuttle to carry Kerbals to and from orbit above Minmus. Inactive: Munar Refinery Module Mk. III An early miner design that is probably outdated and useless at this point, but I haven't terminated just in case I want to bring it online again. The two previous iterations, on the other hand... Nomad Another early design; this one was supposed to be a light cargo hauler and orbital tug, with VTOL capabilities for planetary landings. It's pretty cool, but I don't really have a purpose for it, as it's a jack of all trades; KFC already has a smaller, more practical dedicated tug, and with Atlas around to take care of the heavy lifting, Nomad is abandoned on the Mun. Munar Rover Mk. III This is for whenever I get bored of launching rockets and just want to goof around in a rover for a bit. This version has an ion engine and some Puff engines for vertical flight, so it can clear pretty much any obstacle it runs into. Dart Ion Transport Designed as a pretty cool way to get someplace eventually, the Dart Ion Transport does not currently have any kind of function, due to its incredibly low TWR from only three ion engines. It can go fairly far (in theory), but you would get there faster using only RCS instead of the ions. It was cast out of its home at the KFC as a desperate measure to reduce local part count while the Atlas was being assembled at the station. Now that the Atlas is on the move and lag is back down to manageable levels, it could return to the station, except that I am far too lazy for that.

My cargo transport has successfully hauled the first bits of my mining operation over to Minmus. The payload included two mining vehicles (with refineries) and two fuel haulers capable of landing and docking with the miners. I decoupled one miner and landed it safely, though it was strange flying an eight-wheeled truck: Unfortunately, the miner is crewed by a pair of scientists for some reason, so now I have to switch them out for engineers in order to actually efficiently produce fuel. However, I recovered the ship Bill, Bob, and Val were stuck in (not enough fuel to return to Kerbin), which is perfect for shuttling crew to and from the surface. UPDATE: I dropped off the second miner, which also landed safely, though about 10km away from the first. While driving to meet up with the other, though, I rolled the vehicle badly while traveling down a mountain. As it turns out, a cylindrical vehicle body has a lot of rolly bits which don't like to stop rolling on low-gravity inclined planes, particularly ones followed up by low-friction flats... So now I'm stuck watching a Rockomax docking port roll downhill for a while until it stops and I can switch vehicles to recover the crew. UPDATE 2: Apparently this docking port was simply VERY committed to completing the mission. It rolled halfway to the target miner before finally coming to a rest... UPDATE 3: It seems the kraken got a hold of the lander can; it's disappeared from the tracking station and no longer exists near the crash site, but there's nothing in the area that could have blown it up; much less resilient parts survived somehow, so I don't know what happened to them... RIP Tilian and Jenchel Kerman, Minmus Miner Test Pilots (Kerbin Trials)

The game definitely says the drag values are changing; do the stats visible when right-clicking on the intake not actually apply?

You can have fairings in midsections; if you are protecting a section in between two equal-radius parts, you will have to have the fairing cross-section go out a bit, travel the length of the area it needs to protect, then go back in at the top. The fairing creator usually won't let you make flush fairings because they collide with parts a tiny bit...

I've been working on a mission to set up a refueling base on Minmus for a little while now, and now nearly everything is in place for the journey to Minmus: Yes, that ship is more massive than the space station it's docked to. It weighs 236.6 tons without a payload, and can carry ~150 tons to Minmus without additional fuel tanks (though it won't have any fuel for a return journey). It will carry about 120 tons to Minmus, draining the attached orange tanks in the process. Those tanks are shuttles for carrying fuel from mining rovers on Minmus's surface (surface refining), so they will be fueled up a little before making the descent. The fuel shuttles only account for ~72 tons of the payload; the rest is the two mining vehicles, an orbital tug, and some space station components to start the orbital refueling station assembly. The mining vehicles just successfully completed trials on Kerbin to make sure they dock with the shuttles properly, and I will be sending them up soon. This mission also will serve as a rescue mission for Val and a few of my favorite randomly generated Kerbals, who got stuck on Minmus after I realized that their spacecraft didn't have enough dV to return to Kerbin. It was supposed to land and refuel itself, but I forgot ore storage containers somehow, so no fuel...

The "In" is ln (lowercase L, lowercase N), which stands for the natural logarithm, the inverse function of e^x. It has its own button on pretty much any given scientific calculator.

Mission complete! SSTO spaceplane successfully docked with my space station @ 100km orbit. Barely had enough fuel to get up there, and had to refuel a little to have enough to even de-orbit, but it was a success nevertheless. Spaceplane is bottom left, also visible are a small tug (left) and a fuel tanker (right) And I managed to land safe and sound, in one piece (though a little far away from KSC)

I've been interested in KSP for a while now, but only tried the demo about two weeks ago. I was immediately hooked and bought the full game after only a few hours of playing, and I have been happily shooting off rockets ever since. I'm getting pretty good at building and flying conventional rockets - I'm assembling a space station in LKO and mining/refueling operation over Minimus - but so far a working SSTO spaceplane has escaped me. I have been able to get to 75-80km apoapsis, but have usually required anywhere from 800 to 1200 more dV in order to circularize.... Anyways, I'm happy to join the community!