Evanitis

I could not resist.

Does your GPU supports OpenGL? It's a so dated rendering technique that I wouldn't be surprised if video-cards these days would never even heard of it.

1 (-)

*imagines Jeb in an Mk1 pod + flea SRB construction landed on Kerbin. "No guys, that's my Station. You won't recover it. I'll stay here and monitor the further launches and the biological effects of... being in a can for long. So bring me snacks."*

0 (+)

Yay! Now let's see what people posted while it was down..

But the forever you wait, the more score you get.

I think that's the 'meaning' of SSTO. The 'point' of it for a space program is reusability and extreme cost efficiency. Though I doubt that many KSP spaceplane enthusiasts play such a hard grindy career where that matters from a gameplay perspective (same with actually landing on the runway). For me the 'point' is the fun of flying them. That includes re-entry and landing too - it's just awesome to substitute the hassle with heatshields and 'chutes with only aerodynamic forces of wings. I like the designing difficulty too, and that gets harder if you want to bring the whole thing down afterwards. Not that I don't have SSTOs that decouple some (or much) of their weight on orbit. I'd never mention someone's design choice in a negative manner, because it doesn't fits mine. I'd rather try it to find the fun in it. But I can totally see where the other commenters are coming from.

0 (+)

@inigma What you describe would be a totally awesome start of a career-game. Where tech unlocks adapt to my choices in what I'm building and doing. It would be nice if new parts just got discovered because I keep using similar ones.. Though it's hard to picture such, being used to the static stock tree. Anyways... I like planes. I'd love start by trying to reach higher and higer Machs until someone finds himself on orbit. I heard it was a plausible looking way to do so before everyone got a piece of Wherner's V2.

It's scary how accurately those numbers and relations fit my planes from the small orbital cabs to the huge beasts of hundreds of tonnes.

I took my Shuttle to orbit - without detaching the lifting stuff, boosters and the fuel-tank. I was pretty sure before that it's actually an SSTO, but I didn't think it will be able to take the standard 42t fuel-pod too. Spaceplaneing got soft since 1.02. Though it's never intended to land in this form, that will be my project for tomorrow. It's CoM must be waaaaay too behind, so I'm expecting a hairy re-entry. In the meanwhile, see the cool pictures I took of the failed attempts:

The beauty of having a cardboard supersonic plane still in the lower atmo - if it does anything out of the ordinary, there's nothing left to do than spamming F1 and looking for spectacular angles.

0 (-)

1 (-)

I never built a LES before... intentionally. But today I realized my Shuttle has one. The whole crew saved after two spontaneous discombobulation - one at launch one supersonic:

3 (-)

If you click the little icon of the AP/PE it stays displayed. Nice mod btw!

I was expecting launch-clamps. Or at least struts.

There's a Transfer Window Planner addon with a nice porkchop plotter. MechJeb's advanced transfer function has the same. Once you get the date, you can just set up an alarm in KAC.

Different lifting methods, but basically the same thing once on orbit and on the way down. I'm no expert on parachutes - never needed one on a plane. If a craft can pitch up, it will slow down without any extra help. If it can't pitch down, it's a design problem. Or an explosive one.

5/7. What has silly cats should get the max rating. I was never fond of those generated accomplishment badges. Is there anyone who can recognize even half of it?

I only have two rules of thumb: if it struggles to go where it should, add moar boosters. If it falls to pieces when it gets there, add moar struts. (note: it's not good advice, but a fun and functional one) Though it's sad that the cargo-ramp is such a party-crasher. It'd look so nice as a nose-piece. Struts -might- not be the solution here. I have a deep mistrust towards radiators, but who knows, they might would enjoy a ride.

I accidentally my space shuttle. I decided to take it for a K-Prize run but someone sneezed, and that voids warranty. I chose to not bail out, because control surfaces and landing gears are overrated. A rudder should be perfectly enough to bring down a ~110t brick with a minimal wing-area remaining, right? Right. RCS helped a tiny bit in pitching, but I mainly used the Vectors. It's more than enough to substitute elevons, but the technique doesn't help in bleeding speed. Though you know, if you can swim away from it, it's a landing.