Evanitis

It's from Scatterer.

It has two hatches, on the forward and backward attachment node. Zero problems if you leave one end open, or have another hatch somewhere on the craft, so you can transfer crew.

I totally love the crew cabin. Not having accessible doors is feature that can be circumvented if you expect it, and can provide you much fun when you don't. If I had to pick a similar part I dislike, it would be the hitch-hiker can. It's big, bulky and heavy. I assume it's main merit is being comfortable, but no kerbal ever complained to me when they had to spend 40 years in the weight-efective mk1 can. I also mistrust fuel-cell arrays. It takes my precious fuel that has mass, and turns it into electricity that hasn't. Witchcraft I say!

What bug is that? I'm doing a lot of water-landings (and some takeoffs), and KKS rarely triggers. When it does, it's really close to the velocity that would be also problematic in stock. And I never got actual debilitating damage on water, just distortion. So I have zero KKS related problems on planes that have enough wing area to not stall above 80 m/s, and very few on those that aren't as nimble. An example of not enough wing-area. Yet I landed this without damage on the second try. But that pic is better.

Windows is my all time favorite operating system out of the total of one I ever used. My principle always was to only switch to a new version once an even newer is released. Though that trend is broken now,, still using 7.

I wholeheartedly support this thread. I also hereby request the passing modders to make a KSP plug-in that changes the ingame measurement units into FFF system. 'Furlong per fortnight' seems to be an excellent unit. For reference, speed of light is roughly 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (or megafurlongs per microfortnight).

2 (-)

Umm.. What's the matter with Kerbin? You can practice on it as much as you want. It has atmo, it has gravety, it has space around it. It even has moons you can land on with your plane (if it's built for such). And with orbital refuelling, taking your spaceplane to other planets is really not too difficult or particulary hard to engineer. I raise you one that orbits and lands 8 tourists with lower tech. Only 29 parts, so one can add an autopilot module. Though I admit, it's ascent profile isn't too beginner friendly (each successful tests up to now contained 2-3 atmospheric backflips).

You could do a favour for us masochists, and save us a click or two by fixing the title.

That's incorrect. Sometimes full burn is the most efficient, but that can only be a coincidence based on the rocket's weight and TWR. Feel free to test it in a new career: a single pod on a flea SRB reaches a higher altitude and velocity if you limit the thrust to 40%. EDIT: Ahh, just saw you mentioned that it can save dV. Disregard this post.

You can limit the thrust on SRBs in the VAB/SPH. I usually use them to get a 1.6-1.8 TWR - sometimes along with the main engines, other times SRB only. But it entirely depends on the craft in question, so there is no universal answer here. KER or MJ readouts (or calculating TWR on paper) can help you find the sweet spot for solid boosters.

Welcome back! So you return from a break and start with an SSTO? My man! Hints: since a few versions one intake can feed multiple jet engines - adding more helps nothing, it's just dead-weight. They have different performance based on speed and altitude - shock cones can handle the most height at supersonic velocity. And closing them doesn't change drag anymore, so you can ignore that. My guess is that if you cut down most of those radially attached things from that and leave only 2-4 Rapiers, it'll be able to land on Minimus and come back. By the way... these days we can land on water or take off from it. If you like spaceplanes, there's a seaplane-to-orbit-challenge that you might enjoy (link in sig). It's definitely my favorite feature from 1.0.5.

Umm.. I play on a potato. 2.8 GHz Duo, GF 9600 gt, 4g ram I found that I barely notice a performance drop if I steer clear of visual mods with many big textures and part mods.

Took me two nights of redesigning, flying and crashing, but I did it. It's an early career vertically launched spaceplane that takes eight tourists to orbit, than glides down. 29 parts, highest tech on it is the long mk1 fuselage. And it took me an awful lot of iterations to succeed. On the test run, it decided on 10.000 meters that it wants to go to polar orbit. So it did 2-3 flips and I could only stabilize it northwards. But in this final version I was expecting such, so it's packed with a ton of extra dV. Val, after admitting the passengers that it was her first time in space too.

0 (+)

-1 (+)

I think I'm not getting something. It can't be that you are really asking if a nosepiece's higher heat-resistance results in resisting more heat... I rarely build planes with enough TWR for that to matter, but when I do, I usually pick a shielded port... Mainly for I heard it's good against overheating.

I can't tell. 'Most successful' is so hard to pick. Some really ambitious projects can go without considerable hitches, while simple textbook missions can go so horribly wrong - especially when one doesn't pay attention as it's routine. I usually feel the most accomplished when something succeeds not because of careful consideration, but against all odds. So I'll pick random designs that somehow worked. I found a picture of my first, modular scanner-lander-miner-refiner rig I sent to Jool in my very first career game. The beauty of it is that none of it's parts were designed for that task, I just noticed a close transfer window and threw it together from pieces I had laying around in Kerbin SoI. It worked as bad as it looks. But hey, I planted a flag on four moons, and landed some debris on the fifth.

Well, your Shuttle has a nice, centered CoL that probably doesn't move much (or at all) between launch and re-entry. It also seems to have a nice wing-area/mass ratio. It looks easy to land. Though those silly looking round control surfaces seem to have a questionable efficiency. ^ this on the other hand is a very bad design. I have no clue why everyone keeps building shuttles like this. It's CoM is way too behind. The player tried to compensate it with placing all the wings to the back, but that leads to awful pitch controls, thus tipping over and breaking apart. I bet it could only land by the cheat menu.

Definitely the time when I designed a rescue craft but forgot to include parachutes.. or a door. Kerbal Krash System made it extra-fun.

(oops, wrong thread..)

And now you complain about your bad luck. *takes a step back, keeps distance*

Started a 'no revert/load' KCT career with a nice initial resource boost, but below hard level payouts and science gain (30-30%). Decided to design a low-tech spaceplane launch system that gets 8 tourists to orbit and back - from 30 parts. Gonna be rich make some profit if I succeed. I was -this- close to make it work... Four customers regularly reached orbit, but the management wanted better figures. One of the iterations could have worked... if I could control two pieces of a separated craft. But I wanna' do it with stock tools. It would be -easy- if I could have 31 parts. Today I'll succeed. If KCT simulator doesn't gets me broke, 100 funds at a time. Ahh, I also made my first nuke-ssto-plane, and hacked it into that game, in order to eliminate the early grind. It's designed for reliability, as I won't be able to recover it, field repairs and refuelling is the only option. It went to Minmus and landed back at KSC on the first go. I'm pretty proud of it - I never went farther than LKO without saving before.

Cargobays work if you have one with a bit of space in it... well, until you try timewarping.