Edax

There wasn't room for a docking port (at least facing backwards), and the mechjeb would have to be mounted on a strut just like the Stayputnik. This is a very small spaceplane with only 2 engines, one at each end, and using only MK1 parts. I favored the Stayputnik because it was cheap, light, and wouldn't give me off-centered torque and wouldn't draw too much power. Maybe mechjeb would have been better, but I'm not fond of the green/red light it gives off.

I find Stayputnik useful on my spaceplane that has a whiplash engine at the end of the plane, and a LV-N at the front (since I don't have to worry about aerodynamics in space). I need a Stayputnik pointed backwards so that I can reverse the navball so that I can make use of the maneuver point (since there isn't an anti-maneuver point.)

The precooler may have some use. If say, you have more air engines than shockcones, 2 of these things can feed the 3rd engine, plus the increased heat tolerance may increase your max speed (by virtue of not having the intakes explode from friction) assuming the shockcones are attached to these things. These also look pretty snazzy, you might even find a use attaching lv-ns to them to naturally keep them cooler. But because their so bulky and carry so little fuel, they might not important enough to find room for them.

Jeb's deodorant is apparently made out of candy.

Would DEFINITIVELY like a N-1 1st Stage engine cluster part that can easily mount 30 mirrored engines on it.

The only "rocket" part I'm looking for, other than more LF tanks or switcher, is a size 2 control cockpit that seats 2 Kerbals. The cupola looks cool, but it only seats one Kerbal, and hasn't got enough control panels to look impressive enough as the command center for a large spaceship, plus the Kerbal has to wear a helmet at all times. Spaceplane cockpits look cool on the inside, but they look really awkward if you try use them as the command center of a spacestation/spaceship, which are all size 2, and the adapters are too large to consider for aesthetics. A Size 3 command module would be cool if it looked like the bridge of the Enterprise though!

In my experience, if you try and play a spaceplane only career, you wont make orbit with the wheesley (meaning limited science gains), and you'll need at least some moon flybys to unlocked the whiplash, which would at least get you to orbit.

Even though I don't like hardcore realism, even I think oxygen combustion should require...oxygen. There are ways around that, there was this fascinating documentary about Nuclear Turbofan engines would could theoretically keep a plane in the air for months at a time, which was developed in the 70's. It doesn't require oxygen since all it does is heat air to produce thrust, which would work well on Eve and Jool since they have plenty of air (Duna would be tenuous). Their downside was that they were heavy (requiring an entire reactor to be housed in the fuselage, didn't produce a lot of thrust, and the direct cycle engine spewed radioactive gas and the indirect cycle was complicated to make. I've seen Porkjet design this engine, and I'm sorely tempted to try it out, but I'm worried downloading too many mods will make the game unplayable on every patch day, so I'm trying to stay away from parts mods.

An electric prop would be great. Simple, can be used in any atmosphere, and if you have enough lift and electric charge; grant unlimited propulsion. I can see more opportunities for that then a size 2 subsonic jet engine.

With stock parts, as I understand it, you need at least 2 LF size 1 tanks per LV-N to outperform LFO engines. Generally 3 LF tanks and 1 LV-N with various spacecrafts bits on it will give you about 4000 delta-V without staging.

Prepare for all the MK3 SSTOs to look like this if you got your wish.

I also love the idea of the 1.25m crew tank, if for the opposite reason, I like designing SSTOs with Mk1 parts and I have such a problem getting the crew capacity above 1 since I need the front of the spaceplane to either intake air or have it's space reserved for an LV-N. I don't like MK2 parts cause they cause uncontrolled pitching and Mk3 parts are too sluggish for my taste. Stacking Mk1 inline cockpits looks really ugly so I don't even bother with that. Boy I sound picky, don't I?

So long as it doesn't screw up my previous Spaceplane designs, I'm fine with it.

In vanilla KSP, the Kerbals merely live in "imagination land"

The Deadliest Catch would be found on the high seas of Eve! Where one false spark could set the oceans ablaze and the Enterprise fish that lurk there be 2000 feet long and weight in at a million ton!

Perhaps using a 4 turbojet, 2 aerospike engine combo could help improve fuel efficiency. (though I'm not sure 4 turbojets are enough to carry a 50t ship. Maybe 4 turbojets and 2 rapiers if you can manage it?) It's unlikely that you need the thrust from 6 rapiers once in space to reach orbit. It's important to remember that the fuel efficiency of the rapier is very poor.

As I understand it, xenon is mined from air sepertation. This makes asteroids a poor candidate for mining xenon. As I also understand it, Jupiter has an unusually large amount of Xenon in it's atmosphere, which is why I pointed to Jool as a place to mine it.

Who WOULDN'T want a volcano planet/moon? But then again, is Squad even capable of creating such a thing? Dynamic lava and smoke? I do like the idea of a Xenon mine, but gas mining a rock sounds dubious. Building a gas mine on Jool sounds more interesting and challenging, but that leaves Dres without any uniqueness, so...

Some tricks on keeping the part count down is using more efficient parts, bigger/fewer solar panels, sticking the base strut and fuel line on the booster/stage instead of the base spacecraft. Bigger/fewer fuel tanks, batteries ect.

If the plane has good pitch authority, typically what I do is point the nose at the front of the runway when landing which will increase my airspeed but ensure I wont overshoot, then pitch up when I'm close to the ground and level off. I'll begin to bleed off excess speed until I can pitch the nose up without raising my prograde, and I'll gently glide to the runway nose-up.

I know, but that at least speaks to some kind of standard. You think Assassin's Creed or Battlefield 4 or Simcity halted sales do to faulty bugs? Or recalled the games to be fixed/ patch the game to be fixed? Maybe half the time will they even patch the game to be functional, the other half they give up part of the way through and leave it broken. And with cars you at least get a test drive, most games don't even have demos (though this game did fantastically). And I can bet that those car companies do cringe at the thought of recalls and stopping sales. I'm think most game developers are comfortable releasing a game prematurely cause they can patch all they want and using release as a beta to save money. EA and Ubisoft seem to revel in the negative publicity.

This can be a bit grating though. The reason I bought this game at release was because I didn't want to deal with the stress of a buggy unpolished game that crashed all the time. I'm already sick of seeing that in AAA games, so it's kinda sad that the smaller games are the same, everyone thinks it's acceptable to just make a "rough draft" the official release. It kinda makes the video game industry look pathetic. Can you imagine if the car industry release a new model of car, and not all the doors were on it, and they'll promised that they'll solve the gas tank falling off issue in a couple of months?

Making a slight modification leads to my stages getting all jumbled, causing parachutes and rocket engines to deploy instead of the turbojets on take off. Then I revert to hanger just to cause the game to crash. Out of frustration, this usually causes me to play or do something else for at least an hour before returning to KSP.

Give Bill the imaginary academy award for that performance.

And let's not forget Eve's 1.7g Gravity compared to Kerbin.