Edax

If anything, reactions wheels need buffing as their habit of spontaneously exploding, thus spitting the craft in two and dooming all on-board is a major drawback.

Good thinking bringing a lifetime supply of orange soda! Life would be dull drinking only that grape flavor stuff from Eve.

(Maybe it was 20 laps? I lost count after the first hour) If it went deeper, it would explode. The overheat temperature would rapidly trigger, and the heat would rise very rapidly. I found it best to actually not use the heat shield in aerobreaking, instead pointing the body prograde, and just rapidly rotating keeping all the parts at 80-90% heat. One of the reasons I had to aerobreak so much was that I hard to burn all of the chemical rocketfuel and half the monopropellent just to manage an orbit, but I had to go for a shallow entry into the atmosphere because Eve's atmosphere is like a brick wall at high speed. The worry I had near the end was that when my orbit was no longer eccentric, the probe wouldn't cool down fast enough between dipping into the atmosphere, so I had to maintain a shallow 86-85000m aerobreaking height. It's when I finally began landing did I use the heatshield.

I got a primitive Mun probe lander designed to return Mun data to land on Eve (cause I got a contract to escape the Kerbin early on), I set the target to skim through the atmosphere at 86000m, and I made sure to roll the spacecraft when going through the atmosphere so it evenly heated, but it took like 30 damn aerobraking laps before the thing slowed down enough to land.

In my early Spaceplane builds using early tech, I'd just deploy a parachute in the rear of the plane when the wheels touch down, that slowed it down real fast. (I think the space shuttle does the same thing)

What I do is send a station to Minmus, land it, mine until the fuel and ore tanks are full, then just take off and return to Kerbin Orbit loaded with fuel and ore, ready to be used as a docking hub by SSTOs and other vessels that need fuel and crew transfers.

It's important to note that the navball is calibrated by what part of the ship is being controlled. If you give a probe control of the vessel, the probe is mounted backwards, then blue will point down, and red will point up.

You build your ships your way, and I'll build my ships my way.

My spaceplane was designed when I had just unlocked turbojets and ram intakes. I didn't have fancy rapiers or big-s wings or even a space station (in fact, I still only have 9 kerbonauts working for me). And since it's a fun SSTO to fly, I never bothered to design a new one, only slightly modified it with a docking port and shock cones, and aerospikes.

Just to illustrate such an SSTO in action. This is my reliable and stable 2-man SSTO which I just to transfer crews with the Kerbin Orbital Station. The back part of the plane are two independent parts connected from the front, and tied together with struts to make sure it doesn't wobble.

I'm curious to know whether Bob is a horrible back-seat driver and neurotic control freak, or if Tedus is just a Kerbfleet conscript (via rescue mission) who stopped caring about anything long ago because he doesn't even get a paycheck.

Lol, Gene thinks your overqualified for landing on Jool...

I use the same technique on my main 2-man SSTO. There's an advantage to not having lift surface across the entire plane so that you wont encounter uncontrolled lift at certain angles. It's nice, having a little opening in-between the fuselage for air to flow through (So you wont be pushed around by wind as much), plus there's the extra weight in the front resulting in a more stable and well-rounded spaceplane. (Crash tolerance should be too much of a problem since the MK2 cockpit and fuselage are lower to the ground unless you really crash)

Challenge yourself. Land a spaceplane on Duna. Do something out of the ordinary.

Well why not, the core of a Gas Giant is probably a giant diamond.

The trick to learn is that slowing down when surpassing terminal velocity is not a bad thing (unless you have a low twr). Trying to gain speed past terminal velocity means your fighting the atmosphere; wasting precious DeltaV. You can get away with this with turbojets because of their fuel efficiency, but when using rocket engines, every drop of fuel counts.

Science is it's own reward! But when that's not enough, you can licence it out at the admin building for some serious coin.

That Minmus was not in fact, made of delicious dessert products. Wait no, that's the opposite of awesome.

I generally ignite the rockets when the turbojets die. It's important to remember that the turbojets will send you far past terminal velocity, so that you'll be producing a lot of drag, so letting the turbojets wind down and letting your altitude climb higher into thinner air with the rockets engine off will save fuel. It's at 32000m that terminal velocity will no longer effect you in achieving orbit.

Your engine ratios are wrong. In my experience, for an SSTO, you need more Turbojets then rocket engines. The turbojets are FAR FAR more efficient producing thrust and fuel efficiency. You'll want to squeeze as much thrust out of them as you can in the atmosphere, because nowhere else will you have a engine produce so much thrust for so little fuel. Having 2 Turbojets for every rocket engine is a good ratio to start with, but with heavier Spaceplanes, I've had as many as 13 turbojets and just 2 Poodle engines. Think of the turbojets as the catapult that sends you into space, and the rocket engines merely there to help you limp into low orbit.

I think the solution is to just not have tourist in contracts. I often conduct missions where I have spare seats, either in launching space stations or just on my Spaceplanes. It'd be nice if in the crew menu I could just stuff the empty seats with tourists for some extra coin. Generally I only have space stations manned by at most 2 Kerbals, despite the contracts demanding +5 capacity, so why not just stuff some tourists in there until I'm ready to deorbit a shuttle back to KSC. Let what they see be left to the player, the more they see, the more they'll pay. That's more or less already how the exp system works for the kerbonauts, they aren't rewarded for completing contracts, they get their exp from where they've been. Maybe for every "level" a tourist gains, the higher tier payout?

And those station almost always end up being useless. Can't we just convert them to space-hotels and rent out all the free slots out to some long-term tourists for some monthly income?

If the spacecraft isn't aerodynamically stable, then you can try a BBQ roll, rotating the ship radially pointed 90 degrees away from prograde so that the heat is distributed across more of the ship and you'll encounter the reentry head for less time and slow down faster.

The reason wheels are late game is because the test vehicles kept flipping over. Eventually the development team ran out of money trying to solve the problem and just released the wheels anyway. (When you think on it, NASA only introduce the concept of the rover very late in the Apollo program so in a way that tech tree reflects history, even though it doesn't really make any logical sense.)

My first attempt at a KSP movie without the UI. Still trying to wrap my head around the camera tool controls, so some of the camera angles are a little repetitive. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome. My first trip to Duna and Ike, aboard the Spaceplane Carrier Nyx One (totally not the previous Kerbin Orbital Refueling Station because Mortimer can't spare the funds) and the Spaceplanes: Diabolus X (SSTO for Duna) and Valkyria III (Ike Mission and Direct Kerbin return). This Duna mission was crewed by Valentina Kerman, star pilot, and Jagie Kerman, scientist and first-time kerbonaut. Mission Plan: Valentina flies Nyx One into Duna Orbit, takes both spaceplanes to Duna and Nyx, and uses Valkyria III as the direct return vehicle bring all scientific data with her, while Jagie remains aboard Nyx One to study the data on-board laboratory and wait for low-consumption route home.