Vegetal

Did you try enabling "ignore max temp" on the debug menu (Alt-F12)? It's kind of a duct taping, but better than nothing. I usually have no problems with part temperature, but they do oscillate in a random way sometimes. The thermal system needs much tweaking.

I guess it's doable, but you will carry less payload to orbit than on a stock game. As they pointed out already, it depends on your wallet and your willingness to design a good plane. If cost is starting to be a concern for your game, then it's probably a good idea.

I don't know what you people are saying, my entry periapsis for spaceplanes is below ground, and close to 100% success rate. You shouldn't be getting that with a 6km Pe, are you sure it's the heat that is killing your parts? If you lost solar panels or other low-tolerance parts, that would make sense, but landing gear and wing strakes usually take a lot of heat before blowing up.

Using the Whiplash is just wasteful in my opinion, if the objective is the most dV in LKO, you need the least amount of atmospheric parts weighing your spacecraft. That's about efficiency of course, if you like over-engineered things, that's another story...

Fyunch, the configuration I see having the most success in this regard is Rapiers + Nukes. You carry just enough oxidizer for the Rapiers to give you the final kick on closed cycle, and then the nukes carry you to LKO and beyond. I usually don't pitch up much when going closed cycle, but due to the nuke's low thrust, that might be necessary for the plane in your pic. Try not pitching up too much with rapiers though.

Well, in short: Accelerate as most as possible without melting under 20km. Above this altitude, drag gets really low, so you should be more concerned about your orbital speed rather than escaping the atmosphere quickly. EDIT: To almagnus: Your ascent is really inefficient. If your TWR is that high, you have too many engines, and that ascent profile doesn't take advantage of the hypersonic boost of the engines. Just for you to have an idea, my latest cargo spaceplane takes more than 42 tons to LKO, and only has 6 Rapiers.

Clipperide, I made an SSTO rocket once, and experimented with different gravity turns. It wasn't scientific, but the best results (Most dV once in LKO) came from a very shallow climb, flames all over. You might want to rethink your ascent, in spaceplanes especially, the ideal ascent will always involve a lot of heat.

About the scary flaming effects not being so intuitive, remember: One of the X-15 planes was almost completely coated in ablator material to withstand the heat from hypersonic flight. So it makes sense that your plane in KSP is on flames when trying to get to orbit.

Usually no. If your plane is too underpowered, it might need a bit of a dive on the 10km region to break the sound barrier, apart from that, it's pretty much the same.

The effect is just your craft breaking the sound barrier (and then flaming like a meteorite), the boost comes from the engine thrust curves. The Turboram and Rapier work better at super and hypersonic speeds, so above 10km you have to be accelerating almost flat in the atmosphere to gain the most speed possible from this property. If you reach 20km and still are going 800m/s you lost the opportunity to accelerate. TL;DR: 10 to 20km is the prime acceleration zone. Let your aircraft melt, but gain the most speed there. Then rockets...

Your aircraft isn't going to rotate well with the rear landing gear so far back, the control surfaces don't have much leverage to push the nose up. But with this configuration you can't do much....maybe lowering the front gear so your plane already points skyward.

You WILL see burning effects, but as long as nothing is in fact melting, you are good. Try to ride the hypersonic boost as long as you can before 20km, make a very shallow climb (usually no more than 10 deg pitch). I reach 1500 m/s orbital most of the time on air breathing mode before engaging the rockets.

Depends on the resource abundance setting you use. I reduced mine a little on the last career game, and there were many spots without anything (KSC in particular).

Come on guys, he already said he is on a science game and doesn't have aerospikes or rapiers. I'll toss a guess that what's wrong is your ascent profile. It is king for spaceplane SSTOs.

Think of it this way: The closer to the surface you orbit is, the least energy you will need to get to the surface. An elliptical orbit means you still haven't brought your orbital energy to a minimum before landing, so you will need more energy (fuel, delta-V) in your lander to land safely. That's easy to understand on Kerbin. When you launch, you usually choose to circularize on a low orbit before other maneuvers, because a higher orbit will require a longer burn and more fuel (energy). If you are on a lower orbit, you will also heat up less when re-entering, because you will have less energy than on an eccentric orbit.

Well, I have a Rapier-only spaceplane SSTO that can orbit the Mun and carry a 2.5m lander (and get back too of course). The thing is, it's very underpowered. It's bigger than yours (Mk3) and only has 4 engines, it takes very long to climb. What happens is that the most engines you have, the better and easier it will be to climb in the atmo, but your delta-V once in orbit will suffer with the extra weight. In my case, the priority was vaccum capability, so I sacrificed atmo performance. You will need to do that a little to your plane. For reaching a 250km orbit with 6 kerbals, you don't need much. I guess you will be fine with 3 engines, and scaling your plane down a bit, preferably shortening it. I don't think you have too little lift, as the Mk2 parts are lifting bodies.

Oh, yeah, I can fly fine with a keyboard too, I just recommend a joystick because the game got more enjoyable to me. But anyway, flying is a little hard for some people, landing especially so. If you are really struggling to land, experiment using a braking parachute. Some suggested landing completely on parachutes, but that can be dangerous and require lots of them if your plane is big. If you use one on the tail just as you touch down, the drag is going to be so high that you will DEFINITELY stay on the ground. I used that in my recon/survey plane to land on rough terrain, it stopped very quickly and allowed for very safe landings.

It's actually more enjoyable with analog control, and as the pilot I am, I enjoy just screwing around in the atmosphere. There's no need to, it's just better. As I said, I use just a gamepad, and it's good for other games too.

I didn't get what you are saying, learn to setup a joystick in ksp? It's just like in any other game. Unless you found a bug. That's very usual in this game...

First of all, flying with the keyboard is very bad, the controls are too abrupt to turn elegantly (in an easy way), but you seem to be doing things right, don't use yaw, it's roll and pitch like you said. If you can, try at least getting a gamepad, I use an Xbox one and it is quite enough for my needs. If you can't, there is a mod that allows you to use mouse control, I just forgot its name. I tried it once and it seemed to work well, except for too big of a deadzone for my taste. There's also Pilot Assistant, which I just found out and it's excellent, it's pretty much identical to an actual aircraft autopilot. It isn't good for landing though, as the usual autopilots in actual planes (Cat 3 ones can, I know). As for landing, people already said it, you need to touch down rear gear first, as gently as posssible. 80 m/s seems a bit high for that plane though, it has quite a lot of wing, you have to come in slower, say 60 m/s, maybe even less. EDIT: Oh you also said about SAS. It's only use for planes is to keep them pointed on the same direction, when you want to turn, they are only an annoyance. Turn it off when maneuvering.

I think you'll do good to have a speech ready for people on kerbin, about how the brave kerbals on this mission knew the risks bla bla bla....you know, just in case. EDIT: Did you ever launch from Eve into orbit?

A little off-topic here but.....are you planning on retrieving those kerbals sometime in the future?

I feel the OP's pain. I love this game, because if I didn't, it would be sitting in a (virtual) shelf by now, just by the frustration brought by bugs. Seriously, I experienced LITERALLY dozens of bugs, many, if not most, game breaking. Things like ships randomly exploding in space with parts flung at hundreds of times lightspeed, parts not working as expected, symmetry issues making planes unflyable, random parts exploding for no reason....the list goes on, I can't even remember all of them. Before this, I played space engineers. It is updated WEEKLY, usually has new features, and is WAY more stable than KSP. Oh and it's still alpha last time I checked. I know there are differences, but come on. Like some said before, the fact there are community bugfixes for long standing bugs is worrying. I expect the new version to add a bunch of new, lovely, game-breaking bugs for us! Yes!

I use a standar Xbox controller and it works fine, I guess this one will too.

Someone asked me about my lander privately. I managed to land it on Vall and return to the mothership, but only had like a 100 deltaV left, so it's right on the limit. And as I thought, with the 2 Kerbals, it has 2300 deltaV aproximately. Word of caution if someone wants to use it or wants to replicate the idea: It can only dock with 1 kerbal on board, so you have to get your co-pilot back on the mothership before that. EDIT: One thing: Most people don't see the use for the toroidal fuel tank. It has quite a lot of fuel for the volume, so you can stack a bunch and still make a very compact craft, so it's ideal for the idea in this thread.