Leeksoup

Hi! So while playing around in 0.17, I'm trying to establish a kind of base on Duna. Fly single-man landers there, then leave them there and pick everyone up in a larger ship that has a Crewtank on it. I've been working on this larger ship (the Legionary) for a couple days, and it's a behemoth with 378 parts at 420 tons on the pad. It *should* work, I've ironed out all the bugs except one. My engines sometimes decide to randomly not work. They have fuel. They're still attached, nothing broke off. In fact, they display the graphics as if they work (plume of fire). But they don't respond to throttle and produce no thrust, either on Mechjeb's readouts or empirically. Also, if I decouple them they still look like they're firing, complete with sound. Why does this happen? It doesn't happen always, just sometimes, and it's really messing up my rocket- especially when in a cluster of five rockets, only four work and I start spinning wildly out of control. Thanks!

Those ships look amazing! Mind posting the .craft files?

Indeed! Glad you found this game, it\'s become my favorite addiction since I got it. Happy crashes!

Hi there! So I\'ve managed to build a stable spaceplane, the Xing Long III (Mandarin for Star Dragon III- not original, I know) out of almost entirely stock parts- the only non-stock on it are the fuel ducts, since I like how Kosmos\' look and they don\'t matter, and a couple radial-mount parachutes for those 'oh crap' moments. It\'ll take off, barely, on its two standard airbreathing engines, then once I\'m over water I\'ll kick on my four ramjets. At 10km up, I\'ll shut off my jets, running only on rams. Using this configuration I can fly for... a long time, probably even do a circumnavigation if I\'m careful, at heights of up to 16km. However, there\'s my problem. See, this is supposed to be a *space*plane, so I want to go to space. I ripped out a couple of my jet fuel modules, replaced them with stock rocket fuel and the gimballing engine, and hooked it up. 16km up, doing about 400 m/s... good. Rocket ignition!... which leads to horrible over-lift, or something, and me spinning wildly out of control after I hit about 500 m/s. Usually, this ends with me desperately trying to pull out of an uncontrolled spin as I plummet back to Kerbin, half the time succeeding, half the time dying horribly. What can I do to make my craft more stable at.. what is it, exactly? High elevations? I did put RCS on it... High speeds? Is it just because it\'s so freaking heavy? As a side note, is there any way to manually turn off rocket engines the way you can airbreathing ones? Thanks guys!

I\'m not sure why, but Stone Temple Pilots make some excellent music for launching rockets. It\'s probably not what they were going for, but true nonetheless.

That\'s true. I\'ve thought for some time that it would be nice to be able to manually assign priority to RCS tanks, instead of just relying on the VAB to do it for us- I can\'t tell you how many times my rockets have drained my 'lander' stage of RCS while still in Orbital Insertion phase, just to leave the OI stage full of RCS fuel when I ditch it.

Alternatively, if you\'re within 50km (IIRC) of some other craft or piece of debris in orbit, it\'ll point at that instead. I agree, pointing at KSC isn\'t too useful, but the debris-finder certainly is if you ever ant to rendezvous or something.

Weirdest debris ever. I got rid of this at roughly 80km; how in the world did it survive?! A shot of my latest unmanned rocket, the Overseer V. Designed to haul parts and modules to the Mun and get its valuable core back to KSP, it also looks spiffy.

Welcome to Soup Industries\' presentation of our prestigious star-faring fleet! We appreciate the interest you\'ve shown in purchasing one of our fine models. Please relax during our presentation, and we\'d like to remind you that that the models can in no way hurt you, despite what you may have heard and/or read about. Without too much ado, let\'s begin by introducing the smallest of our craft, the Mark 7 Broadhead! The Broadhead has had a long and illustrious career with us, being the craft we use to push the envelope with new and exciting technologies. Among other things, its latest iteration boasts solid rockets capable of speeding it to supersonic speeds while still under 5km and a full suite of RCS thrusters for vacuum operations! Its final stage serves three purposes: It\'s a fully-functional Munar rover, it has enough power and fuel to make the return visit, and it\'s a stylish command post for your crew to spend their time in orbit comfortably! Despite rumors to the contrary, this final stage has been proven to be 100% reliable, all of the time, with no exceptions. (Hey, they lived!) Next we have the Broadhead\'s older brother, the Mark 3 Bodkin! Designed to be bigger and heavier than the Broadhead, the Bodkin sports eight massive liquid-fueled engines in its first stage, a large secondary stage for inter-orbital maneuvers and a new 'Ion Engine' for final-stage guidance. In addition, it comes sporting the latest in casualty-avoidance technology, the Emergency Command Thruster , meant to pull your crew away from the violently out-of-control ball of death your rocket has become! This wasn\'t added for any reason, of course, purely for legal reasons. The fact that it\'s only on the Bodkin has no bearing on anything, and we resent your implications. Third is our experimental rocket, the Mark 1 Pilum! The Pilum features new fairing techniques that drastically improve aerodynamics while still in Kerbin\'s atmosphere as well as eight swept-wing tail fins that are absolutely capable of surviving the heat from the liquid engines directly above them! Sportier, sleeker and more maneuverable than the Bodkin and Broadhead designs, the Pilum is for the wealthy spacegoer that puts style above such minor matters as functions, stability and safety! Additionally, each Pilum is made of 100% recycled soup cans, meaning you\'re saving the environment while earning the respect of your gravity-bound neighbors! Rounding off our pure rocket designs is the Mark 4 Hydra! The Hydra was built after we got too many lawsuits after the Bodkin kept crashing- er, that is, in our completely controlled computerized tests where absolutely no one got hurt. In fact, I think they didn\'t like it\'s color and that\'s why they sued us. Yep, that\'s gotta be it. In any case, we took the Bodkin\'s ideas and ran with them. The Hydra is capable of putting a truly huge amount of fuel in orbit, giving you all the delta-V any incompetent pilot would ever need (which was, in fact, its goal- to allow incompetence to pull through anyway)! Its second stage sports the NERVA Nuclear Fission engine, which practically sips fuel while blasting completely harmless U-236 into space! In addition, its practical, stylish and suave Lunar Command Pod is perfect for your next Munar get-together! (This last one is zoomed out, but it\'s the Lander on the Mun. It then got home safely.) Now we have our two hybrid spaceplane/rocket projects, the Avalanche and the Adamant! We\'ll cover the former first, the Mark 4 Avalanche. This spaceplane was originally built to be an orbital shuttle capable of putting satellites into space, it initially suffered from what our engineers have called a 'fatal terrestrial magnetism', whatever that means. It\'s currently undergoing a redesign to become a light spaceplane for qucik flights to anywhere in Kerbin! Book your tickets now, they\'re gonna be going fast! Still, we needed something to put our wreckage- er, our communications satellites in orbit. So the boys in the lab came up with the Adamant Heavy Lifter, the biggest and baddest of Soup Ind.\'s fleet! Weighing in at over four thousand tons when loaded, an Adamant-class lifter is capable of putting over three times its weight in a stable orbit, then returning home safely. Being a spaceplane, it does handle like a... what was the term... ah, yes, 'like a brick wall sinking in jello', according to the engineering specs. Still, it handles beautifully in the atmosphere, which is where it counts, and so long as you give it roughly 1,000km or so to decelerate once in Kerbin\'s airspace, it\'ll give you a safe water landing with no trouble! So, act fast! Quantities of these fine vehicles are restricted, and if the amount of rubble littering Soup Ind.\'s launchpad is any indication, they\'re limited time offers! Buy or lease one today! (I\'m going to post the .craft files, but I warn you, I have a ridiculous amount of mods. I don\'t even know what\'s in all these guys. You\'ll need at least C7, DownUnder, Ion Drives, Landers and... ah, I don\'t even know. Good luck!)

Thank you for your checklist, Pandora! I\'ll definitely go through that later. At the very least, I took some pictures of the Avalanche. Maybe you can see what\'s wrong?

Oh yes, doing that works as long as my nose is pointing up. It\'s when I\'m coming back down that everything goes horribly, horribly kerbal.

Ah, sorry. Um... I\'m not sure which mods are in it, I downloaded a lot. C7, definitely, and DownUnder. Whichever mod gives you the Bertha engines, also, and the reinforced struts.

Hi everyone! I\'ve been playing around with this game for a couple weeks now and have been having a blast. Also, it\'s fun getting weird looks from nearby people on the street as you describe your new rocket plans to a friend... Anyway, I\'ve successfully gotten to orbit, I\'ve gotten to the Mun, and most recently, I managed to not just get to the Mun but have landed on it and gotten back in one piece! I figured my next step was to emulate some of you fine people and put stuff in orbit, and since I\'d been wanting to make a Spaceplane anyway... But I\'ve been having some problems with it. It gets to orbit no problem, and in fact it\'s quite handy in the atmosphere. (Handles like a brick wall in space, but happily there\'s lots of time for maneuvers there.) This is a heavy design, with lots of fuel, wings and engines, so I was expecting it to be hard to fly, but no, actually it\'s quite nice... so long as its nose is pointing up. As soon as it hits 90 degrees, it is *impossible* to get above that. Not even RCS pointing straight down can help. As a result, I can never shed enough speed on reentry to make a safe landing. I attached my .craft file, so you can look at my design if you like. (It\'s called the Avalanche- slow to start, but try stopping it...) Thank you!