dafidge9898

I know the jet engines still have the funny center of mass placement, but really, it's not that funny. There's a lot more to a jet engine than just the nozzle: the compressor, combustion chamber, turbine, etc. All this takes up most of the mass of the engine, but in KSP only the nozzle of the engine is shown. It still takes into account the mass of the rest of the engine, thus the weird center of mass placement.

Make a dropbox account, click upload, and select the file from your ksp folder/saves/ships/vab, then click share and create url

Yes, that's what I do. And a TWR of 3 is pretty good and should prevent huge gravity losses. If you post the craft file, I could take a look at it.

So you're in a low moon orbit with 6k dV? What's your TWR? The way I do it is I lower the periapsis to around 30km, then burn retrograde at periapsis and use pitch attitude to maintain a certain decent rate.

I suppose.. I could maybe delete some mods...

Basically the title. Is it just RAM, or am I missing something? I have 16 gigs of ram and am running 64 bit, so I don't know why it's crashing. On my older computer I would get crashes all the time because of RAM (no 64 bit + 8 gigs of ram). I do have mods. I have lot's and lot's of mods (I play realism overhaul). I suspect it crashes because I am launching a really big rocket, but like, shouldn't 64 bit + 16 gigs be able to handle it? I didn't really have any performance issues or lag or crashes with my other rockets, which were only slightly smaller. Crash log: http://pastebin.com/PL3D9jwt Thank you!

Did you go to the right click menu and click "Test"? Or activate the engine through staging? (While it's splashed down?)

Retrograde. If you're circularizing at periapsis (which in this case, an intercept, you are), you always circularize burning retrograde. If you're circularizing at apoapsis, then you burn prograde.

In addition to what the others said about stronger landing struts, you should also take it in slowly. How fast are you going when you hit the ground? And a screenshot would probably help.

Estimated burn time never really was accurate. At least for me. When you make your intercept with the Mun, make sure your periapsis is at 200 km. Make sure it reads 200 km before you even get into the Mun's SOI. Then you circularize at periapsis of the Mun for a 200km circular orbit. This uses less fuel. If you can't get the intercept right on 200km, then correct before you reach the Mun.

Huh, you're right. I could have sworn that was in stock, but I just checked. It's been a while. I actually don't know what mod adds that. But, you still could get this to work by adding one small extra vertical stabilizer, turn off yaw and pitch (leaving roll on), and put the control authority to negative.

Open up the action group menu in the SPH, click on one of the numbers 1-10, then click the engine. In the menu on the left there are buttons that read stuff like "toggle engine" or "toggle mode". Click toggle mode. There, you have just assigned an action group.

This is a common question. The trick is to take the wheel friction control off auto. Then, you set the friction of the nosewheel to 0.1 and the friction of the main landing gear to 1.5 or anything higher than what it currently is set to.

Trial and error, and a good glide ratio

A trick with assigning yaw controls on the rudder: put whatever desired number above zero for yaw, 0 for pitch (unless it's a V tail), and a small negative number for roll to combat the effects of adverse yaw! Edit: it's a bit more tricky than that. Refer to comment below.

Disable the brakes on the nosewheel. That and increase the friction of the main landing gear and decrease the friction of the nosewheel to 0 or 0.1. Real world aircraft don't have brakes on their nosewheel

Yes yes, but don't worry! I set the nosewheel friction to .1 and the main gear to 1.6 or so. The original position of the main gear was all the way at the back, so was no way to rotate for takeoff. I re-positioned them just behind the CoM, not right on top of it.

The problem was probably bugged wheels, but after increasing the main gear's friction and decreasing the nosewheel friction, it seems to go straight. Your V Stab was also slightly crooked. I re-positioned the main landing gear closer to the center of mass (where it's supposed to be, so you can take off more easily) and straightened the tail in addition to tweaking the friction. Also, do you really need two wings? I was able to fly straight and level with one missing! Pictures documenting it: http://imgur.com/a/TXnCJ New craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rn7pxc864yy6j57/Concorde New and Improved.craft?dl=0 Oh, and remember to use SAS

Lots of parasitic or induced drag? Yeah, pictures would help.

If you are calculating total Dv, including during the ascent, then yes, you need to take the atmosphere into consideration. The amount of Dv on your ship decreases if you're in the atmosphere, because when in the atmosphere, the exhaust has to push out against the air. I don't know how to compensate for drag/atmospheric pressure, but it probably involves a lot of calculus because of the all the different and changing factors like speed, gravity losses, atmospheric pressure, etc. Oh, there's also the issue of gravity losses. The lower thrust you have during ascent, the more gravity losses there are. Your best bet is to not bother with calculating the first two stages of your rocket (the ones that get you into orbit), and whatever fuel and tanks that are left in them you jettison. Just calculate the Dv of your transfer stages and whatever stages you are only going to use in space. That way you won't have to worry about the atmosphere. Edit: Or, you could just follow above's advice and save yourself the trouble and math

Is your vessel crewed? If it is, then it will say "Local Control". However, if your command pod is one from another mod, and you have no crew, the mod may not be compatible with Remote Tech. Incompatible probe cores read "Local Control". If you're using a stock probe core and your ship has no crew, then I don't know what's happening.

Get ready to re-learn. Microsoft Flight Simulator is not a realistic flight sim (the procedures and ATC is, but actual flight simulation, not really). KSP is somewhat more realistic, because you can properly stall, and get into unrecoverable spins and all that fun stuff. The best way to fly aircraft is with a joystick, but WASD is still possible. One thing you have to unlearn from FSX (or whichever one you had), if you pull up really hard, you won't just go up: you'll stall, and go down/spin. You'd have to do it gently. Now landing in KSP is kind of tricky, because you have to eyeball and figure out the proper landing speed. Sometimes you can be way off (and that's disastrous). Simply line up (which may not be that simple), keep your surface prograde vector at 3 degrees below the horizon because this is how approaches are done, you should have some angle of attack, not zero. If it's zero, you're going too fast. Adjust throttle to keep the prograde vector at 3 degrees, and pitch to control speed, while tweaking it slightly to make sure you're actually headed toward the threshold of the runway. When you're maybe 50 meters away from the runway, throttle down completely, and nosedown VERY SLIGHTLY so you don't stall. You don't want to nose down too hard, otherwise you'll hit nosewheel first, and hard (other people might not nose down, I do, because that's what I was taught in real life). Flare before you touch down to smooth out. Apply brakes. Possibly spin because the wheels are weird. Summary: 3 degree decent, pitch for speed and throttle for vertical speed, throttle to idle when almost to the runway threshold, pitch to prevent stall, flare, touchdown.

It doesn't affect breaks in the sense that increasing or decreasing friction stops the breaks from working, but if you max out the friction, you won't need breaks. In fact, you may not even get off the ground because you may not be able to move.

I must not have been clear enough. I didn't mean a 15km periapsis for reentry, I meant an altitude of 15km during ascent, where he should start accelerating to a good speed for orbit, but not too fast to burn up. And in any case, it's good to have the CoL behind the CoM, whether it moves forward or back with fuel use. If it does happen to move back, then it's even more important to have the CoL behind the CoM. His case the CoM moved back. I thought they added shockwaves with the new aerodynamics a while ago? I must be wrong, then.

Make sure you have the center of lift behind the center of mass, and as few stabilizers as possible in front of the center of mass. That will keep your craft from flipping and possibly prevent it from spinning. It's also because your center of mass moves aft with fuel burned. As for the heat problem, make sure you're up at 15k or so. When you start overheating at 15k, it's time to ascend higher to get the apoapsis above 70k. If you wan't to go extra fast, put a heat shield or shielded docking port on the nose instead of a pointy cone; it has something to do with the shockwave that reduces heat with these blunt noses.