Sampak

That's good to know. I do believe the Logitech was about $50 or so here in the US. I'll look up the TM16000M and keep that in mind for the next spending spree. Dead zone is def funky I'm finding.

Haha yes it's Logitech. Not sure why I thought it was a Saitek. But yes I noticed that sometimes the craft won't respond to certain input until I push a lot more than usual, other times it'll work as slow as needed. I think it might have something to do with the SAS ON, because even with the keyboard, I noticed smaller movements are impossible without mashing down the WASD as needed. WIth the stick, and SAS ON, I pretty much have to 'power' through the stability at times as if the deadzone was way larger that instant. I can't say I have that problem in other games though. Meh. I'll keep the issue in mind and pay attention next go around.

Actually I do have a quick question, Im using the Saitek Logitech Extreme 3D Pro. Did you have to turn down the sensitivity to make things less twitchy? At the default .80 or so on each axis, I had a hard time with mine doing slight maneuvers, so I turned that down to 0.60 odd. I still found it to be touchy, so I instead now turn down the control surfaces etc from 100% authority to 20-40 depending on type. Seems a tad more reasonable. Just curious. I know practice is key, but VTOL + various orientations x Over correction = crash.

Thanks for your replies. I do understand to a degree that the aerodynamics in KSP are game-i-fied due to many reasons like many of the space related physics (N body etc.). With that said I have been long aware of the F12 aero drag display. To my surprise I didnt pay attention to it before but after reading another post I looked again, and the troubled aircrafts I test all seemed to have at least 1 piece of fuselage (usually the Mk2 lifting body components) that have a 20-30 yard long drag line, usually just the one bad one at around 300+ m/s. These are the same craft that have trouble gaining any kind of speed above 0.9xx Mach. So, I oberved another craft that was more a simplistic joke build, with mk1 cylinder shaped components. Sure enough, the worst drag lines were barely a couple odd yards long at hypersonic (super? as in well above 500+ m/s) so it was able to pierce through the air. Keep in mind I'm a minimalist in most of my builds so I'm using 1 or 2 Panther jets in Wet mode (that one I described again) that have PLENTY of t/w on paper. The ones that seem to speed up without issue are dissappointingly NOT the lifting body Mk2 (they look sooo much better/scale to me) but the mk1 builds. And yes, I've used the slanted scoop as well as this beginner circular intake. No diff as far as any change in success rate.... And no, I'm not going to use the EZ mode Rapiers because, 1. I dont have them unlocked yet, 2. Why not use Panthers if they work for others and me on occasion? So long story longer, are Mk2 fuselage just gimped in the game at the moment and just need a hideous amount of power behind them to work (i.e. ugly big quad jets etc) and push through their disgusting drag. OR, am I making a mistake somewhere? I'll try to update this post with some pictures of the afflicted aircraft for reference so you might point out some errors on my part (hopefully?). I try to go for somewhat realistic looks and only now and then clip parts to make something look better. LOL ok as soon as I fired a "bad" design up and took to the air, it again, defied the norm and kept speeding up. It's now been steadily climbing in alt and speed. WTH... last night I literally spent 2-3 hours trying to figure out why it works and then doesn't. LOL. Same plane, different result. The "usually bad one" that seems to have worked just now but look at those drag lines! The cheap one that achieves almost 1000 km AP if I keep pointing up without trying lol << what drag? Edit: ok tested the plane again TWICE, now it won't get past 370 m/s, seems to be the same shallow climb or even leveling off at ~ 1000-1500m ASL. These next 2 times the drag line was as long as before (or seemed longer, again the same mk2 part) and I couldnt do anything to get up past sub sonic speeds. I give up!

Related to OP somewhat, I also constantly run into a 'wall' speed wise with my various jet setups BUT they're random as hell as far as my A.D.D. self can tell. As in, if I take off and let things go, the Afterburner Jet you get (the 3rd one with wet/dry mode you get I believe) will often break neck speed up and get to 750-900 m/s easily within a minute of take off, and given T/W ratios, I can go vertical for example, and it will burn the skin off no problem. Other times, I notice if I don't do certain things (I can't remember what it is, sorry) or do certain things, I can roll out, take off, climb at 15-25* and the jet will surpass the 'speed wall' and get up to the usual mach 2-3 (750-900 m/s), with almost no effort on my part, no shallow dives for speed as far as I recall. OTHER times, no matter what I do, no matter how many shallow dives I take for speeding up, regardless of flying at 1000m or 6000 or 1000m, the jet will not 'turbocharge' itself with the increased speeds it gets to, usually 300-350m/s sometimes less, and will simply refuse to accelerate as I would expect, short of nose diving into the ground to get beyond 350-400 m/s. And even if it does say, get to 400 m/s, in those 'off' cases I'm talking about, the same jet that went supersonic and beyond in an earlier flight, this time might quickly lose thrust/speed if I nose up even a tad. It's like some sort of vicious cycle I can't break. Any ideas what I've run into? Must be a common issue for newbs I take it. FYI my T/W ratios surpass 1.0 and as I said I can go vertical and get to desired speeds, yet same plane, traditional rollout and I can't gain steam.

Sure thing. However, I'm one of those that try to do things without any mods, besides Kerbal Engineer. LOL. Well, until something becomes stock I will try not to use it, since it makes it seem like I'd be cheating the limitations. That said, Keep up the cool designs. I love all your little ships and the way they play like Russian dolls with their ability to carry/be carried.

Thanks, I just finished watching your video on "Winged Things and how to make them." The only thing that might be blocking me from replicating your method of engine/intake placement is the surface attachment, aside from that I was successfully (sort of) able to clone the Gnat functionally as well as the Mindy/Mork flying servicebay lol. However, not being able to do surface attachments for intake/jet I had to creatively 'utiliize' any available nodes and then move and re-angle the engine bits to look right. With that said the orientation of the controls are screwy, the control seat is facing right but the roll and yaw are swapped and wonky.

OK so I stumbled onto your mini Mork ships from a google picture search for SSTOs. And now I've spent 4 hours trying to duplicate your cutesy looking 1.25m cargo cockpit designs as well as this neat vtol here. What's stumping me for now is how you managed to get the outboard engines to basically attach hover AND in mirror mode (when I reverse engineered your craft, both engines vanish together if I remove one) in the air basically with only the antenna pieces giving visual neatness. Same for the Mork/Mindey type with the way you neatly attached and balanced the rocket/jet / fuel setup on the tips of the very finnicky nose cone "ears?" Teach me!

A game currently in development called Rogue System (referred to as "DCS in space") right now will let your ship calculate a trajectory for a constant G transfer (accelerate half way then decelerate) to other planetary bodies. The game does use very realistic N-body physics and not "patched conics" (I had no idea what this was until recently and still don't know how it works, but I'm ok with that). So I believe with the right data, IRL it may be very possible, if very complex on the computational level, to do what above posters may be asking regarding a constant acceleration/deceleration maneuver to Mars.

There is some truth to this. I find that having SAS on can often cause wobble or instability in a certain longer/complex rocket, making it impossible to hold your heading, while in others it is needed to keep the rocket pointed steady. I suppose it all depends on the design.

You don't and won't need to touch gimbal limits (I never have on my successful rockets). Simply lock the upper few tanks so fuel is taken from the bottom stack and thus keeping the rocket top heavy (which is good). OR simply use "fine" control mode by pressing CAPSLOCK. This should turn the "+" needles green and vice versa if you hit CAPSLOCK again (beware: there is a bug that sometimes if you ALT-tab or do some menu stuff, the fine control mode will work in the opposite way no biggy though, just alt tab and turn CAPSLOCK the other way and it'll go back to normal). This way you limit how quick your rocket responds. This works with any control method (RCS, reactionwheels, fins, space plane control surfaces, etc.) I'm no expert and each flight profile I have is wildly different, but I typically go for slow deliberate pitchover after I reach a couple of KM up. Though I have noticed that from rocket to rocket, some just never want to 'hold' where you move the nose while in the atmosphere and you'll spend some time fighting it to keep it pointed the way you want. In that case, I just let it reach a higher altitude and try to pitchover again. Once your CoM is in control (locking the upper tanks until you drain the lower ones, or your rocket stages in a way to do this) and you're in the thinner atmosphere, you shouldn't flip much at all. Space planes are another story though. Once I figured out the 'issue' I almost never need fins. Especially now that I mostly launch 2.5m cargo/capsules using the 3.5m engines, quad nozzle (Mammoth?) or the single nozzle one (Rhino?).

I have a similar issue with my space plane also drawing liquid fuel from my probe in the cargo bay, which is attached with a small decoupler...!!! I thought decouplers did not allow fuel flow... yet when I reach orbit with my spaceplanes the first few times messing around, I decoupled my satellite only to find the poor thing was drained of liquid fuel with lots of Oxidizer left over for.. explosions LOL. As for the rocket tanks being drained, yes, you'll have to manually "disable" them by clicking the the little green arrows next to Liquid fuel value in the right click menu for each Rocket fuel tank. OR you can simply pump fuel from where ever you need back into the rocket tanks, by using the ALT + left click on all involved (or 2 at a time) tanks and balance out your fuel as needed. Generally though, if your jet engine can sip fuel from rocket tanks, your rockets *should* be able to take fuel from the jet tanks automatically as well, UNLESS there is a bug (or feature") that I'm unaware of preventing this.

To add to what others have already mentioned, I too was in a lull as far as needing more science in Science mode, in order to unlock stuff. So I decided to revisit the Mun and Minmus, this time by complete chance with a 2.5M lander with about 2,000-3,000 m/s extra dV and used it (with my 'skills' it took me a whole night of crashing and reloading) to hop over several different biomes on the Mun, and Minmus, and ended up netting probably 1500-2000 science points, which I promptly spent on science experiments (Graviolli detector, etc.), and other 'fun' bits (3.5m rocket parts and power gen). Start 'hopping' biomes on Minmus because it's much 'cheaper' with delta V and piloting mistakes, and once you've had your fill, recover that craft on Kerbin, and head out to the Mun and try the same. I went against my usual habits and on these high payout trips went into Polar orbits, just to force myself to land and get science from previously 'virgin' biomes.

Don't you mean insanely high Apoapsis? In any case, I am no expert at this but I thought about this question as OP mentioned. And I came to the conclusion that aside from some technical stuff I may not be aware of, one would spend the same amount of energy/Delta V to get to the Mun regardless of first circularizing orbit. If you setup your launch so that you can launch directly to the Mun, you could "skip" circularizing, but you would simply be burning up to, and past some sort of LKO and still need a certain amount of dV. Only difference I can see is instead of stopping for a bathroom break in orbit around Kerbin before burning off toward the Mun as per a typical flight plan, instead you just happened to launch at the right window to be able to keep burning from launch until you intercept the Mun. I hope I made sense with all that rambling.

Not a real life encounter, but close enough. Hi there. I have been playing AT-ROBOTS on and off since '96. Yeah. I had to stalk your profile and website just to be sure. Hehe. I see you're heavily into KSP now. Quite a refreshing surprise. Cool!