swjr-swis

If you still have the quicksave and want to retry, I'd suggest doing the opposite: point into prograde briefly, just enough to be able to do a controlled roll into an inverted position, and then pull 'up' hard (towards the ground). Use the atmosphere and your velocity to make your reentry steeper. The goal of this is to quickly get out of the part of the atmosphere that does most of the heating during reentry, and down into the thicker part that slows you down faster *and* dissipates heat better. It's usually prolonged exposure to reentry heating that explodes craft parts, and making your trajectory shallower makes you stay longer in the layer where drag vs heat ratio is the worst. Once you're slow and cool enough, you can return to a more traditional glide path.

It's really hard to take that part of the Internet serious when they keep insisting on attributing this 'invention' to the wrong person.

I used to be a mod user like you; then I took NRE in the knee. There's some great mods out there, but they sometimes add their own flavour of krakens, and clipping solves some inherent issues that mods just don't. An obvious example: no amount of new part mods solve KSP's severe punishment of open stack attach nodes with drag. Attach a nose cone, clip into the engine to where exhaust is no longer occluded - drag almost entirely removed!

Personally, I would describe it as: Dictated by the (largely self-imposed) functional and aesthetic requirements - in this particular case, the wish for it to fit 'seamlessly' (visually if not physics-ly) in an Mk2 fuselage without incurring too much drag Inevitable (VTOL functionality is a common wish) and unavoidable (due to a distinct lack of stock non-clipped solutions, ie. any Mk2 parts offering drag-friendly high thrust in ventral/dorsal directions) It's basically pairing the non-exclusion principle with the equally Kerbal Moar philosophy: when all else fails, add moar (into the same space). In a different universe, we would design and custom-build an engine assembly that through the use of sliding doors, well-placed vent slats, piping, structure and skin would fit all the necessary pieces of machinery into the required Mk2 cross-section without any violations of traditional physics. Likely, it would need more volume than a single Mk2 'unit', in which case we would simply lengthen the section to add to the available volume. None of these options are available to us in KSP; but we can make parts occupy the same space. So we clip.

You don't mention at what point you are in your career, nor your chosen save game settings. What parts of the tech tree do you have unlocked? At what level are your facilities? Have you changed any game settings from the defaults of 'Normal', and if so, which? These are important to know, otherwise people might be building you something that you can't use in your game anyway.

In case anyone on Reddit missed it... six weeks before said thread on Reddit: https://kerbalx.com/Fishanator/Propellant-is-for-ameratures

Please don't take me too seriously. I wasn't throwing anything back at you - you made and make good points on the thread subject. I reiterate: I was merely sharing a moment of self-reflection triggered by your comment. Nothing to see here, just the local village idiot snickering over the voices in his own head.

Congratulations with 6 years of KerbalX.com! Thank you, @katateochi For 6 years of hosting our craft and mission files, for tirelessly volunteering your time and resources in providing and maintaining this awesome community repository. For allowing us a place to share and learn and help and enjoy.

Even strictly kept to the context of fusion, interpreting it as 'the science of fusion', and only considering the tiny subportion of people close to the subject, the sentiment is still quite true. We, or I should say they since I am not a (fusion) scientist, have been 99% on the verge of a breakthrough to achieve exploitable fusion for.... how long now? How many announcements have we seen already, just in my lifetime alone (and they were working on this since before my time already). I'm not belittling their work or achievements in said field, mind you. I perk up and excitedly click on Every. Single. Headline. I see on the matter (plasma?). Every. Time. One of these days though. Any time now. No, I was using 'us' because I consider myself one of those that keeps falling for that trap despite being aware of how little I know. It was an amusing moment of self-awareness. Since I had let a chuckle escape inadvertently, I decided to share it with the class. Our self-perceived level of intelligence stems from the things we are certain we know. And we let ourselves be lured into making very confident ... let's be kind and say nonchalant... nonchalant claims based on said knowledge. I'm humbled practically every day by the way a simple question from a being of 'lesser intelligence' smacks me right in the face and makes me go 'hmm'. Parents in particular must know what I am talking about.

Doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong. 'Wasting a lot of time' is exactly what happens while playing KSP.

A belated thanks for at least trying. I meant to have said that right away.

Making PAW toggles actionable from action groups -as a general rule- would be a great idea. It keeps coming up all the time, for all kinds of reasons, and they're all great. Alas, action groups action apparently have to be coded in individually, which is why we've ended up with only a completely arbitrary selection of them, and we only get a new one every now and then at random intervals (and when we do, we go all wild over getting them and wonder how we ever got by without).

Literally how some of the best inventions in human history have happened.

We sure like to think so, don't we. Has it though? How many times across our history have we essentially made this same statement, only to learn something new and bam, everything we thought we knew needs correction and we get a flurry of new inventions and applications based on our latest '99%' mark. There are still a good number of rather fundamental questions that we know we haven't figured out yet, and we have no clue how paradigm-breaking any of them may be.

My views on clipping are simple: I don't restrict myself in sandbox or career of any form of clipping (except the misleadingly named 'part clipping' option in the debug/cheat menu - I do try to avoid that, but only because it can lead to difficult to correct/diagnose issues with craft). First of all: building craft in KSP is already limited enough in many unnatural ways, leaving us lacking very basic and common engineering techniques. Apparently, despite clear visual evidence from the existing part set and the KSC buildings that kerbals have the capability and tools for molding and bending metal, riveting and soldering parts together, building intricate multi-functional parts, and fitting and integrating all kinds of resource containers into various kinds of volumes... none of those tools or techniques are available to us in the KSC. At least not in any apparent way. So how is it then that kerbals manage to mold and fit a complex pressurized cabin, monoprop tanks, RCS engines, sensors, antennae, wiring and computer equipment into a small conical shell? It took me some time to figure this one out, but once it dawned on me, it was stunningly obvious: the Pauli exclusion principle does not apply in kerbal physics. Kerbals do not need tools to integrate components into a single part... because matter can occupy the same space. I know, crazy right? But it's true! Try it! So why would a society limit themselves to rules that do not apply in their universe? Who in their right mind would stunt their creativity and engineering options by doing such a thing? I've never looked back after that epiphany. So these days, I do as follows: For forum challenges or requests, I abide by the specified challenge rules or the limitations imposed by the requester. For craft I share on KerbalX, I try to minimize clipping to the degree I feel may appeal to the widest audience, but I will still clip when I feel the design or performance goals call for it. For my own craft, even in career, there is no limitation at all. If factory default KSP physics allows it, I use it. Applied Engineering. Seriously though: We can't build custom-designed parts. We can't mold the aerodynamic shell. There's no built-in way to put the often underutilized volume of parts to good use. And we are severely punished by counter-intuitive physics that on one hand makes parts entirely unshielded to airflow regardless of placement, and on the other hand arbitrarily kills their functionality while inside enclosed spaces (even though they still work while phased inside 'solid' parts!). A ton of disadvantages, very few benefits. I think we're allowed a LOT of leeway in employing the few benefits we do get over regular physics to compensate.

This part may be relevant to your issue:

This could've been a scene from a NG/TDC documentary about large predatory robotic birds hunting for and scavenging smaller planes for parts, and it would still have made total sense.

It's a nice challenge to tackle, very worth the effort. If you want to shop around for some design ideas and concepts, there's a long-running thread in the challenge forum specifically about shuttle missions.

Well, shuttle-style vehicles are genuinely difficult to get right. Rockets and spaceplanes tend to be easy in comparison, because their thrust almost naturally aligns with the center of mass of the vehicle. With shuttles, you have to design it to specifically ensure the thrust aligns, and stays that way even while the fuel is being expended. If you're going into it eyes open good for you, but be aware that It's a very real challenge. If you're set on a vertical launch and are not particularly attached to a shuttle, I'd suggest a more traditional rocket would be easier. They used to when they were first instroduced, but they were changed to LF-only. Have been for a good while now.

Mun orbit was mentioned and I indeed overlooked that. Still, replace the single orange tank by a smaller set of LF tanks and a small orbital tug and I think it would still fit in the cargo bay... just one more launch, and then from LKO, have the tug do the Munar injection.

There's already a few challenges of the sort; not specifically requiring the scanner but seeing how low one can get. There's even a trick (exploit if you will) of a stock mechanic that will allow to go as far as slightly dipping into the surface. Search the forum for Kerbol Limbo.

Load to runway. Engage SAS, set it to Orbital mode, throttle to full, stage. Plane will take flight hands-free. At 500 m/s, switch to follow prograde. At 22km altitude, action group 1 to switch to closed cycle. Cut throttle when Ap is 72km. Set up the maneuver node and circularize. For the return, just fire retrograde at the right time (crater rim), point radial out until plane starts wanting to nose down, glide her over the mountains and onto the runway, at a stall speed of 25-30 m/s. Recover, load with a new payload, rinse and repeat. Short of letting a mod like MechJeb or kOS handle it, it hardly could be any easier.

If you have the tech, use a spaceplane that can return again to get most of the craft cost refunded. It also makes it easier to send up more than one tank if needed.

The tail is pushing up to keep the nose from pointing too much up. This is not negative lift, it's actual lift. Vector point up into the air, away from the ground.

And then there's guys like me that only knew the term 'stall' from fairs and markets. My thanks for the very clear explanation of the provenance and applicability of the term in this context. Considering lift and downforce and length of arm and vectorial math and all, yes, I agree that this is what we would expect. And it may well be exactly how it works in real life, I have no means to question that. What I've learned in KSP is that, aside from the stock 'CoL' indicator often being rather misleading, overall stability of the plane (as in the passive tendencies of the plane to stay more or less upright and pointing into the airflow towards the intended heading) tends to have more factors to it than just main wing lift and elevator deflection. I find that when optimizing for efficient flight and stability, the CoL ends up considerably more forward than the theory would have us expect, either almost right on top or even in front of the CoM. I observe that and acknowledge it, but I don't go and 'correct' it simply because of theory if the plane is actually more efficient and stable that way. I've also noticed that my tail elevators end up having to work against the natural tendency of my planes to want to climb. I don't know if that is considered 'bad design' in the theoretical sense, I just know it works. My planes are optimised to be at equilibrium and at minimal drag state at their cruising altitude and speed. At any point before that in the flight envelope, while applying full power, they want to climb, and the tail elevator is having to inhibit/control that natural tendency to climb, which they do by creating lift/upforce to force the nose a bit down from where it wants to be. By the time the plane gets to cruising altitude, keeping the plane level needs no elevator input anymore and it's at neutral, which is also the least drag and thus the most efficient at the point of the flight envelope where that is the most important element. Result = plane goes far on very little fuel. If someone goes ahead and tells me that all this is a sign of bad engineering according to theory, I won't even argue. It might be. I just know in KSP it works. And it's the result I'm after. If I see someone asking 'how do I design a KSP plane to go far and use less fuel', my answer is going to be based on what I've learned, even if that deviates from what is generally considered how it should be. This here I guess is where our designs differ. My planes want to go up from the moment I start applying power on the tarmac. I have to control their tendency to climb. I don't have to raise my nose to make the wings gain incidence, they already have incidence to start with, which means that airflow into prograde already generates lift. My elevators don't fight a tendency to drop the nose... they inhibit the rate of climb. Up to getting to cruising altitude, where they are at their neutral and least-drag configuration.