swjr-swis

Examining the screenshot closer, it looks like you have the gridfins attached to the nose cone. If you have autostruts on those fins, try disabling them, or attach them to the booster tank instead.

Are you using autostruts? This happens often when the autostruts reconnect after a staging, docking, or loading event, and the autostrut setting is ambiguous. Eg. when you have it set to 'heaviest' (the default) and at the moment of staging or loading the heaviest part is not the one you would expect, or there are multiple parts of identical weight that are not symmetry partners.

As @razark says: if you have SAS on hold (the default when it's on), it is actively working against any attitude changes, including turns. You can't directly compare that to a paper airplane that does not actively steer at all. To get your plane to act like a paper airplane and see how rolling does indeed result in turning in KSP, turn SAS off and use trim. With a well-built plane, you could also use SAS prograde and see the same thing. In both cases you need to also be flying in a state of equilibrium: speed, altitude and thrust should be at balance for that specific plane - otherwise the unbalanced forces will tend to have more effect than what the roll will do. The best situation to see this in effect is in stable cruising flight. I've never flown an actual plane like others here, but I do fly a lot in KSP, and I can tell you that in stock KSP planes do turn when rolled/banked. When I am doing long-distance flights in KSP and the destination is still far off, a slight roll (and no pitch) is how I correct deviations from my intended heading. It exchanges a tiny bit of altitude for a slow turn back towards the correct heading. You tend to gain a bit of speed too, which is exchanged again for the lost altitude after you level out the roll. It's a pretty smooth and stable way of adjusting your heading in KSP. And because it's performed without pitching, you avoid fighting SAS if it's set to follow prograde (with the current SAS code, pulling away from prograde can easily cause very unpleasant self-amplifying see-sawing, so it's something to avoid whenever possible). For faster turns (close to the destination or in chase/dog-fighting), or just generally when flying with SAS on hold, you will need to add pitch to the roll, as @Rocket In My Pocket says.

While you're busy culling superfluous stuff, how about also removing -and stopping KSP from auto-creating- all those empty unused directories in the main game directory? Internals, Parts, PluginData, Plugins, Resources. And that launcher that has been useless for a few versions now. Btw, mod creators: this probably means that buildID.txt will be removed in favour of buildID64.txt. Time to adapt your check routines and ensure you look for the correct file.

Hear, hear.

See this thread (and that post in particular):

I agree: if you do the variants, it would seem fitting to make heat resistance (and perhaps cost) different between the two.

Hmm. It's going very far to call what I did 'modelling'. I was basically just putting together what I saw inside Blender and a few things mentioned by others in the thread you linked. I'd call it 'tinkering', at best, and I remember not being very satisfied - I was just showing how I got it working, figuring someone adept at these things would provide a more polished result. As I remember it, the glow texture I added was a quick and dirty job just to prove the effect, which was meant to be replaced by something better. And didn't the off-white surface of the cockpit end up with an unintended sheen? I do hope the published version had those things corrected, cause my Blender/mu importer setup is non-functional at the moment. I'm afraid the explanation of my steps in the thread you linked is all the help I can offer on the subject.

If you mean the 'smiley face' ocean bottom trenches south of the KSC... that's been part of the Kerbin height map for ages now. I still don't see the connection with the OP mission 'description' though. Anyway, I went and accomplished the mission. Can I get added to the leaderboard, please? (I think I did anyway - I seem to have no rum left and I'm home again, so I'm assuming I forgot all about it)

Jeb's favourite words. It's also usually when I start getting nervous...

Sometimes this forum pulls a fast one on me and hides even the link to pictures or videos. I can see the Kerbin height map.. but it doesn't show anything marked on it. None of the text visible in your post explains what 'this spot' is, nor what 'the mission' is. So I guess I'll be the spoilsport that asks the question instead of pretending I understand. What spot, and what mission, are we talking about here?

Sorry, but this statement is not correct. Engines can and will draw air from multiple intakes to fulfill their requirement. It's quite easy to demonstrate in-game: occlude a Goliath by attaching its front node, so its own intake is no longer working. Add a bunch of smaller intakes (say, 4x circular ones at the end of an inverted quad-coupler). Fire up the engine at full throttle, and then close/open one or more intakes at will to see quite clearly that there will absolutely be multiple intakes feeding into the Goliath - its max output thrust and the time it takes for the engine to choke will vary linearly according to the nr of intakes left open.

This seems to indicate you have no GPU at all, or at most an integrated one (like an Intel HD4xxx). That is the most probable cause for it not to work. Even if the integrated GPU met the minimum requirements, you would then be sharing the main RAM for video memory too, and to do that AND load the game itself, your 4GB RAM is simply not enough.

Most of your space planes also use much bigger wings with lots of parts, which falls outside OP's tech-level and max part count restrictions. @Fraktal, I placed another alternative on my Dropbox, the Fraktal-Plane1a. It uses the same set of parts you used, now that it's clarified. The only part-change I kept from my previous one is the type B wing in place of the swept wings - that change is rather important for a significant performance improvement. Being in the same tech node as the swept wings, that should not be a problem. Parts have been rearranged to balance the plane so CoM stays put with changing fuel loads. This allowed placing all four radial chutes right above the CoM. Even with a full fuel load, it needs only two chutes to land safely (along with a drastic change in gear spring strength). They are set to open in two separate pairs for two landings, giving your science trips the option to return to base for full recovery. The radial chutes do add drag compared to the previous one I posted, which results in higher take off speed, and lower top speed and cruising altitude, but still better than what you had. It can still make it to the poles and back to KSC using about 400 units of LF - it just takes a bit longer (about 50-ish mins one-way). Try not to fly too high - optimal cruising with full load is at around 275 m/s and 7000 m (both raising with less fuel). Oh, when you go in for a chute landing, make sure you are at least about 150-200m above the surface when staging the chutes: the plane does make a pretty hefty seesaw motion as the chutes drain horizontal speed. It will settle to near-level attitude pretty quickly and can be corrected easily from that point on.

Is this to OP or me? OP doesn't show any landing or take off, there's just the one screenshot where the plane is already at 799m altitude. If you're referring to the screenshots in my post/album, they are for an alternative design I'm suggesting that uses the type B wing connector instead of the swept wing. The type B is the best single wing part OP has access to at this point (lighter and more lifting area), and in the same tech node as the swept wing. More lift than those would require a wing of more parts, which OP indicates is an issue (max 30 parts for the entire craft).

The 'something fishy' is just the usual thing all chip manufacturers have been doing for years now: since the chip-baking process yields a significant number of chips with defects, they sell the ones that come out with less defects and work up to a higher factory stress level as 'improved' versions, and the rest as 'standard' versions with a number of cores/cells disabled.

There's a reason the game makes you confirm FIVE (5!) times before actually letting you go... (Esc... Space Center. Esc... Quit to Main Menu... Esc... Quit. YES, AFTER FIVE TIMES, I AM PRETTY SURE I A... oh darn it, almost forgot I had another maneuver node coming. Maybe not quite yet then.)

No, it doesn't reduce drag - only fairings, cargo and service bays do that. In every other case the game treats parts as fully 'transparent' to drag, so clipping makes no difference. On the bright side, this means you can replace the solar panel by one more goo. I figured as much, which is why I did the same with the one I shared. With the panel swapped for another goo, that means mine is only one goo short of your design. If you make it a one-way trip like you do now, or decide to chance landing the plane normally on the return trip, you can remove two of the Mk16 chutes (which are shielded from drag btw, inside the bays) - that would let you complete the set of goo canisters, and still have room for one more part.

Sounds like your main issue is trying to keep the plane balanced with different fuel loads. You are already close -the set of Mk0 tanks can be put to good use for this- but your fuselage misses a bit of length and the Mk1 tank needs to shift a bit back too. One more service bay placed strategically can do the trick. My suggestions, while keeping to your design as much as possible, would be the following (don't read the spoiler if you first want to try yourself): Some pictures to clarify: Full album and additional comments: https://imgur.com/a/mnGrYNj Craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/psg184cjx3hbrtl/Fraktal-Plane1c.craft?dl=0

Well ok, in a strict sense then... we don't really need to bring back kerbals, do we?

Not only. They have a function for science transmission as well, which is an option from the very first tier.

There are lots of grumbles to mention about the stoch tech tree, those just being some of them. Plenty of threads on this forum talking about it. Don't expect too much logic or realism out of it; just see it as a way of gauging progress in your career.

Well, the rules state: Which seems pretty clear by itself. But this exact question was asked before in this thread, and answered by @RealKerbal3x:

23 min is a very nice time, around the ballpark I had figured this might go. You forgot to include a rather crucial one though: the planting the flag one.