Zephram Kerman

That's a lovely idea! It basically makes two action groups into something like the ROT/LIN mode switch.My technique is to put quads in the middle around of the Center-of-Mass. Since they are at the CoM, the thing is easily balanced and should not rotate during translation. (That is, unless the fuel tank is off-center. You did put the fuel tanks at the CoM, didn't you?) Urr, also, I noticed a module in MechJeb2 called "RCS Balancer". I haven't messed with it yet though.

Welcome again, Dear Leader. The Great Kraken cannot defeat you. Will you be launching all your vessels of peaceful exploration from KSP2 in Kerbistan?

Well that's purdy! It looks a bit heavy for the number of engines. So I think with skillful piloting, you could get pretty close to orbit, but not quite. But if you remove some of the extra parts (lights, RCS fuel) it could get even closer. I like how it has only one intake per jet engine. Lots of folks will tell you to add more intakes to radically increase performance, but I feel that's unrealistic (or perhaps even a bug exploit). SSTO spaceplanes can work without "airhogging", but it's difficult. Heck, in my opinion, any Kerbal plane that is stable enough to get off the runway and can go suborbital is an achievement. So congratulations! You've learned a lot to get this far.

I ended up doing the opposite. My tug has balanced RCS ports, like you described. Whatever modules it installs always have their own RCS arrangements too, so that the combination is still balanced. That's a lot simpler than guessing an offset distance for modules you haven't even thought of yet.

There's also the one on the wiki, of course. I like how it looks like a subway system map.

I would practice right next to the launch pad, then head straight to the Laythe colony lagoon.

Ouch. We've all been there. Did you try activating the Time Displacement Repeater? (F9) That's a cool looking ship though. Welcome to the KSP community!

You can always use Infinite Joint Strength, but that's a bit cheaty. To me, the wobbly joints make sense, limiting the length of unreinforced structures.

I'm not sure if this should be in Fan-Works or elsewhere, so mods feel free to relocate as you see fit. A friend of mine at work has just completed a novel, and asked me to put the description here. I'm looking forward to reading this thing, and I hope you will too.

Also keep in mind that everything is moving in circles (or, technically, ellipses) but not in straight lines. So what looks like the correct direction is actually some degrees off. Like rolling a tire; if you push on one side, it turns that way a quarter turn later. So unless you're very close to your target, burning for intercept means rotating your mind 90°.

Oddly enough, the incident did me a favor, and deleted a thread I wished I had never started. Thanks DDOS!

So according to the quicksave stats, Jeb and Bill actually have the same bravery! The difference is Jeb is more "dumb" so he doesn't realize he should be scared. It turns out Bob is the "least dumb" of the three. He'll chicken out of anything that isn't a good idea, and put foam padding on all sharp corners. I cast my vote for "Other"!

Aside: since this image is from XCOM: UFO Defense... The Armory music in Tron: Legacy sounds a lot like it was from this game. Late at night, while in the middle of munar transfer, I stopped time warp and looked inside the capsule. Jeb was playing The Sims and giggling. One of his sims was playing KSP and giggling. One of those Kerbals was playing Human Space Program, and giggling. I got too scared to look any further, so I turned off my computer, which immediately disappeared. And that's why I don't have my homework.

Maybe your plane is working just fine. Consider how fast your vessel is moving. If you pull back on the stick and get four Gs, that's just fine. It might take a while to actually see the effect, but that's just because of the huge amounts of kinetic energy involved. If it took five minutes to get moving that fast, why shouldn't it take a while to reverse it? Otherwise... what kind of control systems are you using? Avionics pack, ASAS, MechJeb, etc.? Rocket-style ASAS will try to maintain the heading when it was activated, while avionics pack attempts to keep reasonably close to the direction of travel.

It's the funky wobble dance that happens just as the two docking ports meet. It puts all kinds of weird torques on both vessels, and then suddenly freezes them in place. So no matter how perfectly you do the maneuver, the end result might look really weird.

You can right-click on the docking port, and select 'control from here' which reorients the nav ball relative to that part. So now the target and direction of travel are in the middle where you can actually see them. If you are moving toward the target at 1 m/s or so, the prograde marker should be stable enough. Falofonos' tip about aligning to north/south might seem like a small thing, but it really makes the approach much easier by eliminating rotational drift. One more thing. It's ok to adjust while approaching the docking port. Looking at the nav ball markers, use lateral RCS to put the prograde marker on the opposite side of the target marker.

Oh I hate it when that happens. Makes the screenshots look all wonky. After the fact, you can undock and adjust, as Technical Ben suggested. Or, you could prevent it in the VAB, by using multiple docking ports for each section. With two or three ports, the vessel will be (almost) forced to align automagically.

Thanks, credit goes to Glacierre; I just reverse-engineered it. Most SSTO spaceplanes have enough thrust to launch vertically if you rotate them in the SPH and attach clamps. They always have enough thrust to land vertically, if they still have fuel. I realize this is probably not what you meant, but technically it works.

And then there's Firefox.

Oh that's cool! Epic road trip with a 'high profile vehicle'. For some reason, I'm always fascinated by polar solar stuff. If you orient the solar panel vertically, it tracks the sun along the horizon and always has 100% exposure. No batteries required! Also, no LOS for communication networks. I want to build all my colonies on the poles now.

Congrats, Asmosdeus! I agree, SSTO space planes are a demanding challenge. Most of mine are butt-ugly, but yours actually looks cool. (The other respondents are also lovely!) Just before the forum incident, Glacierre posted a wordless screenshot of a very tiny SSTO. I was so impressed, I copied it from the image. Somehow it's not quite as pretty as the original, but it still performs well. It can achieve orbit with fuel to spare, and it does so without 'airhogging'. (Just one intake for the single turbojet.) I've nicknamed it Papillon. Of course, I immediately started adding stuff to make it heavier and less efficient. But, Papillon mk 2 can dock with my station. So it can be used as a very cheap crew rotation vessel.

Several months ago, I got pretty close to a flyable space shuttle with stock parts. The only reason it was impossible (at the time) was for lack of tilting parts, which we can now do. I should revisit the idea sometime, but it's far down on my list right now. Anyway, the trick to it is to angle the SSME nozzles outwards a bit, so that their thrust vector is through the CoM. The tricky part is that CoM keeps moving around as parts jettison. So it might be necessary to alter the engine gimbal range.

Eve is not, technically, a one-way trip... especially if your spaceport is on that 6km mountain plateau, as Temstar proposes. The return trip does require a lot of fuel, of course, but the plentiful energy makes this cheap to manufacture. On the other hand, a colony should be permanent. What is the point of building it temporarily? The annual cost of supply ships would be less and less expensive as the colony becomes more self-sufficient. It all boils down to motivation. All we really need to suddenly overcome any obstacle is a possible return on investment.

Looking forward to the next episode, and finding out how the rest of your ship works. I voted for Eve because landing there is the most challenging. Feel free to just do a low pass instead.

Nicely done. The music is intense and edgy, so the first part could have used a quiet moment while viewing the Mun. Otherwise, I enjoyed every moment of all three parts. Excellent use of the fixed camera and parts mods, music sequencing, and special effects. Also, I loved that quote about the dinosaurs. Where did you get the radio voices? That was good stuff too!