Zephram Kerman

Space planes! Just getting one to fly is a decent challenge. Once you\'ve mastered stable aircraft, build a reusable single stage vehicle to visit Mun or Minmus and then return.

It\'s easy if you guess build the thing just right. Since the laws of physics are a bit different in KSP, the best designs will be a bit counter-intuitive to aeronautics regulars. I\'ve done nothing but work on space plane designs since version 15 came out. Finally I can present to you all the Single Stage Interplanetary Vehicle mk 1. The maiden voyage of the SSIPV mk 1 ended up reaching all the way to Minmus! Bobsy was pleased by the stroke of good luck triumph of Kerbal engineering. Milwel and Camin were a bit less enthusiastic, due to Bobsy playing the Hamster Dance song for the entire trip. The SSIPV mk 1 is a prototype, so nobody expected it to ever reach Minmus. Therefore, nobody thought to put landing thrusters. (Besides, the thing is underpowered already.) Undaunted, Bobsy carefully brought the ship to a stop just over a frozen lake, then gracefully belly flopped the ship onto the landing gear. Unfortunately, there is no documentation of the return trip, due to the launch maneuver damaging the aerospike rocket engine.

The moon landings were faked on location at the moon, using all-real space program parts and astronauts, for, you know, realism.

Well, the word minimus means smallest of a series. Since Minmus would almost have to be the smallest visible object in the Kerbol system, and if we contract the i a little bit, obviously, it\'s about a female cartoon mouse.

I\'m not sure if this is still true, but the last time I experimented with low altitudes, unfocused craft 'on rails' were not affected by drag. They plan to fix this, but I think it\'s still on the to-do list. Anything on rails below about 23 km gets suddenly vaporized. So theoretically, you should be able to orbit at 25 km, as long as you\'re not flying it.

I encountered something like this the other day. We were just driving around on Minmus, near a mountain peak. Every 21 seconds, the whole craft would jump up into the sky! Not sure about the acceleration, but it was enough to make the cart\'s wheels bounce up above the craft. As we gained altitude, the effect became more and more pronounced, until we were reaching 7m on each bounce.

Without proper runway lights or nav aids, it\'s pretty hard to see the runway. So I left some debris out in the water close to the center line. These 'approach debris' really help me to get lined up.

Awesome. I\'ve got to get me one of these. Thank you. I never expected aeronautics to be harder than rocket science. Who knew? From now on, I\'ll just focus on beta testing the gravity and explosions systems.

Just yesterday, I had a similar issue with my new space plane. The engine ran out of fuel while there were still two full tanks. I think this is due to the way I had connected the tanks together. It is possible that, during editing, one of the connections was changed to sideways when I intended it to be end-to-end. In other words, tanks can be welded together side-by-side, but fuel won\'t flow that way. If you then connect more side-by-side tanks below them, only one connection gets made and the others become useless cargo.

These designs look sweet! How does that ejector seat work? Modified decoupler, or something else?

Aw dangit. I still haven\'t seen that one yet. But I\'ll get you back! Darth Vader dies at the end of Jedi. Mwhahaha!

Beautiful video. I find these things fascinating! I don\'t have a sextant. But, I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night...

I\'ve had moderate success with something similar. I combined Tosh\'s cart mod with R4m0n\'s MechJeb plugin. Used in Surface or KillRot modes, the cart is much less unstable at high speeds. Perhaps MechJeb would help your design too. While it cannot use RCS to control altitude or vertical speed, it would enable perfect attitude control. (It also tends to spam the RCS and drain fuel too quickly. So I think your best bet would be to use only the single lateral jets for hovering, and reaction wheels for attitude control.)

Re: the comments about rudders and turning, please think of it this way: an airplane does not turn like a car (nor a rocket). An airplane uses lift to turn. Yes, that is not a typo. If you want to turn, roll (aka 'bank') in the direction you want, and then pull back to pitch in that direction. This doesn\'t change the direction of travel, but it does rotate the airplane. The increased angle causes your wing lift to change the actual direction of travel. In short form, 'bank and yank'.

Yah, what they all said above. To put it in a more organized way: add just one of either of these for autopilot: ASAS MechJeb add as much of any of these for control authority: SAS RCS fins gimballed engines Each one works in its own way, with advantages and costs. That\'s where it gets more complicated, and you make engineering decisions.

Indeed, we do not swear, because there may be children present. Yet, we gladly explore anyway! The intrepid vessel, Minmus Peak VIII, reached this pinnacle and measured its altitude at 5283 meters. Along the way, we discovered yet again just how strange this planetoid can be. As we began to approach the summit, we noticed a tiny vibration beneath our feet. The vibration felt much like the tectonic tremors on our homeworld, except for being a series of singular impulses and extremely regular. We measured the period of the vibration to be nearly 21 seconds. Even more unusual was the way the amplitude of the vibration apparently increased as we gained altitude. By the time we found the summit of Minmus Peak, the tiny tremors had become substantial jolts, sending our craft (and ourselves) up to seven meters above the ground! Because of this strange, regular, tremor, I propose this location not be named Minmus Peak, but rather Heart of Minmus. I made a video of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, YouTube is being uncooperative today. Hopefully I can rectify this tomorrow.

I could just see: a Kerbal centrifuge go flying through the wall, a Kerbal rocket sled (with Jeb in Dr. Trapp\'s seat, his lips stretching out due to the wind), and a Kerbal test pilot eating something out of a tube, which tastes good but spontaneously explodes.

Added. Name: Lake of Broken Landers Latitude: 36° 0\' 52' S Longitude: 334° 55\' 36' W (or 25° 4\' 24' E) Altitude: 3 m Celestial Body: Minmus

Anything unfocused that goes below 24km altitude will suddenly vanish without a trace. If the periapsis is higher than that, you\'ll have to get rid of it manually somehow. The quick way is to open the persistent.sfs file and delete any vessel with _debris in the name. The fun way is to rendezvous, and use the laser mod to blow it out of the sky.

Is it just me, or does this control seem very strange? At first, I thought you were joking, and were about to require him to type cntl-alt-shift-caps lock-Ã… or something. But you are Tosh, so I believe.

Doctor Floyd? There is a message for you. There is no identification.

Ooh! It would be cool if the 'frozen' lakes would thaw out in the day time, then refreeze at night.

I think we\'re all just speechless. Real life getting too close to things that should only happen in a game. That\'s kinda disturbing. Thank you, Col. Stapp.

Rescue missions are the extreme challenge of KSP. I love reading such logs, because they always include additional problem solving along the way. Congratulations. Job well done.

Ultimately, your idea could enable us to do something like the White Knight / Spaceship One combination. After separation, both craft need to be piloted simultaneously. But if the carrier could glide down on autopilot, the investors would be much happier. Something tells me this scenario asks a lot.