Kamenjar

Not really in all cases, or maybe not as obvious as Goliaths. Reliant has better ASL than swivel, so it is useful as a first stage where gimbal is not needed, until you get aerospikes or bigger solid fuel boosters in career. When you get Stayputnik, there are no other probe cores available, so it is used. Swivel I use a lot for smaller craft. There's no other efficient small gimballed engine to replace it. largest landing gear I use sometimes (large landing gear on that plane I posted above to get better clearance and shock absorbing for uneven terrain) Big S tail fins are neat and folks use them a log - easy to place and they stay far back. You could argue that fat airplane parts are a bridge part till Big-S wings become available. I've seen folks use i-beams to hang two rovers on them and put them on Mun/Minmus, though they are way too heavy for any other use I could think of. I guess that issue is that engines are a big piece of this game and especially with planes as you tend to build planes around engines, rather than the other way around, and Squad had something in mind with Goliaths, but seems they missed on it. I wish I had a bigger supersonic jet engine, that would make heavy spaceplanes easier to make. But a big slow engine? Beats me...

It's not about my preference. My preference is for myself, and for the forums is a question that I asked (trolled the thread) --- what is the point (of existence) of Goliath (in the game), as it appears to me that alternatives are always objectively better when trade-offs are considered. Goliath trades the best ISP and highest thrust for jet engines for enormous size, at least half TWR and lowest speed at peak thrust when compared to most alternatives. Given those characteristics, my speculation is (and most likely an objective fact) that Goliath's intended for low speed, long range, heavy lifting. The problem that I have with that is: what goals/missions/ideas in the game would there be, that would would be useful for those traits or which specific, useful or fun designs (VTOL?) would be more suitable at low speed than at high speeds with slightly lower ISPs... And please avoid personal preferences or joy-rides like in your your own example (to haul 100 kerbals to the nearest island) As John stated, by the time you get those engines you probably don't even need those engines any more. The only purpose I saw was a air-only heavy ISRU plane with a rover to do some remaining science on Kerbin, or do some missions on Kerbin to collect data And for that I didn't see why I would use a Goliath over a faster engine - whiplash specifically, just to be able to get there faster.

Well not really - that's a 50-tonner that can be powered by 3 whiplashes. Why get there in an hour, when you can get there in 15 minutes? IMO Whiplash does everything a lot better except reverse thrust and efficiency, which is really not an issue. Who cares about efficiency when you've got an ISRU and can still go around the globe at 1.1km/s without refueling

I built a goliath plane (though I am still asking myself why) a bit ago: No crew. About 50+t in weight with MK3 as base. One medium bay in the middle with ISRU etc., followed by a loading dock in the back. 2 Goliaths under the big-S wings. 1 Goliath above the cargo bay, all the way in the back. 2 horizontal "pylons" of MK2 fuel components on each side of the loading ramp, to balance fuel consumption and provide a tad of lift. Large landing gear to offset goliath engines. Perfect dry and wet mass balance. Turns on a dime and doesn't fall apart with high G forces. ... should proly find the time to post a pic when I get home :/ I thought that I could use reverse thrust for short landing on a big plane, but it was too slow to kick in and cumbesome to use. Then I replaced the design with 4 whiplashes and never went back. That thing supercruises 1.2km/s. Still can't find any real use for goliaths. Edit: Just realized I revived an old thread while searching for an answer - what's the point of Goliath

My minmus tanker is 250T and aerobrakes using big-s elevons. I have a dozen of elevons "Extend" in an action group to act as big heat-resistant aerobrakes. Front is aerodynamic with 1.5m to 2.5m adapters (1 straight and 2 slanted) with all three having a shielded docking port. I go in straight prograde in order to get a predictable capture. You will get better results if you go in "cobra", like spaceplanes. When I dip to 26km or so from Minmus, the whole ship is on fire with every component having a temp bar in red and skin temp reaches 2500K, but I end up aerocapturing to 90km apo / 25km peri in a single pass. I also have 4 smallest radiators on the rear. Not sure how much they help. The most heat-sensitive part on the ship is a pair of retractable 1x6 panels that go on the sides (2000K). Now with interplanetary speeds it's a whole different beast depending on your velocity when entering kerbin's SOI, but you can hopefully make use of some ideas from this design. Or use it mostly as-is, if you velocity when entering SOI is minimal or, if you can slow down to minmus orbit equivalent.

I know that you said that you don't want the Klaw for aesthetics reasons, but I'll point out a few things that are in favor of it in hopes of changing your mind: My general rule of thumb is - if it's supposed to dock - put a claw on it! Why? Well first, you don't need RCS to dock with klaws. You have a huge leeway for docking - anything flat will do, so you don't have to aim for a specific spot. Docking time is just order of magnitude easier than with docking ports. I put at least two klaws on every station; or more on every harvester and tanker that I have. The only use for docking ports is if the klaw is simply not practical (mini landers due to weight, and planes due to drag/heat tolerance, or if I need some piece on both top and bottom of the rocket) and in cases where I want to be able to potentially expand the ship/rover in the future (though I still put a klaw on them, and even put klaws on some docking ports so I can "pop it" if I end up needing the port) Klaws are actually great landing gear replacement for tipover tankers because of their good impact tolerance. My minmus tanker looks like a plane with landing gears and can deorbit to 90 km apo / 25km peri in one single aerobrake from Minmus. It weighs 250T or so wet, and delivers most of that weight to LKO station. That tanker has the klaw on the rear, and uses it for docking, but also to bounce off the ground when landing at minmus, in order to tip over to land on the landing gears. Having the klaw also adds the potential for emergency refueling for missions that would fail otherwise. You can use klaws on your harvesters to dock refuel pretty much any possibe ship you can think of. I can dock with a 1-by-1 meter mini lander or 500T ore tanker. Use more than 2 sets of (landing) gears to raise elevation or "kneel" down to grab on. Use more than one klaw at different elevations to dock with small or tall ships. I hope this helps.

To be more specific, I have a harvester that is self-sustained with: (CORRECTION) 8 large fuel cells (needs only 6.6 needed for drills and ISRU, but added more for the rest of the system, and made it symmetrical and a bit redundant so 18 power/sec each so = 144 power/sec) 6 large drills (15 power/sec * 6, so 90 power/sec) 1 ISRU (30 power/sec) 800 KW cooling or so with passive radiators 6% Ore and level 3 engi Now you'd need to figure out electrical consumption of the lab to see what you need to add to make it work.

Agree with Klaus and Aethon. With 100km deorbit you must be doing something wrong to have heating issues. I've re-entered with gazillion small and large (how's 300t+ wet mass sound?) and never had any issues re-entering from LKO. I've always pretty much used Val's method of re-entry (at https://kerbalx.com/Val/SSTO-C-9-Payroll-Mk1). And since I mentioned Val and this is my first post even on the forums - using this opportunity to thank her/him for sharing crafts on kerbalx -- learned most of what I know about SSTOs from those Some tips: You don't want to go in too shallow because your heat builds fast in upper atmosphere and you don't get much drag to slow you down there. I think that optimal aerobraking at LKO velocities happens at around 35km-20km area where you don't have too much air to explode you and not too little air so you can't brake. Another reason for "cobra" approach is to have both drag and lift push you up so you skid across that area as much as possible. You want to have reaction wheels to keep you pointed up. If you are over 100t or so, you want to add airbrakes probably, but should be able to keep a 20 degree angle up to some point when you just won't have enough oomph to keep you pointed up. If you are not using mods to show you your dry COM in VAB, or if you are using rocket engines, which will use fuel unevenly, it's safe to keep COM mostly forward during descent by shifting fuel forward. You can also check your current COM by zooming all the way in - wherever it zooms in to, it's the COM.