EpicSpaceTroll139

Looks nice! One way to improve performance might be (unless you like to really gobble that monopropellant) to remove the large monopropellant tank and instead stick one or two small radial tanks on the bottom, or even just a small stackable one. This could save a lot of weight, allowing the LfOx you have to take you farther. By the way, what kind of places will this thing be used?

I tried to be a good Samaritan on a DMP server and bring a Kairbus that was missing its engines home from the island by towing it with a claw attachment on my Boeing 737-600. All went well until I got about halfway home. Then the oscillations started, with the whole setup starting to snake up and down like a worm. Eventually it got so violent that I was stalling out and we were both going down. I tried ditching the unruley Kairbus hoping this would allow me to recover, but there wasn't enough altitude, and we both went into the drink.

We all have had moments when we botched a mission out of our own stupidity. But I've often wondered how many of us have had our plans thwarted by some strange, and sometimes hilarious bug! Recently I had this happen when I tried to launch a reasonably large hypersonic aircraft with two parasite aircraft. The configuration looked perfectly fine in the SPH. When I launched it however... uhh... just take a look. I took the old version and attached new parasitic fighters, and it came out fine that time, so no harm done. Please post your kraken moments here! btw, if there is a preexisting thread like this somewhere else, feel free to point it out, and close/merge this thread. I thought there would be, but all the kraken threads I found through search (and also by looking through about 5 pages manually) were complaining about bugs. This thread is for the humor!

Shenanigans I'm wondering whether I can fly a fighter jet through the mini-bridge/tunnel

This quick thing I made only has one barrel, and is perhaps a bit more bulky than it needs to be, but the basic design principle should be applicable to yours.

I don't remember if this is a picture of my hybrid helicopter taking off, or whether it was skittering around on the tarmac, but I do remember I got it flying that day. Some additional pictures: Would it not be simpler to just put some rtgs and reaction wheels on the triple-barrel assembly and have the rest of it free to rotate so you can just point the turret with the wasd keys?

I guess @The Rocketeer and I were thinking along similar lines, as I've had a working prototype hybrid helicopter sitting in my hangar for a couple days now (haven't had time to do much because of a chem test I'm taking today), and it works surprisingly well. It's really ugly and needs some aerodynamic changes though . I'll post some pictures when I'm not on mobile. Basically the idea was to use reaction wheels to provide ~90% of the lift needed for takeoff, and then the turboshaft does the rest.

I just tried that. It still got the same problem I'll find another plane without clipped surfaces that demonstrates buggyness

I found a craft that will, with reasonable reliability, reproduce the control surface inversion bug with the AA activated. It apparently flies fine with it deactivated, at least in a clean install. I have gotten this bug on other crafts, but I figured it would be overkill to upload all the ones I've had it happen on. Bug Demonstration Craft In the above picture you can see my control surfaces deflected as if to make the plane pull up, however instead my plane noses down in response to this. I'll try to get a picture with aerodynamic overlay to see what's going on. It should be noted that this plane is positively stable, and was easily flyable before the introduction of AA Edit2: Apparently this bug can happen with the MASTER SWITCH turned off. All that must be open is the Craft Settings I am playing Windows 64bit 1.2.1. Is there still problems with 64bit that mean I should try 32bit? Edit3: It just had it happen with AA deactivated. I will test in a non AA install to make sure I didn't somehow bug the plane after installing AA, Edit4: I tested using the aero overlay and it would appear in this particular instance, the plane is fighting itself. The tailplanes are doing what they should be doing, but some control surfaces clipped in the nose are for whatever reason doing the opposite, and they are overpowering the tailplanes.

First off, this mod is awesome. It has made some of the designs I thought impossible in KSP work (relaxed stability fighters for example) work and hard to fly designs (flying wings) easy! However I've found a strange bug that has been resulting in some bizarre plane crashes. I'll try to replicate this in an otherwise stock install, but I've currently been having a strange bug in which (usually at >130m/s) my control surfaces will either reverse* (make me pitch down when input is pull up, and pitch up when input is push down). Sometimes the surfaces will even be visually deflecting opposite to the force they are creating. This results in the autopilot violently flipping my plane (if it was on), and me having problems flying it for a period afterwards, even after turning the autopilot off (even when the plane is positively stable). After about 30 seconds the control surfaces revert to normal control. A similar bug that often happens along with this one, and which sometimes happens at lower speeds, has my control surfaces suddenly become ultra damped, often, for example, resulting in my fighter halting a loop it was in to lawn dart into the ground. Is this a known bug from the 1.2.1 update? As I said, I will attempt replicate this in a clean game and send you a log (if that helps). *I do not have FAR, so it's not aerodynamic effects, and most planes falling victim to this worked perfectly before I got the autopilot.

I'm running 64 bit here. My problem is a combination of using 1.2.1 (which for some reason is less stable than 1.2.0 for me) and that I'm playing with DMP. Also: nice compact rover. If it's flipped over you could always try ramming it with a kerbal using the jetpack. I find that to quite often be enough to flip a light rover over on low gravity worlds like the Mun.

Crashed Crashed And crashed some more

On the first thing, I was testing using a standard cylinder+cone fairing shape, but I was figuring on applying what I was doing to a fairing that was shaped like a cylinder later. It wasn't until my second set that I tried making a cylinder with an flat end. In that case I did what you said and got the oddball results seen in the last image. (I've found that by simply ending at whatever the radius I want the cylinder to be, I can get a cylinder, it just doesn't have a visible end, and so looks like a hollow tube (but it's not really). What I was trying to do in the first example was contour the walls of the fairing so they changed from looking like the top example to the lower example in the following picture. That is, there is a notch inside which the stripe is hidden. Also, yes, I knew I could edit the texture file and get rid of the stripe. However, this would only get rid of the stripe for me. As my objective in making these replicas was for others to enjoy them, I wanted the missing stripes to be inherent to the craft. It seems that there is no clear way to do this (other than perhaps starting a whole new fairing every couple meters so each individual fairing isn't long enough to have a stripe.) Ah well.

It is because of the lack of this feature that I have taken to making multiple saves of my crafts (especially my replicas) every time I add a section to them. (Ex: build basic frame = XXXX 1, add cockpit = XXXX 2, etc. I would definitely support a regularly timed autosave feature

Yah that would make sense, considering that there isn't any way to "launch" kerbals themselves. Perhaps some quirk makes it hard to spawn kerbals without them being in a part first. Of note is that (AFAIK) kerbals are the only moveable objects (aside from shapes from the object thrower) that do not have a part file. Even the asteroids have a "potatoroid" file. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, Kerbals just have a cfg and the rest is kind of built into the rest of the game.

People say that using the seat is an exploit because it's lightweight compared to a command pod. But the seat: Doesn't stow any flags (and no part adds this to it in stock) Doesn't provide an infinite supply of EVA propellant (and no part adds this to it in stock) Doesn't take crew reports (and no part adds this to it in stock) Doesn't store experiments Doesn't provide torque Doesn't store monopropellant Doesn't store electric charge Doesn't provide thermal protection Doesn't have a radar altimeter (and no part adds this to it in stock) Doesn't provide an aerodynamic shape Doesn't provide complete protection from accidental spaghettification Doesn't have attachment nodes, and thus cannot be stacked on top of each other without a frame. Can't teleport it's occupant to another location on the ship via the "transfer crew" function (and no part adds this to it in stock) If this feature is implemented, they will presumably be unable to hold tourists because the tourist could be knocked free of the ship, a condition which the game does not allow. Meanwhile a command pod can do/has all of these things in one convenient part. Even putting aside roleplay, these tradeoffs seem to make it pretty balanced. If someone wants to use a combination of parts that has less features but also less mass for a particular mission, more power to him! There are situations in which a combination of parts are technically better in every way except part count! (Ex: 2Mk1 lander cans vs. 1 Mk2 lander can). Seats are not one of them, so why this arbitrary rule? I see no gameplay reason why I shouldn't be able to launch with a Kerbal in a command seat.

To build upon @bewing's statement about turning it upside down - To do this, you'll want to start with the small plane, attach the decoupler to that, and then radially attach the cargo plane to the decoupler. This may seem to be a bit of a backwards way of doing things, but it should get you what you want.

What is your periapsis at? Also: Managing your airbrake deployment during re-entry can help to a certain degree. While deployed, even in the thinnest part of the atmosphere, will help slow your rocket down earlier, and thus reduce peak heating. In the deployed state, the airbrakes have a somewhat lower heat tolerance, however the flat surface sticking out creates a bow shock, reducing this effect slightly. When stowed, the airbrake has a higher heat tolerance, but will not provide the extra drag to slow you down, and thus won't reduce peak heating. I would suggest keeping them open as long as you can, and then when you think they will overheat, use the authority limiter to clean them partially, so that they provide some drag while avoiding overheating. I've used this technique for returning rockets from lower orbits (75-120km), and I think actually my airbrakes would survive if I kept them completely open due to the aforementioned bow shock effect (I mainly just take these things into effect while using them to target the KSC). I'm not certain, but I think you might be able to keep them from overheating by using careful management of their deployment. If you're willing to sacrifice a little payload capacity, using a little fuel to slow down just prior to reentry would likely help your heating problems a lot.

I find that by using combinations of retrying the tweakable slider and moving/reopening the tweakable window, I can eventually get it right.

It doesn't matter how you put it relative to the ground really. You just stick em on your craft with and they deploy outward. The only situation you would need to worry about the ground is if the airbrakes are longer than your gear, in which case you would want to avoid placing them on the bottom of your craft. Since you are making a F9, your airbrakes will be at the top of the rocket, so this is irrelevant. If you want more realistic deployment, you will want the hinged round end to be facing down. As for pitch/yaw function, that is entirely up to you and what you want out of your design. With those on, the airbrakes can be used as control surfaces, deploying differentially to incur assymetric drag, thus steering your craft. This flying wing demonstrates how airbrakes can be used for steering. The principle can be applied to a rocket too.

If I recall, there's a line in the physics or settings .cfg that determines the reset distance. I'll have to check in the morning. You could probably change that to a fairly short distance and not run into problems.

Even if you just do it to look nice, you can still use them. Just zoom your camera in enough and it will clip inside the adapter and you will be able to click on the tanks.

I definitely second this. But as some others have said, along with this, the explosiveness of inert parts like non-fueled wings, trusses, and other structural parts should be effectively eliminated. The only time those parts should get anything looking like an explosion is when colliding with something at >1km/s (possibly even more than that).

I had this problem before, but I was lucky enough to catch it while performing tests at the KSC. It's not enough to have the rover wheels not clipping into the floor.They must be visibly held several centimeters above it,and even then you might get a little bit of bounciness. I'm afraid you'll have to flyback to the KSC and bring a new setup.

Yep, I noticed this. Unfortunately the first contract gave me points of interest around a vessel that had, uhh, landed a bit too hard on the Mun. I imagine these will indeed be good for rovers though. Hoping to get ones for my upcoming Minmus and Duna missions.