mk1980

actually that's only half true. SSTO planes with panther engines are quite viable for getting crew or small-ish payloads to orbit without boosters or droptanks. the panther engine is on a 160 tech node. you'll probably want the following 300 tech nodes, too (for mk2 crew cabins and/or mk3 parts) for such a design, but i think that still qualifies as "halfway through" since you can get those without even upgrading the R&D facility to the final level. alternatively, you can also build pure rocket propelled SSTO planes at that "mid tree" tech level that don't need staging. a plane powered by pair of skippers can get a 10 ton payload (in an mk3 cargo bay) to orbit comfortably without staging anything.

i think the "safe speed" of the parachutes was changed recently. i'm pretty sure the indicator went from yellow to grey around 260 m/s in the 1.05 version. now in 1.1 the safe speed seems to be somewhere around 350 m/s. didn't notice that they are weaker than before, though. there is a min altitude slider in the setup of the chutes which can be tweaked to control when the chute goes from partially deployed to fully deployed. maybe the setting is messed up and the chutes are only partially deployed or the full open happens too late to properly slow the capsule down? also - it's often a good idea to have a service bay at the bottom of a return capsule. those things are almost indestructible. their heat tolerance is almost on par with a heatshield and the crash tolerance is better than most landing gears. and you can pack small delicate things like expensive science sensors, batteries and probe cores in there to shield them from all sorts of environmental dangers.

i like small crew space shuttles for career mode. currently using a few variations of a mini shuttle design to get tourists to various locations in the Kerbin SOI. they are nice for this task because the vertical launch is much quicker than a "proper" SSTO spaceplane ascent and the mk2 parts have really good heat reistance, so i don't have to mess around with heatshields and parachutes etc. i don't really see much use for cargo/fuel shuttles, though. they basically combine the disadvantages of SSTO planes (must land at KSC to recover the cost of the expensive orbiter, cargo size limited to mk3 bay size) and rockets (lost hardware). no point lifting a 50 ton shuttle just to deploy a few tons of cargo. might as well launch the cargo directly - which tends to be cheaper and faster. SSTO planes are a different matter, though. i use those a lot.

the way I see it, the only advantage of monoprop engines is that the monoprop tanks are shorter than equivalent amounts of LF/O tanks. that's a very small niche considering that you pay a heavy tax for it (terrible Isp). i think i used them once in >400 hours of KSP and i regretted it. would make more sense to make the puff useful before they add a larger version of it, IMO.

they are somewhat useful to fill the gap between the ~200kN swivel and the 650kN skipper and also to fill the gap between the skipper and the mainsail. that being said, the same problem can usually also be solved with radial boosters (SRB or LFO, wahtever you prefer), so they don't see much use in my games. oh and i also used them as the rocket engines on some early SSTO planes, but i'm not sure they are a good choice for that task. the swivel engine seems to be better suited (better vacuum Isp), and for mk3 planes, the skipper is definitely superior to a combo of skippers and thuds. i consider them pretty much obsolete later in the game.

i'm not familiar with the SpaceY mod, but a 3.75 meter lifter to put a 3 man capsule into orbit sounds like overkill. you could probably just use the "expendable" mainsail + jumbo tanks lifter, slap on some chutes and a probe core and de-orbit it for recovery. recovering lifters is always a tradeoff. in theory, you save funds, since you recover a large fraction of the hardware cost. in practice, you trade time for funds, since you have to land the lifter system, which takes extra time. in my experience, it's not necessarily worth it. for large payloads it may be worth the effort. if you can get some 100 tons spaceship to orbit and recover most of the value of the lifter (probably >>100k funds), it's probably worth the effort. if it's just some small payload, you're probably better off using your time for something else.

i view the labs as a convenience feature. the multiplier is x5 (as far as i know), so instead of doing 20 landings in 20 biomes, you just land in a handful of biomes and process the data for similar end results. of course you can use them to create more research points than intended (actually you can create infinite points if you choose to do so), but that's a decision you make. I don't think the game needs more "handholding". it's ultimately a sandbox game - even in career or science game modes. it's up to the player to use (or not use) features that make it too easy for their taste.

don't quote me when you clearly didn't even read what i wrote... i did NOT write that you should go interplanetary with tier 1 everything. i said you can bypass the silly KSC biome grind by going for the moons early. and you don't need to grind 20 different moon biomes when you can go interplanetary instead. the game will generate contracts for duna. eve, gilly etc. shortly after you did your first mun or minmus landing. that's a clue.

ok i guess it makes sense in that combo. but not really my idea of what spaceplanes are for. i made some rapier+nuke spaceplanes and the biggest one had a bit more than 4k deltaV left in LKO. tried to land it on duna, but failed miserably since i totally overestimated the lift you could get from that thin atmosphere. with a set of parachutes it would have worked i think. i made a falry reliable one that can make a roundtrip to the mun or minmus with 4 passengers and science equipment etc., but by the time you have the tech for doing such a trip in an SSTO, you might as well setup refuelling stations everywhere and use dedicated spaceships for the transfers. in practice, i only really use planes as supply/crew transport to get stuff to LKO cheaply. i can't help but feel that i'm doing it wrong when i make a plane that hauls all the dead weight (wings & jet engines) over to another planet. i usually just launch my exploration vessels conventionally strapped between some rockets (or at the top) and use planes to refuel spaceships in orbit and get crew and tourists up (and down).

your request inspired me to play around in sandbox and make a monstrous fuel tanker - just to see if it works. i've uploaded some images in the "waht did you do in KSP today" thread over at the steam KSP forum, here's a link in case you're curious. http://steamcommunity.com/app/220200/discussions/0/864973123555815074/#c364040961440819685

oh i wouldn't worry too much about fuel for rendezvous. chances are that 6 tons of extra fuel would give you similar (maybe even more?) deltaV than adding 2 nukes just for the docking. if your target station is in a high orbit, you'd probably be better off using a tug to move the tank to the station. if it's just in a 120 km orbit or something, you'll need maybe 150 deltaV for rendezvous & docking, not enough to warrant an additional set of engines. also, as a random note - if you only wanr the fuel and don't really need the orange tank, it may be smarter to build the plane around mk3 fuel tanks. you need a long cargo bay for the tank, which adds 4.5 tons of weight in addition to the ~4.5 tons emtpy weight of the tank. you could instead use 1 long and 1 short mk3 tank and just transfer the fuel after docking to the station/ship. you'd save a few tons of dead weight.

not sure what the purpose of the nuclear engines is. that plane would probably work better without them. rapiers are good enough to circularize and without the nukes, the back of the plane is a lot lighter, so chances are you'd get less flipping during reentry. if you have fuel left after dropping the cargo, transfer it all to the frontmost tanks to get as much mass as you can as far forward as you can. also, such a large plane could probably use some more wing area. if your plane can get a TWR of 1 shortly after liftoff it may have too many engines. i balance Rapier planes so they have just enough thrust to get through the sonic barrier. they don't have a lot of static thrust, but they sppol up and get A LOT more thrust once you're getting into high mach speeds. if it can break through the sound barrier. it can also get you to space. if you can't climb, level out and try to accelerate to get more thrust first.even losing some altitude is fine. i have made planes that would barely climb at all, but if they can still accelerate and get to supersonic speeds in level flight, the design is still viable. ramjets and rapiers produce so much more thrust at higher speeds that climbing up becomes a non issue. every engine beyond that point is dead weight that serves no purpose, basically. just means you need more deltaV in closed cycle mode later to push AP to orbit and circularize and you'll have more mass in the back half of the plane that will mess up your empty CoM <> CoL balance.

I called the crew plane "Startours 2" - used it mostly to ferry tourists to the station where they would embark on mun/minmus tours with the nuclear powered spaceships docked to the station. Startours 1 was a smaller earlier version of it with only 4 seats. The cargo version I just called "Fuel Drone Mk2" (Mk1 was a failure) It's mostly a "workhorse" that delivers the liquid fuel for the spaceships so I didn't give it a fancy name. someone on the steam forums suggested I could call it "Milk Cow"

a service bay is a good substitute for a heat shield. those things have ridiculously high heat resistance (i think 2900K or something along that line). if there's a few batteries and (expensive) science sensors in the bay, it's usually a good idea to keep the service bay below the capsule.

Hi there, I recently signed up to this board after hanging around for a while as a "lurker". I also occasionally post on the Steam forum for Kerbal Space Program (my Steam Name is "mkunz2") I live in Bavaria (south east Germany) with my wife and our 2 dogs. I'm currently 35 years old, work as a software developer and I've been a gamer for almost 30 years now since I got an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. And I've always been fascinated by space travel. I picked up KSP only a few months ago (Steam christmas sale) and if the steam statistics don't lie i've since played it for about 400 hours. have a nice day

simple and ugly, but gets the job done. might be a good idea to swap the service bay and material lab and put the lab below decoupler. these things blow up very easily during reentry now. nosecones on the boosters might help if you have trouble keeping it straight during ascent and add only ~1k to the cost.

meh. far too many games nowadays try to increase the "depth" by adding roleplaying elements. i don't really need that in KSP. i kinda like like that the values are purely costmetic.

yes i do believe they are unrealistic. no i don't think they should be changed, because realistic reaction wheels would serve no purpose other than making the gameplay slower and more tedious (in my opinion)

i don't really agree with the whole "hard mode is too grindy" idea. it can feel grindy if you try to finish the tech tree before you even consider going to other planets, but the game sure doesn't *force* you to play that way. contracts for other planets give *a lot* more cash than simple mun/minmus trips, and you get a lot more science points for doing experiments on bodies outside the Kerbin SOI. i think the "grindyness" (is that even a word?) is mostly self imposed. you can actually do missions to duna or gilly or something without going beyond the 90 science point tech level, so there is actually no need to grind science/money from 15 different moon biomes if you choose to go interplanetary early. there's also no real need to grind 30 different KSC biomes if you choose to go to the mun/minmus early. i think that's also the way the game is actually intended to be played on harder settings - you get lower rewards for easy tasks, so you are encouraged to do harder tasks instead. at least, that's my point of view on that matter.

did you overlook my plane or was something missing in the images? if it's the latter, please let me know what sort of footage is missing. i think there's images from takeoff, orbit, docking and landing in the album.

girder segments and structural pylons make for decent "static" landing gear. if you have no plans to fly through an atmosphere with the craft, you don't really need retractable landing legs. also, the spaceplane fuel tanks (mk3) have pretty good crash tolerance, so you might get away with no dedicated landing gear at all - just some mk3 tanks at the bottom EDIT: uploaded 2 screenshots. both the structural pylons (1st image) and the girder segments (2nd image) have much better crash tolerance than retractable gears. and the plyons look pretty nice, too. the girders look crude, but for an industrial mining ship that look might be quite fitting actually

in case you didn't know: in KSP, single stage to orbit planes (or rockets) are quite possible. i guess that's a pretty good alternative to using a plane to carry a small rocket into the stratosphere. so even if you can't use the plane + rocket combination, you can get similar results by using a plane that flys to orbit, drops off the cargo satellite or probe or whatever and returns to the space center.

so basically the same as the "Rescue [some Kerbal] who is stranded in Orbit / on the surface of X" - but this time they are "stranded" on Kerbin?

if you're going to haul such a heavy engine to duna, i think it's a bad idea to only fire it when you are there. nukes are really good for transfers, so if you're going to bring one, it would be a good idea to use it for the one thing it does really well. with your mission plan, you'd need an additional transfer stage that gets you from kerbin orbit to duna orbit (which seems to be missing in the image?) slap on some drop tanks for the nuke that act as the "transfer stage" that gets you from kerbin to duna. could also be used for the final part of kerbin orbit circularization if needed. EDIT: also - there's a bit of a logistics problem with the 1 man command pod. you can either bring a scientist to reset the experiments or an engineer to repack the chutes, but not both. without an engineer, the chutes are basically one time use, so you'd have to do powered landings all the time. might be cheaper to add another pod and also bring an engineer along to save a big chunk of deltaV every "hop".

i also started a new 1.1. career with hard settings (except for the no reverts/reloads - that would make it too frustrating for me) i didn't have much problems with the early career. frankly, i think you may be overengineering your stuff. you certainly don't need poodles for a mun shot. i landed on both moons with just the 45 research point nodes unlocked, so it's definitely doable. once you've done 1-2 landings you'll also be able to unlock stuff like the OKTO probe core so you can send a scientist to minmus and grab multiple biomes in one go. from there, funds are the main bottleneck in my experience. the settings are relatively harsh. especially the double cost for facility upgrades coupled with the reduced contract rewards. takes a lot of effort to get enough cash for a fully upgraded KSC. the final upgrade of the R&D is currently the "paywall" i'm working on. 3,4 million funds is a lot. satellite contracts are probably among the most economic ways to make money. 50-80k reward for a satellite that costs maybe 5k baseline (+whatever the cost of the required science sensors is) is quite good. tourist missions are a bit harder to make profitable. i developed a small tourist shuttle that can get 4 dudes to the minmus or mun for about ~15k per launch. that works all right, leaves a bit of profit. also, station/outpost contracts can be quite lucrative. you get something like 180k funds for (basically) landing/orbiting a 3 ton vessel (if you use the 2 seats passenger cabins), so that's also a convenient way to get money. it feels a bit grindy lately, but i kinda enjoy how it forces me to come up with cheap and viable solutions. normal difficulty is a bit too generous for my taste.