zdkroot

Well that's exciting! Are you using the latest release or the dev version?

I bought KSP just before the release of 1.1.3 - so early June. I hit 1000 hours sometime in november. Last count was 1021 on 11/29. The count is wrong now because I've been playing RSS/RO copy outside of steam for maybe ~100 hours. You are among friends Also thanks for sharing, you made me feel better

If you don't want the decoupler left on either of the things you are detaching - .e.g. a rover being dropped off a lander. Also if you use EEX to surface attach them the standard decoupler does not work correctly - it will only decouple a part that it is *node* attached to. The separator just releases all attachments.

The panther is one of my new favorite engines. it is my goto engine for non-space planes. It has the least amount of throttle lag of all the jet engines and the afterburner is an instant thrust boost (excellent for VTOLs). They also have they widest vectoring range, or at least the fasest/most useful. They are incredible for agile planes. They are also lighter than a whiplash or rapier. I have a two engine panther with all the science experiments that can cruise <800ms around 20km for a couple hours, land anywhere and is incredibly maneuverable. I also have a SSTO with a reliant, 2x panthers and a claw. It has ~500 dv in orbit. I use it for rescues and debris collection

You specified Kerbals "in chairs" - does that mean I can climb two kerbals into a cargo bay and close it and fly the ship under probe control?

Yeah the right click info is the best. Good to know about the oval shape. What about struts inside a cargo bay, attaching to the frame at the corners? Their drag is applied to the root part not the connecting part right? I think I saw a post about that somewhere. Thanks for your input! I've seen your ships, they're pretty awesome. And I never replied to @Cupcake... ... your ship is awesome man! I love the look of the clipped cooler/rapier and the fuel pods on the side. Basically no control surfaces at all haha. How does it fly? Great work.

After more testing it appears I am wrong - cargo bays do in fact eliminate drag on at least most parts. Kerbals definitely appear to be an exception at least in the mk2 bays. Drag is weird. I'm still unsure how a lot of things are calculated. Surface mounted parts seem to always cause drag regardless how far offset they are. A rapier attached directly to a rear fuel tank node will have approximately the same drag as the part it is connected to - add any part in between the rapier and fuel tank (Dawn engine in my tests) and the drag on the rapier will be 2-4x higher. A 1.25m fairing - no effect. Offsetting the rapier to be flush with the fuel tank - no effect. Putting the dawn engine on the bottom of a 1.25m service bay and attaching the rapier to that - drag solved. It seems my SSTO failures were a combination of too many draggy parts (struts, fuel lines, solar panels) and poor piloting. Hugging sea level really helps with low TWR. The AeroGUI and tooltip info were both very helpful in troubleshooting my planes. Putting all the batteries/misc components inside service/cargo bays has made my planes feel like I just unlocked a more powerful engine. Is there a drag sticky somewhere I haven't found? I've see scattered threads/videos but nothing comprehensive. It just occurred to me that node size might play some role? The dawn engine has a smaller attachment node than the rapier, perhaps adding adapters would fix it. Will do some more testing later.

It's not just those things. It doesn't seem like cargo bays prevent drag at all. Yesterday I was trying a tiny mk2 SSTO with seats in a cargo bay and sure enough jeb and his buddy burned up. Also a few weeks ago I was having an incredibly hard time getting a mining SSTO past mach1 with 0.8 TWR - I replaced the IRSU/drills in the cargo bay with a fuel tank and it can climb at 15 degrees and still make mach1 in about 1:30.