HalcyonSon

No they're not. Contrails are water vapor condensing from engine exhaust. The OP is asking about Wingtip Vortices specifically. Wake Turbulence is the general case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingtip_vortices Follow too close, and it will ruin your day. This is why it's a huge deal when passenger aircraft follow each other too closely at busy airports. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/planes-close-houston-airport-faa-article-1.1856013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mexico_City_plane_crash

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127313-122-bettercrewassignment-v13-smarter-by-default-remembers-your-choices-no-ui/

How far from KSC is the waypoint? On the same continent, or opposite side of Kerbin? Personally, I combined your ideas. Landed a long-distance carrier aircraft on a flat area nearby, then detached a micro-drone with four parachutes and used that to collect the science. The drone was simple: Okto Probe Core, Radial Decoupler, Juno, Mk0 fueslage, and Small Circular Intake with one of the smallest wing segments offset through the fuselage and a pair of control surfaces mounted at 90 degrees and offset through the fuselage. The carrier was difficult to land with starter wheels, but manageable. The drone settled perfectly onto its wheels, grabbed the science, cut the parachute, flew to the next spot and repeated the process. My Kerbal and carrier then returned home after collecting the science from the drone. The drone was left behind. Bingo. Keep it Simple Just use the stock CoM and CoL indicators to place the drone right over the carrier's CoM and verify that the drone's wings don't move the CoL too much. Bombs should be even easier because they're smaller, lighter, and have no wings. I wish I had thought of a way to make the science bomb work before creating my micro-drone. I was very much concerned that I would fly all the way around Kerbin and drop the bomb, only to have it disappear before I got back to KSC. Turns out, all I had to do was fly the bomber in circles until the bomb landed. Landed vessels persist after you leave the area.

Tell me that's packed with explosives!! I want to see a minefield around Kerbin!

Good info from both of you! I couldn't figure out how to get flaps to work correctly. Trying to trim them with [ALT] [ S ] was awfully slow and fouled the elevators. I didn't even realize that "deploy" worked outside of the SPH. Water landings have never been a problem, but then I'm stuck moving at less than 20 m/s - about 10 m/s below dead minimum takeoff speed. This should reduce my need for high-banking S-turns on tight landings. Just last night, I had to set down in a valley in the mountains. I hit more than 8g several times. Had to get my speed down from 150+ m/s to 30 m/s so I wouldn't bounce off a roller or slam into the wall. My designs typically stall around 15 m/s, but it's difficult to scrub speed. I think flaps will make a big difference. edit: Apparently [ S ] is strikethrough.. But how do you remove it? Got it!

I like that. I tried several different pontoon designs: empty Mk0 LF Tanks, Mk1 Structural Fuselages, 1.25m fairings... no luck with any. I could land and float, but they were all too draggy on take-off, or resulted in a flip on landing. Don't know why I never thought to make a hydrofoil. Hmm... now I wonder if anyone has built a trans-oceanic high-speed hydrofoil ship... I bet I could design a stock carrier for reusable micro-science drones to satisfy a bunch of Kerbin research contracts.

Haha true enough. I've had a few panic attacks from forgetting to put my ring back on after washing up with pumice soap. I wonder... does Tungsten feel cold for a long time after you put it on? My old Stainless ring never seemed to warm up, but the Titanium almost immediately matches skin temperature, or even feels slightly warm.

That's the big daily difference between Tungsten (Carbide) and Titanium. People tend to get them confused, but Tungsten feels HEAVY. I can't stand heavy rings. Rings that spin wrong-way-round and beat up the pretty face (like a school ring) also drive me nuts.

I have done the same with with 'chutes, batteries, probe cores, etc, in stack separators for recoverable first stages. I understand the reasoning if a part is radially attached and then clipped in, but I am disappointed to hear that parts stacked on top of the separator and then clipped into the hollow middle catch drag. This deserves further testing. I seem to build a lot of edge case rockets with only the Skipper unlocked, so that small margin can make or break a launch. Plus, it helps the bottom line a lot to use two Kickbacks rather than four.

I went for black titanium with grooves down to the gray. Love it. Lightweight, tough, interesting. Really easy to wear, but impossible to resize. An ex gave me a stainless ring and I never got used to it. Too heavy, too sharp, and too cold... her too actually lol. You can also get different inlays, which look amazing. As I understand it, the black color on high quality titanium is a chemical change (anodizing or something similar) and only deeper scratches will remove it. I've worn mine for five years now and it has taken some damage from working with my hands, but it's definitely tougher than gold (about on par with stainless watch bodies in my experience). http://www.edwardmirell.com/titanium-jewelry/ring-titanium-black-7mm-2-gray-grove-476/ http://www.edwardmirell.com/titanium-jewelry/6mm-black-ti-trade-ring-with-14k-yellow-gold-dome-band-481/

Ehhh... yes and no. That works, of course, but with 1.2 fairings you won't need a central "pillar." You could just use a 2.5 m RCS tank and mount the basic docking port inside the fairing rather than the shielded. The port would be covered for launch, providing smoother airflow in the same height with no extra part count, and you get even better RCS volume to mass. Pop the fairing after leaving atmo, and that removes extra mass and height.

That's what I did to retrieve a Kerbal and his Capsule on the Mun. Three 1.25m Reaction Wheels will easily lift one of my Klaw vessels and a Mk1 Capsule in Mun gravity. dV was lacking though... Somersaulting across Mun surface is a legitimate propulsion method, isn't it? I just placed flags at either end of my runway to improve navigation from "it's somewhere around this continent" to "Yes, there it is!" The flags end up about 2.5 km apart to avoid being cleared on vessel load. Very cool! Looks like a Rutan VariEZ. I just set up a comm network around Mun... my first time trying it. Thought I had it figured out, and dropped my three satellites at 20 km. One per orbit over the space of three orbits. Not even close to linking with each other, or being at 120 degree intervals... I had fouled up the carrier orbital timing and ended up with 180 intervals. Got that sorted with a couple small reboosts (luckily each commsat had 2,000 m/s dV). Still didn't link up. Turns out the proper altitude is closer to 200 km. Reboosted all three commsats to 250 km and circularized, and somehow that interval dropped to 40 degrees. Dropped the first commsat to a lower periapsis to speed it up and the third to a higher apoapsis to slow it down. Exactly one orbit later, I circularized at 120 degree intervals. Limited the engines to 1% thrust, and pinned the orbital period (thanks KER) to within 0.001 second. Next time I do it will be with a 3:2 resonance orbit around Minmus. I'll place the carrier in an elliptical orbit with periapsis at the correct altitude, drop the commsat at periapsis and circularize at 2/3 the period of the carrier, and drop the next two commsats at each of the next two periapses. (For example, commsat period would be 40 minutes and the carrier period 60 minutes). Since I had a stack of contracts to complete around Mun, my commsat carrier also included a (initially unmanned) rescue lander and four micro unmanned rovers. Each rover and commsat was built around identical cores, so each had about 2,000 m/s dV - perfect for small contract work at varying polar orbits. One of the rovers was expended collecting temperature and pressure information at various altitudes and inclinations without even reaching the surface. I used the rescue lander to pick up Romy Kerman from the surface, collect some Midlands science, and immediately put Romy to work collecting polar orbit crew reports... which meant that he had to push the lander into a return trajectory... which will require the launch of a Klaw to pull it into Kerbin's atmosphere. Trying to drop a 2.6 Mm Periapsis to aerobraking altitude is no job for a Kerbal EVA.

Are those four reaction wheels on the Ant? With that much torque, you can probably stand the Ant on end to mate to station parts. Is that how the original worked?

I will terminate debris in a stable orbit... BUT only after I've proven that I can successfully recover it to Kerbin with a Klaw Return Vessel from that specific body. So far, that means Kerbin and Mun and anything in between. Anything headed to Minmus or outside the Kerbin system has to stay there until I successfully bring something back. Since I try to make first stages nearly 100% recoverable, and the Klaw brings back the debris in one piece, the cost and time investment are negligible. This helps my game to run more smoothly, as hiding debris in map view doesn't actually remove it from the save. I won't hack gravity except for testing.

I see a fuel tank and a separator? I'm baffled. Will try to remember to download the craft and play with it this weekend. Got a date playing old-school games at an actual arcade tonight.

Theobles' Third is now orbiting Mun at the correct inclination. In about half an orbit, it should have a rendezvous and he should have sufficient dV to make a Kerbin injection burn. The idea now is to capture Theobles' Capsule, and Theobles' Second and stop spending money!! Some back at KSC have begun to question the value of one random Kerbal's life. Another two Klaw Return Vehicles have been launched. The first to recover a spent Hammer SRB in Munar orbit, and the second to recover some as yet unknown bit of scrap from Kerbin orbit. I do wish these wildcat space programs would liquid off or get it together... Val made a safe return from Kerbin Prime Station. Turns out her Mk1 and Mk1-2 Capsule combination is very slippery. She landed far, far beyond her intended splashdown point. Her spirits are high, despite the long trip home and the Station's fairing destroying all of the HG-5 relay antennas. Luckily, all of the C-16s and C-16-Ss survived. Kerbin Prime Station is ready for its first crew! (and a new communications module) Future expansions are planned, which will include additional living and storage space, a solar array, reboost engines, fuel storage, and eventually a proper habitation and observation ring. What is this witchcraft? I see no engines!?

Nothing "impossible" yet, but I have several Mun landing Tourism contracts that I won't accept. They can just forget it - the contract is not lucrative enough to justify all the difficulty. So far, only three Kerbals have set foot on the Mun, and one hasn't returned yet! Theobles is still in orbit... and Jeb's landing may or may not have been an alternate timeline / parallel universe. Val is the only one that's been there and back in one piece / timeline.

Interesting... so that would be Large Boats Parts and SM Marine?

I'd like to see a mod that allows splashed wrecks to hit the seafloor, rather than just floating forever. Then it could provide contracts to locate and recover wrecks. Why stop there? Make "in flight above" type contracts that are "underwater below." They could use all the stock science experiments. I'd be curious to see what goo does at 100 atmospheres, or in a thermal vent.

Very cool design! The impactor reminds me of TinTin's rocket. Seems a bit Rube Goldberg though... I was expecting it to hit the VAB at near-orbital speed. Instead, we get 700 m/s? Hardly a Rod from God. It would be the ultimate shock troop delivery weapon. I'll give this a try tonight. I'm thinking a bunch of 0.625m fuel tanks and heat-shields offset into each other should be suitably dense to maintain the needed speed. Maybe make it a MIRV on top of a 2.5m core. I bet I can carpet bomb the entire KSC from orbit.

Finally made the last correction burn on a 180 inclined satellite's orbit for a contract. The launch was several days ago. Was paid handsomely for what is now a permanent relay satellite. Designed, built, and launched Kerbin Prime Station to fulfill a contract. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a Skipper (plus two Kickbacks and two Thumpers) was enough to get three Hitchhikers, a Cupola, a full 2.5m Service Bay, Mk1-2 and Mk1 Capsule into orbit on an Orange Tank of fuel. The SRBs were staged off as intended, and the Skipper core was designed for recovery after circularization, but did not survive reentry heating because no probe core was provided to face the engine retrograde. Next, Val will detach and land the Capsules, lowering the Station's max occupancy from 17 (contract required 15) to 13. Since the Station is equipped with two Docking Port Standard and two Junior, it can easily be expanded. The Station will then sit vacant for a few orbits, acting as a very large comm relay, until a larger crew transport is built to bring up some of the rescued Kerbals who got a bit too comfortable in zero G and are getting antsy around KSC. At approximately 20,000 funds worth of equipment, loss of the Station's Skipper core was a pricey miscalculation. Small potatoes in the overall scheme though - the above 180 Satellite contract completion paid 100,000 funds and the Station completion paid nearly 80,000. The Station plus Core and Boosters cost about 75,000. Ah well, at least the signing bonus was pure profit. And again, the 180 Satellite's total cost (Core, Booster and Payload) was peanuts - less than 30,000 funds. I believe the Core there was recovered, returning approximately 7,000 funds. Adding the completion, signing bonus, and parts recovered, that one contract cleared well over 100,000 credits. No quite as much as some of the Tourism contracts, but a lot less mess and customer service (ugh!!) involved.

Love the launch rig! Took me a bit to realize that it wasn't intended as one module on the finished station.

That's right... In the early stages of Mun landings, so I haven't gone Science farming yet.

What wheels are those? All I have right now is the POS lightweight airplane wheels and the first rover wheels.