JadeOfMaar

Gael better be defined as a humble, motherly lady and sometimes the life of the party, @Duski I put a gag or two in the science where she takes things personally or she may get too lively and destroy things. Thalia should be a demon planet. Y-class specifically if you know Star Trek. And Gauss is a darn troll with electromagnetic powers. He makes that face and one of his moons is Loki, of all people.

@ProtoJeb21 Whatever's not in this album. http://imgur.com/a/5bnbO Poodmund did all those.

@ProtoJeb21 I made a biome map and config for Gael already. http://imgur.com/a/uO28m & https://github.com/JadeOfMaar/galileanplanets/blob/master/Biomes/biomes_gael.cfg The config just needs a map path and maybe fine-tuning?

@Mycroft That image where the whole head and neck of your Avatar shuttle are about to pop like a zit due to overheating is why all my main spaceplanes have a heatshield on their noses. Otherwise, that's how it's done: making a fabulous OPT thing and coasting at Mach 6 while under 32km. *2 thumbs up* Your third-to-last plane reminds me of a Kerbin-Mun VTOL carrier I made once. I think it got the job done but had poor SAS and it might have been the last craft I designed for serious use that involved one or two Dark Drives. I abstain from the Dark Drive for story reasons because of its sheer awesome. And have made no ship worthy to carry it since. I envy love your use of Mk3 to Mk2 adapaters. Also I dub your ship with the epic wings, "The Bald Eagle." @Gryphorim I salute at the sight of that fleet. Your pic is "a little old" you say but I say it's timeless. I can't say I like any particular design more than the other. All are so awesome. The K-size plane on far left. Is that a freight? I assume it's made with hollow fuselages and the cargo tail is the only way to (un)load something. @Andrew2070 Your ship must be Legion. For it is many. I've been plotting a multi-ship somewhat like this for a while. But the idea didn't involve OPT parts as the minor ships need to be less than J-size. That idea might change now. Their carrier might become J-size. And I'll keep that last part in mind: J good for atmo, K good for deep space. I have no likes to give right now so I must show my appreciation through extra writing.

The node exposing the interesting name of your other ship, showin in KAC. Also, you can't embed an imgur album. That functionality broke some time ago. Kerbals' ability to lose consciousness is a new stock feature or a new mod?

Holy --*launch fails* O.O Yes! Yes there shall be screenshots. And I have just the ship to use for this. The updated planet chart is quite welcome too.

@MagicFireCaster I approve of that maneuver node.

Had to do this launch on secondary computer. My main computer literally can't handle this and its part count of 400+. Sleep is for tourists. The transfer window flies open in the dead of night. And like a Catwoman, the HMS NANC Brown (With Valentina and Nancy Kerman piloting) leaps through it, well-equipped and unafraid. Don't let the aerospikes deceive you. Those are not her main engines.... And the main engines are Not A Nerv Cluster™ She's also Not A Nice Chick. She's going where nice/normal chicks don't want to go. And look at those probes. She's going to have fun where no one else goes to have fun. Gallery with more pics and informative/semi-serious commentary: http://imgur.com/a/09mp5

Aww, alrighty then. @sdj64

On the subject of stress, I just had to do a mega launch on my alternate PC as my main one power trips and I have to reset the PSU for it. The only visual mod I have in is Scatterer and Texture Replacer and I can't play without those two. And I also don't want to cull mods. I really don't. D: Yay Tellumo love. And yes, more boosters. I still needed some more as the main ship still used its own engines to escape Kerbin.

Really now? O.O Well that's what I had hoped for when I came up with this. Unfortunately, I have to swear off of SVE just to keep my PC from crashing as frequently and corrupting other visual mods (and KER) again. But to improve on this, returning SVE and even adding SVT will be worth the crashes. Well I'm pretty patient and I feel undeserving to have you mess with Scatterer just to grant my little wish.

Designing the right launcher would be very interesting, yes. I'm imagining aerodynamic Tylo landers or winged Flacon 9's for Tellumo, and a textbook to be written on ShadowZone's Bubastis lander at Tekto, to address Catullus. I knew Tellumo was one if not the only ultimate challenge worlds (since Galileo explicitly said once that Tellumo surface trips are one-way), and I'd have suspected Catullus as well if I remembered that its atmosphere is really tall. Those extreme differences in atmosphere are amazing, to say the least. Now if Scatterer drew atmospheres at different sizes in ScaledSpace, that'd be great. I'd love the ability to see at first glance, all of the puffy might that are the skies of Eve, Catullus etc. But that's a suggestion for another thread.

Aww. I missed out when you were ill. I'm glad you're well again @Galileo. And I've never considered how small Minmus is until now. @Duski Careful with Tellumo. I hear he's very clingy since he's so lonely. He might never let you go... On that note, which would you all say is the ultimate planet to do anything with? Like Eve in stock. (Or will that be a secret too until the pre-releases start?)

@icedown My most prominent spaceplanes are hypersonic. That is, they accelerate to Mach 6 and beyond while still accessing IntakeAir, so the cockpits absolutely need thermal protection. You can click the NOX flag in my sig for more info and a gallery. @Crocket That uneven fuel drain actually happened to me very early in the testing so I checked and prepared for whether it would happen again. It did not and seems to be a chance thing so no design changes need to be done. But if you save the center engine for the uppermost stage you can better avoid that danger and you won't miss out on TWR or dV. Also, I think the kerbal+lander leg problem is fixed in 1.2 along with most general wheel issues.

Today's weather forecast: sunny skies as usual with an 80% chance of ....Ball Lightning? Well, a true service has been found for the Mk3 racer, a.k.a. Ball Lightning Freight. Jebediah launches off to refill the giant tank at the orbital crew hub, with 62 tons of LFO, and waving Fort NOX's flag and outshining Valentina when she first did so (that is, not wrecking the craft at the end of the mission). So much purple... Docking had to be performed without the generous hand of Docking Port Alignment Indicator. Maybe it's just my game (and the many crashes), or Control From Here does not work with the Mk3 Inline Node. @SuicidalInsanity Comment? Periapsis wasn't dropped low enough after departure, it seemed, as Jebediah had to do some noodling to bring the Apoapsis into the atmosphere and preempt a second aerobrake pass. It's quite okay, though. He packed some beef and had it hang out the hatch to make into jerky. Having SAS hold the whole way down otherwise gave him all the time to leave the seat and set up his midnight munch on the dark side of Kerbin. A fun snag occurred though: One of the tanks drained asymmetrically, causing the plane to drift sideways. Jebediah could have wound up as salad beside the beef jerky. Landing was pretty graceful if not speedy and bumpy. Ah well, Grasslands for the win. He's also noted to install drogue chutes. The atomic engine could do with some security through stopping power, not that he had any problem with landing dangerously. He's going to fly up a second time and refill [the station body] and/or the idle Saucer Shuttle there.

Mod query: I'd like permission to use Mk2/Mk3 Stockalike Expansion. Or to know if they're banned.

I found a compromise between the mothership's design and sacrificing the Mk2 Pill lander to make room for this, the Xenon Koaster F with surveyor parts. F for (Near) Future, meaning a stock edition exists before this one. So I can have both lander and koaster now for the win. Here in particular I was tweaking the 6 ion engines for perfect balance/breakeven between Ec produced and Ec consumed and reassuring myself of Mun landing performance. Billy-Bobbert Kerman on point to give the good or bad reports as things happened. RCS is weak but should be quite enough for docking. And SAS is boosted enough with two of the tiny torque wheels.

@Ultimate Steve is ultimate! I designed and added a new decal into KSP for the upcoming launch and made a kerbal specifically to go along with the main ship. I've planned for the kerbal the entire time but right after making her I decided... Nah, I don't need a newly spawned pseudo-badS. Valentina literally earned all the stripes already, flying everything and leaving Jeb hanging everytime. I also downloaded a stock truck from KerbalX to involve in a beauty shot with the proposed new kerbal, and switched out stock metal panels for actual glass parts, and gave the wheels room to breathe because (being made in 1.0.4) wheel-blocking was a non-issue. I would've had screenshots to share but a blackout struck while I was still testing the truck. And good thing it happened. I've thought about replacing the pill lander with a Xenon Koaster...and the prepackaged probes are antiquated. They run on Monopropellant and have about 1000 dV. Not enough for this kind of mission.

@Spanksh Dat SAS! Your Voyager reminds me: I had a grand time designing things with Stail class parts in v1.6. There was a humble, stubby and effective science drone plane meant to operate at Duna (before I was even able to leave Kerbin SOI I think), and an almost-Mun-and-back crew shuttle. It did need to top up at a station. This was my ultimate ship back then. Just one Dark Drive to do nearly all of the pushing. No actual landing or decent carrier abilities yet. The design eventually evolved. It got landing legs and drills powered by Infernal Robotics, Stail inline docking ports on the four arms there, and a (Mk3) cargo bay to store a tug or other utilities. T'was later rebuilt and given even more features with the shiny new J & K series in @K.Yeon's last update before going away. I'd share the screenshots but I lost them when purging files to clean my PC.

Ahhh. Excellent. The kerbals building my flagship will be quite pleased. Here's what I did. The lifter has about 2000 dV in it for 640t weight. (Upscaled twin-boars: 3.75m + Eve Optimized Engines.) The main craft at 211t becomes able to fly for itself at 12km up, starting with 8000 dV, and makes 100km orbit with 5000+ dV remaining. With that much I could sacrifice some and add a second cargo bay and fill up with important stuff for a Gilly base or just to refuel to leave Eve SOI. It's prepared for re-entry but the CoM is rather far back due to engine weight alone, let alone cargo weight, and it's missing Yaw control. It currently will drift sideways out of control and explode. Earlier screenshot but still valid. Forward stabilizers bring CoL too far forward given how far back CoM is. The problem remains though so the ship will need chutes or be redesigned as a rocket and do VTOL.

Howdy all. I just tried the latest version of this mod and built a very large thing that actually got into Eve orbit. I've always been a very large fan of OPT, and I like the new category names but I'd like to point out that I'm a little sad that all the part name prefixes are gone (just because it confuses KerbalX, for the most part) but also: The two B-2.5m adapters were not renamed to Stail adapters. Some engines are missing from the OPT Propulsion (Manufacturer) category. Chimera seems rather barren although I don't use that class of parts. If I notice anything else I'll let you know. If y'all want to see what I built, let me know. It contains 6 of those J-81 nacelles.

After fumbling with a couple of designs for a 2.5m lander (all of which resemble a rocket sled or a big man's pants depending on how you look at it) that differed in fuel type: Lithium, LFO, LF. I went a different route and made a Mk2-esque, pill-style lander. Where on Mun I tested it seems like quite a fun and jaw-drop visually pleasing place. I want to plant a second base there. Getting liquided that there's a tendency to only make landers that fit the bill with one seat in the cockpit/can, I put two command seats behind the cockpit and signed off on that. Installing it into its mothership I then thought to attach some science parts to it, even though this is Sandbox. The science parts are for resource sampling and anomaly tagging as there will be much questing. The first spoiler contains the sled/pants lander: stock atomic version. The design goal is to fit in a Mk3 full-length cargo bay. That one is a fail due to the length of the NERV and the need to add and clip LFO tanks to compensate for wasted tank volume and lost dV...and not have the NERVs directly attached to the cabins. There's an airbrake underneath to prop up for liftoff. The next spoiler contains really over-powered things. I didn't write "liquided." but I get it. [I meant to say I was quite angry about lander design.]

Jool mothership... Jool 5 ready or just "does a lot of business at Jool"? That's the thermal overlay, possibly intentionally disguising the parts.

I'd like to call myself a very big fan of OPT Spaceplane Parts and give much thanks to @K.Yeon for starting this mod, @stali79 for maintaining it, and @Mycroft for confirming that there are others who really, really love this mod. Your ship doesn't have to be built entirely using this mod, just most of it or the most important parts. Come on then, show us your stuff. Spoiler contains old OP content.

Still dead? Let's see. Here's a sport STOVL and the first of three VTOL that I'm really happy to have. There was an attempt with this to land on the VAB but I didn't think it'd be necessary to upload that, and I failed the attempt.