RealKerbal3x

If I don't care where I'm landing, then I just set my Pe to ~30km. It seems to work regardless of whether I'm coming from LKO, Kerbin's moons, or interplanetary space (though I don't usually reenter from interplanetary space, because I tend to prefer dedicated interplanetary transfer vehicles that aerobrake or just do a braking burn into LKO). If I'm flying a spaceplane and want to land at the KSC runway, I usually use the Trajectories mod to get me in the vicinity of KSC. Trajectories isn't always that accurate with winged vehicles, but the fact that a spaceplane gives you a lot of aerodynamic control kind of makes up for that. Once I've reached a fairly thick layer of atmosphere, aerodynamic control is fairly intuitive: Pitch down to move landing site west Pitch up to move landing site east As soon as aerodynamic heating is no longer a problem, I use manoeuvres such as S-turns to slow down and avoid overshooting (Fun fact - the Space Shuttle used S-turn manoeuvres during reentry). If I'm coming up short, there's not that much that can be done unless I have jet engines to fly the rest of the way - this would be applicable to SSTOs returning from orbit, which usually have some leftover fuel - but I don't fly SSTOs often, so with a glider the best thing to do is just attempt to find a flat-ish landing site, or if I really want to land at KSC, reload a quicksave I made in orbit and try the reentry again. The amount of factors involved in spaceplane reentry (and spaceplanes in general) versus a passive capsule-style reentry is the main reason why I generally prefer the latter. Capsules are just more convenient.

@Scorpio102 I don't know much about the early days of KSP, but I'm certain that KSP was first created by Felipe Falanghe, who later left SQUAD for other projects. I don't know if there is a Jamie Leighton or David Tregoning in SQUAD, but they certainly aren't the originators of KSP.

So far I haven't seen any. It's not going to launch for a couple of years yet anyway.

Farewell Dragon 1. You will be missed...

I haven't been playing so much KSP recently because a couple of days ago I finally decided to download Star Trek Online. My computer only has an integrated graphics chip, so I have to run on 90s graphics, but it's going fine. I'm still getting used to the controls and how to play in general, but I'm having fun. Space combat is hard but especially satisfying when you win.

@Selective Genius While the planetary system is 1/10 scale, the parts are actually somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 scale (it varies). You can see this in the Making History Saturn V fuel tanks, which are 5m in diameter, compared to the real Saturn V which is 10m (approximately). If KSP's parts were actually 1/10, then the real Saturn V would be 50m in diameter, which is completely excessive (Most IRL rockets are shorter than that lengthwise ). KSP's scaling is a bit of a mess - the stock parts are actually balanced for use in a 1/4 scale solar system rather than 1/10. I would add: Vector - RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engine) Mainsail - Vulcain (Ariane first stage engine) Clydesdale (and Kickback, though it isn't properly scaled) - Space Shuttle SRBs There's probably more, but I can't think of any right now.

It's possible they simply don't have their nozzle extensions added yet.

Darnit On to SN4 I guess! I wonder how long it'll be before we actually see a Starship leave the ground.

@LittleBitMore Agreed on every point. If people want RSS/RO then they can wait for modders. It's too much of a hassle for the developers, especially as an optional feature. (Also, side note, but getting to orbit in RSS takes 8-10 minutes, so not much longer than stock scale. It's about the same as IRL rockets take).

Aw come on, this opens a whole new can of worms... In all seriousness, it looks awesome. I really can't wait for Demo-2 now! Though I wonder, if this booster is reused, whether they'll remove that logo? It wouldn't really make sense if it was launching some communications satellite with a NASA logo on the side.

It's staying green. The announcement was an April Fools joke.

OK, this is something I need to check out

So... double booster helicopter catch?

I wonder how the auto levelling will work, specifically. Perhaps the ship will have downward-facing radar to enable it to deploy each leg in the correct extension before touchdown, to avoid any tippage.

Happy April Fools! Nice try, but I can tell those are screenshots off the website

Given how much data they must have from 50 Falcon 9 landings, I'm not so sure. Obviously they'll need to do static fires to make sure a vehicle with 37 Raptors doesn't tear itself apart, but Superheavy is basically a bigger Falcon 9 with more engines, which should make it easier.

@Chilkoot Is this some sort of April Fools? Because I navigated to the same page as you (as far as I can see) and I see no such announcement. Besides, if something like this was announced it would have a post in the Announcements section of the forum too. If KSP2 is VR-only now, then it's lost my interest. I don't have a VR headset, and can't afford to sink £300+ into one.

Presumably they came with whatever mod he was using for the carrier deck. That deck isn't the one in this mod, the picture was probably taken before flight deck parts were added to the mod.

Given that that was posted nearly two years ago, and that it hasn't been mentioned in this thread since, probably never.

@damonvv Just wanted to draw your attention to this. There are some really nice renders in there - it appears the cargo variant's bay has got bigger. Also, unrelated, but is anyone else having trouble with Starship re-entry? In my 2.5x stock scale install, the ship always enters an unrecoverable tumble part way through re-entry. I've only tested re-entering from LKO, but both shallow and steep entry trajectories seem to cause this loss of control. Any ideas?

Yes, but it's not like SLS has the capability for orbital refuelling, or reusability for that matter.

I love how Starship can get more payload to the lunar surface than SLS can get to LEO

I decided to make a mockup of the new telescopic legs. Since I can't be bothered to learn how to use any proper image editing software, I threw this together on Paint. Of course, we'll probably get actual renders soon that will render (hah) this wrong, but at the moment it's my best guess. These legs still seem a little small for a vehicle as tall as Starship, but I'm sticking to my guess that these legs will be used for the first few test flights and that the legs will be improved further when they get to landing it on unimproved surfaces (e.g, Mars) - but we don't know. SpaceX are incrementing Starship's design so fast that we can't be sure it's going to look anything like this in a couple of years.

Time to quicksave again...

And this is what happens when you design a rocket and then work out what you want it to do.