CBase

Procedural fairings have side nodes where you can attach either a straight or ogive shaped fairing. Without there is no fairing. Do not forget symmetry toggle while adding or you start with only half closed one You may as well change fairing thickness after attaching one to reduce cost and mass.

flexible docking for rovers

There are certainly a lot of drag indicators very close together. Part clipping itself does not create drag, however may give the illusion of an aerodynamic craft. In stock aerodynamics be aware: Part attachement not placement is used for drag calculation. So if you radially attach something it creates high drag at front and backside. Rotating or moving inside another part does not change this.

If you barely left Kerbin SOI: Is there an reentry with Kerbin ? I am not sure how long an orbit needs to be without intersection to count as orbit versus escape trajectory.

Actually in stock aerodynamics radial attached fins are calculated as if they are in the airstream even if there are bigger parts below. In reality there is some airstream as well, just at lower pressure as air expands behind the shielding.

As I had the problem myself to check if gear is running properly: Is there any Mod out there that might help finding issues ?

Ahh you never mentioned that you are using stage recovery mod. Anyway I think you will hardly get below 40k launch costs for this big payload.

Is that per tonne orbital payload as launch cost or after recovery ? I just clicked together a 50t SSTO with 7 Vector, 5m spacey tanks and thrustplate and the SSTO lifter is 200000 funds of which I can recover 185000. So total costs per tonne payload to orbit is 540 funds but requires nearly 4000 per tonne launch invest for a perfect landing. At 3800+ dV at start I can return with 200-300 dV using two procedural canards at both ends to balance reentry pitch of about 10°. A single drag and radial parachute get speed from 700 m/s to less than 50 m/s so that 100 m/s dV are enough for touch down, rest is spent to target KSC.

I did tried a little, but at 40k launch costs you are already 1k cheaper than my best effort at throw away rocket design, SSTO of course being even more expansive. Spaceplane lifter without at least panther engines is not gonna work. Actually the rocket equation does scale: double dry mass with same Isp requires double wet mass. And on my SSTO lifters are some parts that I don't scale (parachutes, probe core, landing legs) so launch costs tend to decrease for me with bigger cargo. Finally drag scales mainly with front area, but mass with volume, again bigger is better. So to really bring down costs I only see Rizzos first question to really think about:

Is cheapest measured by launch costs or after recovery ?

You need to connect the tanks above and below. Out of real world stability reasoning, I am normally using triple symmetry, however I am not sure it is really needed. You could place them as well on the outside, stock aerodynamic will be the same. Even with a 2.5m decoupler your engine is the weak point, so you still need struts. But the larger decoupler adds weight. Note that I am still connecting the heavy parts with struts. But maybe you want a bigger engine as well ? If your burntime is more than 5 minutes, the loss due to gravity and node execution tend to get bigger than adding more weight. That is what actually a skipper is for: Intermediate stage. With all 2.5m parts you do not need to strut . At least not around this separation area. Then RainThorn is right, it will not lift, but only look pretty at launch site Moar power ! Then it is fine to use a oversize tank if part of the fuel is meant as payload. No way to optimize. Good luck on your rescue !

Using small decouplers if the engine above is as well small is fine. Actually you need to add struts (in structural pane) between the tanks above and below the small sections anyway. The smaller the diameter the less rigid it is. It looks to me like a Mainsail, which can lift 120 T with a small dV penality due to the low TWR at launch. However check the most upper stage design: It looks extrem overpowered, since it is likely a LV-909 Terrier and therefore the SL 1400 m/s will be more like 6000 m/s in vacuum. Or if you really need that much, adding a smaller stage could result in the same dV with less mass.

Actually I spent the last 2 days mastering my pilot skills since I thought that the thin Duna atmosphere makes it superfluous to add some aerodynamic top. Well ... regarding thrust and dV it was, but dealing with the high drag at very front proved to be very difficult Next time I will care about aerodynamic stability. After like 20 launches I finally got it to orbit and was not too busy with piloting to gather some more science in low atmosphere. Reintegration in Base with a heatshield parked behind was rather minor trouble. At least after I realized that it is way easier to pickup the heatshield with smaller lander first and then do powered reconnect instead of trying to target a free floating port with a massive rocket. Since I did care about rotation angle docking was all manual Thanks for the recent forum reminder of Snarks great tutorial, was good to read again. Targeting a passive docking port is tricky compared to another ship that auto aligns. Now doing world first contracts on Ike before returning to Kerbin.

The first thing you need to figure out: What is your problem ? Launching into 90° inclination or matching plane with your orbital redezvous (aka getting right LAN) ? Both are way more tricky from polar. Lets talk about inclination and surface vs orbital speed first. When you launch from equator rotation adds only to the length of your velocity vector, so switching orbital vs surface mainly affects how steep to ascend. At polar or high inclination launches rotation is sideways from your velocity and switching changes your inclination. Finally orbital speed defines your inclination, so do a gravity turn using orbital speed as direction from launch. The second thing is matching longitude of ascending node (LAN) with your target. Or where to go to. If you are at the very north pole everything is south. Kompass are no big help. Mathematically (and in a simulation) you never are at the point, so directions are always well defined. Which is an illusion, because they move fast with small changes. Watch the target indicator as the target moves over you and you rotate with the surface. Unfortunately I can only advice to try and learn. Pick any direction for launch, check LAN difference after orbit and improve on next try. It massively depends on position and orbit which direction is really right.

That was what I though, but in my tests I never saw a wing control go beyond the deploy angle, even if there was still room in its mechanic. So for instance set deploy angle to +10° and authority to +5°. I only saw the wing move between 5° and 10°, but never to 15° although it could. However at deploy angle 0° it semms to move from -5° to 5°. All visual observations, I did not had time to throw together code to monitor control wings.

Glad you found it. I was just about to write that your installation might be the problem. I did start something compareable and the yellow spikes from control wings were completely missing in your screenshot, but should have been quite huge at that speed.

As your overall rocket is not trivial, could you add a screenshot with aero forces enabled ( F12) ?

You can afford it, so why make it cheaper ? If you want to launch it multiple times to get all science: Don't, instead try to build restartable biome hopper in order to visit multiple biomes with 1 Kerbin launch and transfer. Yes it will be more expansive once, but should be cheaper than x times this one. If you want save money in general: Do not stage first stage before orbit and try to return vom LKO towards KSC for maximum return.

Spacey Lifters and Spacey Extended has as well very large drone cores with huge included batteries. In general you will need some model and texture files together with the part file. If new features (resources, converters, ..) are added you will likely need some other stuff the part depends on.

Since 1.8 both are in angles and can be set independently, however they seem to work different than I thought. So my question: How are they intended to work together, especially when you choose settings that are asymetric ?

That might be the problem, if they just grab the ladder, they might be still treated as individual vessel. I am pretty sure KSP does heat calculation including shielding per vessel, therefore non of your Kerbals actually is protected by the heatshield.

Hmm what could be more fun to try ? So I asked in my astronaut complex if there any voluntar for a crazy idea: no problem ! Note: 160 Ablator are enough, but 800 do not make you too heavy... Check 1: Entry speed well above 3000 m/s Check 2: Heating during entry just cosy Check 3: Proof all Kerbals still alive as flames die Note on Piloting: Do NOT go retrograde as seats are unlikely in that position (at least mine have been not). I had to turn 90° to bottom until heatshield was in true front.

Heat transfer is not your problem, but piloting or design: The Kerbals must get direct heat. 67km alt is just 1-2 seconds into the atmosphere, if your PE is low enough (and it should be since you are very draggy and very light). 3km/s is roughly Minimus return, it should take a lot more time until Kerbals suits crit temp is reached. Try to enable heat info in debug menu for each part, open all Kerbals and seats and heatshields in space, pin them and use pause to have time to study the readouts.

Finally I got my first Ike lander where it belongs. Due to some heavy bribery space enthuiast support it got a little bit bigger than original planned as first landing, but combining 4 contracts in a single mission was too good. With budget saved, priority was on time and therefore aerobraking into Duna required some effort to shave off 4000 m/s in single entry. First landing on Ike, sponsored by Maxo Construction by 2 Mio funds is full base on wheels, loaded with refined 6000 liquid fuel and room for 10 Kerbals including a viewing cupola. The front section did turn its Duna lifters to assist on soft lay down for mining. Now we need to collect 2500 ore and lift it into Duna orbit. Had I know how bouncy pistons can get, I had opted for different way to extend wheels from service bay on ground. With assistance from the hinge at rear heat shields and cargo bay I managed to extend them just enough to stay locked once I raised all assistance back up. Since Maxo Construction required at least 10 seats, a rather large crew could enjoy the expierence from Duna orbit and Ike landing. Finally my sentinel awaits his final manoveur for orbit between Kerbin and Eve. Meanwhile 8 tourists enjoyed a luxury cabin for their 40 days visit to ... Sunny View of Kerbin, a wunderful destination around Kerbol, just outside Kerbins SOI. Any claims that fin design on Sunny View is inspired by human space program are strictly refused by the chief engineer.

I am not sure if your bug related to the abnormal drag values in part database as others pointed out as main reason why people had very low drag and therefore high thermal stress on reentry. I just tested a 1.25 SSTO rocket and reentry heat and drag seemed quite like in 1.6 and 1.7.