AHHans

When you set the servo to "locked" then autostruts can reach across that servo. So you can try setting autostruts that will reach to a part on the other side of the servo on the engine nacelles and locking the servo once it is in horizontal flight. P.S. You don't need that many air intakes. A single shock cone intake can feed at least two rapiers. So if you didn't add the adjustable ramp intakes for aesthetic reasons then feel free to remove them.

First the easy part: if you are already outside the atmosphere - in orbit or on a body without atmosphere - then higher TWR is in theory better. In reality you a) have problems with the precise execution of maneuvers if the TWR is too high and b) you are more interested in dV anyhow, so you usually are quite willing to sacrifice some TWR for more dV. For the low TWR case of orbital maneuvers see @Streetwind's comment about cosine losses during long burns. For landing and take-off in vacuum the TWR can be as high as you want (with the caveats listed above). In the imaginary case of of an infinite TWR (on a perfectly spherical body) you would just burn horizontal directly at take-off, and do a kind of Hohmann transfer from the surface to the orbit. Which kind of answers your implicit question: no, having an extended coasting phase before circularizing is not necessarily a bad thing. For the launch from Kerbin (or Eve for that matter) see @Streetwind's answer. Experience has shown that a TWR of 1.3 to 1.7 on the launchpad is usually a good value. A low TWR will lead to more gravity losses, because you need to steer a steeper trajectory to avoid falling back to the ground. If you have a high TWR (especially once you are outside most of the atmosphere) then you'll want a flatter trajectory to reduce the gravity losses in order to reduce gravity losses and to avoid raising your AP more than necessary. That gives rise to the "keep time-to-AP constant" strategy of launching. But you also don't want too high TWR at launch because that will either cause too high aerodynamic losses (if you do a "regular" gravity turn), or too high gravity losses (if you first go more or less straight up to get out of the atmosphere). I'm sure there is a way to develop a mathematical expression that will give you an optimized TWR for launches from Kerbin, but I don't know if anyone ever bothered to make one. (I know that you would have to pay me real money to do that. )

I'm sure (nearly) every intrepid space agency manager has had this situation: you are coming back from your latest mission, have the capsule full of exciting new science and are now re-entering Kerbin's atmosphere. Initial reentry works fine without blowing anything up due to overheating, but when it comes to opening the parachutes you hit <SPACE> and noting happens, no matter how often and hard you hit that space bar: these id*bleeeep*ts in the VAB have forgotten to mount parachutes on your capsule. Well, for the KSP 1.11 update we have been promised that an EVA Construction Mode will be included. That means it should be possible to attach a parachute during flight. So the challenge is to reenter the atmosphere in a capsule without parachutes, get below 30km on Kerbin, and then go on EVA to attach the parachutes for a save landing. Best / funniest picture wins.

Just copy the whole "Kerbal Space Program" directory tree and put a link to the KSP executable on your desktop (or wherever you can most easily find it). KSP decides which directory to use by the place the executable was in when it was started.

In the KSPedia (page 35) it says that you set the percentage of dV that you want to have done before the maneuver node. So I would assume that it does take different accelerations of different stages into account. But I haven't actually tested that.

Indeed. In Germany the upper respiratory illness monitoring shows that last winter's flu season essentially stopped suddenly in mid to late March 2020.

Yes, I have considered that. I know how to read the Pitch/Yaw/Roll Indicators in the bottom left of the UI. If you don't believe me, why not try it out yourself? Build a spaceplane with Mk2 parts and a delta wing that is just stable, cheat it into orbit, deorbit it and then watch its behavior during reentry and when in flight at < Mach 2.

This is in English, but the following video at the given time-stamp shows how a fairing is used:

@wumpus, @kerbiloid, @YNM, @mikegarrison : If you want to continue this discussion, we could move it into a new thread instead of hijacking this one.

*looks out of the window* Still there. P.S. @Clamp-o-TronI hope your family gets better soon.

Well, during the "just stable during reentry" to "nose-heavy during flight" case I didn't burn any fuel in between. And to show this behavior stock aero only needs to implement different dependencies of the drag (well, whatever the red arrows in the aero overlay represent) and lift (blue arrows) on the airspeed and/or air density. (I believe the biggest effect is that the drag increases faster with airspeed than the lift does.) Same here! Except that I don't use a mod, but manually empty the tanks in the SPH to see how the CoM moves.

I have confirmed this solely on research in-game. If you mean "Have you had space planes that flew fine at low speeds flip out when trying to accelerate to orbital velocity?" or "Did your space-planes that you trimmed to be just stable during reentry become annoying nose-heavy for the low-level flight to the KSP?" then the answer to both is: yes. Another thing I learned is that the Mk2 parts are particular prone to this problem. P.S. I trim my plane by moving the remaining fuel around, and my definition of "just stable" is that when at 90 deg to the airstream (= belly first) it just so tends to pitch the nose forward and the the aft. And, yes, I regularly pump fuel back aft after transitioning to "normal" flight.

Should work if done right. I guess you mean that, but to be clear: I would not rely only on the Minmus gravity assist to get into the retrograde orbit, but do a significant burn at the Minmus PE to get retrograde. Otherwise you have to enter Minmus' SOI with too high a speed and I don't know if Minmus has enough mass to turn you around enough in that case.

The center of pressure (where the sum of all aerodynamic forces apply) shifts with speed and air density! At low speeds (< Mach 2) and high density it is dominated by lift, which is the center of lift that is shown in the editor in the game. But at high speeds (> Mach 3) and low air densities the aerodynamic forces are dominated by drag. In a delta-wing design - like yours - this means that the center of pressure moves forward in the plane and can get in front of the center of mass. So, yes, your plane became aerodynamically unstable, and the solution is to move the center of mass further forward.

Well, Germany is part of the synchronous grid of Continental Europe (the largest by connected power in the world), is that big enough? I'm not saying that an AC grid doesn't need to be managed. And synchronizing a generator to the grid may not be trivial, but is also not a big problem. In particular a lot less of a problem than designing a DC power grid with multiple voltage levels (you don't want to have the same voltage that is used on the long-range transmission lines in people's homes) and the ability to send power in all directions. Btw. as you are apparently in the US, you probably have some pole-mounted distribution transformers close to you. How often do they need to be serviced? And replaced? How long does the power supply of a computer typically last?

Scott Manley did a great video about the planned closure of the Acrecibo telescope: Worlds Largest Radar Astronomy Dish To Be Demolished! In the comments there's also a comment by "Marko K" and the replies to it, which I found useful.

Well, I couldn't find a "SEQ-6" part in my (stock) install.

Please just copy & paste the link to the site like so: Time dilation In addition to that being *bleep*ing annoying there may also be copyright issues.

My guess is that this is a feature of MechJeb or another mod. Something sets the throttle to zero when you activate RCS, that's not stock behavior.

Well, I see some value in motivating players to look into the definition of orbital elements and phase- / ejection- angles. Just for the added knowledge, not because it's useful in game. But I may be a little weird that way. Other people might find it useful to have the values that the game uses internally when it puts a craft "on rails" displayed in the game. [Edit:] In the end I guess I prefer to have these values displayed over having empty UI space.

Sorry, the complexity and cost of DC-DC voltage conversion - compared to a transformer - makes a grid based on AC the better choice. HVDC power lines are only superior for point to point connections (I don't know of any non point to point HVDC line). With AC you can make a grid, where you can hook up new clients anywhere and have it supply or consume power at need. So even for a clean sheet design I would go with AC for regional and local distribution.

I haven't (yet?) found a practical use for the "Ejection", "LAN" and "Arg PE" values as displayed in the orbital info tab, so I just ignore them. In contrast to RL space navigation in KSP I don't use background stars to navigate my spaceships, I just take a look at the map-screen.

The control point ("Control from here") wasn't set to that probe core. (IIRC it can be that after decoupling the control point is set to a non probe core / cockpit / docking port part.)

A) Probably not. B) Where did you see that?