UncleManuel

If you want to learn more just fire up the sandbox mode and fiddle around with parts. Sometimes you learn by trying out stuff (that's Kerbal for: blow stuff up ). One thing about electricity: cockpits, lights, reaction wheels and control surfaces are consuming power. Rocket engines and jet engines are producing power while running. Another source of electrical power are solar collectors, fuel cells or the RTB (nuclear battery for satellites).

First of all: Space cycles the staging, which depends on how you built the rocket in the VAB. But at the launchpad the first hit on the spacebar activates all engines within stage 1. Just so that you know... A surefire way to tell why the engines are not firing on the launchpad is to look at your main throttle (that little arrow on the left side of the navball). You have to apply throttle to actually get moving. The shortcuts are Y (100% throttle) and X (0% throttle). T is for the stability control S.A.S. . These are the basics you learn by playing the tutorial.

Well, even one cone intake can provide enough air for two Rapier. More important with supersonic jets is to get above 450 m/s for the ram air effect to kick in. Click in flight on the tab on the bottom left so that the card for the engines pop out - there you'll see the actual thrust number. More thrust --> more speed... Actually going supersonic or hypersonic depends on the altitude. The "shock cone animation" indicates supersonic speed. The "flame animation" is just an indication of friction heating which differs according to altitude. And the Mach number also depends on air density (=altitude). But the ground speed indication in 'meters per second' in KSP is more an indicator on how fast you're actually going since it's not really an accurate simulator for planes. But you can multiply that m/s times 3.6 to get km/h to get an idea. But again: Mach 3.2 at 25000 meters is actually 3367 km/h fast... Btw: "hypersonic" per definition are speeds above Mach 5 (6174 km/h or 1715 m/s).

Well, you can assign a key to extend or extend & transmit in the Actions Group menu. But you have to do that during the construction of the vehicle. The Actions Group can be very powerful, it's basically a macro generator for things to do things...

Even without pictures my first thought was: "Jepp, CoM too far behind." Ask me how I know... But you've already moved the CoM bubble a bit forward. I too found that planes in KSP seem to fly a bit more stable that way - CoM & CoL stacked on each other will tend to a twitchy behavior. Another tip: always construct your plane without fuel! Most users have problems during the flight if fuel depletes and the CoM takes a huge shift. I construct my planes dry and then add the fuel - and watch CoM & CoL very carefully.

Shock cones or the divertless supersonic intakes. You can save a lot of fuel if you get your spaceplane up to speed (>900 m/s) in the atmosphere and then use the rocket mode above 20000 meters. But you need to haul ass to actually get the Rapiers going supersonic - that means faster than 450 m/s for the ram air effect to kick in and produce more thrust... Actually you can do this with the Whiplash + rockets but the Rapier is the more compact and probably more lightweight option for a SSTO...

I never noticed this problem because the boosters always getting ejected and then burn up in the atmosphere... Another small trick: if you want to attach pylons/hardpoints permanently (like for a plane) then rightklick on it and klick "remove from staging". This way they become a fixed part of the vehicle...

Definitely a combination of wrong CoL and insufficient control surfaces. Activate the 3 balls during construction. These show CoG, CoL and CoT. The first two should be close together to prevent the plane to pitch down or up. Another factor: weight and thrust. The upper layers of the atmosphere are getting thinner and thinner, so you need speed to stay afloat. If your plane is too heavy it will fly like a brick. A good way is to use the Whiplash engines with supersonic intakes - the faster you go the more air they cram into the engine the more thrust you'll have. Supersonic jet engines are good for up to 20000 meters and 900 m/s. Above that you'll need rockets or the switchable Rapier.

Holy crap! Now I know why my planes are constantly slowly pitching up... With the rockets in orbit this behavior is not noticed because SAS is in "orbit" mode and follows the trajectory...

Nope, even the Whiplash looses steam above 1000 m/s and/or 21000 meters above ground. You can click the stage tab on the bottom left of the HUD to see what actual thrust the engines are producing in flight. To go faster you'll have to use hybrids or rockets. Jet engines have their limits...

@Seanburg2006 Depends on the airplane design. Do you have any pictures? And it depends how far the control surfaces are apart from CoL/CoG. That said it also has to be stated that KSP is not a very accurate airplane simulation. So not everything is 100% "correct"...

With these "normal" airplane wings you'd have to get VERY high to minimize heating. But by that time your plane is already going ballistic. And above 30000 meters on Kerbin wings are pretty useless, you have already move faster than 1200 m/s to stay afloat - and that's already more like a rocket trajectory... Long story short: if S.A.S. isn't doing too much crazy up there your wings basically burn up. You can test that theory by using the Big-S delta wings & rudders. And have an eye on the CoL and CoG indicators during the build phase...

Here, on the bottom: But the CH-47 is tilting the whole head assembly to create horizontal forces. I guess in KSP you would have to use "roll" one rotor to one side and the other to the opposite side to create yaw torque. With the coax design you would have to mix yaw inputs into the deploy angle of the rotors like with the real helicopters like the Kamov KA-50. They do "opposite AoA movement" for yaw inputs which means: one rotor has higher lift and the other less lift. Using engine rpm takes too long to react. I guess with both designs it'll be a nightmare to program a KAL-1000 to actually work as intended...

Hi there! I'm fiddeling around with the BGE and play with some helicopter designs. After some airplane designs with propellers I do understand the basic mechanics and aerodynamic forces of different deploy angles. So far I've not used the KAL-1000, I use the main throttle for the deploy angle. Even with the helicopters because the blades have full axis control and can switch between collective & cyclic mode. But... ...the yaw control. It's basically non-existent with coaxial or tandem helicopter designs. All axis controls are activated with the helicopter blades and pitch/roll are working fine but yaw does nothing (reaction wheel is turned off). Do I miss a thing or is it simply not implemented in the KSP BGE game mechanics yet?

Jepp, the good old "how KSP attaches things to things"-mystery... See my old thread here: Short answer: KSP can only use ONE attach node on parts. Multiple pylons are for looks only. On SRBs you have to use struts or the autostrut function (grandparent)... Bonus info: the part is being attached to the point where the mouse cursor tip is. This makes placing sometimes a bit tricky...