White Owl

I've recently started using it, exclusively for mission-breaking bugs... like motionless parts exploding for no reason, or entire vehicles completely vanishing. Never for simple errors of planning and/or piloting.

Sounds great.

From my perspective... KSP is already so big, so well known, that we long ago passed the point where an influx of newbies from any one source could be all that significant. Probably it'll barely even be noticeable. Remember when Kurtjmac and some Yogscast moron both made their first KSP vids just a couple days apart? Back when KSP was kinda our cozy little secret, and you knew everybody on the forum? That was significant and a little worrisome for a few days.

Same here. The hinges are good... but they're also prone to glitches and bugs at unexpected moments.

I was told that plugin only works for one engine at a time. Is that correct? Has it been fixed, maybe?

I think this is the third or fourth time I've posted this in various places... Get the Damned Robotics mod. Attach a powered hinge or rotatron where you want the engine to go, set up two keys to rotate it (I use 7 and 8, but I have a really weird keyboard, so you might want something else), attach the engine. It takes some practice to manually control the gimbal through launch, but I think the added flexibility in building assymetric launch vehicles is worth it. IMO, the stock hinge and rotatron are too fast for this job. I edited mine to make them turn significantly slower, like so: // toggle parameters rotateJoint = True rotateAxis = 1, 0, 0 keyRotateSpeed = 6.0 rotateLimits = True rotateMin = -60.0 rotateMax = 60.0 rotateLimitsRevertKey = False jointSpring = 0 jointDamping = 0 onActivate = False rotateKey = up revRotateKey = down fixedMesh = Base servoName = New Hinge Hell, I'll just go ahead and post a link to my whole channel, since this kind of launch vehicle is what I use almost exclusively nowadays: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheWinterOwl Really, I kind of feel bad that this technique isn't more well known. I've been showing people exactly how to make it work for months.

Okay, I can imagine several potential uses for this.

I honestly don't recall ever being called a cheater for all the mods in my Youtube vids... Most of the comments received are fairly intelligent too. I love it when viewers helpfully suggest solutions to all the various problems I create.

You beat me to it! LOL I've been successfully launching space shuttles for months, using the method Netris describes. It takes some practice to learn how to manually gimbal engines while flying the ship, but it works very well.

My current series' house rules are something like: All designs must work with both FAR and Deadly Reentry installed. No autopilot software ever, excepting ASAS for basic attitude hold. No conventional rockets. All launches must be some kind of spaceplane. All payloads must fit inside spaceplane cargobays. (I'm willing to just slightly clip into walls if necessary.) No quicksaving/quickloading. No nuclear engines in Kerbin's atmosphere. Liquid-fueled engines are expensive; try not to throw them away. If something is in orbit, I'm not allowed to end flight. (Although the debridement plugin will clean up some debris.) No wonder I advance so slowly!

Yeah, what this guy said... me too. I was loving the robot arms and docking camera, and only installed the full pack to get the EVA construction features.

What a fantastic, clean, elegant idea. Just what I've been wanting, and I kept making unnecessary duplicate parts.

As fantastic as the Canadarm and Buran manipulator replicas are... maybe these two options aren't quite sensitive or user-friendly enough to precisely place parts the way you'd want. Maybe it's time to consider building your own animated manipulator, specifically designed for this one specialized task? I imagine not a long multi-purpose arm, since we already have two of those. Instead, how about a relatively small manipulator that will clamp securely onto one part, and then carefully maneuver a second part through millimetric and fractions-of-a-degree tolerances in 6DOF? Call it a precision assembly jig. It would still require one of the other arms to grab the two parts and bring them close together in the first place. I'm not a coder, so I don't know how insanely difficult this idea would be to implement. Maybe your notion of enabling a snap option is better.

My God... it's full of struts! Edit: I downloaded but have not yet installed. I see only one plugin in the mod... would it be possible to get a version for the struts, but without the super-kerbal features?

My first Mun landing, having challenged myself to do it with a spaceplane:

What's new in 2.2?

Dude! Next you'll be saying Santa ain't real.

Maybe because people have barely begun to adapt to the possibilities this opens up. I intend to make heavy use of this system in my orbital construction yard... but I have to assemble the yard first.

How difficult would it be to convert kethane into spare parts for use with the orbital construction mod? I imagine the converter requiring obscene amounts of electricity, and also terribly mass-inefficient... something like 50tons kethane to 1 ton spare parts. But it would open up lots of possibilities!

These things look so cool.

Now I'm imagining a kerbal Godzilla, and I like it.

Those came from Tiberion's space shuttle. They're great parts... but I wish I could find similar landing gear that would start retracted, but about three times longer, so I could more easily avoid tail strikes upon landing. The resized landing gear in TV Aerospace is tall enough, but won't start in the retracted position. :/

Damned Robotics. Attach a powered hinge or rotatron where you want the engine to go, set up two keys to rotate it (I use 7 and 8, but I have a really weird keyboard, so you might want something else), attach the engine. It takes some practice to manually control the gimbal through launch, but I think the added flexibility in building assymetric launch vehicles is worth it. IMO, the stock hinge and rotatron are too fast for this job. I edited mine to make them turn significantly slower, like so: // toggle parameters rotateJoint = True rotateAxis = 1, 0, 0 keyRotateSpeed = 6.0 rotateLimits = True rotateMin = -60.0 rotateMax = 60.0 rotateLimitsRevertKey = False jointSpring = 0 jointDamping = 0 onActivate = False rotateKey = up revRotateKey = down fixedMesh = Base servoName = New Hinge I don't install all of them at once, and I only install a few parts at a time out of the larger packs. I don't think the game can run with all of them loaded up. For example, I have all the KW fuel tanks and engines, but none of the KW fairings, since I don't need them. I have only a few of the Kosmos parts. Recently I also started getting rid of several of the stock parts that I never use.

The KW Rocketry pack has RCS thrusters specifically made for shuttles. They're streamlined, and also stronger than stock. I like them.

oooo nifty!