splashboom

@eddiew, you make good points. It is not exactly prograde, rather 20 degrees from~. My understanding of hypersonics is that a layer of plasma forms around blunt objects, the blunter the further away. So the cockpit would keep the radiating plasma further away(and deal with the radiation) while any smaller and aloft parts might be closer to it, or right in it. So I doubt Starship would get away with having something like that 'in the wind' .. but who knows. Then again not sure how much of the physics are modeled in ksp (see lift mechanics for instance). Regardless, the re-entry flames are a show to watch

I built an SSTO and could not make it stable without a pair of canards on the nose. However I was sure they were gona fry on reentry, since they look rather flimsy and are at the very front (it enters kinda like the space shuttle). To my surprise they never even got an overheat bar. The nose, cabin, and some of the engines did overheat - no more than 3/4 bar - but never the canards, in more than 10 reentries now. Is there a reason(aerodynamic?) why they should stay cool? The max temp on them is 2400, less than the 2700 on the cockpit, which in turn did get overheated. Thanks!

Here is my first - just landed it for the first time. I lost the vertical fin, does it count? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uip4WEQ2wSfIjJKT8_-mh9pd3QRnB_3N/view?usp=sharing edit: new and improved craft, now holding on to tail.

The picnic spot:

Well I guess that's that - a lot of times in engineering its keep it simple or fail. As you point out, the hypersonic air breathing - exotic indeed - poses fundamental challenges. Go Elon! Guess I will still finalize my KSP SSTO, so I may launch with 1/10 of the cost, and 10 times more piloting.

Yea, I should probably get into Realism Overhaul, but i'm clumsy enough in stock KSP ..

Okay, that rings true to me and may well be. However coming to SABRE(one or more stages), is there something to gain from aerodynamic lift combined with (vacuum)thrust as opposed to just thrust all the way. For sure the later is simpler .. I see that I missed the target with the 'ssto' tag, but I still want to figure if hypersonic engines are viable

(which is better in a duel ..) So the CR-7 R.A.P.I.E.R. engine is emulating the - ever in development - SABRE engine. Seeing that with it an SSTO is quite possible in KSP, you have to wonder some things - What would be the $/Kg to orbit of a plane with SABRE? Is it so much better than SpaceX's Starship? (since neither exists let's use glossy brochures to make comparisons ..) - Would a platform like Virgin Orbit benefit from SABRE technology - on either of the two stages I need to know that my Kerbal SSTO is not for nothing!

There already was a line ROCSeed=-1 in the file at that spot. I set it to 69420, but I cant see much features around KSC or the island airfield. The grass seems to have more texture, but cant remember how much it had before for sure. Anyway, thanks for the help! edit: at the desert airfield there are cactuses(cacti?)

@Zacspace, I am playing on steam, and the linux drawbacks have not yet been so overwhelming to make me contemplate switching OS. I heard they are giving another push to proton, so for not I will wait but thanks for the tip!

I have a career save file without Breaking Ground, can I continue it if I start BG? Also, will I have to reinstall mods? Thanks!

I am quite honored I see that I could probably do with a smaller vertical fin.

This is too funny .. The mapping let me assign 'Pitch Down' to forward stick move BUT: it is binary, that is either goes all the way or not at all. Also shows as button 3, which is one of those mysteries. Quite an improvement for flying, but obviously some way to go until normal. Come to think of it, it is not the first mapping problem I had (and this one seems to have appeared for no reason. Come on Squad what is so hard about mappings? Some things go to some other things

Indeed .. a quick search found this thread. The gist is that it should not work at all (I am on linux!). I have been flying for months until I was bothered enough to look into the dive issue.

I just tried a few other planes, it's the same situation - joystick does nothing in the forward position. I can use the w key while flying with the joystick, but it gets annoying.

It does move when i want to pitch up. I am using a joystick. With the w/s keys it moves both ways (down/up), it is just the joystick that cannot move it down.

The tail fin on my plane lets me take off, but if I want to move it the other way - when I want to dive from altitude - it does nothing. I push the stick all the way and it just stays horizontal. I saw some options to tweak, but nothing that seems to fix this. I does seem like a safety measure - like to prevent you from lithobraking by accident at take-off. But safety is not the kerbal way!

Definitely stock. Don't know how to turn them off, so far I only had at most a couple at a time, a minor annoyance.

That also happens to me but I eventually get out of it with 'V' and also spacebar. Although I never quite grasped which camera mode gets me out of trouble, I just try them until it gets solved :|

I am guessing you are docking from quite far away? By the time I point noses towards each other I am within 3-4 ship lengths, and no frame of reference effects are noticeable to me in the short time until dock. I would be interested in seeing your docking style

Ok, that would assume I planned a dock on the initial station apart from one at the top. Really tricky to land on that. I suppose I should plan all bases on wheels and all the same height, plus horizontal docking ports. Guess that is why they have those huge wheels in the tech tree ..

I get these missions that ask to expand an existing base space station - usually a mobile lab that I have landed on Minmus for example. What does it mean to expand that? If I land one more craft next to it what do I do next? Hard enough to dock in zero Gee, how do I connect them on the ground? Thanks!

Put a thermometer in your inventory and check it when in flight? Also, can it be orbital flight so you don't have to worry about landing?

Huh, and here I thought nobody thought of that(plus I owe an apology to the rotation tool too) Here is a pair of engines with plane attached(they should totally build this irl) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NgQyYVGcbSAOsKzhzMso-p0U_wRtGyl4/view?usp=sharing