BurningSky93

I can see where you're coming from Frozen_Heart but the way I look at it any part credited to "C7 Aerospace" is de-facto credited to Chad by association (yes, aware he's not on the dev team any longer)

Porkjet, have you seen that Squad have basically credited all the stockified Spaceplane Plus parts to C7 Aerospace, not you? I'm pretty appalled by this, unless I've gotten the wrong end of the stick this looks like a grade-A case of plagiarism. Screenshot here, taken from Scott Manley's .25 preview: http://imgur.com/umjE9HC

I was of course assuming an instantaneous burn, which I believe would make my explanation correct? Obviously it's very hand-wavy.

Consider a right angled triangle. The hypotenuse of the triangle is your resultant velocity after the burn and has a "vertical" (your normal burn) component and "horizontal" (your initial in-plane velocity) component. After your burn, your resultant velocity is given by Pythagoras' theorem and will be greater than your original in-plane velocity, hence if you burn at periapsis say, you will increase your apoapsis radius in addition to changing your inclination. Hope this helps.

I'm having some problems, for some reason when I'm on my craft's last stage, if I enable surf on Smart A.S.S. and then use my own personal input (i.e. press WASDQE myself), Smart A.S.S. will stop working. The surf function will still be enabled, but it wont actually input any control (I can see that the control surfaces on my craft aren't moving). Toggling the surf function on and off won't correct this, it is basically faulty for the remainder of the flight. To give precise information in case this is highly situational: -Craft uses the MK1 spaceplane cockpit, AR202 case and B9 aerospace parts -Flight starts, I stage to activate the engines -Input attitude values into surf, enable surf, control surfaces move as craft attempts to move the craft to given attitude (but it's on the runway, so it can't) -Throttle up, craft accelerates and lifts off -Craft takes attitude inputted into surf -At this point, if I press anything on WASDQE, the moment i release the key the control surfaces will return to their "home" position, surf does not take over the attitude control again -This happens only on stage 0, but it doesn't matter if the engines and cockpit STARTED on different stages, if I stage to 0, surf will cease to function after user input. YES, I have electric charge, I'm not stupid. EDIT: Ok, I seem to have found out what the problem was. Under attitude adjustment, the Tf value may have been too high, however, when it is too low the craft will jitter and oscillate wildly. How do I correct this?

Is the patch available separately? If so, do you know where I can find it?

I think the spaceplane guidance could use some work (or its perfectly possible I'm not using it in such a way to get it to behave the way I'd like). What I'm specifically referring to is the "yo-yo"-ing or "sine waving" it does when attempting to hold heading and altitude. When told to hold altitude, it will often climb so steeply that it overshoots the target altitude and to compensate will enter a dive that is also too steep and overshoot in the opposite direction before repeating the process. It would be great if it would begin to reduce climb/dive rate in such a way as to prevent this (or at least make it much less noticeable). It does iron itself out over time, but only after quite a few cycles and it never quite attains level flight.

I did take that into account, I must've not been paying attention when I wrote "rho... can be assumed to be equal on Eve and Kerbin", but my maths does take a change in rho into account. Also i think my math is a bit off because Eve's atmo isn't actually 5x the density of Kerbin's. It was revealed to be that during development but I dont think that is the actual value. I think my actual calculation is sound, even if the actual variables aren't.

Eve has 1.7x Kerbin's surface gravity (1.7 G). Terminal velocity is determined by: V(t) = ((2mg)/(rho A C))^0.5 Where V(t) is terminal velocity, m is mass of the object, g is acceleration due to gravity, rho is density of the fluid through which the object is falling (in this case the atmosphere), A is the objects projected area and C is the object's drag coefficient. In this case, m, rho, A and C can be assumed to be equal on Eve and Kerbin (the Kerbinaut's mass, falling area and coefficient of drag won't change. So, if Eve has an acceleration due to free fall of 1.7x Kerbin and an atmospheric density 5x greater than Kerbin, and terminal velocity is directly proportional to the root of acceleration due to gravity and inversely proportional to the root of the atmospheric density, then terminal velocity on Eve is (1.7/5)^0.5 = 0.58 times that on Kerbin. Hopefully my math is correct, do please correct me if I have made a mistake though

I think that'd be annoying for higher level players who have already perfected landing on satellites who will want access to the interplanetary scenarios right away. All the scenarios should be available from the start. The campaign will handle progress from low to high level stuff.

Good job really, seeing as the OP was asking about planets rather than moons

Its gotta be classical music throughout the flight. Start with something energetic for the launch, then have a couple good waltzes whilst performing your orbital maneuvres, and very calm music whilst "idle". Holst's "Planets" Suite is, of course, a must. Lyrical music just doesnt work IMO.

Ultra sonic sound? As in, sound that moves faster than sound? Wouldn't work at all

Whoa, I might be misunderstanding, but are you saying the lift produced increases as the angle of attack increases i.e. it's maximum at 90 degrees?

Would some of you mind sharing some of our more basic, easy to fly designs, both regular and SSTOs? I've not really seen any good examples of SSTOs. I also keep having this problem of my planes seemingly having, well, zero lift. Even though I have plenty of wing surface, they often end up going off the end of the runway before taking off, which has resulted in exploding streaks many times. Is my memory correct in recalling that lift mechanics are being overhauled for .17?

Do you guys fair better with purely rocket space planes or with mixed engine types?

I've made it my current objective to build an orbital space plane. Now, I've seen in some threads people build itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny spaceplanes that can achieve orbit, and frankly, I'm envious because I just can't do it. Even copying (or to make myself feel better, reverse-engineering) these designs, I've found I'm still not capable of getting a spaceplane into an orbital trajectory. This means that there's something wrong with the way I'm flying the planes (assuming that these people who achieve orbit aren't exploiting the fuel bug). I'm currently using mixed jet and rocket engine aircraft. So, what I'm asking is, what's the most efficient flight plan for space planes? I'm asking for quite a bit of detail here, so something like: "Fly at theta degrees to the horizontal until you achieve an altitude of Y metres, then ignite your rocket engine... etc etc." Obviously there will be variations depending on the actual aircraft, but a good general outline would be very helpful.

Who else can't wait to start saying "peribop" and "apobop"? Great names, Nova, and much to my (and I'm sure your own) relief, you've avoided any "k" names! Hurrah! I also like some of your chosen adjectives but I'm gonna have to agree with you on using some of my own.

This is why you follow in NASA's footsteps and test your rockets as much as possible in atmo before undertaking the main mission. Make sure it stages properly and make sure the parts that need to land on Kerbin do so safely. Remember to try and open your parachute only when the final stage has slowed down quite a bit from drag before opening it (though obviously keep your altitude in mind). You obviously don't want your chute open too late, but it doesnt help to have it open too early either.

God, it's hard to choose! Vostok had the first human spaceflight, but Gemini gave us EVAs and Apollo got us to the Moon. Then there's Voyager with Voyager 1 which will be the first man-made object to reach interstellar space and Voyager 2, so far the only man-made object to have visited the ice giants. I'm probably gonna have to be cliche and say Apollo. I'd say landing on the Moon has so far been one of humanity's greatest achievements along with the invention of mathematics, the written word and computers. As for individual space craft, it's hard to get more iconic than the Space Shuttle.

I find MechJeb's landing tools work best when you are at a fairly high altitude (above 100km) and you give it plenty of time to react with a "land at target", but don't start the autopilot too early or MechJeb will freak out.

The Mars-like. It'll be my first attempt at an interplanetary mission and I think it will be the one I'm most likely to succeed in the fewest attempts at. I'll hopefully be able to land on it's moon (as it will require less fuel) first and then the planet itself before returning home. EDIT: Actually, taking mission science objectives into account, landing on the planet would probably be primary and the moon secondary.

God I agree with him. It's such a lazy, boring and stupid way to name ALL the objects. For Kerbol and Kerbin, it's fine (and could even make sense if "Ker" has huge significance with the Kerbals as it most probably does and these two objects are most likely the most significant to them), but for other objects it just reeks of unimaginativity (is that even a word?)

I would agree with this. If the Mun is analogous to the Moon, and Kerbin is analogous to Earth, then the Mun has a geometric albedo of about .11 and kerbin has a geometric albedo of about .37. However, as Kerbin doesn't presently have any clouds I think that may have a diminishing effect on its actual present albedo. I'd say Minmus is definitely on top in Kerbin's local system, being an iceball, I'd say probably a Bond albedo of something like .4, .5? As for the new planets, I'd wager the Desert Planet, being fairly analogous to Mars, will be beneath Kerbin but above the Mun (Mars' geometric albedo is about .15). Eve I imagine to have a fairly high albedo, perhaps something like .6, .7? The gas giant is fairly bright, so something like .5? No idea about the lavaless planet. EDIT: If we're talking percentages, then let's use Bond albedo for everything. In which case: Moon: .12 (12%), so about the same for the Mun Earth: .3 (30%), so about the same for Kerbin (when it gets clouds?) Minmus: .4, .5? Desert Planet: .25 (same as Mars) Eve: Huge, like .9 if it's a Venus analogue (Venus is .9) Gas Giant: Like .3-.5? Obviously this is all just educated conjecture on my part.

That's pretty cool. The Damned Robotics pack has hinges, so you could have the wings open and close. Link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/9675-v0-16-Damned-Robotics-Version-1-2 EDIT: Also, dont want to be presumptious or try to do the mod's work for them, but I think this thread would be better suited to the spacecraft exchange