Mic_n

If you're using something like the stagerecovery mod that lets you recoup (most of) the costs of the stage, so you're basically just paying for the fuel - then yes, they're still very useful, especially for lighter payloads like kerbin-orbital probes. Does take a tiny bit of extra thought in using them - mainly in ensuring you manually shut them down and stage away before they flame-out. The big benefit, as noted, is in the huge ISP they have - when you can get so much energy from so little mass, you can keep that exponential growth down.

Kerbal Thunder (War Thunder) Replace Spitfires, Messerschmidts, Shermans and Panzers with Kerbal contraptions and have them fighting WW2 battles. Alternatively, try to launch a Tiger Tank to the Mun. Either way, it'd be pretty awesome.

End of April, 2012 - which would be in 0.14...

I happily just built a little unmanned science gathering probe rover that snugs neatly into a 2.5M service bay. Clamp-o-tron Jr mounted on the underside snugs neatly onto the matching one mounted into the base of the service bay, which in turn sits on the ground (surface-mount engines on the sides, landing struts deployed to take the impact and then retracted to let the bay rest on the Munar surface). Admittedly on such a small vehicle, the relative area of 'magnetic influence' from the clamps is well and truly enough to cover any slight differences in alignment that might occur. Bonus is that it has a nice little garage to tuck into and rest That said, waaaaayyyy back in the beforetime I made a "rescue" seaplane (floating girders, jet engines pointing everywhere and inventive action groups) that was completely stock, for picking up splashed-down pods and delivering them back to the KSC. It had a gantry on the back - a double-set of rectangular wing sections forming ramps with a gap down the middle, upon which a small 'sub-craft' would ride on landing gear. That one had a docking port underneath (protruding through the gap) that could dock to the pod, and another at the front that could dock with the main craft when run all the way forward. A probe core, battery, small fuel tank and engine make it controllable and allow it to be pushed up the ramp, meaning you could adjust the height of that docking port by rolling that gantry along the ramp, then take it right up to the top and lock it all in. It's not particularly elegant, but it works, completely stock. These days: KAS/KIS. Don't leave home without 'em!

The J58 used in the SR71 (which is no doubt the inspiration for the engine in question, right down to the new shockwave exhaust graphics) was commonly referred to as a turboramjet. Not technically correct, but quite widely used. Essentially it had a series of ducts and vanes from the intake to exhaust that could redirect varying volumes of air around the compressor turbines. A turbojet at low speeds, and "ramjet-ish" at higher ones, relying on that ram effect to compress air through the turbine bypass. It's not a Kerbal engineering wonder, it's a SkunkWorks engineering wonder

Speaking of paragliders... in the waaaaaaay back for a challenge in here I built me a "set and forget" plane (ie, throttle it up and then disconnect it from all controls) with one Round-8 toroidal tank worth of fuel that covered well over 1000km.. at an average a bit under 10m/sec... It'd be interesting to see how the new aero handles a similar concept...

correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the 'basic jet' (turbojet) produce more thrust at low speed than the 'turbojet' (turboramjet)? Also, although I'm pretty confident you're doing it for the aesthetics, no need to mount the entire "engine pod" vertically like that, it'll be creating masses of drag in forward flight. Only thing that needs to be pointing down is the nozzle.

Erm... not sure about this "repulsorlift" thing, I'm presuming that's the weird non-standard things you've got there. I'm going to sound like a jerk here, but if you don't understand something as fundamental as that, stop mucking about with mods and figure out the basics first. Stop and think about what they're representing. Think of the CoL as a fulcrum, and the CoM as the point mass hanging from it (and the CoT the force you're applying to the CoM). If the mass is directly underneath the fulcrum, it'll happily hang there. A thrust 'forward' on that mass from directly behind it will push it forward and rotate it a little around the fulcrum, meaning you'll nose-up a little. Cut the thrust and it'll settle back to its normal orientation. Move the fulcrum down and the 'turn' will be less and less pronounced until it vanishes altogether when they're directly aligned. Move that fulcrum forward, and the mass will drop away and attempt to point the whole craft straight up. That means your craft is quite likely going to stall and you'll lose control of it. Move the fulcrum backward and the nose will want to drop. No stalling there, you'll speed up instead, so as long as you can raise the nose enough to lift off the ground, you can overcome that tendency. It's not rocket science. Aeronautical engineering, sure. Maybe a little rocket science.

Make a plane. Put a mass of parachutes around the front, and some landing gear/struts hanging out the back. Make sure it has a TWR > 1. Build it, then in the hangar, select the whole thing and rotate it so it's pointing straight up. Launch.. throttle up on the runway and take-off straight up, then nose-down as you build speed to cruise. When you're ready to land, slow down and nose-up to stall, then hit your chutes and drift gently down to land on its tail end. Take the engineer that's flying it on eva and repack the chutes and you're good to go again. Ta-daaaa, VTOL. Also a lot more efficient than you're likely to get otherwise.

I'd suggest an SSTO to LKO and then disposable transit from there, it'll be a whole lot easier. I've made some pretty beefy SSTOs, but you don't really want to be sending them out away from Kerbin, it's a waste. The problem with taking SSTOs (by which I, and the vast majority of people, mean a spaceplane..) much beyond LKO is that all the bits and pieces that you have on there for atmospheric flight are now superfluous, and dead weight.. and those jet engines are heavy. That means you have all this dead weight to accelerate and stop and you're burning waaaaayyy more fuel than you need to. Get yourself up to LKO, open your bay and send a lightweight payload on its way. You'll need an engine to land on minmus anyway, so you can use that for your transfer as well.. what I've done in the past is strap a fuel tank to the TOP of my lander and pipe the fuel down to that to transfer across. Once you've used that fuel up you can stage away and dump that weight before landing.. although on minmus it's really not all that significant anyway.

don't forget all the different biomes right in the KSC.. Most things there have their own biome (some have multiple, depending on tech level), so you can do a bunch of experiments in and around without going far at all and rack up some quick science.

It really depends.. don't make the mistake of going too big.. it's easy to start adding engines and fuel and it really can be counterproductive.. I did an example one here for the passenger compartment, but the same principle applies to any sort of payload. I'd say in general, try to keep it reasonably balanced.. if you have 'outrigger' engines and fuel pods, try not to hang them out the back but keep them relatively centered... Make sure it's still balanced when empty (CoM in front of CoL) and keep a fuel tank at the front that you can push fuel into to keep that front heavy as it drains fuel.

I'd also suggest (though it wouldn't be a HUGE change) moving your ailerons inboard. It's surprising how much they influence your CoL. Because they're attached to the trailing edge of your swept wings there, moving them inboard will also bring them forward. It's highly unlikely you actually need (or indeed want) all the authority they'd provide out there on the wingtips like that, especially when your weight is all quite centred along your roll axis like that. You could also use the option of attaching them on the leading edge and clipped back within the wing.. You could also (if you wanted) switch out your 'conventional' tail section for a two-piece 'V' tail, which can still produce the same directional forces but generates less lift (and drag, for that matter) in the process.

Take a timeout and stop to think about what you're actually trying to do. You're pushing the orbit of your craft out to enter the gravity well of another body out there. That gravity well is going to influence the shape of your orbit, pulling it in towards the centre. So.. assuming that by "prograde" you're meaning orbiting towards the east, then it's just a matter of making sure you enter the SOI in that direction.. IE that you have the body "on your left". If the center of that gravity well is "on your left", then your orbit will be deflected in towards it - 'to the left'. So if you look at your full orbital path once it's back out of that SOI, it will be bent "inwards". If you're passing by with it on the other side, your orbit will be bent "out". So.. which way does your 'exit' orbit deviate? Does it tighten, or open out?

Check the underside of of your craft in the hangar and make sure there aren't any parts clipping through it. The Mk2 bays are only just slightly larger than the 'standard' rocket parts, so if your payload is a rocket and you have things like landing legs radially attached, then those parts can clip through to the outside of the bay. The doors still open fine, that won't clip things.. but on the underside that one part goes through the outside, with the rest on the inside, but it all still attached. Once you've found the culprit, you can perhaps either rotate your payload so that extremity is more off to the side where there's more room, or use the offset tool to move it a little closer in to the payload's centreline so it doesn't stick out so far (or both).

Fly a Kerbal out there and use KAS pipes/docking ports (as mentioned, the magnet doesn't "join" ships, it just lets you winch one in).. sounds like it's the most viable option there... Returning a Kerbal from Minmus doesn't take much at all, and if you want to make it 'feel nice', set yourself up a bit of a station out there he can hang out in.. maybe stick an MPL up there and have some scientists processing some of the masses of science that Minmus can provide to have "something to do" out there... I have one in a low orbit with a pair of scientists (male and female) whom I suspect get up to giggly scientist-y shenanigans (possibly involving mystery goo) when I'm not looking. I'm sure it should be returning more science than it does. You can get from a low minmus orbit down to the surface and back on an EVA pack anyway.. I like to carry a KIS monoprop tank with me just in case.. or better yet hit a command pod on a landed craft for a free refil.. and can get back up to a 50km orbit without any real problem.. but you can certainly orbit an awful lot lower than that with correspondingly less dV required to transit..

If you have landing gear PLUS the rover wheels (aligned to sit very slightly higher), the landing gear can "take the weight" and when the suspension compresses, the powered wheels come into contact with the ground to provide drive, while being saved from bearing too much weight? Does that work? If you've then drained the tanks and it's light enough to uncompress the suspension and lift those power wheels back off the ground, then maybe it's light enough to drive on them by itself - you could raise the gear to let the rover wheels back down when there's only a light weight there..

Just thinking here, but you could probably also edit the SAS action group to automatically toggle the wheels.. Mechjeb's Smart A.S.S holds can suffer from an amount of flutter as well, thuogh it's usually a little different. Pretty much comes down to a combination of sample rates and how aggressive it is with the control inputs, it's all a matter of trade-offs.

The issue there with aligning docking ports comes with heavier vehicles "squatting" more on their gear, and docking ports not lining up properly and bugging out, which happens far too regularly for my liking. I'd +1 on KAS. Just put your things near each other and hook up hoses. Have an engineer up there who can attach/detach ports in case you need to muck with things.

Just to make sure - you do have the RCS system activated? IE press "R", you should see the RCS indicator around your navball light up. You can turn the whole thing on and off so that you don't waste monoprop when you don't need it.

Just realised that the link got munged by the profanity filter there. Should be working now after a sanitising rename

To each his own, but that's still massively overdoing it. Ok, here's an example I just whipped up: see Fat B-stard on KerbalX.com It's a struggle getting up there, but it'll do it. 4 rapiers and a whiplash and it'll get that mk3 passenger bay to an 80x80km orbit with plenty of fuel to spare. CoM/CoL is pretty bad here, it really doesn't like lifting its nose much, but.. take off and nose up at about 25 degrees to altitude.. up to about 15km or so and you'll probably find yourself starting to drop as the atmosphere thins out. Go with it, nose down to about -5 and power through 400m/s before slowly bringing the nose back up to that 25 or so again with your speed climbing. Hit 1 to cut the whiplash and continue the climb on rapiers, then as your speed starts dropping hit 2 to flip them to rocket mode and close your intakes. Hold that 25 degrees to push your Ap up and away, it should be a few degrees above prograde at that point. Once you've got your Ap to 80km, cut your engines and drift to then circularise at the 80km mark. When you're ready to come back down, make your re-entry burn to bring your Ap down to 40-45km then turn back to prograde and again 30 odd degrees nose-up. Hit 3 to shutdown the rapiers, 2 to re-open the intakes, and 1 to re-activate your whiplash for a powered descent. airbrakes are there and should slow you reasonably well. I've got a probe core and a few batteries clipped in up the front there, you'll probably see them getting warm on re-entry.. there's also a pair of spotlights up the back to help out if you need to land in the dark. However, if it's just a matter of getting actual Kerbals to/from space.... command chairs in a mk2 cargo bay would make a great Budget Spacelines Option. ...and with a little fiddling there, the long bay can nicely fit three rows of 4 command seats on octo struts (though you could place them all individually if you want and forget the struts for extra weight saving). A short LF section in front, with short Mk1 adapters around the whole thing, a ram air on the front and rapier on the back.. couple of sleek wings on the sides and a trio of tail fins on the rapier itself. Clip a command pod and batteries in the fuel tanks, slap some solar panels on it (rapier has no alternator) and landing gear, and voila: superlight 12-man space transport that again can hit 80x80 and land again. That one also needs that power dive to push through the sound barrier with the rapiers... but it'll do it. No craft file for that though Feel free to put that one together yourself.

Minmus is slow enough to be able to kill your velocity just above the surface then quickly nose down 90 degrees to land on your wheels.. Mun has more gravity and so it's a little sketchy.. if you have plenty of SAS, that's do-able as well. Way back in the day before we had legs, people used fins to land on anyway.. it depends on a bunch of things though.. if you have a relatively light craft (which it should be if you're landing it on the Mun), then you should be able to carefully sit it down on its tail end, landing gear or not. Carefully.

Just take a look at the numbers in the part.cfg files. I haven't looked much lately, but in the old days it was really just a matter of intakearea. Some have a higher capacity of intakeair, but given how low those capacities are relative to how quickly it's burned, that really doesn't matter much.

yup.. best way is to cheat, like that (which I've been known to do myself on occasion).. alt-F12 "allow part clipping in editor". Otherwise, you don't do it symmetrically, and just work with the asymmetry.. I had a spaceplane with an "over and under" turbojet and LVT-45. By rights you can very carefully surface mount your engines and angle them so that they still push vaguely through your centre of gravity, that's one way. You can also make your craft quite long to minimise how much torque is applied, and add plenty of control authority - particularly SAS reaction wheels - to counteract it.