Vanamonde

The nice thing about Eve is that you can make the touchdown as gentle as you like by just adding more parachutes. I haven't made anything that can come back yet, but I've had a fair amount of practice landing things there (which then fail to take off again ), and yes, the current landing legs are FAR too wimpy for the local gravity and size of ship needed. The next design I try might have a few legs as shock absorbers, but will rely on static beam structures otherwise. One suggestion: add some legs to the inner columns to distribute the weight and impact. (You might already have some, but it's hard to see in that pic.)

I am confused. I thought the trick was to keep the engines running at altitude by spamming intakes, and while closing some would decrease drag, won't it also cause the jets to flame-out sooner? What fraction need to be closed, and why doesn't this cause earlier engine shutdowns? What did you do to my baby?! You can't see out of that cockpit, and there's no plausible way for the nose intake to duct air to the engines. I like to keep at least a certain degree of realism. And it needs the RCS system because, if I can get it to work, I will later want to be able to dock it to things, and I'd rather not take those off, balance it, put them back on, and re-balance it. But they make building/altering wings so much easier because it can be shoulder mounted without fiddling around with shift-WASD while moving wing parts. Also, the central fuselage can be altered or even removed without disturbing the wings. What is the nature of your objection? I agree that there's a weight penalty involved. Actually, no, it flies beautifully in plane mode. It requires a very light hand on the controls, but is stable and has a nice glide ratio after the rocket fuel is spent. That's mainly why I'm reluctant to make big changes to the configuration. I apologized already! Yes, you fixed that previous one for me: the one that was the size of Nebraska. Aren't you at least pleased that this one is so much smaller? Are you talking about the bounce after touchdown? Because other than that I've found it to be pretty easy to land, even on fairly rough ground. I haven't tried it on the runway, though. No, feels like cheating to me, but thanks anyway. Now you, you guys I like. All kidding aside, I very much appreciate the time all of you folks spent testing my ship and giving feedback. I will try various permutations of these suggestions.

I'm glad it was helpful. Yep, small ships can go long distances on small fuel supplies.

If somebody else can get that craft file into orbit, the design isn't the problem and therefore I am flying it wrong. Action 1 fires all the jets for maximal power on ascent, and action 3 starts up only the lower 2 jets because it doesn't need as much power to land and therefore can benefit from the slight nose-up torque of having the upper engine off. So during a flight the action groups are called upon 1, 2, then 3. What's the benefit to closing some of the intakes? It's got more than enough jet fuel, so the extra drag of leaving them open doesn't hurt at low altitudes, and you want them all open at high altitudes, right?

There are faces of a sort on three worlds, but Dres is not one of them. (One might be buried by current terrain fluctuations.)

Thanks Eric S, but that's actually one of my ships I built for newbies, so I always like to give them a little margin for error in thrust and fuel.

Yeah, yeah. I know I post a thread like this every few months, but I *STILL* can't make an SSTO plane that works. Here's my latest failure: Now my question is, is it failing to reach orbit because of the way I built it or because of the way I'm flying it? Craft file: http://www./view/rfyj7wgmxfrnffh/XSP-32.craft

Thread moved to suggestions & feedback. Carry on.

That is a handsome little plane, deadelitezealot. I have a similar one (piloted) that I've been using since .15, and the layout seems to work pretty well. Were you able to land it?

If you get into the game's settings file and change the line CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = 3 to CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE = 0 you will see your path past the planet displayed near the planet itself. Then it will be easy to place a maneuver node at the halfway point of the transit (most efficient place fuel-wise) and play with that to fine-tune the approach. Be warned, though, that entering the world's SOI while in warp can cause this path to get yanked violently from where you planned it, so be sure to drop to warp x10 or less for the SOI entry.

A station is simply a ship without engines.

Huh? After it smashes into the surface and the dribble of remaining fuel explodes, the only "surplus" left is a small hardpoint or two. You're going to be ejecting stages along the way anyhow; what difference does it make if the last one hits the surface?

I generally eject a stage just before the lander touches down, so that the lander is full for the return leg.

Here's a walkthrough for getting to the moons. Many of the mechanics for getting to other planets are similar. For the rest, try this.

The scale of the parts relative to the demands of a Mun-Kerbin return is such that it's more trouble than it's worth to discard parts on the way home. I mean, you can shave some weight off of something like this, but why bother?

Katateochi has no net access while he's relocating to a new house, so it may be a while before he checks in.

I'm moving this over to mission reports, where I hope you will keep adding to it.

Not that. You will find a certain friend on the forum with the same shipbuilding aesthetic.

Can you post pics of your ship? The game does take into account that the *net* thrust will be zero if an engine's exhaust is hitting another part of the same ship.

700NitroXpress, it's so cute!

The Jool system is unrealistically crowded, with SOIs that are a significant fraction of the distances between the moons. It's not at all unusual to find yourself bouncing around like a pachinko ball there.

Something similar happened to me recently while orbiting Dres, though I've never used the gravity hack. I transitioned to KSC, then back to my orbiting ship, and its orbital velocity was zero.

I am fine (well, that's a lie, I'm sick, but in good spirits). Anyway, I'm going to slide your post over to the Welcome section of the forum, Mdsujaan, where you can greet other newbies and be greeted.

Congratulations on one of the game's major milestones. (And moved to mission reports.)

To post a pic, upload from your screenshot folder to a free service like Imgur.com, then use the BBCode they provide in your post.