Markus Reese

For straight up space plane. The lifter technique is one of the better ones. What you want to do is build your spaceplace for your orbital and whichever space task you wish to perform. You want this light. For me it often consists of twin jet engines and four half tanks mounted close to the fuselage with the efficient engines. To get to space, I will make large lifting wings and put more jet engines on it as well as my orbital engines. The staging is as follows when I run this design. Use the jet engines and wings to get thrust up to the 15km usual max altitude. Jettison these engines and engage your orbital fuel assembly. You will want to get a steep upwards bank at this point and then fly it up and around just like any other rocket. SSTO with the new fuel changes tend to be a pain. They still can be done, but that is mostly for the challenge. There there is the way I love to do it. Currently, it does mean moving your ship file outside of the game, but it does make spaceplace builds alot more fun. First stage is design whatever space plane structure you wish in the space plane hangar. I do this so I can have my re-entry space plane and also set it up for VTOL on the muns. Test out your spaceplane, if you have the jettisonable VTOL engines, test your balance out. You want to do the testing lots because making changes after can result in the loss of alot of work. Now, what you can do at this point is rotate the plane so it points vertically and build your rocket setup to have it take off vertical from the runway. What I do is I minimize KSP, and copy the plane from the ship SPH folder to the VAB folder. You now have your spaceplane in your vertical assembly building. Just build up a vertical takeoff assembly and you are in space. I really like doing the copy and paste myself since it allows for the increased symetry options. At this point in my KSP gaming, this is the way majority of my rockets are now built just because I like the style and looks of spaceplanes landed on mun.

Two give you the exactg answer that allows you to maintain your rocket design and know the mechanics, it comes down to the removal of internal collisions. At current, the structural connections on the large parts are a little weak, but the actual structure of the rocket itself outside of the mounting point react different. This is why you might find large rockets running alot smoother. The large decoupler itself is also a bit weak for the output of the engines. Much similar to what henge says. My common re-inforcement to this is to use the small structural hardpoints (the non jettisoned ones) around the lower fuel stage. Use this to attach structural members to link past the coupler to the upper stage. Another thing to consider is the more complex fuel and thrust mechanics. The 2m high thrust engines often can be too much acceleration for a heavy rocket entering orbit. It sometimes helps to reduce your thrust to prevent wobble and structural collapse. You can do this by simply reducing throttle, or what I have done is fuel line link my outer ring of engines to my inner one. As I gain higher altitude, the outer tanks and engines run out and are jettisoned, the inner stage still has full tanks. Once in space, use the efficent small engines for your travelling. It might not be as quick, but you won't overpower your structure, and the increased fuel efficiency allows you to cut out some weight.

Once you do it, atmospheric braking will be all you will ever do. There are a couple of very strong advantages. First is the fuel usage. For example, departing from Minmus, if your departure vector is counter to minmus orbit, you will only be going about 270m/s Kerbin orbit velocity when you reach Minmus escape velocity. As result, it only takes very small amounts of fuel in a short burn to reduce speed to an atmospheric grazing velocity. It is so slow out there that if you wanted, you could completely stall all velocity and set up any orbital capture path you want around kerbin without too much problem. Second: Your kerbals always get home The main disadvantage is you need to be lined up correctly and get the correct altitude for your braking to prevent complete re-entry. Too low and you don't get to choose landing location. Too high and it can take a few passes. If you want specific landing locations, you need to plan in some maneuvering to get a permanent orbit capture. This can be done by simply burning directly planetside to round out your orbit. My favorite altitude is usually the 35km altitude. I never dip lower than that.

have you tried after reloading, to quickly switch to tracking station and back again? I know with fuel crossflow de-activation, the fuel will stop flowing and you need to do this to get it active again. Either that or another bug is breaking your rocket on re-load.

Ooh, a challenge! I actually have seen it quite a few times and keep forgetting to check it out.

For myself, it always was the position of landing gear in terms of pitch. Need to move them up. For heavy rockets, it might be required to use structure to space the gears away from the body to allow more pitch. Necessary for heavy/long spaceplane.

I agree one the previous statements about security. The multibillion dollar companies invest how much in their security and it is cracked before the game is even officially released. With KSP, and minecraft etc, their setup is nice because I can put the game onto a flash drive. When I visit friends or family, is fun to take the flash drive and let them try. No different than if I brought a console game over etc. If they want the full version or updates, then they buy it. Got a few people I know into it this way, plus is just fun to be at a friends house and take turns building stages onto a rocket to try and get it working! The current log in for updating is really the best security is going to be.

I have been wanting a new challenge for a bit, something of interest. VTOL landers, multiple landings, etc so far has all been done. Really the peak of my challenge was the one issued by bioman where with a single rocket I orbitted and landed on both moons with orbit captures, orbited kerbin's poles, and finished with a bombing run of KSC2 finished with it landing spaceplane style. To keep my personal challenges going, I have been re-doing old tasks, but with flashy and complex rockets. So to test creativity and piloting skills, design and post up a flight of your choosing. The goal is to combine a difficult flight along with style and flair to your own rocket's operation. From ground to mission complete. Mod parts make for awesome styling and creativity, and as such, not used since then it wouldn't be as much of a challenge. Stock parts only and feel free to share it up. Hints at things I look for: streamlining decoupling form FUNCTIONAL complexity Remember, it is a combination of ship and mission design. A purdy ship that barely gets into orbit likely isn't going to get my vote unless is really well done. Likewise, if you can fly to all the moons and orbit the sun consisting of nothing but a single stack of tanks, likely isn't going to get ahead since not really any style. So lets get creative! Some examples of what I do. Couple are older ones, I am trying to think of something new and orginal to build while waiting for other celestial bodies.

I don't use facebook really much myself. I believe you can link images, so here is my upload page that I put my best to. http://s529.photobucket.com/albums/dd332/KwKiller/Kerbal%20Space%20Command/

To do it without the map the hardest part is getting the initial kerbin orbit exact. So if you want to go to Mun, you can either plan a direct launch trajectory. That is wait until Mun is in a position where direct straight up liftoff will bring you there, or you can manually get what you think is an approximate speed. Do a standard horizon de-orbit burn to reach the approximate orbit. In terms of challenge, it really is more about looking up charts or slowly burning your way out to an approximate orbit path, then orbiting kerbin counter orbit to what you are aiming for then just some fine tune flying until you get gravitational capture.

I think what is happening is ogject clipping. What is happening is that either you need to rotate the part, or there is a collision conflict saying you cannot put part here. Usually with the multimount points, it is a matter of manually rotating into the correct position. And sometimes, the part just conflicts with another one. Without being able to see the exact parts or test, is tough to confirm for truth or not.

There is another way you can do it that use. First off note that this is really mostly for more in space just due to trying to control the rocket. If it is in atmosphere, you can try the following ideas as well, but less effective. First is to position your radial decouplers around the more towards the top. Have them hang a bit below the inner stage they are connected to. Usually this will "Kick" the top out. The lower portions will swing in a bit, but provided they are hanging past, and you are providing thrust when they disengage, it should kick them clear. Second task, and my prefered one since hopefully you can get out of atmosphere with your main boosters is to cut your engines. Be sure no SAS is going, and just spin your rocket. The gyroscopic effect will fling your stages smoothly clear, and then just re-apply thrust and coast clear. It is doable in atmosphere too, but is easier to lose rocket control. That being said, I have in other rocket building days, used the radial mount engines on an angle or SRBs to start my rocket spinning just before I would need to jettison the stage. The angled thrust if placed in the right spot will spin the rocket regardless of there being an ASAS. Engage, get spin started, jettison when fuel is out and ASAS hopefully can keep you going the right direction.

The best place also to start is images of your rocket. My personal designs is of course start with a basic lander. Use the one man capsule for getting the feel since the smaller size, lighter weight etc makes setup alot easier. Basic lander generally is as follows. It is stable, and really is efficent. Can be set up as follows Small parachute Small capsule 1m decoupler ASAS module 400 unit 1m fuel tank with the orbiter engine (the small one) Attach to that: Four radial decouplers 200 unit fuel tank with orbiter engine each decoupler Fuel line from 200 to the 400 tanks One lander leg each tank The basic premise of this is the most simple lander. On your landing stage, you have all five fuel efficent engines running. The lines ensure you maintain your main tank for any maneuvers or flying needed to get back to kerbin. A solid lander is needed since the rest of the rocket's design will be used to get you there. Other way is simply land on the single engine without the radials, but if you accidentally use too much fuel working on landing, things can go bad. In your design for any rocket, the trick is to break it up into sections to perform tasks. This is how I got started. Work from the last part of the flight to the first part you add will be the last used typically. For Mun, the following list I used: Kerbin Landing Kerbin Orbit Capture (note, the fuel efficient way to do this is graze the upper atmosphere to slow down, not use engines) Munar Liftoff Munar Landing Munar Orbit Capture Kerbin To Mun Transfer Kerbin Orbit Launch If you have the lander set up, then barring catastrophic failure, your kerbals can always return alive. While doing this design, you will find two things might happen. One, you don't have enough fuel or power to complete that task in the list in which case you land and head back to the hangar. (note if you are not concerned about accuracy or choosing where to land, you don't need to worry about getting an actual orbit of the Mun or Kerbin on return). Second is you have enough power or fuel to complete the task which can give you a little nudge on the next one. Use your orbit or liftoff fuel in what would be the next stage. If excessive fuel is still had, you can then trim that weight out. On your initial liftoff, the solid fuel boosters are excellent. Your liquid fuel boosters are running less efficient at low speeds and in atmosphere. So a couple of booster stages with solid boosters can be very handy for your liftoff. Even some intermediate liquid boosters work well. Use their fuel tanks to help feed other stages. A tank that has a fuel line feed will aways have the fuel lined one drawn from first. This way you can have secondary engines drawing from a jettisonable fuel supply before using a main supply. This does twofold tasks. One, it gets you a long fuel supply time for your engines. Second is that you have plenty of thrust to help get away from the heavy gravity and atmosphere, then can just jettison the weight. Hope this helps. This is the process I use for building my rockets, and most of the time works. Start at the end, and work your way to the start, fine tune and you will gradually keep progressing further til you are at your goal. Also be sure to read some munar landing threads, they are quite beneficial if you don't want any "fun" surprizes on your landings.

The aerospike engine is just more prevalently known due to the thrust the aerospike puts out. Being capable of lifting off and getting to the moon with no throttle practically using the aerospikes. No throttle given, no fuel really used.

Yes, the two above posts are the ideal ones for any moon landing. A wide landing base makes for a much more stable landing. Typical lander consists of four small half tanks radially coupled around one engine to get you back to kerbin. use the smallest engine will provide easily landing and lift off thrust. By putting your lander legs on these tanks, landing is very stable. The deceleration phase, you don't want to be using your landing engines just yet. It is good to have some fuel in a more primary drive still from when you left kerbin for this task. To keep your horizontal speed, just make sure your ship is alway pointing in the ADI reverse direction indicator. manually controlling with a fine touch will remove any horizontal velocity, and use mild throttle control to keep your speed from being too high the last bit. For last few thousand metres, I like around 40m/s decent. When it starts getting closer to ground, slow it to less than 4m/s

I concur, everything to me looks like the Kosmos parts pack. It has with it the long arm RCS parts.

That crater is the first non KSC munolith I found. Completely by accident. I chose that crater at random when 0.16 came out for my first EVA travel. While walking around I saw it in distance and relocated my lander to near right on top.

What I have been working on of late for at least atmospheric landings is fiddling with VTOL spaceplane landers instead of parachutes. Right now my biggest hinderance with the kerbin tests are the way landing gears keep settling into the surface of the planet. Going to be testing a new idea tonight by using two ships to travel with. This way I will only need to build an SSTO for getting off the planet, and the second ship will provide de-orbit burn. Guess I am going to have to practice my orbital interceptions.

I use a combination of engines to create the initial lift on stock parts. All 2m engines have thrust vectoring. On the small engines, I used for initial stage a tricoupled stack of tanks with the -30 thrust vectoring. On those, I mounted another set of the same with a radial decoupler. Crossfeed the -30s outside to the inside. I also mount to each of the tri coupled two stacks of the -45 non thrust vectoring engines. Initial launch has the outer engines firing. Fuel lines crossfeed from the -45 engines to the -30 booster stack. Use solid boosters as well depending on your satellite weight. With enough tanks, stack of 5 I find works well, the -30s will get you into a thinner atmosphere. When they jettison, ignite the inner ring of engines. It should be able to get you into orbit if my calculations are correct in my mind. It is similar to the booster staging I use on my munar ones, but mostly I have used the 2m in combination with the 1m parts to lift my heavy and overly complex designs.

I know of three specific causes of lag. One is simply really large rockets and the computer stresses all the physics. Two for me used to be caused by having alot of persistent debris in the area my computer had to independently track. Lastly, if you have been using mods and updating the version. Occasionally conflicts, errors or bugs can occur causing permalag. Try a clean unmodded install and see if lag continues. All mods, download .17 updated and only use the plugin from original source, not the ones with the mods if it can be avoided.

I never used mechjeb myself. One way to really help with capturing orbit, is use atmospheric braking. When you leave the mun, try to burn in opposite direction of munar orbit. This way you are only moving in orbit of kerbin of a few hundred m/s. At this speed, it is easy to change your orbital intercept since small velocity changes have a large effect on your Po. Set your orbit to graze atmosphere. Try and avoid less than 37km in my experience if you want to use it to help capture orbit. The atmosphere will slow you down so capturing orbit takes alot less burn. On re-escape from atmosphere; once you are in space, if you burn directly towards planet, it will circularize your orbit.

This is something I have started to make alot more use of. Jettisoned boosted fuel storage works excellent. Having outer tanks and engines that feed your core engine does wonders for most stages. Especially for landers like you said. A grouping of outer engines when landed then has the bonus of getting that initial liftoff push. On that topic, the smaller tank groupings and engines work really nice for that I find. My favorite lander atm for the large command module has a half 2m tank with the small 2m engine. Around it 4 of the 400u tanks with the small 1m engine and fuel tanks running to centre. It works very well for a 1m lander and ensures the full 2m tank.

Saw your comment about m/s. How did I miss that before? Landing speed on a light rocket is <4m/s. For my large ones, I will feather the throttle and manual control it to less than 1m/s. That speed is probably your largest issue going right now.

A seat for those who didn't make it: Valentin Bondarenko Theodore Freeman Elliot See Charles Bassett Apollo 1 -Gus Grissom -Edward White -Roger Chaffee Clifton Williams Robert Lawrence Sergei Vozovikov A ship for those who didn't return: Soyuz 1 -Vladimir Komarov Soyuz 11 -Georgi Dobrovolski -Viktor Patsayev -Vladislav Volkov Challenger -Greg Jarvis -Christa McAuliffe -Ronald McNair -Ellison Onizuka -Judith Resnik -Michael Smith -Dick Scobee Columbia -Rick Husband -William McCool -Michael Anderson -David Brown -Kalpana Chawla -Laurel Clark -Ilan Ramon In the end all will be together, let their eternal marks be heard. Yuri Gagarin Donald Kent Allan Shepard Leroy Cooper Wally Schirra Neil Armstrong ...and those whom are not listed

I find that large SSTO is extremely tough. I stopped doing that and changed to a jettisonable main booster stage. I also want to point out that with the 0.16 patch, SSTO that are large are much more difficult to build since you need more fuel tanks and the thrust changes, etc. On a large SSTO, you need to position the rockets on the side so you can have the fuel tanks for them come forward down the side to maintain a balance. I don't have any pictures of my 3man SSTO unfortunately, but it uses four boosters consisting of four tanks and the same engine you used just to get orbit. I had the same flip around problem on re-entry as you. Sometimes I can get a plane that doesnt, but getting frustrated, I began mounting decoupling drag chutes to the rear.