foamyesque

Something that can be very poisonous in KSP, I've found, but that doesn't tend to be discussed often, is inertial coupling; masses above or below the CoM induce an instability into the system, and need wingspan in order to compensate. This is a problem real-life aircraft designers only started running into when they were trying to make high speed, very streamlined aircraft... and guess what KSP's spaceplanes want to be. The upshot is that through conservation of angular momentum, attempting a roll will produce a massive yaw moment, sufficient to overpower even very large tails -- large tails can in fact make the problem worse, by further unbalancing the plane.

Honestly the bigger challenge is getting through re-entry. If you can manage that, you're probably going to just float in to a landing. Fire up the aero GUI and aim for a ballistic coefficient of under 400 kg/m^2 (preferably below 350, to give you some margin). Putting a little bit of built-in angle on your wings will also help a very great deal, both in the glide and on the ascent. In terms of KSP 'wing area' units, my current machine has 80 for a landing mass of 135t, and works fine, with touchdown speeds of <30m/s. If anything, it's over-winged for the mass, but I need to cover the takeoff weight as well, which is around 400t.

I suspect that's just a coincidence -- I, for one, would not care to try aerocapturing at Eve at 9km/s.

Oh, you're going to need *some* struts, certainly. But if you need more than three over any particular connection, you've done something wrong. Three struts can lock a connection down in all six axes of rotation and translation, and I *generally* only ever need those to stiffen up the main stack of a rocket to prevent control point oscillations. Radially connected stacks usually need two max, one nose and one tail (often just one nose, or even none if they're directly bolted to the main stack instead of on decouplers), to keep them oriented to airflow. Wings can require some fiddling, since you can put a lot of aero-loading on them on Eve or with high-speed manouvers on Kerbin. Returning 7 people from Eve is a challenge, to be sure, as it's something of an awkward number. If you're using pods, it's a bit heavy for a Poodle top stage, but not enough to justify a Rhino, so you're probably stuck with a Skipper and its worse Isp, if you want to keep a single stack for the improved structural strength. Could always use lawn chairs, but that's a bit immersion-breaking.

The combination of 'elevated' and 'flat' is pretty rare. About the best I've found is sort of rolling terrain; with some aerodynamic control you might be able to pick the least-worst place. A plane has some advantages there with its massive cross-range ability, and because of its low CoG and wide wheelbase can be stable (when stopped) on much sharper slopes than many vertical-lift Eve landers.

You don't need *that* many struts, but a tank -> engine -> decoupler -> adapter is often wobbly. A pair or trio of struts to bridge the connection between the tank and the adapter will make the connection much less floppy.

You can, yes. It's really easy to mess up, though. My own suggestion would be to nab HyperEdit and use that to insert your fixed version into the orbit your old station had.

Doing some testing under hacked gravity, to get the levelling right: Gotta use the ramps as jacks to lower the nose when it's empty, but on flat terrain, anyway, it's close to working. The science rover rides a little high though.

Save-games are just text files. It's possible to edit a replacement into the same orbit, for example.

Unpowered gravity assists are basically throwing a tennis ball at a semi-truck moving at highway speeds

@RizzoTheRat: I don't use KAS, so I'm afraid that's out, and strapping stuff to the outside won't work since I'll need it to survive Eve entry.

@putnamto: This might be a dumb question, but on your tourist contracts, you do have a pilot-type Kerbal in the ship, right?

@XLjedi: I have built a version of your overhead gantry, which works pretty nicely. But I've noticed something irritating: After I run through a dock/undock cycle, my rovers wheels will not steer to anything close to their full extent; it basically triples my turning radius. Have you encountered the same thing?

I like using Minmus as a stop for my Eve missions. Because an Eve return ship is necessarily huge, if it's carrying its own ISRU (for refuelling at Eve), you can use it in the launch to LKO, and then transfer up to Minmus, refuel there, then proceed to Eve. Landing on Minmus using the RCS thrusters installed for control during the Eve entry never stops being funny On a Duna run though, even a Minmus refuel is sketchy. I think the most efficient (while staying relatively simple) profile would be an unpowered gravity assist at the Mun to put you into your Duna insertion orbit, then another off Ike on your way in, then aerocapture and apsis lowering. It'd be a real pain to plan out, though; easier to just load up a little extra dV.

I am skeptical of that, since putting something in orbit around the Mun requires more dV than a Duna transfer burn. A Mun-orbit refuel only saves you on your craft's mass if you're ISRUing and even then it's marginal at best because if you put your craft in orbit around the Mun, you could've got it almost into a Duna capture orbit (possibly all the way there with aerocapture), at which point you aerobrake the rest of the way. Minmus, on the other hand, requires less hardware in every respect, and breaking orbit requires far less than breaking orbit from the Mun. It's by far the better location for refuelling depots.

You gotta get your fuel resupply to Mun orbit if you do that, which saves you nothing if you've gotta haul it from Kerbin, and if you're ISRUing, you lose a lot less going from Minmus-surface->orbit than you do trying to loft it from the Mun's surface.

@Rocket In My Pocket: There's also Ike, at the other end, for deceleration.

Could just use the velocity editor until you're falling fast enough and trim your angle from there. That'd get you most of that 8km/s in one shot.

KSP doesn't care (much) about aspect ratio; the total lift is the same regardless of configuration. You do get certain inertial and lever-arm effects, but those aren't really relevant to 'do I have enough lift to stay up'. The drag differential is because your long-wing layout is using a bunch of struts, and the reason your delta-wing has a higher ceiling is because it has more wing area to provide lift. EDIT: Didn't notice you were using FAR. I don't recall if they model aspect ratio, but either way, the struts are murder and the delta wing has so much more wing that it'll still have more lift.

You also don't have to streamline the cycler, nor does it require high-thrust engines, whereas a surface-to-orbit shuttle is going to need both.

Airspeed and *air density*. Particularly, while the max temp depends pretty much entirely on airspeed, the rate at which heat flows into any particular part is strongly influenced by the density of the air around it. This is why it's safe to fly at orbital speeds basically indefinitely in the extreme upper reaches of the atmosphere; despite the external temperature due to airspeed being very high, the air's so sparse that your stuff will radiate heat away faster than it gets warmed up.

I have no idea, to be honest; I almost never use heatshields for anything. If something of my designs outside of early-career is hitting atmosphere, it's going to have wings on. I'll burn fuel to execute captures and even circularization (since shallow aerobraking takes ages and deep-aerobraking from highly-elliptical orbits has, as you are discovering, major heat management issues). It'd be interesting to find out, though.

Have you tried layered heatshields?

Excessive struts can do weird things where they keep bouncing tension around your craft until a strut snaps, and then you get bits flying everywhere, occasionally (as here) at physically implausible velocities.

I think you're probably overbuilding, @Zosma Procyon, and it's likely the root cause of your issues. You don't need all that to land on Eve at all. The radiators can shield parts behind them from thermal flux (like anything else) and can do so a bit more effectively than most because of their high temperature tolerances, but they don't actually act as active radiators during entry. They can be deleted entirely. Likewise you're running an awful lot of struts, which will ruin your aerodynamics on the way up unless you get rid of them. Me, I don't like parachutes; I actually think I've said this in another question of yours :D. They produce a jolt to the ship that can cause structural failures and you can't pick your landing spot. I'm big on winged landers, which if you fly a cobra entry on Eve will bring you to a stop really quickly; an 100x80 orbit will become an 80x0 trajectory by the time you reach 80km. Your huge inflatable heatshield drag should be doing the same... Are you landing fully fuelled? Because that makes things more difficult; your ballistic coefficient is much larger and it takes a lot more braking to execute a good entry or landing, and the stresses on the entire ship become harder to handle. Particularly with large Eve missions, ISRU is an alternative to consider; you can use your lander's tanks to get it to Eve, which saves enormously on launch, then land it empty/nearly empty, ISRU your tanks back up, and then leave. As far as returning six Kerbs go, I give you this: (Ship file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hh7h2jsqfn7isvr/Eve - 6man.craft?dl=0) It needs some work to make it a fully mission capable plane, but the ascent is easily doable; it'll take six Kerbs to Eve escape from 800m.