Tigga

Applying a negative value to nosecones works for now so long as you aren't into exploiting your mods. It's certainly not something that should be put in officially though as it's very hacky. A proper* drag model for tubes would be fairly easy to implement in such a way that nosecones would work. I guess it's not really a priority though. Non-tubes becomes a lot trickier. *Of course it depends on quite what you define as "proper".

I'm fairly sure nose-cones and air intakes fit into this category at the moment.

Nice and tidy - I like it. My only aesthetic issue visible on these screenshots is the struts connecting the lander to the the fuel tanks. Never been a fan of such long struts. If I'm not mistaken you have added parachutes to your boosters though. Always nice!

Really looking forward to new planets. I'm rather hoping we have some way of transferring fuel in orbit so that my interplanetary craft with landers don't have to be giant. I've been experimenting a bit and doing an orbital transfer, landing on a reasonably sized body, and then getting home is going to take a lot of fuel. I guess another option is a way to add empty (or rather, not full) capsules, which should allow us to send two craft then EVA across so we don't have to return the lander to get our little green men back home. I've also been practising some Mun slingshots - can save quite a bit of fuel if you get it right which is going to be quite useful. Trying to work out if there's a reliable way to get a double slingshot. Pretty sure I read that an back-end change would be needed to allow them to add new planets. It's often the way with game dev in my experience. First you get something that works without worrying hugely about making it generic, then you make it generic so you can extend it. This is much more so if you're going to be releasing early "test" versions. Hopefully old craft files will be compatible - I've just got my SSTO spaceplane working! I guess it won't take too long to manually transfer it.

This rocks!

Not so. We just need a way of either transferring fuel between craft, or docking craft to make one larger craft. Assembly in orbit. AFAIK most planes for RL interplanetary manned missions require some sort of docking manoeuvre for fuel/supplies.

I wouldn't put more than 4 legs on, it looks silly, but 4 is ok. If you are using ASAS it can cause you issues, especially combined with RCS/thrusters active when you touchdown. I don't find it makes me unstable as such, but if I mess up the landing I find I can abort a lot more easily with it disabled. I tend to just land on the nav-ball using mostly upward thrust (RCS fired linearly, and main engine) rather than using RCS to cancel out sideways motion (tends to roll me annoyingly).

I suppose sphere of influence isn't quite what I meant above. What would be really useful is a way to show your trajectory relative to a body. At the moment I think it does this once you intersect the SOI, but it'd be great if either there was an option to toggle it for a specific body, or the volume for which this display was toggled at was larger. Also - Arrowstar - that wikipedia article contradicts your statement. The scaling factor ap has very much to do with the distance from the sun.

Yeah - timing is going to be a real pain to get right without slightly more sophisticated navigation tools. On the plus side, it's likely those planets will have a much larger SOI. I'm rather hoping that they make the spheres a bit larger for planets. This should make it a lot easier to correct for a slight mistiming, as it'll show you hitting the SOI from quite a way out. Doesn't take much of a mid-course correcting to turn a near-miss into a hit.

In that case, I wouldn't have thought it would be in the second config. Dunno then, unless it's a Smart A.S.S. problem. Never used that myself.

When unpowered your craft should will be stable if the centre of mass is "above" your centre of pressure, unstable otherwise. That's "above" is not relative to the ground though - it's relative to your velocity. If you're trying to land tail down you'll want aero forces at the capsule end of the ship, mass at the engine end of the ship. The problem is that your centre of mass will vary massively depending on how those fuel tanks are filled. If you have a lot of fuel at the top you're going to be unstable, if you have a lot at the bottom you should be stable.

I'm currently trying to build a SSTO spaceplane. My main limitation at the moment is getting the thing off the ground because it lags like crazy. I've found rearranging parts even slightly can have a huge difference on frame rate. I've a feeling some self-intersections are the cause, or maybe wheel-ground "collisions". Graphics settings had absolutely no effect on performance for me.

Not sure about the splashdown, but the reentry looks cool.