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They are safe, they do as you expect them to, but in some cases the default behavior works better. Like in a traditional rocket, fuel will be used from the top downwards. I initially asumed, this would be the case for planes as well (from the front backwards) and connected the aft fuel tanks via fuel lines to the tanks in front of them. The Engines where under the wing and connected to one of the middle tanks. That setup did work but due to the fuel lines the plane used the aft tanks first. When I removed the fuel lines the tanks where drained 2 at a time, one in front and one behind center of mass, more or less.

Here\'s an all stock design that works for me... I did a quick test run to mun and back, had enough fuel to do two mun landings, returned to kerbin, again enough spare fuel to do powered landing, but used extensive aerobraking...

I suggest this if the video is blocked for some reason where you are... (You need to view the video on YouTube though, it doesn\'t seem to work on embedded videos) Also I like the video very much, it\'s awesome.

I noticed, any craft created in the plane hangar will drain fuel tanks in a way so that the center of mass doesn\'t shift if possible. My planes started to fly a lot better when I removed some fuel lines that messed with that.

So after some messing around, I wondered if it might be possible to do a plane style touchdown on one of the methane lakes on minmus with near orbital speed... There is only one way to find out, said Jeb. If you have that kind of speed, it might even be possible to do the maneuver without rcs... but that would require insane timing. Turns out, you can\'t really brake with that speed and minmus\' gravity. Once you\'re out of lake, you\'re in trouble. If you touch down with around 90 m/s it becomes possible to stop the craft, but it is always difficult. It\'s in space, it lands like a plane. Spaceplane ;P

Why on Kerbin would someone eject a single spent rcs tank ??? Might it be that you purposefully littered the space around the planet with debris so it would eventually happen

Not to forget, the runways used for the carrier aircraft\'s can be used for all sorts of planes. If you build a launch pad somewhere, it will launch rockets, and that\'s it. On the other hand, a pure spaceplane will always be worse for delivering cargo into orbit. A spaceplane carries alot of dead weight that is plain useless once your out of the atmosphere. All this weight will decrease the cargo capacity. And that\'s why there are no spaceplanes around. I guess the game will have a pretty hard time to make a true spaceplane competitive once some sort of economy is in. At least for delivering stuff into orbit. Retrieving payloads from orbit is an entirely different story. That is probably most efficiently done with some kind of Space Shuttle like system. Unfortunately there aren\'t many things that require being taken out of orbit and brought back to the ground safely.

EVA Plan? I\'d like to put a ladder and a chute on some tank or something, eject that on sub orbital trajectory, EVA some Kerbonaut over to the ejected stage, hang on the ladder during re entry. Just to see if he makes it...

Obviously... but if you manage not to click on that little green arrow (I know its hard) then you can stay connected with something for a little while... with some tuning it might even be possible to push a sattelite on a different orbit or deorbit some junk or something. I\'m fully aware that you can\'t do the Apollo Moon Mission with this messy hack... That will have to wait until real docking is implemented. Until then, if you\'re bored, maybe you try to put something in orbit around kerbin or mun and catch it with a second vessel? It\'s not easy ;P

Why would I want to do that?

This afternoon I came across a pretty neat idea (by some dude called rustymcclintock), use lander legs to dock with something. Effectively grabbing it. Obviously, the standard Legs are not really set up to do that, so I modyfied them a little... Thus I present: The TT-G1 Docking Strut. Not that it would allow you to dock with anything in a remotly save manner, prepare to violently change the orbits of any involved party... (What did you expect ?) I just tried to use them to grab the half empty stage that brought me to orbit, and managed to do that, but the ship started to spin very fast and I lost control. (forgot to make screenshot, the one above is from an earlyer prototype) But whatever, I docked with something! If anyone wants to try them, here you go.

Intresting Idea... if the standard Lander Legs do not work, maybe a custom part could be made... (one part to grab, and some 'legs/arms' to actually grab it) Edit: Seems to work, see this: Three modified lander lags grab a single full fuel tank+decoupler: Press G again it\'s gone =P Note, this was done while under full throttle in athmosphere, but should work in orbit just as well right? I kinda messed up the 'legs' rotating though, need to fix that. I\'ll make a thread in addon release after that, its kinda off topic here...

Doesn't matter if fuel flows through radial stack decouplers or not. The reason is this: Every part of a ship connects to something (with the exception of the capsule.) The game assumes that parts are always lower than what they are connected to, with no regard of the actual positions. The parachute is considered lower than the capsule for example. This is of no great importance most of the time though, it only matters when it comes to fuel flow. Fuel does not flow upwards. So if you put a single tank on a radial decoupler it will be considered lower than the decoupler wich in turn is considered lower than the tank it's attached to. The fuel from the tank will never flow up through the decoupler into the tank. (Or so I think at least...) Unrelated thought: I have not jet looked at stuff since 0.9 came out... if I now can disable fuel flow for the part, I probably should make two versions, and the one that transmitts fuel gets some visible pipes and stuff... I will not disable fuel flow alltogether, if I do it will be a new part wich would be lighter and cheaper.

I've fixed the attachment and mentioned the repository in the first post. Sorry I didn't notice earlier... :'(

Stock only and the bloody thing actually flies ??? Now bring it into orbit and we name a crater after you... Mare DarkCow or something

2:09 and 2498.6m/s stock parts only:

This is not possible at the moment I think, any decoupler will let fuel pass through it. But you can avoid the problem if you put sas directly under the decoupler, I built a ship that uses that, works fine. (Ship is attached) I'm afraid thats the only way as of now... I'm looking into it though.

I remember laughing hard when someone used the lava defence mechanism to stop some weird flood, and in the process scorched the complete outside map... And the next thing that happens is some Elven messenger showing up going O_O, declaring war immediatly... Pure comedy genius! I also remember my first (longer) game, tried to do large scale underground irrigation, had a gigantic water reservoir, somehow it leaked and flooded the central staircase... wich was the only staircase... Many lives lost because I was not able to dig a second shaft quick enough... How am I supposed to fail that hard with nothing but rocketparts? Now if there where goblins in this game...

Surprisingly, the ejection force is the same as that of the stock radial decoupler, originally I had it a little higher. I turned it back down because all joints would break when decoupling (the attached stackes disintegrated into several parts... kerbal style rocketeering ho!) Also about side attachable engines, I built it basically for that purpose, now you can put seven engines one one tank, 10 seconds of kerbalsome propulsion (to the max) Appart from that, if you mount them on a stock fuel tank you practically get a four, five, or sevencoupler that holds fuel as well, all in one part 8) I may do a better mesh sometime soon (I dont like it that much somehow), could lower the ejection force then, if it's liked better.

I have just discovered: Fraps doesn't seem to be able to make screenshots when windowed Needless to say, I had it... Believe me or not, apokee was 150121, perikee 149780. Disconnected Sattelite with 90° angle to minimize speed change (at perikee to minimize plane change), followed it 40 minutes, landed at the KSC because I was afraid of random craft exploding... Powered Landing off course because sattelite had been on top of the capsule... Even the thruster stayed on. It was brillant. Complete Mission Time was about 3:30 h... But... no pic, didn't happen! ah well... It's as they say... after the mission is before the mission. This is my craft if anyone is intrested... It launches almost anything everywhere... exept maybe that silly moon thing... The second stage is a little overkill... I probably could do with 2 tanks and put the sattelite between that stage and the last stage, use that to deorbit and land with a parachute (in this config first stage brings me into orbit somewhere between 60 and 100k, from there I transfer, takes about two tanks of stage two, the third is for deorbit.) Edit: I just found out F1 does screenshots native... I feel stupid now.

Thanks to Nova, the bug is fixed! A Jeb to you! k8)

Yo check this: I call that 'Radial Stack Decoupler'. It's a radial decoupler that can be surface attached, but you can stack stuff under it. Model is not be top stuff and the texture miiiight be a little similar to the tricoupler's, but that makes it fit with stock parts pretty neat. Have a Screenshot: Have a Download (or try the KSP repository):

First Suggestion Worked like a charm. I saw FBX mentioned somewhere else but assumed it was avaliable as max plugin only... Ah well my bad. Also: Last time I tried that it gave me nightmares for about a month ;P To be clear the Problem was not that I couldn't import into Wings but I couldn't import into Blender. To merely convert meshes Blender is overkill anyway I guess. Wings3d just doesn't import .dae, it does export though... I will see how well that goes... if it doesn't I assume I can just use that FBX thing again. It seems to work great, I'm happy now thanks again!

So I decidet to make something for the game. Tried to import the radial decoupler model for reference. Failed miserably. Need Help. We'll short story long: I'm using Wings3d. Unfortunately it lacks .dae import (can import .obj though). Googled a little, learned: Blender can be used to convert between the two. Problem now is, importing fails with a generic 'Cannot create image.' error... (Blender 2.58) I found a absolute path to the texture in the .dae wich was pointing to HarvesteR's desktop... fixed that but I still can't import the mesh, same error. If I delete the whole section with the texture the error disapears and the import fails without error, I love when software does that... Is there anyone who could help me out here? Any way of converting from dae to obj would do I guess... I tried a second program, meshlab, but it only imports vertex data and no faces :-\ If all else fails, does anyone know how a radial decoupler is set up? I noticed some parts stay on the rocket when I blow one. Also, how far are two objects connected with a standart radial decoupler apart? Importing would make me happier than a bunch of numbers though... Thanks a bunch.

Has been on my desktop for ages now... I like how there is a spaceship in the middle of the screen and no-one ever notices ;D