Col_Jessep

The most important part in my opinion is to avoid stalling. Your flying brick wants to go down mostly and you have to let it more or less. If you need to pull up or yaw do it slowly and with care. I would recommend to run the engines at 10-20% until you are finished with setting up your landing approach. Design issue I think. A quick solution would be to press F and wait until the wobbling stops then release the F key again. Long-term you will probably need to cut back on control surfaces, disable reaction wheels in the cockpit or my personal favorite: use MOAR struts. You have air brakes on your wings. Ferram says they are over-powered so you might as well use them. Toggle the air brakes with your regular landing gear brakes and use them to slow your spaceplane down before you land. Keep in mind that your spaceplane will be harder to control after breaking so don't slow down too much. 80m/s should be just fine to land. [ib4 Ferram tells us how to do it properly ]

I'm not exactly sure how putting things like batteries, solar panels, landing gear and ladders in the middle of the tech tree is supposed to help new players. I wonder how many new players just made it into orbit or into a transfer orbit to the Mun just to realize at some point that their rocket is uncontrollable for some reason. I'm saying 'for some reason' because I doubt a new player will realize immediately what went wrong. There are really some interesting design choices that lead me to believe the whole science aspect is aimed at players who were bored with sandbox mode. If it is indeed aimed at new players it should be overhauled.

Agree 100%.

Let's be honest here for a moment: The second you get solar panels the KSP career becomes rather dull. Flying to the Mun and Minmus with a limited supply of el. charge is at least a bit of a challenge.

I love the idea Nova, thanks for sharing it!

I recommend not to do it. After my successful Eve return I felt empty for some time. It felt like there was not much to accomplish anymore. I had landed 2 Kerbals on Tylo already so Eve was the last big challenge to be had. I haven't been to Eeloo yet and I promised myself not to go there. Eeloo is off limits. The last place I haven't been.I'll keep it that way until we get more planets/moons. On the up-side: After Eve I started to look into mods. Nor just KER and Precise Node anymore but FAR, B9, Kethane, Mission Controller, DRE... They not only brought the fun back but added new challenges at every turn. I'm saving life support and remote stuff for when I'm getting bored with FAR nad DRE (aka not anytime soon ). I'm not scared by any planet but I respect them all. Those with atmospheres a little more since FAR/DRE.

The new parts are so beautiful!

I agree with Murph. Bac9, your parts are stunningly beautiful and the best way to build heavy duty planes/SSTOs but getting them off the runway without spontaneous gear disassembly is a challenge. A heavy duty gear set would be awesome, especially if it had some additional ground clearance for large/long spaceplanes. I know, my 220t LKO refueling SSTO is probably a bit excessive but jeb really enjoys flying it... I got it working and my next goal is to make it look nicer (hide the struts whenever possible) and to optimize its flight performance in FAR. Thanks bunches for this awesome mod!

Not as long as you have 100+% air on your intakes. But in 0.23 the jet engines don't flame out at 100% anymore, you can bring them down to 70% or something before they flame out. It seems they don't produce the amount of thrust when they get closer to their flame out which can lead to swaying of your plane. Nothing a reaction wheel can't keep in check though - at least in the design I tried.

I build another minimalistic SSTO for you Sirine. I'm afraid it's even uglier than the first one. Meet The Gnat: 12 parts. I might be able to bring that down to 11 but I doubt it. I made orbit in 7:39. Col_Jessep Craft Name: The Gnat Part Count: 12 ((150-12)*10= 1380) Time to LKO: 7:39 MET ((10-7.4)*5=13) Fuel Remain: 20 ((20/10) * 3 = 6) Total score: 1399 Craft File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2449177/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/Gnat.craft And here is a video in case the pictures didn't scare you away already: I apologize, I'm not proud of the design. It should come with mind bleach... PS: Maybe we could give everybody 50 parts to use freely without counting them for points? I'd love to build a nicer looking SSTO but for every part I save I get so many points...

My RCS thruster is in the nose under the air intake: It was the only useful place for it and I got it to stick there by zooming in very closely until I was 'under' the intake. No dev cheats used.

Place Bill and Bob at the end of the runway and Jeb on top of the VAB in a VTOL?

What I find really discriminating and offensive is that nobody even mentioned that there are no cats in KSP. I want KATS!

I just took my old Hurricane II out for a spin. It was designed as a way to deliver small probes into LKO and I remember that it took around 50m/s to get into orbit. Now I'm down to 27: I wonder if I can get into orbit on jets alone. Not bad for 72 units of liquid fuel, eh?

I like your SSTO design a lot. Good luck with Eve!

No idea what happened with my download link. Here it is again: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2449177/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/The%20Ugly%20Duckling.craft PS: Ah, the forum updated the text but not the actual link in my first post. Col_Jessep's Entry: Craft Name: The Ugly Duckling Part Count: 21 ((150-21)*10= 1290) Time to LKO: 9:10 MET ((10-9.1)*5=4.5) Fuel Remain: 209 ((209/10) * 3 = 62.7) Total score: 1357.2 Craft File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2449177/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/The%20Ugly%20Duckling.craft mi9vOvDHPE8

I now want an ion drive EVA suit covered in solar panels to zip around on Minmus all day. Note: make sure to plan ahead for the night...

I recommend to copy your KSP folder and install FAR on the 2nd copy to try it. You will love it once you get used to it, I'm sure! =3Here is my SSTO entry: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2449177/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/The%20Ugly%20Duckling.craft Time to orbit: 9:10, fuel reserves: 209LF, (210 really but I overshot... ) 21 parts; All parts are stock. Any mods I currently use should not affect stock performance: Kethane, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Precise Node, Enhanced Navball, Docking Port Alignment Indicator, Mission controller and Safe Chute. And I made a Youtube video for you: You probably just want to skip to the timestamp where I circularized into LKO at 8:15. No matter what, I probably win the price for the ugliest SSTO so far. Oh, the RCS port is in the nose under the intake. It's really the only place I could think of where it is useful and doesn't cause rotation problems: Cheers! PS: I'm calling it The Ugly Duckling - if you need a name. And I'll probably enter a better looking SSTO later.

I just tested SafeChute with 0.23 on Kerbin and it seems to be working just fine as expected. Great mod btw, thanks!

I hope Bac9 updates B9. Building planes without B9 would take the fun out of KSP.

The -1m/s vertical speed are very good. The horizontal speed might be your problem. How fast are you going when you touch down? PS: Do you have a screenshot?

I completely forgot about the FAR stats! Nope, 600% from those little flaps certainly seems a bit ridiculous. I checked: If I turn the whole ship sideways I get a little bit more than 200% increase of drag - which seems to be correct. The flaps however...Well, maybe we will get a more reasonable stock aerodynamics model at some point and those crazy OP parts can be adjusted. Not holding my breath though. Thanks for the answers and explanations guys! You have helped a lot! And thanks for your awesome mod Ferram! Once you go FAR you never go back. Okay, I'll put a dollar in the Horrible Pun Box now...

Agree 100%. The Mainsail is overrated.I wrote a little post for somebody else a while back to show how you can easily get the power of a Mainsail and more with the smaller engines: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/60251-Tutorials-or-help-with-my-heavy-lifters-Stuck-%28?p=816791#post816791

I agree that the air brakes are too cheap and too light. But instead of modding the mod I might go for some expensive and heavier visual fluff. Maybe one of the B9 cockpits. If it was just about the costs and weight I would just slap the inflatable heatshield on, it's cheap, light and reusable I think. That would be boring though. I don't want to add a giant part that will be only used very occasionally. They heat up but not too badly, 500-600°C, which is quite manageable. The forces on the air brakes miniscule. Each one only provides 0.03kN drag compared to the 30+kN of the large tank (at the time you hit the thicker part of atmo). The trick is that they just give you that little amount of drag in the upper atmosphere that you need to go from Mach 6.5 to 5.8 or something. Doesn't sound like much but it's enough to make reentry survivable. I can even retract the flaps when I hit the thick part of the atmosphere. If I retract them at 32km they already have slowed me down enough to survive reentry. Keeping them deployed after that is just to keep the crew from turning their helmets into barf bags... Now there is a challenge I want to try! So if you would design the drag brake like a ring around the ship that increases the radius and has no sharp edges the shock flows would be reflected away from the ship, right?

Hi! TL;DR: I'm using air brakes from B9 to increase my drag in the upper atmosphere. This decreases my speed faster and the ship doesn't heat up as much. I'm using a good number of mods and I'm working on a way to build my Kethane Nomad. Basically, a science vessel that can fly to another celestial body, scan for Kethane, land on a deposit, drill, refine its fuel and take off again. I'm also using Mission Commander so money is limited, fuel is very expensive and I want a way to explore a lot without straining my budget too much. Taking off from bodies with an atmosphere is not ideal with the current design, so no need to think about aerocapture. Aerobraking however would be really nice, especially in the Jool System. The obvious solution would be ablative plating since the inflatable shield is too large and might spin my Nomad out of control. I wasn't too fond of bringing several ablative heat shields or to only have a limited amount of aerobrakes. The heat during reentry is mostly caused by the compression of the air in front of the ship, not by friction. Slowing the vehicle down with increased drag should therefore help to keep the temperatures down, right? Time for testing! I brought a 24 ton vehicle into LKO. Its AP is around 90km and PE at 30km before I decoupled the engine. All tests were done from the same quicksave and without any steering/burning on my part. I point the nose retrograde and disable SAS when I enter the upper atmosphere. The winglets and air brakes keep the vehicle pointed retrograde. Test 1. A vehicle of comparable size and mass braking in Kerbans atmo without air brakes or ablative shield: The vehicle spontaneously disassembled itself a split-second after I took the screenshot. This is probably what my Nomad would experience during aerobraking in Jools atmo. Test 2. Reloaded the quicksave and didn't separate the ablative heat shield before reentry this time: The heat shield is completely spend but the vehicle survives. Test 3. This time I deployed the 22 air brakes before I enter atmo: The vehicle heats up to ~850°C which is still within acceptable parameters. Aerobraking should be doable. A nice side effect is that the increased drag slows you down before the parachutes deploy. That means fewer chutes... <3 Test 4. Air brakes and ablative shield: Only a third of the ablative shield is used up instead of 100% without air brakes! The temperature stays under 400°C the whole time. My question: Is this a legit way to deal with reentry heat? Would it work in real life? Or did I just stumble about a weakness in the way those mods integrate? My idea was to slow my ship down as much as possible in the upper atmosphere. Scott Manley (who else?) gave me this idea when he turned his space shuttle in the upper atmosphere left and right to increase drag and kill velocity before dipping into the thicker parts of the atmo : What are your thoughts?