Dekker3D

Welp, first thing I felt the need to reply to in ages. I liked the intro post, but quickly realized that it'd probably be ill-supported compared to FAR, and not worth installing... then I read the name Ferram4... and realized that this is from the same dude. Or dudette. I'm guessing it'll probably work as well as FAR then, since it does similar things and probably has a lot of the same codebase. I'm installing this, can't wait to try it. I love having a reason to use nosecones and fairings, but I dislike the mach effects and how different the physics are at high altitude compared to low altitude in FAR.

Personally, I'd like for the water to be Ferram'd as well. It'd make submarine style vehicles doable, and someone might be crazy enough to create a plane that can survive diving straight into the water... Not saying that this someone is me, of course.

So yeah. I put this together: I don't think something this simple and small requires a craft file or anything.. it just used the new multi-mode engines added in 0.23.0. No liquidfuel-only tanks because stock doesn't really have any that are small enough for this kind of short-term use, so it's just 1 normal-size and 1 double-size rocket fuel tank, 2 RAPIER engines, 6 air intakes and a command pod. It even has enough fuel left, and surprisingly also gets enough intakeair (despite the intakes being turned in the wrong direction for that), to turn on air-breathing mode again when it gets back into atmosphere. I managed to slow it down land it in the water: In other words, the new KSP has made SSTO surprisingly easy for stock rockets.

Here's a thought.. any craft with science modules or kerbals (status reports) on it will give an amount of science points that will be removed again if the craft is removed/destroyed/reclaimed. The amount of science points depends on its location. Removing these points can let your total go down below 0, and having multiple stations in the same place gives reduced results just like normal science does. It requires at least one antenna for transmission, any number of science-capable parts, and any one part that has produced power in the orbit you leave the craft at, when you go back to the space center. It also requires a drone or manned capsule of some sort. Of course, stations could also give additional permanent science points up to a certain maximum per location, for being there for a long time. I'd love to see some telescopes, by the way. And more science tools of any kind. Give us a bunch of random crap to haul over to the whole galaxy, and give less points for each item. Maybe make some of them really big, so you just take them up into space to scrape together those last few points.

A space plane generally uses wings for lift and has more efficient, atmospheric-only engines. As you go higher, the atmosphere thins out. To achieve a true orbit, you\'ll -want- to be out of the atmosphere because otherwise it\'ll just slow your craft down and decay its orbit again, but a spaceplane generally can\'t manouver above the atmosphere. To get an orbit with your spaceplane, put some traditional rocket engines on it.