RoboRay

First landing with the new design... Yeah... it is the hood ornament that makes this work.

Yeah, would be nice... especially since some of the analog gauges are duplicated several times. Still looks good, though.

I just put a science lab in orbit around the Mun and it needs a reusable lander for surface visits. Here's Engineering Test Article #1: For some reason, the theme song from that old TV show Sanford and Son starting running through my head.

Wow! That is a really fantastic looking and extremely functional design. The atmospheric pressure display on the airlock door is a really nice touch, as is the fact that you devoted internal volume to a space for an actual airlock instead of just putting a hatch on the wall.

A flat basin over in the desert with runway markings would be pretty neat.

Now that, my friends, is what we call "attention to detail."

If you do decide to make a replacement IVA for the Mk1-2 pod, I'd be thrilled if the seats were raised to the point where the pilots can actually see straight forward out the front windows. See FASA Gemini for a great example of how good the visibility through tiny windows can be.

Right. That's one of the niche examples I mentioned.

I don't have any trouble with Deadly Reentry using the existing Mercury and Gemini capsules without heatshields. Are you diving straight down into the atmosphere?

How many toroidal fuel tanks do you encounter in real-life? They do exist, for niche purposes where their form-factor is more important than their efficiency in materials required. But they are quite rare.

As a big fan of TT's Mk3 parts, I'm happy to see more that fill in some gaps in the selection or just offer alternatives.

"Jr." It's about the right physical size. I never docked Gemini to the larger docking ports because it looks so unrealistic.

Another way to reactivate the port magnetism is to quicksave and reload. That way, you don't have to move out of range and then come back in.

Is there a way to get the Orbital Information to display tenths or even hundredths of seconds for the Period data, instead of just whole hours/minutes/seconds? That level of precision is very helpful when synchronizing constellations of satellites to mitigate drift for years at a time under high timewarp. I can get very close by tweaking the engine thrust down to minimum and cutting the throttle right as the seconds counter flips to the next number, but I'd like to have a way of knowing that they all have identical periods (without installing KER for just that one thing).

That is my recommendation. I believe the old black version should still work, but the revised version in Wolfpack is (AFAIK) being actively maintained. You can delete the other parts if you don't want them. If that one becomes abandoned, I will look into bringing those improvements back to the old version.

If the Prograde marker is directly on the Target marker, the Relative Velocity displays the actual closure rate.

That would be redundant. The prograde marker already shows you your relative lateral velocity by its position... If it's to the right of your target, you're moving towards the right relative to your target. If it's below your target, you're moving downward relative to your target. You can infer the rate of the lateral component of your velocity by the distance between the markers in respect to your total relative velocity displayed at the top.

People that need to stack a dozen intakes on an SSTO to make it work just aren't trying.

If resource management is too complicated for the average player, how do they manage to handle orbital mechanics? But, anyway, of course resources are for advanced players. Gathering and using resources being too much for a beginning player is irrelevant. You don't need to do that to accomplish any particular mission. Even in the real world, with all the exploration we've done in our solar system, we've never used local resources ourselves. But when you do get to the point where you can manage that, it opens up a vast amount of new possibilities for advanced players without in any way impacting beginning players.

Well, not only will the CoM change somewhat during flight, the ideal angle of the control pod will also vary with craft design. There's probably a good compromise angle somewhere in the middle, though. What is the actual base angle of your engines? It should be a little less than that, so that the control angle isn't too far off with boosters attached.

Innovation: After wrestling with the craft's offset axis of thrust for setting my pitch attitude, I stuck a probe pod on the external tank and tilted it 20 degrees. Selecting "Control From Here" on the probe pod prior to launch puts the NavBall orientation pretty close to the actual thrust vector. When the ET is jettisoned, control automatically switches to the cockpit and the NavBall jumps to the new in-line thrust axis. I did a test launch letting MechJeb's autopilot fly the ascent, and it had no trouble flying the craft with the offset control angle. It took it a couple of seconds to adjust to the new angle when control switched to the cockpit, but it figured it out. A new control pod that's designed to radially attach at the angle of your shuttle engines might be worth looking into, though it is pretty easy to set it up manually as I did.

Space shuttle test flight... Overshot a little on the reentry, but that's no problem when you include a jet engine.

I finally got a chance to build a shuttle with your engines. I decided to do things a little differently, though, and included a jet engine for powered landings: I made it into orbit on the first test, but it was an abort-to-orbit situation... When jettisoned, the boosters smashed the wings. I still made orbit, but had to send a rescue craft up for the crew as landing without wings would be challenging. This led to a bit of a redesign. Test #2 was a perfect success. I should have brought along some cargo.

I also think breaking these staging and action group control parts out into their own mod separate from the shuttle engines and fuel tanks might give them more visibility and attract more users. They're fantastic tools. I would love to have a part equivalent to the Apollo LEM contact sensors... They wouldn't need to be part of the landing gear, of course... just something like a telescoping rod (similar to the existing antenna) that can be attached to the bottom or side of the craft and extended downward past the footpads of the landing gear. When it touches the ground (and possibly breaks), it trips an action group that we could assign to cut the engines. No more floaty bounces on the landing because we didn't cut the throttle at just the right moment.

I just turned Part Clipping back on. Its unfortunate that something buried in the Debug Menu is pretty much essential for using realistic construction techniques.