RoboRay

Honestly, anything Niven and Pournelle collaborate on turns into the defining work of whatever genre or situation they're writing about. Top notch. Yep. It was in battle seconds after launch, so that was the only way. The big concern was whether or not the propulsion-bomb feed would actually work. While the first bomb was a given, being preloaded on the ground, the second one would be loaded in flight. And if the feed failed, you were already a mile up.

The Robodyne Control Moment Gyroscope provides three-axis torque in response to command inputs for rotational control of the spacecraft. The amount of torque added is equivalent to a manned cockpit. Some electrical power is consumed by the gyro. Install as many CMGs as desired. Extremely massive spacecraft may benefit from multiple gyros. Download: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/control-moment-gyroscope-4/ I am not an artist and, yes, it's using the old abandoned original ASAS model/textures. I think it's a reasonable fit for this, considering what a real CMG looks like. However, since Squad owns the art assets, please do not redistribute this part anywhere that Squad does not control. Feedback is welcome!

There's your problem. Diminishing returns on added mass are huge. You don't get equal performance by doubling the fuel and engines, you get less. It's far easier to improve performance by removing mass (even fuel and engines) than by adding mass. Even the stock version is oversized for a one-seat SSTO plane. A one-seater should come in under 10 tons. Even a two-seater is doable at 12 tons or less: Every little bit of weight you can shave off by using fewer engines, smaller engines, and less fuel will make reaching orbit easier.

Staggered wings are quite common in biplanes.

Yes, steam boilers for RCS, on an atom-bomb propelled spacecraft. I loved Footfall. It's a fantastic place to start for anyone who hasn't read any of Niven's work, as it's a stand-alone story. Seriously, it's a must-read. I'd forgotten how they varied the acceleration by delaying the detonations... that could really simplify things and only require one type of bomb in the magazines. I wonder if the plugin could read the throttle setting and set the delay based on that.

Only if someone wants to make it. I can maintain the compatibility of this mod with part.cfg edits, but I'm not an artist. If anyone does want to produce replacement texturing for this part, I'll be happy to incorporate it.

It's not what you say... it's how you say it.

I wonder if a better way to trim that kind of design might be a couple of half-full fuel tanks, and you transfer fuel back and forth as ballast.

The Quantum Struts mod will allow you to add struts in orbit.

Probes: Crewed: Rovers:

Departing Kerbin... Ascent stages: starting TWR of 1.7 +/-0.4 Insertion stages: starting TWR of 1.0 +/-0.3 Injection stages: starting TWR of 0.3 +/-0.2 Remember that TWR increases during the burn, so it's OK to start a little lower than what you think to be the best choice.

Asymmetrical thrust? If the thrust vector of your engines is above the CoM, it will push the nose down. It can be a little off for jet engines, as long as you have sufficient aero control to hold the desired attitude, but putting it in line with the CoM simplifies things for you. Or, you may just need a little adjustment to your elevator neutral position. Angle the rear-most horizontal control surfaces a notch or two upward and see if that helps.

But OMG, the part count!

"Compatible" and "compliant" do not mean the same thing, either. If it works, it's compatible. If it accomplishes that in a particular, specified way, then it's also compliant.

Full at launch. The launch vehicle was a single Jumbo tank and Mainsail under the sphere for the third stage; a ring of six more Jumbos and Mainsails for the second stage, crossfeeding fuel to S3; and a ring of 12 more Jumbos with Skippers around the outside for the first stage, crosfeeding fuel to S2 and S3, with all engines (except the four little orange radials on the sphere) firing off the pad. I did use a little fuel out of the sphere for orbital insertion and circularizing (with the little orange radial engines, as the last Jumbo and Mainsail was jettisoned with Pe at 20km for no orbital debris), but it was still nearly full upon reaching the 100km final orbit. S3 had a TWR of less than 1:1, so it was a little marginal, but I managed to get it up there. The station itself's TWR with it's dinky little thrusters is something like 0.03:1, so circularizing took a while. I plan to bring up some more habitation modules and maybe another big sphere tank to complete the station. So, figure two more big launches.

My flight school was good for something. Either would work. Keep in mind that the effectiveness of your flight control surfaces increases as they get further away from the CoM also (more leverage around the fulcrum). So, shifting the CoM forward would make your rudder and elevator surfaces work better, too. You could put it point backwards behind a fuel tank. Better yet, stick it anywhere if you use the little square truss to make an attachment point and jam the avionics cone on top of it. It's a variant of the ASAS, so it won't do anything if the regular ASAS is still installed, though.

Docking mode is generally an inferior control arrangement. You're combining two different sets of commands onto a single set of buttons and toggling between them. Which can be usable, sure, but you have to make sure you're in the right setting before doing anything and you can only rotate or translate at any given moment, not both simultaneously. Staying in Staging mode and working the rotational controls with the left hand while the right hand operates the translation controls offers better control over the spacecraft. The secondary advantage to this two-handed approach is that it forces you to take your hand off the mouse, so you stop working the camera around. The camera view is a distraction and provides less useful data than the NavBall. One hand to rotate, one hand to translate, and both eyes on the NavBall (or the Docking Camera, if you install that mod)... that's how to dock.

New fuel depot is open for business.

The first crew for the new orbital HÄÂlau Depot arrives, aboard a Malihini Orbiter spacecraft. (Yes, I've tired of Greek mythology names for my craft and am switching to Hawaiian.) LKO's new fuel station is open for business.

EVA on the pad to get rid of unwanted crew.

No, not unless it's extreme. You can tilt your elevator surfaces on the back of the wings upward one notch to give the nose a natural upward deflection, and Avionics or ASAS (or manual trim) will hold it there nicely. The reason CoL must stay behind the CoM is because lift is also drag. If you have more drag behind your CoM than in front of it, your craft will naturally "weather-vane" and keep the pointy end out front. This is positive stability. If the majority of your drag is in front of the CoM, the craft will actively try to spin around backwards. This is negative stability, and is pretty much never desirable. If the drag is perfectly centered on the CoM, your craft has no preferred orientation in respect to the airflow. A neutrally stable craft is extremely maneuverable and even harder to keep pointed in the direction you want to go, which is great for fighters and aerobatics, but not so good if you are trying to go space today. On the other hand, if you put the CoM too far out in front of the center of drag, the craft can become so positively stable that it becomes difficult to make it turn. I find that putting the CoL and CoM markers just barely touching each other works well for my designs. It may work better now... that was back on 0.18 when I tried putting them on square trusses for radial mounting. As soon as I'd dock, they'd bend and tear off. Go ahead and try it, but if it doesn't work you'll know how to fix it.

Because you don't need to install third party software to open .zip files... support is built in to modern OSs. Not to mention, the superior performance of .7z is meaningless for something as small as these files. If you want a tiny niche audience for your mods, stick with .7z. If you want everyone to use them, switch to the standard. I was interested in your lights, but I guess that's just not meant to be.

Move your CoM forward, away from the CoL. CoM is going to shift backwards as you burn off jet fuel, and you're already critically close to neutral stability. Burning off the rocket fuel will probably bring it back forward a little, but not much, and you're not making it far enough for that to help, anyway. And, just so you know, that docking port will probably rip off when docking. I've never gotten the shielded ports to work well when radially attached. An Avionics Package instead of the ASAS might also be more useful.

Conic patch modes change how the trajectory information on the Map is displayed. In Mode 0, when your trajectory enters another SOI, instead of showing your projected trajectory in the location the body will be when you arrive, it shows it where the body is right now. This allows you to focus on that body and zoom in close, to see exactly how you're changing your trajectory within that SOI. The only issue with it is, zoomed out at the Map, your trajectory appears to dead-end when it hits an SOI boundary and magically reappears elsewhere, wherever the body is now. So, your trajectory is a series of dashed arcs instead of one long continuous line. This is not the default conics mode, probably, because it may be more difficult for somebody unfamiliar with orbital mechanics to understand what's being presented.

The sandwich is still not man-rated. Crumbs... crumbs floating everywhere!