Wayfare

Looking at your pictures, I've had more success with planes that have their center of lift very close to their center of mass - maybe a little bit behind, but certainly not as far as yours. Inside the "ball" at least. I think yours would want to tip down on its own. As for runway sway - correct with your rudder (A or D). Even a "perfectly balanced" plane will have its slight quirks one way or another. It should even out once in flight.

MechJeb and Kerbal Engineer will give you a lot of help. One mod I really recommend is the Protractor, which takes all of the nasty NASA math out of your hands. After all, you've got highly qualified pinheads flight controllers down at Mission Control to do those for you, right? The best part about the Protracor is that it gives you a line in the map screen indicating your closest approach - so even if you don't have an encounter just yet, you have something to go on and adjust your trajectory to.

NERVAs take a loooong time to burn anything of any mass around - but they're so fuel efficient, they're really the engine of choice for interplanetary journeys. Just remember to start your capture burn (the one that turns your fly-by into an orbit) well ahead of your Duna periapsis - take ten minutes as a ballpark number. A decent 100km parking orbit gives you a lot of room to consider your final landing. Go for a shallow descent so you maximize the effect of Duna's thin atmosphere slowing you down. And don't aim for a mountain If you're feeling cocky, try dipping your inital periapsis a few km into Duna's atmosphere and see if you can get an aerobrake (using the atmospheric drag to slow you down) to get you into a capture orbit. There's a few mods out there that will really help you to get a good capture, offering you things like orbital information and closest approach figures, but I don't want to spoil your manual experience just yet. Shout when you want them

Surface altitude matters on Duna - you can get quite a bit of mileage out of parachutes if you aim to land at a low spot. That said, due to Duna's low gravity, a powered landing should be doable, especially if you don't need to reserve detla-v for the return trip. Why did you land so hard? Did you run out of fuel? If not, maybe try and use the quicksave (F5 = save, hold F9 = load) to practice your landings.

Jebediah is the Space Program.

Uncontrolled rolling is caused by asymmetry. The hard part is figuring out what, ecaxtly, is asymmetrical on your rocket. Common causes I've found on my rockets: - Uneven struts causing boosters (whether solid or liquid) to torque to one side or another. Be aware that fuel lines also function as struts! - Uneven thrust due to poor staging design. Make sure the center of thrust remains in line with the center of mass throughout the stages. - Uneven fuel consumption due to poor fuel line routing. If one side's tanks drain faster than the opposite side's, you're shifting your center of mass.

Of course, that's one Kerbal meter... [ATTACH=CONFIG]34596[/ATTACH]

My forum search turned up a handful of previous land speed record challenges, but none in 0.17, and none with pure stock parts. So... The challenge: achieve the highest speed over land! The rules: - Stock parts only. - Start must be from the KSC runway (tip: turn your command pod/cockpit 180 degrees in the SPH to start pointing away from the sea). - Vehicle must maintain ground contact at all times. - Vehicle must end the run intact (minus any ejected stages) and stopped at 0 m/s. - Crew must survive. Beginner's benchmark: From here I'm sure you guys can do better - good luck!

It doesn't just look good - I copied this design using stock parts and it flies really nice too. Good job ganjou

I've smashed Jeb into the Minmus lander due to a poorly controlled EVA maneuver. "Hey guys I'm coming ba-" *SPLAT*

Bravo, sir - bravo!

A heading of 270 is wrong in (almost) any scenario - all it does is make it harder to achieve orbit because you have to fight against the starting body's rotation. I'm not in a position to check the angles for you right now as I'd have to launch a craft to Duna first I really recommend the Protractor Rendezvous Plugin - it will do all the nasty math for you. Plus it has a nifty "closest approach" line on the map screen that will let you fine-tune your trajectory even if you don't have an encounter yet. KSP is asking us to shoot at fruit flies with lawndarts. I say, fight the system!

The problem: to put more mass into orbit, you need a bigger ascent stage. To have a bigger ascent stage, with a bigger orbital stage on top, you need an even bigger launch stage. And you may need an even bigger set of boosters. Push the envelope too far and you'll be building rockets that collapse under their own weight at the launch pad. Not to mention that the sheer number of parts will bring your computer to a crawl. The challenge in the end is not to put as much rocket as possible into space; it's to put enough spacecraft into space for the job you want it to do, and then to build the absolute minimum size of launcher under it to get it there. I think most of us have gone through the whole "need moar rocket!" thing and eventually found that in KSP, less truly is more. My Munshine XI-B will put up to 65 tons of payload into orbit. You could easily split those 65 tons up into two stages - for example, a lunar transfer and lander stage topped with a Kerbin return stage. Good luck!

Strongly reminded me of (WARNING! PROFATINTY ON SCREEN! LAUGHTER-INDUCED SPLEEN RUPTURES MAY OCCUR!) .I can see the humor

So I wonder... If you brought this to Eve on a rocket, and glided and/or parachuted it to the surface... Would you be able to do the unthinkable and have a stock ship return from Eve?

The motto of my experimental designs division:

Hi Psycho, You can turn your IG Speeder craft 180 degrees in the SPH by selecting the cockpit and using A or D to turn it around. You'll need to mess with the canards after that as KSP redirects the lift for some reason. I'm afraid I couldn't set a land speed record with it - at least not one where the pilot survived. It tumbled and crashed soon after activating the outside engines. Do you have any sort of user guide? My own attempt is documented here. Top speed was 306 m/s. Craft file for the XL-3: [ATTACH]34493[/ATTACH] EDIT: Sadly failed to load the IG 17 and 21 due to missing part NP.Decouplerflange. Is NP NovaPunch? You may want to mention in your post which mods you're using and where to get them

Through trial and error evolving design philosophy and dozens of killed test pilots heroic sacrifice The biggest problem is keeping the vehicle stable and on the ground. Because the area behind the KSC runway is not perfectly flat, it tends to want to take off and set new air speed records instead. The wings are flipped upside-down so, according to the SPH lift indicator, they provide the necessary downforce. After that is was just a matter of dialing the power down to prevent catastrophic failures: The XL-1 and XL-2 used large booster which were simply too powerful to make for a survivable run.

After the resounding success of the program to break the sound barrier, IDEA engineers put on their funny hats and decided it would be cool to see how fast they could make a Kerbal go... Over land! They built the XL-1, which didn't do too well, and the XL-2 didn't do much better: [ATTACH=CONFIG]34438[/ATTACH] But then came the XL-3 and with it, an old hand returned on the stick: Jeb! [ATTACH=CONFIG]34439[/ATTACH] The XL-3 had a bit of kick to it: [ATTACH=CONFIG]34440[/ATTACH] Peaking at just over 300 m/s: [ATTACH=CONFIG]34441[/ATTACH] The boosters burned out and the drogue deployed: [ATTACH=CONFIG]34444[/ATTACH] Mission success! The current IDEA land speed record stands at 306 m/s with a maximum G of 7.4. Thanks to the drogue chute, the pilot survived - a first in the land speed program! Now to break the sound barrier on land...

So you're saying Jeb launched off on a new adventure and left Kelbus for "later"? Sounds like typical Jeb to me

I'm definitely interested in this prallalel liquid engines technology you speak of! It should probably be noted that this rocket has been stripped of a lot of structural support. That's Less-2-Lag for you. I personally launch my rockets with MechJeb these days as my focus is more on conducting missions than being at the stick. MechJeb can *just* manage to keep this beast stable. If you fly it manually, a bit of lateral strutting between the stages will definitely help to ensure craft stability during ascent, at the expense of some system lag. I've found 300 parts to be the magic number on my machine, but every user's experience may vary. It should probably also be noted that I don't use true "asparagus" staging on this rocket because I've found it introduces stability issues at the worst possible time (gravity turn) and it messes with the thrust to weight ratio when lifting such a heavy payload.

Thanks Sean, glad you enjoyed it! There's an ASAS in the first stage. You really shouldn't need it after that, but it would be a small matter to move it up to the second stage - or even to the top of the ITG. And I guess you didn't look in the compartment labeled "Emergency Oxygen Supply - Do Not Open" Most of the rocket never makes it away from Kerbin. It takes quite a lot of launcher to put over 8000 m/s of delta-v into orbit - but once you're there you've got a lot of options!

I really like those screenshots of the rockets on a trail of smoke against the dark blue sky - nicely done! But... Are you launching another one-man rocket? If you want to bring Kelbus *and* Jeb back, you're going to need to build a rocket around a three-man pod. When it's on the launch pad, EVA one of the crew and end his mission while he's out. He'll return safely to the KSC, leaving you with one free seat to pick up the stranded Kerbonaut.

First of all, major thanks for MechJeb - it's made things like ascent, ship attitude control and certain orbital maneuvers so much easier to do! After I figured out how to do them manually, MechJeb just takes the busywork out of it I would like to suggest that the aerobrake prediction feature be moved to the Orbital Maneuvers panel - preferably in such a way that I can input my desired apoapsis and MJ will burn to the correct perigree for it. Given that you've figured out the aerobrake math I think this should be possible? I'm suggesting this because, to me, aerobrakes are more a part of orbital operations (Jool missions especially) than something used purely for landings. Thanks for your time!

Hah, that's awesome - you built an ornithopter!