sgt_flyer

@WooDzor the parachute works (it's a single blue radial one) - gives the soyuz roughly 10m/s of landing speed @ sea level - so i also have separatrons as retrorockets tuned to help slow down (5/6s of retrorocket at slightly below 1TWR) it's very cramped too ^^ 3 kerbal capable (though it's also heavy, at 7 tons ^^) the flare of the fairing is an open ended fairing creation technique . basically, you can actually close a fairing onto thermometers placed in radial symmetry, with the correct angle for the thermometers - and you can even remove the thermometers afterwards, the fairing don't disappear ^^ for the truss, the soyuz truss is still present even on recent ones, it's just hidden - remember soyuz is 'wrapped' in blankets until it separates ^^ the problem, using a fairing would disable the RCS ports there i might use an inverted BZ-52 radial attachment point to cover the gap instead (and still retain RCS functionnality)

i hope wheel autostrut is temporary until a better solution is found - that change effectively kills custom suspensions and completely prevent wingflex for wing mounted wheels... would it be possible to know how much work has been done on the missing steering and motor actiongroups for the wheels ? though, having multidocking fixed is a godsend

Reaction engines tought about the concept - they are stating a 20000km range for their mach 5 concept. (so a way greater range than concorde's 6200km) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_A2 now such a design would face the same problem as supersonic jetliners - you can't go supersonic above the ground - clearly limiting the avaible destinations. one of their idea was to propose to go from europe to australia by flying over north pole then above the pacific. i'm not sure making a plane for such specific routes is going to see much buyers for that plane they would likely prefer more classic and more flexible designs that can be affected to other routes in addition, the airports that would receive such a plane would have to build and maintain the infrastructure for storing and fueling the LH2 (+ ongoing costs to maintain the cryogenic temperatures). that'll cost a lot for 1 plane ! especially given the low density of LH2 and cryogenics, you won't be able to use a fueling truck - you'd need to bring the plane to the LH2 tank instead.

a slight toe in helps a lot too with rolling stability

from my own tests, every landing gear has a suspension (even the LY-01 fixed gear !) - but the 'disable suspension' toggle seem only to have a cosmetic effect on most landing gears or landing legs (visually block the suspension in the current position - however the .craft still has the exact same physical 'rebound' like if the suspension was active regardless of the toggle) . the button seems to only have a physically noticeable effect on rover wheels suspension (and yup, suspension is important for a good grip !). for the jittering / suspension danse, here's my MK3 test plane (if you fill up the fuel tank, it'll worsen the effect even more, up to linkage failure between the wings and the body) - the 4-wheel heavy landing gear is affected here. - you can see how much the wings flexes https://www.dropbox.com/s/n7j4u8bvcjowaia/test%20jitter.craft?dl=0 interestingly, roverwheels don't trigger jittering in the same configuration (with XL3's in place of the heavy landing gear on the tip of the wings) : https://www.dropbox.com/s/nn7rpq94yd9vuss/test%20no%20%20jitter.craft?dl=0 so a good question, what's so different between rover wheels and landing gears suspension ? from my tests, the main difference between rover wheels and affected landing gears is the damper ratio : the LY-60, ly-99, and ly-10 are the only ones that have a 2.0 damper ratio, while other wheels have a 1.0 damper ratio. putting a 1.0 damper ratio on the affected landing gear negated the jitterbug for me on my MK3 plane : i tested the same modification on the small landing gear, and it also fixed @bewing's panther jitterbugging. as those landing gears were not prone to jitterbugging when centermounted, it's more a combination of wing flexing & overreacting suspension it seems so the problem seems to not be the same for all landing gears (nice way to complicate the problem even more ! ) i also tested how the 'disable' button affected landing gear / legs / roverwheels here's a copy of my tests and observations on those : in the end, wheels are currently a bugfest anyway

on my 'fresh' save the Delta-deluxe winglet is on the 'control' node at the same level of the tree than the aviation node. the wheesley and the radial intake is on the node just 1 level deeper in the tree after the aviation node - both of those are not yet researched in your tech tree - so it would look like more what you 'see' isn't the real stock tech tree the game refers too when testing if the parts are avaible.

@Insidious500 ok, i checked out, looks like your research tree is corrupted in your save (by comparing the aviation research node of a fresh carreer save to your own) - the aviation research node in a fresh 1.1 save doesn't have wheesleys or delta-deluxe winglets in it (so that would explain why they are considered 'invalid'). here's the aviation node on the research tree of your save (weirdly plenty of MK1 cockpits btw !). here's what the same node on a fresh 1.1 carreer research looks like : did you start your career save pre 1.1 ? maybe the research tree in your save got corrupted during the switch to 1.1. Or if you started the career pre 1.1, maybe you had a modded research tree but forgot about it.

all of this is in the game's save folder (the subfolder has the name you chose at creation when you picked career, science or sandbox mode) if you can zip the whole subfolder which has the name of your career save, and upload it, (on dropbox or google drive for example) then share the link like that people will be able to test your save directly

you should upload your persistent .sfs file and .craft file so people can check this

ok, checked out your .craft, all inverted docking ports are connected by their docking collar node - all of the 3 nodes circled in red won't be able to allow any docking. only the docking port (and the one behind) in the middle is correctly oriented and would allow docking. (free docking collars can only 'attach' to similar 'free' docking collar - and they have to face each other) when trying to dock two .crafts, the end result for docking ports has to be this (both .crafts 'docking collar' nodes have to be free, if that's the case and they are in the magnetise range, they will attract each other) : so, place your docking ports the right way docking ports are not one way if you want to absolutely keep the aesthetic look of the 'inverted' docking ports, but still have functionnal docking collars, you're going to need another method : (added comments in the album) nah, once you are in the magnetism range, both .craft will still attract themselves for docking in 1.1 like before - regardless of approach speed - and when you undock, you still have to move out of the magnetism range before the magnetism reactivates

you should check the menu of all of the docking ports that are supposed to be 'free' - if you see the option 'decouple' or 'undock' on some of them, that means the node of this docking collar is already connected to something. if it is, you won't be able to dock anything to this docking port. if you try to press the decouple button, whatever the docking node was attached to would separate, potentially violently if it's clipped. seeing your .craft file would also help, to check the build.

i know it was going to be fixed sooner or later - it's too important as a feature i just wanted to warn about it until the fix is there

nice list @bewing i'd like to add a few things - Rover wheels / landing gear action groups : the old toggle motor and toggle steering action groups are currently missing for the wheels - Squad is working on it. Docking ports falling off : this is even more true for multidocking currently - 3+ multidocking ports submitted to torque, and 1 of them will break very easily under torque. so beware of multidocking currently if i also remember, i've seen an issue talking about the extreme drag caused by struts and fuel lines - i don't know if it has been tweaked since, so beware fairings : only Interstage configurations are currently hollow - 'nose' payload fairings while closed are currently not hollow for performance purposes. when fairings are discarded (interstage or payload) , they'll act normally in regards to physics. but don't decouple anything inside the payload fairings before ejecting them (or use nose 'payload' fairings as kerbal habitats) - they'll either get stuck in the geometry or be forcefully ejected from it. hollow interstage fairings allow things to be decoupled within them on the other end

if you compress gases, they will heat up, and will be higher temperature than the surrounding medium - you'll end up losing a slight part of this heat through convection and radiation before the gases expands again - but having lost a bit of heat in the process, the overall process won't be lossless.

there's several things - notably, pneumatic separation systems between the two (spaceX doesn't use explosive bolts for stage separation, for reusability) then, the second stage has some RCS (likely cold gas thrusters, or even possiby gas from the lox boiloff, to not have to deal with too much hassle with toxic hypergolics) for attitude control (roll control, all the time, pitch & yaw when coasting) depending on the RCS arrangment they can provide some forward thrust to settle the liquid propellants before turbopump startup (maybe not needed at stage sep, but definitely for engine reignition). if there's no reward facing RCS, maybe they use the fact that they need to pre-chill the engine before ignition - maybe they can use the lox used for engine chilldown to give a slight forward thrust by ejecting the used lox through the combustion chamber (it'll be very low, but enough to accelerate separation - an it'll be action-reaction between the upper stage and the 1st stage)

don't forget to add the various things an employer have to pay additionnal things for each employee - social security costs, taxes, insurances (healthcare, unemployement, advantages, etc) and afterwards, it's not counting running costs - land taxes, pollution taxes, maintenance plans (for leased computers or equipments) electricity bills (and when you're metalworking, it's not a household electricity bill !), etc.

Mandatory What Ifs from randall - and it doesn't even need to be frictionless ! throw anything fast enough, after ram heating, you can even have air molecules ending up fusing with whatever you threw though in this case, you'd end up with a plasma ball https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ there's also the one on reentry steak if you want more infos on compressive heating calculations https://what-if.xkcd.com/28/ it's crazy to think how much randall's what-ifs can be adapted to other questions

they are made of carbon composites on an aluminium honeycomb structure http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/04/12/fairing plus acoustic reduction material / structure on the inside of that. someone explained on reddit that fairings are one of SpaceX main production bottlenecks. the problem with carbon composite half shells is that they have to be made in a single piece, which requires enormous machineries - one to 'form' and 'hold' the complex shape of the half shell, and a gigantic autoclave big enough to fit the whole piece inside - it's basically one of the few thing they can't optimise for mass production - and it takes huge amount of space on top of that ! SpaceX doesn't have a boeing or airbus style megafactory and subcontractors to help them with that so they either need to get additionnal floor space + the custom carbon composite machinery and the people to operate them, or reuse the fairings https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3z53as/what_is_limiting_spacex_when_it_comes_to_launch/cyjcgi4 they may not save a lot of money by having to send two helicopters to catch those mid air, but they'll save on time i don't know how large they can go against marine regulations - the lateral extensions on the barge already can't fit inside the panama canal. they still need to be able to get the barge in protected ports

@YumonStudios Fairings are extremely hightech and expensive - Bruno Tory, ULA's CEO, when he was on the phone with Dasvaldez during one of his streams, explained that fairings need to be able to absorb the vibration from air friction on top of the rest (lightweight, heat resistant and solid) without something to absorb the vibrations in the nosecone, Mr Tory said that the sound resulting from those vibrations would be enough to kill a man ! for a start about the price, here's an article about a fairing order from Arianespace (Ruag makes fairings for Ariane 5 and Delta-IV) - they ordered 18 fairings for 112 millions - ending up with 6.2 million per fairing http://spacenews.com/41132ruag-books-order-for-18-ariane-5-fairings/ even if spaceX fairings cost less than ariane's, it's still a meaningful part of the price of launch vehicle

here's something to compare it to Atlas V launch, as the atlas's RD-180 is a staged combustion cycle (no separate gas generator exhaust) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkRZeEtumNE&nohtml5=False&spfreload=10 the flames that 'widen' out on the sides near max Q is mostly due to the interaction between the two expanding exhausts of both nozzles.

one other possibility, is that it's indeed from gas expansion due to lower pressure - but it could be coming from the merlin's gas generators exhausts.

Are you referring to the landing at 27:30 ? what you see is the exhaust light reflecting against the landing legs, while they are still rotating. for aerodynamism reasons (deployed legs are extra draggy) the landing legs are deployed only at the last moment - they almost lock in place less than 1s before touchdown.

yup, and low center of gravity (with the fuel tanks empty, a good chunk of the weight comes from the engines and the legs

aand dragon spreading it's wings