Temeter

Also keep in mind how the Center of Mass shifts. When those tanks are empty the CoM will have moved, while the Center of Lift remains stationary. Always try to kep the CoL behind the CoM, or your plane will just flip.

It's not a bug, it's a feature! Reminds me of a mission to test and aerospike in a solar orbit. The hight was around 2 trillion kilometer and i was supposed to get it correct with a margin of around 3k. Still easy to do with a bit of care, but I guess the sun is just treated similar to other planets. Then again, it's a nice gag and Squad probably should just leave it in.

I like the stock fairing, never had issues. It's just a nice touch to create them manually instead of getting everything automatically. You basically want structural fairings, tho, that's less of an issue with the current ones.

Try more wings? They're lift got buffed at the same time when drag was increased, so they should work.

Those things are indeed ultra-useful and nice-looking, but yeah, sadly not really usable atm. If you want to check heating of your ship try the heat context and saturation in the debug menu. While nice, they're more something for specific situations compare to the gauges which only get visible when they're needed.

I tell you, traveling around the moon is a blast. Moving your mobile base at 20m/s and 4 times time acceleration, using wheels and RCS to stabilize tricky situations, planning every step of your route ahead through the impossible terrain, overcoming obstacles such as giant canyons, huge landbridges and craters so big you need to zoom out to actually understand their structure. I think I went 80km, maybe a bit more, crossing a whole bunch of biomes. New moon is amazing. No, the updated geometry, not the terrible one with those sparkly vampires.

You need some engines for the final descent, just a short burn before takedown. I think duna was always like this, as long as you didn't spam chutes in 0.9? I like it, just landing by chutes is a bit simple and using a short burn remindes me of real Mars missions. Also far superior to the older version since your chutes aren't just gone as soon as you hit 0.1 airspeed... That one did cost me some nerves.^^' On the bad site, no point in ever using drogues.

In 1.0 there wasn't any distinction between a terrible and a good plane. Literally everything flew there. 1.0.2 has a bit more drag, but also more lift and less wing-drag. It's an adjustment to the new atmosphere, really not as of a deal huge as some people make it.

I assume i'd be salty as hell too when i'd spend my whole time whining about the game on forums instead of actually playing it (which includes redesigning that terrible plane). Well the lock isn't far away.

Honestly, who cares? Yesterday I, after two years of neglecting that little iceball, finally got to made my Eeloo mission. Part inefficiency and part betrayal by mechjeb left my with to little fuel, and I could only return to kerbin, but not actually slow down. So, as an experienced KSP player, what was the sensible option? Aerobraking of course. From an Eeloo trajectory, with the whole mothership, around 3800m/s. What could go wrong? Turned out 30km periapsis wasn't as reasonable, tho. Slowly, one part after another, the frontal docking section started melting, while the central mk3 parts survived just a bit longer. However, as the first radial engine section broke off, it sent the whole ship into a brutal spinning motion, flinging that little crew section around like a toy, while one stressed part after another finally conceded to their fiery death. The mothership did one good thing: It succesfully slowed the flight down, shielding my pilots just enough, so their capsules could survive the harshest part of the heat and aerodynamic forces. When the docking port finally broke off and their safeboat was tossed away from the dying ship, it stabilized itself after a few seconds of tumbling, shooting like a bullet through the atmosphere and somehow just remaining below melting temperature. When it left atmosphere, the apoapsis was 400 km and the periapsis around 25km, which would put less strees on the capsule during the next, and final, reentry. Allowing my pilots, and not least their bounty, to survive. So, was that realistic? Not in a million years. Will the next balancing update make that kind of thing impossible? I'd bet on it. Do I repent surviving by dirty tricks and luck? I'm playing KSP, of course not. Was it fun? Hell yeah it was! The point (and tl/dr) is, I can only give the advice to just stop worrying about what slight adjustment Squad is doing next patch. Just play the game, KSP was always a bit unrealistic and weird, so some small misstep during balancing won't ever break it. Everything in the game has its margins and possibilities to overcome problems with a little bit of creativity, and that's actually a great thing about the game. As for your aerodynamics hack, of course it throws off the balance harder than every small issue. I'm not sure why you'd prefer that to continual balancing. If you want fullblown realism, then go for FAR, which to my knowledge aready has a beta. Just remember that mod also took a while to balance, even with it's straight adherence to realism. Did it kill the mod? No, looks better than ever.

You don't need to include *100 into your formula, % already means 'of hundred' *nitpick*

Either put bigger wings to counteract on the back of your rockets, or put radial rockets above the wings. Managed to bring a heavy, nuclear driven mothership with 8 engines and 80 of the bigger lego wings into space. Never let it be said that you can't get crazy impractical stuff into KSP 1.0.2's space.

Btw, I recommend using the aerodynamic markers (F12). They tell what parts of your rockets cause drag and the severity. Nice reminder to keep the rocket steady. edit: Also, a nice try to get something out of your rocket: Put fins on the end of it, start the rocket, instantly point it between 5 and 10 degree (try it at 5 first). Then activate the lock to prograde and do... nothing. Just stage stuff, lower the gimbal when it wobbles, use time acceleration when necessary. It's really quiet relaxing and the results might surprise you. All that maneuvering you do by hand can be rather costly, when a rocket might fly best when left alone.

It's clearly moving downwards at 25m/s, and that only because stalling is a slow, continual process in KSPs new Atmo, you have enough time to counteract. In this case the shuttle touched ground shortly after starting the stall. The gliding at very slow speeds was already there in KSP 1.0. Also, shuttles in KSP aren't a 100 Ton monster like the real ones and very light when empty.

I got somewhat below 3400 in my better launches, although with little experimentation. It's similar to the 1.0 profile: Start your g-turn low, stay in the prograde marker until 20+km, and try to point at the horizon at around 40km, there still is next to no drag at that height. Fast rockets can go a bit lower. Afaik those 20km horizontal rockets have ridiculously fast t/w ratios and flat profiles, often even SSTOs with no freight. So not much point in copying them.

Don't put nukes on a FL-T100. Heating creates two weak links, one is the nuke, which can withstand 2500k and rarely overheats, and the part a nuke is connected too. And a FL-T100 has an extremly low thermal mass and therfor overheats in no time. You can see those infos when you activate the heat context info in the thermal debug menu. Even a FLT-800 would work around a million times better. One actual mistake in your build are the upper tanks, though: They are somehow isolated and don't get to spread any heat, so there isn't any reason to put wings on them.. Look at this: http://i.imgur.com/0fHL0Hw.jpg This ship could, with full tanks, managed 2000+ dv in a single burn in 1.0, were heat was a lot more dangerous. Only loss was the command core, but that was my own fault since that's the one part where you don't want to spread heat too. The single engines are all connected to a big tank, which would heat up slowly and reasonably radiate heat away. Furthermore, that tank doesn't just have to cope with the heat alone, since the conductivity distributes heat over the whole craft and every single part radiates heat. While I didn't test it in 1.0.2 (was an early ship to test heat), I would bet that ship won't overheat at all.

Different parts of a vessel don't collide with each other, that's why those things move through the asteroid (which was part of your ship after docking). Try quantum struts, they are pretty good for keeping things in place. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93818-0-24-2-QuantumStrutsContinued-1-1-Magical-Struts-for-Rigidifying-Outside-the-VAB!

I think i had some bugs where dihedral control surfaces developed insane lift in editor and game.

The gauges are automatically enabled, since they only pop up when they're actually needed.

Pointing rockets at your craft isn't a great idea, those little booster are stronger than they look. Just angle them outwards or reduce their fuel. 1 or 2 units of fuel is usually plenty for their job.

OP didn't make any points to answer.

I wouldn't know, OP doesn't actually explain his issues aside from a vague outline of his emotions.

A calm ye tits thread and the first two posters are already hyperventilating and talking about ruining the game. Classy. Then again, you can't make a thread about stock aerodynamics without someone unasked telling how much more he loves FAR. Noticed a bit of toxicity in the forum in the recent past. I guess the positive people are just busy playing the game and not complaining on the forums.

They indicate overheating, when they get filled either your ships or your RAM explodes. edit: To be clear, better deactivate them. They are a huge memory leak atm, as soons as the symbols pop up, and can cause your game to crash.

You placed the LVNs in a way that isolated the engines and caused the heat to pile up, I assume a strut or some other part as a fixture? The heat needs to spread over your whole ship (not the electronics tho) so every part can do it's job at radiating heat (which is the only way to get rid of heat in space). Do that, and your ship will most likely never overheat in 1.0.2.