Van Disaster

Could just weld a bunch of stock plates together in a new part - the idea is to see if it can fly rather than not fall apart.

Would this work? MYSPECIFICLIB { MODULE { name = first } MODULE { name = second } } @PART[somepart] { #@MYSPECIFICLIB/* } If not like that then perhaps @PART[somepart] { #@MYSPECIFICLIB/MODULE[*] {} }

To be honest you probably want to replace SAS with Pilot Assistant - which has it's own SAS replacement - it's tuned specifically for aircraft ( and is most definitely not an autopilot ). If not then find a SAS tuner mod. * There's no aeroelastic divergence in FAR ( or stock ) so you can use forward sweep without worrying about that. You can get long span wings flapping as if there was some if you exceed their happy dynamic pressure range, but they won't diverge because of any built-in instability. * You can use the AoA setting as a trim for your horizontal flight control surfaces - I think, at least, I've experimented a little & I think it's working but it can be a bit hard to tell. The main idea is to stop them stalling by deflecting excessively because unstalling a FAR surface is a bit awkward.

Hangar extender mod would work absolute wonders here... half the time that starts my camera considerably outside the SPH/VAB as it is.

You can just scrap the ship you ship your rocketparts in, that'll not only get you even more rocket parts but fuel for the ships you're building too. That way you can ship parts up on dirt cheap rockets, although eventually it'll be more expensive than a reusable lifter, depending on the outlay for that.

Guidelines? assuming pWings * Pick a cockpit. Pick a cargo bay. Pick some engine mounts. Now pick what you think will be enough tankage to get to orbit, and distribute it either side of the cargo bay. That's your fuselage, now add the mass up and note it down. * Now stick a pair of wings on, for your main wings. Pick some sort of target wing loading given the fuselage mass ( say 0.3kg/m^2 at this point, the wings themselves will have significant mass and you haven't added a payload yet presumably ) and work out how much wing area you want ( I don't actually do this, but I'm pretty good at estimating by looking ) . You'll probably want the semispan to be at least the root width unless you're making a single delta, other than that drag the wing around until you find a shape you like, which is not excessively weighted in either span or width. Long thin wings can give structural issues and excessive supersonic drag, while stubby wings with wide roots are going to give excessive mach tuck for no benefit. To be honest I have had some pretty excessively long spans with entire engines stuck on the end without issue, but I try not to do that. * You'll need some sort of horizontal stabilization; you can do this all as a single delta wing but unless it's a small craft that doesn't end up working out too well. The fuselage layout will make a canard vs rear tail choice for you, probably. * You'll also need one or more vertical stabilizers somewhere, I don't have a rule of thumb for those at all because they'll depend on the fuselage length and where the fulcrums are. You'll probably want one that's in the same order of size as one horizontal stabilizer. Don't make it too tall or you'll get roll coupling issues, the tailfin is one place you can have a short span & long root without any problems unless you're building an acrobatic aircraft. * Use the wings as tanks when you're test flying to add any extra fuel you might need. Wanderfound has tons of examples, I don't have many small craft but this one is probably around the size you're building: No calculations involved there, mostly "if it looks right it'll fly right". Edit: I just realised the top pic is a slightly later version of the craft than the bottom, which would explain why they don't quite match.

Upper left, green circle with three forks. My undersea launch capped at 10m/s, lol.

oO Undersea rocket launches are go!

Meanwhile in KSP... Temperature measured at 500m via stock thermometer is 17.48C, so that's 341.4 m/s

In the Unity inspector, click on the model file you exported from blender - there will ( should!) be an Import Settings panel with Model tab. In there is "Scale Factor" which always resets itself to 0.01 for every new model I try and import...

Hehe, good stuff. It does make a difference in FAR - conversely closing intakes makes no difference in FAR - hence I just ejected the wheels out of habit.

Could PA not just treat the situation as if it's flying, but just have no output? I realise that might have integral windup issues, but I'm wondering if that really would be an issue - if the craft is not doing what PA thinks it should be doing then integral windup might be a *good* thing; if it turns out to be a problem, maybe turning a PA component on can just reset all the relevant integral values, it'd still transfer with some control deflection and be at least a little primed.

... what would that serve? the Mk3 parts were developed to match the HL parts anyway.

wow that looks fantastic!

Awww yis. Pure stock, 366m/s and for FAR, 1389m/s And in case you're not happy with something built entirely of 1m intakes, here's 1018 m/s - FAR - which looks like an aircraft.

One of Astronomer's packs, Edge of Oblivion or whatever it was is a bit easier on memory use for clouds. Alternatively that Renaissance pack. You'll need EVE and Texture Replacer at least, you might have to dig up some older versions for compatibility.

Scale = 0.1 ? did you really mean that? also check the actual size in Unity, make sure you imported it at the correct scale.

I'd install FAR at least, it'll get you ready for the 1.0 aero ( or you might find you like FAR better & keep it ). For now I'd ditch TAC & Remotetech, just getting the hang of logistics with all those ISRU mods is going to be enough. Also I think installing MKS means you don't explicitly need EPL? or possibly even Karbonite either. I don't run MKS myself so I don't know for sure.

For MJ ascent AP launches I use a curve of about 26-28 whatevers the shape is marked in and usually adjust the start point to whenever the rocket has enough motion that it's not going to drift sideways, so usually about 3-400m or so. Flat finish at 70, final orbit usually 90, dV to get there usually 33-3500ish, start TWR I couldn't say because KIDS messes up all the displays . I'll either try and avoid fins completely or add some really large ones and reduce thrust for a while so I get some atmospheric lift out of them, but some rockets just want guidance fins either way. Really low TWR launches look majestic, but gravity losses will chew through dV.

Thrust to drag ratio is what matters There's two issues you'll have with low TWR; getting off the runway before it ends, and somewhere about 20km there's a bit of a wall where you need to get higher to get faster, but you can't get higher without getting faster because you're pitched up to hold altitude & can't generate any more lift without accelerating. Working backwards, one solution to the wall is to add some more wing, but then you'll get drag issues or structural issues and it's probably easier just to add more thrust instead; if I've filled up so my wing loading is that high that I'm pitched up too much I tend to add some large droptanks with jets ( fairly feasable given they're the size of a mk1 aircraft ), but of course the other answer is to just offload some payload. Note I've only ever run into the wall that badly with < 0.3 TWR, I think occasionally I launch with 0.28. The runway issue has a few solutions; you can add droptanks & take off with rockets lit too, you can use SRBs, you can use powered wheels, you can just run off the end of the runway of course, or you can install that bigger desert runway from Kerbinside. We've got a bunch of issues with KSP that make life a bit more awkward than real life - high empty mass, no complete customizeable shapes, no ground effect, short runway. Finally of course there's the matter of it taking half an hour to get to orbit ( in my worst case, it took two times round the planet to get to orbit ) which is maybe not something you want to do all the time. In my case I usually set a climb rate or a pitch hold and just keep half an eye on it while I do something else, but that's not for everyone. I'd say if you're making >1.0 TWR aircraft then you might as well just drop the wings, they're useless weight at that point.

Everything is made of triangles in the end, keep that in mind - even quads are bad if you bend them & don't pay attention to the triangles they're made up of. I've honestly forgotten most of the reasons ( although it'd be easy to look up ), Max's mesh smoothing mods - and I presume everything else's - don't really appreciate them too well though, and you can run into issues with smoothing in general if you're not careful. If it's a flat surface then make it out of whatever the hell you want, providing it's always going to be flat ( ie you're not animating it ). Possibly might get some artifacts from a LODding algorithm. If it's curved try and stick with quads at least, it'll be safest for exporting.

A few points: * 25% payload fraction is pretty low - I've managed half the takeoff mass as actual payload, but I'm not sure that'd work in current FAR. * My usual runway TWR for larger cargo craft is somewhere in the 0.3s. 0.75 is excessive. * As was mentioned those formulae are for RC aircraft which have a very narrow range of operating speeds & heights, and probably relatively insane mass/str ratios. Also probably minimal wing loading, I'd imagine. Look at existing supersonic craft and you'll find the fuselage is probably quite a bit longer than the wingspan ( the F-104 is an extreme case, that thing's takeoff & landing speed were higher than the Shuttle's landing speed ). Of full size things that have actually flown the XB-70 is probably the nearest we've got, if you allow for it using compression lift. The ideal is a long thin shape, so if you're using a fat bay then you're not going to want a short fuselage. * Engines don't support a set mass of aircraft; you can have the same mass which looks like a needle vs the same mass that looks like a wall, which one is the same engine going to drive better?

362m/s stock. Can't find those elusive few more...

I've landed a cockpit & single piece of fuselage from an aircraft breakup at 45km alt/~2000m/s - well "landed" is a bit of a strong term, "survivably crashed" perhaps - in BB water with RSS-the-plugin installed, so it probably isn't that specific combo. The first post mentions resized planets. I don't know much about stock bouyancy because I've used firespitter floats for watercraft since they appeared - before trying this one with 0.90 - and as far as I can tell BB just tweaks stock, is there any point to designing hull forms? I'm not sure I want to contemplate what oddness is in the water after knowing what oddness was in the atmosphere...

Yeah, it - or at least explorer - will dereference the symlink. Using a windows shortcut ( which I have to do anyway because of cmdline flags ) will set the working directory but while that will set the output location for logs & so on, not sure if it sets the right gamedata. I just copy the main exe across installs anyway...