capi3101

(1.1.3, still checking mods for 1.2) Largely out of town this past weekend; spent most of what time I did have in game puttering around with the Kerbinport space station on my desktop save. Sent up a refueling module, the Deepwater Horizon 7, to the station in order to refuel Jabit III currently docked at the station. Started working on designs to try and get the thirteen freeloaders off the station and came up with the Kerbal Tour Bus 7d, powered by O-10s. I haven't really used the O-10 in any designs before but I must say I like it - a trio of them did the same job as a Terrier engine without me having to add a separate re-entry package to the vehicle. The design performed well although I cooked off all three O-10s during re-entry, so I'll be investigating moving the engines upwards and maybe putting an oversized heat shield on it (maybe make it a puller instead of a normal pusher). She also almost ran out of power during re-entry, a side effect of the onboard Reaction Stabilizer, which I added since the thing only has an OKTO2 for control. Design barely made orbit with the current booster (50 m/s remaining after orbital insertion), so if I can make changes without increasing the payload mass, I'll be happy. Since I also had a contract to put a new orbital space station around Mün and five new tourist contracts to go there, I loaded those suckers paying customers into a new space station core and launched it out that way. Haven't put it in orbit yet, and I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the station once it arrives. I suppose I could add it to the existing Munport, but there really isn't a need to double up on the core facilities. The four freeloaders I returned from Kerbinport are still showing up at KSC, even though they have no contracts and should have disappeared. Been a while since I've had this problem - if anyone can give me a refresher on how to get these jerks out of my persistence file permanently, I'd be pretty happy. I'd rather not resort to killing Kerbals even if they are completely useless... Freeloaders = Kerbal tourists whose contracts were scrubbed by the Kraken. Same Kraken ate my "Explore Duna" contract too...

(1.1.3) Been a few days since I've posted owing to events in RL, including a little sickness. Haven't actually played much KSP these last few days - last night was spent on my desktop save pulling a rescue and re-positioning a satellite over Mün. Still haven't really mopped up from the Kraken dumping all my contracts a couple of days ago. Right now I can't even recall what I did on my laptop save on Tuesday night, if I did anything at all. Today I begin the "pre-flight" for the download of 1.2, double-checking to see which of the mods I use are ready to go and which ones aren't. I won't download until a significant fraction of them are ready, or if a particularly critical one isn't working. I'm not particularly attached to either of my 1.1.3 saves, so I'm still debating whether I want to continue them or not when the time comes. I am considering adding the outer worlds mod (I don't recall what exactly it's called but it's the one that adds worlds like Sarnus and Hale to the game) to my mod set for 1.2.

Depends on how you usually go about updating the game. Assuming you're on PC, if you go through Steam, make a copy of your current KSP directory before you fire the next time you fire up the game. You might want to add the version information to the name of the copied file directory; I do this myself, and in my archives I have versions going all the way back to 0.18. This should also help you out if you rely on CKAN to update your mods, though I can't attest to that personally. Myself, I usually grab my updates from the KSP store. (1.1.3) Last night was spent on my desktop career save getting Jabit III back to Kerbinport 7 and docking a habitation module with the Munport 7 space station in anticipation of the massive numbers of tourists I was planning to send there. It was particularly nerve-wracking since I didn't time things very well at all; I was constantly having to shift back and forth between the two flights since their nodes were lining up pretty well. The big panic moment of the night was when I switched back to Jabit III and found it 53,000m above Kerbin not pointed retrograde and with the ship's solar panels still deployed. There was some frantic maneuvering there to keep the craft intact but it worked out. Jabit III arrived at Kerbinport with 1 m/s of fuel remaining, and Munport can now house up to twenty Kerbals from its original four-Kerbal capacity. I'd be happy, except the Kraken also ate all my contracts (again) last night, which I discovered after Jabit III final docked. At this point I've got sixteen freeloaders aboard Kerbinport with no ready method for getting them back down again (at least not without trashing the space station, which I'm hesitant to do...). What specific problems are you having, and which version are you running? - as per my previous, I haven't updated to 1.2 yet. 1.1.3, I've had reasonable successes with Juno-powered craft. You do have to adjust the characteristics of the wheels a bit (especially if all you've got is the crummy bush-plane gear) and the Level 1 Runway is fairly useless. FAR (with its ability to set control surfaces as spoilers) helps here.

(1.1.3) Spent the day yesterday with my laptop career save. If I did one, I did five rescue missions around Kerbin yesterday, with another one slated for today. Mostly low-level easy pickin's around Kerbin, with the notable exception being the mission to rescue Juluna; she was the Kerbal whose craft shot past Mün and whose initial rescue attempt failed. Taking the advice of @eddiew, I got her out of her debris and lowered her orbit using her suit thrusters: http://imgur.com/a/ANavP The game continues to cough up scientists, which I'm sure will be a good thing as I progress in this career save. Also did a ground temperature survey in the vicinity of KSC with Bob's Scimobile and a couple of parts tests. Looking forward to the release of 1.2 as scheduled for later today, though as usual I'm not liable to switch over until after a good number of my mods have been certified for use. So probably a couple of weeks at best.

(1.1.3) Didn't get a chance to do too much this weekend; what I did do, I did on my desktop save. Farted around with a plane design that really needed something more than Elevon 1 available for a little while. Went ahead and got Jabit III to Mün with its load of tourists and docked the craft to the Munport 7 space station, offloading three passengers (though one of them seems to have disappeared; I'm not quite sure what happened there, nor do I know if I'll have to scrub his contract when everything is said and done). Put Jabit III back on a course to Kerbin, where the plan is to rendezvous with Kerbinport 7 to offload the single remaining passenger (the one that wanted to visit Mün but not land there) and do the whole thing over again. I also need to get a more substantial crew module installed at Munport 7, obviously. Put several probes into their final orbital positions for contract, though I was once again dismayed to discover that I had replaced a thermometer with an accelerometer on a probe where the contract called specifically for a thermometer...and this around Mün to boot... The replacement contracts weren't interesting. I'll be waiting a few in-game days for new ones. I really should get back to my laptop save - that deal with rescuing the Kerbal on suit thrusters only really did sound pretty fun...

Yeah, I've got command of her pod...oh, I get what you're suggesting - have her bail out and use the suit thrusters to reduce her orbit. A very Kerbal suggestion; I might have to do it...

She's back in her debris, unfortunately. Made an attempt to put her in Gurney 7 but after the craft was seven kilometers off and not getting any closer I reverted back and just let it fly off. Craft didn't have RCS anyway (at least, the replica version doesn't; haven't been to the Mün yet to unlock the tech in my laptop save). Incidentally, if anybody knows the keystroke command to reorient a Kerbal to match the direction the camera is facing, I'd sure like to know it. Ostensibly I have a mod that does that very thing but it's either not working or I've got it installed wrong. On a somewhat-related programming note, I did get a new power supply installed into my home desktop this morning and it's up and running. I'm left with the question of which save game I'll be focusing on this evening; even though I'm not as far along with it, there's some interesting stuff going on in my laptop save. Plus it's coughed up two scientists...

(1.1.3) Did a pair of rescue missions last night, one successful, one not so much. In fairness, Julana's craft did a Mun encounter and I probably could've pulled it off in a Munar flyby, if I had packed Gurney 7 with another 500 m/s of delta-V. Got to watch her debris fly past at two kilometers. The good news is that I did get close enough to her craft to switch control over, and her post Munar-encounter craft puts her in a wonky orbit of Kerbin instead of shooting her out of Kerbin's SOI like I had originally feared, so the possibility is there for me to try again. Should get a multi-star scientist out of the whole deal once I finally do pick her up... Danwig's rescue was as routine as they get. I do have a staging issue with the replica Gurney but I can work that out before I make my next attempt to rescue Julana over the weekend. Picked up a number of contracts for flights in and around KSC; going to try to get those out of the way if I can here in the next few days. Built the Bad Idea 3 for the job but I'll need to upgrade the SPH before I can attempt to fly it - too many parts...

Ah. Tourist makes a bit of a difference... The math still holds, though. You just gotta think bigger...a Mammoth could get you the gees with a Hitchhiker Module, and you'd even be able to use a slightly larger tank (by which I mean something up to an FL-T200 or so). If that scares you a bit, you could do two Mk1 Lander Cans and a Mainsail. Fuel requirement doesn't change since what you're going for is thrust. Gotta admit - the combinations I'm suggesting here are very, very Kerbal...

Newton's second law: F=Ma. 20g is 196 m/s^2, so you plug that in: F = 196 * M. M is your payload mass, and F is the combined thrust output of the payload mass's engines. If you want to pull that much force with stock parts, I'd suggest a payload of a Seat attached to an Oscar-B, and slap a strutted Skipper engine on it and blast it at full power. Great thing about gees - you don't have to pull them for particularly long... Good luck getting your Kerbal back after that, of course...

For planes, three mods I'd suggest are Atmosphere Autopilot, RCS Build Aid and NavUtilities (which I guess is called NavInstruments now). Atmosphere Autopilot adds a fly-by wire system that can be toggled on and off and flight autopilots if you want to use them - if your plane has a shred of stability, it makes flying it a lot less tedious. RCS Build Aid is useful for plane design because of its Dry Center of Mass indicator, which will show you how your plane's center of mass with shift as you burn fuel, helping ensure that you can maintain general stability regardless of your fuel status. And NavUtilities/NavInstruments is an ILS system that can be toggled for any Runway in the game and any glide slope you're comfortable with. There's also FAR, which I use for the stability analyses primarily. Dynamic Controls is also a useful one; it ensures that when you push a button to turn your plane that it the control surfaces involved don't deflect so much that they rip themselves off the plane. All good mods for aerospace craft if you're wanting to get into that part of the game more. I very rarely need weight aft...more often, I have problems keeping it amidships. Having a ballasting tank sometimes helps (say, an FL-T400 with the fuel and oxidizer locked, adjusting the amounts as needed). LV-909 isn't the best engine for those rare jaunts into the upper atmosphere. I'd suggest a pair of Thuds on side tanks set to a somewhat reduced thrust level. That way you can still attach a somewhat traditional tail to your plane. (1.1.3) Last night was spend doing more early career mode work. Successfully completed a contract to test a Thud while splashed, and then sent Bob around KSC in a low-tech science mobile for EVA reports, crew reports, materials bay samples, goo samples and temperature readings. Got about 200 science from his efforts, enough to unlock fuel lines and the OKTO probe core, which is generally where I really like to be in the early game. Did another sub-orbital tourist contract wherein I re-discovered an old FAR bug; had to revert and come in with my service bay's doors open to prevent drag where it shouldn't have been (might've just been a one-time fluke). Picked up a rescue contract; should've read the details about it before I accepted - the Kerbal I'm supposed to rescue is going to have a close encounter with Mün and will be gravity boosted right on out of Kerbin's SOI. The replicated Gurney 7 may or may not be capable of making the rendezvous. On the other hand, it's 70k if I can pull it off. Probably will be another lousy pilot... I'm hoping the game gives me some decent contracts in the near future. Right now it's all high-altitude crap and observational readings on the far side of the planet. Playing on my laptop last night, didn't plug it in, thing died on me before Gurney 7 circularized. I've checked this morning and the craft is still there on a sub-orbital trajectory pre-apoapsis, so I'll be continuing the rescue mission this evening.

Set your rear brakes to 200% and make sure to set the friction to about 1.4 in the SPH, and make sure to lock their steering if available. Forward gear to 0.4 friction, no brakes, full steering. Generally works in 1.1.3 at least. What kind of gear are you using for the aircraft in question? As for the tail strike issue, I could give you pointers but I'd need to see your plane. Depending on the design and your tech level, you might be able to get away with a "kicker" on the tail. Plenty of mods I could suggest to make plane flying easier, if you're not adverse to mods.

(1.1.3) Power woes continue on my main box, so I was once again on my work laptop last night. Jeb made a couple of flights in the Bad Idea 1 aircraft to do low-altitude observational contracts in the vicinity of KSC. Glad I've got chutes on that thing - he had a couple of good approaches for KSC 09 but I didn't trust the airplane to actually be able to land safely on account of A) Level 1 Runway and B) bush-plane gear. Also took four tourists up on an suborbital hop and while I was up there managed to clear a sci around Kerbin contract. Did a number of parts tests as well in a single mission - a Rockomax Adapter in flight, a Swivel engine in flight and a Radial Drogue chute in flight. Went ahead and upgraded the Runway to Level 2 by night's end - if I'm going to keep on sending up planes, I'd at least like to be able to have them take off without having to drive off the Runway first. All in all, still having fun doing the low level early career stuff. Am thinking about sending Bob around in a scimobile to harvest KSC science so I can get fuel lines; will probably do that this evening if I can.

Nothing terribly impressive - a six-year old AMD Athlon II Dual Core at 2.9 GHz with a GeForce 620GT and 4 GB memory, good enough to run KSP. Replacing the box has been on my "as soon as I can afford it" list for the past four years; it keeps getting passed over for either A) medical bills or B) vehicle repairs. This year it was vehicle repairs; I imagine next year it will be medical bills. KSP really is the most graphics-intensive game I play, though, so I haven't really needed much more than that up to this point. Replacing the PSU would just be a band-aid to keep me running until I can afford a new box, which should (optimistically) be around 2046 if the current trend holds...

(1.1.3) Spent the Friday night working on getting a sat up into a K-orbit over Kerbin. Got it there - then realized that it needed to have both an accelerometer and a thermometer...reverted with the intent of doing it on Saturday. But while I was playing, I started smelling something hot and electronic. My computer's PSU had been making growling noises in the prior weeks so I decided to check the fan; it had stopped. Got it restarted with a puff of canned air but I decided not to restart the computer again until I'd replaced the unit - hot and electronic smells usually mean that something critical has already melted... Idiot me forgot to copy off my save file before shutting the computer off. In fairness, I had an older computer in an ATX case with the same wattage so I thought it'd just be a simple matter of swapping them out. Nope. Old computer had only 20-pins on its PSU; my newer box needs 24-pins. What's the going rate these days for a 350W ATX 24-pin power supply? Whatever it is, I'm pretty well guaranteed it's money I don't have... So last night on my work laptop, I started up a new career save. Got as far as putting Jeb into a polar orbit and collecting sci samples and EVA reports from all of Kerbin's biomes before calling it a night; all in all, not much progress lost over my current career save. I say that - Bob hasn't been to Mun and back twice yet...

I agree that it would be nice to know what kind of Kerbal you're picking up before you go and do it. Could've sworn that you could check in the Tracking Station ahead of time, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Haven't really noticed a gender imbalance my own self. As for the profitability of tourism missions, it helps to A) do them in bulk, B) use reusable craft in space and SSTO spaceplanes to ferry them to and from Kerbin's orbit, and C) mine the ever-living snot out of everywhere else. Folks that just want to go up to orbit can be put on a pretty cheap rocket and launched when (A) applies. I still can't say if tourist missions are profitable or not, but that algorithm there does tend to increase the overall profit margin. And I find them fun to do, which is probably the best reason to do anything in KSP. As a caveat, I've never taken a tourist to any SOI except Kerbin and Kerbol...

(1.1.3) Didn't do that terrible much in KSP last night; went ahead and launched a Gurney 7 rescue rocket to retreive Tinia Kerman from orbit - another effin' pilot for the ferry routes, looks like, or maybe the future commander of Minmusport 7 when I finally get around to launching it. I'd say the mission was fairly routine but it wasn't; her debris was nearly overhead when I decided to launch and naturally I had to set up a resonance to come around for a rendezvous; Gurney 7 almost ran out of fuel this time around, and it was pretty short on battery power at the time as well. I really oughta redesign the thing with some solar panels or something...I mean, I didn't when I first built the design but I have them now... The replacement contract? More tourists that want to go to Mün, naturally. Oh well - at least there's a vacancy for them at Kerbinport 7 at this point. Finished out the night with an equatorial satellite contract. Redesigned the Beep-Beep 7 probe launcher again; at 5 tonnes paywad, 4-stage asparagus is really overkill (but fun to set up). Launched the Beep-Beep 7b to orbit and I've got its apoapsis and periapsis up to the target altitudes. I still need to adjust the plane of its orbit and it won't get to the descending node again until after Jabit III reaches Mün. Both missions are on my radar for this evening. Also got a contract for one of those funky K-orbits at Kerbin that I'm wanting to try to knock out as well, so probably another redesign of the Beep-Beep 7 (or maybe the Bleepity-Bleep 7) is in order.

(1.1.3) Spent some time looking at some old images I posted on Imgur about a year ago, specifically of my old Stratofortress 7 intermünar ferry design. Since I wasn't on my home computer at the time, I went ahead and used the image to help me rebuild the craft from scratch, taking the time to add a few extra niceties and a few quick modifications to it (for example, the RCS tanks are now ensconced safely inside a Service Bay, which also includes an OKTO2 core for automated control and batteries, and the design now has headlights). Ran a test flight of the design in my litterbox save to double-check all systems/staging etc, then transferred the craft file over to my main career save. Launched the first Stratofortress - dubbed Jabit III - with Kathbertha at the helm on a mission to rendezvous with the Kerbinport 7 space station. Rendezvous and docking were complete successes, and now Jabit III is on her way toward Mün, where it will dock with the Munport 7 space station, offload its passengers and then return to Kerbinport. Still haven't figured out how I'm going to get the tourists down there just yet - I remember having a lander designed specifically for that purpose but I also remember not liking it very much...

(1.1.3) Since I determined yesterday that my woes with getting a space station core module off the pad were due to a mod conflict, I decided to try my original plan to launch a pilot, an engineer and sixteen tourists in a space station core. Rebuilt my original core module design with two cupolas on either end, four Hitchhiker modules, four ports, eight antennas, eight collapsible solar panels, a monoprop supply, and a partridge in a pear tree a probe core in a service bay with some batteries. Launch was successful; Kerbinport 7 is now operational and I got a fair amount of cash from the lower-hanging fruit (i.e. the Mün-bound tourists that also wanted to do suborbital and orbital flights over Kerbin). The next big trick is going to be getting all those folks out to Mün. I'm thinking it's time to pull my old Stratofortress 7 intermünar ferry design out of mothballs. I'll still have to figure out how to get a lander out there eventually, and I'll ultimately have to design a fuel ferry - I don't have drilling bits just yet. Did take care of a couple of other things. The Bleepity-Bleep 7 probe was put on a course that would take it back to Minmus after its historic flyby of the pudding moon, this time to put it in a final orbit for contract. It will return to Minmus in another 28 days. I also had two tourist contracts where the folks just wanted to go up into orbit, so I had Jeb take them on a Kerbal Tour Bus 7b craft and knocked out a few extra bucks that way. Got a parts testing contract which was pretty routine, and then picked up a rescue contract. Went ahead and upgraded the tracking station to full - I've got everything at Level 3 now except for Admin, R&D and the SPH. The upgrade has put me down to about √300,000, but that should still be enough to put up some infrastructure to ferry folks to Mün and collect some more money in the process. Going to try to launch a Stratofortress tonight and since I have a rescue contract, it looks like another flight of the Gurney 7 is in order...

(1.1.3) Spent most of the day in utter frustration trying to get the core module of the Munport 7 space station to launch from KSC; no matter what I tried, no matter what I did, the damn thing would flip out of control after making it up only about 5,000 meters. It was when I was finally ready to throw a discount brick through someone else's computer that I said "well, what the hell - let's see what this thing looks like in FAR. It looked like this: Ooh...pretty pretty voxels... Traced the problem to a conflict between FAR and Flexible Docking Ports; I replaced them with regular Clamp-o-Trons and got the damn thing to the Mün. Tonight I'll start getting ready to send tourists to the station. Time to recoup some money if at all possible.

(1.1.3) Over the weekend I returned to a long-standing personal tradition of naming new rockets after American nuclear weapons tests. What started out as a refit of the Munar Prospector 7 turned into a completely new craft, which I dubbed Sandstone X-Ray 7. Like Munar Prospector, Sandstone X-Ray is a science lander designed to put a scientist on Mün with nearly 5,000 m/s of delta-V at Münar landing, with the idea being to hop and farm biomes. Unlike Munar Prospector, Sandstone X-Ray was designed with Mün in mind (instead of Minmus), by which I mean it uses a Poodle engine instead of an LV-909...er, a Terrier I guess is what it's called now. The craft in aggregate was nearly 400 tonnes at launch; I have yet to unlock Mainsails in my career save and Skippers weren't going to cut it, so I fell back on the long-lost art of Reliant/Swivel engine clusters to get the sucker into orbit (which reminds me - I owe a huge thanks to whatever genius at Squad decided to move Cubic Octagonal Struts downward from the top tier of the tech tree, otherwise this thing would've needed Modular Girders and would've wound up weighing a lot more than it did). Worked; Bob's scientific mission to Mün was a complete success and he harvested over 1,700 science points, more than enough to unlock mid-sized docking ports and launch my Münar tourism industry. I spent the rest of the weekend failing to plane and failing to space station. Bad Idea 5 is pretty much a write-off, while the core module of Munport 7 was probably just too long - that's what I get for trying to haul sixteen tourists to the Mün all in one thwack, especially since I still have no idea how I'm going to get all of those people back to Kerbin when everything is said and done...

Didn't have a lot of time to play last night; in the time that I did have, I utterly failed to plane (this after giving people airplane advice all day - forgot to follow my own freakin' advice...). Let's just say I created a new plane that Atmosphere Assistant couldn't fly (i.e. serious stability issues; I didn't even pay attention to what FAR was telling me. Real period of total idiocy). Needless to say I'll be attempting to correct the problems I have with it today. Moar structural fuselage at a minimum.

Okay...couple of things I can see right away from your screenie. Your CoL is definitely too far aft; you need to try to move it closer to the CoM if you can. As a first step, and if it wouldn't mess with the aesthetic you're going for with the design too much, I'd suggest some canards. They could be added to your plane with a minimal amount of fuss, they'd move the CoL forward and you'd gain some more pitch authority in the process. Alternatively, you can move the main wings forward on the plane a bit. @Val has already demonstrated that the wings will provide sufficient lift for the design. The other main thing I'm seeing is the positioning of the aft gear - they should be aligned as close to the CoM as you can manage. Both of these suggestions have to do with torque. See, you can think of your plane as a big lever along the three different axes (fore-to-aft, port-to-starboard, dorsal-to-ventral). The CoM acts as the fulcrum point in each case while in flight (while on the ground your aft wheels are doing the same thing). Your main wing and your control surfaces provide the effort necessary to change the plane's attitude, measured as the cross-product (one of those nasty mathematical things with which college physics professors like to torture poor suckers undergraduates) of the force vector with the distance from the fulcrum. Your main wings provide a torque, and the CoL is the point through which the force vector is acting. The further away that force vector is from the CoL, the greater the torque it provides. Now, you want some torque from the wings to keep your plane from flipping out of control, but you won't want so much that the control surfaces can't overcome the tendency of the main wings to push down the nose. That's why you want the CoL relatively close to the CoM. Probably more to this explanation here, but I'm at work and today I will not be anywhere near a computer, so I'll let one of the other plane gurus take over/correct my ramblings.

This is just a guess, but I imagine you're too heavy for just the tricycle gear setup you've got going on there...your plane is sagging towards the tail because there's nothing holding it up, buckling your aft gear inwards from the vertical in the process, causing camber (if that's the right term) in the aft gear, which is steering your plane. @keptin discusses this phenomemon towards the bottom his Basic Aircraft Design Explained Simply, with Pictures thread. TL, DR: Another couple of sets of gear aft towards the center of the plane and you should be fine. Can't tell where your CoM is - could you add some screenies with your CoL and CoM turned on, purdy please? Given your engine configuration, I'd also suggest turning on CoT; you might have problems there. Typically, if your plane sinks once you're airborne, it's either because you're excessively stable (i.e. CoL too far aft of the CoM) or you haven't got sufficient lift (i.e. your main wings are too small). Looking at your plane, I'ma guessing a combo of the two. Could also be insufficient pitch authority as well, I suppose. Really need to see those markers to be sure.

Downloaded the Atmospheric Assistant mod (a fly-by-wire mod) yesterday afternoon and decided to try it out last night on a crew survey report out about 250 klicks into the ocean east of KSC with Jeb aboard Bad Idea 6. Holy crap did that mod make flying that plane easier - I barely had to touch the controls, and that was with SAS off. Had absolutely no problems getting the plane up to 10k and hitting the waypoints required for the contract, especially once I figured out how to make the navigation autopilot work. First time I felt comfortable turning on physics timewarp during an aircraft flight while still in atmo. The whole experience was... a bit sterile, I guess (I hate to put it that way, but the mod took the challenge out of most of the flight, not that I have any plans to uninstall the mod anytime soon...). Had a real nice lineup on KSC 27 going on for most of the trip back. Still managed to botch the landing; plane bounced when I touched down and managed to slam the tail into the runway (again). Most of the rest of the plane (and Jeb) survived, though, and I got more than enough extra coin from the contract to make up for the damage done to the plane. Pretty sure I was simply coming down too fast on touchdown. Then again, it's been close to a year since I tried to land a plane in KSP; I'm probably just out of practice. Went ahead and got the Beep-Beep 7 probe into its final orbit around Mun and the Bleepity-Bleep 7 probe to Minmus's SOI for contracts, and also launched a revised Beep-Beep 7a probe into a polar orbit around Kerbin. New contracts involve sending more tourists to Mun...I was really hoping to get a contract to Explore Minmus. Not yet. Guess I'll be sending Bob back to Mun to collect more sci sometime in the next day or two...