capi3101

No problem; I'm glad it worked out for you.

Do bear in mind that in order for KAS to function, you have to have KIS installed first. Myself, I'd take them both together. I've got roughly the same number of mods installed in your "utilities" list working on a box that is faaaaar inferior to the one you're describing (on the side is says "Manufactured in Byzantium" - it's pretty old). I'm pretty sure you could handle them all. 400 parts is about my limit too...which is why I try not to get my part counts up quite that high when I can get away with it.

I'm not entirely sure if it'd be redundant to install both Mechjeb and KER. My understanding is that they give you pretty much the same information. Mechjeb if you want the autopilots, KER if you don't. I use KER my own self but I've always said I'd install Mechjeb if I ever successfully takeoff to orbit from the surface of Eve... Pretty solid list otherwise, provided you've got a box that can handle all that at once. As far as FAR is concerned, there are sufficient differences between it and stock aero to make it worth your while (I use FAR myself but I've played around in 1.0.x aero). FAR is still far and away more realistic. The stability analyses alone make it a nice mod to have, especially if you've got plans to become a serious spaceplane jockey. Others I might recommend if that's the case are Kerbal Flight Data, NavUtilities and Dynamic Deflections. StageRecovery and Procedural Fairings are also a couple of nice ones to have - the latter especially.

I'll admit to not having studied stock parts as closely as I should've. In particular, I've never used the Mk3 parts for anything, so I know nothing of their overall dimensions. That's an oversight I really need to get around to correcting. It's pretty simple to figure out the dimensions of those wings - start in the sandbox with a Cubic Octagonal strut, note its width, add the part to be studied, record the overall length and width and subtract out width of the cubic octagonal. The final result is its dimensions. Those Mk3 wings do have a bit of crank going on with them but that's getting buried into your fuselage, so it shouldn't matter all that much I'm trying to think of how you'd build a wing assembly like the one you have with B9; you'd almost certainly have to design it as a sub-assembly. Start with a cubic-octagonal strut, and then attach a single B9 wing forward to act as a wing connector; you'd want its length equal to the desired final span of the wing assembly and as thin width-wise as you could manage. Then you'd put your main B9 wings on either side of that connector bit with dimensions close to (if not identical to) those Mk3 wings, trying to match up the edge of the wings with those of your initial wing connector bit as best you could. Since the cubic-octagonal is the piece by which you'd probably attach the whole assembly to the rest of your plane, you'd probably want to sweep the wing pieces towards the cubic-octagonal. That'd be how I'd try to build something similar. I should probably post some screenies to show what I'm talking about. I also have no idea if this would actually work or not (I should try it myself before I offer it up as advice) but if it does it'd be a solution that would let you circumvent the sixteen meter limit and fix how it looks. Might be worth a try in any event.

Last night I fiddled around with a new spaceplane design - the Vulture 7 - designed to deliver eight tonnes of fuel at a time to the New Horizons space station (eight tonnes being about 25% of the station's current rocket fuel capacity, about the best I can do at the moment without Mk3 parts). Nice little cranked arrow gull wing and canard design. I say nice...I didn't realize until after the flight that I had a fuel line borked, which certainly explained why the plane developed this vicious roll about 5 kilometers up. Corrected it by settling TAC Fuel Balancer to balance all tanks and the flight continued. Got a good reminder of the fact that Aerospikes don't gimbal - which is why I don't use them all that often, though their relatively high Isp helped me keep the delivery fuel mass down. Launch was a success. Docking was a success. De-orbit.....failed miserably. Plane flipped out of control at about 35,000 and it didn't take long for FAR to cause a complete structural failure. So that flight cost me √60k. Only √60k, but then again I'm not exactly flush with cash at the moment either. Got to looking at the plane afterward and it looks like the center of pressure is below the dry center of mass; I'll try raising the wing to compensate and see if I can maintain control next time. I'm convinced the design is relatively good. Not convinced I can land it safely just yet owing to a heavily loaded wing, but... Meantime, the Straight Flush is eleven hours from Minmus, with Minmusport scheduled to arrive a day behind it and Bill's repair flight a couple of hours behind it. And then Jeb's headed that way in Free Bird 7; he won't get there for another twelve days though. Got a lot of cash riding on those four missions... Also figured out how the 1.0.2 MPLs worked; I'm now trying to figure out how to get all that data out of the New Horizon's lab. Doesn't help that I only have two scientists in my employ at the moment.

Do you have an SPH screenie? How did you build what you have?

For the record, I have used B9 procedural wing parts to built cranked arrow designs, using one B9 wing as the forward strake, another for the aft connector bit and then a third for the remainder of the wing: The trick there is to make sure that the root of the main part of the wing is the same length as the aft connector bit, and then to make sure the root thickness of the wing is the same as the tip thickness of the connector. The strake thicknesses should also be the same as those of the aft connector, and its length should also be the same. It's a perfectly good plane, using six B9 parts for the main wing and another 2 for the V-tail. My point in all this is that it is possible to make composite wings with lengths that exceed the sixteen-meter limit if you're careful about how you do it.

Last night I successfully quickloaded my contracts back into existence in 1.0.2 from where my 3-year old had borked them on Tuesday. Jeb and his tourist group aboard Free Bird 7 were returning from Mun heading into dock at the New Horizons space station over Kerbin. I'd thought he was further along in the process - it turned out the last time I'd quicksaved, though, it was after his third and final aerobraking pass so I plenty of time to set up a rendezvous and docking. After checking tourist contracts once Free Bird successfully docked, I decided I needed to send some folks out to Minmus - I wanted to move Bob out to the new MPL at Minmusport, I had two tourists whose itineraries took them out there and I had a rescue contract over Minmus, so Jeb loaded up Bob, two tourists and Diissa the Engineer into Free Bird for the flight. New Horizons didn't have enough fuel available to refuel Free Bird, so I reluctantly sent up another fuel can (still haven't worked out the Mother Goose 7 - the fuel delivery plane I was working on when my 3-year old borked the game). Successfully docked and refueled, and now Free Bird is headed to Minmus. It'll arrive in two weeks, eleven days after the current flotilla of Minmus-bound ships arrives. At this point I've got a lot of cash riding on fulfilling Minmus-related contracts. Only √400k or thereabouts in my coffers at the moment; I need to start picking up the cash flow a bit. I also need to figure out how to get the 191 data out of the MPL at New Horizons...I've got a few nodes I want to unlock. Like bigger spaceplane parts... Still waiting on confirmation that the majority of my mods are working before I begin the switchover to 1.0.4; that usually takes a week or two to happen. I'm looking awfully hard at those radiator parts in the meantime.

You've got some pretty significant wing loading going on there - good for high speed flight, bad for pretty much everything else. What's the takeoff mass of the plane, and what is the FAR analysis telling you about your wing area? How about the AoA at 0km and Mach 0.35? An SPH screenie with your CoM and trans-sonic curves visible wouldn't go amiss in helping to diagnose any potential problems. I might suggest swapping out that Terrier for something with moar oomph (an Aerospike would do well if you've got access, but even a Thud or two would do well - something that gives you more thrust). Just a thought. EDIT: More craptastic advice from the nugget. If you go to try adding more wing, start with a strake, maybe a Wing Connector C or D aft, and then put your Tail Fin ailerons there; you'd wind up with a cranked arrow wing, which shouldn't affect the overall shape too terrible much but will give you some more wing. Start with that, and expand it out more if it's still not enough. Myself, if I was designing the plane, I'd take its mass and divide it by the wing area; in my experience, you're generally "good enough" if the result is between 0.3 and 0.5, favoring the low end of that range.

Wheesley's are designed as low-altitude engines; you won't go much above 15k on them before they flame out and even then you'll be lucky to top Mach 1 (if you do, it'll probably be in a dive). Best to save up the tech and unlock Whiplash engines; those have a shot of getting you high and fast enough.

Just for point of clarification - you're having problems with Whiplash engines, right? You're not trying to go high on Wheesley engines? Because 15k is about as high as you can get on those things. Even the Whiplash these days doesn't get much above 26k, no matter how many intakes you put on the thing. Sorry - I know this is a type of question up there with "is your computer plugged in". Just want to eliminate that possibility first before going on to other possibilities.

I'm with Wanderfound; it could be any number of the things he listed. I'm also looking at the nose gear; at a glance it looks off-center. Could explain the behavior of the plane before takeoff. I'm thinking the canards aren't helping you any either. You'd be better off lengthening the fuselage and ditching the canards in favor of a pair of stabilators aft. The Tail Fin part works well as a stabilator for this kind of low-tech bush plane design. I may also be missing it - where are your air intakes? Obviously you have an intake - otherwise that Wheelsey would sit there and laugh at you - but I'm not seeing it. If that's an Engine Nacelle aft, you've got access to Elevon 2 and 3 - either of which make for better ailerons than Elevon 1.

Last night I was fiddling around with creating a Whiplash/Aerospike powered Mk2 fuel delivery plane, something I could send up to the New Horizons space station in lieu of launching more fuel cannisters via rocket. One of those slow nights where I had four in-game days to kill before the next thing happened. Anyway, I had the wing set too far forward and had a nose-down gear configuration, which FAR was kicking me in the nuts over. I was about to fix the plane when my 6-year old called me into his room to help him put away a board game since it was his bed time and my 3-year old wasn't helping matters any. I left the game in the SPH, went in there and helped him out. As I came back towards my box I hear this curious clicking and rolling of the mouse wheel...my 3-year old had chosen that moment to experience KSP. I don't know what the hell he did, but aside from borking the plane, I found that I still had all of my money and rep but somehow he'd managed to cancel every last one of my contracts... It occurred to me this morning to look at my quicksave file; it still had all the contract data, so tonight I'll just overwrite the persistent file with the quicksave and everything should be cool and froody. I think the last thing I was doing that required a quicksave was a final docking approach for the Free Bird 7 to New Horizons, so I'll have to finish docking the plane - no biggie. Pretty sure that was it. Pretty sure it wasn't "I'm 12 kilometers from the Runway, going to crash land the Ballista a dozen times now"... Plus 1.0.3. I'm about halfway through the tech tree in 1.0.2; if I wasn't as far along I'd consider a new save game, but it's taken me this long to get to where I'm at. Maybe if I can't recover my old save, I'll start over...but I won't be happy......

No problem, always glad to help out when I can.

It's possible, yes, but the fuel fraction is going to be significant - for 16,000 m/s and an 800 Isp, you're talking about having roughly 87% the mass of your craft as fuel. I might suggest ions in this case, but if you haven't got nukes it's a fair bet you haven't got ions either. Damn shame you can't strap a tourist into a seat...

It should be pointed out that if you're in Career game, you'll need to have upgraded both the Tracking Station and Mission Control facilities to Level 2 before you'll be able to make maneuver nodes. The option, when it does pop up, will say something like "Add Maneuver" or some such.

Updated image for 1.0.x at http://i.imgur.com/9vVZMxq.png, BTW. You'd need 360 to launch from Minmus and escape Kerbin, so that part you could do. Whether the 3500 in the dingy could do the trick or not, though, is questionable; the way I'm reading it is a flat out no, but others might have different opinions. Maybe with a bi-elliptic transfer maneuver.

What exactly are you trying to do with the plane? If you're just trying to send to Kerbals up to orbit, I'd agree with what's already been said. Guidelines for stock air: *25% payload fraction *1 Turbojet/200 kN of rocket per 15 tonnes of mass maximum -or- 1 RAPIER per 13 tonnes of mass *1.5 kN of SAS per tonne of take-off mass (trust me, this does help matters). *Plan for ~1800 m/s of rocket Wings I'm not sure about in stock these days; anymore I fly FAR and the guidelines are different (I'd shoot for a wing root equal to half the length of the fuselage, a wing loading of 0.3 (about the same as a Eurofighter Typhoon) and an aspect ratio of about 2 (same as Concorde or the Shuttle) - both of which can be determined from the estimated mass of the craft). Now, the drag models are closer to one another than they used to be but there's still sufficient difference down in the soup to make any advice I'd give you suspect. Still, if your plane is just sending two Kerbals to orbit, you shouldn't need much wing (your payload is literally just the cockpit - two tonnes, say three for extra bits like batteries and solar panels, 12 tonnes theoretical takeoff mass so a single Turbojet could do the job; I'd recommend pairing it with a pair of Thuds to keep things simple). Back in the day the advice was 1 unit of Lift Coefficient per tonne of plane; a Delta Wing and Wing Connector A both had a lift coefficient of 2, so a twelve tonne plane would require a pair of two Wing Connector As with a Delta on the end. Couldn't tell you what the guideline is these days...

Had a pretty busy weekend overall. After installing FAR Froude, I went ahead and removed the forward canards from the Ballista 7 and launched the plane to orbit. It got plenty hot but nothing broke (for once), and I was ultimately able to deploy its payload successfully. I went ahead and cold-soaked the plane before attempting to land and that helped matters when it came to the de-orbit; I was able to fly the plane to the KSC Runway, quicksaving at 12 klicks out. I then proceeded to crash the plane a dozen times; the final time, the plane bounced twice before I ripped the v-tail off - but nothing else broke and I was annoyed, so I declared victory and moved on. Still managed to recover 2/3 the cost of the whole plane, even with the damage. Meanwhile, I sent the Ballista probe onto the Mun for a contract; that all went well. I also topped off the Raven 7 that Jeb had used to bring up some tourists to the New Horizons station and then sent Jeb and a batch of tourists from there on to Munport 7, and from there I sent down Jeb and a batch of tourists to the Northwest Crater. Jeb did a crew report, an EVA report and collected a surface sample, and then headed back to Munport. Job done, Jeb and the tourists headed back to Kerbin, re-rendezvousing with New Horizons as several of the tourists also had Minmus on their travel itineraries. At this point, New Horizons needs some more fuel brought up from Kerbin to refuel the Raven; I began working on a fuel plane late in the evening on Sunday. Didn't finish up that effort and I'm not hopeful as to my chances of success with it given that I don't have Mk3 parts just yet, and I'm guesstimating a 120 tonne plane will be required for the amount of fuel I want to haul. On the plus side, I've got a contract to test Aerospikes at this point. And while all this has been going on, Val and her tourists remain languishing on Minmus, Bill's en route, so is Berris with another batch of tourists and Minmusport 7 is also on its way. 4 days...

Claw's how you do that in the stock game. If you're not adverse to mods, you can also grab a hold of the thing with parts from KIS/KAS. If you haven't got the Claw...well, that's problematic, but not impossible. You'd have to build a "cage" for the item in question, say out of Modular Girder Segments or somesuch. Maybe use lander legs to keep the object from flying out once you've got it in place. And the tricky bit there is that without a firm connection between the recovery craft and the part, you couldn't risk time-warping for fear of blowing something up.

High altitude planes are probably your only bet. You could in theory send a craft to orbit and then de-orbit it so that it passes close to the target area, but judging the correct spot to deorbit can be tricky. You can also burn yourself up pretty efficiently too if you haven't got A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. unlocked. It is the fastest way to do it, though. If you've just begun career, you might want to hold off on high-altitude surveys (much above 15k) until you get far enough the tech tree to get the Whiplash jet engine unlocked. You can do surveys with the Wheesley, but you won't be travelling nearly as fast nor as high. That said, if you've got such a contract already, you can just hold off on doing it for a while rather than cancelling the contract (unless you can still only take two contracts).

Alright. thanks. So basically the blue curve is just showing me how the pressure differential is distributed over the length of my craft, i.e. which part of my horizontal surfaces are going to generate the most lift. Is it meant to replace the CoL indicator (or perhaps explain why it shows up where it does)?

Okay, and what's the significance of that line? What do I want that line to look like when it comes to my designs?

Alright - so I downloaded Froude this morning and will get it installed when I get an opportunity. Meantime, can someone give me a lowdown of what's changed with it? For example, I saw on the main FAR thread someone with the wave drag up and there was a blue curvy line - what exactly is that used for? Is that even in the Froude build? Haven't had much to ask you guys about lately - which may or may not be a good thing...

Not much accomplished last night. Launched a space station core to Kerbin orbit for a contract; the core will ultimately be sent to Minmus to set up research efforts out there. Melfort snuck aboard while I wasn't looking, so at this point I have no available KSC ground staff whatsoever. Hasn't happened in quite some time. Tried landing a Ballista 7 cargo plane I'd launched a while back. Crap got hot and exploded, and then the whole plane disintegrated. I still have yet to retrieve one of those intact. Tried launching another Ballista, this one to fulfill a Mun probe contract. That one got hot and exploded on launch, first time that's happened. That plane designed flew a lot better before I stuck canards up front - I'ma thinking those are going to go before I try to fly one again. Meantime, I've got a lot of stuff in transit, a fair amount of it (no fewer that three flights) headed to Minmus.