capi3101

Yeah - truth be told SAS and ASAS.......er, sorry, Reaction Wheels and Reaction Stabilizers are largely unnecessary for well-built rockets these days. You might need one - tops - and generally that's to assist a rocket with a probe core that doesn't have native SAS capabilities as its main command module. Examples are the Stayputnik and OKTO2, maybe the QBE but don't quote me on that since I'm just going off the top of my head. Reaction Wheels, Reaction Stabilizers and Large ASAS Modules (that last one is the only one that was never renamed) all do the same thing any more; the difference nowadays is in how much torque they generate and in their size. Reaction Wheel is tiny/5 kN, Reaction Stabilizer is small/15 kN, Large ASAS is large/30kN. That change came somewhere around 0.21 IIRC, or maybe it was 0.20; I don't recall exactly. Sufficed to say that it was fixed and now there is no difference between SAS and ASAS.

Greetings, fellow Kerbonauts. Over the course of the past year I've been learning how to design and fly spaceplanes. Like most spaceplane amateurs, I was very frustrated when I first decided to try to unravel the mysteries of that particular side of KSP, and it wasn't until I first got a hold of DocMoriarty's KSP Space Plane Construction and Operation Guide and the guidleines it contained that I started making spaceplanes that would fly reliably every time. A few things have changes from 0.24.2 when the last version of the guide was released, but the general principles are the same now as they were then. An idea I've had for a while now is to use a spaceplane to launch a Munar capsule to orbit, and then to use that same plane to haul the capsule back down to KSC. I've tried this a couple of times but there were a few addtional spaceplane "rules" and tools I needed (RCS Build Aid, Intake Build aid and the ability to use radial symmetry in the SPH) before I got a design that finally did the job. So, this past weekend I put together this monstrosity, the Vampire Bat 7, a DocMoriarty-style transporter spaceplane hauling a Geschosskopf Science Bomb Munar lander. This weekend I conducted a successful mission - Mun and back, all parts recovered, 500 science gathered...total mission cost was just √3,500 - the cost of fuel. Okay capi, so you've made the world's ugliest spaceplane. So what's your challenge?. When we hit KSP v1.0, the souposphere stock aerodynamic model - in which this craft is obviously designed to fly - is going to go away, to be replaced with an aerodynamic model more akin to NEAR or FAR. When that occurs, designs like this one should become more problematic (if not impossible) to fly due to the changes in drag. So, my challenge to you is this: Build a plane that will haul the same capsule design to and from orbit, using either the NEAR or FAR aerodynamic model. Grab the Capsule Here. In addition to the requirement of using NEAR or FAR (your choice), the following rules apply: 1) You are not allowed to modify the design of the capsule in any way, shape or form. The capsule is too wide to fit inside a Mk3 Cargo Bay; that's part of the challenge. It weighs over eighteen tonnes fully fueled and can fly from LKO to the Mun, land, take off again and return to LKO. It has been balanced so that its center of mass won't shift as it burns fuel. 2) No vertical launches - the capsule must be brought up to orbit and brought back down via a transport craft that's readily identifiable as a plane. 3) No breakage - the number of parts you have at the start of the mission must equal the number of parts you recover from the mission. 4) The usual crap - no hyperediting, gravity hacking or other cheatsy nonsense. To enter, you'll need to submit the following set of screenshots: 1) Your craft in the SPH. 2) A screenshot that indicates the number of parts the craft has prior to launch (this can be combined with the first shot if you've got a mod that shows that information, such as KER). 3) Your craft in orbit. 4) The capsule on the Mun. I'll give extra consideration to those who take a screenie with a Kerbal/flag in the shot or using the sci bomb (by which I mean I'll use that stuff to break ties). 5) Your craft safely back on Kerbin. 6) A shot of your craft's recovery with the price of parts recovered visible. Along with your screenshots, you must also indicate which mods you use - NEAR or FAR, stock parts versus parts mods such as B9 and Firespitter, etc. Categories for entries will be based on specific mod combinations as they come in. Scoring for the challenge will be based solely on mission cost, i.e. your score will be the total overall cost of the craft minus the cost recovered from the craft, which makes the first and last screenshots absolutely crucial. Best of luck to all entrants. (If you want to fly the Bat yourself, here are the necessary files): Vampire Bat Craft FileLarge Gear Bay Folder (You'll need the Large Gear Bay part to fly the Bat; just drop the contents of the Dropbox folder above in a local folder titled "LargeGearBay" inside your KSP>>Gamedata>>Squad>>Parts>>Wheels directory. All it is is a Small Gear Bay re-scaled to twice its normal size. The plane uses these action groups: 1=toggle Turbojets, 2=toggle 24-77s, 3=toggle Intakes, 7=undock the lander (non-functional), 9=toggle lander's solar panels, 0=triggers the sci bomb). LEADERBOARDS: - - - Updated - - - So...okay - next step would be my own entry. Anybody know of any good FAR tutorials?

That's what it reminds me of as well. And you're right - it's only works because of the stock aerodynamic model. I'm interested in seeing if it'd be possible to run the same mission with one of the more advanced aero models. Flies and flies well. Takes off at 55 m/s. The undercarriage needs to be reinforced; that's its major design flaw. Wanna give it a spin yourself?

One thing I've done is to "build" a re-scaled landing gear using the procedure outlined here. The "Large Gear Bay" has come in handy on quite a number of occasions, none of which have involved (so far) Mk3 spaceplane parts since I've yet to unlock them in the R&D. Really, though, a lot of spaceplane design is just a matter of following formulas and figuring out what you want to do with a given plane. Your aero model has a lot to do with it too - you can get away with crap in the soup that you can't with FAR and NEAR. Take this ugly monstrosity for example... Flies in stock, delivers a Mun lander to orbit and then brings it back down again. Pretty much as far from a Rafale as you can get... - - - Updated - - - I should mention that another thing I've done to help guard against tail strike is to put a "kickstop" wheel in the back and set it on its own action group. This wheel's sole purpose is to hold up the tail until the plane is going fast enough (about 20 m/s or so). You then retract that wheel, and you can take off on the back gears as you would with any other plane. In general that's not an optimal solution, but it does occasionally save a few headaches.

Hmm...there've been improvements to the way parts attach to one another in the last few updates; a plethora of struts is no longer necessarily the answer to a structural integrity problem. Could easily be that you've got too much thrust for the size of your rocket. I've had issues with craft that were overly SASed along anything other than the longitudinal axis; without looking at your craft I couldn't suggest a fix one way or the other. Any chance you could post a screenie of the craft you're trying to launch, or better yet the craft file? Also, are you playing with any mods?

Did a number of missions over the weekend. Pulled three spaceplane flights on Valentine's Day proper, one to recover Pantemone Kerman from orbit and two to deliver Barn Owl probes to LKO, with mostly successful landings afterwards (first Barn Owl flight didn't land level and I wound up tearing up a wing). Fulfilled a number of contracts, enough to upgrade the Runway to Level 3 at long last. I still need to upgrade my SPH, Tracking Station and R&D to Level 3, but that's it at this point. Probably the biggest thing I did this weekend was successfully complete the mission of the Vampire Bat 7; Jeb and Bob made a successful Mun landing, collected a bunch of science and headed back to Kerbin to rendezvous with the launch and retrieval plane, making the rendezvous with 9 m/s remaining. The re-docking mechanism worked as designed and the plane successfully brought the craft back to KSC. I do need to reinforce the undercarriage if I intend to use the craft again; she landed intact but was awful wobbly on takeoff and landing. Nevertheless, it was overall a great success - Mun and back, 500 science, all parts recovered, total mission cost was √3,500 (the cost of fuel). No, that's not a typo.

Ditto everybody else. Q-D-S-S is the general key-press sequence I wind up using.

In answer to #4 - a reasonably reliable method I use is one suggested in DocMoriarty's KSP Space Plane Construction and Operation Guide: 1. Set a marker out at KSC. Preferably, this is a set of flags set put on either side of the runway lengthwise (i.e. one on the ocean-side end of the runway, and one on the other side) - you can use the flag to check your alignment on the KSC Runway. Additional markers at 1, 5, 10 and 20 kilometers out on the landward end of the runway can be placed as well; this would give you a rudimentary ILS. If you've got a mod like NavUtilities, you just need a single mark for KSC itself. A powered probe core on the Launchpad will do just fine. 2. You want to put a maneuver node on the far side of Kerbin exactly opposite from KSC. You'll want to position it so that your craft will reach the node within one minute; for each additional minute of lead time, you'll need to add a lead angle of one degree. 3. Set the maneuver node to put your periapsis over KSC at an altitude of 44,000 meters. If you're at a higher orbit than 100x100, set the periapsis lower and vice versa (DocMoriarty suggests 45,500 for a 72x72 orbit, for example). Burn as indicated. With this method I usually wind up in the situation where I'm subsonic (generally below 400 m/s) within 100 klicks of KSC. Done right you can glide right in; I've never accomplished that... Bear in mind - this procedure works for the souposphere (i.e. stock aero). If you use NEAR or FAR, you'll need to make a series of tight turns as you approach to bleed off speed - otherwise you're going to wind up going WAY too fast, and won't be able to do much besides wave as you overshoot the runway... I'll have to take another look at your shuttle to see what its flight characteristics are late in its flight. Depending on the design, your CoM could be shifting behind the CoL when you make your final burn for orbit, in which case a safe recovery is going to be highly problematic. The RCS Build Aid mod would be able to tell you if that's what's going on (it will show you your "dry center of mass", and let you know how much/in what direction the CoM shifts as you burn fuel); you could try that out with the orbiter in the SPH to see if that's what's going on.

I think others have hit on the problem - the lift vector should be pointing upwards, not downwards. The likely cause of this is the way you have the wings attached. Wing position has a lot with how the game calculates lift in general, and it assumes that certain wing parts will be aimed certain ways (for example, a Wing Connector A is designed to generate lift if it's placed with the long end touching the fuselage/adjacent wing; turn in sideways (so it looks like a Wing Connector and it generates no lift. I suppose it's possible that the game is calculating negative lift for the wings...certainly in a quantity enough to overcome the lift that is being generated by the lifting body parts you're using (such as the Mk2 Cockpit).

Didn't have much time to play last night. Did a re-design of my earlier Evening Dove 7 Kerbal rescue plane; failed to make orbit on account of insufficient oxidizer. I remember that was the issue it had when I first designed it back when I still had the Level 1 SPH, and I didn't fix it then for the same reason I didn't fix it last night - I needed to have a Mk2 Rocket Fuel tank for the fuselage instead of a Mk2 Liquid Fuel tank, and every last damn thing on the plane is attached to that single piece (including the exquisitely fine-tuned RCS ports). Maybe one of these days I'll get around to it. Meantime I designed a new rescue craft - the Twilight Dove 7 - on account of the fact that I'd forgotten I had a perfectly good rescue plane already (I've also run out of the names of real "doves" at this point, so I had to start making stupid crap up - I should really go back to naming my craft after nuclear weapons tests). Tweaked it a bit, got it to orbit, bedtime. Will conduct the rescue tomorrow if I get a chance; I'd say tonight except this evening is when me and the missus are observing Valentine's Day... I hope the guy I pick up is a Scientist. I've got 4 pilots, a slew of engineers...but only Bob and one other scientist. I'm also not seeing a whole lot of new recruits in the astronaut building, despite my rep being up there a good ways. Didn't do anything more with the Vampire Bat 7 mission last night; Jeb and Bob are still en-route to Mun at the moment. Will let y'all know how that whole thing turns out.

The devs have made the stock craft that come with the game generally incapable of carrying out their intended function without tweaking. It's been that way since at least 0.18, and they do it on purpose - the idea is to see what you can learn from the craft. You know, figure out what's wrong with it and then make some changes that get it working as it should. For example, the Kerbal X rocket is supposed to be a Munar lander with an asparagus booster - it's a lousy Mun lander and the asparagus is about as rotten as it gets, but it can be tweaked to a working craft pretty easily. The wiki states the following: "It is recommended to tweak the thrust of the orbiter's main engines to 60% and tweak down the thrust of the Kerbodyne KR-2L engine at the bottom of the large fuel tank during the flight as fuel is being drawn from the tank." I imagine you could also just not run the thing full blast all the way up, but I don't know if that would be easier or not...

So I decided to give the idea of launching a Mun lander to LKO via spaceplane one last shot. As I was last typing on this thread, I realized what I needed to do was re-ballast the plane so the CoM didn't drift upwards as much, then reposition the CoT and CoL afterwards to account for the changes. So I did that - I used a couple of RCS Cylinders set below the payload to re-balance, adjusted the position of the engine clusters so that the CoT was better aligned and re-positioned the wings to put the CoL in better position. I also adjusted the position of the rudders; they were largely ineffective where they were originally. Since I now have a Level 3 SPH, I went ahead and moved my action groups around (and added a few extra action group functions). After all the adjustments, I put Jeb and Bill in the cans, fired her up and this happened: The boys are on the way to the Mun now. I'm a little concerned about the return; the lander didn't want to come out of the bay at first and it has no chutes, because it's supposed to rendezvous with the plane upon return to Kerbin and the plane is supposed to take it back down. Going to suck if I get back and I can't get the damn thing in to dock again - but I still think I achieved a thing of awesomeness last night. Going to be sweet if it actually does dock back up - that'd be a mission to the Mun, 100% reusable for just the cost of fuel. Which probably is substantial - it's a √220,000 craft as is...

As a general rule, there are two ways to conduct a test while landed, either A) through a specific "run test" button which can be accessed by right-clicking on the part in question, or (the far more common option) by activating the part via the staging controls. If the part doesn't have a "run test" button, try hitting the space bar. If that's what you're doing and it still doesn't credit you for the test, that's a bug.

Spent a good chunk of my evening working on a DocMoriarty-style transporter spaceplane that would send a Geschosskopf Sci Pack Munar lander to LKO, stay in orbit while it went and did its business, and then bring it back down to KSC. Got a bit anxious trying to fly the thing; getting the cargo frame shaped correctly was a challenge in and of itself (still Level 2 Runway and SPH, see), and in the end I would up with a craft with a short fuselage and long wingspan. Thinking on it again this morning, because I hadn't ballasted the thing properly I had a craft with a tendency to nose down and insufficient pitch authority to correct for it - she couldn't make it past 12k. I'll have to overhaul the design tonight - I still think the idea has merit. I just need to re-ballast the plane so the CoM is better balanced and reposition the wings so that the CoL isn't as far above the CoM as it was. Increasing the length of the craft and re-positioning the elevators for better pitch authority wouldn't hurt either. Spent the rest of the evening finishing up a batch of contracts I'd had outstanding for a while. This included putting a satellite in a geosynchronous Kerbin orbit, satellite in Munar orbit, putting a space station in Kerbolar orbit, landing a base on Minmus and putting a materials bay satellite in Minmus orbit. Made a lot of cash; I was up to √1,800,000 by night's end, enough of a cushion that I felt comfortable upgrading the SPH to Level 3. My SSTM plane runs about √200,000; going to need the thing if I can get it to work...

Trying to figure out exactly why you're wanting to connect a Mk-55 to a Monoprop cylinder. The Mk-55 is a bipropellant engine; the Cylinder is a monoprop fuel source. They're incompatible with one another. You also don't need fuel lines to feel monoprop thrusters, BTW.

The major difference between stock aerodynamics and real aerodynamics (to my understanding anyways) is the way that the game's current drag model is set up. In reality, the formula for calculating the amount of drag force an object experiences is dependent upon the cross-sectional area of that object. More cross-section means more drag acts on the object. In KSP, this cross-sectional area relationship is replaced with the object's mass - i.e. more mass means more drag on the object. This simple change has some pretty substantial effects - for example, with stock aero, an plane that has a sleek nose will generate more drag than one with a blunt nose, because the nosecone is a separate part and adds mass to the craft. This is, of course, completely un-intuitive and is one of the major complaints that veterans of flight simulators (to say nothing of folks out there with real world flight hours) have with the game in general. I'd have to go back and check my notes to see how much the atmospheric pressure of Kerbin's atmosphere changes with height and how it compares to Earth's atmosphere in that regard. I do know that on average the atmospheric pressure on Earth at 10 kilometers up is roughly 100 hPa (roughly 0.1 atm). There may be a difference there that also contributes to differences in how the atmosphere behaves. The developers have said that they intend to update the stock aerodynamic model prior to the release of KSP version 1.0. What I got from that announcement was that the new system wouldn't be entirely like any of the existing aerodynamic models available (stock, NEAR or FAR); I of course have no details on how it would operate. So yes, if you are dissatisfied with stock aero, NEAR or FAR are options that will make planes behave more realistically and you're more than welcome to check them out. Me, I fly stock, and I consider someone's preference of aerodynamic model to be akin to the choice of whether or not to use Mechjeb - totally up to the individual, no right or wrong choice there.

Farted around last night with a spaceplane that was designed to be single-stage to the Mun and back. Wound up not going to the Mun due to insufficient delta-V for a round trip, though the design did make orbit. Started playing around with the notion of using a spaceplane to launch a Munar excursion module to LKO, using the plane as both the Kerbin launch and re-entry vehicle. Designed the Munar transfer and landing stage and then started crunching the numbers for what kind of plane I'd need to do the job. I think I came to the conclusion that I'd wind up hitting the Level 2 SPH part limit. So really, what I did last night was come to the conclusion that I need to bite the bullet and upgrade the SPH to Level 3 already...

Managed to corrupt my career save over the weekend. I think what happened was that I somehow managed to open up two instances of KSP at the same time and some of the parts got loaded into one, while the rest got loaded into the other. Total fluke - that utterly managed to nuke every craft I had out there. Fortunately the game simply reported all the deployed Kerbals as MIA and the next time I fired up my game I had all of them back. Still, the glitch also cancelled out my "Explore Minmus" contract, and I was in pretty dire need of those funds... So after all that I got back to the business of fulfilling the current set of contracts I had. Built a series of transporter spaceplanes ala DocMoriarty (with Turbojet/24-77 combos instead of RAPIERs as I still haven't got the R&D up to Level 3 yet). Also installed a mod that takes care of the whole intake-intake-intake-engine business for you with a push of a single button; I owe whoever built that thing a couple of beers. I also need to find the damn thing again so I can add it to my list of recommended mods for spaceplane users... EDIT: Ah - found it again; it's Intake Build Aid by LordFjord. Removes one of the most aggrevating things about building spaceplanes at the push of a button. Lets you run your three-intake fed turbojets full blast all the way to 38k. Now officially on my "recommended mods" list. Anyway, I used planes to launch two six-tonne probes and a six-Kerbal, 11 tonne space station core to LKO. The station core is going to a Kerbolar orbit, while both probes are Mun bound (I'll need to send the second one on to Minmus, though, as I didn't fully read the terms of the contract when I launched the thing - an oversight corrected in the second flight. I did have a mishap where the payload attached to the frame of the plane instead of the decoupler to which it was supposed to attach, throwing the plane's CoM almost far enough for it to exhibit lawn dart behavior, and obviously it was a surprise when I got to orbit and couldn't offload the payload - had to come back down with the payload still loaded, which was frustrating but I managed it. At this point I've got about five missions in progress and about √300,000; I need to start finishing out some things so I can get moar bux to finish upgrading KSC...

Usually if your plane can't hold its attitude despite being fully pitched in stock aero, it's a symptom of insufficient pitch authority. I'd also question the amount of lift being generated; I don't know enough about the B9 mod to say one way or another. I do know that the latest version of the B9 mod requires one of the advanced aerodynamic models, which may be the source of the troubles you're having. Our of curiosity, how massive is that plane?

Try RCS cylinders to move the CoM aft. They add a fair amount of mass (4 of them are equivalent to one of the large Monoprop tanks) and they're fairly inconspicuous. If you do this, be careful that the CoM doesn't shift aft of the CoL... You might want to start using RCS Build Aid if you're not using it already; balancing the rest of the craft so that the CoM doesn't shift is a pretty important part of making bonafide shuttle designs in the first place, and then you can adjust your wings from there.

1. It'd be easier to answer the question if you could tell us a little bit about the aerodynamic model you're using, and maybe show a pic or two of the planes you typically fly. I use stock aero myself. I also use NavUtilities; Alshain's provided you the link. Before I used NavUtilities, though, I used to set up a manual ILS. To do this, take a Kerbal, put him out on a very basic rover (or walk/run - it'll just take a lot longer) and drive him out to the ocean-side end of the Runway (just off the raised "ramp" portion). Have him plant a flag. Then drive him/have him run to the other side (landward side) of the runway. Have him plant a flag. Those flags become your ILS - when you're trying to land, line up those two marks on the screen; you know you're aligned with the runway at that point. You can then use the distance between yourself and the current flag to determine your glideslope - you want your altimeter reading in meters to be one hundred times the distance to the marker, plus 100 meters. (For example, if you're 12.3 kilometers from the flag, you want your altimeter to read (100*12.3)+100 = 1330 meters). If you're more than 200-300 meters above that mark, you're too high; more than 200-300 meters below that mark, you're too low. That's just a handy way of doing things if you want to stay stock. Note that you can set out more flags landward; marks at 1, 5, 10, 15 and 25 kilometers will give you more points of reference and will improve the accuracy of your runway alignment. From there it's pretty much like people have said. Keep your throttles at 2/3 or below until you're 10 k out, then you don't want to be above 1/3 throttle or so. Drop the throttle down to one or two klicks once you're 2-5 kilometers out, and then try to go that last kilometer with throttles off. Touchdown needs to be gentle - 5 m/s downwards, tops. Try the plain out before you shoot for the runway; it's generally an easier target to hit. Deorbit such that if you start at 100 kilometers, you put your periapsis right over KSC at 44,000 kilometers or so. That'll generally get you within 100 kilometers of KSC; get it right on the money and you should just be able to glide right in. I've never pulled this off myself... 2. Maneuver nodes become available with an upgrade of the Tracking Station to Level 2.

Well...let's start with the basics. What kind of aero are you using: stock, NEAR or FAR? The answer you seek may be different depending on what you use. Also, which mods do you use. All relevant mods here - any plane parts mods, whether or not you use RCS Build Aid, etc. Me, I use stock aero. And I use RCS Build Aid and Nav Utilities; those are the only relevant mods I use. And I successfully land on the runway quite often. And the problem you're having - the craft tumbles out of control upon re-entry - is one I used to have. From the look of your craft, I can see two issues: A) Your CoM is shifting aft of your CoL late in the flight due to burning fuel. Had a RAPIER-powered cargo plane with that exact same problem; once the oxidizer was gone, the plane was unstable. RCS Build Aid would help you out tremendously here (it'll show you where the CoM will wind up once the plane is out of fuel, and let you know EXACTLY where the CoM will be at that point. You haven't got nearly enough lift for the mass of your craft. Ideally, you want the sum of the lift coefficients of all lift-generating parts to be roughly equal to the take-off-mass of your craft. From the parts I'm seeing, you've got enough lift for about a five tonne plane - and it weighs quite a good deal more than that, I'd wager. You've got more thrust than you need, which is why it makes orbit in the first place. You also might want to not fire up the engines until you're subsonic (below 400 m/s), and then don't fire them up past 2/3 throttle. That does help you maintain some control as you get further down into the soup. Of course, if the CoM has shifted that much, you're going to be in trouble no matter what. Going to point you out to my general advice for new spaceplane users. Keptin's guide is good for the basics; DocMoriarty's guide is good for the specifics (even if you're not trying to build transporter spaceplanes - and the principles it contains are still sound, despite the guide being slightly out of date (0.24.2)).

If they're seniors, you want to make sure you've got them right side out - it's pretty easy to stick one of them on upside down and not realize it. For reference: Not much else I can say here; Foxster's right in that the OP's image is pretty dark to be able to tell what's going on one way or the other.

After five days worth of headaches, I reluctantly took the GT 620 I'd put in my box alongside my new memory chips out, putting me squarely back at GeForce 7025 suckville. As soon as I got the graphics drivers reset, I promptly fired up KSP - because it had been five days. Even though I'm back to suckville on the graphics, I did notice the effect of the new memory - the game runs a LOT smoother now. I'm considering turning up the graphics settings a bit - for the first time since I started playing the game. Didn't really do much gamewise. After fiddling a bit with a VTOL design, I took on a contract to test an aerospike on a sub-orbital trajectory. Designed the Blackbird 7, a drone spaceplane, to do the job - and boy did it do the job. 20 tonnes, dual Turbojets, 6 Ram Intakes, 6 24-77s. Fueled it for a thirty tonne takeoff weight and balanced it for no CoM shift. Thing didn't flame-out until it was going 2100 and close to 40k in altitude; didn't have to do much flying on the 24-77s at all. Test completed, I went ahead and circularized my orbit, then de-orbited in a spot that would put me down close to a landing at KSC. Almost got that right - I wound up overshooting KSC 09 by ten klicks before I was sub-sonic. Did a quick turnaround an had a hairy descent and final approach for KSC 27 - wasn't even close to lining up on the runway until I was less than four klicks out. Let's just say that bit was probably against FAA regs; my wife watched me bring it in and after everything was said and done she told me that she was glad that she wasn't riding on that plane. Brought her down nice and gentle on the left side of the strip - all in all a successful mission. Profitable too - netted over √100,000 and something like 2000 science (why I took the contract in the first place). Went ahead and upgraded my Mission Control to Level 3, bringing me a third of the way to a fully upgraded KSC. Nothing really interesting in the pipe at the moment, unfortunately. Still have my initial Minmus exploration mission in progress along with a couple of satellite contracts. Am considering a mission to launch a space station to Duna - maybe to support the Ike exploration when I'm finally ready to go that way.

No problem, and thank you for the rep.