capi3101

Won an eBay auction - bought myself a couple of memory sticks that A) are going to be freakin' compatable with my motherboard THIS time and should double my computer's current memory, which means I might actually get a chance to play KSP without having to resort to using ATM (because after LoadOnDemand, that mod well and truly blows nuts - to coin a phrase from the works of Tom Clancy, it's been like switching mounts from Secretariat to Elsie the Cow...).

The SAS helps the plane to hold its attitude in atmosphere without user input (i.e. they're there so I don't have to mash down on the "S" key for half-an-hour). Actually, including SAS is one of DocMoriarty's design suggestions, and for that very reason - He suggests "1.5 kN of SAS per tonne of takeoff mass". The big ASAS wheels provide 30, and I have 8 of them - from that you can guesstimate the take-off mass of that plane (somewhere between 140-160 tonnes). As it was I had to add all the canards up front because the plane didn't have sufficient pitch authority during the early test flights. Wound up with that big Monoprop tank as ballast - at the time I'd forgotten that Vernors work on LF/LOX instead of monoprop...if I redesign that plane sometime in the future, I may swap it out with an X200-8 or X200-16.

Let me ask this question real quick - what exactly are you doing with this design? From the 3.91 launch TWR, 4.5 tonne final stage and 9259 total delta-V, I'ma going with Eve launch vehicle - is that a correct assumption? If it's just to get off of Kerbin, what you've got is some seriously overworked plumbing... I would second the suggestion to use Seperatrons. If that particular staging event is the only one that's giving you fits, you need only add Seperatrons to that stage. Judging from the size of the stack you're decoupling, I think two should do the trick.

They'll blow on tri-couplers; that happened to me with my own "lift a full orange tank to orbit" spaceplane design... I also had the overheating problem. I found, though, that the plane was still able to make orbit even two marks back on the throttle, so I didn't attempt to do anything to correct it.

Moar rudder. DocMoriarty recommends anywhere from 1 to 2.5 rudder parts per engine used; last I checked you've got five rudders and no fewer than seven engines. Now, that's not terribly specific - I don't know which part he's actually talking about when he says "rudder". I'm guessing Standard Canards, but I've used AV-R8 winglets as rudders to good effect. Rudders can also help you in asymmetric thrust situations - I had one design where a engine completely flamed out but the craft held its course due to its rudders (though the fact that the remaining engine wasn't outputting a great deal of thrust at that point might've had a lot to do with it). 1900 m/s at 34k though is pretty darn good regardless of what kind of engine setup you've got - personally, I wouldn't knock it. As far as your intake action group is concerned, you may have been hit by the old symmetry bug, especially if there was some kind of mishap during the application of the intakes. Try de-selecting the intakes from the action group, then re-applying them, and see if that solves the problem or not (might want to test it out while you're still on the runway...).

Really, getting to Eve and back isn't all that terribly difficult unless you want to land on it; cicatrix has given you the data you need. The landing isn't all that hard either. Getting back into space from the surface - there's the cast-iron female hound...

I don't use FAR myself, but I've heard of FAR users using banked turns to bleed off speed in the atmosphere. It's the same thing the shuttle used to do during re-entry (for the same reason). Something you might try. Other than that, I'm no help.

If you want some guidelines for VTOLs, try DocMoriarty's KSP Space Plane Construction and Operation Guide; it has a rather extensive section on what you're looking for design-wise. Most of the principles still apply in stock aero despite the guide being two versions old now. Having the RCS Build Aid mod installed makes building aircraft easier in general as well. General rule - make the craft function well as a normal airplane first, and then try to turn it into a VTOL. I'd suggest replacing the lift engines with Basic Jets - it excels at low altitudes (particularly in terms of Isp) and it has inherently lower thrust. You'll also probably want to raise the position of the lift jets if you can - as a rule you want their CoT to be placed roughly as close to where the CoL whould go on a normal fixed-wing craft for stable VTOL flight.

Stock aero craft, eh? Then my general guidelines apply. -13 tonnes maximum take off mass per RAPIER (or 15 tonnes maximum take off mass per Turbojet). -.035 minimum intake area per engine. -1:1 Lift Coefficient to Mass Ratio. -40 units of Liquid Fuel and 25 units of Oxidizer times the Maximum take off mass for the number of engines required (if using RAPIERS - you can get by with less oxidizer with a Turbojet/rocket setup). -Plan for a 25% payload fraction for the craft. The big one I'm seeing is insufficient intake area - the more you've got, the higher your atmospheric ceiling. Take a look at DocMoriarty's guide (the one in the link I provided) if you decide to stick with the RAPIERs - it's old data but the principles are still sound.

Here we go - the procedure for "re-sizing" stock parts by hand. You could easily do something similar with any of the wings. To get them to generate more lift, you'd affect the line that says "deflectionLiftCoeff = 2.0" to some higher value. (Actually, just scaling up the model should make a wing generate more lift by definition, but I have no idea if that would work in and of itself or not).

Props are not in the stock game. You'd probably need a mod that includes them - I think Firespitter is the one you need but don't quote me on that. You can build a stock VTOL, though; DocMoriarty's KSP Space Plane Construction and Operation Guide has instructions on how to build and fly them. The principles haven't changed that much at all since 0.24, though if you're using FAR you want to be careful to make your plane actually look as aerodynamic as possible.

You can do the same sort of thing manually - I myself did it the other day to give myself landing gear better suited for the Mk3 size than the Small Gear Bay. Even wound up getting a test contract for the things. I'll have to go find the link to the procedure, though. Only reason why I didn't post on this thread until now...

The mass. A 4 tonne craft by definition weighs somewhere a little shy of 40 kN on Kerbin (F=mg=4*9.8=39.2); putting on that many wing parts (20) on such a little plane would go into the realm of the ridiculous pretty fast...

The actual information can be accessed via the middle mouse button in the VAB or SPH. In general, Delta Wings and Wing Connector A/Bs both have a lift rating of 2. You want your total lift rating (the sum of the lift ratings of all lift-generating parts) to equal or exceed the mass of your craft (for example, a pair of delta wings is sufficient for a 4-tonne craft; a pair of wing connectors with delta wings attached to the end is sufficient for an 8-tonne craft and so on and so forth). I think that general rule holds in both stock aero and FAR, but I would definitely use FAR's analysis tools over taking my word for it - I don't use FAR, see...

At first glance, your plane has got insufficient lift and insufficient air intake for its mass (I say that; I'm not as familiar with the B9 parts as I should be). I'm also not sold on its level of pitch authority. Its CoM-CoL arrangement is also favorable for stable flight - meaning its maneuverability sucks. Ideally the two would be closer together. Increasing your lift is probably your best bet for fixing the problem. In stock, you want to should for a combined lift coefficient from all the lift-generating parts to be roughly equal to that of your mass. I don't know if that rule still holds in FAR or not.

For future reference, this is the subforum for tutorials (i.e. if you're trying to help out other folks). General questions like these should go in the parent "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" section. Now, that said, since you've got a rocket that will make orbit, you've got a couple of options here. 1. Launch your orbital rocket. When it reaches 7k ASL, fly it along the horizon - you're not trying to make space, you're trying to build up the speed you need. Hit the staging controls to activate the T45 when they all light up (note that you don't actually have to fly with the engine - you just have to activate it via staging controls, so if need be you can simply add one to your stack somewhere and turn its thrust limiter down to zero. 2. If the problem is getting too much speed before you reach 7k, lower the throttle settings and don't let them get too high. You should still have sufficient TWR to continue climbing with less than full thrust. 3. If you really can't get going fast enough on the trip up, try testing the engine on the way back down. You might still miss the target altitude/speed range, but it may be worth a go. Maybe try a combination chute/braking engine. 4. Mount the part to be tested on an airplane, if you've got all the tech required. Even a Basic Jet powered aircraft would be capable of hitting the target altitude and speed easily enough.

I agree with Alshain 100%. So, with that said, how exactly do you prefer to play the game, OP?

Didn't have much time in KSP yesterday, but I did have enough to launch Pigeon 7, a five tonne, Basic Jet-powered survey plane to a couple of survey missions within 200 klicks of KSC (my first ever attempt to do anything operational at all with a Basic Jet engine that didn't involve VTOL). I can definitively say that the Basic Jet sucks. On the other hand, it did get the job done (just not as quickly as I would've preferred). Missions went reasonably well, though the landing was bumpy; already bouncy to begin with on account of the gear setup, Jeb clipped the portside wingtip on landing and from there it was a struggle to keep the thing from tipping over. I at least was able to hold it and get the rest of the plane on the ground intact. Got a couple of issues to deal with in 0.90. RCS Build Aid appears to be completely non-functional; I plan to go back through the release notes to see if there was something I missed about the current version. And the old problem of slow performance when the terrain is in view has come back. I assume that has something to do with one of my settings somewhere and that it was something LOD had corrected pretty efficiently. Made the landing all the more tricky.

I beg to differ...if you're having issues holding the profile, the design either has insufficient lift, insufficient SAS, insufficient pitch authority or the CoL is a bit too far behind the CoM (i.e. you've got inherent lawn dart behavior). Without looking at the design, my guess is insufficient pitch authority, but to know for sure I'd have to see a picture.

I generally use DocMoriarty's guide both to determine fuel and ascent profile. Couldn't say whether it's optimal or not; I will say that it works. Here's my general spaceplane advice - the guide is linked in there. Here's DocMoriarty's ascent profile in a nutshell: 45+ degrees above the horizon to 15k 30 degrees from 15-20k 20 degrees from 20-25k 15 degrees from 25-27.5k 10 degrees from 27.5k onward That kinda works; sometimes I find that I have to start descending to pick up more speed while still in air-breathing mode. That's generally a sign of a bad profile; I'm aware of this fact...

After transferring my flags from 0.25 to 0.90 I ditched my first 0.90 career save and started up my "official" one. Spent the evening with parts testing launches and fulfilling the four initial "milestone" contracts. Was able to launch a Stayputnik single-stage to orbit. That one I didn't get any return on the flight but it only cost a little less than √4,000, so it wasn't too big of a hit. Upgraded the Administration Building and Mission Control to Level 2 and by night's end I had my first survey plane built. I'm thinking of taking the design and copying it to 0.25 to check the balance. I really need to work on beefing up my coffers so I can afford some facility upgrades at this point - I'm about to hit the limits of what you can unlock with the Level 1 R&D and the 18 tonne VAB limit is a serious nuisance. At the moment I've managed to save up a little over √100,000.

That right there is a thing of beauty. Seriously. Myself, I haven't had time to fart around with the Mk3 parts to much yet - just long enough to be disappointed (once again) that there aren't wings dedicated to handing Mk3-sized craft...

Seconding Alshain's suggestion - a pic and the F3 Data would be helpful.

Spent the evening installing Active Texture Management and DDSLoader. Took two hours to fire up KSP and it only caused my box to meltdown once - both of which are apparently normal for ATM on the first runthrough. The game doesn't look as bad as I thought it would, but it still doesn't look as polished as it did with LoadOnDemand. Still hopeful for an upgrade to that mod in the near future. Meantime, I can finally join y'all in the fun of 0.90. So far that's involved a run around KSC in an hourglass (to unlock early science) and about a half-dozen parts testing missions. Making money in the new version has proven quite difficult but I do have Stayputniks and batteries unlocked at this point, so I'm hopeful that I can finally complete a contract to test a Mk-55 engine in orbit. Going to have to review my guidelines for SSR boosters - and start practicing them, it looks like. The money's too scarce to be shedding off most of a rocket just getting it into orbit...

Bit the bullet and downloaded 0.90 along with my current mod list. Spent the first half hour getting the game's graphics settings turned down. Still need to ge all my flags transferred over, and I obviously need something to replace LOD for the time being. Made a few preliminary contract launches. I can see what everybody's been talking about - making money in the early going has gotten quite a bit more difficult, particularly given the limitations imposed on the lower level buildings. Thank goodness for KER - without maneuver nodes it's my only real way of telling when to make orbital insertion burns...