ComradeGoat

Why not use a liquid fuel droptank with a high thrust engine on it, and then jettison it when the tank is empty? Better ISP than an SRB, same benefits, can be switched off and gives you extra fuel for your destination if you don't use it all on the initial "kick".

Scott Kerman to James T. Kerman, "dammit Jim, she cannae take much more without implementing resources and mining!"

The problem with that is that you will likely miss your launch window while waiting until the right point in your (lengthy) orbit round Kerbin to drop your periapsis.

When I've tried setting off from the edge of Kerbin's SOI to Jool, I've noticed that even fully fuelled, it's still less efficient than burning direct from LKO because of Oberth. YMMV, I guess.

I have, on occasion, dropped them at strategic points so that they will clean themselves up. After completing the plane change burn to Jool, for example: set Joolian periapsis up to hit Jool, drop empty tanks, fix periapsis. But mostly I just litter interplanetary space with empty orange tanks.

ASAS doesn't waste fuel if you turn off RCS before using it. It's also very handy for maintaining heading while translating with thrusters to dock, if your craft isn't perfectly balanced.

Hurrah for drop tanks!

Always go to Duna. Those launch windows are rare!

Thank you for saying this. As a woman playing this game, the "boys club" atmosphere does put me off a bit at times, especially when the response is "gender is irrelevant". If it's irrelevant, why does it always seem to default to male?

I'm using this little engine a lot on my spaceplane shuttles. It's really light and does all you need to get from a barely orbital flight at 30,000 metres to orbit.

If you have enough TWR on the jets and enough intake air to run at full power at 28-30k, you can get up to 2000 m/s at that sort of height in straight and level flight. This is almost orbital velocity. Problem is, you'll lose most of it to friction if you cut the power, but you don't want to be carrying high TWR rockets because they're heavy. Here's what I do: 45º up to 10K and about Mach 1 (330 m/s), pitch down to about 30º. Watch engineer redux - assuming I have a full power ceiling at 29-30K, when my apoapsis hits 28K level off - this will stop apoapsis from climbing. Make fine adjustments at 28K to stay at that altitude. Let the plane accelerate to close to top speed (2000 m/s or higher if it'll do it: my current SSTO shuttle will do 2100 m/s at 29K on one turbojet). Once your acceleration drops right off, pitch up as steeply as you can without going into a flat spin or flaming out. Having only a single engine here helps because it stops flameouts themselves making you spin. The apoapsis will climb sharply away, As it gets a decent time i front of you (say 20 seconds), pitch down again. Reduce power slowly to avoid a flameout. If your rocket engine is a NERVA, it should be lit at this point, otherwise stay on just jets. By the time your apoapsis is at 50K or more, pitch down to horizontal. Keep reducing power to avoid a flameout. If you only have one jet engine, you can let it flameout and then reduce the power until it restarts. If you have more than one, avoid a flameout at all costs, so be more conservative. By 40K, I'm on a trickle of power, but my apoapsis and periapsis are still climbing. If you've done this right, your apoapsis will be in space. Once the engine won't even idle, cut it and close your intakes. If you are well above 40K and your apoapsis is above 80K, you can glide into space before circularising from this point. If your apoapsis is still below 70K, or close to it, you'll need to use your rockets to lift it into space. Good luck!

I build my stations and interplanetary motherships (basically stations with nuclear engines on the back) using the Sr docking ports. I then add a docking module populated with standard and junior ports for landers, spaceplanes and launches.

No! Shall not.

I design my stations so that the panels are well away from the docking area. Also, they're modular: if I break them, they can be replaced. Here's my current LKO station, receiving a shipment of rocket fuel: Note the solar panes are well clear of both the main docking area and the larger docking ports above it.

Considerable improvement.

It was affecting me quite badly (fine now), and I wasn't using a joystick.

Update: Tried landing my plane. Crashed into a hill and exploded. Jeb survived. SAS worked perfectly. The hill was my fault.

Guys, thank you so much for 0.21.1 It's vastly better. Issues I was seeing have all but disappeared. It wanders a tiny amount when under thrust, but not enough to cause me significant grief. Plane flies beautifully in atmosphere. Thanks for getting this out so quickly.

In your universe, people submitting bug reports for a feature that has just removed functionality are "haters"? That's ... quite polarised!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! <3

Neither. SSTO spaceplanes here.

It's doing it on my plane when there is plenty left to give in the control surfaces.

Nope. The videos I did showing the uncorrected pitch problem were from a clean install. All it was used for was to launch that plane.

Curious. I see the other 2 axes drift like you, but all I see in orbit is a pitch. It seems like you're getting worse behaviour than I am. It flies beautifully in 0.20, by the way.

OK, here's an updated video of my problem for those apparently wanting to attribute a sudden 10º shift in heading to orbital precession. To eliminate that possibility, I rolled the ship 90º. I also selected a much higher orbit. Interestingly the effect seems less pronounced in a higher orbit (no, it's really not orbital precession I'm seeing). This video is much shorter. I thrust from stationary, the ship pitches up about 5º and hods it there (briefly - it runs out of fuel at this point), and then when the engines cut out it returns to the set heading. The effect is smaller further away from Kerbin (also, there's less lag, so probably a different physics delta?), and can almost be lived with, but it's still annoying.