Nurph

I built a close copy of your lifter and flew it to a 100 km orbit just fine: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqvhucjs1y73es8/22T%20No%20Asp_%202.craft I also made an edited version, adding some winglets, more fuel, fixed Mainsail overheat, and used less RCS. This one made it to a 100 km orbit with fuel to spare: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6cgbb0frm0qe6u/22T%20No%20Asp_.craft Your design is actually pretty good and it's definantly not over-engineered. What does your ascent profile look like?

I believe you could get around the flow logic problem by waiting to activate the center engine until the payload tanks are empty.

I'm not sure the orbit you want is possible. You would need an orbital period (how long it takes to complete one orbit) equal to Kerbin's orbital period around the sun, and i'm not sure if Kerbin's SOI is big enough for that.

It just so happens that Scott Manley just put up a video on pretty much this exact topic: If you put fins on the rocket make sure to place them as low as possible. Having control surfaces above your center of mass makes for unstable rockets.

The extended ladder bits don't have collision boxes so thats not your problem. I believe the issue is with those particular landing legs. When I took a look at the .cfg for the regular legs I noticed that they lacked the breakingForce and breakingTorque parameters, unlike the mini and large legs.

Built the same rocket, did hard and early gravity turns, loops, re-entry effects, full throttle the whole time, no struts. Had absolutely 0 structural failures. Try rebuilding from scratch.

Parts have mass and inertia. A spinning rocket will want to keep spinning. Try not to make sharp turns in atmosphere, you may just be working the controls too hard.

At the top: Nope At the bottom: Nope In the middle: 10 outa 10 I usually place thrusters like this: Ideally, you want them to thrust into the Center of Mass of the booster to avoid rotation. For multipart boosters you'll just have to guestimate where the center is at.

Alright, Basics for Space Flight: 1. Burning prograde (in the direction you are moving) raises the opposite side of your orbit. 2. Burning retrograde (opposite the direction you are moving) lowers the opposite side of your orbit. 3. Use the manuver node system. (There is an in-game tutorial that covers this) The arms of the node represent directions you can burn towards. Play around with them to see what happens to your orbit. 4. Plan a manuver that raises your orbit to touch the Mun's orbit. 5. Grab the node and drag it around your orbit until you can get a Mun intercept. Keep experimenting and you'll get there eventually.

When and where are you starting your burn? The general rule is that you burn prograde as soon as the Mun rises (from a 100km-ish Kerbin orbit).

Flying Wing design, flew quite well.

ASAS is a computer that uses whatever control authority your rocket has (SAS, gimbals, RCS, etc.) to maintain your current attitude and it can be rather, aggresive, at times. If you're suffering structural failures add more struts/space tape and disable the gimbals on any of your radial boosters. It will also fight your inputs, so turn it off if you need to change attitude. As far as I know, SAS modules only provide additional roll control.

-Waiting -Bracing for Lithobrake -Hiding Snacks -Buzzing the Tower

How many RTGs and solar panels do you have? Pictures are great if you can provide them.

My best so far:

I had issuses like this before in previous KSP versions, but not recently. Is your decoupler pointing the right way? Pictures would be nice (use imgur).

There are no 'fuel physics' in KSP, it's just numbers. Resources will only change a part's mass, not where it's CoG is. I assume you know about the CoG, CoL, and CoT markers in the editor? As fuel drains the CoG of your plane (the whole plane, not individual parts) can shift around and cause instabilities, so you'll need to design around that or transfer fuel between tanks to keep balance.

I wasn't at 21 km the whole time (was still looking for the ideal altitude) and I landed once on the way around, so it could probably be done faster still. The airbrakes are from B9 Aerospace (great mod, atleast for the re-done plane parts), but the one I flew around the planet first with was all stock and had radial scoops there instead (they have pretty high drag when open so you can kinda use them as airbrakes). I was tapping my trim up and down the whole time to hold altitude, so you might need Mechjeb to hold it steady if you want to walk away for more than a minute or two.

If you can find the panels in your persistence file I'm pretty sure there's a 'broken true/false' parameter. Don't quote me on that though.

Liek dis I can transfer fuel around in the outer tanks to maintain balence. It's absurdly stable and can survive 2x time warp at 1500 km/s and 21 km altitude at full throttle. After a bumpy landing. It actually has 1520 units of fuel, but I had 191 left over after the flight, so 1400 is more of an estimation. Also the stock fuselages aren't very well balenced, the Mk 1 tank has a higher dry mass than the Mk 3

Based on my first around the globe plane, 2 turbojets, 4 ram intakes, and about 1400 units of fuel should be enough for a round trip anywhere with a few stops in between. What altitude are you usually flying at?

Mabye there collision meshs are touching, so KSP says NO because they're clipping into one another. Have you tried moving the nodes outwards slightly? Does it work when you enable part clipping?

Managed to fly this to a 100km orbit quite easily. https://www.dropbox.com/s/y9y2dj18jdurxeo/Med%20Lifter%202.craft?v=0rw-- I added some winglets, set action group 1 to disable the outer mainsails, more launch stabilizers, moar struts where it was needed (connection between center stage and payload was failing, outer mainsails not very well supported), and set up the staging to follow the order that the fuel drains. Enjoy!

VTOL does a backflip.

Utility: MunLab Station Core http://imgur.com/XMl4ZTi ~13.5 Tons, 60 parts, Action group 9 for solar panels, 0 for other doodads. Use 'control from here' on the probe core for launching. Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qxc3k2kr6yj7iha/MunLab.craft?m=&v=0swn- Name: Nurph