GeorgeG

Problem solved. The main problem was not Hyperedit's fault. I have an SSTO Space Plane with two Rapiers, several turbojets, and an LV-N. I found out today that the LV-N did work in orbit….. if I had NOT activated any of the airbreathing engines. One clue was the Rapiers, after a test firing on the ground, they would usually make a "puh" sound when Hyperediting into orbit. The sound that is made when an airbreathing engine does not have enough air. The engine did not change from airbreathing to closed cycle, since it had not automatically switched when the intake air got too low. So maybe that counts as a bit of a bug for Hyperedit , but again that is not the main cause. And maybe not so much as a bug as an issue that the user should be aware of. With Mechjeb, a few days ago, I started using the Utilities option to "Prevent jet flameout". Well, now I realize that when the jets are in orbit but activated, Mechjeb refuses to allow the throttle to advance even though there are rocket engines that could work. And this only tends to happen when using Hyperedit, as a normal climb to orbit would involve shutting down the jet engines anyway (Well, before I started using that option to prevent flameout, I used action groups to shut down various jets). And the Rapiers change from airbreathing to closedcycle on their own. So the solution for me is to either deactivate "prevent jet flameout" in Mechjeb once the airbreathing part of the flight is over, or just have all of the airbreathing engines deactivated (and make sure the the Rapiers are in closedcycle mode). - George Gassaway

I've run into a problem, which I am not sure if it is a Hyperedit bug, or what. Basically, I used Hyperedit to put a ship into orbit, to test it out at a far away planet . I throttle it up, and nothing. The Navball throttle indicator does not move. I turn RCS on and the RCS works, but not the engines. To confirm the ship is good, I throttled up the engines on the launch pad, and they fire fine. I then use Hyperedit, and nothing. Plenty of electricity, and of course it has a command pod. It works fine until I use Hyperedit. Now, it does not happen with all ships. But it is happening with a new one that I've been working on. If the craft file is corrupted in a way that Hyperedit does not like, any ideas on how to fix it? I even remove the engines and put new ones on, same thing. Quit the game, restarted, same thing. Removed other mods except for Mechjeb, and restarted, same thing. And Hyperedit was also removed. An earlier file version of the same ship has the same problem. I did fly the craft into orbit the regular way and it throttles up fine when in orbit. But I really need to do some test landings on another planet before doing a real mission. It is such a complex ship, that it would be a PITA to have to rebuild from scratch. But if it is a corrupted file that can't be fixed, I guess I'll have to rebuild from scratch. But before I do that, I wanted to ask here first. I am suspecting that when Hyperedit cuts throttle when it takes a ship from a pad and puts it in orbit, that there is something that Hyperedit does which does not let the throttle work after that. BTW , I'm using .90. - GeorgeG

Thanks for the comments. I barely got the Buh Hee Moth into space. The lag and problems, I think it traveled at least halfway around the planet before I finally got an apoapsis out of the atmosphere (it took me at least two hours, about 30 minutes in "Game time"). If I do another space plane to travel to another SOI, it's going to be smaller, less parts, and more maneuverable when in space (and more aerodynamically stable in yaw!). Anyway, here's another minimalist entry. Hoping I can have the largest and smallest at the same time.... till someone beats one. MicroJet 2.0. Mass on runway, ready for takeoff, 1.960 ton. In orbit, 70.059 x 78.887 km. After a nice re-entry and mostly a glide, with a bit of jet use at the end, almost on the runway. After a safe landing. There is room for tweaking the fuel load to make it a bit lighter. After the tedious, laggy, long flying of the Buh Hee Moth, this was quite a refreshing change. - GeorgeG

Foxter - Congratulations on no doubt taking the minimalist record with your redesign that added wings for an aerodynamic takeoff (and an aerodynamic winged landing). How do you know? Oh, you meant dimensions of the Space Plane! Anyway, thanks for the icon. I definitely have incentive now to update my signature. - GeorgeG

Here's a Heavyweight entry. Named the Buh Hee Moth. Mass of the ship, 226.407 on the runway, according to MechJeb. It flew to Minmus, landed on it, and did some other mission things while it was there. Went thru a number of versions, the original at about 150 ton. It ended up growing. I gave it some payload capacity, more for carrying some interesting payloads rather than a lot of payload mass. However, this would be one "heck" of a tanker to refuel a ship in LKO, could fill up more than four Jumbo 64 tanks. But not very practical to do that, due to the lag, and ships would need to fly to and dock with IT. Oh yeah, lag, it has over 500 parts, nearly 600 with payloads. So, it involved a lot of tedious flying to do maneuvers.. Or sitting back and waiting. The lag was so bad (1/4 speed or slower) that 4X warp when thrusting was more like normal speed The album has most of the info. Here is a direct link to see the album in larger size on IMGUR: http://imgur.com/a/JJY11#0 It was a struggle to get it into orbit. Along the way, there was a need for engine management, shutting down various groups of engines as they neared flameout,. It used 21 jet engines in all for takeoff and climb. When it made orbit, it had 5991 dV left if only the LV-N's were used, and plenty of extra fuel left for jet power. It got to Minmus, dropped off some satellites, then did a vertical landing with the fuselage horizontal. Dropped off equipment for a base, including a crew of two. Then left. Also flew to the Mun, went into orbit, dropped off a 4th satellite, and….. You'll have to check the album to see what happened. After a hairy moment during re-entry, and long long approach, finally, THIS Safely landed. The Buh Hee Moth next to my MicroJet 1.2 light Space Plane. - GeorgeG

Is this a space PLANE challenge, or an SSTO rocket that moves horizontally for a few meters challenge? There's another challenge thread for non-winged SSTO's. - GeorgeG

Only last week did I find out about this mod, and tried it out. Fantastic! Then today, the new version. So, thanks very ouch for taking it over. I have a question….. what do I need to do for it to work well with Mechjeb? For Landing, and Translatron (such as vertical hold), the engines sputter and the ships fall lout of the sky. On Ascent Guidance, it does fly mostly under control, but sputters and wobbles and drifts horizontally in the pitch and yaw directions. Or are they incompatible with each other? I've worked up a big SSTO SpacePlane, to land on Minmus, which has some VTOL landing rockets so it can land vertically (and take off vertically) with the fuselage horizontal. I'll probably do the landing manually (using TCA), and the vertical takeoff will be easy enough. But still, it'd be great if I could also use Mechjeb and TCA together for future projects. - GeorgeG

Aqua and SAI Peregrinus, thanks. I'll try out both. - GeorgeG

I'm working up an SSTO that has VTOL capability for landing. See pics (test flight on Kerbin with gravity hacked to test out takeoff and landing in lower gravity). I need to modify the design due to CG changes as fuel is used. But I'll probably still need to use fuel transfer between fore-aft tanks to get the CG good enough for a vertical landing (and takeoff) with the fuselage level. What I'd like to know is whether there is some method in the game, or some mod, that can let me know what the CG is in mid-flight. So I won't have to do tedious and time wasting (and fuel wasting) fuel transfers, then throttle up with the VTOL engines and see if it pitches up or pitches down out of control, or stays steady and under control (CG close enough to thrustline). ep lane that can do a 180 in 6 seconds or less and not 60 or more. If out of control, then more fuel transfers, more tests, and so on. Really would help to not have to do the thrust tests a ship like this is ver sluggish to respond, would be different if it was a nimble little ship with the same issues. Also this one has so many parts that there is a LOT of lag, so that again is making testing tedious. This is also a problem for re-entry as well. The only solutions for that are to keep going back to a quicksave to try different fuel transfers until it does a safe re-entry without tumbling out of control or being too nose-heaving ot fly to an accurate landing. Well, I do know that ideally I should design the ship so the CG wil not shift very much, and I am going to make some changes, but still, there are often some practical limits (this ship started out that way but by the time it got flyable due to wing and tail changes.... it wasn't anymore). Would be great if mid-game it was possible to being up the CG and Thrustline indicators that are available in the VAB and SPH, but AFAIK that is not possible. Maybe that sort of thing will be added to the aerodynamic aircraft/ space plane upgrade in the next major update. Is there a mod that can do differential throttling? Say if I had the engines spaced apart with a set in front of the CG and a set aft of the CG, it would throttle one set higher and the other set lower in order to keep the thrustline balanced thru the CG? I know there was something like that a couple of years ago, or so, which allowed true Space Shuttle type models to be flyable, but I do not remember the name and it may be a long dead mod. BTW - I've been at this since version .16, though sometimes take many months away from the game. I've done a number of Space Planes, but nothing this big, trying to use VTOL - GeorgeG

I have made some SSTO's lately. One is a contender for lightest SSTO space plane. The album below has many pics of interest and some which document what I write below. EDIT - These were flown in .90 (Probably obvious by the time you see the docking target ship) MicroJet 1.2. Mass on runway ready for takeoff, 2.543 ton. To get the pilot aboard, rather than the hassle of a crewed rover near the runway for every flight, attempt, I used a subassembly of ladders and Mk1 pod coupled to one of the jet's engines. After climbing the ladders to get aboard, that subassembly was decoupled (mass of decoupled subassembly not included in takeoff mass). It flew to a 136 km orbit, with 311 ms dV left. Landed safely at KSC. Second Ship: MicroJet RSC-dock. It is the above modified with RCS and a docking port, and other tweaks. Mass ready for takeoff, 2.662 ton After circularization burn, 388 ms Dv left. 95 km orbit. It docked with a big SSTO spaceplane. The album has many interesting pics of it with that big Space Plane and others. The MicroJet RCS-Dock had 325 ms of DV left after undocking, 189 ms left after deorbit burn. Landed safely, with 122 ms dV of fuel left (for rocket mode) Next, MicroJet Dock 3. It is a version of the above ship, modified to carry three 3 Kerbals. Mass at take-off of 3.054 ton. I know, no official category for lightest that carries three. Flew to an 88.6 km orbit, then waited for a rendezvous with the big SSTO space plane in a 75 km orbit. It only had 261 ms of dV left, so the small difference in orbital altitudes helped reduce the amount needed for rendezvous. It docked with the big SSTO Space Plane. And yes, on the previous flight, that was a 3-Kerbal MicroJet docked to the front. In game-play the "second flight" documented above was flown after this one, but I wanted to present them in order of ship creation. Many more pics in the album, including EVA's. I know the big SSTO Space Plane won't count for anything until I document it's flight from start to safe landing, and that the Mun Lander won't count for anything more than a "payload" once released since the SSTO only delivers it in LKO. After the spaceparty was over, MicroJet 3 undocked and landed safely back at KSC. I was concerned about not having enough fuel left, but had a lot of RCS left. So I used only the RCS for a retro "burn" on the other side of the planet, to lower the periapsis enough to cause a slow gradual re-entry (the 75 km orbit for rendezvous also helped a lot). I used MechJeb's projected landing distance error to help get it close. So, it did not use a drop of rocket fuel to re-enter, only RCS monopropellant. And it landed safely. Final ship, new album, Corvette R6 Payload: For purists who not only want to have their Kerbals inside of a pod/cockpit, and prefer something that looks more "realistic" and sleek, then here is a sporty 2-seater. Corvette R6, with Payload. It does not climb as fast as the MicroJet, but is not skittish and has plenty of fuel to get to a nice orbit with enough Delta-V left (600 or more, I think one really good jet climb had nearly 700 dV left over) and way plenty monopropellant to rendezvous and dock. It handles very nicely, good control response. Sometimes on landing it may be a bit nose-heavy, I transfer remaining fuel to the aft 100 liter tank to move the CG back. The wings provide a lot of area, allowing it to have a pretty decent glide, or requiring less throttle to maintain altitude. This one is not a record setter, as it is over 6 tons (6.237). So, it's shown "for fun", and to officially do a flight that took off with a payload, released the payload, then recovered the payload and brought it back. It also handles well for docking maneuvers. In addition to the "official" flight, I did some more. Docked two of them. And a bit more fun. See the album. Below, a pic of all of the SSTO's above, and a few more. Also, had one of the craziest incidents (bug) right after landing the last "plane"….. a big BANG.... but it wasn't my fault. See the album! Now to get back to the bigger SSTO planes. - GeorgeG

I_Killed_Jeb and Hannu, thanks for the comments. Because some people go nuts when others use MOD pods instead of stock? Now is there a subculture to that, some having a problem with using a STOCK part in a creative way such as a cockpit for anything that is not a "plane"? Wow, if you do not like my use of a Mk2 Cockpit, you will absolutely hate the way I used the old original mK3 cockpit for my favorite workhorse lander, named Synchronicity. See my earlier message (message #51, page 6), the mission albums for Eeloo and Moho starred that lander (my favorite design), and also used it in a complex mission to Eve (it did not land on Eve but did lots of other stuff plus Gilly). http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105885-Moho-Dres-Eeloo-No-Atmosphere-No-Moons-No-Game?p=1646229&viewfull=1#post1646229 When I started playing KSP in version .16, the Mk3 pod weighed 1 ton, carrying 3 Kerbals. That was the absolutely lightest way to fly 3 Kerbals inside a pod, not much more than using a single Kerbal Mk-1 pod. By .18 the mass was increased to 3.5 tons. But the Mk1-2 Command pod weighed 4 tons, so it was still 1/2 ton lighter to carry 3 Kerbals. And even the new Mk3 pod weighs less than the Mk1-2 pod. Also I am a big space shuttle fan, so I liked the look. And for piloting, the black "belly" side and white upper side makes it easier to see the roll orientation than for anything else. And…. it even looks more realistic (to me, which is all that counts) when used as a lander because the windows make more sense for a crew member to look out of to see the surface for landing than any of the other pods. An exception is the recent Mk2 Cockpit upgrade……. that also looks worthy. The "lander can" is nice… but the field of view out of that one little window is almost a joke. And the Mk2 cockpit weighs 6/10 ton less than the Mk2 Lander Can pod. Back to the Mk3 cockpit, the rest of the Synchronicity lander design I built around it, the clustered Asparagus tanks, extra items carried along the sides (rovers, or mini-landers, or probes, or all the above), plus the "Forward Service Module" , I just really like the design. In version .23, I made up reproductions of the Synchronicity Landers. In the pic below, the original was like the one at the lower right. I later made a monster that had clustered 2 meter tanks, but then refined it to the design seen at the upper left. That was used in various modified forms for many missions. Then having made the reproductions, I made up a "new" one as seen in the middle which was lighter and could make use of rendezvous and docking with a transfer stage in orbit around the planet, which was not possible when I made the first one, and that I did not get into doing for planetary missions until later. So that means the version reproduced at the far left deorbited to, landed on, took off from, and returned to Kerbin from as far away as Eeloo and Moho without docking, all by itself. However, the new Mk3 cockpit has the front attachment node offset from the rear, so the CG is affected if I put any significant mass on the nose node. So, unlike the old pod, so I can't do the Forward Service Module without needing to kludge together something on the opposing side to keep it in balance when thrusting. So that is one reason why in my recent jump from 23.0 to using .90, I made a totally new lander rather than deal with that problem. And the mass increase yet again to 3.9 tons was not fun. So by downsizing from 3 Kerbals in the Mk3 cockpit to 2 in the Mk2 cockpit, the pod mass is nearly half. Although I don't get to use the Forward Service Module feature with it. The Mk2 cockpit lander for this Dres mission does look a lot nicer on reentry than anything else that still has tanks and engines attached to it, this new lander does not have anything hanging outside into the airflow when it re-enters nose first (well, a little bit of the landing leg footpads but that's as much as I can fold them in without sacrificing deployment span for landing). But I'll use "real pods" too. Awhile back, in .23, I wanted to make up a totally new lander with a Nuclear engine in the center. So, that meant using two or more pods on the outside. I ended up making it into a Quad lander, with four Mk1 lander cans, which was a very efficient way to land 4 Kerbals anywhere that didn't have too much gravity (did a Mun & Minmus mission, then flew two of the Quad lander ships docked together to Duna .Both landed near each other, one staying behind as a base as it gave most of its fuel to the other lander before undocking to land, so the other Quad lander could land on Duna and have enough fuel to fly back to Kerbin). Of course in the end, all that matters is that it works in KSP. It is the nature of KSP to make "unusual" rockets or ships. And sometimes even a pod is not the answer. My favorite design to beat a technical challenge was what i came up with to fly from Eve's surface back into stable orbit (to rendezvous with a Synchronicity ship). It did not have any pods at all. The original for the mission was able to make orbit from 2.4 km, IIRC. Later I made one that could fly from Sea level, and then much smaller ones as part of a challenge, taking off from 6.5 km mountain tops. A couple of pics of that first one below, for more pics see my Eve album listed in the message link posted above. I'll close by saying that I get most of my enjoyment in KSP from designing and assembling the rockets. Which also sometimes includes coming up with some creative new thing to do for a specific mission, which on this one was the Grasshopper (and yet another new reuseable launch vehicle. Though I've used that basic concept before, as have others, just not with 3 meter parts since I did not have any 3 meter parts to play with till now). Now, once everything has been tested out, and I fly the "real" mission, I do enjoy that. But the real mission takes far less time than the preparation does. I spent about a month on the preparing for the Moho mission and 4- 6 weeks on working up all the goodies for the grand Eve/Gilly mission (of which the in-game flight to orbit from Eve was the smallest part, albeit the most important). - GeorgeG

Inspired by this thread, I finally flew a mission to Dres. It was the only planet I'd not landed on. Made up a lander using the Mk2 cockpit, and using some .625 meter tanks thanks to "tweakscale" scaling down some FL-T800 tanks to 50%. Most importantly, made up a "flying rover" named Grasshopper, to be used for flying thru and exploring the canyon, plus a crater farther away. It used micro landing struts mounted to deploy horizontally, to help keep it from tipping over if it landed on a steep slope. More pics in the album below. - GeorgeG

I'll just mention a couple of recent ones, using .90 I had an SSTO space plane re-entering, coming towards KSC, about 10-15 km up and I guess about 20 km away. Suddenly, theft wing breaks off. I press F3 and it says " wing collided with launch pad". I resume. The now-doomed space plane is starting to go out of control then the right wing also breaks off. I press F3 again and it says THAT wing collided with the launch pad! Then on a recent mission to Dres, I was flying a manned probe that used a command chair for the Kerbal pilot to sit in. I was flying thru the narrow deep canyon on Dres. A couple of times, ended up hitting the side and the ship tumbled, but survived. The Kerbal had fallen out, took a long time to wake up. But he can't plant a flag, can't do a report. In one case, he never moved, but was standing up looking alert, not rag-doll unconscious.. In another case, he moved but I couldn't get him to get back into the command chair, the option was not there. I went he space center, came back, and…. both times the Kerbal was GONE. It was as though he had either been a ghost, or a zombie. In both cases, I had not done a save before he got secretly "killed", so I had to use Hyperedit to put a new Kerbal in his place. Do not no if that is unique somehow to Dres, or an issue that's come up since I switched from playing .23 to .90. - GeorgeG

If you REALLY want 2.5 meter Turbojets that are simply scaled up stock turbojets, you can have those right now! "Tweakscale" http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80234-0-90-TweakScale-Rescale-Everything!-(v1-50-2014-12-24-10-40-UTC) It will dynamically scale existing parts, so a 200% scale-up of a 1.25 meter turbojet engine to 2.5 meter size has 6 times the thrust, and weighs nearly 6 times as much (6.788 ton vs 1.20 ton). Unfortunately, scaled-up air intakes do not seem to behave correctly. For example a 2x shock cone intake has 8 times the intake air max capacity of a 1x. But on a flight to higher altitude, when the 1x intake is down to .30 air out of .8 (37.5%), the 2x intake is down to 1.38 out of 6.40 (21.6%). Higher and faster (15 km and 351 m/s), the 1x intake is at .10 out of .8 (12.5%), and the 2x intake is at .47 out of 6.40 (7.3%). At 26 km, the 1x intake is at .02 out of .8 (2.5%) while the 2x intake is at .10 out of 6.4 (1.56%). So, for best performance, six or more 1 meter intakes would be better than one 2x scaled up intake that is supposed to have 8x the airflow. Fortunately, with part clipping on, the shock cone intake can be stacked onto itself multiple times, to achieve a better looking plane that doesn't have ridiculous amounts of intakes stuck everywhere. BTW - BIG planes also tend to need decent landing gear. And frankly the stock landing gear is too ancient (unchanged since what, 0.15?), rickety, finicky, and does not look so great. So another mod I have started using recently is "Adjustable Landing Gear". http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99660-0-25-Adjustable-Landing-Gear-v1-0-4(doors-fixed)-Nov-14 Here is a link to a 49 second video showing what it is like and how it works. It is fantastic! THIS is what KSP's "stock" landing gear ought to be these days. Adjustable Landing Gear, plus "Tweakscale" produces landing gear suitable for just about any size of space plane that you can get to fly. Below are two images of a SSTO shuttle I made, which uses a 2.5 meter turbojet plus six 1.25 meter turbojets, and stacked intakes (also a lot of the skinny long Structural Intakes along the bottom of the wing). Action groups shut down the six 1.25 meter turbojets as the thin air risks flameouts of random engines that could cause it out go out of control. So then it keeps accelerating on the single 2.5m Turbojet. Then when it flames out, it does not make it go out of control, and it's time to fire up the two aerospikes and climb steeper. This also uses Adjustable Landing Gear, and the main wing used tweakscale to be 200% larger. - GeorgeG

In replying to CalMacDa about Gas Planet 2: Yea, Nova Silisko once wrote long ago on how Eve was going to have storms and wind. Eve's oceans were going to have Blutonium in the water. That was also during the time when KSP resource mining plan was in the works, then later went away as it was going to be too complicated and not fun. So you have to consider the age of anything that was announced as in the works, if that is relevant anymore. And unfortunately a lot of internet references do not tend to get updated to reflect changes in plans. - GeorgeG

Yep. I have landed on every planet but Dres. I started playing in version 0.16. First planet I flew to was Duna. Then did a flyby of Jool as a joyride test. Went to Eeloo and landed there, as it was the farthest-out planet. Then Moho, as it was the innermost and hardest to successfully land at due to the Delta-V required to get there and have fuel left to return to Kerbin (and some sensible choices of what part of the Moho orbit to use, my first try was worst-case ,with Moho at its periapsis instead of apoapsis as I learned later). I focused my mission on exploring the very deep hole at the north pole of Moho, and sending a probe to check on rumors of a possible deep hole at the South Pole too (nope, none). IIRC I was the first to report how deep the "MoHole" was (about 4.8 km), from flying a probe to the bottom and then later Jeb to the bottom. Many would go to Eve early as it is easy to get to..... but incredibly difficult to RETURN from a landing to get back into orbit. So I was not interested in an Eve flyby, went to Duna first. I waited to get better at the game before tackling Eve. I put a lot of time into working up landers to be able to return to orbit from Eve, some from a high altitude and some from sea level. Gilly was a "bonus", but not nearly as interesting as landing and coming back from Eve. But I made the side trip to Glly interesting too. I flew a simple "Land, walk around, get back" mission to Laythe, using an aerobrake from Jool. Landed on Laythe with a lander that mostly used jet power with rocket assist, and returned. But have not done all of the moons of Jool. Probably should do a Dres mission soon to at least cover all the planets. And maybe then a ship with landers that can do the the rest of the Jool moons. FWIW - here's links to some of my missions: EELOO MOHO EVE DUNA (recent mission, new base with Quad Lander) As you will see, most of them involved a lot more than just technically getting there and flying back. The first three were done in .17 or .18, before "Science" existed (there were some basic sensors but no biomes). - GeorgeG

Made another Space Plane, and modified the carrier plane a bit. This one, not as totally outside of the box as the "K" wing with everyone riding the outside. This one is an "X" Wing (no, not THAT kind), that "opens the box". It uses a short cargo bay to hold 12 seats. With the Mk2 cockpit, it carried 14 Kerbals. Group photo of all the passengers, including the 13th who flew in the co-pilot seat (they do not call him the 13th passenger, he is an honorary co-pilot). The 14th person, standing on top of the cockpit, is Jeb of course Everyone, and all craft, back safe. Some earlier attempts had… issues. I finally solved it by using Hyperedit to gently "land" the vehicle back onto the runway from 20 feet up (this was the only use of Hyperedit, to "rescue the save" before beginning takeoff). It slowly settled down, wheels on top of the runway surface. It was very important to be able to use that save, rather than start over, because the save had the 12 passengers in the cargo bay for an official attempt. It would have been a PITA to load each one of them all over again (I had to do that three times with my earlier "K" wing, as I found fatal flaws requiring a trip back to the SPH to fix a problem). - GeorgeG

Action Space Enterprises presents the ULTIMATE ROCKET RIDE INTO SPACE! Our Space Shuttle will get you on your way! Why fly into space inside of a capsule or small cabin? Peering out of little portholes that might as well be little TV screens? When you can enjoy the ROCKET RIDE AND VIEW OF A LIFETIME (however long (or short) that may be). We proudly present our Phoenix Space Flight System. The carrier plane takes off from a runway, like a big cargo plane, and flies well above 25 km before YOUR ULTIMATE ROCKET RIDE begins! The Flight of the Phoenix Space Plane will shoot up into space HIGHER than some spacecraft ever go in orbit. And hey, orbit is over-rated anyway. You can almost feel the wind in your hair as you fly..... and certainly would if you were not wearing a REAL SPACESUIT. You will have the ultimate view of flying into space, and re-entry, from the comfort of your seat, flying on the OUTSIDE of our Phoenix space plane (just like those aliens in that funny science fiction movie "Flight of the Phoenix", but they didn't have seats or spacesuits) The Phoenix Space Plane is unique! No mass is wasted with "frills" like cockpits and cabins that would destroy the view and reduce the thrill of rocketing into space like you will on the Phoenix. And nobody else in the suborbital space ride business offers the option of doing a REAL spacewalk! The unique "K" wing design, scaled up from one of Dorfmann Kerman's model rocket plane designs, helps to provide additonal wing lift and roll stability to help make the extremely difficult and dangero.... uh, "simple" landing back on the runway even easier. Let's follow a typical passenger flight.... well, typical successful passenger flight. You and 11 other perfecly sane, not crazy at all, passengers will get onboard of our SPACE SHUTTLE!. Which will drive you more than an entire kilometer to the waiting Phoenix Space Plane and its carrier plane. You each climb aboard, get strapped into your seat, and wait for takeoff. You've never experienced an airplane takeoff like this, and this is NOTHING compared to what happens later. With the jet engines nearing flameout, the engines are shut down first. Shortly after, 27.5 km up, the Phoenix Space Plane is released and small separation rockets push it away. Then the pilot ignites the big solid engine and there is no going back, that baby can't be shut down, you are on the THE MOST EXCITING RIDE OF WHATEVER IS LEFT OF YOUR LIFE! If the pilot does not screw it up, most of the boost will be vertical, so it can fall back down as close as possible to the Space Center, ideally a bit past one of the ends of the runway. By eyeball and reviewing the a helmet visor-projected computer plot of the ballistic flight path, the pilot steers the ship in the desired directions and fires several of the small rockets in pairs to adjust the ballistic path to come closer to the Space Center. This flight coasted to nearly 95 km up, then began falling down. The passengers had a great view of the planet and out into space. Sometimes a passenger does a "spacewalk", unbuckling from their seat and using their backpack for a few minutes. However only those who have undergone and passed extensive EVA suit training are allowed to do that.... as well as paying a "Leaving your seat" fee (Passengers who do not pay the fee in advance and try to spacewalk for free will find their seatbelts will not re-buckle, which will be a major problem during re-entry!). The space ship really starts to begin to feel the effects of the atmosphere around 32 km up. The ship begins to nose down from the rapidly thickening air, and re-entry heating from about 22 km thru 12 km. It gets pretty HOT, but don't worry, those suits are WELL TESTED. We might have had to go though a number of flights using other suits (grumble...stupid rubberized cotton suits...) before we found some that let the wearers survive re-entry. But hey, we've got that all solved NOW.. The pilot begins the pull-up, as the ship falls thru thicker air that can provide enough lift to the wings to transition into a glide. The pilot got it into the ballpark with the earlier sepratron burns, now on the "downwind leg" before turning to the crosswind leg, then the final approach. The pilot brings the Phoenix Space Plane in for a landing. The Shuttle Bus comes in to pick up the passengers after they de-board. Official Flight stats, flew nearly 95 KM up. A few minutes later, the carrier plane comes in to land. The carrier plane stopped next to the SpacePlane and Shuttle bus. Flight data from the carrier plane. it coasted up above 40 km. The employees celebrated another SAFE flight, so they still are still alive...., uh so they still have jobs to return to next week! ----------------------- OK, switching from fictional Action Space Enterprises to me, GeorgeG. I tackled this from building a capable space plane first, then built the kind of carrier plane needed to lift it that high. I was VERY tempted to just build a crazy-overpowere carrier "plane", that would use at least some rocket power, that would be pointing sharply upwards at a high speed when releasing the space plane. So, the space plane could be a lot smaller. Those were two loopholes in the rules, not requiring the carrier plane to be purely jet powered, no rockets, and taking off horizontally. And not requiring either a horizontal "drop", or only a shallow climb when the carrier plane drops the space plane. I could have used a smaller SRB for the space plane. But once I saw how well the big SRB flew.... I had to use it. Even though that meant the carrier plane would have to be pretty big. Actually I ended up needing to change the big SRB to one with a lot less power, more on that later. The carrier plane a PITA. A number of control issues. And structural issues too, before it was finally stiff enough to be able to fly without "dancing". The original plane's fuselage was based on girder trusses. Boy was that a mistake. I changed to 1.25 meter 800 liter tanks (empty) for most of the fuselage, which were a lot better but still needed to add some struts to brace the tailboom from swaying side to side (part of the take-off problems). The wing design evolved. Originally it had less span. Then it grew, and grew. And went from 4 jets to 6. It was a bear to get to successfully take off, and handled slightly better than a garbage scow. However, it flies better now, and is not hard to land. I also learned to use "tweakable" options on the control surfaces to disable unwanted functions such as yaw response on the wings when I only wanted roll (aileron) response. The plane started handling a lot better after that. Of course if the wings had been straight (flat), there would not have been any yaw interaction. But I liked the look of it, with the dihedral. Although I am not so sure that KSP aerodynamics recognizes the dihedral for roll stability. The Space Plane handling and glide are very nice. It can get at least as slow as 23 m/s before stalling, so that helps to stretch out the glide path if the pull-up was not really close to the Space Center. But after I finally got the carrier plane worked out, and could fly to above 25 km to do a horizontal drop, the velocity at that height was 500-600 m/s. When the ship was dropped, it did not want to pitch up much. I tried tricks like a pair of separatrons in the nose and tail thrusting in opposite directions to force a pitch-up, which helped but not enough. It took so long to pitch up, that by the time it could finally get vertical, it had tremendous horizontal velocity and was almost impossible to try to get thrust the other way to fall back in range of KSC. So, I gave up on horizontal drops. The carrier plane went thru more changes, reduced the span back ot an earlier version, added more jet engines, so that after a horizontal takeoff it could climb vertically and release the space plan vertically. Though there were also more tweaks needed to be able to fly vertically under thrust, originally the thrust wanted to pitch it nose-down when it was pointed vertically and got to thinner air Finally got that worked out. And after working out some more bugs..... finally got a great launch. Well, being separated vertically, coasting up already, the SRB power took it crazy high. Over 2000 kilometers! The space plane's projected landing spot was about 1/3 around the planet, taking about 90 minutes of duration to fall back. So, the SRB Space Plane was overkill. But I liked the design a lot. So I replaced the big long SRB (KD25K) with the original RT-10 solid fuel booster in KSP, and added two long 800 liter rocket fuel tanks to it to match the length of the big SRB (the tanks were tweaked to be empty, no fuel, no oxidizer, the Space Plane using only solids for thrust). That version therefore only flew for 94.5 km, plenty high above the atmosphere but not as high as I was hoping for. Below is a pic showing both, the final version on the left, and the original with the big KD25K SRB on the right. Given the carrier plane is now perfected, I could make up a totally different space plane that could fly higher. But from the start I wanted to do a space plane that was "outside of the box", with the passengers riding on the outside. Still, it could be made smaller and carry 12+1 on the outside anyway. Also from the start I figured out the usefulness of having pairs of separatrons to nudge the ballistic path (in map view) to bring it closer to where the runway should be due to rotation of the planet. Oh, the "K" wing flies nicely. I wanted to give the plane more wing area without giving it more span, and something unique looking. In my main hobby of Model Rocketry, I came up with a rocket boosted glider with a "K" type wing (and tail) in 1975. It was even a kit briefly by an old obscure model rocket company. It's not aerodynamically efficient in the real world, no biplane is, and the "K" wing is even worse for a biplane, but in KSP it seems OK. http://plans.rocketshoppe.com/pubs/ASC/1976/ASC_1976_catalog.pdf - GeorgeG

This challenge rule: "7. No mods apart from KAC, FAR, and any non-part/aerodynamics/mechjeb mods" It is not clear to me whether Mechjeb is OK or not, since it does seem to clearly allow KAC, and FAR, then gets murky in the rest of the sentence. If Mechjeb is not allowed for active flight control, what about using it for information? UPDATE - I finally succeeded. Did it without use of Mechjeb. Will post a write-up and pics later tonight (Monday) - GeorgeG

I'm working on this one. The space plane works very well by itself. The Carrier plane has had…. "issues" with take-off. Finally have it taking off well, and resolved some flight control problems of the carrier when climbing with the space plane. But have not quite gotten it all together yet for a flight that carries the space plane up and drops it reliably. I should say I'm using pure jet power for the carrier plane, not rockets, so that is why it takes a long time to get to drop altitude. The most frustrating part about this is not being able to do a quicksave in mid-flight. If the attempt fails, it's necessary to start the flight all over again on the runway. And the combined craft have a lot of parts, so there is lag, and warping does not work well. So….it's a lot of long boring boring climbs and then a VERY intense minute or so…. if it survives the first few seconds after the drop. Hope to get a flight to work out well tonight. If soon enough I''ll post images tonight, otherwise Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, here is a real tease. - GeorgeG

SOLVED! But not at first. I am a Mac guy, mainly use the PC to run KSP as my Mac can't run the Mac version. So, i use my Mac laptop to download the game and parts and such, then use a thumb drive to move them to the PC. Also BTW, the PC got some severe viruses on it a few months ago. Finally got rid of the viruses, but I do not let it connect to the internet anymore, just not worth it and do not need it to. I would unzip the downloaded game into the thumb drive, and then copy the unzipped game to the PC. I know I did this a few times for earlier versions such as .19 and .23, and they were OK. So, I copied the .90 game from the thumb drive to a folder in the PC listed "Games". Still did not work, Directly copied from the thumb drive to the hard drive. Still did not work (by not work I mean could not open a ship file in the VAB). I even tried to run the game off of the Thumb drive copy, same problem. You mentioned how the log file was an epic train wreck. It occurred to me that perhaps the train wreck was not necessarily WHERE the game had been copied to, but HOW that copy had been generated. So, I copied the compressed zip file to the PC. THEN extracted it, letting the PC extract it. Started the game, went to the VAB, nervously clicked on the folder icon to open a ship file… and got the "Select a ship to load" window! This may also explain why I could never get .24 or .25 to run, they would hang at the same part of the start-up load. But .90 loaded and runs fine….. until the point of trying to open a ship file. So if I want to go back and try .24 or .25 then I ought to try copying the original zip file to the PC, then extract it. So, thanks very much! Now I have a some tasks ahead of me to copy and move over the ship files I could not open before, and reinstall various mods that I have found work nicely on a modded copy of .90. I hope this helps with your expert's knowledge base for future bugs other people report. There probably are not many who use a 2nd computer to download the game and then use a thumb drive like I did. But odds are there are some, who may inevitably have this problem or something else that is related to that process. - GeorgeG

Unfortunately, the fresh install has the same problem. Cannot open any ships. I saved the log file, put it on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/spthymz1plsdnnt/KSP.log?dl=0 Below is a screenshot of the last lines of the debug console after I tried to load a ship file. Thanks for trying to figure this out. - GeorgeG

OK, thanks very much to you both. Later Sunday, I'll do a total fresh install. Because I never even tried to open / load any of the stock ships , I just jumped right into making a new ship to try things out. So I have no idea if it would have worked fine to load other ships to begin with or not. If it works fine, and I can access and load stock ships, then it must have been a corruption from the first crash, problem will be solved. If it cannot access ship files in the VAB even from a fresh install, there's a deeper problem. I'll keep hold of the ship files i made after the crash, and not even install those until seeing if the fresh install works. And I'll delete the ship file that I had during the crash, as you suggested. It was not that complex of a ship to begin with, under 5 mins to rebuild. - GeorgeG

Silks, nice job. I wondered what those little things were under the barge…. then when it got to shore … surprise... it rolled up onto the surface. - GeorgeG

I'm using KSP .90.0.705 Beta I started my first game in Sandbox mode. Built a ship in the VAB. Saved the ship file Had a game crash, later. Cut back on the graphics in settings, and went back to my save. Got into the VAB, tried to load the ship file, and nothing. I click on the folder icon, which has a dark gray rectangle near it labeled "Load". Nothing happens. Does not matter if I left click or right click. I've been playing the game since .16, so I know how it ought to open. I have been unable to get the game to load for .24 and .25, so if anything changed since .23 I would not know (I was SO happy to find .90 loaded, I thought I was stuck with .23 forever, unless I got a better computer). But I cannot imagine a change since .23 that would not work by clicking on the"Load" folder icon. When I say will not load in the VAB, I mean nothing happens at all. I click on it and there is no box that comes up to show a list of ships as there usually is. It's as though the "load" button is doing nothing at all. My computer is using Windows Vista Home Premium. Service Pack 2 Processor AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.73 GHz 4.0 Gig memory. 32-bit Operating System. - GeorgeG