Curs0r

I always hack the parts file to make an air intake that can get my space planes all the way out of the atmosphere of Kerbin without having to use 40 intakes. There... now it's exposed

Heh, cool addon. I was just looking to achieve this functionality today. I'll have to check it out.

A stylistic note on the readme file; I had to dig into the actual .cs file to find the isActive setting. I was very intrigued by the ResGen.Explode resource. I immediately tried to make a self-destruct device out of it. I see in the code though that the explosion is limited to the individual part. Could this be changed to allow for some calculated blast power? It might be more fun to vaporize my obsolete stations and ships rather than crash them or end their flight. If so I will have a modeler friend collaborate on a new set of "Kerbam! Self Destruct Devices" as an addon part for the spaceport. That is, with your permission to use this nifty plugin for that purpose.

Hi all. I have made a SSTO plane recently that I feel pretty good about. I wondered if others might like to try it out and post some feedback in this thread. Much as I'd like to publish it on spaceport, I'd like to make sure I'm not the only one that can fly it. I've gotten her as far as Eve and Duna already, I don't have any gas stations outside the Kerbin SOI yet, but I don't foresee it having any problems getting further if there is a place to refuel. Flight recommendations: Try not to pitch it above 50 degrees. She's heavy and may not climb at a higher pitch on the jet turbine alone. During takeoff, begin trying to pull up immediately for extra takeoff speed. Must be something in the engine, I honestly don't know why that is. This plane absolutely will make 2400 m/s off the jet if you hold her in the 30km altitude range to pick up speed. The rockets can be used for that little extra push to make a circular orbit above 69km. This tactic will save you tons of rocket fuel. The jet fuel is useless weight if you're not coming back down before refueling so feel free to just keep picking up speed until the liquid fuel indicator reads 540. Important Kerbal safety tips: I strongly doubt this plane could safely touch down on Tylo so I would not go trying that. In this case, SSTO might also stand for Seriously Scary Take Off. This hog is very heavy. She will run all the way to the edge of the ocean before lifting off if you don't kick in the rocket engines (personally I don't use the rocket engines during takeoff, up to you). She will fight you for control at first in Eve atmosphere. Just hold a 30 degree pitch on re-entry until about 20k meters, then she should settle down. That about covers the basics. If anyone feels like trying this and posting a note or two about what is difficult to manage, or any other concerns about it, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to foist another untested craft on the public through kerbalspaceport Without further ado, the link. It's a free file host so just ignore the garbage on the page and click the file name at the top to download: K-21-Munray.craft Fixed the download file, it now has nothing but stock parts on it.

I like to keep mechjeb on my vehicles mostly because of its ability to auto-handle some of the time warping. The auto-landing I have used a few times, and I almost always have to correct it before landing. That's ok, it is accurate for the most part. Just bear in mind that the auto landing will always do a much better job if you put yourself into a circular orbit around the planet or moon first.

In the interest of the most conventional and sleek look for my SSTO I came up with this air hog, which I named the K-21 Munray (yes it took me 21 tries to get my ideal plane happening). The K-19 was probably my favorite but ended up being pretty gutless for Hohmann uses. She is not as nimble as I'd like, and takes the entire run from that start of the runway to the edge of the water to lift off. She will make it to the surface of Minmus from the runway though. I generally end up at a 212km orbit from takeoff with over 2/3 of the fuel remaining. I have a gas station parked in synchronous Kerbin orbit, and I managed Duna (using Ike to brake) off of 1 refuel. Ike braking maneuver I was bone dry for fuel, even RCS after pulling the deorbit burn. I have never been so glad to have pointed my craft at a perfectly flat area. At this point I would have been quite screwed in a conventional lander, but this is the very reason for using a space plane. After pulling the standard speed-bleed seesawing for about 10 minutes, I set her down like a leaf in a very flat area.

Currently, I have 2 ships, both landed and left where they are as museum pieces, and 2 space stations. The LKO station is about to be deorbited and destroyed (it's a great station but it's too elaborate and is a general lagtacular creation that just wastes my time). The other is just a gas tank with a probe core and some docking clamps. I had about 60 flights going until I realized that communications satellites do exactly jack squat. Now I'm deciding whether to put a gas station in orbit around every planet, or just walk away from KSP for a while until things like communications devices do something. I know there are addon packs and yada yada, but I hate dealing with version skew on stuff like that so I'll only be using mechjeb until the game hits a final state and I don't have to worry about version skew as much.

I've had Star Trek Online for 3 years and racked up 800 hours on that. I've owned KSP for 2-3 months and have 498 hours on it. That shows proportionally I do play this more than anything else in my steam library

I nailed orbit right away with the demo version. I've always been a space junkie so I understood the mechanics launch trajectory. Took about 10 hours of testing and tweaking to get to Mun. I was hooked. Bought the game that day.

I finished designing my single-jet SSTO. The K-21 Munray. Successfully I might add. Runway to Minmus without stopping for gas.

I have a somewhat obscenely elaborate creation that I call Roverlab. It gave me roughly 3-4 fps sitting on the launchpad in .19, now it gets maybe 1 if I'm lucky. Regardless of the FPS count it is unlaunchable, even with mechjeb. My poor PC just can't handle it. My space stations seem a lot less laggy though

The absolute first thing I had to do was place the new cupola module on the station I was already redesigning.

Next time? That was planned. For capsules.

I'll be honest, I'm not the best at this. No, really. It's true. I spent a week losing sleep and missing work trying to make an SSTO happen. Well, I did it. Feast your peepers: Ain't that pretty? Makes me think I need a bigger space station now though haha. Anyway, despite my insane joy at having achieved. The hatch is obstructed on that design. They couldn't get out. D'oh!

Mission log, Day 342: Today we encountered 3 small green aliens that haphazardly landed and snapped several pieces off their vessel. After they emerged from their vehicle, one looked deliriously happy, another appeared somewhat confused, while the third would not stop screaming. Communication seems to be impossible at this time.

Congratulations. Nice looking plane.

Any landing that you can walk away after...

Boxed copy or not I would like a Kerbal figurine. I usually hate it when games do that sort of merch but something about that is strangely appealing. I think the community should pitch in the 3 cents each and we'll send one to one of these private space firms with the request they take it along on a flight and send us a photo

Well I did say 'half'. Some of my friends dig it too. My girlfriend does not but I think I'd give her up before this game

Milkin Kerman. Fondly remembered as the first of our heroes to be crushed by the force of his own ship's acceleration.

I have seen Bill free-run his way up the side of a lander craft that our engineering team neglected to fit with a ladder despite the fact that he had been stranded on Laythe for 118 days. He's got raw, animal, power that one. Also he's got the luck thing going on, my mission to Bop was able to scoop him up.

It's caused an alienation of half or more of my friends because I won't shut up about aerospace engineering and I keep sending them screenshots that don't interest them.

My favorite light-duty rover design on the red world. It would have been a better shot if I hadn't bounced my landing and broken 3 struts. A slightly more ambitious application of that same rover. It turned out that though the flight went perfectly, they were too close to the ground and would not let go of their docking clamps when decoupled. Responding to a nice comment made: Yes you are so right, the second image shows a craft of supreme inefficiency. That was done just to see if I could actually get it there at all. It turned out that it did arrive, and even had enough fuel to return to Kerbin after failing to deploy the rovers.

Halifax Low-Orbit Station