Hovis

I love this mod. Such a smart idea and it makes shipbuilding much, much easier. Something like this, if not just this itself, ought to be in the stock parts down the line. Many thanks!

I like Mechjeb for creating repeatable launches and such like. If I blow up a ship on a manual launch, or don't reach orbit, I don't know for sure if the ship is bad, because maybe I screwed up. With Mechjeb it might not be as efficient as a perfect manual flight (which I might managed 1/100 times) but I know it's going to give me pretty much the same result every time. So if my ship fails, it's the ship. Which is good to know.

Question with this, is there a way to replenish CO2 using the biomass modules?

Must confess I have not found a whole bunch of uses for this thing, but I love it anyway. Kerbal survival is always a big concern and this thing is very good for that. Also it's a really high grade set of components, which is always great to see.

OP is not cheaty. If it's in the game, it's in the game. I think it's a very clever idea and something I might well pinch for my own plans. My lifters are usually bodged together with all sorts of rockets, boosters and voodoo. Anything that can get a heavy payload into atmo has my attention.

Works out like this, space planes are harder to build, engineer and fly than rockets. However they are in some ways better. Why are they better? Well because they are vastly more efficient in terms of fuel, and the fact that you are not dumping off great big valuable chunks of space rocket on your way up into orbit. But of course because nothing costs anything in KSP this advantage is lost. So in effect they are much harder to use with little real in game benefit. I could be wrong, but my take on it is that the SSTO space plane, capable of flying between planets, even landing on them or on moons, and coming home, is pretty much the greatest design challenge in the game. It may not even be possible. I'm not great at the game, not even close to great, but I've seen some amazing things built on here, and on vids and so on, and the most impressive things almost without exception are the space planes. That stuff is hard. Harder than rocket science hard. There's nothing wrong with it being hard to do, it just is what it is.

I was saved by limiting acceleration to 20 m/s on the control thingy. Not sure on the exact science of how this made the critical difference, but it did. My understanding is that Ferram favours longer more controlled lift offs, rather than the Massive Power Blitz style that would traditionally work fine. Once I made that change Mechjeb was fine.

When it comes to landing, on Kerbin at least, FAR or no FAR, I've found the secret is ALL THE PARACHUTES. It's getting back into the atmo that proves challenging at the moment. As a further query, has anybody had any success with emergency procedures for planes? I often find with planes, whether I'm using FAR or not, that landing is impossible, or just unlikely, and I should probably bail. Having a pod that can pop off the top of a rocket is one thing, but escaping from a plane as in its death throes seems a lot harder. Was experimenting with decoupling the front of the plane, but there is often too much momentum in the same direction to get clear, and a lot of the cockpit setups don't have the strength of a capsule and things can get ugly. In some cases I've just loaded up small aircraft with enough parachutes that if things go bad I just gain altitude, cut the engines, pop the chutes and float down, but this is seldom practical for larger aircraft.

FAR has been a bit evil for making me relearn how to into space, but seems very good overall. Due to it's uneasy relationship with Mechjeb (which I've now largely sorted) I did at least get to test a large number of in-atmo-rocket-goes-crazy escape scenarios. Only fatalities so far, out of about ten attempts, was when a capsule failed to get far enough clear of some debris and a chunk of wreckage took out the chutes. My bad on that one though. Am installing separatrons now as standard to get capsules well clear. I was a bit worried some of these mods might not have been updated yet, but I'll give them a look. Is B9 clear to work with FAR?

Fine Tune was the thing I was always forgetting. That's the key right there, the difference between hitting the target and fifty years of mindless hula hooping round the solar system.

First thing I would say is that an SSTO plane is pretty much one of the hardest things to build. It is something to bear in mind when you're building the thing, it's not like getting a rocket into orbit, you're really going to have to know what you're about to get a working space plane. If you actually manage it, you're a hero and they'll build statues of you in Kerbaltown. Maybe. Anyway, as bsalis said, sounds like you're making the standard early attempt at SSTO mistakes. However many intakes, lifting surfaces and control surfaces you thought you needed when you started this thing, you'll almost certainly need more. It is also worth bearing in mind that even if you design the perfect SSTO there is still a lot to do when flying it. But I'm a rubbish SSTO pilot, so I'll say no more about it. Suffice to say, there's more to it than just flying up in a straight line, which is how I used to do it when I first tried it. Good luck though.

So the End Flight mission has gone, and for me this has changed the game a lot. Gone are the days I could end a mission and kid myself that it wasn't a horrible death for all involved. I'm just not going to be happy if I can't count my Kerbals into space and count them all back home again. It is time for a revolution, for me at least, in design, building ships that can be recovered easily, ships that can land, and ships that can, in emergencies, be used to dock with an rescue Kerbals from other ships. No more Kerbal orphans. No more letters to Kerbal moms. The body count stops here. So I was wondering if anybody had any tips or designs they might be willing to share? I'm specifically working at the moment on some fairly basic concepts, and I'd appreciate any input people might have on them. 1. An easy to use escape pod, either a sort of standard capsule build to use for all craft that can be relied upon to detach and fly home from a reasonable range and come down from orbit, or some kind of pod I can have the Kerbals run to when things get hairy. My previous experiments with this have tended to leave me with an escape pod that is too big though, and it becomes more work to get into orbit than it should be, and gets in the way of actually doing anything in space itself. 2. A crew transfer vehicle. Am thinking of using an SSTO for this, but am thinking it might be simpler to use some sort of basic shuttle type design that launches vertically off a rocket but has enough lift on re-entry to actually land softly. Essentially this would be a flying bus that could return the passengers safely. Was thinking something like this will be required to bring folks home from stations or from any rescue missions. 3. A rescue ship. A proper Thunderbirds are go cleanup vessel. Something with loads of useful equipment and other gizmos (possibly from mods) to either collect the crew of a damaged/stricken/immobilised vessel, or refuel that vessel, or dock up and tug things away. Am thinking such a vehicle would be entirely spacebound once launched, have it deliver rescued crew to a transfer vehicle to drop them home, so it could be bigger and capable of longer range. Maybe docked onto a station. Anybody got any thoughts? I've seen rescue missions as a recurring theme in the game but that was when it was just a part of the fun, now it's serious business to get everybody home.

An alternative plan might be to have a second craft remain in orbit around Eve and have that either dock with the lander to bring it home, or have it collect the Kerbals.

Maybe so. But something better takes longer. I was shooting for something quick a struggling player could get into orbit with. Does it do that? Yeah. So what's not to like? Why do you hate orbit?

You can just turn the throttle down a little bit. You just run it at about 80%.