Syhrus

Have you tried switching with the [ & ] keys? KSP tend to choose to stay in control of the bit that youdon't want whenever I decouple...

Gooood! You might still get a bit of tilt from the engines, but not as much. And I can't fly most of my ships without ASAS, the reaction times needed for SSTOs is on Jedi levels.

I have done something similar in the past. Docking ports are the key here. Have 1 (or 2) sections attached bu docking ports, then once in orbit just reattach the part to make it a perfect box (I actually had a large station that was 4 sections joined together, but the concept is the same)

Your flipping issue is thanks to your COT here. Because it is slightly up from your COM, the engines will cause the plane to tilt backwards under thrust. Also, your COL is close, but forward of your COM, which helps for takeoff, but at high speeds actually causes your plane to become more unstable, as the nose will try to lift up. Couple this with the aforementioned tilt induced by your engines, and you're gonna have a bad time anywhere faster than 100m/s. Turning on the runway is caused by a glitch in the Spaceplane Hangar's 'symmetry' option. For reasons unknown to science, if you place something using symmetry mode it has slightly more drag/weight/Element Zero (I actually don't know what is increased) than its symmetrical partner. This effect is not noticeable in flight, but on the runway, where things are more precise, you will drift off to your favored side of building. You can counteract this by either building your crafts one side then the other when using symmetry (place 1 set of wings on the left, then the next set on the right) or by using ASAS to keep the craft stable on the runway until you reach takeoff speeds. As for the wheels falling off, I'd take a guess that has to do with the platforms they're mounted on. Those things are pretty weak, and I reckon they are the part that is actually breaking. Try attaching the wheels to the outer wings instead. Also, take a look at my SSTO series in my sig. I've got a video on design tips... I think... EDIT: Actually I don't. I'll do one tonight!

This: It was the Genesis node for my Citadel Station. I was going to add Kethane storage and conversion nodes as well as a construction node for building interplanetary ships. Sadly, it got eaten when the new update broke a couple of my mods.

You might be able to change your orbit by flinging one ship around the Mun at an angle to change it's Kerbal orbit. It really depends on how much fuel you have left in either ship. And now that I've re-read your question I presume these ships are orbiting Mun already, so my suggestion is out anyway... ... Good luck!

Stock parts are pretty hard, but doable. Some people like to use FAR, which can be found here: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ferram-aerospace-research/ I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure if it actually has any parts, but check out my series if you get stuck

I've been doing a bit of experimenting on spaceplanes (you can checkout my videos here: but I haven't done any major tests on there about lift yet). The main thing I can say about lift is that it is a very small part of actually getting your plane to fly, but it is vital in the very first stage: takeoff.I might do a bit of research into how lift units work, but for now this is what I know: My 26 ton spaceplane has 2 turbojets and a total of 13.4 lift rating from all surfaces (this number is probably a bit higher than the truth, as some of the canards are on an angle) and it manages to takeoff by running off the end of the runway and uses the lift to remain at a stable altitude until I maneuver to go higher. At this point, it is doing 108m/s. So at 108m/s, 13.4 units of lift can keep 26tons at a stable altitude AT SEA LEVEL. As your altitude increases you need more lift to achieve the same thing as the air is thinner. All this said, you can't rely on lift to get you into orbit anyway. My advice is to get as enough lift to get off the runway, and then just focus on keeping the weight down and the centre of lift back so you can control the thing. ~Sy

It depends which body you're trying to land on, and whether is has an atmosphere. The way I like to do it is to fly very low (again it depends on the body, but for Mun I usually use about 5km) over where I want to land and then burn retrograde until I'm falling straight down. From there, it's not too hard to adjust your trajectory and land where you want to. This is by no means the most efficient way to do it, you can use epic maths skills to make it so that you only need to pass over your landing site by 1 or 2km, but that's less reliable. If there is an atmosphere, it's a bit harder. Perhaps someone with a bit more experience landing on such places can help us out?

Actually, I'm referring to these: http://science.howstuffworks.com/solar-sail1.htm

Removing xenon would technically make your ion drive no longer an ion drive as you're not actually shooting off ionized particles to make thrust. Perhaps what you would need is some sort of solar sail? I'm not sure if such mods exist, but it could be worth a look..

I might do a separate series for FAR. This one will allow people to build stock Spaceplanes. Thanks for the suggestion though! I hadn't considered this

So I've been doing a lot of my own research on SSTO's (specifically horizontal takeoff spaceplanes) and I've started to put together a little series on youtube about my tests. Feel free to check it out guys, and offer up any advice or suggestions for what direction I should be moving in with my designs.

KSP in a nutshell there.

I used to have this problem a lot. Fortunately I found a little sneaky way to fix it. It does involve a little cheating in some people's eyes, because it involves editing your save, but it saves you spending hours and hours trying to line up your docking ports exactly. This video explains it best: http://youtu.be/YsEHIn_ucIA

An excellent challenge! I shall begin immediately!

So physics had a heart attack on my 3 part space station. I'm happy to say there was a reactor failure though. This is what my orbital map looked like 30 seconds later. The explosion managed to knock a few parts out of the solar system.