GreeningGalaxy

GIMP forever. It's a pretty powerful bit of software, especially for something free. It has a pretty steep learning curve sometimes, but I took an entire class centered around photoshop etc. at my school one year and it turns out photoshop skills transfer pretty well to GIMP. Not that that means I'm any good at flags, but I'm getting there.

Yeah, sepratrons are cool, right down to the little "DANGER: BIG ROCKET THING. DO NOT DROP" printed on them. I used them on my latest SSTO as an emergency escape system, and I probably did too many tests just because ejecting the capsule was too dang fun. I'll have to try that spinning-ejection thing you did with that stage in your gif; I usually accidentally blow up Poodle and Mainsail fairings when I start the engine, and that was pretty slick in comparison to what I usually do.

Alright that makes sense, I guess I just assumed that the game didnt account for control surface mass shifting for some reason. /selfbonk. lucidLemon, I'll post pics later tonight. I also posted it to the SSTO showcase thread over on the Spacecraft Exchange, if you feel like hunting for it. The pic there isn't great since it's a tail view, but I think I've got some better ones somewhere. Meantime, I'll go hunt for a control-surface-lock mod.

I once had a perfect total eclipse on the instant of takeoff on an unmanned rescue mission for the Mun. About ten minutes later, I came down over the Mun, tried to kill my horizontal velocity, failed, and put a reasonably expensive black mark on the surface. This was before I knew how to screenshot or quicksave (nooooob I know). I'm not superstitious, why do you ask?

Hey guys- I was just flying an SSTO to Eve today, and was noticing that my projected orbital trajectory constantly jumps all over the place whenever I have ASAS on. I mean, sure, that happens sometimes with big ships with RCS, but this was a lot more jumping than usual, to the extent that it sometimes won't let me time warp with ASAS turned on, apparently counting me as "under acceleration". The plane does have RCS, but I hardly ever turn it on, so I'm thinking the only culprit could be all those big control surfaces I put all over the rear end of the plane, which aren't supposed to work in vacuums but apparently are to a lesser degree in my game. Anyone else have this too? Sure wish there were a way to lock and unlock control surfaces with action groups...

I'm still working on this design, but it does indeed fly. It doesn't handle physwarp too well (although it can manage) and it does use a bit of intake spamming, but, hey, just last week I didn't even have one working SSTO, and this one can get clear out to Eve, possibly farther, so I'm still proud of it. .craft file download (mediafire) Action Groups: 1- Toggle jet engines 2- Toggle aerospikes (use sparingly; use nuclear as much as possible once high enough) 3- Toggle nuclear engine ABORT- this may be completely unnecessary, but I decided to include an emergency recovery system to eject the capsule in the event of a catastrophe while leaving the atmosphere. Once clear of the ship, mashing spacebar will deploy the parachutes. This is recommended for use only at or near Kerbin, but the RCS fuel tank and a few thrusters do come away with the capsule just so you're not totally helpless if you blow up far from home. Yes, I did use ASAS instead of the Avionics Package. I'm probably doing something wrong, but I've had much better luck with the former than the latter. Maybe someone can help me with that? It doesn't really cause problems unless physwarp is on, and even then the Avionics Package might not fare much better. I need to do more tests. May contain trace amounts of inspiration and design points from the ZoPL Kiwi by zekes (although I promise it was built as an original craft in the SPH; I can't even load the Kiwi in my game for some reason). As I said before, this is under development, so it'll hopefully show marked improvement in the future.

I've always wondered this; what exactly is wrong with using ASAS on spaceplanes? I use it all the time and I've gone all over Kerbin's SoI with my crafts with little trouble. Avionics packages just seem to make my planes dive, or flip out, or do anything besides go forward which is usually what I want. I mean, I can see how having to choose between having your heading absolutely locked or free to blow in the wind could be an issue, but it's usually not, especially with trimming. I guess I need to experiment more, but I'm interested to hear an experienced opinion on the matter.

I did do extensive Kerbin tests of the plane (its mass and lift centers are in the right spots) with the only difference from the real thing being that I didn't test it with the decoupler attached to it. It should fly pretty well (and in all honesty it was doing fine on Eve, it just had to be throttled up way too high). I'll try a few things this Friday when I get a chance to play the game again.

Thanks! Now that I see that it seems pretty obvious, I guess I just never thought of trying to use stack decouplers as radial decouplers before, just assumed it wouldn't let me attach the planes that way I guess. I'll try that as soon as I can and tell you how it goes.

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I did think of docking, but docking ports don't want to go together face-to-face in the editor, and I'm somewhat unexcited about flying both planes up individually. Plus, the docking port still has mass. However, I was noticing that the mass value for the small gear bay is actually a bit higher than that of the hydraulic detachment manifold, and gear has never given me trouble. Maybe I've got some other issue with the planes that makes them want to flip out? I'm not sure. I guess I need to run some more Kerbin tests. If all else fails, I can re-engineer the ship to carry more payload and use bigger planes with spots on the back available for stack decouplers.

Be careful with transferring fuel from radial tanks to center tanks or vice-versa; there's no way to transfer it symmetrically yet and you'll probably end up unbalancing your spacecraft if you don't completely fill or completely empty the radial tanks.

Hey everyone- I've been wanting to explore Eve a little better than is possible with rovers or kerbals, so I got out my standard long-range ship and added a couple of Aerospike-powered planes to either side, ending up with this. The mission went reasonably well at first- the tanker was able to get a nice circular orbit despite the extra mass of the planes, docking of the regular lander went as smoothly as could be expected, and I pulled off some pretty sweet fiery aerobraking upon arriving at Eve with a speed of about 5 kilometers per second. Unfortunately, when I tried to use the planes, I hit trouble- the hydraulic ejection manifolds I used to detach the planes from the main ship eject from the main vehicle, but stay attached to the planes, which provides just enough extra mass and drag to make them really want to nose-dive unless the engine is throttled up very high and the control surfaces turned all the way upwards. I've been messing around with different decouplers, but nothing seems to work- I can't hold it from the rear because you can't attach anything to aerospikes, and there don't seem to be any radial decouplers out there that let go of both sides when fired. So, does anyone have any tricks out there for this kind of thing? I can think of a few solutions already, but they all involve bigger planes or less efficient engines and I just want to know if anyone has a better system of getting aerospike-powered planes to Eve. Thanks!

Heyo, people! Just now registered on the forums after about a month and a half or so of playing the game. So far, it's pretty great! I've been around the solar system a little bit (about five Mun / Minmus landings, Duna, Eve, about three close passes on the Sun, and a solar escape trajectory) and I'm interested to see what other people's ships are like. So far I've had absolutely no luck with spaceplanes, and I'm also kinda looking for tricks when it comes to orbital docking (I can do it, but it takes around half an hour), so any input in that department would be great. Anyway, I look forward to being part of the KSP community!