Bothersome

I'd say go ahead and buy it. Then you start building rockets and things to start learning what works and what doesn't. But don't try building an empire in space until the update is released. But all that you learn from now till then will be useful.

Don't roll on the ground faster than 60m/s. On Duna, the first plane and the last plane fly at about 50m/s at 4000 meter altitude. Some areas on Duna are that high. That was the reason I made the plane in the second picture. I large wing surface to give lots of lift. That plane can fly about 15m/s on Duna at 600 meters. I forget right off hand what it flies at 4000 at though. I was going for slow flight for takeoff and landing and also speed at high altitude.

Here's a few of mine...

Congratulations Dude!!! I bet you were full of excitement after that. What a feeling!

I'm not so easily pleased. I already gave my money at the first window and I want the full burger as it was advertized to be. Can you say "career mode?"

In case you wanted a screenie of the Diamond 23 R3 docking and docked... I went ahead and made some for ya. Only thing I've noticed is that you forgot (I guess you forgot) to add some RCS thrusters to the aft of the plane. You got them on the nose, but not on the aft end. This makes it real hard to strafe sideways. I still don't know why the target is not correctly shown on the nav ball when I have selected the target's docking port as target and selected the planes docking port as control from here. But the program thinks that the center is the crew cab. Must simply be a bug in the program. You can see that there is no target shown on the nav ball in the first picture above. Plane flies very well, I haven't landed it yet. BTW, is it necessary to have so many intakes? The plane weight is just over 56 tons on take off and about 36 tons while docking. Seems a bit heavy but I don't know what a plane's weight ought to be. I'm just asking. I have not flown any other people's planes yet. Just this one and the few that I made myself but didn't fly well.

Your quite welcome. I enjoyed doing it. Only suggestion I can make at this point is put the docking port as close to the COG as you can. On the top is fine. This way, if you want to push it to Laythe, then it won't try to spin your pusher much. I just got done landing it back at KSC. I was a bit tail heavy on gliding. I could have moved some fuel forward but I couldn't easily get to the tanks that had the remaining fuel and you didn't provide any landing instructions, so I decided you knew best and probably didn't need the fuel moved. I managed to get down and land on the runway but I did knock off the 4 most aft engines in the flare. Still, Bob survived and walked away to tell about it. It's a much better flying and to orbit plane than I have ever built. I've tried a few but you have obviously put a lot of time and love into this one. So, you definitely the better plane builder. Not only that, it looks awesome. Great Job. When you get it tweaked, you should offer it again. I look forward to flying your next version.

Yea, I've been building a few gliders myself... I think building them was most of the fun.

Dude!!! That was a kick ass video. The music rocks and it was very well in-sinc with the show. A+

OK, I got you covered. But before I dive into the pics, got a few questions... 1. Why did you use a Jr. Docking Port? They make it wobble a lot if trying to move the plane with a planetary transport or something. 2. Why did you use fuel from rocket engine tanks instead of jet fuel tanks when using the jets? 3. Why did you put the CB Antenna's on the bottom of the plane? That make it hard to land without snapping them off. Comments: Very well flying plane. Balance is spot on. Plenty of fuel to get to orbit and maneuver around. Docking port when selected "control from here" does not align with target port when docking. (No wonder you had trouble docking. I had to do it via visual instead of flying the ball.) Now for the pics... Climbing to top of atmosphere with jets. Obtained orbit. Approaching target to dock. First alignments. Aligned. Just a bit more. Done.

One thing I'd definitely fix is the welding of two like sized tanks. We shouldn't have to use struts to hold stacked tanks together. Do Kerbals not know how to weld a complete bead around the tanks? Having to use struts to hold it together is not really adding to the fun of the game and is only causing us to have to use more part counts for our lift vehicles. Tanks should have a very strong and solid connection to other tanks.

Sometimes you will come across a problem that looks like there is no easy answer to. Sometimes all you need is patience. Here is a problem that I ran into. With Lunar car with lander that I sent to Laythe with the attached long range transporter, I missed it's "align planes" orbit burn point. So, I decided to try and make the best of it. It had already had it's tranfer orbit burn done. So it was on it's way to Jool anyway. There was Jool encounter shown in its orbit path. So I knew it would at least get close. Close is a loose term here though. Like WAY OUT THERE close. I had to use up most of the fuel just to get captured in Jools orbit or else it would have fallen back in and then the mission would have to be scrapped. After I used up all the fuel on the long range transporter that brought it to Jool and then just a bit of the mission fuel for the car lander. It was in a very ugly orbit around Jool. Has an apoapsis of 2.189 billion meters. Yep that's just about on the edge of the SOI for Jool. But at least the problem is now contained at Jool. Oh, and the orbit plane is off by no less than 60 degrees if the previous wasn't enough problem. And oh yea, the apoapsis was pointing downward so it was not going to be an easy cheap plane adjustment. Somebody was gonna have to spend some money on a fuel burn to fix this one. So I just left it hanging there until I could think of a solution to fix the problem. So after I sent an airplane to Laythe, the long range transporter that it used still had most of it's fuel remaining. Yeah I used a better design for that one. Plus, the payload was much lighter. 5 tons vs 26 tons if I remember correctly. Well, I figured I'd send the transporter after the car/lifter and finish the job... but I got to thinking, maybe I could use the fuel on the lifter (what remains) to fix it's on orbit planes first. This would save tons of fuel on the transporter that would have to dock with it. Since it is already in a nice plane with the moons already. OK long story getting shorter. Here is a couple of pictures I took of the solution... Each picture worth a thousand words ya know... I found a cheap solution by using the gravity of Tylo to slow my rapid decent towards Jool AND fix my planes with the same burn. Only gonna cost me 84.5 units of DV to make that happen... That should save me a ton of fuel to fix my problem. Since I'd be close to the moons planes, I should be able to find a fixer to help get me to a destination. Preferably Tylo. The neat thing about it, is it doesn't use an atmospheric brake to slow down. Comments are welcome. I'm always up for learning something new. But don't recommend using any mods. I'm adverse to using any sort of mods.

No, that's not correct. They used the figure 8 because they wanted a free return trajectory if things went wrong like the service pod engine not starting. For absolute best landing and takoff from the Mun would be also in the way it rotates. For best exit from the Mun back to Kerbin, would be to burn on the far side of the Mun and make your apoapsis rise on the near side (closest to Kerbin). Then when it breaks open, you are then in a lesser energy orbit around Kerbin. If you keep burning a bit more you will decrease you orbit even further. But, eventaully, you will add energy if you burn too long. However, that would be a serious over-burn. But you are right in that it is the same principal when dealing with the sun and the planets. Just think of them as a larger Kerbin and Moons.

Scouring the forums I visit, like now, got another 1.5 hours to go on this burn. Yes, I'm burning the Ions again.

No I think you mis-understood whomever it was trying to explain or tell you what was needed. Always launch to 90 degrees (due East) from the launch pad. But, I think they were trying to say go prograde of the planet for outer planets and retrograde of the planet for inner planets. This means you want you ejection to be prograde or retrograde of the planet you are leaving. So, if you wanted to go inward, you want to leave your current planet on the sunny side. Making your ship travel around the sun in a lower orbit around the sun. But, this is not alway the best practice. There are better ejection angles that will optimize your fuel/DV needed. But for general, off the cuff, ejections, just orbit counter-clockwise as you normally do but when you "break away" from the planet's SOI, you want to have less energy (lower orbit) for inner planets or more energy (higher orbit) for out planets. If that's not too muddy, maybe it helped. Someone else might be better at explaining what I'm trying to say better than me. A teacher, I am not.

OK, here's mine.. Mobile Moon Base. and...

Hmmm, here is another one of mine. 7 Orange Tanks (worth) to Stable orbit. Yeah, I know it don't qualify because of launching it into orbit with two seperate launches. Still needed though.

It's the simple things that make you go hmmm.

One of my very favorite pictures because of Jebediah's face...

That's the mystery and the beauty of it. It's pushed by using the force Luke. The plane is 100% stock and using no mods or Alt-F12. It is designed in a way to optimize the use of the force. There are others that use the force in a more abusive manner, like doing parlor tricks, but this one is used in a more elegant and useful way. This allowed the plane to fly gracefully and elegantly.

Here is my lastest. A high flyer with a good cruise speed. This photo is on Kerbin at cruise speed and at service ceiling, actual top speed is about 280. Can't wait to get this one to Duna to try it out there. But it's still in testing at the moment for fine tuning. I had an earlier model that could do 360 but it was a bit shakey so I reduced some power to keep it from shaking. P.S. Almost forgot... This one serves the need for a slow flyer for easy landing in un-even turain. Light so I can use it on Duna and has a fast cruise speed. On Kerbin, it has a service ceiling of 16700 meters and a cruise of 275 m/s. Yet takes off at KSC at about 20 m/s.

Congrats on a mission well done so far. Now bring dem Kerbals home!

That is an awesome looking project you got going there... Great work.

Well, I've taken my planes a step further... I've got two planes on the way to Laythe (one for backup in case of mishap or mission fail on first) and am currently in flight on the Dune plane. But it's night so, it don't make good screenies. I'm flying to the other side of Duna now. added: Here is the plane in the early morning light a max altitude of 6km... added: First Duna Meeting

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