Heagar

There is an other option too: I mounted the heatshield upside down on the top of the craft, it worked well. I think that the new aero design in conjunction with the old parts - it may be influenced by Near or FAR - has it flaws. Computed is - in my opinion - the hole craft, witch will automaticly point with it's end with less drag into prograde. But computed should be the COW as well to allow a normal reentry eather with some corrections or/and to allow spinning the craft to stabilize it (at the moment the spin stops with SAS disengaged).

I had build once - for test purposes - an spaceplane consiting of one jet fuel tank, an advanced jet engine, two intakes, four xenon containers and two ion-engines. I found it funny, that this little thingy was able to go to mun, minmus and return to kerbin in one launch. So, for small systems an ion engine is a good choice in my opinion. For example: if you want to do a "grand tour" (visiting every (outer) planet in one mission) assisted by slingshots around the planets an then go interstellar like voager if you use any life-support mod, you can use a ion powered unmanned spacecraft to deliver the goods for a spacestation/base and return to kerbin.

@Keras To embed pictures/albums from imgur you use the following code without the asteriks: [*imgur]Alphanumerical_Imgur_Code[/imgur]

As you said before: Activate the to test part when the conditions are met, not before! Witch means: KSP is counting not every stage, but the first one with the to tested part. If you use a booster - witch already is the test subject - to lift your craft to an altitude and speed to meet the test conditions, you have already activated it for KSP under the wrong conditions --> test failed. For a "landed" test subject: You have to activate it on the lauchpad/runway. You simply put an extra stage as first stage for the to tested part on your craft. That's it!

It depends on what your plane should be capable off. For a plane with a basic jet engine one intake is enough, since this engine starts to loose power at about 15 km altitude anyways. With the advanced jet engine and one intake you can go up to 26 km. But in case you are planning to build a STTO: with three intakes per engine you are on the safe side without problems with two intakes per engine you should hit at least 1800 m/s between 30-36 km, then it is not important, if your air-intake reading is zero. You can achieve altitudes up to 56 km with working jet engines with sutch a plane. BTW: Very important is to mount your jet engines seperatly, not in symmetry mode. The same with the air intakes. That reduces the ammount of uneven thrust/flameout for a multiengine plane. That means, that you mount your first engine. Then mout the air intakes for that. Then repeteatly the same procedure for the rest of the engines/intakes.

It's essentially to know, if you are playing the sandbox mode, or a career game. In a sandbox game you should see your trajectory, but: If the second option is the case, Starhawk is right when it comes to manouver nodes, tracking targets and so on.