Cranium

I don't think the music fit with your video, but otherwise, it looks really nice! It's a shame they tweaked things with the masses sitting on top of engines, cause now I have to build things like you are. Can't wait to see what you have planned next! You seem to make these too easily...I might be tempted to challenge you with a ludicrously large dropship, capable of bringing an entire large fuel tank to orbit.

Just to clarify, I hope...You want to make a docking port...contraption that acts like a docking port? Is your goal to actually merge the two crafts, or are they supposed to be clamped together? If that's what you want, landing legs in a certain configuration would do just what you want.

Your problem is the shrouds on the inner engines. They eject outwards, so they will collide with the outer engines. Why do you need so many engines for such a small payload? You're getting awfully inefficient with that many engines.

I don't see this as much of a challenge, because it's actually really easy to do... You simply need to put a probe up there with an ion engine to finalize things to within a meter of difference.

Wat..... WHAT IS THIS SORCERY? MOVING PARTS??? Props to you, man... Although, you might be able to accomplish this in .22 with the new landing legs. They make just about the same angle as what you have there, and it might be more stable as well.

I have some interesting things, that I just might have to post here. I like what's been posted so far, and iDan, you're just being too negative.

Yeah, landing on the bell is difficult, but certainly doable:

For the research, I'd say it makes sense to be on a per part basis. Say for instance, you make a spaceplane to get you to an orbital trajectory, and even do some docking to a space station. But when you land, you break your jet engine, and this, your research for that part is significantly reduced because you couldn't recover the part. Everything else however, would still provide a small amount of research for use later, such as improved wings, better fuel, or a much improved autopilot since you docked with the station. Even with this though, I don't see how you could prevent from 'farming' the research points.

Very nice, I would love to see one of your trademark videos showcasing this wonderful craft!

Sometimes I see fellow Kerbonauts try to overengineer their spaceplanes. You don't really need tons of control surfaces to make a flight-worthy plane. In general, you need a minimum of one control surface for each side for yaw, pitch, and roll. So you at least need elevators/aelerons, and some sort of tail fin. Often, I see people put canards, aelerons, elevators, and tail fins, with winglets on their planes, and then they wonder why it twitches out so much while flying. Less is sometimes more in planes.

Now, do you set your brakes to start off, then throttle up? If so, I've experienced the same thing on much smaller planes, the problem being that when you brake, and throttle up, part of it clips through the ground, gluing you there. You can 'fix' this by 'wiggling' around, or just waiting until the thrust overcomes the quicksand.

You'll see on the real shuttle, that most of the engines are already angled quite a bit towards the dorsal side. If I recall correctly, they could gimbal an additional 5-10 degrees(I might be completely wrong about this) to compensate for the asymmetric amount of thrust and mass. It's not really easy to maky such a craft in KSP, but I have seen it done. What you may end up doing, is simply attaching your lifting stage directly below your plane stage.

Use the quick switch keys to go back and forth between nearby crafts and debris. Square brackets are the keys used by default: [ ]

if you're missing your maneuver nodes, try using Kerbal Alarm Clock. It's really nice for that.

Ooh, I quite like that two stage design. I might have to shamelessly rip it off for some landers I've been planning.

You can load this craft in stock, but it won't fly as well. The reason for FAR was to allow it to fly properly with the split fuselage control surfaces.

The only mod you need installed is FAR, since it is able to individually assign controls to each control surfaces. There are no part mods whatsoever. I try to make my crafts as close to stock as possible.

A few weeks back, I saw a video of the Virgin Galactic ships; most recently their White Knight Two launch vehicle, and the SpaceShipTwo suborbital craft. If you're not aware of these two crafts, I suggest watching this awesome video: Watching that inspired me to see if I could make my own. So I started on it, and after several design hurdles, and control issues, I was finally able to get a very similar craft working. A few shots of me flying this thing, and showing off the release system. You can obtain a decent altitude with this craft, and even though I failed landing, it is entirely possible to land both crafts separately. I'm just a terrible pilot. If you want to try this out for yourself, here's the craft file: http://www./download/jc4pc86cclca7jg/Kerbin_Galactic_Two.craft Unfortunately, I can't present you this craft without mods today, as the split fuselage didn't like Kerbal aerodynamics. You'll need FAR in order for this to fly properly. Action groups: [1] Toggle innermost jet engines [2] Toggle outermost jet engines [3] Toggle rocket engine

having trouble with KSP shouldn't prevent you from upl;oading the .craft file. Unless fo course, the file does not exist or it is incomplete. Alternatively, you can open the .craft file in notepad, and upload the text to pastebin.com or other similar text sharing sites.

Alternatively, if you do some camera magic, by moving the entire craft off center, and then clicking only the farthest point away from the attachment point on the part you want to add, if the attachment point gets to the rest of the craft before your mouse does, it should attach as intended, rather than radially.

Your edge of insanity video always makes me think of this:

Not sure how I managed this, but it was doing this with no control input, and had I let it, would have run forever. It ran for a full 45 minutes while I uploaded that video...

Well, your 'challenge' is poorly defined. There are no goals beyond flight and wheels. If that's the case, I can slap some wheels on an SRB, and still participate. There aren't really any rules, or any scoring system. It seems like you just want a Showcase, rather than a challenge.

Well, that is with the exception of the command seat. You cannot assign kerbals to the command seat(which is silly)

You can use the square bracket keys [ and ] to quickly switch between vessels.