mellojoe

It must be my ascent profile then. Can you look at the vid I posted to see whatnI'm doing wrong?

I've devloved into editing air-intake part configs to make them more effective. I got so sick of part-clipping a million ram-air scoops that I finally just made a new super air scoop that takes in about 15x more air than a single scoop. It lets me keep pretty looking planes, but still do the air-hogging necessary to get SSTO planes to work.

GOOD TIP! I knew about the 'last engine placed' trick. I'm usually trying to build things with odd numbers of engines and ensure I place the middle one last. But I didn't know about teh mirrored engine being the one to go. THANKS!

FYI: I have had this problem with my KSP. I no longer do asteroid missions. I have never been able to perform asteroid missions without massive wobbles, and that makes it impossible to do anything with them.

PorkJet's Mk2 Spaceplane Plus Someone previously listed his inflatable habitat parts, which are nice. But take a look at his Spaceplane parts. Yeah ...... stunning. Too pretty, and by itself is a small enough package of parts not to be too overwhelming. B9 parts are brilliant, but there are (what feels like) thousands to pick and choose, and it just becomes hard to remember what you want or where it is or what is availible. The Porkjet parts are easy, and pretty, and simple. I recently found them, and I love them.

I have been able to click on the hatch. Works fine. I'm definitely looking forward to having Portraits, cause I like watching the stupid faces the Kerbals make. But, clicking on the hatch door gives methe option to EVA them.

At about 7:05, you can see my technique for babysitting twin engines for flameout prevention. If you Alt-Right Click both engines, you can watch the thrust each is providing. One will start to lose thrust relative to the other. This is my cue to back off the throttle to prevent flameout. A couple SAS units to correct any slight torque. Once you identify which engine flames out, it will always be the same engine everytime that flames out first.

At 5:45 in the video, just before I throttle down, you can see the plane lurch sideways. That is my cue that one engine is flaming out. I have to throttle down at this point. Is there a way to prevent these flameouts? At that point in the video I'm at 25,000m, 1500 m/s, and air intake at 0.11.

Updated first post with .CRAFT file.

Updated first post with a video.

Thanks to PorkJet's Mk2 Spaceplane Plus parts, this thing is fun. It isn't perfect by far, but it is useable at this moment. Just delivered 4 tons to orbit. Fully reusable. ((edit)) I have succesfully delivered 5.5 tons to LKO. Still testing and minor tweaks. Still don't know theoretical maximum yet, either.

When I try to make larger SSTO planes, I hit a wall right around 23,000m and about 1400 m/s. Often I can get near 1600 m/s, but thats about it. I run out of air, switch to rockets, and then use all my delta-V just getting into orbit. Do I just need to air-hog more? What do I need to be doing? Here's an example craft: It was on its way back down, but you get the idea. All those intakes on top? About 12 or 14 of them clipped together to try to air-hog as much as possible. ((edit)) Here's a video of my current project and my current flight plan: Here's my flight path: Mostly straight up until about 15,000m Level off and fly straight trying to max out speeds Slowly let plane climb of own accord 23,000meters and around 1400 m/s engines start getting air starved and slowly throttle back When speeds stops increasing, aim upward to gain altitude When engines finally cut out, switch to rockets Am I missing something? ((edit)) Craft File Here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tqw80lrq2ukoltc/Mk2%20%20Plane%20v4.craft It uses PorkJet's Mk2 Spaceplane Plus parts, which can be found here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57662-PorkWorks-dev-thread-Inflatable-habs-and-more%21-Current-project-MK2-stock-expansion And it uses the combination RCS block thrusters from B9, which can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ztdlwtlxy7inhgx/Control_RCS_Blocks.zip And instead of sticking on a thousand air-intakes, I modified the scramjet air intake to be the equivilent of about 15 ram air intakes. This was done just for aesthetics. These parts were too pretty to part clip a million ram-air intakes. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0wntxv6i9rm66r7/part.cfg

Thanks guys. The parts are brilliant.

What about getting Portraits working? How do I get my Kerbals out of the plane once it lands? PS: The MK2 parts are brilliant beyond belief. I have ben playing around with B9 parts trying to find something I like, and then I found your Mk2 SpacePlanePlus pack. This is it. This is exactly what I want.

The Mk2 cockpit and crew compartment don't have portraits? Is this normal? Is there a fix? PS: I just found this thread. I LOVE THESE PARTS! Beautiful.

Graveyard Orbit:

I think this was the reason for larger wings, too, right? In order to bail out of failed launches from polar orbit attempts? In order to glide back to a usable runway?

I've heard numerous times that NASA's Shuttles ended up being massively less efficient than originally intended, and that it comes back to a design change somewhere in the process. But, I can't seem to find out what changed. What was the initial intent? Did it have something to do with the Main Shuttle Engines? Was it the wing design? From what I understand, the military demanded the wings to be as big as they were. Why was that? Thanks.

Exactly my point. If the whole process is simply to burn something to ashes, we have other means of doing so. The pollution will be similar, just in different layers of atmosphere.

I think the concept is nice. In practice though, I think there are too many flaws. Scenario 1) in theory, you have a giant empty fuel tank orbiting and a bunch of thrusters just sitting around. Surely, you could Kludge several of them together to create a useful stage out of existing parts. But, then, you somehow need to get fuel up there. If you are already sending a large amount of fuel, then you already have the tank it is stored in. Therefore, the only real recycling will be the engines themselves. And, well, you already have an engine attached to the fuel you are sending, since you need someway to move the fuel up to the orbiting debris. Therefore, it is not woth it to try to Cobble a bunch of spent stages into a useful stage. Scenario 2) in theory, you have a bunch of metal and materials floating in space. You want to deorbit them all to gather the materials and recycle them into raw material for manufacturing. Now, we need to send a ship up to capture and deorbit the junk. But where does it land? Do we need to bring a massive heatshild with us to protect the debris? If we deorbit it slowly enough, can we predict where it will land? Can we recover it after it lands? Do we need to bring lots of parachutes to ensure the debris survives impact? Massive, massive costs, and very little return. Scenario 3) in theory, we have a bunch of crap that needs to be cleaned up. You want to deorbit them and destroy them to keep space clear. Now, reallly, we are just moving trash around. We are moving trash from space onto Earth. There's already a lot of trash on earth. I think many people would argue that instead of bringing more trash to Earth, we should be eliminating trash on Earth by sending it to space. Can we ensure the space debris is burned up? This could yield a decent solution. Turn space debris into ashes. This could also yield a decent solution for cleaning up Earth. Send giant bags of trash to space, then fling them back into the atmosphere to be burned up. But again, massive costs, and potentially massive pollution.

I'll be honest, I also thought throwing things into the sun would be much easier. I'm a space geek. I've been in love with all things NASA since I was a kid. I understood orbits, and a few little things here and there. But it never occurred to me how difficult it would be to crash something into the sun. I always thought a solution to space trash would simple be to have these transfer stages fling themselves into the sun after they drop something in Geostationary orbit. How WRONG WRONG WRONG I was.

The boosters are supposedly planned to be recoverable, yes? However, the booster seperation will be approximately 500km downrange from the launch site, from what I understand and from comments from Elon Musk. Are these boosters supposed to turn around and come back to the launchsite? Surely not. Where will the site of the booster recovery be? On land, from what I understand, as is the whole point of powered rocket landing as opposed to using parachutes into the sea. Is there a specific targeted site? Is the flight plan of the recoverable boosters to just free fall until a certain altitude, re-fire the engine, re-orient to vertical, and touch-down? Or will it powered-flight to travel to a distant landing site?

Did a little Googling ... looks like Cosmonauts were aboard, and on the launchpad, and they were filling up the tanks. A leak developed, a fire broke out, and with literal seconds to spare, the escape tower was used. Pulled the men to safety about 4km downrange. Much bruising, but no major harm. The explosion of the rocket happened just underneath them, a window of 2 seconds after the escape pod fired. Scary, scary stuff. Also, the Longman Dictionary seems to point to a British use of the phrase "in anger", which is much different usage from the Americanized phrase. I learned something today.

If I want to send a mothership / base to orbit Jool, and then use that as a platform of opertations to visit the different moons, would it be better to put it in a circular orbit amonts the moons? Or into an elliptical orbit that crosses the paths of multiple moons? And if we do the elliptical one, will I encounter issues of accidental gravity assists shooting me off where I don't want to go? I guess I could put my elliptical orbit slightly inclinded to miss the moons, but then do I get the advantage of the elliptical orbit in the first place? Or will I end up wasting too much fuel trying to get encounters with the moons? My thought is a single main craft (mothership / base) with a lander (or multiple landers) that can detach, go explore one of the moons, then come back and join the mothershiop again. This might turn into a full Jool-5 challenge, but it might not include Tyloo, if that adds too much complication to things. My main goal is to establish a permanent base of operations in the Jool system.

Has anyone read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein? You should. First off, its a good book. But secondly, it exactly illstrates what a colony like this could look like. It is written in sort of a communication slang, but once you get into it, it tells a wonderful story. About a colony on the Moon (Luna) and the people who now live there (Loonies). A theme central to the plot is law enforcement amongst the people, as well as between the colony on Luna (who consider themselves fairly independent) and Earth (which considers the Moon as a colony to be governed). It also talks about relationships, and how those relationships develop in a nearly-cut-off place like the Moon. Go to the library and check it out. Its from 1966, but very little of anything is outdated, the darn thing is so well written. Mannie, Wyoh, Prof, and Mike all have discussions very similar to those happening in this thread.