longhornchris

Jets can work well as part of the 1st stage, but they require a different flight profile. As others have mentioned jets take time to spool up and lose power at high altitude and high speed... so that has to be taken into account. I don't often use them, but when I do I have them start before I release the launch clamps. Next, I start the turn at a very low altitude to get as much speed out of the jets before I get over 20-25km where the jets start to lose thrust. Jets do better the faster they go... until a point. Note: I've been using FAR for a while now, so jets behave a bit differently there. Personally I tend to use the SABRE engines in the B9 pack because its fewer engines to deal with.

There are several key differences that change some of the details of the ascent profile: Earth a lot bigger with more surface gravity Earth has a much denser & taller atmosphere Earth engines have much, much higher thrust to weight ratios - hence no asparagus staging This is a major reason why Earth rockets go straight up, or nearly straight up then pitch over. For US launches there is usually a roll (for vehicles that have a 'wide' dimension) followed by a pitch to get out over the water quickly. The full pitch over doesn't occur till much higher to minimize atmospheric drag and the associated thermal and aerodynamic loads on the fairing. Now, I don't expect KSP to implement all of this - but with FAR and deadly re-entry the impacts on the fairing are modeled, albeit not perfectly.

How do you actually put cargo into the cargo bays? I've tried to get docking connectors or decouplers to mount into the bay and it doesn't seem to work... so I must be doing something wrong. I've finally got a decent spaceplane with plenty of margin to haul stuff and i can't stick anything in the cargo hold.

I've found that for most of my spaceplanes I need 3x more Fuel/Ox than Fuel only. I may be "Doing It Wrong" but here's my flight profile: 1: Get airborne on jets / SABREs in Jet mode 2: Shallow climb until speed reaches Mach 1.2 where the transonic issues go away 3: Climb to 10Km / 15Km and start to level off - maintain a shallow climb - 50m/s or less climb 4: Build speed to 1.6Km/s - 1.8Km/s at or above 25Km altitude 5: Activate rockets / switch SABREs to rocket mode and nose up to 45 - this part is usually hard if I've pushed the altitude too high - RCS helps if you've got it and enough monoprop - Holding altitude for a minute while speed builds can help too 6: once apoapis is above 70Km (usually 75Km) kill the throttle 7: Pitch back down to zero AoA to minimize drag - given the FAR lift model, positive AOA will increase apoapsis while decreasing periapsis because the lift keeps pushing your orbit steeper. This may be desirable but will cost you deltaV as drag goes up with lift If anybody has a better flight profile for FAR I'd love to hear it.

I'm using MechJeb 2.08 beta. Has anybody else had any luck getting a good starting point for MechJeb's Attitude control PID? Adjusting the PID values work with FAR should be doable, but I'm having trouble getting there.