Jarin

Remember, there's a lot of mod folders with the Mk4 download. If you want to do a fully clean install, you need to delete all of "B9PartSwitch" "CommunityResourcePack" "DeployableEngines" "Firespitter" "MarkIVSystem" and "NearFutureProps" directories, then re-copy them to GameData from a fresh download of Mark_IV_Spaceplane_System-2.3.4.zip

Built a Mk3 craft with basically the same profile. At the same 3° pitch, I'm seeing a bit under 50kN to the Mk4's 180 on the cockpit. Still, it's fatter and less aerodynamic in general, so I suspect this is just an engineering challenge at this point, not a bug. Maybe that divot at the bottom/back of the cockpit is doing unfortunate things to the drag model? Don't actually know how it functions behind the scenes. Or not, since, I tossed on the Vulture cockpit for comparison and got 220kN drag; notably more drag where I would have expected less. I'm clueless at this point. I think the takeaway is just to build the wings to keep the fuselage as close to 0° pitch in the transonic zone as possible. Aero is weird.

Yeeeahh... that model's not exactly... designed to land again. <.<;

Mk4 Testbed back out and flying. Still seeing 180+ kN drag on the cockpit at 3° pitch. Mach 0.98 at sea level. Less than 1 kN on the service bay, and 200kN on the medium fuselage. For troubleshooting purposes, I tweaked the wings to get the fuselage pitch as close to 0° as possible. At 0.1° pitch, things get interesting. The cockpit's drag is down to 67kN, and the fuselage is clear down to 30kN. Total craft drag was right at 1000kN on the original craft file I provided, vs 545kN with the wings inclined to pitch the fuselage almost level. The Mk4 Shoulder Intake is still showing 5-6 times the drag of the stock shock cone, as well (8.8kn vs 1.5 tested side by side). Hope this is helpful. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do.

Eh, have fun. I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with now that we're pushing the edge of what's possible. Just be warned with that craft... it's a (very accidentally) precisely-tuned instrument. Every adjustment I've made to it seems to kill its ability to max out the engine speeds.

The biggest problem with L points is that L1, L2, and L3 get really flippin' weird when you don't have n-body simulation. Do you just give it its own tiny SOI? Do you just have a magical point to "anchor" to? Do you adjust the orbits of things vaguely near them? At least L4 and L5 are orbits that can be sort-of mimicked in KSP.

Had this happen to me, double-check productivity. Building from a survey station without a workshop requires rather smart kerbals to get a positive score.

True. Automatic station-keeping would help with things like geostationary sats as well, though, so that would be my preference.

Make the final adjustments right after you leave Kerbin SOI, for best fuel efficiency.

I was going to suggest the Canadarm mod, but that doesn't look like it's working for everyone currently. Your best bet if that fails (other than a tug) might be building your own construction arm out of Infernal Robotics joints. Alternately, if you're up for some config editing, I bet there's a variable defined in KIS somewhere that sets an individual Kerbal's part-movement weight. I think it defaults to 1 ton. Could ask in the mod thread if someone knows where to find that.

Yeah, but they typically handle that automatically. I should be able to have X monoprop on the sat or whatever, and have it hold position for Y years without my interference.

The intent is to duplicate the Mun's L5 and L4 points, for relays to and from the back side of the mun. If your orbital period is the same of the Mun (or Minmus), it shouldn't drift in, but this level of precision is basically impossible over the long-term, even with save editing.

I'd say wheels only, otherwise you're just launching a weirdly-shaped rocket at the satellite. At best, no rocket thrust after leaving the ground, but maybe for speed on run-up to a jump.

So it looks like we're running into orbital mechanics here. This high and fast, the gravity losses of the slower orbital speed going west are notably increasing the required lift to stay airborne.

Apparently my fuel efficiency doubles when maxing out at 1748m/s vs maxing out at 1732? Still not making sense... Spot the westbound flight: Half the thrust, half the fuel flow. Both are at max throttle, speed 0.07 mach difference.

Right, I'm flying high and fast enough that planetary curve is important. Forgot that. Still doesn't explain the doubled fuel burn though.

So, in my continuing attempts to push the envelope of airbreathing flight, I've run across something very odd. My supercruise craft that can hit 1750+m/s flying east is catching more drag or less lift going west, and tops out at 1730, in addition to burning significantly more fuel since it's having to run at max throttle to maintain that lesser speed. Anyone know anything about this? Edit: That's an even weirder anomaly. I'm legitimately burning fuel twice as fast, even factoring throttle into it. It's not just drag. Westbound at full throttle I have 15 minutes at cruise altitude, estimated by KER (and tested at empty halfway around the world). Eastbound it's 30. Something seriously screwy going on here.

So, uh... flying west is apparently substantively different aerodynamically than flying east. Still investigating the actual effects here. But my craft that can hit rapier flameout going east (1752m/s) can barely bust 1730 flying west. Runs out of fuel twice as fast, too. Edit: Westbound run complete. Popped the drogues a few moments early so I landed short. Less than a km short though, so it's still solid. Every minor tweak I try to make to this craft drops the top speed, so I think that's it for me. I somehow accidentally stumbled onto my best design apparently. I'll take solace in disproving the "Mk1s probably won't be able to compete" comment.

I'll add my anecdotal info of getting tech unlocked with a green 'lith. The world-first notification showed the tech. Fairly heavily modded, but mostly parts; nothing that should affect science, to my knowledge. Unless it's ScanSat, which I used to locate it.

This should be pretty close. Though I think it'll happen to any Mk4 craft. If it doesn't, I'd love to see how to avoid it.

... can you have infinite of a resource that there's no storage for? I think I had it on manual switching, but I didn't even think to check, and that thrust kick would be consistent with mode-switch. Ah well, I was mostly trying to test heat tolerance, so knowing the design can handle anything airbreathing engines can do is useful. Now to toss on some mod scramjets to see how it handles.

The real trick was keeping it from melting on ascent. Had to keep it at like 1/5 throttle below 17km. Once up high, it seemed to handle itself pretty well (once I found a fix for the little "mk1 cockpit exploding" issue anyway). Turning on infinite resources keeps the rapiers from cutting out, and I've pushed it close to 2200 (edit: can hit 2250, but eventually hits heat saturation as internal temp climbs) without any structural failure. Interestingly, the rapier thrust curve actually goes up on the other side of its cutoff point. It takes a minute to accelerate from 1720 to 1740, but like 10 seconds to accelerate from 1780 to 2100.

Radiators inside the faring. :3 Plus strategic placement of heat shields (ablator set to 0) to block spread of heat where necessary. Edit: @fourfa here you go, There's a few other details in there, but it's not too fancy.

I'm rather proud of that little speed demon up there. Still working on how to integrate the heat-spike design into something actually career-useful though.

Have you set Emiko Station to use autostruts? I know it was originally constructed before they were implemented.