Jarin

That's interesting. I see the same thing if I exactly duplicate what you have there. But taking the same craft in flight to the Wheesleys' flight ceiling and they both stay solidly at 100% until they die. They stop producing thrust long before there could be a flame out. The imbalance only appears if the craft is held perfectly stationary so no airflow increases for the intakes.

This is really strange... what sort of arrangements are people running that are getting asynchronous flameouts? I haven't seen one, regardless of design or build order, since... well, a long time now. Two intakes to four engines is a very common arrangement for me, and whether it's circular intakes with panthers, or shock cones with whiplashes, I've seen nothing but simultaneous flameouts.

Glad to know I wasn't blind. I've seen some weird veering from landing gear, but never anything that severe. Would also second @sal_vager here, asking for the craft file. But that's purely for my own amusement. That looks great and I want to play with it.

Is... is that a pair of Junos on that thing?

^^^^^ This, a thousand times this.

My testing begs to differ. Disappeared two seconds later, immediately after flipping to 25.0km. As for the others, I'm pretty sure the physics range for space is 2km just like landed. Either 2 or 2.5km. Tested regularly refueling craft at a big laggy space station. It doesn't halt the game to load physics until final approach (which has gotten me in trouble with time warp more than once).

With the severity of that turn, it really looks like the left engine nacelle is having its thrust blocked. This can happen even with symmetry, I've found. Try removing just the parts behind the engines and test-fly to see if it still has the problem (obviously this isn't a final solution, just troubleshooting).

This one. I launched a satellite from the back of a jet, but the game crashed sometime after that and I never got to use FMRS to switch back. Yeah, I just flipped Jeb back to "available" in the persistence file. I'm mostly just trying to figure out what caused it, to avoid it in the future. Also... "execute them"? Pretty sure that they're supposed to survive even Danny2462-style abuse if respawn is on. Wasn't aware that KSP had a death penalty. o.o;

And here I assumed you were thinking small. XD But yeah, that should work nicely. Though you might still want to consider FMRS so you can ride the base down and manage the landing, unless you're really sure of its parachute stability.

Give me a few minutes and I can test it. Edit: Confirmed, 25km. Just remember, 25km goes by real fast when you're supersonic. Your drop pods need to be on the ground by then. You may need to adjust how low their parachutes open. My materials bay + probe core + parachute test pods set to immediate-chute-open had barely dropped 500m by the time they went out of range, and they were dropped from a subsonic flying bus.

If you can stay in physics range (25km in atmosphere, I think?) until it hits the ground, you're good. For everything else, look at something like FMRS. There's a 1.2 updated version in the last page or two of the thread. I've been using this for Virgin Galactic style high-altitude orbiter launches. If you're just trying to get biome science info without landing, though, parachute drop-pods from a plane should do fine. Drop them low and circle if necessary.

Val4lyfe! But for non orange-suits, I nominate Terry Kerman, chief engineer of Minbase Alpha. She's basically singlehandedly responsible for assembling my Minmus fuel depot (via KAS), as well as saving several derps who forgot critical craft components like solar panels or antennas.

Hm... don't think my mods would be messing with that. I guess FMRS might do something if you don't shift back to a first stage properly. Everything else I have is informational or graphics. Went ahead and tweaked Jeb back to Available in the persistence file. Though I did get a weird bug where he had 5 stars for his first flight before it corrected itself. Edit: Another possible cause... maybe this isn't checked properly if an aircraft is auto-removed for being out of focus in the atmosphere?

So, in my current career, I have it set to "missing crew respawns", and most of the time, even with some pretty impressive crashes, the crew always finds its way back after a bit. Except somehow... Jeb is now showing up as "KIA" instead of "missing" in the astronaut complex, and isn't coming back. What gives? Is there a way to kill kerbals hard enough to override the respawn setting?

I have been running an aircraft-only career in 1.2 and the runway seems fine to me. I could launch basic "bushplane" style aircraft from the tier 1, and I've been tossing some pretty big aircraft off of the tier 2 runway without any difficulty. Is the tier 2 in a weird sweet spot and I'm going to start seeing gaps in the tier 3? I need to know if I should avoid upgrading...

The game desperately needs proper visualization for "Center of Drag" =/

Does it explode any parts? Check the log to see if you crashed into the phantom launch pad.

Okay, that might have been overkill. Lab is now in orbit with 2.2k dV left in the tank. Debating where I want to park the thing now. XD Didn't quite get the lifter home, but that was mostly due to a stupid fuel imbalance, and me madly pumping everything into the forward tanks while spiraling backwards towards the water; engines on full burn to slow me down. Still, it recovered and got a goodly ways towards KSC before I put it down in the water. 86% recovery from a flubbed re-entry isn't half bad, I say.

that seems... really strange. You're sure about that?

I know that slopes on the front greatly reduce drag, but I wasn't sure about slopes on the back. I'll have to test it.

Pretty sure that's exactly how it worked. I don't recall anything but coupling parts blocking flow before, either. All that I've really seen new from a construction perspective is automatic crossfeed to radial parts.

That's the general idea. If I'm putting this much work into it, I'd like to have it work for other functions as well. Though if this model doesn't pan out, I'll probably steal your Flying Lab design there just to get the dang thing in orbit and figure out a proper lifter later. The real trick is having CoL balance both with and without payload; thus the detachable wings on the lab. Haven't had a chance to test it yet though, beyond a short hop just to make sure it didn't spaz on liftoff. Will update after it flies for real. I really need a wind-tunnel or something. I have no idea what changes actually assist with drag enough to offset the mass cost.

Oh crap, almost forgot to do that. I was just going to toss another mun flyby out for something to research. Didn't even think of ground science

BEHOLD The Packmule 1 is ready to fly! Panthers dropped in sets of 2, with LV-909s underneath. I may swap these for T45s, since the lifter doesn't actually need to get itself clear to orbit. Keeps a single panther centerline for lifter return. Lab segment ditches the wings and wheels once it's free. Mostly copied @bewing for the lab component layout. ... I have no damn idea if this is going to work. Wish me luck. I would sell Jeb for a whiplash right now. Maybe toss in Bill for some Big-S wings.

This is amazing. My airplane-only career would not be possible without it. Regarding the random unreliability, I've got a correlation between flipouts and computer processing power. I play the same game on two PCs, and my home computer can handle mach 3 level flight at 3x warp but flips out at 4x. Meanwhile my weaker laptop flips at 2x, in simpler flight. I'm thinking it doesn't play nice when KSP starts skipping physics frames? It seems to coincide with the flight time in the upper-left going from green to yellow or red. Not sure if that's helpful info, but I can always hope. Thanks again for this project!