[Breaking ground - Test Zone]

I built a simple VTOL as a test.

Spoiler

 

[Space Used Stage becomes a Capsule]

Did you use the aim camera option on one of these parts before staging? even after staging it will keep the camera aimed at the targeted part even though you might actually be in control of the next stage.

it could also be a problem with your root part. change your root part to one in your last stage. this can be done in the vab.

[Tail fins configuration for my SSTO - Running out of ideas]

I Downloaded your craft and took her for a test flight. It's nicely balanced! So I fiddled around a bit and this is what I came up with:

It gives yaw stability but no yaw control. Not a real problem since it has enough reaction wheels I found.

craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad8p832qpg6zet7/Orzel-XI V4X Tail 1.craft?dl=0

 

[Remove one letter from a movie title and describe the new movie in a single line]

Indian Jones: A western following the life-story of an adopted Indian called Jones by his adoptive parents.

Die Had: A professional gambler loses one of his lucky dice and becomes obsessed with finding it.

Battlesip: A bunch of extremely drunk friends get violent after a drinking game.

John Cater: After his adventures on Mars, John starts a new career in catering.

The Pa Riot: A bunch of dads start a riot.

Ineption: A comedy that follows the career of some extremely incompetent people that reach the top through sheer luck.

Kill ill: The story of a doctor dedicating her life to find a cure for her former boss and lover Bill, who suffers from a rare illness.

Rob Cop: A movie about a cop turned robber in Detroit.

Death Poof: a story about a homosexual stunt car driver.

Tax Driver: Police is in a high speed pursuit with a professional race car driver wanted for tax evasion.

Lick: A two hour movie about Adam Sandler sneaking into peoples houses and licking their remotes.

 

[Nighttime // Planes thread]

tadaa!

[No nosecone, 2 intakes on sides, two canards, and one thruster. Make it fly!]

Tadaa, at first I wanted to put a parachute as a nosecone, but then I remembered the thrust reverser!
a little bit scary when landing this thing, with a high angle of attack and no clear view of the runway from the cockpit!

[What did you build two years ago?]

This album is in a few days exactly 2 years old. It shows my first operational space shuttle launching and visiting my ring station aptly named Saturn.

I used to be all about SSTO's at the time, and didn't build much shuttles after this one.
about a year ago my interest turned more towards space shuttles and I have been building loads of em since then.

[Sentinel asteroid detection quality or quantity]

Thanks, guess I built my sat more for looks than functionality!
Launched it anyway in my career save, cause it looks cool and It's a fun shuttle mission to bring it up and assemble its solar panels with a shuttle.
 

[Set camera focus to specific part]

I like this Idea.

I think the best way to do this is making it a keyboard + mouse-click combination available for every part.

I see no sense in limiting it to control parts, that would influence designs and increase part count just to look at your craft.
And right-click menus should be for controlling the craft and some parts have pretty long menus already.

an example I would like it: hold Y and click a part to focus camera around that part, and Y + right mouse button to reset to center of mass.

[I suck at this!!!!]

Snark is right, you could rendezvous as it is coming into Kerbins SOI. Just like a simple asteroid intercept.

[Sentinel asteroid detection quality or quantity]

Would the rate at which you detect asteroids increase if you put multiple telescopes on a single vessel? Would two sentinel satellites spot more asteroids aimed at the same planet than a single sentinel?

[So what ended your Career mode play through?]

I start a new career save every new version. I usually have some sort of focus for my early career. This time it is space shuttles.

[Station Design Guidelines]

Use a tug for construction. that way you can minimize part count on the station by leaving control parts and rcs thrusters on the tug, and keeping the part count of your modules to a minimum.

This might sound like common sense but It wasn't mentioned yet.

 

[Parachute proper usage]

You can use the Presmat Barometer to check the pressure per altitude. you can check it with a simple test flight. 4KM is for example a usually safe parachute deployment altitude and pressure at this altitude would be 0.54atm. Here are some common deployment altitudes:

 

[Poll: What is your favorite moon?]

Mün! It's close by, has some great easter eggs, and is sort of the proving grounds for any new KSP player. It is like a friendly neighbor that always has it's door open for you.

[KSP Manufacturers Real Life Counterparts?]

Rockomax Conglomerate = Rockwell International.

"Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate in the latter half of the 20th century, involved in aircraft, the space industry etc." - Wikipedia

The companies that built the Apollo CM/SM and the Space Shuttle orbiters were all part of Rockwell International.

[Absolute positioning values]

Yeah a screenshot would help. Im not sure but I have a hunch your root part is on one of these hulls? If that's the case you could try to put the rootpart in between the hulls and build the hulls out from there. 

 

[Drain fuel evenly across a rocket stage.]

17 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

This works for single stacks... but it can mess you up trying to rapidly click on multiple tanks for multiple stacks.

Allowing us to toggle fuel flow from tanks via action groups would be very much appreciated... maybe it merits its own suggestion.

I have made, and have seen others make, designs that rely on proper timing of enabling and disabling tank flows to remain stable throughout flight (while staying stock, TAC fuel balancer would help I guess)

Fuel tank toggle in action groups would make me very happy. It's actually kind of weird it has never been implemented before, seems like such a useful and logical thing to have.

[Drain fuel evenly across a rocket stage.]

23 minutes ago, Temstar said:

In real life fuel drains from the top down as well, assuming we're talking multi-stage rocket. This change would mess with asparagus staging and other such designs that rely on fuel flow logic.

So how about a toggle for fuel flow behavior in the VAB, in the tweakables. Just select an engine and choose between "normal drain/drain evenly".

[Pressure at a given altitude]

I don't have a formula, but I did do some testing a while back for safe parachute deployment altitudes. That way I can just set my parachutes to open at a certain pressure to have them open at that altitude.

These readings are from 4km, 7km, 8km, and 9km.

[How do you lose your aircraft?]

I must say I don't crash vehicles I have flown before, and if I crash them I would chalk it up as aggressive maneuvering.

However there is a certain design flaw I walk into every now and then and that is a hard to predict one in the VAB.
It is a center of drag problem at higher angles of attack.

an exaggerated example:
Let's say you are building a plane that is a bit X-wing like, a long nose with all of its weight (cockpit, engines fuel etc) in the back of the plane and center of lift slightly behind center of mass. At high angles of attack the nose will create drag or body lift, pushing it backwards.

I'm not sure if I should call this a stall since it isn't really the wings losing lift, it is the nose creating lift and/or drag.

 

[Regional airliner challenge]

ok, I went for mass kerbal transport. I call this craft the UP-01, UP standing for under powered.
I did it in 17:49, with 48 passengers + 1 crew.

It really was a race against the clock since it is a very slow plane and can only climb 1° while maintaining speed, so I had to do some slow climbs followed by some shallow dives to get a reasonable airspeed. my highest speed achieved was about 90 m/s throughout the whole trip. I have no idea how much fuel I used, I forgot to look it up but I had about 172units of liquid fuel onboard.

the plane loses airspeed with SAS on (because it is slightly unstable to keep it efficient) so I had to fly most of the time manually constantly trimming it.

[1.0.5 is out!!!!! post your fist craft here.]

just a little experiment with the thrust reversal on the jet engines.

[Make satellite contracts "remove control permantly" from the craft.]

If you want satellites to be more permanent I think it would be a better idea to have contracts of a longer duration.

like position satellite in orbit, then have it orbit 3 times. This would cost some extra of course.

[Narrow escapes?]

I recently built a new shuttle system for my career mode for 40 ton payloads. to make it economical it is basically a big rocket plane with two huge drop tanks on the side, inspired by the phase II shuttle. My ascent went nominal and I even had some fuel left in orbit for maneuvers.

as it was a test flight I reentered it bone dry, to check its glide scope and aerodynamic stability, stuff that's very important because I want to recover the shuttle at KSC. As I come over the KSC at around 23km altitude I do some hard braking turns, each more aggressive that the last. When I finally pitch it fully to the north it starts to flip and it just keeps on spinning. As all the engines are on the shuttle it is very tail heavy so as a last resort I try to stabilize it backwards, hoping the body of the shuttle will cushion the "landing" for the cockpit. at around 5km I had it tail first heading to the ground as to my amazement it reacts good to my control inputs. so well in fact I was able to get it level, flying backwards. flying tail first is one thing, but landing tail first was not something I dared to try so I pitched up into a stall and got it flying forwards again, landing safely after my most idiotic reentry ever.