Jimbimbibble

I believe you want the longitude of perigee. You can compute this value by adding the longitude of ascending node to the argument of perigee. Both of these are available in KER. Then, compare the two values for the two satellites to compute the angle you're looking for. However, it will be very difficult to burn directly into that orbit without lots of really hard math. If you can manage it, I would suggest putting the second satellite in a circular 1400km orbit and then lowering its perigee when it's current longitude is 180 degrees away from the desired longitude of perigee. You should be able to get within a degree or two using this method. Then, you can burn radial/anti-radial at apogee to adjust the longitude of perigee precisely. This will change your apogee, but you can change it back at perigee without significantly affecting the longitude of perigee if it's not a major change.

When you say instantly explode, do you mean that it happens on load or when you start the engines? The exhaust might be damaging your engines.

You can set the chute to deploy at 50m altitude. It should only take a couple seconds to splash down.

You can also launch almost into the target orbit. Wait until the space center is directly below the target orbit, then launch and turn the rocket to the desired inclination. Remember that a heading of 90 degrees is 0 inclination and you may have to turn north or south depending on whether you're launching at an ascending or descending node. If you do this right you can get within 1-2 degrees of the target.

Just burn normal/anti-normal when you get to the node.

Sure, it works, but you're probably wasting 1000 m/s of deltaV. It is significantly more efficient to do transfer burns in low orbit.

I see you're trying to exploit intake spamming. This doesn't really work in FAR. I'd suggest reducing your intakes so that it flames out around 30km and 1700m/s. Slashy is right that you will need rockets to make it to orbit. Two popular options are rapiers or turbojets + a nuke. Rapiers are better within Kerbin and turbojets + nuke are better for interplanetary spaceplanes.

With most of my lifters I find that if the station is about 15-20 degrees behind the space center I can launch and rendezvous in no more than 1-2 orbits. In real life, they slowly phase in over a period of days. It took the shuttle 3 days to dock with the ISS.

Probes can still be practical for some types of missions. It's a good way to get science from inside of Jool or the surface of Eve without killing your crew. Also, you don't have to worry about returning a proble if you transmit so you can use a much smaller rocket.

The trickiest part of interplanetary is getting the transfer timed correctly, especially with a low TWR ship. There's a mod called Protractor that's really useful for this. It tells you exactly when you need to start your burn taking into account your ship's TWR. It's not perfect but it will get you close. Also, you might consider doing a return mission from Eve and Gilly. Land on Gilly and just orbit Eve. Those are probably the easiest targets for your first mission. Just remember that unmanned probes can only return experiments. No crew report, eva, or surface sample.

I've had the same problem. Right now, I'm doing a spaceplane only save with B9. Everything that I put into orbit has to ride in an SSTO. I think I'm going to try Jool 5 like this.

You can manage a TWR less than 1 actually. Very few real planes have TWR larger than 1. You just can't expect to fly it like a rocket. Climbing at 20-30 degrees to 10km then flattening to 10 degrees is more reasonable.

Wow! This mod is amazing! I've been waiting for something like this for a very long time. Here are some suggestions to make it even better. In a real autopilot, the pilot controls both altitude and rate of climb simultaneously, which your mod does too. However, the setting for max climb/decent rate is in the PID tab, which is less convenient. Can you move this out to the main tab and just have a single value to enter which governs both climb and decent? Also, many of the lower PID limits are difficult to type in with my keyboard because they require a negative value and for some reason I can't just highlight the existing text and start typing over it if the first character I type is the minus sign. It doesn't recognize the minus unless a number is already there and I type the minus in front of the number. Maybe you could have the user enter only positive numbers and have your code multiply the value by -1 when it reads the text box. You could put the minus sign into the GUI in front of the text box for clarity. Also, there are a number of settings where it doesn't make sense to enter high and low values separately, like max roll angle. I don't need a plane to turn to the right at 45 degrees and to the left at 30 degrees. You could simplify the interface by having a single value where it doesn't make sense to have two.

Here's my review for Sonertial's SSLSv3. Despite looking like a Flood ship (yes, from Halo) and having more parts than a 747, it actually flies surprisingly well. I don't know how you did it, but well done! It's hard to take off but when it gets into the air it's quite stable and easy to fly. TWR is a bit low but sufficient for the task. I like the fuel module functionality. It would be impossible to dock this thing without a detachable fuel tank. My biggest concern is part count. I'm overclocking my CPU to 4.6 GHz and I had about a 2x slowdown in physics speed, so the amount of time it would take to actually use this ship makes it somewhat impractical, especially for someone without a nice gaming rig. I would suggest that the designer use B9 or P Wings and minimize strut use to significantly reduce part count. Here's my review for Wanderfound's Kerbodyne Wedgetail XXV. It looks great! The designer obviously put a lot of work into making this thing look good. I like that the designer exercised restraint by not making it so huge that it becomes impractical. However, there are two areas of improvement that I see. The craft is overpowered. It would be more efficient to use less engines and have a lower TWR without sacrificing very much on performance. Personally, I don't need my planes to climb at 45+ degrees. Stability is also an issue. There is an up-down wobble induced by SAS (which is hard to avoid because SAS is not optimized) but it could be improved. There was also a roll right-roll left wobble which can be eliminated entirely by redesigning the wing and tail. Check your stability derivatives. Some dihedral might help you here. I'm not done reviewing yet, but so far my vote goes to the Wedgetail for best tanker because despite its issues its a lot more practical than the SSLSv3.

It sounds like with the increased thrust, the gimbal on the engine is causing the wobble. Try disabling the gimbal and using a sane amount of SAS for control.

It all depends what you want to build. It's possible to do orbital construction like that but not always necessary or practical. I think that unless you want to build a massive ship, it's better to launch in one piece and refuel in orbit if necessary.

Scott Manley says "lathe" in his YouTube videos.

Here's an example of a heavy lifter you can try (with craft file). I entered it in Wanderfound's spaceplane challenge recently. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93779-SSTO-Spaceplane-Airplane-Design-Contest-II-Akademy-Awards?p=1506865&viewfull=1#post1506865 You should also check out the other competitors. There are some pretty good spaceplanes that have been entered. Here's the link to the first page of that thread. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93779-SSTO-Spaceplane-Airplane-Design-Contest-II-Akademy-Awards

If you get FAR then wings will be modeled correctly and you won't get weird effects like this.

Controlling the station from a location near the CoM can help too. Also, disable SAS (not the reaction wheels themselves, just the auto stabilization) during the move so it doesn't make the wobble worse.

Here's a link to a heavy spaceplane I made. It can lift 2 orange tanks (75T). You will need B9 and FAR to fly it. https://www.dropbox.com/s/13bhjdcm10124y3/C-47%20Globemaster%20IV.craft?dl=0 I highly recommend B9 because it includes a lot of parts for big spaceplanes, including 8m parts! If you want to make something huge without a shred of practicality or sanity, B9 is for you.

Or get a fairing mod. I would recommend either procedural fairings or KW Rocketry if you don't want them to be procedural.

I believe the game is paused while saving so no game time should progress during quick save.

INTRO: The C-47 Globemaster IV is a sleek heavy cargo SSTO designed with style in mind. FAR/NEAR Categories: Best heavy-lift cargo spaceplane, best use of B9 parts, best-looking craft Mods: FAR, B9 Craft File: dropbox Technical Specs Max Rated Payload Capacity: 75T Dry Weight: 71T Max Takeoff Weight: 223T Part Count: 68+14 cargo struts More Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/KGA4U Action Groups I've had a bug where symmetry is deleted from action groups. Check groups before flight the first time you load it and any time you change a part bound to an action group. 1: Toggle Engine Mode 2: Spoilers 3: Cargo Bay Doors 5: Cockpit Lights 9: Trim Down 10: Trim Up How to Load Cargo Properly The cargo bay can accommodate two orange tanks (or equivalent). Drop your cargo onto the docking port, then save the craft and reload it. This will cause the struts to automatically attach to your cargo. You can remove any struts that were unnecessary, but DO NOT save the craft after removing struts. If you do, then they won't be there to auto-attach the next time you use the craft. After you detach the payload, the strut end points will automatically delete from your payload the next time it gets loaded. For heavy payloads, you will have to convert the tail section from structural to LFO and remove some fuel to balance the CoM correctly. Takeoff Procedure For light-medium payloads, just throttle up and go, but be careful not to strike the tail. For heavy payloads, you may want to hold the brakes until the engines spin up to reduce takeoff roll. Climb as fast as you want until you hit 10km, then start leveling out. It takes a while to pick up enough speed to fly in the upper atmosphere. If you suddenly don't have enough pitch authority to maintain level flight, you probably ascended too fast. Switch over to rockets at an altitude of 25-30km and a speed of 1700-1800m/s. Approximate time from launch to engine cutoff is 8-12min. Using the Trim Because SAS is stupid and really likes to overshoot and cause wobble, I added trim to the elevator to compensate. The way I did it is I set up the big stabilators as "flaps" with negative deflection. You can adjust the magnitude of the trim in the SPH using flap/spoiler deflection (more negative is more trim). Use action groups 9 and 10 to adjust the trim in flight whenever the plane starts to wobble a lot. Also try toggling SAS. Generally, you need more trim at higher altitudes and you want it at 0 when on final approach for landing. Descent/Landing Before you enter the atmosphere you WILL have to transfer fuel around to balance the CoM correctly unless you ran it dry. A good rule of thumb is to put a little more than half the fuel in the front LFO tank and the rest in the rear LFO tank (not the tail). Typically, you should place your PE at KSC 10km below the surface. Activate the spoilers all the way down and only disable them on final approach if your speed is < 120m/s. Ideal touchdown speed is about 100m/s. This plane likes to come in hot, so don't skip too high or you will overshoot. Lastly, for DRE users, the B9 air brakes (spoilers) don't have an active heat shield and tend to burn off sometimes. I modded mine so they don't burn off because they really shouldn't be doing that if they were set up correctly.

To optimize Roastduck's method, have the individual satellites circularize and the carrier doesn't have to burn all that fuel going up and down.