Galane

Got ideas on that, and tech treeing the parts, share them. Mostly I've just been changing things as needed for my own use and experimentation, then sharing the results. I'm still not sure about the mass and capacity on the ThunderMaximus parts' due to their increased diameter but same length on the two tanks, and making a nice looking interstage adapter for the ThunderMax and ThunderMaximus tanks... you can see/use the functional yet ugly one included.

I'd like to know what bogs KSP down so much on CPU power to where an AMD 2.5Ghz 7550 socket AM2 dual core starts to choke on it around 250~300 parts in a scene. A Phenom II 550 dual core socket AM3 doesn't fare much better. Monsters like this one are very laggy on the Phenom II and pretty much impossible to to do a thing with on the 7550. Gotta get me a faster/newer AM3 CPU at least quad core. screenshot9 by g_alan_e, on Flickr

I could modify this http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/51115-Ship-to-ship-kinetic-energy-transfer-test-report

Someone needs to do a filksong of this song as "This mod is an awesome mod"

I've done that, but Ascent Guidance is for rockets that have the power to fly straight up. A typical spaceplane needs to fly up much closer to horizontal for quite a ways, until above the majority of the atmosphere. If the plane has the power to fly straight up, AG will rotate so fast and hard that anything out behind the rearmost wheels will get smacked into the runway and broken off. If the plane has enough lift to get airborne quickly, but not enough thrust for vertical flight, AG will try it anyway. An AG for spaceplanes needs a completely different ascent profile, with at least one movable point to set the transition from horizontal airbreathing flight to vertical rocket flight. (Note that "horizontal" and "vertical" may not be exactly flat or straight up.) Two movable transition points would be ideal for planes that have an initial rocket boost, then a jet cruise stage followed by a rocket boost up to orbit. Autoland has some issues too. No automatic throttle control and if you engage it from too far out from either runway (what is it's ideal distance?) it will dive to a low altitude then follow a glide slope right into the water or crash into the island below the runway. I'd like to see it plot a slope from whatever altitude and location the plane is, then follow that angle down until it's close to the runway, whereupon it will maneuver to a final approach position and altitude to land. One more thing, select which end of each runway to land on. I've had it successfully land unpowered rocket gliders, but only when I lucked into engaging it somewhere within the distance range from KSC that it will work with. Once it must have been just a few meters outside the max distance because it pancaked in just short of the ocean end of the runway. Too far away and it seems to just give up on flying and drops the glider tail first into the ocean. I even tried attaching a parachute to the back end to pull the tail up but autoland kept the tail forced down. with it off I could bring the glider to level and forward flight. If I added a couple of fuel tanks and jet engines, it would fly it towards KSC but I'd have to periodically abort and manually climb until it was close enough so it wouldn't fly it into the ocean. I made one landing on the island by using hyperedit about a dozen times to refill the SRB. Once it was close enough, autoland brought it down perfectly. The most awesome autoland would be able to do a deorbit from any orbit around Kerbin then navigate to either runway and land from either end. Even cooler would be for autoland and landing guidance to have a way to set the desired local landing time. That's a goal I'm trying to achieve, get a spaceplane to orbit using ascent guidance, then deorbit using landing guidance, then switch over to autoland.

I'd like to see a Spaceplane Ascent Guidance with a profile that doesn't start out vertical, so it can get off the runway without striking the planes' tails on the runway and breaking things.

Just to toss something out there, here's a shot of my all stock rocket SSTO I built in .21.1. http://pastebin.com/3t3CEuNu IIRC at the time the only mod I had was MechJeb and a set of command part cfgs to integrate MechJeb. Oh, I also challenged myself to make it work using the default ascent profile in whatever official release version of MechJeb was current then. SSTO FTW by g_alan_e, on Flickr Got from the KSP pad to LKO with just a whiff of fuel left. It wasn't just lifting a bare bones lander can, there's a two stage lander on top, and none of its fuel was used in the ascent so it could land back on Kerbin. After that bit of fun, I re-arranged the staging and some fuel pipes to asparagus it and went to Mun and back for the second time (after in-orbit refueling of what made it to orbit). All rocket stock SSTO from Kerbin = doable but bulky (if you don't use the new parts in .23.5). All rocket stock SSTO from Eve = nuh-uh, no way.

A client built this airplane using some parts from the ReStock catalog and was happy with how it flew, then figured with the mounting points on both sides of the wings it might find some customers as a heavy missile/bomber or perhaps as a launch platform for research rockets. BigWing 2 by g_alan_e, on Flickr The client kept thinking up possible uses for the plane but still found no buyers willing to pay for a production run - when the idea to adapt it into a spaceplane crept up behind him in a dark alley and hit him over the head. That's when he became a client of Alan Aerospace Recycling and Packaging. "Make my plane go to space today." he said. "Okay!" we said. We should have been a bit less enthusiastic about the project... Here is one of our many, many failed attempts to strap enough extra bits onto the plane to get it to orbit. BigWing 2 by g_alan_e, on Flickr The client requests that nothing currently on the plane be moved or removed (as shown in the first image) because as a plane it flies perfectly well and if engaged at the right distance from KSP or the Island runway, MechJeb can land it quite nicely. Aside from that, anything goes on *adding* parts and pieces. No points, just a challenge to stretch your creativity to achieve a goal. (But you win the internet if you manage to get the plane to another planet or moon.) P.S. The Abort system shuts down the RAPIER engines, pops all the decouplers on the wings and deploys the four parachutes. You'll probably need to use it during R&D, unless you like killing Kerbals. The plane is also equipped with an RGU so it can be flown unmanned. P.P.S. Notes on flying. Before adding anything, it's very easy to get off the runway but be careful not to over rotate or you'll have the tail off. Fuel first drains evenly from the foremost and rearmost tanks, then it drains from the mid-forward tank before the mid-rear tank, so fuel shifting may have to be done to avoid a tail heavy condition. P^3.S. Why RAPIERs when it has no oxidizer? When asked, the client replied "Because that's like having eight engines, isn't it?"

A note to thread visitors. Check GameData\NASAmission\Parts\Size3Decoupler\part.cfg for the line PhysicsSignificance = 1 Either change the 1 to a 0 or delete the line completely. 1 causes the mass = 0.8 part to be treated as "massless" in flight just like a Cubic Octagonal Strut... and it really @#%@es up using it in dual/tri/quad configurations under the Bigger Beastlier adapters. For even more malFUNctions, flip the decoupler upside down and use it to (try to) drop a Kerbodyne tank (use many sepratrons to kick it away) off the top of an asparagus side booster. Not only will the seps (usually) not light, if you're asparagusing below a Beastlier, Badder or even stock 1-to-n adapter they won't all go at once. What happens is it appears the decoupler force gets all shunted downwards (to the top of the upside down decoupler) and destroys the part it's on top of. Change that 1 to a 0 and the Kerbodyne decouplers behave just like all the other inline decouplers. I built all stock test rockets that looked positively weird with giant Kerbodyne boosters clamped onto the sides of LV diameter core parts to verify that the problems were not with the rescaled stock parts. Only then did I come to the conclusion that it *had* to be something wrong with the decouplers, so I looked in the part.cfg files and noticed that one difference. Then I posted a "WTH?" on the forum about it... Amazing how just one wrong byte in one text file can cause so much trouble.

A couple of KSP revisions ago, when I sent my mission to Duna (it's still there!), the boosters that sent the ship on its way dropped into very elliptical orbits around Kerbin with periapsis well below 70KM. I had the rockomax/OKTO2/clampotron parts atop them. I figured since they were dragging deep into the atmosphere that they'd get deleted because if you're flying a ship on such an orbit and just let it go, it'll crash.

If/when the craft structure gets modified to support node connection loops, you'll be able to use more than one hinge.

Looks like a hybrid design of multiple somewhat conventional rocket nozzles in an aerospike styled shroud. Definitely not an annular nozzle, pure aerospike design in the renderings.

Assuming Firefly Space Systems has a lifetime longer than its insect namesake. http://www.gizmag.com/firefly-alpha-aerospike-launch-vehicle/32892/

A terrain following radar part that aims a 'radar beam' out would be a useful addition. Reading the angle the part is mounted at, relative to the straight down vector the mod uses for height control... I suspect would not be trivial. Perhaps a modification of a quantum strut? But it would be cool. Could also open up the door to things like station or distance keeping in space, or triggering actions when a set distance from another object is reached. Hmmm, instead of a single beam, how about an inline stack part that has several beams down at a fixed angle? For planes it could be a part that has a half circle of beams. Could end up with several parts for different ways of mounting and required to be attached upright to avoid calculations due to user placement at arbitrary angles.

Do you have enough battery capacity to support the scanning? The scanners take quite a bit of electricity so you'll need solar panels to charge batteries and enough battery to last through the night side of the orbit, or enough RTGs to keep up with the demand from the scanners.

Forrest Kerman carrying Lt. Dan Kerman?

Fuel pipes can move with things they're attached to. Could they be modified into movable struts?

The BigWing heavy missile launcher plane. The SRB missiles are mainly to show how much payload the plane can lift. Can it demolish big tanks like VAOS' "Hell Rain"? Action group 1 dumps the first pair of drop tanks. 2 drops the second. 3 drops and lights the missiles. 4 lights the missiles without dropping them. It flies great using the big SRBs. (Do note that KJR may be what keeps the wings from ripping off when doing that.) With the big missiles mounted, just use all the runway to accelerate and concentrate on keeping the plane tracking straight. Be ready to pull up as it runs off the end. Climb won't be fast. The fore and aft structural fuselage sections could be swapped out for more fuel for a much increased range, but you'll have to arrange pipes or use a fuel balancer mod to maintain center of gravity. Dropping the tanks and missiles has little effect on how it flies. Without the SRBs it is stable at 3x warp. At 4x warp it wants to come apart so don't fly it at 4x warp. Of course its climb and other flight performance are much improved without the huge payload. More decouplers or some pylons could be added for use with smaller missiles or other payload. MechJeb's autoland brings it in perfectly. Throttle down to about 30% then 25% when it lowers the wheels. Cut throttle just before touchdown. Since the RAPIER engines don't generate electricity, it relies on the two batteries. Customization with some type of power generation is highly recommended. You can fire ze missiles at zero/zero without blowing up the plane. The missiles will slide down the runway (destroying their nose cones and RGUs) then fly off the end and into the water or sometimes climbing a bit. http://pastebin.com/iZJdN1eq Requires ReStock Reloaded parts package. BigWing by g_alan_e, on Flickr

What purpose do the fuel lines to the legs serve?

You could casually mention this amazing simulation software program that is masquerading as a game...

You must use the highest terrain detail settings in order to have the dip the silo is built to set into. At lower settings the polygon detail of the planet surface is less and cuts through the silo.

Isn't working for a company that uses PID technology an excellent reason to learn the deep down stuff on how they work? Might gain yourself a pay increase or other perks... Adjusting the throttle response of the jet engines in KSP could be a useful method of simulation testing of PID algorithms. Tweak the throttle response to act like something that needs PID controlled, then write the code to work with it. Then the code can be tried on the real application the KSP engine was adjusted to mimic. Certainly cheap enough it won't break any budgets.

How about Kerbodyne size? A few additional parts make the stock Kerbodyne parts much more useful. *Shamelessly plugs link in sig.* Being able to switch the inflatable parts to deflated during craft building would be very useful.

PID, Proportional Integral Derivative is what might be able to tame those sluggish jet engines for hovering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller The plugin would have to read the engine part CFG data to calculate the thrust/time curves then add those for all the engines on the craft (and as the people doing MechJeb found out, calculating thrust for off-axis pointing engines is a PITA). Combine that with the ever changing mass of the craft as fuel is burned and it should be possible to get the correct throttle adjustment to achieve the desired altitude change with little or no overshoot or bouncing. Some interesting info on real jet engines. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=696218 http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/99094/ Current FAA regulations (linked in the straightdope one) require commercial turbofan jet engines to be able to spool up from "flight idle" (which is higher than "ground idle") to 95% power in no more than five seconds. Turbojet engines (without that big fan that's basically a multi-blade, shrouded propeller) can have a considerably faster throttle response.

That's why you use Sepratrons, rotated and angled as needed to push the spent stage parts away. The heavier the part(s) to shove away, the more Sepratrons you'll need to stick on. Be aware of what the Sepratron exhaust is aimed at or will move across as the spent stage drops. Sepratron exhaust is quite destructive, which makes them useful for simulating a failure. Mount one aimed at a fuel tank or engine etc and when it activates you'll have rocket parts all over the sky in a couple of seconds. A word of warning when using them with MechJeb, they MUST have a radial or inline decoupler in the same stage and the decoupler must stay with the rocket until it's time to fire the Sepratrons. Sticking an extra decoupler on a lower stage then putting its icon with the Sepratrons doesn't work because once the spent stage is out of physics range KSP removes the decoupler from the staging list , then MechJeb will go ahead and use them out of order. Without a decoupler in the stage(s) with Sepratrons, MechJeb will activate them out of order, even if they are positioned to fire forwards. MechJeb will do the same with other engines not paired up with a decoupler, even though that works perfectly using manual staging. Without having at least one decoupler in every stage that has engines (not every stage has to have engines) the way to block MechJeb from activating engines early is to set the Stop at Stage number to the stage below the one you don't want it messing with. If that's in the middle of the rocket you can manually trigger that stage then change the Stop at Stage number to allow MechJeb to continue automatic staging. Or you can completely disable automatic staging and let MechJeb pilot while you wait for the burnouts and pop the spacebar - and the staging will work exactly as if you were doing everything manually.