Hodo

Not worried about it. I may send a second craft, XI-3 packing more kerbals and acting as a mission control in orbit of Eve to help with the decent. And I may send an additional correctly weighted probe, or manned lander.

Is there a explanation anywhere in this thread on the flight computer controls?

I chuckled at this part. Because I have a space plane that has a TWR in atmosphere of 3.5:1. But it has no wings and is a lifting body design.

Yeah I realized the probe lander I sent wont be able to land with my lack of skill and Remotetech2. Not on that island maybe if I used Mechjeb I could do it. But programming the flight computer to deal with the 74 second delay is... uh... challenging to say the least. So I am sending a follow on vessel the XI-3 packed with 4 more kerbals and a lander to act as a on site mission control to cut down on the signal delay and intermittent signal loss. On the up side, my improvements to the XI class of Ion powered long range vessels has grown quite a bit. The XI-3 has 9000d/v and a TWR of .57:1 when using all four nukes and 8 ion engines. Or just a .14:1 with just the Ions, but as long as it is at least 45deg facing or away from the sun, it will not run out of battery power.

Looks good, I can give you one bit of advice to clean up the look a bit more. You can lose those battery packs on the tail section and place two of the 1.25m 1000 unit batteries behind the intakes. The weight shift shouldn't major and should have a minor affect on the VTOL characteristics. But will give the craft a cleaner line and a bit more electricity.

The other problem is it isnt 15 tons. The probe that I have attached is only 3 I think, 4 at most. But it has all the communication equipment, I have to have it due to Remote Tech 2, and the science gear minus the SC-9000.

Yeah my goal was to honestly keep the parts count down and the shape. I don't like uneven looking craft, its a personal thing.

Now that I see this post, I am not sure if my science package has everything. I wasn't sure if it needed everything. I am sure I have most of that, not sure about the science jr. though. Or if it is 15 tons. Yep just as I feared no SC-9000 and it only weighs in at 3 tons. I can't reload a save because I have already saved when I got there, and doing this mission again is not going to happen. Took 3 hours just to get to Eve and thats with time acceleration on. Hell it was a 3 hour and change burn.

Go get those Gamilas!

So this is a first for me.... The XI-2 "I-Schooner" as I have dubbed it. While headed to Eve had a slight miscalculation on the intercept, and over shot by a few million km. So on the deceleration burn I am looking at a 3000+m/s d/v, good thing I have Ion engines... 3 hour burn.

To be quite frank, it looks heavy. I personally would drop the nuke engine in favor of something with a bit more power to weight just to get you out of the atmosphere or at least up to 2300m/s.

I may have screwed up my entry profile into Eve... good thing I have Ion engines... 3 hour burn.

That is why I said, very close. Not exactly.

I actually follow a very close to NASA launch profile for my rockets. -Full throttle on launch till 500m, then throttle back main boosters to 50%. (I use SRBs for getting off the ground for my heavy launcher.) -Stage 1 completion I return to 75% throttle till the gravity turn at 10km. -Gently push the rocket over to a 45deg angle, usually completed around 17km. -at 20km push to 100% throttle till achieved altitude is met.

I like the second points option. Even though I am most likely going to just go for mission option 1.

Welp never been to Eve.. this should be interesting.

Not sure what you mean by "maze", so a bit confused there. When I read the word maze I think of a maze, or labyrinth, not something that has to do with game code. But in response to your statement. I, unlike others, do not post in someone thread about someones craft that they may have spent hours working on or is their first working SSTO, plane, rocket or whatever and say, "meh, thats impractical.." or anything to that affect. I may say, "I like the design, but unfortunately it may not work for me." Which is me saying, good job on your craft, but not my taste. And to me thats no different than me saying, I am a Ford man not a Holden fan. If someone asks me privately what do I think about a certain craft they have made, I will tell them privately. But I will not come out and bash someones work publicly, I may offer advice on how to improve a faulty design or tweak something to get a bit more performance out of it. But I will not just tell them its junk start over, or here download one of MY craft. I have been building SSTOs for a while now in KSP, both stock and mod. When it comes down to the brass tacks, I couldnt stand the stock KSP lack of aerodynamic code, and actually fell in love with the FAR and DRE mod. Now they are the first two mods I install when ever I have to reinstall KSP. I wanted a harder, closer to real life flight code. Something where I could build a plane that looks like it could exist in the real world, and it behave like a real aircraft, not like some wondermagicalmysterymachine. Now there are a few of my SSTO space planes that are just down right fugly, but they weren't designed with looks in mind. Others are quite good looking but perform like shaved bricks. But vast majority of my space plane SSTOs perform quite well and look pretty decent. Even my stock maching bird challenge mach 6 in FAR craft is based on a real life aircraft, the Mig-21. But that is because I like the look of that craft. But being a military history nut, I knew the Mig-21 was designed not with looks in mind but performance and specific speeds in mind, when it came out it was one of the fastest most nimble aircraft in the air. So my craft followed that design theory. And it performed well within specs and exceeded my goals and yet it can do better with a few more fine tuning runs and tweaks. It runs 2 ram intakes, with a small nose cone in the center, and it topped out at 2170m/s at a low altitude of 24km. But is it the best looking plane I have ever made, no. Is it the fastest in atmosphere jet I have made, no. Is it a airhog, nope.... What is it? It is mine and I am proud of it. And that is all that matters to me. And to be honest that's all that should matter to anyone who builds their stuff in this game and posts pictures of it.

Unfortunately with my recent ventures in Ion engines I have found more engines means more battery drain. And thats honestly your biggest problem with ion engines.

That's nice, I said my reasons and I am sticking to them, like them or not. That is the beauty of KSP, I can play the game how I want to, and you can play the way you want to. I don't bash peoples designs that are hog monstrosities, or completely impractical asparagus blocks of tanks and rockets. I often find some of these Dr. Zeus contraptions to be quite entertaining, more so when I download some of them and place them in my sandbox just to see how they explode. But again my way is not the right way, and your way isn't either. Not going to debate reality or game world physics with people on the forums for a game that isn't even complete yet, simple as that.

Air Hogging is running ridiculous numbers of intakes per engine. Great examples of them can be found in the Spacecraft exchange forums. Some of the SSTOs designed can be found running something like 20:1 Intake to jet ratio, which is just flat out stupid and would not work in the real world or even in the Hello Kitty-verse. My rule of thumb is 3:1 intake to jet ratio. As it is HARD, REAL hard to find a real aircraft that has more than that ratio. As Traches said, FAR does solve the airhogging problem. Not only does it make running jets past Mach 5 impossible, it also makes aircraft near impossible to fly with that amount of drag with the numbers of intakes most airhogs run. Some of my fastest aircraft have had surprisingly few intakes using the actual speed to boost the airflow into the engines, you know like a REAL plane. I am fine with part clipping, as long as you dont exploit the debug menu to do it. Sometimes it leads to a better aesthetic look and feel to the craft. I find most of the SSTOs created running the typical airhog setups absolutely horrible. There is one that I find great looks but that is because he was going for a particular look and that is Cruzans "BSG Viper". But that craft does not work at all in FAR. The only way some of these stock air hog monstrosities even come close to flying in FAR is with the use of Mechjeb. And if you can't fly the craft yourself, because it is that badly designed, then you have no business letting a computer fly it.

I had a problem like this also for a while. I found that I was not attaching the gear to a stable enough surface. I also started using this mod. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55657-0-22-Kerbal-Joint-Reinforcement-v1-4-2-Properly-Rigid-Part-Connections Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, is worth it trust me. I have been able to cut down on the numbers of struts and part counts by a fair amount.

Funny I was thinking the samething for the flight computer.

I still run the original X-Com:Enemy Unknown and Terror From the Deep on my Windows 7/64 system. No need for dual boots or a 32 bit OS. Just some work with this wonderful tool called "Google". I even managed to find a Mechwarrior (the first one not Mechwarrior 2) that works, and works with 7/64. As for Windows 8, I can't stand it. It is a tablet OS forced on a PC. If I wanted that I would jailbreak my Kindle Fire and use it to run KSP.

Here are two of my more recent additions. SVO-19, not going to give out its craft file not quite happy with it yet. It can mine and process its own Kethane, and make it to the Mun without refueling. Unfortunately I did not install a Kethane scanner, and it has some stability issues I am working out. But otherwise flies fine in atmosphere. And the newest in my VTOL Space plane line or SVO line as I call them.... SVO-23 It is far more stable than the SVO-19, but still can mine and process its own Kethane fuel amount. But is still in its testing phase, currently it can achieve a 100km x 100km orbit with fuel to spare. My latest trend has been build smaller craft. But I am finding that the bigger more robust craft I built earlier in the line, like the SVO-9A that is pictured leaving Ike in my previous post, was one of my best if not complex designs. There was literally nothing it couldn't do. But it was horribly unstable on re-entry with Kerbins atmosphere due to its short design. I may go back and improve on the concept with a longer more stable design and attempt another shot at Ike and Dres.

The list is actually in my sig, every mod I currently use.