Hodo

That I can not answer for you, I haven't been to Duna with the RSS atmosphere scale yet, last time I went there was when I had stock sized Kerbin system and then I set my PE for 20km and that worked fine. 30km might be to low though, but it would be worth a try.

After watching Dispicable Me 2 last night, I have a strong want to have minions as my crews.

The simplest fix is to recode the whole jet engine code and set it so that each jet engine is modeled after a real engine, and has limitations placed on it as in the real world. Be it speed, altitude, heat or any combination of them. The plugin AYJ does a great job of this, along with FAR. But I have a feeling a large part of the community would birth jumbo-32 tanks if SQUAD implemented that level of realism.

You will still need to worry about it. To low and your craft will burn up or lawn dart into Duna, to high and you will just skip through the atmosphere and back into space.

Yes, you can. But you will need heat shields. Go for a shallow PE, that just barrely breaks the atmosphere but deep enough to slow the craft down to bring your AP down to the new PE. You may have to do several burns to get there but it is possible to do it in one aerobreak.

I have two versions of KSP on my computer, one stock one modded. And I run Steam. The trick is go to your steam folder, copy the KSP folder, then paste that new folder where you want it, and you know what... a SECOND install of KSP is there, no autoupdates no need to have anything else, steam wont mess with anything not linked to it or in the Steam folder.

Probably not, I will give that a try when I get home. Do I install that with the current RSS or just that?

I have had no luck getting this to work, I think I am just an idiot.

Why don't you do like most intelligence agencies do around the world. When you don't know the exact number and are faced with conflicting or different values, average them. 9 times out of 10 that is closer to the real number than anything posted by any one source.

That would be a fun little challenge in RSS to make. I have a question though. I have been trying to get RSS to do the "real solar system" with the planet factory planets but I have had no luck. Kerbin is still very much Kerbin just bigger. No faults in the alt-F2 no crashes.

If you are talking about trying to come straight down and landing from orbit, you will have to burn A LOT of delta V to bring the craft to a stop and basically fall straight down. Even then I can't say for sure if your craft would survive the fall. Honestly Duna is one of the easiest planets to land on with an atmosphere due to its thin atmosphere. As long as you have a heat shield and a pretty conservative decent angle you shouldn't have to much of an issue with burning or G forces. The hard part on Duna is slowing down for landing without hitting the ground at 20+m/s. Most people use retro rockets and parachutes to land pretty softly on Duna. I used nothing but rockets, and I think everyone else had it right.

Oh 900 hours ago when I started KSP, I started with FAR and DRE. Then I discovered KER and B9. And I am JUST now getting around to using Mechjeb, and I don't use the autopilot for anything unless I am launching communications satellites for Remote Tech 2.

Now that I think about it I do have a couple craft that are rather "exotic". My lifting body design VSR-5. [imgur]rYgFL[/imgu]

The amount of wings you need is also a a matter of taste and style. I use FAR so I often have to use a realistic amount of lifting surface on the aircraft. But I have made a few that have no wings and they have flown fine, granted at a MUCH higher speed than most of my conventional designs. But Claws formula of .8 lift per ton is a pretty good number to start with. If you find that you can do with less by all means. After all this is one of my SSTO aircraft, and it has no wings and is not a tail lander.

Does your rocket have to much TWR? Are you performing your gravity turn to late or to steeply? Is the top of your rocket far heavier than the bottom? Is the top of your rocket about as aerodynamic as a barn? If you answered yes or maybe to any of the above questions, it wont matter what version of FAR you are using.

Nice WW. A few suggestions for to improve that craft. First I will say, I HIGHLY suggest you get FAR. I am not sure you can do this in the stock KSP but, I would set your control surfaces jobs, Ailerons=roll, Elevators = Pitch, Rudder = Yaw. It will help with stability and control of the craft. You can also drop that tail wheel off of your craft. None of my craft have tail wheels unless they are tail draggers. With good control you can actually keep your nose up at the V1 line without having to deal with a tail wheel. Last but not least, you need more power, or better engines. The B9 turbines that are meant to be hung under the wings actually work great.

It is not effiecent to climb that way with SSTO space plane. It is best to climb at a 45deg angle till you get to arround 12-18km alt then bring it down to a 10-15deg climb and gain as much speed as you can under the jet engines before you have to switch over to the rocket engines at around 25-30km alt. (unless you airhog, then in that case you can fly till around 60km)

I usually build my SSTOs with a TWR of at least 1.5:1 for the jet engine stage. And at least a .7:1 TWR when on Rocket power. The most powerful of my SSTOs has a TWR of 2.3:1 under jet power and a 1.3:1 rocket power.

A-The trick with underslung engines is you run a fuel line to the wing root. I often hide them in that silly little gap you always end up with between the fuselauge and the wing. The fuel line to the wing will feed all of the engines on that wing. B-The B9 landing gear HL or tall gear work for the clearance but you need to adjust the cfg on them so the stiffness value is the right value. C- There is a fine line between to much and to little. It depends on what I am trying to do with the craft, but most of my SSTOs are flying fuel cans, they often have a fuel volume of 55%-70% of the total mass of the vehicle. Some of my non-SSTO aircraft are hauling much less fuel, they don't need as much for jet engines, they are REALLY effecient in KSP. You can fly around the world with the B9 turbine engines (the ones that look like a 747 wing engines), with only one Rockomax 16 filled wth liquid fuel. EDIT- One thing I noticed about your craft, you will need a larger tail stabilizer. Your aircraft will have quite a bit of yaw with the current setup.

Taki thanks for the link. But one more thing, there is a bug in the B9 landing gear cfg file. It is set to the wrong number, there is a fix somewhere in the B9 fixes thread, but I am on my work computer and dont have that one saved on this machine. For large planes with B9 parts the trick is you will need a couple of things. 1- Kerbal Joint Reinforcement by Ferram4, it just stiffens the stock linkages between parts to where they should be not to where they are. 2- use the B9 struts, they really help. Lastly, not saying you have to, but it is strongly encouraged if you don't have FAR, get FAR. That is my largest non-spaceplane SSTO aircraft currently. It can lift 120 tons with ease and take it anywhere on Kerbin.

There is no exact number you need for a plane. The simplest answer is... As long as your plane can get off the ground and climb to an altitude you want to fly it at, you have enough engines. One basic jet engine is plenty for most small planes.

Thats simple... SSTO space planes. http://hodo.imgur.com/

The stock tech tree is a place holder. If you want a better progression there is a mod for that, that does a fantastic job of giving you a realistic progression through the tech tree.

Looking at that plane I have a couple of questions. 1- Why so many intakes for those engines? 2- Where is your CoL in relation to your CoM, both empty and loaded.

Jet engines will not work on Jool, no air to breath for them to operate. But yes it is possible to make a spaceplane that works with rockets and dip down into the atmosphere and fly back out of Jool for science.