Sparker

I've been experimenting with the amazing B9 procedural wings mod and made this little spaceplane having something in common with other lifting body designs. The body is made of these procedural wings. The middle sections have 1m thickness. Here it is a second after separating from the first stage booster: Approaching to KSC after making a few orbits: I wish we could offset the tips of the wings to make a completely flat bottom for such spaceplanes.

So I wanted to make a quick mission to Duna requiring a single launch and that's what I made: During the mission I performed 4 Duna landings and a few Ike landings. The mission required 700k money and yielded about 6k science.

Nice lander! I see you too like to put those lander command modules in parallel.

This transfer window planner is great and it works well in RSS: http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/224116-transfer-window-planner It can also work with the alarm mod!

This thread has been silent for a while... So, I've been thinking about Mars deceleration and landing again and this cool picture I've seen long time ago came to my mind: That's a cool lander, isn't it? I wish I could do it in KSP... wait a second... take a procedural interstage adapter, make these leafs, disassemble the interstange and put the leafs on IR pivotrons, and it's done! I have tested it and it works perfectly with FAR! Also it's possible to add AblativeShielding to procedural fairings so overheating will not destroy the decelerator. This is the result of attaching fairings generated for 8 attach nodes to 6 pivotrons: 8 leafs, more cross-section area: It is also possible to remove gaps completely. Unfortunately, i don't have a screenshot of this shield in folded state. I hope this helps you with reentry and aerobraking in your missions!

I've built this one to practice gravity assists. Made an Eve flyby, then two Kerbin flybys and arrived Jool 10 years after launch.

A simple munar landing mission in Career mode. I used the Apollo plan, but only with a single kerbal. Got 400 science from that!

If anyone else is also having problem with running KSP on a notebook with two video cards, try running the game in forced OpenGL mode(add -force-opengl to launch parameters) or, if it doesn't work too, in forced DirectX11 mode(-force-d3d11). I have a notebook with NVidia and Intel graphics. I have never had such a problem in Windows 7, but I decided to upgrade to Windows 10, making a clean install after the upgrade. Now, if I try to start the game with the high performance NVidia card, it only starts well in OpenGL and DX11 modes, but not in the default mode(DX9).

That's a nice heatshield design! Did you know, you can try to deploy heatshields on one side a bit less than on the other to create some lifting force during re-entry? Or do you use the small heat shields at the top for this?

Better try to make a plane yourself, it's not so hard and interesting. You will have to download all the mods and maybe something will be broken if you try to use other people's crafts, everyone has one's special gamedata folder. Rothank, that's a nice plane! I think you can find an application for it in KSP. For example, you can launch some rockets or spaceplanes from it.

Is it asymmetric?

Staying calm when the game crashed not first time during a day

Sorry, I don't remember, but must be something close to real life proposed MAKS - 7 tons.

So huge, flying it through the air must create a hurricane somewhere over the ocean!

I absolutely agree with you, this should be done some time! There is another application for this, it will allow us to align side-attached stages constructed in orbit!

I've finished my Mars journey: The only real problem i had was with the Mars-Earth transfer, the ship needed 200 more m/s Delta-V. But who would stop the show because of that, right? Also, immelman asked half a month ago: Sorry to answer that so late. The three small modules were 100-ton at LEO and about 12 tons on Mars surface. The Mars Ascent Vehicle was about 230 tons on LEO. The car on the surface was about 5 tons. The mass of the big crew transfer rocket was ~400 tons on LEO.

Yes, that's what i was going to write, it wasn't clear what was the argument in this topic about: Mars flight VS Moon flight or Mars flight VS Moon base(long time laboratory). Sure, a 'redo of Apollo' only is of no use, but a Moon base is. Also, a Mars flight also requires a base because explorers will have to wait for a long time for the launch window. So, maybe Moon base and Mars flight can be developed to use similar hardware? I think that's what Zubrin suggested: aim for Mars and land on the Moon if needed; Mars as a target, not Moon.

But what did Apollo start with? Were there arguments like 'We can't go to the Moon until we have done ...' or they just did developed the needed technologies and did it? Is it really necessary to redo the Apollo landings instead of going to a new place like Mars? I rather agree with Robert Zubrin that a Moon base should be built from hardware built for Mars mission.

That's so wonderful, I can't wait to fly it in RSS! By the way I've always wondered, how does the ERV reenter? As a lifting body or as a classical blunt body?

I am trying to drive my car on Mars surface but my car regularly falls through the ground and explodes. Is there a way to avoid this? Why does it happen? Ok, I've noticed that it happens when car drives on next polygon ofr ground. Anyway, how do I lower the possibility of falling through?

My small base on Mars:

I can hardly imagine how huge it would be in life. For example, here is the side booster of your rocket:

Robotengineer, that's an impressive shuttle you've made! By the way, there's a different topic for RSS spaceplanes : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/66462-Realistic-Solar-System-Spaceplanes-MEGATHREAD Thank you for the FAR analysis! As for the folding heat shield, I think I've found one solution: The spacecraft is launched only with the bottom 'inline' shield attached to extendatron. Then other side shields are attached by using another vehicle(I used KAS magnets to do it). With hinges the shield can be deployed or retracted for orbital maneuvering. Side attached engines can be attached to the shield side of spacecraft and used when the shield is retracted, allowing also to store heavy propellant at the bottom and shift center of mass further forward. Also it's possible to vary deflection of individual shields to compensate for CoM offset or to create some angle of attack. And very important, there are very few parts there(which sometimes can overweight almost any argument in KSP )! Actually I haven't tried to land with it, I use it for aerocapture/aerobraking.

What an excellent lander! I'm also glad that that it can fly so good! What is the diameter of the heat shield? And I've got a little request, could you flip it over in the VAB(heatshield up) and post the results of FAR static analysis at supersonic speed(~20 mach is fine) with AoA varying up to 90 degree? Thanks!

I think you will still be able to launch to other planets, just more planning of the launch date will be needed. I've got a question about textures. I like this Duna Mars terrain texture: But somehow it switches to this one, also the view distance is reduced: I can't find what I need to change in settings to enable the first texture. Everything is set to max now and i switched off ATM, but it doesn't work.