cybersol

The lower my TWR, the more I lean toward the constant altitude method of landing (search for videos). The basic idea is to first use pitch to control vertical descent rate while slowing your orbit speed at constant altitude. Slowing down more at a higher altitude tends to be much safer for the lower TWR landers.

Use the select root tool to the right of the rotate tool. If you want to edit the top, pick a part near the bottom to be the new root. To make that part the root, click the tool, click a part next to that part, and then finally pick the part you want to make the root.

Congrats on getting to space. You posted your spaceplane weight later in the thread after my poodle suggestion, and for that weight the 3 terriers or 1 swivel is likely the sweet spot. For landing tips: 1) Airbrakes are great additions. Turn of all control like pitch/etc on them, and use their braking feature to slow down or change your landing position. Bias them towards the top surface to help with 3). 2) Move your remaining fuel to the front of the plane before re-entry (usually a good fix for capi's CoM thoughts above) 3) You can also pitch up (cobra style) to slow down faster, but you may want a quicksave your first few times with a particular plane, until you find the limits.

What goldenpsp is suggesting is that you are not actually running the game from that location, even though you think you are. I'm not sure if he's right, but a way to test it would be to make a backup copy of one of the .cfg files in Gamedata/Squad/Parts/X/Y/Z.cfg. Save the backup copy to a far away directory like desktop, then edit the original by changing the "cost = XXX" line by 1. Reload KSP and check that the part changed cost. If so, then you are running from that parent KSP directory. Either way copy the backup over the file you changed when you are done. I'm actually guessing its in a hidden folder similar to the links you started the thread with, only the username is Guest or whatever windows wants to call that account. At this point I would definitely do an all disks search, but for me that is as simple as: find / -name "*.craft"

For you first interplanetary transfers I would start from a circular and equatorial low kerbin orbit. At first there is a plenty to learn about what day to leave (the launch window), where in your orbit to burn (angle to prograde/ejection angle). Later you can add more complications like below. For example, starting from Mun for interplanetary is more straight forward because its at 0* inclination versus Minmus's 6* inclination. Assuming you are going interplanetary, and thus speeding a lot of dv, its most efficient to drop down from Mun/Minmus orbit to very low Kerbin orbit and perform your interplanetary burn there at periapsis without ever circularizing. By doing it that way, you would have an extra 800-900 m/s of speed at periapsis and thus gain more efficiency from the Oberth effect. However timing that so that you arrive at the right window and with the right ejection angle and inclination can be tricky. Plus if you mess it up, you can end up costing yourself much more than you would have saved. EDIT: 2) A 5000 m/s ejection burn is a terrible idea and will result in a similar sized capture burn to Duna. You need to learn more about launch windows and ejection angles that I talk about above. Use something like http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ and wait to leave until the time it says, and make sure you are spending about what it says. Or better yet, save first and then try it your way and then the launch planner way to see the difference. 3) You have good intuition about waiting to the right time in Minmus orbit being the easiest way to leave Kerbin near the equatorial plane.

For me merge doesn't work at all, even to the point of sometimes only loading two-thirds of the craft that I click merge to load. When all of the craft does manage to load, there is never an attachment point even if the root node has one available. It may be particular to Linux 64bit, but there it's completely and utterly broken. Luckily sub-assemblies work normally and well.

I think Claws stock bugfixes mod has a way to fix this. Its a sticky at the top of the Add-on releases forum. The mod is built in a way that you can enable only that fix, and turn off the other fixes if you desire.

Oh, I was just thinking about what a Jump Drive mod might look like and then I searched and found this. Admittedly I have not read all 27 pages... yet, but in the process I though of ideas for features that might go well with your mod. I had not thought of the jump beacons, but its a great idea. In the way I was thinking about it, you could enter an orbit for the jump with a UI along the lines of hyperedits orbit picker; however, there would be a decent chance that you missed and your orbit got messed up. You would then have to have an adaptable craft to fix what ever went wrong. Now if the beacons are the accurate way to pull off a jump, then this non-beacon way to jump could have a really high, cascading failure rate. So you would succeed maybe only half the time, and half the time something would go wrong. When it wrong, half the time it would go wrong by a 25% deviation in your orbital parameters, and half the time it would be even worse. The next halves in the cascade would be 50% and 100% deviations, and the last half would be to switch your orbit parameters onto another body. Another idea was to include an unfocused jump capability. The idea would be to perform (an optionally quicker, lower EC charged) jump that would take you to a completely random place in the system. I think this would be a cool way to end up in a random situation. Finally, when I was imagining it, the electrical charge the drive needed to store would be quite large, something like 1 million EC, but would build up over time. I see you recently moved away from a charge over time model, but I don't know what your EC charge requirements were before. What were you thoughts on the switch?

Sandbox to me is all about going big. Things like: 1) Send an orbital probe to every planet and moon 2) Start full scale ore mining operations on Minmus or even better somewhere like Pol 3) Start designing and testing parts building towards what will become a Jool-5 challenge entry 4) Send a Kerbal to explore the mohole via EVA and then return to Kerbin

You want to use 6378100 for r to get the units to cancel. I recommend you write down all the units for every value and cancel them explicitly (meters over meters cancel, meters * meters is meters^2). See this site about the proper way to cancel units. EDIT: 10 minute Ninja

Good question. Control fins on the outside and further are away from the center of mass are more effective. However, your BACC booster stage is so short in burn time that those fins are not carrying their weight. To be honest, the BACCs themselves are probably not carrying their weight. Confession that I might be biased since I started a thread about how SRBs were overly nerfed in 1.0 (BACCs got 15% less Isp in a relative sense to most LFO engines, 30% less burn time, and 50% increased cost).

I left Windows long ago, but have you tried to "Show hidden files and folders" or whatever the equivalent option is now? After that you can also try searching for your KSP profile folder (i.e. what save name you pick when you resume your game).

While I still haven't unlocked it myself yet, the narrow band shows a small window of the resources on the planet in greater detail. When you use it after using the surface scanner on each biome, you get as accurate a picture of the resources as you can get.

For me at least, the merge feature is completely broken. I would use the old subassemblies. - For that, go to the big black arrow, then the green button on the bottom left. You should see a drop subassembly here to save box. - Now, use the select root mode (right of the rotate mode) to rearrange the craft you want to save. Make the part you want to attach to be the root, by selecting the part next to it then the part you want to be root. - Then pick up you subassembly craft by the root and drop it on the save box. Now load your main craft, select the saved subassembly, and you should be able to attach it by that root part.

*Cough* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem *Cough*

EDIT: Old thread

No staging for me, as its usually a rocket SSTO coming in for landing at KSC Yeah, the rocket SSTOs usually have 12-20 AV-R8 control fins depending on how awkward the payload is. I'm still experimenting with other craft, but so far it definitely seems like the overall tendency is to overshoot the prediction, as others are reporting.

Squary (RAM), pre-coolers, and shock cones are all decent. You want enough intake area per engine for any of them though. 0.01 intake area for turbojets and 0.016 for rapiers seems about right for me. Turbojets are better at punching through transonic with peak thrust near 13km, rapiers are better for top speed and ceiling with a thrust peak around 18km. A turbojet with a single tank should easily break the sound barrier unless you have too much wing and drag. However, you'll still be about 1800 dv from orbit when they give out.

Struts are an art form, and I find there is always more to learn. I rewired it the way I would have currently struted it and ended up with 34 fewer struts. I also ditched the interstage fairing which did not seem to reduce drag and the BACC control fins. Personally, I would lose the BACCs entirely as they are nerf-tastic in 1.0. The craft file is here. IMO, if you need fins then control fins will do the anti-spinning job better with less mass than other mere lifting surfaces. The one time I found if can make sense to have non-control lift is when you need to counter higher up lift (wings, radiators) and already have too much control (symptom is SAS freaking out).

I disagree completely here. This was the key advice for the old style of lingering to milk your air-breathers, which really doesn't work any more. In the new aero with any actual payload, you won't get near 1 min to AP until after you go transonic and are at the very edge of the air. By then its not bad advice for the brief time you can use it; but you are never going to space if that is the only advise you use so that you fail to get through the transonic region effectively.

Mach 3 is 340 * 3 = 1020 m/s For your plane, whats the TWR of the 3 909s when you first switch to rocket mode? I'm guess its a little low. Have you thought about using a Poodle engine there? For spaceplane ascents to LKO: - Lift off - 10-20* pitch up until speed above 270 m/s - Raise pitch to maintain speed below 290 m/s (high drag above this speed) - At 10-14km, pitch down to 0-5* and accelerate until 500 m/s closer to 10km for only turbojets and to 14km for only rapiers - Slowly raise pitch to 15* while building speed 5* pitch up per 50 m/s speed increase above 500 m/s seems to work well - Grab the last bit of airbreathing speed by pitching back down to 5-10* upslope Do this around 17km for turbos and 20km for rapiers - As soon as your speed indicator stops going up, punch the rockets and/or switch modes on the rapiers - Get out of dodge by aiming at 20* upslope until 32km - After 32km follow the top of prograde marker until your at 5-6* pitch - Cruise until your desired apoapsis - Cruise out of atmospshere to apoapsis and circularize You don't have to do all that exactly, but its what I do when efficiency is more important than lackadaisical piloting.

Haha, I really like this summary! For the OP, here are my general tips for old players: You are not alone. This spinning thing is something we all initially had trouble with in the new 1.0+ aero until we learned to engineer and fly new rockets. Spinning out of control essentially comes down to a contest between drag and control. When the drag overcomes your control authority, you go for a spin. You can decrease drag by staying closer to prograde and building a more aerodynamic rocket. You can increase control using engine gimbals, stabilizer wheels, and control surfaces. Also note that drag increases significantly right around mach one (340 m/s), so you should stay pointed as prograde as possible at speeds around 290-400 m/s. On a rocket, any control fins should be as low and outside as possible. If you are using control fins on more than one stage, the CoL needs to stay below the CoM at all times, even as the tanks empty.

Since I updated Trajectories, I've used it mostly for landing on Kerbin. It's definitely not perfect, but its also better than nothing. Overall, the landing prediction is somewhere between being good and my actual landing position overshooting the initial spot. However, even then there appears to be 3 phases. 1) In the upper atmosphere actual overshoots the prediction, 2) in the middle of the atmosphere during the deceleration and heating phase my actual position then switches to undershooting the prediction, and 3) In the lower atmosphere its more accurate, but still has a tiny tendency for actual to overshoot the prediction. 1) and 2) almost cancel out for landing, but I can see that aerobraking probably gets more of phase 1 and overshoots more.

KSP Linux 64 bit is working fine* for me, even with the steam overlay enabled (using Nvidia drivers). *As fine as it ever was, and with similar bugs to what is reported on Windows.

Best: AI War - Fleet Command, Final Fantasy 7, FTL, Master of Orion 2, Neuromancer, Reach for the Stars (original), Alpha Centauri, X3 - Terran Conflict, Uplink, Chrono Trigger, Europa Universalis IV (despite the bugs), Starcraft 2, Total Annihilation, Space Empires IV, Star Control 2&3 (yeah I'm weird like that), OpenTTD, Pirates! Worst: First rule of worst games, I don't talk about worst games