cybersol

X3TC/AP = Fly/Trade/Fight/Bounty Hunt/Stop Aliens and then create an empire of 200 ships spreading your influence throughout the galaxy. This one can easily rival KSP for number of hours of entertainment, which is rare. FTL = Awesomesauce rogue-like space game, a true indie gem, but the fighting is more like a mini strategy game than actual seat of the pants fighting

For >90* you can save even more by aerobraking some of the retrograde component, which is particularly useful in the case where you do a full 180 around a body with an atmosphere.

In the general case this would be tricky to pull off timing wise, and you could easily lose more sidereal rotation boost than the small maneuver at mid-plane would take. EDIT: Ninja'd, but still relevant. Generally this is complicated enough to easily mess it up enough to hurt your fuel situation more than you help it. It the kind of thing I might try if I tried the normal way and ran out of fuel. However, if you know you are going to run out of fuel at launch time, you also have easier options to fix low fuel

I really wanted to remove the girders and struts as well, and now you made me try it. I removed all the girders, struts, and fins and relaunched using the above profile in MJ. Now the 2 booster version has 39 m/s left in the Skipper stage, while the asparagus version has 83 m/s left in the Skipper stage. The proper order of the universe is restored, as asparagus regains its rightful place.

Yeah, physics unload and put anything more than around 22 km from you on rails. And anything on rails below around 22 km is destroyed instantly. Possible solutions are: 1) Go higher with your reusable stage so you can circularize your main stage and then switch to the reusable portion and land. However, at that point your suborbital trajectory is so far away from KSC that is makes sense to just build an SSTO than can launch the payload and return. 2) Stay with 22 km while the parachutes deploy and land. Good luck with that. 3) I don't use it at the moment, but another option is the Stage Recovery Mod which will recover any stage that would have been destroyed if it has parachutes.

Checking it out now and will add more later. But first of all, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much wing. I'm guessing you are using KJR or Claws mod or similar because it explodes on physics load every single time for me. Its actually a pretty cool explosion though.

I also was getting tired of this, so I am using the Disable Temperature Gagues mod to turn off the stock gauges and the Critical Temperature Gauge mod to show the most critical part. They seem to work well together.

Max thrust is at 13km or so, and the thrust becomes negligible at 20-22 km and shuts off by 25km.

Exact right place. My recommended spaceplane ascent profile I just posted here. For the design part, GoSlashy has a good guide in the tutorials section here. General rules are that you will need more engines than before to quickly punch through transonic drag. Because engines now lose thrust with altitude and at very high mach speeds, you won't be able to linger the plane in atmosphere all the way to orbit. You will need to get what you can get from the air breathers, and then switch to rockets sooner and get out of there. All in all you will need something like 1600-1800 dv after switching to rockets for stable LKO.

There was actually a relevant thread from earlier today here you may want to read, but it may just give you more questions to ask here.

A modern rocket profile starts the gravity turn almost immediately, but the details depend on your preferred starting TWR. I prefer running full throttle at 1.7-1.9 starting TWR, but wimpsmore cautious people prefer 1.4-1.6 starting TWR in stock aero. For the lower TWR you will want to get more altitude faster and turn slower with gravity pulling you around more. Also, with more drag (i.e. ginormous fairing, etc.) you will want to gain altitude faster to reduce drag. My rocket ascent profile: - Starting TWR of 1.7-1.9 and pretty aerodynamic design - Most important thing is to be SMOOTH, never do anything too fast - At a speed of 50 m/s, SAS off and pitch over to 75* - Pull your gravity turn a little faster by being near the lower edge of progade until 280 m/s - Straighten up to almost exactly prograde from 290-400 m/s - Then pull near prograde edge again to try to reach 45* picth at around 13km - Aim for 22.5* pitch by around 26km - Level off to 5* by 40km - Continue until your reach target apoapsis - Main engine cutoff, coast to apoapsis and circularize EDIT: Okay, now that I wrote both of my ascent profiles out, its time for 1.0.3 to land and change them

But whatever you do, if you can help it, NEVER change your inclination at ApoapsisPeriapsis. FIFY.

That is likely old advice, in 1.0.2 its much more about targeting certain pitch angles up at certain altitudes. For spaceplanes: - 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.

If you don't want to wait until the Minmus orbit crosses Kerbin equatorial plane, then you are best off doing a mid-course plane change maneuver. The best place will be somewhere between just after you leave Minmus (slowest speed, so more plane change effect per dV) and mid-way to Kerbin (better angular leverage). Edit: Ninja'd by Snark

Thanks for the updated staging, it launches now. So you definitely have a heavy arrowhead on that rocket. I actually downloaded and launched both on identical MJ ascent profiles with only corrective steering (needed for your heavy nose), autostage, and autowarp set. Profile was 1km start at 50 m/s to 42km end with a final angle of 6* and a turn shape of 55%. For the 2 side booster version it took 3651 m/s to get to 75x75 orbit with 1755 dv remaining in the Poodle stage. I added more control authority to get the asparagus version to fly more true to its MJ ascent profile by moving the wings to the bottom of the central core and changing the mainsail gimbal back to 100%. It then took 3749 dV to get to 75x75 orbit with 1720 dV remaining in the Poodle stage. So under as indentical conditions as possible, the asparagus staging does slightly worse, likely for the reasons that Red and Rhomphaia mentioned. Or maybe its just the aero drag? Changing the nosecones to advanced A type and removing the 8 lower struts gives 3721 m/s to 75x75 orbit with 1754 dV remaining in the Poodle stage, which is basically equal to 2 side booster dv remaining. So its really a combination of the extra drag of the asparagus staging (lines/struts/cones) with the fact that the stacks are pretty short and not worth that much extra drag. I think Red wins, plus he makes for a better pet names. A cat named CyberSoul would scare the crap out of me, especially at night with those intense eyes.

How does the 2 side booster one take off with 0.79 TWR. Did you fix the staging and change the links?

I think the asparagus versus not labels are backwards on the downloads. Given your staging, the 03B2 with the 2 side boosters won't even take off in 1.0.2. Looking at the KER displays it only has 0.79 TWR at sea level on Kerbin. Are you hacking gravity to launch these? EDIT: On the asparagus version, which does launch with your staging, you don't have enough control authority. So you are not going anywhere near where you (or MechJeb?) tells it to go.

I fully agree herbal space program on the 12.5-13 tons per Rapier in stock. When I had about 15 tons per rapier, adding 15% more engines to get to 13 tons per engine actually REDUCED my total fuel use. I think capi might be talking about nuFAR where I think you are able to go to a higher tonnage per engine.

Sorry, as Randazzo says you first pick the part next to the battery and then the battery to make it the root part. EDIT: Did you get it to work yet?

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, which in your case is probably the lower battery on the rover. Then pick up you rover by the battery and drop it on the save box. Now load your lifter, select the saved rover from the subassembly box, and you should be able to attach it by that battery.

It was never a single number, even before version 1.0. How long you stayed in the gravity well affected your gravity losses, but staying below terminal velocity was enough to minimize your drag losses. However, in 1.0+ it really depends much more on how much drag you experience, which is a combination of design and piloting. With high TWR (1.7-2.3), an aerodynamic single stack design, and a quick gravity turn with a low ascent profile you might manage around 3200. With low TWR (1.3), a fairing the size of Gilly, and a late gravity turn with a high profile to prevent wobble you might take 4200. A good conservative number to use for planning is probably in the 3600-3800 range, with the lower end for those who favor high TWR and full throttle and the higher end for the low TWR and reduced throttle crowd.

Well many thanks from me to Youen, Kobymaru, and atomicfury for all your contributions to the mod. Its a very nice one to have and the new aero makes it even more important!

A probe core is enough. I would definitely fill the lab and bring back the science ASAP. My minmus hopper mission returned 4000 science when I really needed the boost.

In the tutorial section, there is a how not to get things to FLIP sticky thread. I posted about a similar problem & fix there, repeated below: Finally, a different class of problems comes when hauling things with their own lift to orbit. Here I am lifting my standard nuclear tug. I like this configuration with 2 wide nukes, because they are stackable (need more TWR, just add more tugs), *limited by wobble. However, the wide arrangement doesn't fit in a fairing, so I had to overcome the lift generated by the radiators fins. Here I used 4 delta wings generated enough lift below the CoM to offset the lift in the upper stage. The launcher is my medium 3 mainsail rcoket SSTO. TL;DR = Use lift surfaces at the bottom to move the center of lift far below the center of mass, even when the upper tanks empty the CoL needs to stay below the CoM

Post a pic for the best help, but meanwhile for me it been about more pitch control when I've had similar problems. First of all make sure tail rudders are only yaw controls and your other controls do not yaw. Its much less critical, but if its a big plane that needs lots of control, I also end up disabling roll on about half the other control surfaces. Everything horizontal has pitch enabled, because it always seems to be the limiting factor. Other than that its about more controls, with more control lift, further out and forward or backwards of the CoM (not CoL). Do you have canards or elevators at the very front, as those really seem to help? The BigS elevators are also really great for being high lift controls. As for speed, the drag spike really only starts around 290-300, so for a lifter I keep around 270 until I'm ready to level off an go transonic at 12-14 km.