Starglider

Rocket Farmer is right about part clipping and small spaceplanes. I wanted a small spaceplane so I had to resort to that (I didn't go so far as needing to use the debug panel though). Some other comments from others that I've seen while doing my own "how to" research (I don't have names or http addresses to reference, so apologies to the posters - we really need one consolidated how to page with everything in it): 1) 1 jet engine per 10 tons of plane. 2) 3 intakes per engine. Even more is better. The ram air intake is the most efficient of the stock options available. You can place them without part-clipping using cubic octagonal struts and spacing them out along wings and fuselage (must face forward to be effective), but I find it more aesthetically appealing to clip them one-behind-the-other, in a column to each side of the main fuselage (if you do it right you don't need the debug panel). 3) Minimize your oxidizer to what you absolutely need, as rocket-style fuel tanks are heavy, and draw fuel from airplane fuselages (be aware the mk1 is less efficient than the mk2 in regards to fuel/weight). I'm going to put this into caps as it is all-important: WEIGHT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND! Trim everything you don't need. I once designed a plane that jettisoned the landing gear (with parachutes attached of course so they could be "recovered"), and relied on parachutes to "land" with, because each of the landing gear costs half a ton and the parachutes weighed so much less (that, and I wasn't "good" at landing on runways yet - more about that below). 4) This suggestion is all mine, based on what works for me (thus, YMMV) - wings generate lift, and you need enough lift to take off. However lift come from increasing drag. Having too much lift thus generates extra drag, which impedes your thrust potential. How much lift do you need? My rule of thumb, is that if you can't take off at less than 100 m/s, you need more lift, and if you can take off at less than 50 m/s, you may have too much lift. Some of my failed spaceplanes turned into successes just by removing some of the lifting surfaces. 5) Center of Mass must always stay in front of Center of Lift, but should still be as close as possible (you need it close so the plane stays responsive). This isn't as easy as just clicking the buttons and looking at the spots. As you use fuel and oxidizer, the center of mass changes. You have to figure out where the Center of Mass will end up at, as well as how it will shift in flight. Determine what percentage weight of fuel (meaning, total weight minus dry weight) is on each side of your initial CoM. You can add extra parts temporarily to the opposing side to simulate the mass balance with dry tanks. Once you know the final CoM position, work out how the CoM moves during flight. 99% of all spaceplanes drain fuel front-to-back, sending your CoM to the back of your plane before it eventually moves forward. I, however, represent the 1% (actually, I've never seen this recommendation online, anywhere, so this is another one from me) that disconnects the engines from the fuel columns (using that nice cubic octagonal strut) and runs fuel lines to the front of the fuel columns. In my planes, the fuel drains back-to-front, sending my CoM forward first; thus as long as my CoL is behind both my initial CoM and final CoM, I know I won't encounter stability issues. 6) Center of Thrust should be behind both CoM and CoL at all times. 7) Horizontal symmetry is vital. You can get away with a telescoping ladder on one side of the nose, but you will be able to see the difference in how the plane tries to yaw to the right. Anything more off-symmetry is asking for trouble. Vertical symmetry is almost as vital - your plane may flip over, in flight or in space, if you don't have this, but you can get away with some violations by using reaction wheels to compensate (but only up to a point, after which badness happens). 8) Odd numbers of jet engines are preferable, with the center jet engine placed last (more on this below). If you have an even number of jet engines, your spaceplane is automatically rated as "expert pilots only". 9) Start small. Get a spaceplane that has no cargo/docking/whatever capacity into orbit, before thinking about larger spaceplanes that can deliver cargo. When you go bigger, do it incrementally. So many more things can go wrong with spaceplane designs when compared to rockets. 10) Put your excess intakes into an action group, deactivate them on the runway, and reactivate them only when they are needed (at about 0.08 IntakeAir per engine) - this cuts down on drag. 11) Figure out how high you can go, yet still be able to pitch down into level flight at the slow horizontal velocity you have (you may need to revert several times while doing this "flight testing"). The question is basically, how much of the thick draggy air can you get out of, coming right off the runway? From there you can build up horizontal velocity and increase altitude further. 12) As IntakeAir drops under 0.08 per engine, you can throttle down proportionately. If you don't do it quite right, one engine will "flame out" - simply reduce your throttle until the engine reactivates, then increase again, but not to the previous level. It is the experience of other posters that the last engine to be placed, is the one that flames out first. Having your center engine placed last, thus helps it flame out first, eliminating any spinning issues resulting from this (provided you adjust before a second engine flames out, that is). 13) Before thinking of going into space, you should be able to hit 30km altitude and 2000m/s horizontal velocity. 14) It is my experience that my apoapsis is exceeding 125km altitude, and my periapsis is above 25km, before I worry about rockets at all (that's right, my "orbit" is almost entirely in place before I leave atmo). I don't tend to "pitch up" to get to space, so much as I "fly straight out of atmo". It is also my experience that its best to wait until I'm close to apogee before doing any rocket burns (even if not quite in space yet) - that oxidizer, being so heavy, is too precious to waste on increasing atmospheric drag through its use. 8) Use small rockets as most of your dV comes from your jets. I'd be overjoyed to see a 400+ Isp rocket with a thrust rating of 1-2 and a mass of less than 0.1 tons, but since I play 99% stock, I take what I can get (2xRockomax 24-77). I find I don't need the thrust ability of this rocket, but its weight is good, and I typically need more than an equivalent weight of LV-1Rs would produce (and the 24-77 has slightly better Isp). 9) Pointer for re-entry: if you aim to de-orbit your periapsis to about 35km, and do this on the opposite side of Kerbin to KSC, you will find yourself close to KSC when you're ready to land. You may need to tweak the altitude and burn-position based on your plane. 10) Pointer #1 for landing: construct a rover and place them directly east and west of the runway, at a distance of >500m. On your approach, you can target the nearest with your navball so as to line up early, and you can see them highlighted on your HUD, so you can keep them lined up vertically, and thus keep lined up with the runway (think of it as an "instrument landing system"). Be careful though - if you park the rovers too close, the game may want to clear them out before letting you take off. 11) Pointer #2 for landing: once you have your distance to the closest rover, add the distance to the runway, and divide the total by 10. That number should be your altitude. You should descend 100m per kilometer on your approach. This instantly tells you if you are too high or too low. 12) Pointer #3 for landing: use a flight-stick. Seriously. Keyboard airstrip landings are a nightmare, and a big reason I did parachute landings for awhile. Flight-sticks aren't exactly a dream (proper landings are difficult, even with the quasi-instrument-landing-system set up with #10 and #11), but waking up from a nightmare is still a major improvement. 13) This is one of my suggestions, as a private pilot: build and fly a small airplane first - not a spaceplane. Give it lots of fuel. Then, practice your landings. Land, take back off without stopping, circle around, and try it again. This is known as "touch and go". Get good at landings; the most stressful part of flying a spaceplane is landing at the very end, when you've done everything you set out to do, but that one last thing can screw everything up. You can't quicksave while moving in atmo; you'd have to reload from when you're in space (which probably means having to do your deorbit burn again too); and it takes time to get back to your landing attempt from space as you're limited to x4 physics warp (if your plane can handle even that). If you get impatient to do spaceplane launches, ditch the landing gear and descend on parachutes like I talked about earlier. It'll save you the headache. That's all I can think of at the moment, but I probably forgot something somewhere. Time will tell.

I've noticed when keyboarding that when I yaw left/right, ASAS sets the pitch and roll controls to center (even if the controls are trimmed) which cause further issues. So now I use a hotas (hands-on throttle and stick) controller, so I can control all three inputs at once (and get better throttle control too), and rely on ASAS only when I want to fly straight. The difference is like waking up from a nightmare. As for "drift", you can use trimming to fix that once your off the keyboard. My recommendation is to get an actual flight controller, build a small, normal airplane, and practice "touch-and-go" runs (by that, I mean land on the runway and immediately take off again). Once you've mastered landing, piloting in general is a breeze.

I downloaded it from the spaceport about half an hour before posting that. But since then I did figure out the problem (as you said, the files weren't in the right places). So the problem is solved on my end, but there may be something glitchy when downloading it.

Oh, so its not a keyboard control? (loads up a test plane) Oh, those things in the top readout are clickable! Yay! I'm going to go back to my cave now, and ponder my stupidity. Thanks, y'all.

I hate-hate-hate it when I go on EVA from my spaceplane/rover, and it rolls away from my kerbal... Jeb isn't that fast on his own two feet, you know. This doesn't have to be a new part; just a function of existing wheels that you can toggle on and off. There are two "workarounds" I've found, but neither is satisfactory. Raising your landing gear has other issues (the plane may not rest on the gear bay; wheels may clip into the ground). Using landing legs isn't very good either (they lower when you raise the gear after takeoff thus consuming action groups to rectify; they're rarely able to be perfectly placed, causing the plane to bounce around as they are lowered/raised; I've seen damage to the landing gear occur as everything bounces around; increased part count for something that is so basic).

I drove a manned rover out to the east end of the runway and planted a flag, off the runway a little bit but still rather close to it. I named it "KSC Runway 270-66m"; this gives me something to target (at long ranges, or at night) when I come in for landings from the east. And the game allows it (no "Runway not clear" issues). However when I do likewise on the west end "KSC Runway 90-66m", the game freaks out ("Runway not clear" whenever I try to launch) even though its not actually on the runway. Even 500 meters further east it is still giving me this crap. Any suggestions? Most of my flights come in from the west; I find it annoying to fly around and approach from the east when I should be able to fly straight in.

I can verify Helix935's bug report. The extendo and radial reaction wheels show up; the cargo bays and rs docking node do not. The log file says the models don't exist. There's also some warnings I don't understand. Here's the relevant snippet from the log file: [LOG 13:30:59.330] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/SSI/Parts/RadialReactionWheel/part/radialreactionwheels' [LOG 13:30:59.347] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/part/[LSI]CargoBay_1_25m' [ERR 13:30:59.350] PartCompiler: Cannot clone model 'WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/model' as model does not exist [ERR 13:30:59.351] PartCompiler: Model was not compiled correctly [ERR 13:30:59.352] PartCompiler: Cannot compile model [ERR 13:30:59.354] PartCompiler: Cannot compile part [LOG 13:30:59.355] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/part/[LSI]CargoBay_2_5m' [ERR 13:30:59.356] PartCompiler: Cannot clone model 'WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/model' as model does not exist [ERR 13:30:59.358] PartCompiler: Model was not compiled correctly [ERR 13:30:59.360] PartCompiler: Cannot compile model [ERR 13:30:59.361] PartCompiler: Cannot compile part [LOG 13:30:59.362] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/part/[LSI]CargoBay_3_75m' [ERR 13:30:59.364] PartCompiler: Cannot clone model 'WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/model' as model does not exist [ERR 13:30:59.365] PartCompiler: Model was not compiled correctly [ERR 13:30:59.366] PartCompiler: Cannot compile model [ERR 13:30:59.368] PartCompiler: Cannot compile part [LOG 13:30:59.369] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/part/[LSI]CargoBay_5m' [ERR 13:30:59.371] PartCompiler: Cannot clone model 'WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/cargo/model' as model does not exist [ERR 13:30:59.372] PartCompiler: Model was not compiled correctly [ERR 13:30:59.373] PartCompiler: Cannot compile model [ERR 13:30:59.375] PartCompiler: Cannot compile part [LOG 13:30:59.376] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/Extendo/part/ExtendoStandard' [WRN 13:30:59.388] PartLoader Warning: Variable motorSndPath not found in MuMechServo [LOG 13:30:59.393] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/Extendo/part/ExtendoSmall' [WRN 13:30:59.402] PartLoader Warning: Variable motorSndPath not found in MuMechServo [LOG 13:30:59.407] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/Extendo/part/ExtendoLarge' [WRN 13:30:59.416] PartLoader Warning: Variable motorSndPath not found in MuMechServo [LOG 13:30:59.421] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/Extendo/part/ExtendoExtreme' [WRN 13:30:59.430] PartLoader Warning: Variable motorSndPath not found in MuMechServo [LOG 13:30:59.435] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'Gamedata/WolfPackAeronautics/Parts/RSDockingNode/part/RS_dockingNode1'

Apologies in advance if this has already been suggested; I did a search but did not find any such suggestion. In the VAB, how about the ability to "lock" and "unlock" assemblies of parts that have been built. Control-clicking (or whatever) a part would toggle a lock on it and all other parts between it and the command pod. A normal click on a locked assembly would be equivalent to clicking the command pod (enabling movement of the ship) instead of removing the part from the assembly.

What works for me, is this process: 1) Add clamps to the rocket (if you haven't already), and stage the rocket so the clamps don't release on "launch", but that the engines activate (on the lowest layer, that is). Remove all fuel lines (again, on the lowest layer). 2) Send it to the pad, and test-burn the engines. You get a good idea of the rocket's ability to handle heat, as well as whether the rocket's structure is stable enough. When the rocket settles down during the burn, revert to the VAB. 3) Add the first pair of fuel lines that will form your asparagus system, and re-test as above. This time, you're looking for pairs of engines to burn out together. This is actually easier with mainsails burning hot; as they burn out, the heat bars should drop away in pairs. 4) If there is uneven burning, you know which fuel line pair the problem is in. 5) Add the next pair of fuel lines and re-test the rocket with the new pair 6) Repeat #5 until your asparagus system is complete 7) Return to the VAB to work on staging. If you need to, you can test the asparagus staging in a similar manner, but staging issues are more obvious than fuel line issues so you probably won't have to. 8) Now that your asparagus system is working, you can continue on from there with confidence.