Ivan Ivanovich

You could use the 'smooth' decoupler, only drawback is that it cannot really handle a lot of stress...

I got to 2.2g. The idea arose when I noticed that the satellites I try to orbit usually break off during ascent because they, and their separators, cannot handle the stress. With less g, it worked out pretty well.

I know Jeb\'s gonna hate me for that one... Now, with all the addons and goodies and gadgets, it has become easy to slap enough engine power behind the capsule to accelerate it to 2000m/s in a split second... but have you ever thought what stress this puts on the poor thing? And the expensive satellites? Oh, and I guess our astronauts won\'t really enjoy it either. The goal: A stable orbit at or above 100k meters. The challenge: Lowest G-Force stress on the payload.

I know. But then, I cheat, I\'m in one of your neighboring countries. In other words, herzlich willkommen! (And yes, I even know where Croatia is. Beautiful country and an even more beautiful coast. Wish we had one. *sniff*)

I\'ve seen that docking ring and also tried using it, it\'s just friggin\' HARD to align the capsule with the main thruster only. I\'m waiting for the directional thrusters promised for some of the future updates with the docking. Right now I\'m working on getting sats into orbit. I can already launch one (stacked on top of my capsule), I just have a hard time keeping the whole rig stable during launch, the bigger sats are kinda wobbly and they don\'t want to have stabilizers attached to them. But I\'ll figure something out. So far I can fairly predictably reach a 100k orbit, change orbits with a hohmann transfer and time my orbit deburns at least halfway decently to land at least close to the launch facility. Guess there ain\'t much more I can do right now towards my goal of having a 'serious' space program.

Indeed. I didn\'t expect the drag to be that intense, but the moment I hit the lower atmosphere, my 3k m/s nearly instantly turned into 1 m/s (with a vector that pointed anywhere but upwards for the return swing). Being light on the tail (i.e. the rocket aligned in the air with the capsule to the back) also means that I doubt adding wings would change much to improve that. I guess the 30s will be the limit.

I\'m just coming in from a 1012k orbit as we speak, aiming for 5k. Let\'s see how it works out!

Mods allowed or stock only?

I blame you if I get to join the crowd of people who lose their job to a game, take this as a warning! After just a day of try and error I managed to get rockets into orbit (ok, not necessarily in the orbit I wanted them in, but hey) and I\'m trying to improve my designing and piloting. Can\'t wait to see more of it, so far it\'s already stunning... even though I have no idea how I should ever be able to dock, I can\'t even fly remotely close to another object, kinda hard to navigate by visual cues only. Anyway, great work so far!