Madrias

I've been mucking about with a stunt plane I built. Standard old-school biplane, though I'm using the electric engine instead of the gas one (gotta have a challenge. That, and there's no 1/2 size fuel tanks, and it doesn't look right with a full size one). Little bit of part clipping involved, but only cause I hate the look of the vanilla batteries and RTG's. I'll have a run later and see if I can build one that doesn't look bad with the full-size fuel tank.

I'm trying to fly an infiniglider around Kerbin. It's actually kinda challenging, yet fun.

It's a cool idea, but it's impossible to see anything during the night, let alone through part of the day when the sun's not shining just right on your craft. Now add clouds, rain, snow, and storms, and you've made a mess out of landings. Plus, most people wouldn't see the weather other than maybe for 10 minutes because they're flying rockets. I'd see the weather the whole way up for an hour trying to get an SSTO into orbit through a thunderstorm. It'd have to be something that'd be toggleable, because some would love it, others would hate it.

Returning again after an SSTO flight on a plane that should never have made orbit (one engine, a nuke, and nothing else). If you really cared about your delta-V requirement, you'd make all of your designs infinigliders, with one nuke engine and the smallest possible flight weight. To do that effectively, they must use the MK1 Cockpit and be flown from IVA view at all times. Docking ports aren't allowed, so if you run out of power in space, your Kerbal is dead. If you can't tell, I'm being kinda troll-ish about it because I find it a rather pointless debate. Nuke engines are fun even if slightly impractical. It's like making anything with an Ant engine. It's fun to do, even if impractical. I've made an infinigliding SSTO with either Ant engines or Nukes, you just need patience and flying skills. The thing is, it's incredibly impractical, but a splash of fuel gets you through to orbit, making it lots of fun. What it has boiled down to is the "Why are people having fun this way? It's wrong. My way is the only way to have fun," peeing match that you see in playgrounds during elementary school recess. Plus, it's fun to brag to friends that you've landed infinigliders.

Simple answer: Because I wanted to. Yeah, it's not quite as efficient as, say, just one turbojet and just one nuke, but two turbojets ends up being a fartload of mass that ends up as useless weight on my SSTO designs. Two nukes means I've got a long-range SSTO that can cruise up to my space station, grab a Rockomax Big Orange Can, and proceed to fly anywhere in the bloody solar system. That, and two nuke engines just look cool.

Had a safety system on one of my planes, a simple glider designed to get one back to Kerbin at just about any cost by the power of two Ant engines. Ejected the Flying Ant Safety Glider from the rest of the plane when I had a problem (unrecoverable spin caused by engine flameout, fuel tank separated from decoupler and removed half of the left hand wing) and proceeded to burn the engines to descend with a great rate of speed. Pulled out of the screaming dive at roughly 460m/s and carried myself a long way back toward KSC. As I'm hurtling toward the KSC and I've run out of fuel, my safety glider showed its true colors, proceeding to infiniglide at roughly 2000m at a speed of 60m/s. From flight trials, I knew about the infinigliding quirk, and had a plan in mind to land safely: I designed it to eject its wings and parachute in, much like a rocket does. I leveled myself toward the runway, the control tower on my right, craft placed strategically at the four corners of the runway so I knew where to aim. At 2km the loading lag hit as I reached physics range, my Flying Ant screaming for the runway at 60 meters per second, still holding 2km altitude and travelling smoothly. Timing it just right, I deployed debris chutes, then decoupled the wings so they would fall back to Kerbin instead of hanging around and crashing my next flight. I hit space again to deploy my primary chutes. Thunk. A moment passed. Brief panic, though mild. Maybe it didn't register. My keyboard's a little old, sometimes space doesn't register right away if I hit the wrong side of the spacebar. Thunk. Thunk. Panic sets in. I'm realizing it's one of two things: my space bar is broken, or I forgot chutes. 1500 meters altitude. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk. 1200 meters altitude. My spacebar sounds like a machine gun as I'm desperately hoping that I'm just finding the wrong spots. 700 meters altitude. I'm working the flight cluster, hoping to point the MK1 Cockpit in such a manner that I slam the tail and structural beams into the runway first, instead of the nose. 400 meters altitude. The battery has run dry with the craft facing the runway side on. I know this is it, Jeb can't possibly survive this. I have one critical escape plan left. 200 meters altitude. Time's up. I EVA Jeb and have him cling to the falling cockpit, planning to jump at the last second. Roughly 100 meters altitude (I could see shadows) I hold W with all my might, and Jeb crawls off the end of his doomed plane. There's a terrifying fireball and debris goes everywhere. I hope for the best. Bounce. Jeb's helmet hits the runway with full force, and he lazily ragdolls off of it and back into the air for a split moment. Poof. Jeb's bounce carried him, still grinning like a madman, straight into the control tower where he turned into a cloud of dust. I went back to the drawing board and the first thing I did to the Flying Ant MKII was to rename it the Flying Ant MKIII and immediately throw two parachutes onto the design. One on the structural beam holding the tail together, the other directly behind the cockpit. I'm up to MKIX now. Slowly working out all the bugs. Jeb's come back 4 times and I finally just retired him and his 2 brothers to my orbiting space station. Then I accidentally put a Flying Ant through it. I really need to add some power generation to the bloody things...

Minmus, believe it or not. Lost more bloody spaceplanes to Minmus than I can account for. No deaths, but I've got 22 Kerbals stranded there (11 flights, following my Crew Code where manned flights may not be solo.) and roughly 30, maybe 40 craft that it's claimed all over the surface. I'm tempted to send a Base-In-A-Box there and just call it my first semi-permanent colony.

I've had moments where I've set up missions and had 'em go wrong, and so I developed a requirement that no crewed vessel leaving the atmosphere can be flown solo. At least if the Kerbals die, they won't die alone. I set up safety precautions up the wazoo to try getting the Kerbals back home again. My last one was an ejectable cockpit unit with batteries, large solar panels, and an Ion engine for thrust. It took me an hour and a half, but I got my Kerbals home. I've had explosions on the launch pad, so I built launch escape and abort procedures where I press one button, all engines but my launch escape unit shut down, escape unit sends me skybound, then parachutes deploy at the press of button 2. And I have gone so far as to put flags down by the MK1 Capsule monument to honor the fallen. It makes me less likely to kill them if I have to send out the rover buggy and drive from the runway to there and plant flags. On the other hand, I'm not afraid to send probes where they should never go, and they don't have to be paired together... Or return home.

Does a random ejection of a cubic octagonal strut, a command seat, a probe core, and a parachute count? I tend to love doing that to Kerbals randomly. It's fun to do.

All debris must be designed to be easily deorbited once I have the technology to easily deorbit it. Ships must be constructed early on for debris removal. No Kerbal may travel alone on missions outside of Kerbin's SOI. Ships must be designed to carry at least two Kerbals, though it is not required to carry them in the same cockpit. Probes should be sent before Kerbals when logically possible. Please do try to keep the little green guys alive. They're expensive to clone and replace. All vehicles should be equipped with a failsafe sequence such that in the event of a critical failure during ascent, all pieces of the vehicle should be able to make it back to ground and land safely. Use of IVA view is encouraged. Using mods to give parts with better IVA views, thereby, is highly encouraged. Rockets are for cargo, planes are for Kerbals. Kerbals must return home. They may travel for long distances, but they must always have a way home. (No setting up bases and returning the rocket home, stranding every Kerbal there.) Rescues must not kill those being rescued. Minmus, due to a poor track record of safe landings for me, is only allowed to be landed on with wirelessly controlled vehicles. Probe landers can be controlled from Kerbin directly, but a rover requires at least a satellite or command ship in orbit. No nuclear burns in atmo, and nuclear engines must not be destroyed on landing. A lot of my planes eject the engines with a parachute just to avoid this.

Okay, now I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for more.

Hey, at least it'd spare Kerbals from being hit by my repurposed (and usually empty) fuel drop tanks...

Little kids in multiplayer flying a solid rocket booster through your space station. When you go to take them out with your space lasers, hit detection issues arise and you blow up the rest of your station anyway. The servers go down a minimum of twice a week. Your computer must be online and connected to Origin to play, so that they can save the multiplayer world, even if you're only running singleplayer. Twice a month, they wipe the multiplayer worlds to eliminate lag. They do this without mentioning it's going to happen. No time acceleration. Fly your mission or die! Time acceleration available as a DLC for $10. Want more than Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus? Buy a planet as DLC for $10 a planet and $5 a moon. Or buy KSP Premium for $70. Want more than a command pod, a liquid engine, and a solid rocket booster? Buy the Parts Pack for $10. Note I didn't mention parachutes. Your KSP account has points which can only be gained by doing Science or by buying 10 points for $1. Kill a Kerbal? We deduct 15 points from your KSP account. Parts explode into a million fragments on impact while exploding. Your system will need a minimum of 4 GTX 780's running in SLI just to run the game on Medium. Did I miss anything?

I tend to alternate between trying to build things to get somewhere without looking at any delta-V charts, launch windows, or nav-aids, and the other side of the coin of building something ridiculous and setting a destination on Kerbin. Mods I use: Firespitter, B9, Infernal Robotics, Lack Luster Labs, Modular Multiwheels (old, but functional if you don't mind playing sandbox), Hooligan Labs Airship Parts, InfiniteDice's Boat Parts, and Kethane. Something fun I tend to do is build rovers and either try to drive them somewhere, or air-drop, build them to survive the landing, and then drive to a location. I also build propeller assisted rockets, Jet-driven speedboats, rocket powered blimps, sepratron driven drag-trucks, and planes full of probe missiles. Then I switch tactics and try to build airplanes with 6 wings, solid rocket powered ships to reach the Mun, making a train in space out of docking ports and Lack Luster Labs parts and hinges for turning. I build fuel trucks that dock with airplanes and are flown to the North Pole, I make bases on Kerbin, the Mun, Laythe, and Duna, and then switch again to being silly and trying to put helicopters in space. So what do I suggest for having fun? Introduce some Insanity into your designs and create chaos.

My favorite screw up has to be the overengineered unmanned rover/lander I built. Took off down the runway, made it to Orbit in 3 stages. Cruised around Kerbin once just to do it, sailed to the Mun, orbited, landed, no science was done (Sandbox craft, but I wanted to do this anyway). Took off from the Mun, orbited, travelled to Minmus, managed to get an orbit, pulled off a bloody fine landing if I say so myself (third successful landing out of 30), cruised around a bit, then took off. Got my orbit, transferred to Kerbin, grabbed an orbit and pulled my re-entry. It was about this time that the batteries finally died. Yep, completely overengineered rover design. Had just enough juice to leave Kerbin, make it to the Mun and Minmus, then back to Kerbin, without solar panels. And runs out of battery just before I can pull chutes on the lander section. It came hurtling down fast enough to keep reentry effects going from 22KM down to 12KM. It hit Kerbin's Pea Soup hard enough to jerk upwards under lift for just a moment, a fleeting moment of gliding, then continued screaming through the sky at roughly 400 m/s. And then slammed smack-dab into the side of the control tower. I got yelled at for laughing at 4 in the morning. It was worth it. My unplanned, unguided missile of a return stage actually hit the control tower with no control, no engine, no fuel, no battery power remaining. Not even enough to deploy the parachute. I laughed both at that, and the thought that if that happened in a cartoon, the parachute would have to deploy seconds after impact and float down to cover the debris.

Drogue chutes? We've got drogue chutes? All joking aside, I tend not to use chutes except in emergencies with my planes. Point it into the atmosphere and re-enter with full burn, might as well enjoy the pretty yellow and orange lights. If I'm concerned about descent velocity, I'll mount a rocket backwards and action group it to push my plane from the wrong end in a rocket-braking technique. If something goes wrong, it's a matter of 1 2 3. One ignites all sepratrons, two activates all emergency decouplers, three opens ejectable cockpit chutes. On some planes, it's merely a count of one. Fire the main decoupler and release the Flying Ant Safety Plane. It's a semi-infinigliding Ant Engine powered MK1 Cockpit with wings and wheels. Everything you need to make it to ground and not explode.

Kerballed Rover to Laythe. Should be a nice challenge without being too painful. Pack some science gear, and plan a good return for extra fun. Alternately, space station in Kerbin Orbit. Get some docking practice in.

That... That can't possibly fly, can it?

Gathering Science. Want a good challenge, gather your science with spaceplanes. I'm actually the one who wants a difficulty adjustment for Career mode because for some it's too easy, for some it's too hard, and some, like me, just find it too tedious.

Ah, it's just purely aesthetic. Seat belts are a safety feature and thereby are banned from Kerbal aircraft, I believe.

Any chances of a little 'bolt on' windscreen for the biplane cockpit for those of us making stunt planes out of it?

I can kinda agree with some under-fuselage floatation parts. I've made a couple long-distance planes where I'd enjoy being able to land on water and not need to dangle floatation pods under it.

I've had this issue in the past myself, where I find myself burnt out on KSP. My latest craze has been using Firespitter to make interesting propeller planes, then launch them into space.

My first successful docking was to dock a spaceplane to an orange fuel tank with a probe core on it. Being that 90% of my space program uses spaceplanes to get around, I needed extra fuel in space, so I launched rockets with fuel cans into orbit. I'll say this: docking to something that doesn't have RCS or SAS on it really sucks. It sucks more when you realize every time I screwed up, I had to try docking to a moving target. My second one was actually more hair-raising. Docking my standard spaceplane to my Station Central Core only to find out the hard way that I had my docking port positioned too close to the solar array and I'd foul it with the wings. Quick thinking had me wedge a fuel can between the core and the spaceplane... While the plane was sitting mere meters from my large solar panel, threatening at any second to smash it.

Probably either my Front-Engine Jet or my Ant Engine Escape Glider. One flies so well I could (though hadn't for the screenshots) fly it without SAS. The other makes a very powerful high-speed glider that I had no idea was an infiniglider in disguise.