Madrias

Glad you pointed me toward reading this thread! Enjoyable storytelling along with seeing yet another way to dodge the Tech Tree's unfriendly nature to planes. I'd installed some mods which took care of the problem (Half-blimp, half rocketplane) and allowed exploration, but this is a surprisingly elegant way to turn the game on its head and kick the tech tree in the shins.

I consider the Kraken and I to be on a first-name basis. Goodness knows I've seen enough things caused by the Kraken realizing I'm running a group of grey-suits to space and deciding to implode the solid rocket boosters through my Rockomax tank, but not the bottom-most one, letting my Mainsail go sailing right through the capsule.

When I'm not putting spaceplanes in orbit, I'm testing things I've done by config bashing... Thanks to another modder on here, I've learned a neat trick for bashing models together and making one whole part out of it. What did I make with it? An engine. What did I do with it? Decided to see how low I could fly to the concrete water (complete with a few requisite low-altitude victory rolls) with one of the Orange Three on board. Wanted to put 2 there, but Jeb's manning my refueling station and Bob's on the Mun driving a rover, so Bill had to take the task alone. And yes, Bill survived to fly another day. Although, undoubtedly, he'll need a new flight suit. For the record, second to last image holds my altitude record. And yes, that plane's not easy to control, and it gets worse with fine controls on. You need quick reflexes to handle a Devastation Incorporated Forcefyer prototype engine at full thrust. My next crazy plan? Strap two of 'em to something...

How low can you go? Wide open throttle with an engine (made by me) that produces 1680 thrust. And yes, Bill survived. I'm not cruel enough to post something like that if I killed one of the big 3. Jeb's in orbit, comfortable in the space station.

One or the other would certainly help (says the guy who's been up since 5AM... Yesterday. I don't sleep on a normal 24 hour schedule. Too many late nights led me to adopting a 48 hour "day"), but sometimes either can be just the inspiration you need to make something crazy work.

RCS Hoverbug (basically a challenge to myself to make something that flies around Kerbin on RCS alone) just exploded and crashed my game something fierce in a spectacular parts-flying-everywhere fashion.

I've mistakenly used canisters of RCS when I meant to grab canisters of Xenon, so it's not impossible... If you're tired enough, it's possible. Needless to say, those wing-mounted space probes had plenty of effective Delta-V when one considers the rate of acceleration for RCS versus the rate of acceleration for an Ion engine... 3 cans of RCS will do that.

Plunk a docking port on there (either replace the nosecone or use the inline one), stick some fuel tanks in Orbit as a space station, and fuel won't be a problem. Just a friendly hint for you. After that, you're only limited on places to go to by the number of relay/refuel stations in orbits above planets.

Oh, I'd forgotten my early adventures in Rocketry where I'd lost the ship due to parachutes opening alongside the SRB's.

I've built R/C airplanes before, so I've got a reasonable grasp of basic aerodynamics. Some planes are big, others as small as I can make them, and most look like planes or some futuristic derivative of them. Rockets, on the other hand, tend to flip out of control, run out of thrust at the wrong moments, create chaos with staging mishaps, and when they do work properly, take an age to turn in any direction.

Who needs parachutes? That's what wings are for. Of course, I pack parachutes on the ejectable cockpit just in case of accidents.

Thank you! Visiting the forums tends to inspire me to build crazier spacecraft than usual, so I can tell there's been some insanity here from the start. After all, where else could I get the idea in my head to try launching a mission to the Mun using nothing but solid fuel boosters? It exploded about 4000 meters up, but that's cause I'm not good with rockets. I can build many spaceplane variations, even built an SSTO that gets to my station, docks to a fuel can, refuels, then takes off, carrying the Rockomax Jumbo-64 under the belly, but my roughest time in Career mode? Having to launch rockets to get plane parts. Of course, the forum has also inspired me to be a little more active in the KSP community.

Hi! Figured now that I started poking around the rest of the forum, not just General KSP Discussion, I should introduce myself before people start trying to remember me and break something. So where to start? Been playing KSP since 0.17, though didn't enjoy it until some time into 0.18. I suck with rockets, but give me enough time and I'll get anywhere with purpose built spaceplanes. I love mods, and I'm slowly learning how to make stuff for KSP (so far just by config bashing, but I'll get there eventually). As mentioned, I'm new. I showed up a few days or weeks or something after the forums came back up, mostly just poking around when I realized that there was KSP discussion. One of the threads at the time, the one that drew me in, was referring to something like "Have you ever had an accidental orbital collision?" and I'd literally just had one. I'd flown my shuttle into orbit, dumped my spent fuel can, and sent said spent gas tank hurtling into my space station. I've filled orbits with debris, and I've created fields of green on Minmus with stranded Kerbals. And if you've read this far, just call me Mad. Everyone else does everywhere else.

Thank you for this! Now that I know how to do it, I can go nuts making engines that look cool (for personal use only, though I've put in my .cfg files the requisite info for teaching me how to do it.) as well as not having to worry about parts clipping.

Oh, nothing much, just poking with config files and peeking into mods to figure out how things were done. Gotta thank the author of ReStock for indirectly teaching me what I used to make a new engine... Yeah, I was bored. Figured I'd make a Devastation Incorporated prototype engine. Obviously I'll be tweaking down the thrust when I copy the folder and make the "production model" of it...

21, though might as well say 22 (will be in December), and I build spaceplanes. Sometimes I make weird things with .cfg bashing and then strap it to a plane and fly it.

When you try to scroll down the KSP forums with a right click and drag.

I've had decouplers get stuck, engines turn sideways, planets disappearing, Hell Kraken, and disintegrating spaceplanes full of struts. I'd say the Kraken and I have become one at times.

Building more low-level spaceplanes in Career mode. Learning to hate the LV-909 in the process.

Lightly airhogged, but not to the point of insanity. Something to keep in mind is that the Aerospike rockets are good for spaceplanes. As for craft files, I've never uploaded one before, so I'd have no clue on doing so. But I will once I get more of the parts I need in Career mode. Can't wait to get the NERVA engines, they make my job easier.

SSTO Crew Shuttle to evacuate all essential personnel, dock to the station, forcibly deorbit using the shuttle's engines, undock and follow closely behind, but mindful of the trail of debris.

Because having your Kerbal get out and push actually has more thrust. Or that you can get more thrust out of your RCS thrusters...

Keep your Center of Lift behind your Center of Mass, and keep Center of Thrust in-line with Center of Mass. Also, once you build enough spaceplanes, follow your instincts. If it looks like it should fly, it'll probably do okay. If it looks crazy, check the relationships between CoL, CoM, and CoT.

The crazy guy who plays flight sims and built a few RC Airplanes in my free time. Once you know the basics of aerodynamics, it doesn't take much to build aircraft, and once you've made something that can cruise around Kerbin under jet power, it's only a matter of getting the altitude up, making orbit, and remembering to pack some RCS for easy navigation. Then just use some maneuver nodes to get where you need to go. Rocketry is a foreign concept to me, and I waste tons of fuel getting something half the size of a decent 3 Kerbal spaceplane into orbit.

Flying around Kerbin grabbing Science in a modded Career mode playthrough. Hooligan Labs Airship mod, B9 Aerospace, Firespitter, and a few others are all thrown in the mix. Got to the North Icecap with a LV-T45 powered blimp.