700NitroXpress

So I have an SSTO that achieved orbit, then I did a re-entry, and I was flying it at 22,000 meters give or take a couple hundred at about 1650 meters per second and I was descending. The craft felt unstable so I was being careful with the controls and then it nosed up hard and spun out of control. I regained control for a brief period at 8,000 meters and now going about 600 meter per second, but then the same thing happened again. Is this because the SSTO afterburner tanks were empty and throwing of the center of mass, or is something else to blame here? The turbo jet engines all have equal air intake and were running at about 0.4 and the flame-out threshold is 0.1 so they were still running. Here's the craft on the runway and in max velocity sustained flight. Update I have stability for sustained atmospheric flight by locking the forward fuel tank until the others are depleted. I have action groups for all engines. I'm now testing parachutes to see if they can pull me out of a chaotic spin and then cut the chutes using an action group for those.

That's pretty cool. What's the largest object you can transport with it?

Really, the game is hard to get into by just jumping right in, so I personally watched some tutorials on how to do basic things and learn all of the major components of the game before I did things on my own. Career mode is a challenge even for advanced players, but it does have the structure of learning the parts in a useful order for beginners. So really it's your call, but I would go with tutorial videos first to get the basics down and learn how to build good rockets and planes so that way you're not wasting time and effort with all the trial and error. I have in-depth tutorials for both new and advanced users on my youtube channel. There are also good videos by Scott Manley that I think everyone would also recommend. Here's Episode 1: It covers UI and controls as well as the VAB and SPHEpisode 2: Covers SPH and shows you how to build one that works from scratch.Episode 3: Covers the VAB, rocket building, orbiting and maneuvers.Here is a useful link to the KSP controls: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Key_Bindings If you choose to go the video rout, check out the ones I posted and also check out Scott Manley.

Good deal, I usually build planes with the CoM and CoL equal, but having it slightly behind is good for lightweight planes and slightly in front is good for heavyweight planes.

I use that engine on a lot of my lander designs and combine it with a few 24-77's on a FL-T800 fuel tank. If you have four of these on a lander, you have enough thrust for a launch off the ground on kerban, so it's more than enough for other planets and moons. The lander that I put down on Moho had these engines and it was enough for a landing and a return to dock with the orbiting ship.

What planet are you trying to get to? Here is my design of an interplanetary space station that I docked a crew transfer lander to the bottom, but there is still plenty of room on the sides for small rovers and more landers. I call it Gagarin Station. Currently deployed at Duna with plenty of fuel to spare. The station launches up as all one piece, if you like it you can get it here, just look for Gagarin Station and Transfer Pod: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-vTRL2n8wvzRmtqaWowdnZYTXM&usp=sharing Here are the videos of the launches:

One possibility as to why this works the way it does, is because the game is saving two ships to memory in the VAB. You have the ship that you're building and then you have an equal auto-saved ship that the game is saving for you in case of a crash. While both are being stored together in active memory, it can run slowly. While the ship is in the game and loaded, you're not actively saving the auto-saved ship to memory because the game is only focused on the current ship. Also, unless you are launching you're entire craft into space without staging anything, you're loosing a bunch of parts and once they pass the render threshold of 2.3km they don't have physics loaded anymore so the game will run more smoothly.

The part limit in the VAB is different than the part limit that your system can render and run on screen. So if you have several ships that are 1500 parts, you could launch them all and dock them in orbit and assemble massive vessels that otherwise wouldn't work as one in the VAB. This is also going to take a monster machine to run. I have an intel quad core clocked at 4.0 ghz 32gb of RAM and a EVGA GTX 690 and I'm getting about 10 fps on both station pictures that I posted.

You should replace the jet engines from the basic jet engine to the turbo jet engines. They'll take you to a higher altitude and achieve higher air speed, then do engine shutdown and switch to rockets. Also, you can use the rockets and turbo jets together because the additional thrust of the rocket will provide more air intake for the turbo jets and allow you to achieve max speed and altitude before you run out of air. Also, you don't need RCS on anything unless you're docking. This plane work as an SSTO. All turbo jet engines and 215 power engines to achieve orbit. This version also works with the nuclear engines.

Make sure you're using the right fuel, pure liquid fuel tanks are used for jet engines and liquid fuel, oxidizer combo, is used for the rocket engines.

I got to 1227 meters, then kaboom.

3564 parts shown all together in this station. 1100 parts in this station. This is Big H.O.S.S. Helios Orbital Solar Station, under it is a bunch of Ion engines so it basically has an infinite fuel supply as long as there is gas for the ion engines. In theory, I could doc both of these stations together and have a super station, but I haven't tried it... yet.

I'm working on making space planes and SSTO's for Duna. Obviously, air intake engines will not work so the plane has to fly under rocket power, be capable of landing and be capable of being refueled both on the ground and in orbit. Post your ideas here, stock parts only, no mods. Here's an example of what I have so far. This SSTO flew from Kerban all the way to Duna with only its two NERVA engines. However, it doesn't have the power to land or fly very well in Duna atmosphere, but it can glide very well. Here is a design, that I think will work.

Duna Command Center (DCC) My next step is to put some APC's in a garage next to it and also lay down a solar array field.

My Duna Command Center. First launch achieved Kerban orbit, next 5 launches refited the engines. Then it was off to Duna. Here is the first video: Here is the second video:

This is pretty cool. They should work up to 20km before you switch to the rockets.

I was only doing a simple version for the purposes of demo. I used the same method to get my Duna Command Center into orbit as well as this. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzaVkxMTNwUlNsMVU/edit?usp=drive_web

Good advice for optimization, thanks.

Technically, it's not cheaty because it's just a large scale version of this:

I'm using an air lift method to get any sized payload into space in two stages. Then, once in space, I can send up any engine I want and dock it to the rest of the craft using the same launch method. Here is an image of my Atlas III craft with the launch stage attached to it. You can also check out the video demo of this method here: The download link is in the descriptions. Fly it like I did and you'll have no problem. What do you pro's think of this method? What do you new players think of this method? Here is better example of this method. Air lift to max altitude, burn orbital engines, decouple, attach new transfer engines through docking process. Don't just look at the air lifter. What do you guys think about the engine refit with the use of the docking ports? You can attach any engine or fuel amount you want in orbit without having to refuel the system.

You can get rid of all of the complex launch stages and just go with a 2 stage design. 1st stage uses all jet engines to lift your craft to 20,000 meters, eject, then fire an orbital stage to get your craft into orbit. If you perfect this method you can get any sized payload into orbit without asparagus staging. I do an example here when I launch my refit engines into orbit to connect to my orbital base that I later set down on Duna.

Take a look at this and see if it helps:

Top view of the APC deployed on the landing legs.

Rear view, you can see the main command pod protected inside as well as the ion engines going at full power. Landing legs are deployed to prevent the craft from moving.