DeMatt

I stand corrected. One-hundredth of normal gravity, not the zero I thought it was.

Could always build a barge - land a ship on it (or more likely, detach a science package from on top), and it'll be "landed".

"Hack Gravity" turns off gravity. Simple as that. So drag from the air brought you to zero, instead of terminal velocity (drag force = gravity force).

I unfortunately can't replicate the "flying apart" bit from your flight, so I've just got some comments on the rocket design: There are Mk3-to-2.5m adapters which double as fuel tanks... maybe use 'em instead of the 3.75m-to-2.5m adapters? Fuel cell is unnecessary unless you plan on retrieving parts from, say, Jool. Action groups? For e.g. solar panels? You dump the Poodle but not the X200-16 fuel tank it feeds from? Sepratrons can lose two-thirds of their fuel. I think you're short on parachutes. Maybe stow the probe core inside the cargo bay (beside the Klaw) and replace the sub-1.25m stuff with a Mk16-XL? No torque, reliant on RCS for attitude control. Mainsail stage has a little too much fuel if it's discarded just before LKO. Maybe lose the X200-16 and move its fuel to the Poodle stage (using the Mk3-to-2.5m adapter tanks). You could just not timewarp? It seems to not fly apart until you actually timewarp, so don't do that, and fly your mission. Maybe it won't fly apart if you timewarp after you dump the Mainsail.

The custom parts catalog is stored in /GameData/Squad/PartList/PartCategories.cfg. Really? You couldn't show a little patience, especially when asking about something so esoteric?

It seems that the game has a tendency to auto-delete debris on KSC grounds. If you can go to the Tracking Station, and then back to your landed pod-ship, and still see the debris sitting around, then you should be able to recover that debris. Use the icons at the upper-left of the Tracking Station screen to un-filter the debris category.

What-all's in the Service Bay? Materials, Goo, Thermometer, Gravioli, Barometer, and Seismometer? Anything else? 'Cuz if that's all, you could try moving the Materials Bay to between the capsule and the parachute, then switching out the 2.5 metre Service Bay for a 1.25 metre Service Bay and moving it there too. That'll knock 0.2 tons off right there. You ARE stripping out nonessential Monopropellant, right? If you only need to move five tourists, keep the Hitchhiker, but replace the 3-man pod with a 1-man, and add a probe core for control. They're not paying for a GUIDED tour. Maybe try rotating the outermost boosters inwards, so from above it looks more like this: 1 2 1 3 4 3 1 2 1

Those posts were written before version 1.0 came out and changed both aerodynamics (and thus wing designs) and the air-breathing engines (and thus which engines you use where). Try looking for a more recent thread - say, one started in May of this year.

As with subassemblies, the root part on the craft being merged in (so the satellite if you're adding it to the rocket) MUST have a free attachment node.Not any other part, the ROOT part. The one you chose when you first started building your satellite. You can use the "Root" editor gizmo (beside the Place, Offset, and Rotate gizmos) to change which part is the root part.

The difference between "time to apoapsis" and "angle to apoapsis" is specifically down to the amount of effort it takes the rocket to accelerate UP to apoapsis. Loosely speaking, KSC will not remain centered under your rocket while it accelerates to apoapsis (which would mean time = angle). So, to measure "angle to apoapsis", you'd fly a test rocket along your intended trajectory, and when it reaches apoapsis, you'd check its longitude versus that of KSC. Assuming you can fly the same trajectory every time (or have MechJeb do it), then you'd launch when "angle between target and launchpad" = "angular distance travelled by target during launch time" minus "angular distance travelled by rocket during launch".

That setting limits the amount of braking force that the wheel can apply.Think of where the wheel is receiving its deceleration force from... right where it touches the ground, yes? Certainly not in line with the ship's center of mass. Too much brake torque, like too much acceleration torque, will either flip the ship upside down or cause the wheel to skid.

If you can send Jeb on EVA (upgrade the Astronaut Complex to level 2), then you can get out and push. Really. Wait until your vessel reaches apoapsis, aim it in the retrograde direction (so you know which way to push), then EVA Jeb and have him push the vessel with his EVA pack. Make sure you're pushing straight and not causing the vessel to tumble. Don't use up all his EVA fuel; save some to get back in the vessel so he can refuel. Repeat until your vessel's periapsis is low enough (~40 kilometres) to aerobrake effectively. Or you can turn on "Infinite Fuel" in the debug menu (Alt+F12) and pretend you did the pushing. Rendezvous (so you can transfer Jeb and all his science to a new craft) is probably beyond your skill level at this point.

Is your trim clear? (Alt-X) According to the screenshot, your plane is pointed to the right and is also steering to the right. The angled rudders are probably not doing you any favors, since by default they'll also activate for pitch adjustments. Try straightening out the rudders and setting them for yaw only (right-click in the hangar and hit the toggles). If that doesn't work, post up the .craft file and a list of mods needed to run it.

Mostly correct. You can put parachutes on your boosters and trigger them in the same stage as the decouplers, and then if the booster stays within physics range the parachute will function normally. The "old" physics range was 2.5 km; I believe it's been increased by quite a bit, but I don't know by how much. If the booster lands before your ship leaves physics range, then it will remain landed when your ship leaves, thus allowing it to be recovered. If the booster is lofted into a suborbital trajectory (> 22 km altitude before leaving physics range), then it won't be considered "crashed" until it returns to the 22 km border; this means that if you put your ship in orbit before this happens, you can then switch the view back to the booster and watch it land, preventing the system from crashing it. I find that boosters tend to be cheap anyways - if they're not, you're overbuilding your spaceships. You can look at the StageRecovery mod if you really truly want the game to "recover" your boosters instead of "crashing" them.

They're also not related to each other, which suggests to me that they should be in separate threads so they can be discussed separately. The rules for the merging-in craft are the same as for subassemblies: the root (=first chosen) part MUST have a free attachment node for it to attach to the destination. Don't know where you got that idea... the only thing I can see in the patchnotes that has anything to do with flameouts is this: - Air-breathing engines now drain fuel evenly from all tanks in a vessel. And that won't prevent flameouts because it's "each engine grabs its resources from all the fuel tanks", not "engines share their resources evenly".

It's been noted on the forums a few times... I don't know whether it's intentional or a bug.

I have to say, I'm not seeing any of this in a stock install. A replica of your center stack (with the service bay empty) flew perfectly straight with SAS on, right through to burnout of the first stage (didn't bother testing further). I could steer the stack without problem within the atmosphere, so long as I didn't get more than about 15 degrees off of prograde. If I oversteered, then SAS was unable to stabilize the rocket until the airspeed dropped. Tried that, only way I could force SAS to not hold a good heading was by asking it to aim at a wildly changing target, e.g. a maneuver node with only a small maneuver to perform.Could you be mistaking "camera shake" for "rocket shake"?

Does your rocket have any other sources of control? Steerable fins, RCS jets? Does it happen just after you've staged off a piece? A pic of your craft would be helpful.

Multiple labs on a single station do not work. Undock the second lab from the first and run it as a separate station.

...The radial (= surface-mounted) version of the drogue chute IS new. Before version 1.0, there was only the radial version of the standard chute.

You can hold the mod key (Alt on Windows) to prevent surface attachment and force node attachment.

Really gotta ask... what is your problem with just eyeballing it, and then fixing the inevitable error? Contracts tend to be pretty loose about meeting their specifics.

Hrm... That is a lot of RCS capability for a ship without a docking port. And a lot of electric capability for a ship without science instruments or an antenna. A quick rebuild of the lander says that it masses just under 22 tons wet. LKO to low Duna orbit is approximately 1700 m/s; using a single LV-N and its 800s Isp, you'll need a little under 7 tons of fuel to achieve that, bringing the mass up to about 32 tons. With liquid-fuel boosters and good piloting, you should be able to put together a booster that squeezes under the 140-ton limit of the level-2 launch pad and puts the above into orbit. Solids are probably too mass-intensive to make that limit. I think you need to rethink your lander. Why does it need the rockets if it's not expected to bring Valentina back?

The impression I get, from a couple quick experiments, is that "Suspension Spring" roughly equates to the tonnage (on Kerbin) the leg can support without sagging. "Damper" is presumably how well the leg resists bouncing. "Impact Tolerance", I would assume, is how much instantaneous force the leg can possibly exert without it breaking, whereas "Crash Tolerance" applies when the ground is hitting the leg from some other direction rather than on its foot.

The new fairing parts, beginning with the AE-FF1 under Aerodynamics, do permit for "interstage" fairings. Unlike the Procedural Fairings version, which has an attachment node at the top to continue adding the rest of the rocket, you will want to build the "spine" first, then add the fairing base to the bottom and finally add panels until you reach the top.