psyper

I was able to reach twice the height in the atmosphere before I even had a slight chance of a flame-out. Its only at 15k from the surface and it has a large number of intakes. The intake air bar is only at 50% with over 1.xx units of air in it and I've had a lot lot less (about 0.12 units) before it actually flames out. When the reduction of power occurred there was no sparks or sputtering noises that you usually get with a flame out and I cut the engines regain control falling to a lower height and then kicking the engines back in and it would be the exact same engine that had this problem. I even landed the craft with the 'chutes and then take off and the exact same engine would start getting a power loss. I've even taken its twin and tweeked its power down to 80% and I was able to fly the vessel back home going above 15k ASL without a flame out.

its not a flame out issue but thanks for the input

Back to the drawing board. moar boosters, moar delta-v

no. don't. we need a backstory. we need a book. we need a blog posting series with ksp video footage etce tc!!

Theres two types of KSP players. I'm more the lets do this the way space-x or nasa would do it - but without many of the safety features... oh and everything is a simulation until it works right f5-f9 is my friend most of the time! I do like to read up on some of the posts on mathematics with huge formulas but at the end of the day I prefer to use websites and mods to do the calculations for me - heading towards a spacestation at 100k/s there isn't time to work out when I should start burning the nukes to stop me in time! I can't really tell from the screenshot - do you have any more - I was tempted to build a reverse craft which had two cockpits separated by a large wing and control surfaces - I can then use that as a rescue mission (not sure if kerbals weigh anything while in the craft?) but I couldn't even get normal craft off the ground but it might be something to play around with later on in the game. There is all kinds of awesome on that thread - certainly worth a look through. I'm always eager to view how people solve these challenges - some come up with really unique ways I never knew you could do on stock. I can spend hours going through the moonbase and spacestation megathreads taking a note of different configurations that I like the look of or solutions to problems I've had in the past. ah makes more sense now, thanks - moving them to the rear later tonight Well I had a play around with a new ship taking on board all the suggestions in this post - I launched it without SAS switched on and watch it climb with little deviation - when i did the first turn in to horizontal flight the prograde dropped down below my vector and it was very hard to keep flying horizontal as the weight is more forward than SAS could cope with but that can easily be solved by going vertical until I get my speed up and then slowly turning to horizontal flight a little at a time - the added speed on the wings help to keep it more stable at higher speeds and I'm able to get stable horizontal flight. Once I got it over 1km/s I tried to do a sharp turn and managed to get it, under control, around 90 degrees from my current heading before (of course) flame out occurred - before I'd go off 5 degrees from my current heading and it would spin out of control so this is a major improvement over my original design. And my SAS held it where I put it so I could point it at a target, kick in the SAS and wait for the craft to catch up to where I wanted it to go. I next cut the engines, rotated the craft to its retrograde heading and switched the engines back on - I managed to slow the crafts horizontal velocity so that it was descending vertically - full throttle stopped my decent and got me climbing again with no issues, no spinning or anything - it was bliss! Even threw the craft in to a spin on purpose kicked in the SAS and it eventually got the craft stable and I was able to point the craft at a 30 degree angle and punch it back in to a climb. It was amazing how a couple of simple changes made all the difference!! I was having way too much fun too late at night to get screenshots so will post them later today when I get home from work. I'm tempted to put some winglets (canards?) at the front just behind the cockpit just for aesthetics do you think that would cause any issues at all?

Yeah I noticed the drag on my ssto - I have them close on the same hotkey I have the switch to fuel/liquid ox switch. Bringing the intakes further forward - thanks Ah yes I'm figuring it out now - looking back I noticed that the plane would spin a certain way when vertical landing and again looking at my ssto it has symmetrical wings too (why I didn't just take that same design and removed all the LqO2 is beyond me!! With fuel pump you can set each tank with a number between 0 and 8 and it drains the highest first - its a god send when doing fuel runs from kethane - pumps fuel from the kethane miner to the surface-2-station lifter - then pumps fuel from the storage tanks on that to the station - then pumps fuel from the station to the minmus-kerbin transfer tug then pumps fuel from that to the lko fuel station then from that to any docked ships - saved a whole load of hassle and its fun watching your centre of mass shift as soon as you dock! I mainly use Jeb for all the features people use engineer for - distance from ap, pe, horizontal acceleration, vertical speed, suicide burn, closest distance from target etc It means I don't have to keep switching to map mode to watch my ap when going for a gravity burn or rendezvous or keeping an eye on my actual height above the ground rather than sea-level and winging it. Basically the tools nasa and the first Apollo astronauts had all those years ago. I did use the translatron for docking with my minmus base as you cant use feather controls for your thrust levels so its hard to just hover above the surface while you use reaction thrusters - if you could then I wouldn't need that. I also have limit thrust to terminal velocity for heavy launches - again nasa uses the same thing during the shuttle launches. And lastly as mentioned the anti-flame-out system which I think should be inbuilt in to the engines - not that hard to incorporate irl and I'm sure we would have that in place if we ever have decent ssto's!! I do all my docking manually as well as intercepting ground bases when landing - all thanks to Scott Manley of course - and, of course, fly safe to you too!!

Fengist, I noticed your modified Eagle is showing the lift dip down below the cockpit too - is this a problem?

WOW thats awesome thanks everyone!! Fengist: thanks for all that input - it was far more than I thought I would get and would certainly take that on board. I've downloaded the modified craft and will give it a play. I'm rather fond of tailsitters so it'll be cool if I could keep the design. I did a ssto tailsitter for my space tourism hotel and jet propelled lift (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85713-Space-Tourism-comes-to-the-Kerbal-Space-Center-%28VTOL-SSTO-Space-Hotel%29) - looking back at that one now I realise that I accidentally put all my tanks along the centre of mass keeping it stable pretty much all the way in to space! Oh and the skilled landed-on-the-VAB-shot : I use the goodspeed automatic fuel pump so can direct fuel to any tank in turn so I could use that to send fuel to the front first as I start to use it. I also use mechjeb's flame-out preventer which helps get my plane high and fast. I do love the look of my crafts wings so I might bring back the shape with your suggestions in order to bring the weight forward and the lift further back thanks for all the help. O-Doc: thanks, I'm partial for vtol craft as I got really angry with my planes plowing grooves in to the runway but will give the Ares 4a a fly just to see how they are made and might build on the design - I really need a ssto to take 4 crew to space so working out a way to get a hitch-hiker can on to it might be a bit of a challenge!

Thankyou - I'll give it a go. I noticed that too but when I rotate the craft 90 degrees in the sph the tilt disappeared (in another screenshot on the album) - I'm not sure if thats an artefact or not. The plane is built symmetrically - once the top two wings have been created I copied the top right one and put it at the lower left so it reflected and inverted then strutted the two together. Everything on the fuselage has been kept on two-way symmetry so I have no idea where that quirk has come from.

I have terrible trouble building planes. Everything I build ends up in a fireball at the end, side or base of the runway. So much so that I dispensed with runway launches altogether and adopted a rocket-with-jets approach. I've had some success with a vtol ssto and I'm now working on an ordinary vtol plane. I assumed not having to worry about extra mass of a nuke and oxidizer would make things more easy but alas no. So here is my first attempt. She flys okay - can hit a ceiling of about 25-30k with mechjeb flameout prevention and can do speeds of about 2km/s at a push - she is ideal of doing several SmallPrint's waypoint markers. However, and its a big however - If Hardun Kerman so much as sneezes in the cockpit it spirals out of control - I can only nudge slightly out of the prograde marker a touch to change its direction - if I so much as get a couple of degrees out it spins off to the retrograde marker and sticks to it like a magnet or it just rolls and rolls between the prograde and retrograde marks spinning like cheese down a hillside!! At one time or another I've had to deploy the chutes and wait until it lands then repack the chutes and take off again. Not ideal for these stealth trips in to enemy airspace! Help me pretty please! The craft is listed as 'Eagle 1 sans tac' in this folder: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8S2KVucoU9cWG1vSDNVNHZ5VTQ&usp=sharing

Thats one coooool AirRover! I was tempted to make a space plane with rover wheels but went for a deployable rover instead but that looks way more fun to fly - and do you drive to each waypoint or do you hop to them? On the answer to getting it to laythe - moar boosters of course

Ah forgot about tac - I'll remove it and resave the ship for you Yeah I knew as soon as i uploaded my ship then this would get moved here! But in all honesty I want this to be a spacecraft exchange anyway so I'm gonna start posting links to my craft files if anyone is interested in them - perhaps get a whole thread of different contract solutions would be pretty cool if everyone did it too Edit: uploaded a Sans TAC version for you.

Testing engines the kerbal way: strut some rockets to the side of it and let it go!

I wonder if you could create a copy of a FL-T100 Fuel Tank and replace the fuel with the goo canister code - not an elegant solution but it could do the trick. Or another way - any modders out there prepared to make a non-radial-attached goo canister?

I would try this differently. I've created ships in the past where they have tanks attached radially and then have sr docking ports at the end of them - this will then allow you to stack them on top of each other. In your example in the first picture if you half the size of the lab stack and then place two orange tanks radially on each side using girders and struts to balance them out when launching and then add sr docking ports at the top and bottom. You can then launch two identical sections and then fit them together in orbit.

so in kerbal-lore are these bad omens or good luck charms?

I'm tempted to install a robotics mod just so I can have the landing legs on a rail system - but depending on the terrain you either have to get the buggy underneath the docking port and wait for the magnetics to stop rocking it and then drop the ship on it OR you have to switch to the ship - set the thrust at 1/4, switch back to the buggy and wait for the thrust to raise the ship up a touch to move the buggy underneath and cut the power.

I created a little bit of complexity to Kethane with Kethane+ but nowhere near that of the diagram you posted. However, it wouldn't be impossible to create something along those lines. Kethane is pretty restrictive in the types of models you can use for it (you can't re-texture the models and publish it as a modification to the mod for starters) but kerbonite is looking pretty malleable in that respect and when I get a couple of days when I get bored of playing ksp again and want to work on making kerbonite more complicated then I might give that diagram a go!

4 sats and the first part of a spacestation that was requested by fine print. Each of the satellites have one science equipment on them in the photo but that can be swapped out as the contract requires.

Link to my craft page for Raptor 1 if anyone is still interested: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8S2KVucoU9cWG1vSDNVNHZ5VTQ&usp=sharing

does look like its a problem with symmetry - I'm thinking its having a hard time because they are mounting on to the liquid tanks which are themselves in 4x symmetry too. Might have to play around with the design of the ship a little bit. Many thanks for the input

I can do you one better - I can provide the craft file when I get home. Its been renamed to Raptor since the build. She flies okay most of the time but can get a bit hairtrigger on sharp angles of attack. Also she seems to have a habit of one random engine cutting out for no reason (low level low speed flight) and it'll be the same random engine on every reload. It'll be fine for a few missions and then suddenly start playing up. If you can figure out what is causing it that would be awesome! Its based on my SSTO from my old sandbox game: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85713-Space-Tourism-comes-to-the-Kerbal-Space-Center-%28VTOL-SSTO-Space-Hotel%29

Those bases are looking pretty cool but I saw this and the perspective makes the kerbal seem really big - couldn't help thinking that either the kerbal is having fun playing with his toy minmus base on minmus or he's just looking at it thinking - is this a minmus base for ants!?

Thats actually quite a cool solution - tie it in with a spacestation contract and you have rescue pods ready and waiting. I did a similar thing with satellites - I had 4 contracts to put 4 different satellites in to orbit so just created one rocket with 4 sats sticking out the sides (I'll post that later)

Perform aerial surveys of kerbin at an altitude of x to y & Chart source of data anomaly near site x on Kerbin with a rover. I've got loads of these so decided that a dedicated ship would be ideal - it had to stow a rover with it. I am terrible at planes so went for a vtol which has just air breathing engines. It has a top speed of over 2km/s and atmosphere ceiling of around 25km. It can pretty much circumnavigate kerbin while picking off aerial surveys and dropping the rover in to landing zones for closer inspections. I'm my save I see all these contracts as black ops (putting all those satellites in orbit - spy sats from suspicious companies that don't really exist - but they pay the rent so..). Oh did i mention the sinister red lights - yeah that just screams dropping in to the middle of nowhere with nightvision goggles on. Both craft and buggy support two people and the buggy is stowed underneath with enough clearance to drop from the craft and for the magnetics to kick in and then the landing legs can be raised and drop the ship on to the buggy. Occasionally the terrain is a little uneven but turning on the jets at a low power is enough to raise the ship for the docking ports to engage. Ship fully fuelled and buggy costs 86,368.0 I even managed to send one version of this on 3 contracts (two aerial and one buggy) and get it home to ksc with some fuel and plenty of snacks left over! I'm planning on keeping one going by returning it to base after each mission and refuelling it via KAS and send it on its next mission keeping tally of its costs and income. However, I do have a funny engine problem where one would randomly start malfunctioning - I've ruled out intake air starvation as its low atmosphere and seems to be the same engine each time... oh hum.