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I always rather liked this vertical staging idea. Its actually quite effective provided you do as you suggested and drop some of the engines themselves as the TWR climbs. I regular used this in 0.22 with NERVAs on interplanetary designs. If the docking ports get too swingy and the tail starts to whiplash then consider moving to full-on 2.5m decouplers rather than the ports. You will no doubt have tried this and realised you cant stitch the fuel lines across the decouplers due to their high profile, however there are a couple of tricks to get around this; Firstly, if you have the KW Rocketry modpack then the slim profile decouplers included do allow for a vertical stitch like this. If you dont have this mod then you can put a tiny fuel can radially-mounted just above each joint and pump the fuel across the decoupler via this. You can even tweak the radial can to be empty at launch to save weight, the lines will work anyway since they just define fuel-draw paths and dont actually pump anything. Note that while the oscar B or toroidal tanks are tempting for this, they tend not to work very well since they dont attach well to radial decouplers and/or dont like fuel lines. Use the tiniest 1.25m tank. You can jettison each of these helper tanks along with the tank below since you emptied them in the VAB anyway. Thirdly, and this one makes for some monstrosities. Rather than your single 'beaded' stack, have 2 or more such stacks up the middle with your ring of engines up top. This then lets you run your fuel-lines up the stack without the need for mod decouplers or radial pumping points. You run each line to the tank above it on the next stack across, giving a 'helter-skelter' pattern of fuel lines. I've done this one a couple of times using 6/8 of those vertical staging stacks and it works like a charm, though is pretty hvy on part-count.

I suspect Vanamonde is probably in the right area here. A lot of my designs visibly sag a little which of-course leads to non-straight non-perpendicular wheels. I've certainly noticed this too and have never really succeeded in eliminating it from designs. In order to spread the weight as evenly as possible I started using a great many wheels on each side in order to remove suspension compression as a possibility, still turns. Tried the east-west minmus flats, still turning. Tried killing all the torque modules and driving in docking mode, still turns. What really weirds me out, is that if Vanamonde identified the only factor here, then the direction of the drift wouldnt be consistent, sometimes you would drift left, sometimes right, depending on the design and surface. I always see left-drift...

Yeah you wont be able to get much past your current 450ms on Kerbin. Even adding FAR wont change things too drastically as the terminal V at sea-level is still fairly low. I did something similar to you, rocket-powered cars are awesome. I use the Minmus flats usually for drag-racing. As you pointed out, downforce is the tricky bit. Seems from your screenshot that you are using RCS for the downforce. Depending on the mass of your car you may have more luck with LFO burning engines for that aspect. I use ants (lv-1) or the little rockomax 48S quite often to stick the thing to the ground, just dont get carried away and add too much downward thrust as i snapped a number of wheel-bases before 0.23 brought us thrust limiters. I've long suspected that the reason (or part of it) why minmus drag-cars liftoff is that the curvature of that world is so small. If you enable SAS before starting your run then the car will slowly increase it's 'Angle of Attack' as you burn across the flats. It's trying to hold the heading you began with, which is now above the horizon. Try with the SAS off Of course the other fun part of drag races across the minmus flats is that when (not if) you fail to stop in time, the slope at the end of the flat is often enough to punt the car into minmus escape (think Harvey Wedstone in The Darwin Awards and his rocket-powered Chevy)

I've had a couple of these over the last few days in my current career, including one that made me spill coffee across my desk. I have a lot of satellites parked up in LKO for the RT/SCANSat mods, add MW relays from KSPI and near-kerbin space is fairly populated. Now these sats all launch on lifters designed to leave no debris, i dont drop boosters in stable orbits, specifically to reduce Kessler Syndrome. What I didn't allow for however was the disposal of aerodynamic parts added to stabilise the launches with FAR. So I got a swarm of nosecones blitzing round Kerbin in a variety of stable orbits. No sweat I think, I've played enough KSP to know the likelihood of collision is slim, even when shooting for the same orbit all the time around the little planet of Kerbin. What I had entirely forgotten was that one of the career save's very early flights was launched westwards into a retrograde orbit. The little satellite serves no real purpose, was just something I was mucking about with, but the awesome side-effect is that during launches I now frequently see that sat zip past at 5kms relative velocity. Last night as I lifted a 290 tonne fission reactor stack into LKO I had that little westward satellite buzz by at 400 meters distance. Was gone almost as soon as it could render. Chuckling to myself I aligned for my circularisation burn, lit the engines and started to stabilise the orbit, and suddenly 'BANG', bits of junk spinning everywhere. The aerodynamic nosecone from that westward sat had passed close enough to tear a radiator off the piloted ship. Im now very glad that KSP isnt doing impact energy calculations; the debris massed about 150kg but struck with a relative velocity of approx 5kms. Feels like I should have been instantly vaporised. Unfortunately I was forced to abort the launch of the reactors entirely. The loss of 1 radiator wasnt going to be enough to cause catastrophic overheating, but it did hammer the efficiency of the generators to the point where there wasnt much point in having them up there. Deorbited the stack and dumped it into my nuclear graveyard.

Economy is a false economy. Ecology is for hippies. They get thrown wherever I damn well please; despite the Kerbals being a green race, the environmental concept of 'green' has never occured to them. I do roleplay a fair amount when playing KSP, I agonised long and hard over what to do with my nuclear junk (playing with KSPInterstellar so I get more than the average space program). I eventually came up with the idea of making my space program's flag the trefoil nuclear symbol. Anywhere a lander has used a nuclear drive gets flagged up as a hot zone. Theres also a graveyard some 6km west of KSC where all my ground-based un-kerbaled reactors are parked. This patch is surrounded with 30-odd nuke flags to warn off any curious kerbals and a lot of junk gets piled in there alongside the active powerplants. Safe? Not really, but then I'm quite happy lighting the damn things on the pad and spraying whatever their exhaust is across KSC should the mood take me. Im also not much for re-use. I play a lot of KSP across multiple saves and launch a great many missions, KSPI necessitates a number of maintenance missions due to it's mechanics, and I just cant face the increased workload refueling all my spent stages would entail. So empties get trashed somewhere and replacements are launched from KSC. So far in my current save I am at least taking KSPI's 'depleted fuel' resource seriously and stacking it into the graveyard to decay quietly. (its a useless resource, just fills up your reactors and clogs up the power production, necessitating disposal of some sort)

Nice work with the coupler-chaining there. For some reason it never occured to me to do this with engines. I did however use the same principles on the nose-end of several rockets to dramatically increase the number of 'payload slots'. Dont have a pic right here, but imagine your setup inverted on the nose of a rocket with each engine replaced by an independant satellite on a port/decouple. Was loads of fun, loved it, but never found any way to make it work with FAR, just too much drag.

..snip.. Question about SSTO using KSPI engines rather than rapiers. I havent experimented with the top end KSPI power options, I currently have no fusion or AM. That said, a thermal turbojet design is easily realisable even with basic KSPI infrastructure. Key is to not carry the reactor of-course, the thermal jets are a bit gutless as the air thins and they really struggle to push their own power source into a position where you can make an orbital insertion. I've managed to make a number of reasonable SSTO designs that will fly with FAR using microwave thermal receivers and the turbojets. Major design constraint here is engine length sticking out the back of the craft since you cant surface attach to the thermal receiver (due to its animation). Heres an example of something I managed to get into an 80x80 with a little to spare. It needs about 500MW per engine on the runway to power up to working altitude Note that the radial intakes are dangerous and were removed in the next version of this design, They don't work with the pre-coolers and caused the turbojets to detonate when I lit them on re-entry (DRE contributed i'm sure). Additionally the wing surfaces are all procedural, which made it easier to get the proper wing-shapes despite not being able to attach to the receivers. A much smaller earlier design with a single receiver/turbojet and a total weight below 10 tonnes was able to mach whilst still on the runway and showed re-entry effects on the powerclimb. These engines are quite a lot of fun to be honest, and im looking forward to seeing how these same designs perform when fed with more power.

True, Mechjeb and Engineer have a horrid time estimating thermal stages. If you are carrying a reactor they do the math properly. If you dont carry the reactor but just a thermal receiver then KER at least wont register any dV at all until you launch and actually toggle the receiver so that it knows how much power its gonna get. Same is true for a number of the interstellar part combinations in situations where they cant produce their own power and rely on your network infrastructure. In general I find a launchpad test to be the best thing to do to estimate these. Just remember it's under-performing a bit. My turn... I found that in my version of KSPI at least the atmospheric intake scoops for feeding thermal turbojets dont appear in the VAB/SPH as they are assigned category : 'none' in their part file. Am I not supposed to be using these then? I actually got several thermal jet spaceplanes into orbit before i realised my stock intakes were not producing intakeAtm. Making them aero category brought them into the game properly. I should be using these then right? My thermal turbojets are running on atmospheric mode.

Not quite sure why I didn't consider this one during design. The canards are gutless and work mainly as a secondary elevator, which I knew. I then didn't consider the length of the lever on those rear ailerons, which as you pointed out leaves me little roll authority. Repositioned the control surfaces in the back, lost a bit of the over-zealous trailing-edge sweep on the wing-root to make that segment more delta, then lifted the swept tips to give me a little dihedral angle. Much more stable in that axis. I also took the opportunity to move the CoM backwards a bit, as shown its balanced as I'd balance stock or most mods, but this design loses no mass until orbital insertion and that CoM was giving hardcore mach tuck. (im used to some CoM drift before I even rotate from runway acceleration. This flies for free until 20km and 2kms thanks to the interstellar mod components.)

So....I've been playing around a bit with a supersonic fighter-style thing. Love the design i've come up with, but I'm getting some stability issues you guys might help me diagnose. The 'viper' in the SPH. It's mainly wing shapes and such I want you guys to look at. For those curious the tanks are KW, thermal turbojets and radiator from Interstellar. Now this thing flies just fine in the lower atmosphere, however around 12-14km (900-1000ms) it starts to 'dutch roll' and then loses roll stability altogether (it will fly level if trimmed and left level. If roll occurs it does not self-correct, the roll surfaces currently seen are 'just' enough to reign in most rolls but a return to true stability/level-flight is rare). Several flights have ended with the craft inverting completely around this point in the climb (where its actually pretty stable). Im starting to think I need to angle the wings from the root (anhedral/dihedral angles). Now normally i'd want dihedral to promote roll stability, yet when i look at many modern high-velocity aircraft im finding anhedral angles. The wing currently is 0 angled and emerges from the horizontal 'datum-line' of the fuselage. Fore-canards are set to roll, Ailerons are the two small controls either-side of the aerospike, elevators are the large surfaces further toward the wingtips. On a related note: when using procedural control surfaces like this, should i angle the back edge of the control surface to run parallel to the back edge of the wing its attached to? Or should it be running perpendicular to direction of flight? Ideas? How can I make this design more stable in the roll-axis?

You can do orbital solar farms, but you will need to get them down inside Moho orbit before they start making enough to run the stuff this mod adds. I have 4 solar farms in a very low solar orbit, each has 4 gigantors and this setup provides a reasonable chunk of power, with the advantage that i always know exactly where to point the reciever. Note of course you need to add lots of radiators to cool the farms when they are this low. You dont need too many sats for a strong network, I only launched 3 relay sats, to 900km in an even triangle they give complete LoS in Kerbin SoI (barring some moon shadows). You then just keep churning out the reactor transmtters. Many of mine are parked in the grasslands 10km west of KSC, where they beam the power out to the network. As far as I can see atmospheric attenuation is only applied if the receiver is in atmosphere, so this doesnt hurt me. Note reactors on the surface of Kerbin are hard to cool, but the advantage is you can rover or parachute them into position, avoiding some super hvy launches. My Questions: Im trying to economise some designs and am wondering exactly which aspects of a relay situation need directional transceivers and a proper line of sight? The craft that ultimately wants to use power has receivers pointing as many directions as possible to hook into the network fully. How many transceivers does a relay need? Up to now i've been studding these as well, likewise transmitters. So... do I need transmitter and relays pointing in all directions just like i do with the reciever craft? Or are one or both of these aspects a more simple 'LoS to craft' rather than 'LoS to transceiver'? Main reason im asking is that im struggling to make large reactors, since between radiators and transceievers real-estate becomes an issue. Secondly. Whats the use of the Attila? I must be reading the tooltip wrong, or mis-understanding. From what I can see for equivalent sizes it has the same thrust/mw as the plasma thruster, same mass, worse isp and a worse max power draw (and therefore potential thrust). Whats the deal with these things?

Counting reverts/quickloads i've probably driven the Kerbal race to the brink of extinction by now. My most recent run through with KSPI and FAR is proving particularly dangerous, with many launches somersaulting through the 13-16km mark, I can generally recover and orbit these, though its happened so frequently I started removing the kerbals from these flights. (hvy reactors in payloads tend to leave me very high CoM). The single most lethal design was a 45 kerbal capacity orbital station that i launched in a single piece. I had filled the hitch-hikers to check capacity and forgot to empty them for the usual unmanned launch. An ejected booster at 29km clipped the tail and tore off a radial engine and a few fins. The resulting instability sent the rocket into a flatspin which I could only recover by abandoning an entire half-burned stage, this left the design unable to stabilise its orbit and it re-entered (with DRE and without intent == DOOM!) The most dangerous designs I have that actually see regular use is any of my shuttles. Jet aircraft dont prove bothersome, neither do traditional spaceplanes. These shuttles however are pure rocket engine, TWR>1 with a token lifting surface to stabilise them through the FAR atmosphere. Thankfully I now have a crew abort system on these that will save passengers from 1km or greater altitudes. They still regularly kill pilots below that mark though when they roll off the runway edge or backflip on rotation at liftoff. This is the culprit... all stock parts, likes to wipe crews out at liftoff

Jeb was so excited he could hardly sit still. The big day was finally here and he was going to space. The ship had been delivered the week before and sat now on the pad being fueled. Here was his chance at last to show the world that space was the answer. Jeb didn't much care what the question was, space was always the answer... 3..2..1..Lift-off! All in all a successful venture. Jeb proved to Kerbin that a Kerbal could make it outside the atmosphere, and survive. The press went wild. On his way around the planet he took plenty of photos with his cellphone and spammed a bunch of forums with them on his return, raising awareness even further. Several contractors promised delivery of new parts, picked personally from a range of possibilities by Jeb. In particular was a memo to the manufacturer of the marvelous explosive rings regarding a radial version to avoid a repeat of the mid-stage of this maiden flight... ------ Standard flight to orbit for science collection. Grabbed crew reports on the climb and started transmitting around 40km, then did some biome eva spam. Grabbed a couple of basic nodes and then chased down experiments as usual. Key unlocks are Science Tech and Electrics along with Stability, General Rocketry, Survivability and Flight Control. This gives the newly born KSP some tools to work with.

Jebadiah Kerman was bored. The Kerbals were not interested in space flight in the slightest and the fledgling KSP had a paltry budget. But then one day everything changed for Jeb. In fact, everything changed for every Kerbal, but Jeb would be the first to feel the effects. A small group of amateur Kerbal astronomers had identified an asteroid the size of Duna barreling through space out past Eeloo orbit; whatever had taken a swipe at this giant had sent it hurtling through the inner system, and even the most pessimistic of those with the ability to do the math acknowledged the inevitability of a catastrophic Kerbin intercept some 5 and a half years hence. And so the Kerbals did what you would expect of such heroic little green buggers. They panicked, looted and generally wasted the first 6 months of the time remaining to them before the authorities finally regained some semblance of control and announced the bootstrapping of the Kerbal Space Program to ensure the survival of the species. (whether this is a good thing from the universe's perspective is your call) Cue Jeb and co... --------------------------------------- This is going to be a series of mission reports with screenshots illustrating my latest game of KSP 0.23 I am running the Apocalypse challenge (link). Basically I have to get as many Kerbals off Kerbin within 5 years. Emphasis is on some kind of infrastructure and sustainability for the species at the 5 yr mark. Hence mods include: KSP Interstellar (no warp, i suck with it anyway) Kerbal Attachment System Porkworks Orbital Habitats - living space for groups of kerbals longterm KW Rocketry Novapunch2 - 5m gear only Im also using for various immersive/difficulty reasons DRE, FAR, RT2, SCANSat, KJR, KIDS, RealChutes, PresciseNode, PDynamics+Fairings, Alarmclock, Engineer and MechJeb. Im starting it out as a career game, since the Kerbals havent been interested in spaceflight upto now. The assumption is that the vast majority of the stock tech is available on Kerbin but needs to be adapted, repurposed and generally obtained for the program. Mod tech and the new KSPI techtree nodes represent companies and groups on Kerbin backing the evacuation plan, rather than some crazy scheme like huge underground bunkers or giant frikkin lazors to shoot the rock down. They therefore accelerate their research to help KSP out. Completing generally impressive tasks and showing proof of concept will also win backing and investors. In this way the science collected to unlock the parts for this scheme is better imagined as public relations and exposure. If it looks like the plan might work they might work faster! (a bit of basic tech was moved to start node to avoid a series of sub-orbital spam) Kethane is installed at the moment as I may at some point add ExoplanetaryLaunchpads which I recall being dependant. I dont intend to actually mine Kethane since KSPI adds plenty of options, though I do like using the scanners to balance out against RT dishes so that may happen. I did start a run at this challenge once before, but got interrupted and then discovered KSPI, hence the reboot, and this time I took loads of pictures to share.

Quick question for you KSPI types regarding Aluminium Hybrid refueling... I put a base on Mun, reactor, heat management, 4 refineries. So far so good. I then built an aluminium hybrid powered rocket and landed it at the base. Hooked it to the main craft with a KAS pipe link. My problem is that while the refineries will mine Alumina, and electrolyse it, they are producing only oxidizer. I know they should make more oxidizer than aluminium, but im getting 0 aluminium. There are no AH rockets on the base itself so the main structure doesnt technically have anywhere to store aluminium, just alumina in the refineries and oxidizer all over the place. Is this the problem? I was under the impression that a KAS pipe link works exactly like a docking port, so these 2 vessels are now 1 craft in the game's eyes. Why isnt it storing the aluminium in the hybrid rockets? edit: done some fiddling with part files and my persistent file and determined that the aluminium will indeed not refine into the AH rockets linked via KAS. Is this resource set to not flow somewhere? Gave the refineries a little aluminium storage and they began producing it correctly, but I still have to manually shunt it from the refinery into the rockets. While this may be as intended, I would like the aluminium produced at the refinery to behave like stock liquid fuel when it comes to locating and auto-assigning storage space for it, can anyone tell me which variables I need to alter to get this behaviour? (I really really want to avoid giving my AH craft their own refinery)

cheers Surefoot. I'll have a bit of a rethink and try a single winged design. The lateral tank thing started as a way to stop the com moving steadily backwards as the central tank drains in sections, I'll try and work out something else for that.

Yeah, I did build a lot of smaller stuff first. These are by no means meant to be realistic or even efficient, and are by no means my first FAR craft, though they are my first real supersonics. I do like using them, they repurpose to be interplanetary shuttles quite well from orbit, with 5k dV, more if i arrange to lose the skippers. the crew capacity is something of a key in this design. I need to lift as many crew as feasible per launch, with enough 'living space' for them to go interplanet in the ssto after a refuel. When this does reach orbit its generally still holding 1.5k dV. It weighs 220tonnes without the jaydo solids and relies on a TWR of >1 to 'fly'. 3 jumbos, pair of 32's and then the 1.25m core is i think an 800 and a 200. Its got 6 aerospikes, a t30 and a pair of skippers. I get it, its a beast. But i still wanna fly it...think of it as a horizontally launched rocket with some aerodynamics to effect the powerclimb edit: it's also the lightest of the shuttle designs im currently using. I have 2 others that will reach orbit from the runway, both considerably heavier, based on 3.75m and 5m cores. They dont really get more dV into orbit, but are awesomely useful once refueled at the station. My mod-shuttles are able to ditch their lift-surfaces once in orbit and become interplanetarys or hab sections. I just plain like the idea, all of these would launch better vertically, I just dont wanna since these can always re-enter if they want.

Seems to be this that is likely my issue. It might also explain why I find it so very hard to rotate off the end of the runway, since my craft are generally supersonic by 500m (or more accurately take so long to rotate that they are several klicks downrange while still being below 500m yet breaking 300ms). This album shows one of the designs im having issues with. It does fly to orbit, yet needs constant TLC to keep it airborne. Is entirely stock other than some nosecones. It is almost impossible to launch, leaving the runway at 200ms without having achieved enough lift it gets catapaulted by the drop at the end of the runway and then rotates like a brick. (as said above its often supersonic before its finished rotating for a 45deg climb.) This one doesnt fall along the prograde in thin air, but it's window of acceptable AoA's shrinks drastically above 9km, it loves to stall out right around that transition. In addition, it doesnt like to hold pitch. I gave it lots of elevators and can get the nose up, but it has a tendancy to yoyo. The final image shows CoM and CoL. Bear in mind that the first tank to drain is the 1.25m nosetank, which shifts the CoM back noticeably whilst rolling down the runway, the SRB's are functioning as Jaydos here and get dropped on the runway. Still could be mach tuck? I've definately seen that on some of my planes so i'll keep an eye open for it. Looking back through these pictures makes me think my wing isnt Delta enough, so I might try and extend it forward toward th enose a bit more. I was trying to avoid pushing the CoL forward, but if its sliding back as I mach nyway then theres some tweaks can be done. Tanks draining cord to tip. Thanks > edit: hmm controls; the forward winglets are roll only, the surfaces eitherside of the centre-tank, mounted on wing boards in the tail are elevators, the surfaces mounted to the 2 delta-pieces on each side are combo pitch/roll edit2: might experiment with some flaps to assist the launch edit3: more reading on mach tuck was a bit of a lightbulb. You'd be amazed how much that didnt come up as a glider pilot, it'd probably have torn my wings off. My designs are likely all encountering this immediately on launch then i'd guess since it triggers while still sub-sonic. Infact i now realise i've seen this in a couple of designs even as they accelerated to the runway end, where they 'tucked' right before I went to pull off. I'd guess my CoM is a little too forward in several stages of flight, will play around later this evening and see if I can stabilise this.

Something weird is going on with my aircraft lately. Its no doubt a shortcoming in my understanding of aerodynamics as implemented by FAR, so maybe someone could suggest whats happening and what i might alter. I built a load of sub-sonic light aircraft, and a few big slow beasties, all fine. I've got a handle on what my CoM does as fuel drains and am careful about where I pump it, my CoM drifts very little and sits just ahead of CoL, everything im designing manages to fly just fine in lower altitudes and sub-sonic. However I hit a bit of a wall when I try and go supersonic or bust past say 10km. I rather suspect my CoL is moving in relation to my speed. My realworld piloting experience extends only to gliders, so im not sure whats happening physicaly as I start to mach. Does the CoL react when you increase speed? Which way is it drifting? Some of my designs suffer loss of control authority up around the 12-15km line, the nose drops to prograde and nothing will persuade the nose to lift, the wings are not stalled as far as I can see from the mod's readouts, I can work out the CoM at those points to still be where I want it to be assuming the CoL stays as shown in SPH, if CoL is moving then I just dont know. If I do manage to break through into upper atmosphere then its generally good from there, but I find that as I pass the 10km mark I have to be bang on my prograde. The window of angle-of-attack that doesnt produce a stall gets tiny. What is influencing this segment of the climb? I do have a couple of designs that will climb to stable orbit reliably, I have managed to build the ssto's I wanted, im just not sure exactly why some of the designs work and others suffer these issues. Any advice on the physics behind these phenomenon is welcomed. I can probably drum up a screenshot or two later on of designs that display these traits if needed. They all share the same underlying theme, in that they are fully rocket-powered heavy shuttles with TWR>1 taking off vertically along the runway. They each have customised top and bottom wing sections to provide the lift/balance. As a rule the wings are deltoid and hug the body (the lift surfaces below and above angle to hug the decreasing core diameter moving from cord to tip), They rotate very very slowly after popping off the end of the runway and then climb at 45 degrees before dropping towards the horizon. I tend to make the entire ascent as one burn rather than coast and circularise.

Try this maybe. Hubble-esque orbital telescope by rubberducky. lot of fun eva's to service it too. He's also worked in science gains for images of other bodies that you take. Its quite involved and awesome fun.

I have used ECLSS a few times and am quite a fan. My main annoyance is that theres no way to create perpetual systems (realism bah) unless you can leverage some kind of resource mod or tweak the numbers. Even with the scrubbers you slowly lose O2 which makes bases and stations a logistical nightmare unless you are going to close the loop somehow. Longrange interplanetary stuff becomes tricky too, i ended up doing a lot of high-speed transfers for huge dV to fit time constraints.

yay, FAR shuttles

Ran a manned Duna mission today, managed to shoot myself in the foot pretty good. Assembled a cm/lm in orbit, took it out there, transferred a pilot and made my landing, all good. Ascend, match inclination, try and plot rendezvous. Try for quite a while before realising the cm/lm are orbiting in opposite directions with 2kms relative. Some fast maths indicates that the lander cant meet the cm, the cm can meet the lander but they then drift with hardly any fuel. There was a sketchy profile where i send the cm on an ike slingshot to reverse direction of duna orbit, but it was discarded as too much hassle. Bah. Only 10 days to next kerbin-duna window though so I quickly queue up another of the ship mission profile, lifting both cm/lm in 1-piece in my haste. Once i got it in flight and out of the kerbin soi on its duna intercept I sent a guy across to the lander and seperated them. Each will now enter Duna orbit to match with its opposite number from the first mission and I will then run both returns. I needed to go back anyway, got the grav scanner and atmospheric nosecone sensor after the first mission departed. Works out well with the rescue. The hard part is waiting patiently for my ships to return rather than annihilating the rest of the tree with minmus/mun missions

Yeah if I manage to crash KSP to desktop its usually like this. The issue doesnt seem to be having lots of parts on my ship, the deal-breaker is when i 'pick-up' a lot of parts in the editor (like trying to save a complex launcher as a SA or adding a piece to the very top of your design). Havent found anything that fixes this particular issue, but it does also seem to occur when reverting such flights and/or sending them to the pad. Any time there are a lot of parts 'up in the air' computationaly. KSP is limited to I think 3.5G of ram. At least on a windows platform anyway, you may be able to assign more on a linux rig. As mentioned above, most of the heavy-load is not multi-threaded, so my quad-core actually under performs my old monolithic 2G single core machine. You can try going through control panel and setting the affinity for ksp.exe to restrict it to a single core (i often bump it up to real-time priority at the same time).

Yeah that one is awesome. I was also blown away by 'hold shift to run on EVA'. Though I have Sirine's sig to thank for that. I played probably 2 months before I learned it and at one point walked Jeb 22km to a rescue ship across Minmus.