Pecan

This. Step back a moment guys; I might have found my brain again ... The big thing no-ones talked about here is staging; how often and at what burn-times. A launch TWR of 2.5 is quite reasonable with early-staged boosters that more or less just get you off the pad. (Second stage presumably being much lower). A SSTO rocket with much more than 1.3 TWR at launch is probably going to have more than 5 by the time it reaches space. Between those sorts of extremes there is a whole world - universe? - of compromise and experimentation. And that's before you start considering the cost before or after recovery Why else would it be fun? :-)

Something else - I'm just thinking the "Spaceplane+" hype is making it sound like the way things "must" be done. Just the hype, you understand, no complaints otherwise; I'm just saying this is not the one and only answer to everything so calm down a bit.

See my tutorial ETA: Oh ok, I'll be a bit more explicit - the easiest way to perform a landing is to face your rocket retrograde (backwards) and burn your engines to reduce your orbital speed. As that happens you'll fall more and more steeply towards the surface - keep turning your rocket so that it is always facing retrograde. Eventually you'll be falling almost straight down and your engines will, therefore, be firing almost straight up. Aim for a touchdown speed of <10m/s vertical and as near to stopped horizontally as you can, otherwise you'll tend to tip over.

Career mode adds money. Science mode was old career mode adds insanity. Why would you want to play career or science mode if you wanted to learn about the science of space flight? Do you really think it makes sense to invent the manned rocket before the ladder, let alone the wheel? Sandbox mode for any sanity. Science mode for grinding to 'win' KSP. Career mode for, well, whatever Squad are going to change it to next - but presumably, 'Space tycoon'; it's what they've always said they want the game to be.

You say that like it's a bad thing?

You know, from the sound of the hype-train my next tutorial is going to be so easy. "This is what you ship must look like. If your ship doesn't look like this you're having fun the wrong way."

And @ Kyle = look at the pictures in the OP; you can see resource and parts lists in the tracking centre - that's still not stock, although partly done before as well, as Jaxx pointed out.

8~0 I said what I intended but may well have misread what you wrote. I also think my mainsail figures are wrong. Apologies; I'm doing three things badly at the same time instead of getting any one of them right. Ignore me while I fail to make sense ...

That's the second time you've said that - You need more than a TWR of 1 to get off the ground - true, 1-and-a-slight-breeze is enough but burning huge amounts of fuel at full throttle to not go anywhere very much is not a winning forumla! That said, I agree that a launch TWR of 2 is overpowered - the consensus of advice and experience I've found aims for an average stage TWR of 2(ish). In other words, start low and finish high as the fuel burns. More interestingly (to me anyway) is your assertion that mainsails are no good. I've always thought so prior to 0.24, but now they've had a buff they seem more cost-effective than skippers (which I'd also never use by choice before) for any payload over 10t. IF, that is, you are recovering them and getting most of the money back. My investigations on this and the other engines continues ...

The tutorial in my signature tells you ;-0

The functionality of several other mods is also being incorporated - Spaceplane + is just the one they're buying-in.

How comes no-one's commented on the functionality of other mods that are being incorporated? Enhanced Navball, Crew Transfer/Crew Manifest/ShipManifest and, possibly (?), Connected Living Spaces :-)

Ike 390m/s deltaV landing requirement, Minmus 180m/s - according to this deltaV map

Welcome to the forums. Be assured that you aren't the only one, within the last 24hrs: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91017-Eva-jetpack-retroburn http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/91057-stuck-in-space Have fun :-)

1. Although, as Poynting pointed out, any periapsis over 69km (and a bit) is stable most people take 70km as the absolute minimum and, usually, aim at 75km to provide a safety margin. 2. Never heard of it, we'll have to trust Mr. Shifty. The thing is though that orbits don't have a 'range'. If the ship can dock - and since you're going to use it for resupply I suppose it can - then it can be refuelled. With fuel it should be able to go anywhere. 3. Yes, as explained in my tutorial (link in the signature), I send mapping mapping satellites to find suitable landing sites. Sometimes I use the RT2 communications satellite mod as well. In career mode I'd probably use unmanned science probes too, but I hate the insane tech-tree so usually stay in sandbox. 4. No help here, sorry.

The Drawing Board has a list of tutorials other players have written or filmed. Including mine (link in signature) :-)

AlphaAsh - take a look at posts 9 and 11 in this thread - you have more fans :-)

I'm not surprised it tips, did you have a question? *grin* Mostly; 13x FLT-400 - Really? That's hugely long and thin. What are they fuelling, you don't list an engine.

Yes, "get out and push" is a recognised KSC manoeuvre, it's in the induction manual. What do you mean you didn't read the induction manual because Jeb stole it? Oh well - my tutorial says "One, very Kerbal, solution is to 'get out and push' - you have infinite EVA fuel so get the Kerbal to push the pod retrograde using the suit RCS, slowing the vehicle and lowering its periapsis. Re-board the pod to refuel the suit, repeat as required until the periapsis is in the atmosphere and aerobraking will do the rest for you." (so it must be true!) Whether you can do it with "very little" EVA skills is up to you - you may well need to re-board the capsule several times and you need to get lined-up in front of the ship more or less properly when you do push. I say, if in doubt practice in a sandbox game created specifically for practicing things :-)

I was going to say NEAR but Maxmaps' "This isn't like us taking in a feature that a mod has already done before, it's a whole thing we are buying from a skilled modder." has me completely confused. Not a feature that a mod has already done but still "a slightly modified version of a very well made mod". I surrender. And I want a refund for my ticket on the hype-train!

My current 10t SSTO also uses the skipper, although in my case 2 skippers with X200-32 and -8 tanks (adapters and drogues) radially mounted to a core jumbo-64. You're replacing a skipper engine, (the equivalent of) a jumbo-64 and X200-16 (cost ~18,850) with SRBs (say 6 to be conservative = 10,800?) so should be around 8,000 cheaper at launch. My engine and empty cans are worth about 5k after recovery (these are very rough figures, I'm just sketching things here!) so per launch your design could be about 3,000 cheaper, I think. I won't be able to test until tomorrow but it seems plausible that disposable SRBs are cheaper long-term as well as immediately. Please let me know if you test and compare before then. Oh, and it is a very good point that if things go wrong my design means much more lost capital. But what could go wrong ... ?!

Yeah, but hey, at least it isn't rocket science *grin*

More or less the same - I'm playing around with SSTO rocket designs at the moment. I've found two drogue parachutes more effective in performance and cost than the others. With a SSTO/stage as light as two (almost empty) orange tubes and a mainsail they'll bring the speed down to ~20m/s so you need hardly any residual fuel to reduce to a safe landing speed. What I haven't done yet is determine whether all the fuel burnt by using a SSTO design is less than the cost of (disposable) SRBs. Certainly it's cheaper to build an SRB-based rocket but I'm still only at the stage of comparing different LFO engines for SSTO payload ranges and comparing their costs (ie; are 5 mainsails more cost-effective than two KR-2Ls for launching a 50t payload?) ... results will follow when I have enough data to publish.

cantab is, as usual :-), correct. See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures

I'm using this deltaV map - it says 870 - but at least we're getting to the right ballpark. I seriously thought you were just making the parachute point.