Pecan

I was playing around while you were typing ... 4 mainsails. All 2.5m parts. Core stack; RGU with large SAS and docking port on top (to connect the <=45t payload). Two orange tubes beneath. Radially attach 4 stacks of two orange tubes each (8 orange tubes plus the two in the middle). Add mainsails to bottom of the 4 radial stacks, Rocomax brand adapters and drogue parachutes on top of them. TWR ~1.47 and 4,790m/s deltaV. Will SSTO, de-orbit and land at <5m/s touchdown speed. The point of this design is that engines are expensive - by using a SSTO you recover 98% of the entire vehicle cost (minus fuel) if you can land back at KSC. ETA: Oops, I forgot to say - you need fuel lines from the two central orange tubes to the radial stacks, of course.

Wings are excess mass in vacuum. Excess mass is bad. SSTO your Moho ship by all means, then decouple all that useless excess mass before your transfer. Redock when you come back and want to land. Carry one docking port the rest of the way or a pair of wings, engine(s), etc. that are useless; you do the maths.

Tweak them to open high ;-)

Moho requires 870m/s for landing and again for re-orbit, while Duna requires 1,300m/s each way. Are you just pointing out that you can save loads on Duna with judicious use of parachutes?

If you can't make a rocket big enough to launch your payload cut your payload in half and dock them separately to your station ^^.

diomedea has identified the most likely culprits. If that's not enough you can try moving the control surfaces closer to the CoM. The further they are from the CoM the greater the 'control authority' (strength) they will have. Specifically, if they are on the outside edges of the wings, move them inwards so they are nearer the fuselage. Similarly, with elevators, if you are pitching up/down too violently you can move them forward so they are nearer the CoM.

Chapter 8 of the tutorial in my signature has a 2-man lander for Duna. Chapters 7 and 8 together cover permanent manned space-stations, interplanetary transfer and lander vehicles. Probably more than you need but should give you some ideas. Without doing much math all you have to do is add up the numbers along the route in a deltaV map. The lander looks like this:

Chapters 7 and 8 of the tutorial in my signature cover space-stations, transfer vehicles designed never to land and dedicated landers that, er, are. Designing your own is a good plan but the ideas there should help you. The whole tutorial is available as a PDF download - link in the OP - and you can also download all the .craft files if you wish to start from what I built. Like this:

Woo! I haven't seen that one before. It has everything.

Perhaps you've simply done everything they need of you at the moment. If you are just doing contracts, without gaining new parts with science or opening-up new frontiers by exploring further, you are limiting the options for contracts.

As explained by Tex. With a battery it is useful to disable the flow on a unmanned probe-cores so they do not drain and can be used as an 'emergency reserve' should you ever find yourself out of power and needing to deploy solar panels, orientate the ship, etc.

Text updated today. This thread is currently synchronised with the PDF version; if in doubt, the PDF is definitive. Please continue to report any errors and ommissions :-)

...visions of my bumpy landings, on Minmus = back in orbit ^^.

A life support mod (eg; TAC LS) plus mods for bases and station parts which include greenhouses and similar. Grow your own ecology ;-0

Happy half-birthday to panels ... Once on rails ships stop rotating. A panel facing the sun from Kerbin will, half a local year later, when the ship has drifted up/down to the orbit of another planet, be facing away from the sun.

You can't convince conspiracy theorists with evidence. They only see it as evidence that you are part of the conspiracy ^^.

Oh man, I'm so glad I don't; I've had my time as support and helper to more programmes and forums than I care to remember. Ok - now I'm educated I'll take it all back; it was a good decision based on newbie (I hope?!) feedback. I withdraw any complaints about it then, thanks.

I never saw a single complaint about it being set at 0% so have no idea why daft 50% was introduced. It's hard to believe it was done deliberately ^^. You're the only person I remember saying you prefer 50% - can you tell use why?

Career mode, with all the hassle of funds, contracts and the insane tech-tree is not a good way to learn how to do things in KSP. You may prefer a bit of sense and just work it all out in sandbox to start with.

Drag also increases with mass in stock KSP, and it was wasted mass I was objecting to. I'm not going to get into an argument about the aerodynamic model though, I'll just wish you good luck. Yes, you're maximising your atmospheric performance but in every other way you're making things worse for yourself. Slower climb, higher drag, higher gravity, lower Isp; ir would be a strange profile that turned that into a fuel-efficient ascent.

OK then, here's mine (Chapter 7 of the tutorial if you want the details): Moar safty: 'Abort' shutsdown engines, decouples cockpits, deploys parachutes: 3pt Crew space: 3 crew: 3 + 3 = 6 Much science: It's got a SCANSat BTDT, does that count? 6 + 1 = 7 Fully reusable: It's a SSTO. 7 x 2 = 14 Less boosters: Doesn't use radial stages. 14 + 3 = 17. Spaceplane: Use wings to land. (not parachutes or engines). 17 + 3 = 20. Rough landig: Well, yeah - if you want to. 20 + 3 = 23 Why piggyback when you can take off: did that. 23 + 3 = 26. Docking compadible: That's part of the job description. 26 + 5 = 31 Power: Battery and solar panels. 31 + 5 = 36 Triangle velocity: Has delta-v. Well it's not built for it but being over-engineered it does end-up with quite a bit. 36 + 8 = 44

Yes to both of you again - above 25km or so and into the mid-teens speed 1,300-1,900m/s wings are only good for about 5-degrees of pitch or so. No problem flying a jet ascent profile without all the mass of wings. I don't think this needs a new thread - we need some spaceplane submissions for this one :-) @ Dundrat - yes FAR is allowed:

It's definitely not 'gaming' the system, you're just using the equipment you've fitted. However, R (RCS) isn't going to be doing anything at all unless you've fitted RCS thrusters. If you have fitted those it'll be using-up the RCS fuel (monopropellant) you've installed and/or that is provided with the command module anyway. So SAS is the only one you can use 'for free' but the torque provided by pods is very low so you don't get much unless you fit a dedicated part; inline reaction wheel, IRW, is the cheap one, otherwise inline advanced SAS module (IAS). I think what you meant was clear and most people just talk about 'SAS'. If you need to use SAS much though it means your design is wrong, or at least out of trim. Use fine controls (pres capslock, pitch/roll/yaw indicators at the bottom-left of the screen turn blue) and the 'mod' key - alt on windows - along with the normal control keys. Typically you want some pitch-up trim (alt-S) at takeoff but the in-flight settings change with fuel-load - as the centre of mass moves - altitude and speed. Get the trim more or less right and the 'plane should almost fly 'hands free'.

Direct sunlight but generating 0 power means they were edge-on to the sun; 'just' seeing it but not well enough to be useful. The 'angle of incidence' is important too - they will produce most power when they are at 90-degrees to the sun. ASCII art ^^. ||| 90-degrees, maximum power ----- \\\ 45-degrees, reduced power (it's logarithmic, I think) ----- - Low angle - 0 power - ----- -

Yes, I read the post and even if a plane can't, in practice, compete with Vector on size it should easily be able to beat my single orange-tube payload. I'm therefore surprised we haven't seen any. Jets should make a lot of difference, I'm still unconvinced wings help much for anything except landings.