Pecan

Yep to all this, although we wander off-topic again. FWIW I really do think Squad are meeting demand very well. Seems a lot of people say "Oooh, space", "Spaceplanes are cool". "I wanna be cool, make it easier to make cool spaceplanes". You will notice I rarely address spaceplane questions, which is because they aren't interesting.

Pods used to face East (ie; hatch on the West) in the VAB and North, as now, on the pad, with the camera as now - East in VAB, North on pad. Since that meant the rocket turned 90-degrees between building and launching it the arrangement was changed so the orientation is the same in the VAB as on the pad. I don't expect much effort to be put into it again because it's nothing to do with Kerbal Flight Simulator, so all the 'plane fliers aren't impacted by it.

Launchpad. Touchdown at 5m/s is more than Kerbal concrete can handle. (What RIC and others said)

ARE you using MJ? If so IT should be doing the turning, not you. Engage autopilot on its Ascent Guidance module before you fire the engines to launch. Without getting into the technicalities it will attempt to fly the programmed gravity-turn, but limit the AoA to the set limit (5 degrees is fine) if your vehicle is aerodynamically stable enough to do so. As a rule you should be aiming for a TWR of around 1.4 - 2 across the burn-time of each stage. Any higher than that and you'll accelerate too fast for the turn to i) be aerodynamically stable or even, ii) not to be possible (hardly turning at all before you're many km high). As a general comment - that's a huge and complicated design, would you mind telling us what you're trying to do and what successes you've had already? It is best to start with small and simple designs in order to learn how it all works before trying something like this.

Woohoo, I've just ordered my new computer to replace this 10-year old one ^^. Single 970 to start with, I'll buy another one, or possibly a 980, later.

If you are missing ship icons in map view, setting the visible ships by moving the mouse to the top of map view would seem most sensible. But I dont understand "see both in orbital map" ... "nor can I switch to it". 10km is too far for switching with '[' and ']' in flight mode but if you can see both in map mode you should be able to select the other and 'switch to' it; which also means the advice about icons above is meaningless. Are you in timewarp? That deactivates many things.

My PC is old and lame so I got the demo version to see if it would run ok. Hooked immediately.

That's the most brilliant thing I've heard in ages - well done! If you've disabled the entire orbital physics system that underlies KSP then I'd say you have four options: Do whatever it is that's required by the physics system you've replaced it with Do whatever you want Point straight at it Deliver all the presents before dawn

What's a Christmas and why's it on Eve?

Where on Jool did you descend TO?!

Oh that's alright then, I thought I might be on ignore list or something. Just the various posts here, where you've responded to various others but not mine, plus the 'locked-VAB' thread and something else that I can't even find myself now.

HELLOoooo? Can you see my posts at all? Did you READ any of them? Since this is the third of your threads I've addressed in two days while being ignored I'm starting to think not.

The pertinent word is 'eventually'. Ignoring a contract has no penalty, declining it does so you can't just decline loads to speed-up the appearance of one you do want.

A Mk1 command pod can easily re-enter from LKO without a heat shield. You, er, don't mention a parachute at all though? Without that it's going to be a bit 'sticky'. Anyway: get your orbit (Ap and Pe) down to 70-75km, point retrograde and burn until your Pe is 30km or lower. I can't guess your dV from the amount of fuel but if you can't do that, GOAP (Get Out And Push - EVA Kerbal, use RCS jetpack to push ship backwards, re-board to refuel jetpack, repeat as required). Hold retrograde all the way down. If things at the back start popping then jettison them with your decoupler. Do that anyway when the ship flips to point forwards or you reach about 10km altitude. Turn capsule back retrograde if necessary, wait for velocity to reduce to 250m/s or less, deploy parachute. Make a cup of tea.

At the risk of taking this too far from 'planes and their parts ... That's all pretty interesting, especially as I hardly bother with anything except rocket SSTOs - and I'm in sandbox where money doesn't even exist. All my vehicles are infinitely reusable (with added fuel) - as you say in your small print. I don't see any reason to treat Kerbin differently so my launches there are also with SSTOs. Since the payloads can be large and awkward shapes, I use a family of tried and tested rockets for the job, although in my case the exception is spaceplane crew shuttles. For me, spaceplanes don't look cool; they look like planes that can struggle into space. Atmosphere is not where my interest lies but the important thing is that KSP caters for everyone, even those of us who want to build rockets that go to space, despite all the focus on flight simulators over the past 5 or 6 updates.

Excellent! Well done. And you, all I got was the usual hop to a barge or - the way I do things - 1st stage recovery after it has orbited, or circumnavigated, depending on how you look at it. (NB: no neccessarily a 'full' SSTO, since it doesn't have to get its Pe above 69km, just high enough to come down at KSC). And to all those racing to say Blue Origin didn't do the same as Falcon 9 - I didn't say they did. I don't think anyone said they did. They 'just' did the first vertical landing from space.

Agreed that 'planes aren't too difficult but the reason I say they are harder to build is just that there are a lot more things to thing about - control surfaces, Col/CoM, fuel drain. Otherwise, no great argument there. On your final point, don't forget that rocket SSTO is perfectly viable - and still easier than a spaceplane - for those that want to get the recovery fees. Rocket no more means multi-stage than SSTO means spaceplane.

A. Already answered in my original post. B. Two on the opposite sides, so they fall off naturally or, better, one underneath with radial engines on the lander itself to keep them out of the way.

Duplicate thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/128467-how-to-activate-the-separator/

First, I see no separator between the docking port and rover in that first picture. If you put one on it goes in the staging sequence just like a decoupler - the only difference between a separator and a decoupler being that the former separates from both parts of the vehicle, not just the one pointed to by the arrows on the latter. If not in the staging sequence you can right-click a separator (or decoupler) and click the button in the GUI to activate it. If you didn't stick one on at all then you can right-click and decouple the docking-port - but there won't be much of a push on the rover. Crossfeed = fuel can cross the separator/decoupler/docking-port when enabled. Editor = thing you use for building ships = VAB or SPH. You do not change the default, it's the default. What you do, if you wish, is change the actual behaviour, which you do by ... right-clicking the part in the editor and changing its setting. As it happens, you can do that in flight too but it only affects that flight. ETA: And for your next questions: Once separated, in whatever way, you switch between vehicles using '[' and ']' to control the one you want Use RCS or SAS and a rocking action to get your rover to fall off the rocket when it doesn't on its own (docking port) Be prepared to catch it when it flies off into space if your force is too high (separator/decoupler) Use RCS or SAS and a rocking action to turn it back upright once it hits the ground If it survives. Engineers can repair broken wheels. Expect 'fun' driving around

The same parts are available - and useful - in both the VAB and SPH. Although building in each, er, building starts with different assumptions (rockets and vertical, 'planes are horizontal, etc.) it's otherwise the same. Wings and intakes, if you have any unlocked in a science or career mode game, are under the 'aerodynamic' tab. Note that building 'planes is much harder than building rockets and that the extra considerations of career mode will make trying different designs harder than science mode.

You, and Nibb31, miss my points: If first stage is sub-orbital and blue origin is sub-orbital then arguments about landing from orbit are moot - what the payload or later stage(s) might do after separation is their own affair. I do think people have been a bit too sniffy about the first vertical landing, even if SpaceX's vehicle is more useful. The effort of reversal is not so much about TWR but dV. It's hardly surprising the launch stage doesn't have to use all the engines it used to lift the whole vehicle just to manoeuvre itself, minus most fuel. A few people simulated the barge-landing in KSP but I have yet to see anyone turn their rocket around to come back to KSC

I nominate this for rocketry photograph of the ... decade or more, since it's the first that shows a rocket launching and landing. However, KSP fans, it does show (as if we didn't know anyway) that this first stage is still a sub-orbital vehicle. It it went to orbit it would be a lot easier (and dV-efficient) not to reverse direction but to allow it to complete an orbit and land from the West. Thoughts on that reversal and the effort it takes?

Congratulations :-)

Career mode is the full-on game, but all the money, contract, strategy, reputation stuff makes for a much more complicated experience when you're just trying to learn how to build and fly. If you don't like the idea of wide-open sandbox mode the best place to start is science mode, which restricts the parts you have initially and requires you to collect science in order to unlock the others but doesn't have all those other considerations. Next, why FAR, or any mods? An information mod like KER, MJ or VOID is great but otherwise you're mostly making the majority of tutorials and other peoples' experience and vehicles invalid for your install. However; rockets flipping during ascent is common to all (1.0.1+/FAR) aerodynamics and there are many threads about it. The basic causes are that there is too much drag above the CoM of the rocket or the CoM is just too low. Darts have their mass forward and drag (fins) at the back - it works. In order to fly through atmosphere properly you need to start your gravity turn early and keep the nose within (roughly) 5-degrees of prograde so the rocket is going more or less straight through the air. At slow speed you can sustain a higher angle of attack, simply because there's not much speed-induced drag to affect the ship anyway. Similarly, above the thick atmosphere, at least 30km up, there isn't the density of air to induce much drag. 5 degrees is a good ascent guide though. Don't go too fast, as that increases the amount of drag. A launch TWR of 1.2 - 1.4 is sufficient, max TWR <2 until you're above the thick air. (This latter very much just a guideline) Make sure the Com starts high and, if possible, stays that way. As fuel is usually consumed from top tanks first the CoM moves down - too far and the vehicle wants to fly backwards and will flip. Most importantly, if you are staging-off parts they generally go from the back, where their drag was helping to stabilise the ship. Upper stages also tend to have comparatively heavy engines for their structure/shape/size, so lower CoM. Both are what rocket engineers call 'a bad thing'. TL;DR - make sure each stage is aerodynamically stable; CoM forward, drag back - and don't accelerate or turn too fast.