Pecan

There's always the hitchhiker ...

(Second time quoting Starhawk, in two posts. I must be a fan ^^). Regretfully, I must concur. (Space)planes came into the game because so many people were more keen on Kerbal Flight Simulator than Kerbal Space Program. For them launch vehicles just don't rock et (sorry, I'm in a funny mood) enough - which is fine, we all want Squad to make a game that appeals to as many people as possible, without spoiling 'our' fun. So now I see the game as being several separate things; rockets and spaceplanes are as different as sandbox and career modes and are attractive to different people for different reasons. Looking for compatibility or sense between them is as pointless for looking for sanity in the tech tree. As it stands there is obviously some balancing to be done, but it seems 'about' right for both preferences. The regret comes in because i) so many updates have been entirely, or mostly, about spaceplanes. ii) so many people only do planes, even where they make no sense at all. iii) As someone said recently "SSTO, by which I like so many people mean spaceplane ..." ("SSTO" means Single Stage To Orbit - if you mean spaceplane, why not say spaceplane? If you mean to Minmus/Laythe/wherever, why not say that?)

Starhawk almost said it right, but I'd (mis)quote): Don't expect any engines to perform as they did. Don't expect part costs, masses, capacities or capabilities to be as they were. Especially don't expect any atmospheric anything to be what you're used to. Versions 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 changed almost everything.

Taking a break from playing with spaceplanes, I was comparing the performance/cost of a one-seater SSTO rocket and thought 'why not pitch-up and broadside to aerobrake, as with a plane?': This is my first experience with body-lift in KSP, as I haven't done much since 1.x came out. It wouldn't come down! Not only did I miss KSC but I almost missed the next continent/peninsula over. Your most epic misses please? (There should be some good ones for non-encounters as well)

That's interesting actually - but not enough to make a new thread for. The reason I don't is that the vehicles in each save I make have very different constraints (science, career or whatever) or purposes ('xxx' book, 'yyy' tutorial) so there are very, very few I share between saves. Who else uses the 'Ships' folder in KSP, and what for?

"Straight up, then turn right" only makes sense if you think planets are flat. Hohmann transfer from surface to orbit would be the most efficient and easy to understand. You don't want to end-up travelling 'sideways' above your start point, you want to move around the body you're launching from - up to orbital speed. For vacuum bodies that's fine, with the minor problem of mountains in the way. For those with an atmosphere then, yes, there are added drag issues but the path of least resistance is still Hohmann, not two sides of a triangle that leaves you going the wrong way, It's been linked a few times before but is always worth a look: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

Exactly like the tides on Earth, for instance ;-0 (Trouble is, Geschosskopf said in the pro/retro direction, not radial)

Congratulations; you're the first person I know who actually uses Ships. I delete all the stock craft as soon as I install then copy the occassional file in there if I need it available to all saves. Downloaded vehicles just go in the save I want them for. (For those who don't know ... KSP\Ships contains the Squad stock vehicles which are, basically, pants. Every time you click Load in the VAB/SPH these are the ones that clutter-up your nice list and are labelled '(stock)'. Delete them, but not the folder, to save yourself some annoyance. Conversely, if you put any *.craft files in there they'll be available in every game you create in that install).

Soliloquy for Hamlet Robotengineer on table 3! (*Beep*)

I'm afraid is Chatterer, and makes as much sense.

Who cares? We just want to see it done! For that I might even watch a video of the aerobraking pass.

Why not? A SSTO rocket is easier to build and fly than a SSTO spaceplane, although each launch will probably use more (cheap) fuel. Why keep lifting and landing excess vacuum equipment to and from the surface of Kerbin, every time you want to go to Orbit? Why keep dragging wings, landing gear and airbreathing engines all the way to Minmus and back? They are separate operations, in different environments and deserve different equipment. Launch never-landing space tugs in orbit with SSTO rockets. Use their space efficiency to transfer everything to Minmus (or wherever) and back. Refuel and reload with SSTO rockets; rinse, repeat. The important point being that all the stuff that is only used in space only needs to be launched once. SSTO rockets or spaceplanes are your call depending on which you prefer to make and fly. These myths that "SSTO" means spaceplane and "spaceplane" (neccessarily) means super-efficient are sad temptations to the uninitiated. This SSTO will put a 100t+ payload in orbit. It is easy to build and fly and will launch and land using MJs standard settings, if you want it to. Decoupler below payload. 3 stacks of 5 x S3-7200 S3 KS25x4 nosecones and fins to taste Batteries and RGU on centre stack, SAS units and drogues on side-stacks. Has about 500m/s remaining once in 75km orbit, using MJ's default settings (just open Ascent Guidance, set 75km target orbit, click 'Engage Autopilot' and press space to go there), better if you fly it yourself.

If location matters, I live 30-minutes walk from the sea. If experience matters, until recently I spent 10 years living on yachts; mainly sailing around the North Sea and Mediteranean but including 3 Atlantic crossings and time in the Caribbean. The sea tends to maintain an almost constant temperature, while the land heats-up and cools-down much more during the day/night. Keeping it simple (don't base any forecasts just on this!) land warmer = air rising over land, falling over sea = sea breeze, usually during the day. Conversely land cooler = air rising over sea, falling over land = land breeze, usually at night. So, yes, if there were any wind at all in KSP the sea breeze (which is usually very weak compared to other weather influences) for daylight launches 'should' make the flag point inland, out to sea for night launches. But which way is inland? KSC is almost surrounded by sea on three sides and has mountains to the West. At 4km high those aren't insignificant lumps of rock and would act as a block on any wind blowing due West; both physically and because you'd expect an almost-continuous "fall wind" to be pushing East from there. The most open direction for the wind to flow would probably be Southwest from KSC, almost parallel to the coast there and South of the mountains. Overall, this guesstimate would suggest winds over KSC would vary roughly from NW to NE during the day, backing SW during the night, but probably never as far as South. Conclusion: hmmm, there isn't much of a sea breeze in your picture, the major effect being the prevailing and katabatic winds from the moutains. Were it a hotter day the bay to the North would have more effect and the flag would be pointing more South, even Southwest. Meterology ^^. Fun, isn't it. EDIT: AW gah! I had so many unfinished sentences and typos in that it was all wrong *facepalm*

Took a while to make a spaceplane that is stable and easy to fly, my main purpose being to present a beginner's vehicle. It lands at ~40m/s, 5-degrees pitch so it probably has way too much wing and drag from them. Single-rapier design and I'm also using automatic switching to keep it simple, so flight profile can definitely be improved. However - tests so far show a 10-degree climb on closed-cycle, through the 30s km altitude, until Ap reaches 75km, then prograde cruise saves about 100m/s dv compared to the 20-degree climb I was holding before, having had to use that to force the rapier to switch mode. Simply put, the extra dv it takes to fight atmospheric drag is more than compensated by the reduction in parasitic drag (with this design). @ Frank_G - this probably wasn't what you meant; I haven't yet tried your technique of only raising Ap to 55km (ish) then circularising and continuing with low-thrust.

Don't forget your precious "Screenshots"! Otherwise as the others said: KSP - Gamedata (mods) - saves (includes scenarios and tutorials so, if you want just take ...) - - <the specific save(s) you want> - Screenshots (- thumbs has the small, thumbnail, pictures of your ships that are shown in the VAB/SPH load menu. These will get re-created automatically as you load the relevant vehicles though, so don't worry about it much).

It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it's done. It doesn't stop being 'Single Stage' just because you refuel it. Basically, anything that can SSTO with a docking port can Single Stage to any body's orbit. 'To Orbit' stops being relevant if it's designed to go to further without refuelling though ^^. (Like the others, I use (have used, pre-1.x) spaceplanes for delivering light payloads to orbit, SSTO rockets for heavier ones and space-only vehicles for moving everything around once it's up there).

Interesting. I'm only just starting to mess around with spaceplanes in 1.x and I'm surprised this approach works so well for you ... I shall try it and report later. In 0.90 and earlier it was certainly worth doing a flat, low-thrust, burn to circularise in the atmosphere, but that was making the most of jets' fuel-efficiency. In 1.x, once on rockets (or closed-cycle rapier) I would have thought you'd want to gain altitude as soon as possible to get out of the draggy air, then circularise. With rapiers, especially, TWR isn't an issue as they've got to have the high-drag jet punch anyway, so must have enough rocket power. The main thing is not to climb so steeply that you lose the horizontal velocity you've previously fought to gain of course. Again, I shall check what results I get with a flatter rocket-stage climb. (to be slightly baffled by the failure of the SPH engineer, KER and MJ to recognise that my wing-mounted fuel pods do, actually, feed the engine so I have plenty of dv, thank you very much computer ^^). ======================== ETA, for below: yes, I understand the low TWR, but rapiers (as I see in your ship pic) have a higher TWR as rockets than jets anyway, so I would have thought you'd have the punch for the climb. I'm hoping it works for me - always keen to get better results :-)

For completeness: persistent.sfs is the current game state. Autosaving updates the stored version of this. It is also replaced when you (quick)load a different state ... quicksave.sfs is the game state most recently quicksaved with F5. This is what F9 will quickload. *.sfs you can save any number of other, named, game states within a save by using alt-F5 (Windows, mod-F5 or whatever your control settings are). These are loaded with alt-F9 (although, since there's no difference in the file structure you can load quicksave.sfs or even persistent.sfs with alt-F9 as well, if you want to).

If not ... ask in the RT thread.

If it works, it works :-) If you like aiming for efficient then, yep, you have a new target to aim for. If you like launching big, you've got good experience to start with. Win either way.

Need more information; we have none about what calendar, if any, Kerbals used before the one in the game. By career and science modes, however, note that whatever the event was that led them to reset the calendar it wasn't space-flight since tier 1 parts aren't capable of it. Perhaps this is the dawn of sentience on Kerbin - the Mk1 command pod is their typical hut design (which is why there are no urban areas on the planet), the 'flea' is their standard heat source and the mk16 (what happened to the other 15?) parachute is an old dress. *grin* As I mentioned before they have no ladder or 'sheet of metal' until much, much later in their tech-tree so there's no way to convert to human time or even anything sensible. Beyond that - make up your own number and back-story.

I have just designed an Eve/Duna orbit and return (7km/s to allow for errors) science probe. Science-mode limited so the parts aren't the best possible. Recovery-stage probe itself is about 1t, while the whole transfer-orbit-return-orbit vehicle is 15t and total launch mass 95t. Although designed to return that dv does mean it can do anywhere 1-way.

Plane-changes in low-ish orbits are so expensive compared to other manoeuvres that's it worth saying you should try to avoid them whenever possible. Transfering from equatorial Kerbin LKO, say, to a Mun polar orbit don't establish an equatorial Mun orbit then plane-change. Instead, a tiny (anti)normal component of less than 1m/s in your transfer burn will be enough to go directly to a polar fly-by, at which you circularise directly into the required polar orbit. At worst transfer with anything that gets you an encounter, then establish the periapsis and inclination you want right out on the edge of the target planet/moon's SOI, as soon as you enter it - usually needing a burn of <10m/s (obviously depending on how far out your original transfer burn was in the first place). All that said, of course, there are still times when you do need to plane-change in low orbit (such as landing somewhere far from a space-station's pre-existing orbit) so again I applaud your efforts to understand the maths behind it all :-)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/misc.php?do=bbcode shows the formatting and other commands available in posts and signatures. The latter is limited in size and length though, for obvious reasons. To embed pictures you'll have to upload them first to a hosting site (eg; http://imgur.com) and then embed the link that that provides. 'large thumbnail' is a good size for pictures in posts, clickable so people can see the full-size thing if they want to.

You never forget your first time. Why, I remember the first time I landed on Mun. We named the crater after the pilot - still, any landing you watch from a safe distance, hey? Congratulations.