Pecan

Here is a two-man vehicle for a return Minmus landing using low-tech parts (I think), so you should have them unlocked: 2xMk1 Lander Cans (one on top of the other) Attached to the lower can: * Ladder * 4xlanding-legs * 1xLV-909 * 2xFL-T400 fuel tanks radially attached (one each side) * Fuel lines from the tanks to the engine or can On the fuel tanks: * Mk16 parachute on top * OX-STAT solar panel on the side = 3,568m/s deltaV (plenty for round-trip, even without aerobraking), mass = 6.6t Make sure you don't let KSP sneak someone into both cans when you go to launch it! Anything else we can do for you?

Why are you surprised that when you change the rules, MJ doesn't know how to play?

I'm glad you're glad. All I said was Squad probably never expected their space-sim to be such an attractive flight-sim, things often evolve in surprising ways (which is why waterfall software development never works). While the first part quoted you so people could see what my first comment referred to the "[Different Subject]" was meant to be a hint that I was talking about something else thereafter and, no, I wasn't attributing any views to you in that second part. So Alshain say, he is an example of someone who prefers atmosphere work in exactly this way. Consensus, which I think you would also agree with, is that spaceplanes take more (or perhaps just different) work than rockets/tail-sitter jets, they all have their uses if you want to do them but regardless of how anyone does anything building a 'US space-shuttle' style vehicle is a nightmare in KSP. @All: Incidentally, is it 'more' or 'different' work? Anyone come straight into KSP to build 'planes and then found rockets hard?

True, and in sandbox/science mode there's nothing to stop anyone being as wasteful as they like. Anyone even slightly caring about cost-efficiency should worry about throwing-away an interplanetary transfer vehicle though, since all any of them need to keep operating is more fuel. That, of course, introduces the second difficulty - which is making something that can transfer to another planet and come back (or sending a tanker trailing after it ... which is then thrown away ... which defeats the point). That something is difficult does not affect it's efficiency ("RV and docking takes so much time if you want to be efficient") but absolutely does affect whether anyone can be bothered. Quite rightly, we're only here because it's fun; no point in doing tedious stuff. And that's my point, which is irrelevant if someone doesn't care about the cost; if you throw-away transfer vehicles, which are the most reusable of ships, you'll end-up having to do an awful lot of tedious contracts just to pay for them. It's the same argument as for re-using (presumably SSTO) launch-vehicles and landers at each end of the journey.

Absolutely, about all of it but ... oooh! ... Slashy's going to give us his VTOL SSTO rover to (all sorts of places I can't rememer) again; it's just too good a cue to miss, I'm sure ... (LOL)

How does your pre-made transfer section reduce any of the interplanetary problems you mentioned: exit burn time, transfer time, injection burn time ... and back? The point is you have more than one tractor vehicle, shuttling backwards and forwards so you resuse them and don't need one for every single mission. You complain about burn and transfer time then say "RV and docking takes so much time..." !? Five minutes at the beginning and end of a two-year mission so you don't have to pay for, and launch, a whole new transfer section? Really? I think you might want to .

For a SSTO rocket (or 'tail-sitter' jet-launched vehicle without wings) aim for 500m/s more deltaV than required to get to orbit and include 2 - 3 drogue parachutes. De-orbit from LKO should take ~200m/s dV, the rest is for a soft drogue-assisted powered-landing.

You are right. My intention was not to dismiss but indicate that they require a whole new(ish) set of skills to design, build and fly. The rest of your comments are spot on and your final line: "...you can do cool stuff with spaceplanes. It takes work though. I tried and quit a handful of times before getting a handle on it." is what I meant. [Different subject] It is amusing though that people who think 'spaceplane' is the way to do things are amongst the most strident about stock aerodynamic woes. "Realism counts" ... except there's never been a real spaceplane, as eddiew points out. What I find most interesting here is that the Kerbal Space Program is, perhaps, most attractive to flight-sim fans and the strength of opinions offered about the atmospheric flight-model often outweighs that for, well, space. There's no right or wrong way to have fun, of course, but it's no wonder Squad didn't expect the 'flight' part to be quite so important. I think it's a noteworthy point about end-objectives not necessarily being what you expected them to be when you started (RAD FTW!).

Have a look at the launch-vehicles in the last chapters (7 and 8) of the tutorial in my signature (stats in the text are for KSP 0.25 but the ships still work as advertised). A single mainsail can SSTO 11t, a KR-2L 25t. Join a couple of them together and you've got 22t and 50t respectively - you see how it goes. Staging makes everything more efficient (but more expensive and complex) but you shouldn't have any trouble getting above 8t.

As usual, Slashy and I are on the same page here. The easiest, but not the best, you can hope for is what SpaceX hasn't quite managed yet - so we start ahead of the curve :-) That is - launch a rocket; make sure it's got a probe-core, a couple of drogue parachutes and 200 - 500m/s more dV than needed to get to orbit (I aim for 4,900m/s). Decouple your payload in orbit, use ~200m/s to de-orbit, ~300m/s to perform a drogue-assisted powered landing. Practice and you can get back to KSC for 98% recovery almost every time. If the same thing with jets somersaults at higher altitudes it's likely you've got your intakes creating drag ahead of the CoM. There's nothing particularly difficult about jets without wings, because you don't have to care much about balance - you do need to care a bit about drag though, because you're going to be spending so much time in atmosphere. Pictures of craft you're having trouble with always help. For spaceplanes much has been written and, sorry, but I can only say that like docking or those other specialised skills it will 'click' if you read and practice enough and you go from not being able to get off the ground to being able to put almost anything into orbit. It's tough, but that's the way it goes :-(

I hope not, since those are temporary and random things.

SSTOs - vertical-launch rockets are easiest but least efficient, vertical-launch jets are most efficient if you can land them, spaceplanes are hardest to build and fly. Shuttles - just don't, as has been said in many, many threads. The US 'space-shuttle' design is a very difficult, inefficient design in KSP that performs worse than almost any other way of doing things. It isn't a SSTO either! Spaceplanes - are a pain in the arse. Some people even take them to other moons and planets, which just shows how little they care about efficiency. Lots of tutorials around.

0.90 Chapters 1 - 5 update posted,with the ships for that. Chapters 6 (big changes), 7 (almost no changes) and 8 (a few changes) still on their way. All the hi-res pictures as well, warning 56MB, in case those embedded in the .PDF are unclear.

Why are you surprised?

404 = Not Found, on GitHub too. Saturday night typing there in Aus? :-)

Tail-sitters, VTVL. 100t in 59 parts, all sorts of SSTOs. IF you must do it the hard way, the best way to balance things is to put the heavy, static, mass of the engines in-line with the CoM - ie; out on the wings, just like real planes do.

Select action groups. Select group to use, eg; Custom01. Click part to use Click action Repeat from three for each part If you chose the 'stage' action group to shutdown all the engines then as soon as you ... *Stage to start You fire the action group ... *Stage - to shutdown For jet-launched vehicles I usually use Custom01 to toggle jets, Custom02 for intakes and Custom03 for rockets

Parts 'should' be unaffected by this, it is an artefact of 3d modelling and the physics engine. Without jargon - parts consist of at least two 'models' - the display model (what it looks like) and the collision model (what physics works with). The collision model is typically much simpler, to minimise computation, so for most fuel tanks and similar it'll just be a cylinder. To look good the display model has more detail, such as pipes down the side, ridges around the edge, etc. You may also find instances where things appear to 'float' above the surface, for the same reason.

Submarines are impossible in stock, aren't they?

The new ones are included in the OP links for the 0.25 stock ships and 0.90-compatible ships. Thank you for pointing-out that the link in the text is obsolete. I have been a bit ill but the first half of the update will be posted this weekend (including correcting that link in Chapter 2).

Congratulations on the hard work. Free-return lunar flights, planetary slingshots and gravity-assists are indeed possible in KSP but require you to enter the Sphere of Influence (SoI) of a body for any effect. Now you have docking-ports so you can transfer fuel as well as crew ;-) The whole 2001 thing is an efficient way to do stuff - spaceplanes and SSTO rockets carry Kerbals and fuel to orbit, docking to a space-station to transfer them to never-landing space-vehicles for lunar/interplanetary transfer where they again transfer at a station, into reusable landers for whatever the destination body is. We even have (non-functioning) monoliths and a murderous adversary - in the form of the Kraken (generally gets blamed for any bugs that destroy ships for no 'real' reason).

Sandbox, SCANSat, tutorial. See link in signature. Beginners should tackle all the extra complications (and insane tech-tree) of career-mode once they're comfortable with how the game works.

Rovers can do 40-50mph ... except that they have a great tendency to bounce around and crash if you try it for long. Even at that speed it also tends to take a loooong time to get between different places. Although pretty cool for short-range work you're usually better-off using a 'hopper' design that flies to the next destination on a sub-orbital trajectory, or even re-establishes orbit. This is especially true on low-gravity bodies, like Minmus, where rovers are particularly hard to control but it takes very little deltaV to 'hop'.

Tested: Under the port wing were two fuel-lines, one in and one out of the core. Loops like that can do all sorts of funky things to fuel-flow but particularly would have made the 'plane unbalanced since it wasn't duplicated under the starboard wing. Since the 'plane was pulling to the left it was presumably burning fuel in the starboard, but not port, wing-tanks. Deleted all fuel lines and had no problems with imbalance. Gear was so far back I could not rotate on the runway so could only climb after 'falling off' the end of it. Moved gear forward but not enough pitch-authority to rotate. Added elevon-1s to nose-wings (as in your picture but not the craft file) - CoL still behind CoM. Able to rotate, max 8-degrees to avoid tail-strike. Climb-out ok but once above 10-15km either had to climb (almost) vertical to rapid flame-out or could not maintain positive pitch. Maybe that heavy monopropellant just behind the cockpit. Max altitude achieved 35km.

SCANSat is a mod that adds mapping sensors, which is a good use for unmanned probes. You don't have to change your gameplay or do anything (apart from launch satellites/vehicles with the sensors on them) to use it, so it doesn't screw things up like RemoteTech. On the other hand, unlike RemoteTech, it gives you useful information - like where the biomes, flat landing-areas and 'anomalies' (Easter Eggs, programmer's jokes, #odd# things) are.