Pecan

While it was released for 0.24.2 I'd be surprised if it didn't still work in 0.25.

I'd say I'm impressed, but that's superfluous when it's you zekes :-) I am surprised you think a Laythe SSTO is harder though - the balance problems of something like the US Shuttle has always put me off even going near the design.

Should be in Mission Reports, no? Edit for below: fair enough, just a suggestion. Carry on having fun :-)

[No baiting of other members - the KSP Forum Moderators] 1. Yes - Single Stage [to orbit] means it doesn't have to stop at orbit. My alarm clock is a torch. 2. Balance the lift and drag correctly relative to the centre of mass. Adjust trim as fuel is burnt and speed and altitude vary. 3. Which engines to use depends on the payload you're trying to lift. The simplest SSTOs use 48-7Ss for small ones, then aerospikes, T30s and mainsails. 4. The trouble with external seats is that you still need a command-pod to get the Kerbal to the seat in the first place. Otherwise ... 5. Light is always the best way to build spacecraft. Think about why you want to do this in a single stage. Think about why you want to do it without refuelling. Do yourself a favour and ditch the wings. If you must take them, at least drop them once in orbit (unless going to Laythe). ETA for sal_vager's edit: we are having a PM exchange :-)

It's generally a mistake to think something that doesn't "respond to the way they should be responding" is not working the way it should work. Rather better to become familiar with how it does work and then then respond to how it reponds. Start a little less epic. Make small things that work, get used to what works and how, then improve in the direction that most suits you - smaller, more efficient, longer-range, higher-capacity, cheaper or whatever. You particularly don't want to be messing about with wings while learning.

Thank you. I was busy waiting for the tutorial readership to hit 25,000 rather than looking at reputation. Depressingly few of those 500 points come from giving advice, surprisingly many for making a joke ^^.

December 7th: More fun with ions.

Lots of questions ... No, the lab doesn't increase the value of returning science (it's already 100% if returned). EVA a Kerbal, fly next to science part, right-click part to recover data and other options that may be available for any particular item (fix broken wheel, etc.). When the Kerbal re-boards a command-pod/lab the experiements are all collected in there. A used goo/science junior can't be reset without the support of a lab - again, right-click the part in question.

You might like to check the Glowstrips mod, which light up themselves but not other parts. Huh? Computers are simulating things - LIGHT sources, by definition, cast light/shadow as their rays fall on other objects. Working all this out takes a lot of processing, as others have explained. Glowstrips (and similar) instead set their own brightness but tell the graphics engine that they aren't light-sources, so no calculation needed. The effect is like flourescent strips - bright on a dark background.

Thank you for your detailed comments. Strange that I haven't noticed that - must have just taken the 'plane as it was and made sure it still flies. It could do with being replaced anyway; but 0.90 will probably bring many changes. Editor changes will be particularly significant so I'll have to review any actual building tips as well. Use Crew Shuttle Mk2 instead of Orbiter SP if you're having trouble. It's better in every way, although a little more expensive. Hope you get on OK with the rest of the campaign.

Righty ho, that gets us a lot further. Cartographer Heavy (unmanned), chapter 5 of the tutorial, Tractor Light, chapter 7, and Landers Light and Medium from chapter 8. Otherwise ... again, work out exactly what you want to do. Just there (un)manned (and back), or visit moons, land on them, re-orbit? My preferred (crewed) approach is to use tractors rather than single-use vehicles all the way from KSC but you may not want to do that. As with any design, working backwards, I'd first make sure the tractors can get back with all the crew. Then add fuel so it can get there in the first place, dragging landers if required. And get them into the right positions for landing/re-docking. Once you've got all those bits and pieces consider how you'll launch it in the first place - and design the launch vehicle(s) necessary. Single-launch or multiple with orbital construction/docking (better, in my opinion).

And if THAT's not giving it all away: Find out when the planets are aligned for a transfer window Decide what you actually want to do Find out how much deltaV is required Design ships to fulfill the mission profile Build them Fly them It's rocket science, you see. "Some kind of nuclear rockets" are not required, but are the most efficient engines. Beyond that you'll have to give us a bit more of a clue as to what you want advice with. Or read the tutorial in my signature

Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.

Dec 6th (5th reprised): Aha! Now it's "one Kerbal" possible, I'll use the system I developed for the Mun Challenge/, since it's super-light (TL;DR it's 4.7t including the launch vehicle. Others there got below 4t!). To be honest I just wish I could fly pure ion ones in that thread but I just can't land them. So, done dusted and tested :-) Hope your broadband is feeling better and you aren't suffering too much yourself TJ.

This = please post the .craft file so we can all play with it. I'm not a spaceplane fan but Wanderfound definitely is and others are top-tech flight-engineers. As you've seen from all of us; TWR 3 is much more than you need for anything, so we can't see what the problem is. Nevertheless, as numerobis suggested (and he's numbers man, the clue's in the name!) the figure reported by MJ is not accurate for 'at rest' jets. Even so you should have a TWR at least 1.5 and should be able to do a vertical launch without problems).

All things can be modded. Mods can be modded more than most. Make your own Kethane version? But perhaps you would be better looking at Karbonite, or one of the other resource mods. Although it was popular for a while Kethane seems to be 'outdated'*? [* Maybe - I've never used it so feel free to tell me I'm wrong. It's not the resource-mod I'd recommend these days though.]

@all: 0.25 (half) buried it, reported in a few threads, including forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/60551-Spoiler-Easter-Egg-Stocktake-0-23-%28Done%21%29-Pic-Heavy/page9 @OP: Remember the film/book "2001: A Space Odyssey?" - advanced aliens had left 'monoliths' around. This is one of the equivalents in KSP. They have no effect but are fun to track down. There are a lot of other 'Easter Eggs' (Americanism) on Kerbin and elsewhere, detailed in the thread linked above. Several of them are monoliths but a few are ... more interesting. [The thing is, programmers get bored at work too and sometimes they put a 'joke' into whatever programme they're working on, 'just because']

If you're the sort of person who likes building machines, it's the sort of problem you like fixing :-) KSP appeals to "engineers" as well as sci-fi space-fans so ... we get people who like building spacecraft. It works (or we'll fix it) ^^.

I like to agree with LethalDose because he's the only person that regularly insults me for not agreeing with him ^^. Despite MANY hints Squad continue to believe video is the way to communicate, which it isn't for lots of reasons that they exemplify :-( On the other hand I wouldn't be quite so hard on Squad as LethalDose is - they do TRY to communicate, and have demonstrated several times that they listen, which is a lot more than most other development teams. Expecting the tech-tree to change quite a lot during/after Beta, so that it makes some sort of sense. Probe-core 'progression' does make sense, automated heading-control and guidance with gyros, etc. IS (not was) one of the hardest engineering tasks for unmanned vehicles. High-speed computer-control makes the likes of UAVs possible but UCAVs are still (*whisper* "as far as we know") completely outclassed by pilots in the cockpit. The important point remains: SANDBOX is how to start and experiment. SCIENCE mode (if something like it continues to exist) is just there for historical reasons. CAREER is 'the' game, with all the difficulty you might want. Maybe. Career/science mode never has been a good introduction for newbies and now, explicitly, it isn't intended to be. The fact that it was labelled as such (and the tech-tree so screwed-up) IS evidence of a lack of a "cohesive design plan" by Squad (but also that they are paying-attention to what people want and changing their plans as they go - KSP is in development, including what the final product will look like. Getting close to 'done' though; which is both good and bad).

Would you care to compare it to the two challenges I have published?

Dude, where's the 6th!? Worldwide audience, 24-7 systems operational. It's cool but "I have to go to school" = "I can't do it". All you have to do is publish once per day and, annoyingly enough, arbitrate all the questions and quibbles that raises. I'm possibly missing the 6th because by the time I'm back from work again it'll all be over.

Adding to that - If you have TWR >1 you can do a vertical launch! With TWR 3 you should more or less be able to do whatever you want and 'lift' from wings is irrelevant. Remember - wings and 'lift' are only useful for landing. If you 'plane requires them for takeoff you almost certainly don't have enough thrust for speed at altitude. If you have them for 'pretty', just ditch their mass and get important dV. Really - they only count on the way down.

worir - post a screenshot me - post the .craft file you - solution (before the fact) ;-) Yep; you were first in the thread to guess right. worir was the first one to give advice that lead to a definitive solution. (and I know, because I was there [Max Boyce])

Buy it. I have an old, underpowered, PC that didn't even meet the system requirements when I downloaded the demo just to see if "it would work anyway". It still works pretty well, although there are Unity-engine memory leak problems in 32-bit and the 64-bit version is very unstable. Steam? I have no idea. I hate the Steam's intrusiveness (on the 1 of 400 games I have) and it adds nothing for me, so unless KSP's a lot cheaper there I'd get it from the Squad site.

It's easy for us all to become "too close to the problem" to see the solution at times. We can't get over how it should be and can't see how it is. In IT when we're SURE our programme's right, and just cannot see why it doesn't work, we "call for a sanity check". Half the time, just in describing the problem to someone else you'll see the solution yourself. The other half of the time it's obvious to them, but we all know the situation :-)