G'th

I haven't had any issues with planes not driving straight unless I was loading too much weight on the wheels (To clarify, I was able to fly a 120ton spaceplane straight down the runway using one frontward medium wheel and 4 extra heavy wheels attached directly to the wings, so its not like you need that many wheels to counter the weight, but without an established weight limits for the wheels it can't hurt to overengineer a bit). Something to also watch out for is wheel placement. Too close to the COM marker, and the weight won't distribute evenly and any minor roll your plane gets (either from a bump or even user input) will actually cause your plane to tip (and in turn your attempts to correct it will exacerbate the problem until you clip a wing and go boom). Too far away, and the weight isn't supported at all and your wings will flex, causing your plane to not want to ride straight as your wheels will come off the surface. Course, I also follow a real life procedure of toggling off nose wheel steering (and disabling steering on rear wheels altogether) after ~25m/s. Real planes do this precisely because using wheels to steer after a certain speed gives you way too much input when just your rudder controls (provided your rudder surfaces are adequate for your design) will suffice to keep you running straight down the runway. Rudder input becomes useful on a plane at takeoff when you hit anywhere from 50-65% of your takeoff speed, so use that to gauge when to toggle off your nose wheel steering. You of course could also just eyeball when you need to toggle it, when your plane suddenly starts veering off left or right at the slightest input. Given the wheels being funny as it is, its highly recommended to start with this practice and see how you fare with it. What Admiral suggests is also a good idea, though it will likely hurt your ability to taxi your plane. (though there again, taxiing isn't a thing in KSP unless you want it to be, so yeah)

Its really only the little ones (that are fixed and don't deploy) that are unuseable, and IMO they're worthless even when functioning perfectly anyway. The deployable gear work (98% of the time) and are more useful in every area. Even in career mode unless you're insisting on planes only or something you're better off waiting to design anything needing wheels until you get the deployable ones. I'd just use rockets to hop to any particular biome you need to get to on Kerbin.

Peserverence is a virtue worth having. Re-entry isn't that bad, you just want to make sure you're not dropping your periapsis too far into the atmosphere. If you're returning from Minmus, you only need to drop to about 25km for pretty much any reentry capsule. Any lower and you wont' slow down enough before hitting the thicker parts of the atmosphere. Too much higher than that and you won't slow down enough to get your apoapsis under 69km. And as for re-entry from interplanetary space, perhaps you might want to try breaking into LKO before reentering. Instead of coming back into the Kerbin system and immediately reentering the atmosphere, why not slow your craft down into a low orbit (anywhere from 80km to 150km) and then reenter from there? It will take a significant amount more fuel to accomplish (and as such you'll need to create a larger craft than you necessarily need) but it will greatly simplify reentry. And for Duna (though with stock aero this may be different) I never particularly needed any heat shields. Duna's atmosphere is so thin that you don't really get any friction unless you come in super fast.

OR, land in the ocean. Distinctively easier to do and at most you might have an engine be destroyed.

Everyone knows the story about Ed and how he went back in time to see the dinosaurs and gave them all the chickenpox and thus gave rise to the age of mammals.

Seems your ASET Props was installed incorrectly some how. The folder structure for that should go ASET > ASET_Props. That could potentially cause issues.

Re-install RPM. Cleanly. As in, delete JSI from Gamedata and reinstall the latest release. Anywhoo, heres a nice picture:

^ Indeed. And the more I think about it, it occurs to me that the idea made more sense originally because all of my KSP upper stages are typically overengineered and I end up throwing some 4-700 dV away.

So lately I've been toying around with reusable rockets in KSP (because of dat SpaceX bandwagon naturally) and something occurred to me about reusable upper stages (namely in the style of a Falcon 9 upper stage). What if instead of expending them or devising some complicated method of bringing them back down, you designed your upper stages to have a use as an orbital tug once its delivered its payload? And then, simply had it meet up with an orbiting propellant depot to sit and wait until theres a use for it? Obviously this would be mostly pointless unless you had good reason to require so many random tugs sitting around in orbit (Such as near constant satellite/probe deployment or re-supply to beyond LEO locations, whereupon they become expendable for obvious reasons), but I would think it would make for a potentially cost saving method of devising a reusable (or at least, a limited reusable) upper stage if there was a need for tugs. Considering the upper stages would be expendable anyway, and provided the additional cost of turning these stages into tugs post payload deployment was acceptable (which again, depends on how much of a use you'd get out of them), you might not even need to design them to be that necessarily reliable as the relative large number you'd have sitting in waiting would always guarantee a backup.

A handy tip is to treat it like landing on the Mun. If you can do that, you can rendezvous and dock. Presuming you're launching to rendezvous, launch below and in front of your target when its approaching approximately 5* (that number may be off, but visually you're looking for an 8th Pie slice. So imagine a quarter circle and cut it in half) off the launch pad (IE, in map view, you can measure a 5* angle between the launch pad and the target). While doing this, make sure the target is set (right click and target), then, as you coast to apoapsis set up your maneuver node. From here, play with it until you get a good encounter. At this stage, its okay to have it anywhere under 10km, though if you can launch and then circularize into physics load distance (2.3km or lower), then even better. Once you have that node set up, go ahead and keep coasting and then make your burn. Be sure to start with your normal/anti-normal (The purple markers) to make sure you're as close to your targets plane as possible before doing anything else. It will help get you your encounter markers. A good tip here is to zoom in on your projected orbit and compare it to your targets orbit when it comes to burning normal or anti-normal. Something to keep in mind here is that may have to raise your orbit higher than your targets orbit in order to hit the encounter. If you do this in map mode, watch the markers as you play with the nodes. Once the orange marker shows up, you should see one stay static while the other moves around the orbit. This will help guide you towards an encounter. Then, once thats done, put your craft on prograde and turn on your RCS. Go into map view, focus on Kerbin (so your screen stays static rather than following your craft) and hover your mouse over your encounter markers (non static screen makes it a pain to keep your mouse on these markers) so it lists your sep distance and relative speed. Then, using the IJKL/HN keys, maneuver your craft so that the sep distance becomes lower and lower until you get as close as you want to get. 0.1km is ideal, though I typically prefer 0.3km, as it gives me some room to slow down without damaging my target. At this point, you may hit a point where you simply can't get the distance to go lower no matter which key you hit. In this case, plop a maneuver node on the next asc/desc node, and play with the node until the distance comes down. Now, once your sep distance is perfect, the issue becomes your relative speed. This also needs to be as low as possible, but is much easier to manage once you have a good encounter. Ideally, you want to wait until you hit your encounter and come into physics load range. At this point, you're basically landing on the Mun, except the Mun in this case is your target. So, treat your pro/retrograde markers like you would on the Mun, but treat your target as the center of your navball. (like on the Mun when you want your retrograde marker to be in the center of the blue horizon, indicating your coming straight down). Point your craft towards your anti-target marker (the Y shape one) and maneuver your retrograde marker onto it. If your relative speed is very high (2-300m/s range), you will want to use your actual engines for it, as RCS won't do it fast enough unless yours are very powerful (as in, beyond stock powerful) or you have a ton of them. Push the retro marker on to the anti-target, and then just keep it there as you slow down. The retro marker will move around during this. Finally, once you've slowed down to about 10m/s or better, point your craft towards the target marker (the broken circle with a dot) and maneuver the prograde marker onto it. You will have to speed up a bit to do this, as your craft is still going backwards relative to the target. Then, just use your RCS to keep your prograde on the marker until you meet up with your target. Be sure during this to stay below 10m/s until you get comfortable doing it faster. Docking isn't very hard once you've rendezvous'd. First set the port you want to dock to as your target, and align your craft with it. You don't want to rely on the target markers here, and instead eye ball it. You want your craft to be oriented in such a way that, if the port was directly in front of your craft, you could just RCS forward and dock. Once you're oriented and you have your relative speed cut down to a minimum, start using your RCS to maneuver to the port. Here, you definitely want to be patient, and keep CapsLock turned on at all times. What this does is cut your input by a significant degree so that your RCS comes out in tiny, weak bursts rather than full power blasts. One or two pulses of your thrusters in the direction you need to move in is all you need at this stage. So, for example, lets say you've done all the above and your target port is 300m ahead of your craft, and to your crafts left and above it. So, 2 pulses to the left, 2 pulses forward, 2 pulses up. (in this case, the pulses would push to the right, backwards, and downward, respectively*) and wait. Once you start to get close, pulse in the opposite directions to slow down and eventually stop. At this point, you can pull up your nav ball, and presumably your target marker and prograde marker should be starting to get lined up, if they haven't already. If they have (that is, center of prograde on center of target), just pulse forward until you meet up and dock. If not, use your thrusters to get the markers lined up, and pulse forward. Once the ports meet, they should magnetize and then dock. If the ports are placed strangely (Such as part clipped, or if theres other things your craft may otherwise be colliding with, you may have to put some thrust forward in order to dock.

My personal experience has been that I initially suffered from the same sort of crashes others have reported, VAB crashes, staging crashes, and other random CTD's near constantly. Then suddenly the game just started working longer and longer and longer, and now I only crash with the moving parts in the VAB (as Alshain hinted at). Essentially, so long as I'm careful about how I work in the VAB I don't crash.

because the STS program (as originally envisioned) ended up failing. Money and general pessimism towards space were at the crux of both those issues.

Scientists don't become useless once the tech tree is done, so long as you take the strategy that autoconverts science to funds.

^ That. If you like the challenge, by all means go for Flight Manager so you can actually fly back your boosters without trying to finagle two flights at once. If you just want the benefits (while still requiring that you make it possible for the things to fly back), then Stage Recovery is best. Also highly useful for things like SRB's. Use chute cones as the noses on these boosters and they're very valuable if you need the thrust.

I don't particularly care for the system the real Space Shuttle used, mainly because its a pain to get it working properly and ultimately its finicky without countless amounds of tweaking. What I do like, however, is a Dreamchaser style of shuttle, where the Orbiter is mounted on top of the rocket rather than bolted to the side of it. That much can be seen below in my short lived STS series.

Are we presuming that we're all operating the same ascent profiles? Are gravity turns even being considered here? The thing about going as fast as you can without burning up (Which Im taking here to indicate as exploding, not just generating reentry effects) is that it leaves you with a highly inefficient method of establishing orbit unless your rocket can handle the extreme stresses you'll be putting on it in order to get a proper ascent profile. IE, putting you back in the Kerbal stone ages where you burn to 10k, go straight to 45*, keep burning till you get your desired apo, cut engines and coast until you're ready to circularize. Except now you're just burning until you get your apo up and then you have to either cut your engines or start burning radial in order to keep a fixed apo. When you cut your engines, you've got too much in your early stages and you're losing all the altitude you gained as you coast (its not much, but its still not efficient), and when you start burning radial you lose a lot of efficiency because you're flying upwards on your side, putting a lot of drag on your rocket that you're fighting against. Maintaining a low TWR through ascent, on the other hand, gives you room to maneuver your rocket properly through the atmosphere, and with a proper turn for your rocket you're effectively minimizing all the losses you'd incur with any other sort of launch method. TL;DR, Duh. Even on Kerbin, going vertical is cheap, but required. Its the horizontal that costs (but isn't necessarily required on ascent, its only absolutely necessary to establish orbit. After all, the idea of burning straight up to get into space can work, though its horribly inefficient), and going as fast as you can without burning up isn't the answer to efficiently gaining the horizontal velocity you need for orbit. In short, to me it seems as if the fuel costs are being focused on too hard here where its not really necessary. You can minimize fuel costs very easily if you get the trajectory correct with your combination of engines, as then each stage can be tweaked to be just right for whats needed during that stages portion of the flight. My rockets are designed that way, and each stage has a loose min and max TWR that determines when they get staged, and typically you want these to coincide with your dV for each stage. Using a Saturn V style booster (which most of my rockets are based around) as an example, you have a third stage with the payload mounted thats meant for upper atmosphere/vacuum flight, and its TWR will start at ~1.1-1.3. As this stage, max TWR is ignored because in vacuum high TWR is desirable. Engines and fuel amounts are chosen and tweaked to meet the desired starting TWR and the required dV for the mission. Second stage, typically for middle atmospheric flight and potentially vacuum flight as well. TWR again starts at ~1.1 and maxes at 1.6-1.7. For cleanup purposes, dV for the stage + that of the first stage is adjusted to be just under the required minimum for LKO, so that the second stage does not become space junk. The starting TWR is fairly strict as this stage typically ignites right around Max Q and what I call the flame barrier (where Kerbin unrealistically starts rendering reentry effects on everything going past Mach 3), and I want the TWR to be low enough so as to not induce too much heat damage to the rocket as I fly into the upper atmosphere as well as to provide better control over the rocket, as at Max Q my rockets typically require a very light touch in order to be flown without breaking up. Too high of a TWR at this stage, and I'll either have stuff exploding (or getting near enough to it), or I'll have any attempt to maneuver the rocket past "ever so slightly" result in a break up. First stage, deep atmosphere flight. Essentially to get the rest of the rocket up and moving, and in a position where the following stage can work at its most efficient. Min TWR starts from 1.1-1.4 (depending on the payload. Lighter payloads need lower start TWR, heavier, higher) and caps at ~1.7-1.8. The fuel amounts for 1st and 2nd stage are chosen to split the required dV at a 0.9:1.1 ratio, respectively. All stages are packed with extra fuel not only as ballast to help in achieving the TWR ranges, but also as a contingency in case I mess up the ascent or decide on a higher orbit. (Which I admittedly do quite often) With the stages designed like this, so long as I fly the rocket properly I'm wasting the relatively minuscule amounts I keep on the rockets extra. If I bothered to crunch the numbers, I could probably get near 100% efficiency as I wouldn't need the ballast fuel.

Ultimately the idea of a repair mission to James Webb would depend on how worth it it would be to do so in the first place, given that the mission would mostly comprise of one time use hardware, procedures, and so on. With James Webb not being designed as Hubble was, to repair it would require development time and resources that, depending on the kind of repairs Webb might need, may end up costing just as much as rebuilding the whole thing altogether. Other things to consider is the simple fact that if James Webb goes up in 2018 as planned, it will sit up there broken until at least 2021 when we're finally sending astronauts up with Orion. It also has to be stated that, much like the SLS rocket that would both launch it and inevitably be called on to help service it, Webb has had development issues. Given everything and the general climate, if Webb launches and it ends up a failure, no one might be willing to even fund a rescue in the first place. But, grown up pessimist talk aside, the idea of repairing it would still be pretty complicated. One because you would in fact need a specialized device to either capture or otherwise restrain the satellite in one position while you work, and two because by design most of what might go wrong with it will require taking the thing apart in order to fix. If you have to dismantle the sun shield, what might that do to the instruments?

I went to a very, very pretty Mun

I deal with it with mods and by ripping off Eyes Turned Skyward, The Martian, and NASA itself for my craft designs. (though my planes are purely my own) Pretty much any basic orbital vehicle of mine is ripping off the MK V Apollo spacecraft from ETS. Any lander, the LM or Altair. My failed interplanetary mission to Duna from 1.04/5 ripped off The Martian and Constellation at the same time. And so on. Frankly, even when I was still just building random stuff instead of actually trying to be efficient with my designs, I wasn't relying on pure stock parts. Stock in general has always been lacking and will be until the focus for Squad moves towards the content side of things.

^ Awesome. Also, to update on the docking port issue I was having, deleting TE's docking port configs corrects the issue, and apparently a lot of issues I (and I believe other users) have been having with docking ports. Such as extend functions in the VAB not working, and so on.

Quite a few. I went ahead and did a sep install and I'm adding my mod list 1 at at time to track down whats causing the the issue, as stock KSP + CX does retain the node. Already went through all the mods i'm using that aren't actually 1.1.2 compatible, so it has to be something recent thats doing it. Will report back when I find it. UPDATE: Found it. Tweakable Everything is whats causing the node to disappear. I looked through the configs in both mods and my experience isn't pointing anything out as an obvious culprit.

Yep. Been in and out of the game multiple times over the last few days. I'll try it with a stock install to see if its still doing it, but as far as I can tell nothing should be conflicting with it, because that just doesn't make any sense.

Indeed, I am unable, but that is because there is no node, as can be seen below. Normally I've seen parts like this where the node is there but its basically overlapping the bottom node so its hard to get proper attachment, but in this case, when the bottom node is already occupied, theres no other node present.

Congrats on the release, but is it intentional for the Active APAS to not have a second node? Been wanting to use it as a port for the Mk 1-2 but the lack of a top node means I can't attach a blast cover and/or LES.

Living on Merritt Island for most of my life, I can tell you that while the safe zone is indeed about 2-4 miles depending on the rocket, you can still feel and hear the rocket from a much larger distance. Upwards of 10-25 miles away.