1.0 Fairings - for the middle bits?

[kurja]

Do the new stock fairings always have to end in a point? I've been trying to wrap a midsection of a rocket in a fairing but it doesn't seem to work... Think lander module in an apollo-style rocket. Is it possible to use the stock fairings in this manner?

Edited May 15, 2015 by kurja

[Goomblah]

You can have fairings in midsections; if you are protecting a section in between two equal-radius parts, you will have to have the fairing cross-section go out a bit, travel the length of the area it needs to protect, then go back in at the top. The fairing creator usually won't let you make flush fairings because they collide with parts a tiny bit...

[Alshain]

middle bits, more accurately called Interstage Fairings, can indeed be made by closing around anything else. Build your craft placing the fairing base at either the top or bottom of your intended stage and then build the fairing and when you get to the top, close down around the bottom of the next part above the stage (or the inverse if the base is at the top, however make sure your base is upside down if that is the case). You can close an interstage fairing to a decoupler, a command pod, or really just about anything that is handy depending on how you want to access your cargo (decouplers are logical choices).

What you can not do currently is making a static interstage shell. These are fairings that do not decouple themselves and instead are designed to have their cargo extracted in space (called TD&E). This is how Apollo extracted the lander from below the command module engine (technically Apollo had half and half, part of the shell staged away, the bottom of the lander had to be extracted). Unfortunately the only way to do this in KSP is to have a docking port attached to a decoupler (because undocking from an engine does not remove it's fairing, known bug) and the only thing you can close the interstage fairings on is the decoupler itself. However closing the interstage on the decoupler will cause the decoupler to rip apart the fairing even if it isn't staged. The simple remedy is always stage away your fairing, but that kind of ruins the whole immersion. I'm hoping Squad can fix this, in the meantime you can do this with the Procedural Fairings mod.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Alshain

[kurja]

Hm okay thanks for the tips, I succeeded. The fairing generation seems to be a little finicky, need to click back and forth a bit to get it to close the fairing on an above part for some reason, such as here, it just wouldn't.

[EtherDragon]

Here are a couple examples of interstage fairing - for my Apollike rocket:

VAB - Fairings "closed":

VAB - Fairings "exploded":