Kerbal Space Program

^ Can you post picture of your plane and maybe pic of when it's starting to go tailspin?

Yeah, here's a picture of it◊, and here's when it starts to spin◊. It started getting hard to control around 600 m/s, then settled down a bit once I got above 800-ish, though the nose still bobbed up and down quite a bit. This time around, I actually managed to keep it stable until I reached and equilibrium of about 1,000 m/s at an approx altitude between 13,000 and 15,000 meters. My earlier 25,000 meter number was just me remembering it wrong.

Anyway, this time around, I had to fire my central rocket in order to induce the spin, but it happened all the same. You can see that all my jets are burning and I have .88 air. I turned on my Kerbal Engineer and FAR flight data on the off-chance that it might help.

It seems like this design wouldn't really work anyway. I have too much jet fuel and not enough rocket.

edited 27th Feb '15 11:02:52 AM by CDRW

What I generally do is set all the air breathing engines to a action group. Generally 2 or 3 so it's right there. That way I can kill them all before the spin's too severe. Also, watch your intake air. When it's about to bottom out, fire the rocket engines. The thrust from them will help prevent the spin.

Here's some images I found on imagur awhile ago that should be helpful. Haven't tried all of it myself yet, but they did Math™, so I'd trust them.

EDIT: Also, moving your engines closer to the center would lessen the spin-out.

EDIT 2: Oh, apparently, if the guy who wrote the guide is to be believed, if you put on the intakes and engine in order of use(intake 1,2 , engine 1, intake 3,4, engine 2), they'll all pop at the same time. Again, I can't say.

edited 27th Feb '15 5:37:32 PM by Joesolo

Kerbal now offering to 3D print your ship.

That is a huge help, thanks!

A question because I don't want to do Math if the answer is already out there. How much delta-v do I need to make a Grand Tour—including a couple asteroids—if I'm only planning orbits and flybys, no landing?

Your airbreathing engines are dying because you are Doing it Wrong. Not that it is at all obvious how to do it right. http://imgur.com/a/3jrUJ#avVZHXh Explains things. Currently doing a house rules game - No using the rocket pad at all! ;) Kind of forced to use *rockets* but, the idea is to focus on space planes. Currently bringing Jeb home from the mun... Sans spaceship. Ran out of fuel after taking off from the mun again. <,< Spacewalking has a surprising amount of Dv, tough, especially when you obert from stupidly low munar orbit. Guess I made my own rescue mission?

Finally got around to taking pics of my mobile moon base. It's ever-so creatively named the "science land train"

That one is, if memory serves, the MK 3. First one's scattered in bits across part of the mun. Second one broke a bit too often. So a lot of parts on there are improvements from the old ones. Like the pair of aircraft wheels fore and aft. Those take the brunt of impacts when I ramp off hills. And the rockets on the back, those allow her to climb steeper hills...when they're not used as a "go fast" button.

That's really cool. I wish I was able to make creative looking stuff like that.

I wonder how will you able to lift those kind of thing after aerodynamics is put in...fairings?

I've been working on a project for the last week or so, a ship to take Valentina on a tour of the solar system when 1.0 comes out.

This is my best design so far, in both delta-v—just over 70k—and looks.◊

yea, pretty much fairings. That baby was actually launched vertically, the decoupler on the back was attached to one of my heavy-lift rockets so fairings would work pretty well.

aw that's pretty cool. Looks like something out of the early days of sci-fi.

edited 3rd Mar '15 8:42:39 AM by Joesolo

I made◊ my◊ first◊ Mun◊ base!◊ I went overboard with the design because I wanted to make a real Mun base, but I actually still broke even on the contracts I fulfilled with the mission. The rover was deceptively expensive, with two ion engines and orbital capability. I wanted to be able to use it to fulfil all those "take x reading at y location" contracts.

I launched the whole thing on one rocket and assembled it in orbit. Let me tell you, that was a pain in the ass. I'm going to have to find a different way of doing things for my other bases.

Lunch the base components as rovers, dock them on the surface under there own power.

Thats my solution at least.

That's the most common way to do large mun bases. My mobile one is actually on a standardized frame I built for grOund bases, just with wheels added

Yeah, I'm probably going to do that for future ones. It just seems wrong to have a base on wheels though. Then it's just a truck.

Could have a base transporter truck that goes underneath each portion. You put each base component on Lander legs so that they lift the base above truck height.

Alternatively, you could sky-crane them all in

Use underpowered wheels and make a truck/trailer ensable.

Like a mobile home.

Ooh, I like that first one. What exactly is a sky crane though?

What you built up there, with the thrusters above the object you landed.

Ah. Thanks.

Was on my mobile so couldn't open that. Yea, you've got a sky crane right there. Very nice.

Halloo! Saw this thread, read through all of it, and it is full of awesome. Has anybody here come across someplace that has the math of orbital and space maneuvers? I've seen the Scott Manley videos and Project Rho, and I want MOAR MATH MOAR SCIENCE.

Could always check out the wiki.

Personally I've only ever used guesstimate math in this game. 9/10 end up with half an extra stage on my mun landers and such.

...

I prefer using sandbox and making crazy contraptions.

Which means sometimes I end up with MULTIPLE extra stages, no kill like overkill. >.>

When I was first playing, I Overshot kerbin orbit and went into a Solar orbit. (Didn't get the whole "turn east to orbit" bit yet...)