![]() ![]() It all worked very well with each stage achieving its objective. Stage 4 was the crew cockpit and parachute for the landing. Ended up with four stage rocket, stage 1 was to get into space, stage 2 was for the transfer to the Mun, stage 3 was for landing and return to Kerbin. Having opened up some of the larger fuel tanks it was time to put them too work, also an rcs landing was out of the question with the crew cockpit. I wanted to get the kerbal back to Kerbin as well. ![]() For this reason, I try to keep below 8,000 metres.The first contract for this week was planting a flag on the Mun. If you get too far into the atmosphere your engines will lose their oxygen supply and fail. It can be tricky – even impossible – to stay perfectly level, but keep one eye on that height meter. Holding this key down while maneuvering will adjust your default trajectory, which can be useful to keep things stable if your design is slightly imbalanced and likes to lean backwards or forwards, like mine usually do.ĭon’t go too high. In the same spirit as the point above, activating SAS helps to nullify any of those problematic, slightly-too-sharp button presses. Even the best-built plane is fiddly in KSP, and even a hint of anything rash on the keyboard can send your creation into a spin it may never recover from. Go too hard and you risk spinning your plane on the tarmac or losing control very close to the ground, which is never a good thing. With a tuned build you should be ready to do some flying! You should know roughly how this works, but here are some tips that I’ve picked up both through my own test flights and from various forum posts and videos online. Think about airflow, thrust and drag and why your build is fighting to move in the particular direction it is. There’s no silver bullet for any problems you might encounter with your plane, but this is where your foundation in aeronautics comes in. Finding the plane hard to manouever? Play around with the positioning of your wings, tail, winglets and flaps until things get smoother. Even if you followed your reference material as closely as possible, chances are there will be a slightly misplaced component or some quirk of the KSP physics model that will give you some trouble in the air (or on the ground).Ĭan’t take off? Try adjusting the angle of the wings to create more lift and move the wheels to angle the front end up more. Make tiny tweaks each time and see what works best. There’s no magic formula I can give for this – it’ll likely take some testing to work out what the optimal position and angle is for these. Lastly, add a tail and some winglets at the rear. The front one, as the name suggests, goes at the front – just make sure it’s straight! The rear wheels should be located on the underside of the wings, close to the centre of the plane and just behind the centre of mass. This engine will require air intakes, which I usually position on both the top and bottom sides of the wings close to the centre of the plane – they can go elsewhere, but this looks neat. Attach a jet engine (or two) to the rear end. Add some flaps towards the ends of the rear side of the wings so you can control the plane in flight. These need to be proportional to the size of your plane, and slightly angled so they push air under the plane and create lift to help you get off the ground. Start with the obvious stuff like the cockpit and the fuel tanks that make up the body, and add some wings. You can pull up a reference photo of an F-16 or a Boeing 737 in a few seconds on Google… And that’s all you need to get started on your own design. You’ve probably got a foundational knowledge of aeronautics. You definitely know roughly what a plane looks like. That said, there’s a lot to be learnt just by watching. He’s usually working on some kind of KSP project, is very knowledgeable, and – if you’re lucky – might even answer any burning questions you have. If that sounds too much like homework, try watching EJ_SA on Twitch. Luckily, the best in the business – NASA – have a site they call the Beginner’s Guide to Aeronautics that explains all of these theories and how they apply in practice across passenger aircraft, military aircraft, and of course space flight. Without this foundation, your builds will be nothing but hit-and-hope blind trials. Yes, you read that right – to get a plane off the ground in Kerbal Space Program you’re going to need at least a passing knowledge of aviation and aerodynamic concepts like thrust, lift and drag. Here’s what I learnt… Learning the theory ![]() I saw this as walking before I ran, but it was surprisingly tricky to get a balanced plane out of the hangar and into the air. After getting a couple of satellites into orbit in Kerbal Space Program, I decided I wanted to take to the skies in a plane. ![]()
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