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[Greiger]

Is it harder to make SSTOs with the new model?

Air breating engines seem to have been nerfed hard. Previously the Turbojet could go 2200m/s at 60km pretty easily but now it seems to only be able to do 1400m/s at 20km. The Rapier didn't get hit as badly and looks like it can do 1700m/s at 25km.

Throttle now takes into account your intake air so you can no longer flame out from having the throttle fully open.

A big part of the problem seems to be that the space plane parts can't stand up to the heat stress of being a space plane. Another is that whether or not something burns up makes no sense. I keep having a Mk2 Cockpit burn up while accelerating but the Mk2 Drone Core behind it is fine despite the plane moving faster than before and it being a flat surface and having the same Max Temperature.

EDIT: Pre-Cooler intake can survive going 1660m/s under 10km. but Ram intake cannot. Ram intake has its max temperature listed as 100 degrees higher than the Pre-Cooler. Looks like space plane construction has gotten very trial and error.

Yea space planes are much harder than before.  I managed to get one into a real orbit and back again.  But just barely, ran out of oxidizer when trying to deorbit and had to deorbit using rcs.

The heat really makes things more complicated, like when you are attempting to get into orbit sometimes you have to back off on the throttle as well as nose up when yer too low for your speed or you risk blowing up the front of the plane (which I think is why the ramjets die, the frontmost parts get MUCH hotter than the ones farther back), you also need to aerobrake HARD during the high part of reentry to slow down as much as you can before getting into the thicker atmosphere.  So far I've been telling the sas to point radial during reentry to kill speed from 70km til 50km, then trying to keep my nose 10 or 20 degrees high of prograde until I'm down to 300m/s or so.  Seems to keep the plane alive without having to find some way to build in heat shields.

[Lightningfalcon]

Once nice thing about the new model is that you can now actually time warp while flying.  Or that might just the plane I've been using. 

[Gabeux]

Is it harder to make SSTOs with the new model?

Air breating engines seem to have been nerfed hard. Previously the Turbojet could go 2200m/s at 60km pretty easily but now it seems to only be able to do 1400m/s at 20km. The Rapier didn't get hit as badly and looks like it can do 1700m/s at 25km.

Throttle now takes into account your intake air so you can no longer flame out from having the throttle fully open.

A big part of the problem seems to be that the space plane parts can't stand up to the heat stress of being a space plane. Another is that whether or not something burns up makes no sense. I keep having a Mk2 Cockpit burn up while accelerating but the Mk2 Drone Core behind it is fine despite the plane moving faster than before and it being a flat surface and having the same Max Temperature.

EDIT: Pre-Cooler intake can survive going 1660m/s under 10km. but Ram intake cannot. Ram intake has its max temperature listed as 100 degrees higher than the Pre-Cooler. Looks like space plane construction has gotten very trial and error.

Yea space planes are much harder than before.  I managed to get one into a real orbit and back again.  But just barely, ran out of oxidizer when trying to deorbit and had to deorbit using rcs.

The heat really makes things more complicated, like when you are attempting to get into orbit sometimes you have to back off on the throttle as well as nose up when yer too low for your speed or you risk blowing up the front of the plane (which I think is why the ramjets die, the frontmost parts get MUCH hotter than the ones farther back), you also need to aerobrake HARD during the high part of reentry to slow down as much as you can before getting into the thicker atmosphere.  So far I've been telling the sas to point radial during reentry to kill speed from 70km til 50km, then trying to keep my nose 10 or 20 degrees high of prograde until I'm down to 300m/s or so.  Seems to keep the plane alive without having to find some way to build in heat shields.

Hmm this is interesting. But the deadly reentry now adds a whole other layer on top of all the trial and error that already ensued when trying to do some weird SSTO designs.
I still need to try the new version, but my guess is that at least it might make things a bit more intuitive, even with all the difficulty added.
Before 1.0, I could never guess what effect a new flap/wing/etc would cause.
Now at least I'll now for certain that I'm doing it wrong and that it's going to fail 

[Leonon]

I think you also need to take into account how much heat the part itself actually puts out, is your ramjet intake attached to the same engine at the same throttle and altitude as the pre-cooler was?

Throttle, altitude, speed, and part connected to were the same. Ram intake just can't handle speed as well as Pre-Cooler intake. The Engine Nacelle intake seems to work about as well as the Pre-Cooler intake too.

EDIT:1690m/s horizontal speed in atmosphere.

[Greiger]

Well that is both an accurate and Kerbal method of science.  Want to see the heat durability of an object?  Strap an engine to it and fling it through the air at hypersonic speed and see if it explodes.

[LoSboccacc]

the 30 part limit really restrict what you can do, and to lift it you need both pad upgrade and vab upgrade, the latter costing 450 square roots

[forsaken1111]

the 30 part limit really restrict what you can do, and to lift it you need both pad upgrade and vab upgrade, the latter costing 450 square roots

Honestly not to hard to make though. I built a simple and mostly-recoverable rocket to exploit those new tourism contracts and made some cash as a space travel agency.

[Shadowlord]

I did the same, but after I got into orbit once, all the tourists only want to go to the mun and minmus now. I don't have waypoints (hopefully that's what "patched conics" are, though I can't afford the upgrade for them yet), have yet to succeed at getting into orbit a second time (and if I wasn't reverting I'd have drained ~100k of cash failing to do so), and my tourist revenue source has disappeared.

Most of the contracts available now that I can do are either barely profitable or not profitable at all, and my rocket that almost makes orbit costs around 28k credits, IIRC.

For example, survey on kerbin contracts, for which I have to take off from BumpyMcDeadlyRunway with a plane which includes two jet engines and a LV-T45, fly to below the survey location using just the jets, and then activate the LV-T45 and point the plane straight up to reach the designated height. I only have enough fuel to do one of them (largely owing to the 30 part limit and my lack of any better jet engines or bigger fuel tanks). The last one yielded about 1000 credits worth of profit (it probably doesn't help that I ejected the jets and their fuel tanks, but when I tried to land with them previously they and their fuel tanks exploded. But this is because they have no parachutes, because of the part limit.).

On the plus side, I was able to upgrade four of the buildings to level 2 before I achieved orbit and crippled my revenue stream.

[Rhodan]

You can decline contracts without penalty as long as you haven't accepted them first. They'll get replaced with new contracts, including the occasional tourist contract. If all else fails, just keep refreshing contracts for those "test while landed at KSP" ones. With some luck, they'll let you try out a useful part you haven't unlocked yet.

[Silent_Thunder]

Man it just doesn't feel the same without RemoteTech, LifeSupport, and Construction Time mods. Gonna have to wait for those to update before really delving in.

That said the new reentry effects are great. Not sure if it's better or worse than Deadly Re-Entry, but at least they plugged the exploit in DR where since heat damage was per part, as long as your completely unshielded ship hit the atmosphere ass end first, the command module would usually survive.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Most of the contracts available now that I can do are either barely profitable or not profitable at all, and my rocket that almost makes orbit costs around 28k credits, IIRC.

I generally try to run a half-dozen contracts at a time so as to offput the costs.  And its a case of 'I will make this work even if it takes a dozen attempts.'

[forsaken1111]

Man it just doesn't feel the same without RemoteTech, LifeSupport, and Construction Time mods. Gonna have to wait for those to update before really delving in.

That said the new reentry effects are great. Not sure if it's better or worse than Deadly Re-Entry, but at least they plugged the exploit in DR where since heat damage was per part, as long as your completely unshielded ship hit the atmosphere ass end first, the command module would usually survive.

http://magico13.net:8080/job/Kerbal%20Construction%20Time%20Development/
http://magico13.net:8080/job/StageRecovery%20Development/
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/116790-1-0-USI-Life-Support-ALPHA-0-1-0-2015-04-27

KCT and stagerecovery have 1.0 dev builds apparently, no idea how solid they are. USI life support is a nice middle ground between snacks and TAC

Can't help you on remote tech yet.

[Rose]

There's no rule that you have to actually use the runway. I tend to just taxi off to the side and use the grass.

[Rose]

Remote tech got rebuilt by a guy on the inovae studios forum.

[forsaken1111]

Remote tech got rebuilt by a guy on the inovae studios forum.

Link? Iz 1.0?