The Eve fleet is now about a week under way, and I'm still faffing about with spaceplanes.
First, I fixed my first spaceplane design. Turns out, it was just the front set of fuel lines that were mucking up the crossfeed. When I got rid of those, fuel fed symetrically, and I got it into orbit again pretty easily.
Once that was in orbit, it was time to engage in some bigger-is-betterism and make a SSTO plane that could have some hope of doing some interplanetary missions.
I only launched one. Incidentally, the beach, east of KSC is off limits. Any pilots with questions shall be immediately sacked.
...
Now, I've got two spaceplanes in Kerbin orbit, with no intended destination, and despite the last screenshot, the Mun is probably a bit of a stretch. Let's gas one of them up to buy some time to think about destination.
Ah ha! If something can be soft-landed, it can be soft-landed on Minmus. It might not have an atmosphere to make use of the plane aspect of the spaceplane, but its easier on an untested landing vehicle than the Mun, and the only other option readily available is Kerbin, so off to Minmus we go!
Oh, I see you lurking there, Mun, with your dastardly plans to screw up my ascent. Piss off!
Before any punches could be thrown at celestial bodies, the sunrise got me distracted.
After passing the Mun, it was about two days to Kerbin apoapsis, where the plane just hung in space, until Minmus caught up.
Incidentally, I set up a maneuver node for my capture burn, immediately after entering Minmus' SOI. I then switched to cockpit view for a different perspective on the approaching moon and noticed that a feature that has been bemoaned as being missing isn't actually missing. Specifically, there's a retrograde vector for maneuver nodes on the navball, but like the radar altimeter, it's only available in the cockpit view.
Back to business, then. Capture and circularize!
I did a couple of survey orbits, first at 40km and one at 10km, before landing.
Kerbin came out, on the last survey run.
And then it was time to land.
Yes, I extended the landing gear. Hope springs eternal, after all.
Really, the plan was to kill my horizontal velocity with the aerospike and control my rate of descent with RCS. I found quite quickly that I didn't have enough downward-facing RCS thrusters, so it became a more traditional descent to Minmus, using the rocket to manage horizontal and vertical velocity, except that I had to level the craft immediately before touchdown, so that the wheels would be what made contact with the surface. How'd that go?
Well, that's four wheels on the ground, but touchdown felt a little...
...rough.
At least the aerospike is still intact, so the spaceplane can get back to Kerbin, but a powered landing there will eat up a lot more fuel, without the jets available. So, now we wait for the refueling ship to arrive over Minmus.