Ohm is Futile

"Fly safe" is a very common thing to say in Eve online, which Scott has played. Maybe they were thinking of Scott when they put that in, but it's largely used by certain communities, which do not include our good friend Scott Manley.

This. Very much this. Also very much this. Note that parachutes will gain effectiveness if you have an engineer to repack them and attempt multiple landings with the same lander. For a single landing and then back to Kerbin, a couple of drogues can help a lot (depending on mass, ofc) and you should otherwise not worry too much about fuel expenditure for the landing.

Good advice. Quick note, you don't need the maneuver node at AP if you have KER. You can have it display that information on the fly with perfect accuracy at all times.

Aerobraking maneuvers are a difficult balancing act, typically. You want to go low enough to brake within an acceptable time frame (one pass for aerocapture) but not so low you burn up and/or crash. That altitude highly depends on the amount of drag your vehicle can generate and how much heat it can survive. That means you should really be wary of something having a lower max temperature than the rest of your ship and it not being in a service bay or protected somehow. If you plan on aerobraking, part temperature values are always worth looking at. Now, if you don't need a capture on the first pass there is always the option of quicksaving before the maneuver that will set your braking altitude (aka periapsis) and messing around until you get something survivable and simply make multiple passes.

I wouldn't bother with the exact numbers. It's not about the speed number or even the attitude at whatever altitude (although that's typically a decent indicator). It's about TWR. Rockets with more or less TWR will want a more or less aggressive gravity turn. Another decent indicator is time to apoapsis. If it's above 1 minute and rising, tilt more until it stabilizes around one minute. Keep that going 'till orbit or until you reach the desired apoapsis and then throttle down until you reach apoapsis and then circularize.

No. Radiators are not meant to shed heat during atmospheric flight. If you want to aerobrake, use a heat shield, use airbrakes (depending on the context), use wings and control surfaces with sufficient heat tolerance, but do not use radiators.

Well, there is a somewhat universal solution if you really want to go wheel. Depending on the size of the vehicle, it could be anywhere from crazy impractical to pretty trivial. Basically, you could put the smallest thrusters on your vehicle facing downwards and then muck around with thrust limits and throttle to see how much you need to stay on the ground... It shouldn't be too expensive in terms of fuel, at least for the very short trips you would be doing. That said, Gilly is probably just too small to apply even this. RCS and other lightweight solutions should be fine and probably more desirable. Heck, you could probably cut the middle man and just straight up dock the hauler with the mining rig since the gravity is so low.

I just realized this but how many relays do you have? is it possible the relay itself is losing sight with the KSC? Because I ran the numbers in Poodmund's signal calculator and as long as all the antennae are deployed and one of the satellite has KSC connection, then you should at least have a red bar if not two orange ones. It definitely should not be completely disconnected.

Not a bad guide, although it's pretty technical and the pictures are broken. I would think some googling should actually yield the answers. I'm sure some of my more technical fellows can answer in more detail, as for me, I can tell you you don't need those to go anywhere in the stock game. In fact, you may very well manage to do pretty much anything in the game without being aware of all the math involved. Blasphemy, I know.

Well, Duna is close enough that you can pretty much throw something together as long as you respect some rules of thumb to make it strong enough. It will be over-engineered and more expensive than it needs, but it will do the job. That said, I am a sucker for tools such as dV calculators and launch window planners. Basically, anything that takes the guesswork out of the equation and I wouldn't say it's perfect for new players, but it can take a lot of frustration out of the process especially with interplanetary trips as those involve a lot more time both designing and flying. It also makes it easy to underestimate interplanetary trips as all the numbers those tools put out are the most efficient ones and most people including myself end up wasting a certain amount of fuel to a number of factors. Then again, at least you get a ballpark idea of what your rockets can do. So, it's up to you really.

PS4 version might be different enough. I just don't know at this point. From my test, this is not what happens, at least not with the original design. It was not perfectly stable, but it did not behave like something that wants to flip either. I was pretty sloppy and ended pointing the rocket well away from prograde in the lower atmosphere. I've wrestled a top-draggy design recently, and believe me, this one may not be perfect, but it actually wobbled back and forth because it wants to fly prograde much harder than it needs for a good gravity turn. Something flip-inclined would try to move away from prograde the moment you push it slightly over the edge. I pushed it well over 20 degrees out of prograde. So at this point, either my replica was not close enough (but I doubt that, as much as I dislike the winglets, they do provide a lot of drag at the bottom and can help prevent flipping) or the PS4 version is different in how in handles aerodynamics. Failing that, I'm guessing there's something the user may be doing during ascent that somehow breaks this rocket. Without more information, I really couldn't tell.

Yeah, only thing I can think of is that the HGs are not extended... Also, do you have any mods that could affect the strength of antennae? What about the difficulty settings?

Ok, so I made this. It looks pretty much the same, it has a different value by 60 moneys, but as far as I can tell, the thing is otherwise a perfect replica from the OP. I got this into a 250km by 250km orbit with my eyes closed with 2,800 m/s dV left in the tanks. I ditched the middle stage a fair bit earlier due to the lack of torque because of the reliants, I would probably have significantly more fuel left if I used swivels. As I expected, the winglets prevented me from making a really nice gravity turn, which is why the orbit is so high. It flew a bit weird, but even with sloppy controls, it didn't flip. At this point, I have to ask exactly how is the OP trying to get this thing into orbit? It seems like it's more of a pilot problem than a design one...

Hmm, food for thought... I mean, you are not talking about the winglets which were there initially (which I believe do more harm than good) which should counteract a significant amount of torque. At this point I'd be curious to recreate the rocket with and without the winglets and actually test the thing, because in my experience this rocket doesn't look too crazy in terms of top drag.

I tend to agree with that, but who knows? It depends on the target orbit for the satellite and a bunch of other factors. I strongly doubt that there is more drag at the front of the rocket, unless the service bay doors are open during the lower atmosphere part of the flight. If the doors are closed, there's no way the drag is higher at the top than the bottom with those winglets (not that I think they should be there, but that's another debate). The doors are closed during launch, right? Not a bad idea to incline the rocket on the launch pad, especially with the clamps. It's possible the OP is simply being too agressive with the gravity turn, though. You should never get far(or leave the edge of the circle even) from the prograde marker even with a stable rocket during the lower part of the ascent (<30km altitude).

Reaction wheels can indeed result in weirdness when combined with rovers. Another potential source of weirdness is how you placed the wheels. Did you place them using symmetry in the VAB or SPH? Did you place them manually? Did you rotate the wheels using the rotate tool?

If you are not using a swivel engine for that middle engine, it might cause problems. Fins should be useless. The 3-way symmetry shouldn't be an issue unless you eyeballed the placement instead of using the in-game symmetry. It's probably unstable on the launch pad since the clamps are below the CoM. Your boosters are placed a little weird in comparison to the side decouplers. Try to offset the parts until the decouplers are roughly in the middle of the decouplers and/or add struts if you can. Did I mention those fins are probably useless, heck, a problem even? The fins are potentially an issue. Fins on rockets make them not want to turn, plus the lift they provide is going to be unequal as the trajectory changes during the gravity turn. Also, if you are trying to steer with them... ugh. Use a swivel and avoid fins.

Duna is the easiest interplanetary target (well, I suppose Ike is kinda easier, but you get the idea...) As others have pointed out, the transfer window is really important. In terms of dV, you can look at this map, it will give you a good idea of what it takes. Note that landing can be basically free using parachutes thanks to the atmosphere. You can easily send a manned mission there and back, and that wouldn't require too much effort. You could send probes, but then you will need at least a couple of strong relays and you will probably want some less powerful ones to make a local network. None of it is particularly complicated, you just need a bigger rocket to cover your fuel expenses due to the greater distance between Duna and Kerbin than Kerbin and the Mün. I'd say you don't even need the mainsail unlocked. Skippers are probably alright if you plan your stages right and save mass wherever you can. It all depends on what you want to do around Duna. Do you want to science the hell out of it or do you just want to land, plant a flag and get what you can?

^ Pretty much that. Might sound stupid, but you need to pay attention to the direction of the orbit, too. With the right knowledge and a bit of mucking around, it's quite easy to match the orbits, but it's also easy to do it the wrong way. So watch the shade of the line and its movement, because reversing an orbit is much, much more difficult.

Haha, thanks guys! Yeah, my signature is not the flashiest. Should it?

...you don't? You could use an empty Mk I pod with a probe core.

Oh hi! It's not the best quality, but the info is accurate, if you click the link in my signature you'll be led to a post with mainly YouTube links to my tutorials. They were recorded with 1.2.2, but there's almost no difference with 1.3 gameplay-wise.

Right, good point, Laythe is a satellite. Getting into a polar orbit is simple enough, but getting into the same polar orbit is not quite as easy. Yup, I would definitely recommend shooting for Jool first, doesn't even need to be a polar orbit of Jool (in fact, it probably shouldn't be) and wait for a good opportunity to transfer from Jool to Laythe with both matching orbits and inclinations and such.

I doubt it will "get mad". The problem is that the shifting in CoM as it gets built may cause the gravity to change directions depending on the mass of the structure. It's also probably fairly unpredictable since Gilly doesn't have a regular shape. That would likely 'cause the Kraken to awaken. That said, as others have pointed out, I doubt you can even get there. The "physics' bubble" would need to be significantly larger than it currently is. Like, a lot larger. Plus, as far as I can tell you can't even use the Klaw to firmly plant your structure on Gilly. It's a technical nightmare, no matter how you look at it.