Dust

Learning how to land on the Mun is all about learning how not to crash. It probably took me about a dozen crashes into the surface of the Mun before successfully planting a lander upright and undamaged on the surface. Then about half a dozen more landings to get one that could also return. At first you have no feeling for how fast you're going or how high up you are, and how fast you should be going and how high you should be. If you're using quicksaves in your game, get into a low circular orbit (10-30km) around the Mun then quicksave. Then when you crash you can load that quicksave and try again. And again. And again. You will improve until it happens. The other thing you can do, and what many recommend - and many others scoff at - is to try Minmus first. It only takes a little more fuel to get to, but the much lower gravity of it means landing is a lot slower and easier.

You may need to upgrade the VAB and Launchpad to handle more parts and heavier rockets. That's what I had to do.

When you hit space for launch everything in "Stage 0" will activate. Edit your staging by clicking the little plus sign to add a new stage, then drag your engine down to that new stage.

Nice mod for automating the process. I recently removed a bunch of fuel tanks to save RAM by using procedural parts instead. Regarding loading textures: The way I understand it the game will find all cfg files, parse them for assets (textures, models, etc.) and load them into the game. If there are assets that are not referred to by any cfg file then they won't get loaded. If cfg files have a model but refer to non-existent textures the part will have a placeholder blue texture in game. If the model doesn't exist it won't be available in the VAB and any craft using it will not be loaded. Also, existing crafts in flight that use parts that are pruned will not be loaded, and you'll lose them permanently in the next autosave. Also, craft files that used missing parts can't be loaded in the VAB or SPH.

As I understand it, you can calculate it if you know the temperature of the heat source, the ambient temperature, the surface area of each radiators, and the efficiency of each radiator. There are some formulas at https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki/Waste-Heat-Management

Control surfaces automatically react to control inputs based on where they are in relation to center of mass (as far as I can tell) so that when pitching down (A button), canards in front of CoM angle up and elevators behind the CoM angle down. It could be that your "ailerons" are placed forward of the CoM so that when you pitch down they correctly react by angling up to push the nose down. Design tips: If you're using ailerons for pitch they are called elevons, and will need to be positioned well back from the CoM to be able to provide pitch control (think Space Shuttle). If that's not possible you will need to place a separate elevator and/or canard, then disable pitch on the ailerons.

You're staging the engine and parachute at the same time. Hover the mouse over your staging stack - the little thing in the lower right (in the VAB, lower left on the launchpad) - click the little + button, drag the engine down to stage 0 so that it's not in the same stage as the parachute. Then, when you hit spacebar you will only activate the engine. Once your rocket is spent, wait until you reach the top of your arc (Ap for apoapsis) and are under 20km altitude and hit spacebar again to activate the next stage, which will be your parachute. Edit: Actually, DeMatt's little img tutorial above is exactly what I just described, so make sure you check that out.

Minmus is a captured comet...

Not sure if this is caused by any mods, but I'm posting it here because I am running mods... KSP: 0.25.0 on Windows x86 (32 bit) Problem: Early on in career, going suborbital with the craft below, looking to complete a contract to test the LV-T45 between 77km & 85km. When I staged to fulfill the contract I staged too far and decoupled the pod. So I reverted to launchpad and that's when the problem was seen. First I noticed the fairing was missing from the LV-T45. Also, the staging stack was missing, as was the IVA view for Jeb. I'm also pretty sure I tried to throttle up and turn SAS on but neither throttle nor SAS responded. I reverted to VAB, hit Launch, and it was back to normal. However, I goofed up the staging again, and reverting back to the launchpad gave the exact same result. Mods: (all advertized as 0.25 compatible) [x] Science! 1.0.0 DeadlyReentry v6.1 FAR 0.14.2 Fine Print 0.59.0.0 RasterPropMonitor 0.18.3 KAS 0.4.9 KER 1.0.9.3 Kethane 0.9.2 MechJeb2 2.4.0.0 PreciseNode 1.1.1 RealChute 1.2.5.2 RemoteTech2 1.5.0 ScanSat v8.0 SelectRoot Jul18 Ship Manifest 3.3.2 Karbonite 0.4.2 KAC 3.0.0.2 VOID 0.14.2 KSP Interstellar 0.13 Module Manager 2.5.1 Click to see full res (2560x1440):

Landing a docking port on top of another docking port is pretty demanding. I did it once, but it took an hour, several crashes & reloads, half a bucket of sweat, and probably shortened my life expectancy by a day. If you're using mods MechJeb has some tools to help, specifically one which can hover at a set altitude for you while you position yourself over the target, then you can set the descent rate to lower your rescue craft onto the port. Kerbal Attachment can also be used to add struts between the two crafts if you're worried about rigidity across the docking ports. You could give it a go, it's always good to try something yourself for the experience. We're just forewarning you so you know what you're getting yourself into.

I tried removing TweakScale, and the 6.25m heat shield still loaded up as inflated on the launchpad. On a hunch I also tried removing TweakableEverything, which caused it to show as deployed in the VAB! However, I also went to a bone stock 0.24.2 folder and only installed DRE v5.2 (exact same version installed on my career), and it loads to the launchpad normally. So there is definitely another mod interacting with DRE... Now to troubleshoot further... Yay...

Is anyone else using the 6.25 Inflatable Heatshield? I'm using DeadlyReentryCont_v5.2 and I'm having an issue where it is deployed when it loads up on the launchpad. This is the only time I've ever tried using it. I'm testing it out at Kerbin for a Duna lander. Originally, I had it within the KW 2.5 extended fairing and it deployed through the fairing and knocked the sides off. Removing the fairings made no difference. I made sure "start" was "closed", and I even tried it with it "open" just for kicks - no help. Is there a trick to using it correctly, or is it just bugging out on me? I have a bunch of other mods installed: B9, Editor Extensions, Extraplanetary Launchpads, FAR, Kethane, KW, Infernal Robotics, RealChute, SCANSat, SP+, TAC LS, Tweakable Everything, TweakScale, KSPI (WaveFunctionP's 0.24 fix). This is using the 32 bit launcher (x64 crashes were pissing me off so I got Active Texture Management and went back to 32 bit). Here it is in the VAB, and on the launchpad.

This is a thing of beauty and awe! But if it has issues with DRE I'm going to have to make a new install for it. Does it play nice in FAR (fairings and trunk hide contents from drag)?

toadicus, should Engineer.Extensions.dll be removed from my 0.13 install? I noticed it's not in the 0.14.1 zip.

Oh good, I'm not the only one. Now, to find this fix...