No one

The original RCS thrusters worked just as well, the only problem was that you needed so many of them that the game would lag significantly before they became useful. I tried to use them in the 30 second altitude challenge, but my computer couldn't handle it.

Generic hints do exist: You can test it and see if it works. Also, considering how bad the staging the game sets up for me is, I highly doubt the talking heads would know what they were talking about. Also I would instantly switch them off for being annoying and consider them a waste of developer time.

I've failed 2. Well, failed one canceled one. I rescued a kerbal, on the way back to Kerbin I went via the Mun, but I tried to land on the dark side and crashed. He was not a part of my space program yet and I feel no guilt. Also, I was rescuing another, I used a tiny retrieval vessel with a command seat, got him into the command seat, landed on Kerbin, recovered the vessel, only to find out that because I used a command seat rather than a command pod it didn't count and he was gone (I recovered him but he wasn't in the astronaut complex) so the mission was impossible to complete.

Perfectionism is driving me crazy, but in a different way. I'm attempting to do everything I do for as cheap as possible. I have over 3 million funds, but every launch which costs more than 50k makes me die a little on the inside. Also, doing everything as cheap as possible has a downside: On my latest mission to Kerbolar orbit I opted for a light LFO rocket to return (48-7S) rather than an ion thruster because ion thrusters are too expensive. Now Neilzon is trapped until I send up a rescue probe, which will basically be a clone of what I used to send him up except with an ion thruster, making the mission cost almost twice as much as if I had just done it right to start with.

Have a "base" (One Kerbal+One command pod, also you should really make sure they have a way of eventually getting home even though you'll never bring them home) on every body you visit where they're likely to ask you to plant a flag. Then getting money is as easy as accepting the contract, going to that base, EVAing, and planting a flag. Also have a probe/ship capable of transmitting science orbiting every body where they're likely to ask you to get science from space. Also, SRBs are cheap. Very cheap.

Later on other missions surpass them. I think it's a very good idea for rescue missions to be amazing early-game, because they force you to learn how to rendezvous, a valuable skill later on, and one you would probably not otherwise have learned. The devs probably intentionally designed it that way.

What contracts are you comparing them to? I currently am being offered contracts with similar rewards for things as easy as "get science from space near Kerbin". I would say that rescue missions are some of the hardest (Though not as hard as some of the testing parts missions) in that they require you to essentially dock, even if it is in equatorial LKO, whereas things like "get science" or "plant a flag" are much easier.

Another mistake made by me: I didn't think of just leaving kerbals/spaceships in places like that, and I launched a new rocket/just didn't take the contract every time I got a contract like "get science from X" or "Plant a flag on X" (Though I made sure to do several at once).

At the moment? Trying to build a rocket capable of going interplanetary without spending much money. (I have tons of funds, but I'm a cheapskate). The difference between my attitude in .235 and .24 is rather striking. .235: Well technically I could use rockomax sized parts and be more efficient, but using Kerbodyne to lift everything is so much easier... .24 : Well technically I could use rockomax sized parts and lift heavy stuff, but using small parts to lift everything is so much cheaper...

When I was landing on the Mun for a second time (I had a contract to test a jet engine while landed on the Mun), I was trying to conserve fuel and thus went on a trajectory which would impact it rather than orbiting, only unfortunately it was on the dark side and I forget to put landing lights on. The good news though was that the Kerbal who died in that incident had just been rescued and thus wasn't officially a part of my space program yet. Also I then tried again only with a probe and did the same thing. Then I tried a third time with another probe and this time was careful to land on the light side, but then I didn't have the fuel to get to Minmus which was where I was hoping to test another part in the same mission.

If we assume that perceived age goes up at a rate of 1/(chronological age): Let a=the age at which we start counting Let x=Your chronological age Perceived age = ∫1/xdx = ln|x|-ln|a|=ln|x/a| Half your total perceived age = ln|83/a|/2 x=the age you will be that perceived age, solve for x: ln|x/a|=ln|83/a|/2 x/a=√(83/a) x=a√(83/a) x=√(83a) If we start at 0: 0. You first infinitesimal instant of life takes forever and the rest of it goes by in a flash. If we start at 1/2 (I think that that's when you technically classify as self-aware or something): 6.44 If we start at 2 (I think that this is about when most people learn to talk and stuff, I forget):12.88 If we start at 6 (Ask yourself: Were you really sentient before the age of 6?): 22.316 Basically, if the function is really as simple as that, the middle of your life is pretty early.

I didn't use quickloading/quicksaving at all, so nothing is different now that I've actively turned them off. That said, I also turned off respawning Kerbals, and now I'm terrified of anything going wrong. I'm currently going to Minmus, and rather than risking any of my precious Kerbals I'm rescuing one from Kerbin's orbit and making him land on Minmus before coming home.

The KR-2L used to be my only lifter engine. I was going to stop using it in .24 anyway due to budgets, but now even more reason.

I did all 4 in one launch using explosive decoupling.

But the probability of encountering one object in the solar system without trying (Which you can't try if you can't track it) would be far too low.

Contract: Euthanasia Agent: Mad Scientists Inc. Task: Accelerate a manned spaceship for a delta-v of at least 3000m/s in less than 10 seconds and recover the capsule. Completion: +funds, -rep, +science Contract: Krakenfeed Agent: The Kraken Task: Fly a manned spaceship with at least 100 parts into the depths of Jool. Completion: +funds, -rep, +science

Dare. Grinding is boring. If a mission is too grindy I'll attach extra things/do more things at once until it becomes dare.

The EAS-4 strut connector. If you were to take away any part in the game, that would definitely be the one which would hurt my space program, and I think everyone's, the most. I remember the days before I discovered struts. My rockets weren't very good back then. Well, actually they were very impressive and I now look back on the pre-strut pre-asparagaus times and go "How was I ever able to get that far without struts?"

Someone brought up the WNTS list as evidence that we won't get stock life support, but that isn't really evidence either way. Another list, the Already Suggested List, has "Physical/Mental Health" labeled as "Not planned ever". So Squad's current plan is that we won't be getting stock life support ever.

I don't think so. Or at least, if you did, it would require different physics. In the Pluto/Charon system, Pluto orbits much more slowly than Charon, despite being much closer to the barycenter. If you tried to treat it as a standard system where they both orbited the barycenter, Pluto would orbit much faster due to being closer.

Landed on Gilly. Finally. After one failure (I came down a bit too hard and the lander broke without killing any kerbals, I reloaded the last autosave and the entire craft was gone) and several reload-the-autosaves, I finally got it. Despite the much larger gravity, I found landing on Moho (And, by extension, everywhere else I've landed on) easier due to having an in-space-low boundary above the time warp boundary. That's one giant leap for a Kerbal, one small (Technically it's not much of a challenge at all compared to the other planets I've landed on) step for Kerbalkind.

That is a firewire aka ieee-1394 cable. A long time ago people used those instead of USB cables. The entire thing is an ipod charging cable, except it works with both USB and firewire.

First, the ones I mostly tried to abide by for .235: 1. No mods. 2. No quicksaves. Reverting is totally fine. Quitting/throttling then going back to KSC so that I revert to the last autosave is totally fine. 3. No Kerbal left behind. Even if it takes me 30 years and the entire tech tree, I will rescue them. 4. No suicide missions. Every Kerbal must have at least some chance of returning without a rescue mission a long time later. 5. If there is a risk that the Kerbal might (They need some chance as per rule #4) be trapped and need rescuing but I won't have the parts/skills to rescue them, send a really courageous really stupid Kerbal. The one I first planned to abide by in .235 but ditched because of how much more reliable it was to just recover one Kerbal than a probe with tons of science instruments: 6. Send a probe to get all (Besides crew/eva report) of the possible science from space before sending a Kerbal to get crew/eva reports+land. (Now that money is a thing I'll want to recover the science instruments for money, so manned missions won't make recovery any easier) New ones for .24: 7. Kerbal safety is a top priority. As a result of this, once I am sufficiently far into the tech tree no Kerbal should re-enter in a command pod/science lab/hitchhiker unit. All of them are to re-enter in a command seat attached to a parachute. Also some tiny fuel tank/rocket to de-orbit them. 8. Unlike .235, go interplanetary before I've unlocked the entire tech tree. 9. Attempt to do things efficiently. In .235 I used an asparagus monstrosity for everything (Well, after I discovered struts and asparagus I used the asparagus monstrosity for everything. Before that I still generally used the same launcher for most things, but that launcher kept improving because a) it wasn't very good, and I couldn't make it that good because I didn't know that struts existed). In .24, I will design the launcher for the payload and not use too much overkill. 10. Rule 8 will stop applying if I either make a godly SSTO capable of lifting anything OR a godly not-SSTO but all parts are still recovered. 11. Every piece of debris I leave in space represents funds I could have in my pocket. Recover as much as possible and don't leave things floating in space for no reason. 12. When returning from interplanetary missions, orbit Kerbin then de-orbit. No more slamming into it at high speeds. This is to ensure that I return as close as possible to KSC. 13. Rule 12 does not apply to the Kerbal-returners of rule 7. Those things should be as cheap as possible and the return is more focused on the Kerbal and the science they are holding than the funds. 14. Rules 11 and 12 do not apply to extremely cheap probes.

Definitely Aerodynamics. Biomes I don't really see the point of in general. I mean, all they really do is make science more grindy, they sort of add some challenge in that they encourage you to either design one ship with multiple landers or make landers reusable and capable of making multiple hops, but I think that this is much better accomplished by making one planet with lots of moons (As in, Jool. Though it could use more moons, doesn't Jupiter have like 50 or something? I'm not asking for 50, but we could use a lot more than 5). That said, some planets sort of deserve some biomes, like Moho could have a light side and a dark side, Duna could have poles and not-poles, but I definitely don't think that everything should have as many biomes as the Mun and Minmus. The Mun and Minmus should not have as many biomes as they do right now imo. Nuclear fuel for the LV-N, meh. I mean, it should be added but to me it doesn't seem that important. If people are abusing the fact that it uses the same fuel as everything else then yes that should be fixed, but I never have. Also this should probably be relatively easy and take far less time to implement than the others. (They already have ion thrusters which run on Xenon, making another thing which runs on an alternative fuel shouldn't be that hard). Making EVA take monopropellant wouldn't change that much, monopropellant is pretty light and it would be easy to carry enough for way more EVAs than would be necessary. Also, like the nuclear fuel, it probably wouldn't take that much time to implement. Aerodynamics are glaringly bad at the moment and in dire need of fixing. Personally I'm just ignoring the existence of planes until they fix aerodynamics. Also I'm building massive pancake rockets which would be aerodynamically horrible because there's no reason not to at the moment.

Originally I named them after what they would do (e.g. "Mun Orbiter") but then I started getting more creative**. Some common things I name them after: Greek mythological figures. More specifically, greek mythological figures who attempted to go against the gods and found out that if you do that in greek mythology then bad stuff happens to you. For example: Icarus (Fly close to the sun), Prometheus (Steal fire science from Zeus Jupiter Jool), Arachne* (No relation to the spaceship, I just thought it would be a good name) Random things vaguely related to the name of the planet/name of the equivalent real planet: WALL-E, which was going to Eve, Minecraft, which was going to Dres (Dres is like Ceres. Ceres was the god of Agriculture. Minecraft made me appreciate the importance of agriculture. I really didn't know what to call it). Also Cerberus (Go to Eeloo) fits more into this category than the first one. Real spaceships: Messenger which was going to Moho (That was what NASA called their mercury probe) Real Astronauts: The Collins Lander*, because Collins was left behind while the others went down and landed on the moon, and the Collins Lander gets left behind on the planet/moon. Random things which sound vaguely related to where they're going via random association: Gilly sounds sort of like "Gill". "Gills" are what fish have. Fish swim in the water. What else is in the water? Frogs. Thus, the Frog is a planned mission to Gilly. Previous spaceships which accomplished the same thing: If the goal is ever "ESCAPE", it gets named Mun Orbiter 4. When I was making the Mun Orbiters, I accidentally skipped 3 and went straight to 4. The Mun Orbiter 4, I think this was the manned one, ended up being shot out of Kerbin's SOI and trapped in Kerbolar Orbit for 30 years while I completed the tech tree then went and rescued him a long time later. Next, I went back to 3 which I had skipped, only then I made another Mun Orbiter 4. This one, unmanned, ended up having lots of Delta-V (This is what happens when the final stage is an SRB and the rest of it is just a sputnik and a few weightless things) and it escaped Kerbol. None of the other Mun Orbiters even escaped Kerbin's SOI. Of course, the goal hasn't been to escape, but if they ever give you a reason to escape Kerbol's SOI, I'm calling the escaping Ship the "Mun Orbiter 4". If I need 2, it will be "Mun Orbiter 4" and "Mun Orbiter 4 2". *=A general ship design used in multiple ships. The others are all names of specific ships. **I do still use this naming system sometimes. For example: MohoProbe, DresProbe, EelooProbe. But I've been trying to stay away, even if it means having to use the naming system which led to the Frog.