Snark

+1 for solar panels. Mun and Minmus will give you tons of science, and you need solar panels to get there. You already have enough tech to build a successful (if inelegant) Mun or Minmus lander, as long as you can maintain electrical power. Go, land, get your 4 instruments + EVA, come back, tons of science. Repeat on different biomes for more science. Mmmm, science. Also, don't forget that in munar (or Minmus) low orbit, you can repeatedly EVA over the various biomes, of which there are a lot.

Not sure what strategy you're using for docking-- some description would help to debug it. If what you're doing is "fly to the Mun the usual way into an equatorial orbit, then do a huge burn to manhandle your orbital plane to polar", then yeah, that's gonna eat up your dV; it's not efficient. A few options, depending on how adventurous you're feeling. One is to do your orbital adjusting early, as in "right at the start when you're leaving LKO", or even at the midway point en route to the Mun-- don't wait until you get to the Mun. The later you wait to adjust your orbit, the more expensive it gets. For example, you can do like this: Set up a Mun intercept the usual way. Once you're en route the Mun (and your projected path intersects Mun's SoI), drop a maneuver node somewhere around, say, the halfway point, but don't give it a vector yet. Then click on the Mun and choose "Focus View". This takes you to the Mun and gives a nice view of what your trajectory will be around it. Then, while still focused on the Mun, rotate the camera around it until you can see the maneuver node you just dropped. Now you can fiddle with the vector handles on the maneuver node to adjust your Mun orbit. It'll be cheap: a relatively light maneuver will make a big difference to your munar orbit insertion. If that's not your cup of tea, here's a completely different approach that's also relatively cheap on dV, as long as you're not in a hurry: 1. Set up a Munar mission the usual way (equatorial plane). Set it up so that your approach will have a really low munar periapsis, like 10km. 2. At periapsis, burn retrograde just enough to be captured to the Mun (i.e. so that you have the highest possible apoapsis). 3. You're now in an elliptical orbit with really low apoapsis and really high periapsis. Coast up to apoapsis. 4. At apoapsis, burn prograde to circularize your orbit (this will be really cheap in dV). You're now in a very high circular orbit around the Mun. 5. Let your orbit progress until you're at the ascending or descending node for your target (i.e. where your equatorial orbit intersects the plane of your target's polar orbit). 6. At that point, burn to rotate your orbit so that it's coplanar with your target. This will also be a cheap burn because you're orbiting so slowly that it's easy to make a right-angle turn. 7. You're now orbiting in the same plane as your target, it's just a normal orbital rendezvous at that point.

Actually, landing is no problem. A kerbal on EVA can re-enter Kerbin's atmosphere without any heating problems, and can drop out of the sky into the ocean and survive. That seems way overpowered to me, and I wish they'd nerf it, but we play the cards we're dealt...

KSP pretty much insists on consistent symmetry level. You can put no-symmetry parts on symmetric ones, and you can put N-symmetry parts on N-symmetric ones, but you can't put parts of one symmetry level on parts of a different symmetry level. This limitation comes up most often when putting together asparagus staging. One way around that is to add the radial boosters in pairs, as suggested above, but I don't like that way myself because it introduces hassles with editing/maintaining them. The other way is to just turn off symmetry when adding the fuel lines, which is admittedly also a hassle, but I find it much less so than the other option, so that's what I do. Subassemblies help with some of this pain; I put together a library of various sizes of asparagus for different size payloads, so it's quick to drop one in.

I realize this is a moot point now that you're back, but... Don't even need to get out and push... just get out and go. - Kerbal EVA packs have a few hundred m/s of dV in them - A kerbal on EVA can re-enter Kerbin's atmosphere with no problem of overheating (pick a high periapsis like 45km and you don't even get any reentry or mach effects) - A kerbal can drop out of the sky into the ocean and survive Not sure if you could quite pull it off from Minmus surface (haven't tried), but if you get your ship to Minmus orbit, a kerbal can definitely get home without a ship. (Not saying I'm happy about that-- I think kerbal EVA is way overpowered, think they should nerf all three of the things I mention above-- but hey, we play the cards we're dealt.)

That can come in quite handy for unmanned probes that may be in danger of going completely dead when they run out of juice. Just keep one battery in reserve. If the probe dies, you just toggle the battery back on and voila. (The game lets you toggle resource containers on/off even on a deactivated craft.)

The easiest option is to start your gravity turn early, even just a tiny smidgeon eastwards, before your first stage (SRBs or whatever) needs to drop. That will generally cause them to hit the ground just east of the pad, so no problem. If you want to put chutes on them, you can do that and it'll work-- just make sure that you've set up the staging so that the chutes on the ejected stage are in the same stage as the decoupler that ejected them. That way, a single tap of the space bar will both eject the stage and release the chutes.

1. Click on a crew hatch, so it brings up the little UI list of all the kerbals therein. 2. There are a couple of buttons next to each crewmember, "EVA" and "Transfer". Click "Transfer." 3. All the parts on your (combined, docked) ship with crew capability will light up: red if they're full, blue if they have space available. 4. Click on the blue-lit part to which you want to transfer. Ta-da!

Heck, you think EVA-landing on Minmus is a challenge? You can EVA-land on Kerbin. From Minmus. (Or munar orbit, for that matter.) It's not even hard-- is considerably easier, in fact, than EVA-landing in a vacuum. Just lower your Kerbin periapsis to ~45km and go get a cup of coffee. No re-entry heat, just kerplunk in the ocean and they're fine. (Just discovered this today, much to my dismay.) Since it's a "sandbox" game (in the general sense, like SimCity), there's really no such thing as an "exploit" or "cheating." You play the game because it's fun. If doing a certain activity is fun for you, then it's serving it's purpose. For myself: I want Kerbals to be fragile, and I want them to need spaceships. I don't want to EVA-land on Minmus (or Kerbin) because I want to have to make repeated vehicular landings and figure out all the fuel logistics around that. To paraphrase Kennedy, I play KSP not because it is easy but because it is hard... and that's the particular form of "hard" that appeals to me. So when I play, I just pretend that they only have 1.0 units of EVA fuel, and won't ever use more than that. But that's just my own play style, and other folks enjoy different challenges. Nothing wrong with that. The only real measure is: after you pull something off, do you feel amused / rewarded / accomplished, or do you feel kinda let down? That's the only metric that matters.

I agree that "zany antics" is very Kerbal. They just need to be reasonably believable, and challenging. For example: I would contend that "getting from orbit to the surface of the home planet in nothing but a spacesuit" should be frankly impossible. Or, if not quite impossible, it should require near-legendary finesse, so that if you actually pull it off, you'd feel like "wow, I just got a hole-in-one." As it stands now, it's trivially easy-- "adjust periapsis to 45 km and go get a cup of coffee." That's just sad. I'm not saying it's impossible to kill them off... but I tried the EVA landing once, and succeeded once, and didn't do anything special. I always hated that it was possible (pre-1.0) to re-enter in a craft while sitting in an external command seat, so I role-played and just refused to do it. Now we're in 1.0, and I was thinking "oh boy, they will have fixed that now" ... but nope.

Does anyone else think that game mechanics are way too forgiving of kerbals? Observations (yeah, I know, not so new): - Their EVA propellant is way overpowered (too much dV) - Reentry heat is way too forgiving for kerbals on EVA - Surface impact is also way too forgiving for kerbals on EVA I just had a rescue mission for a Kerbal stranded in orbit around the Mun. It was a fairly high orbit. Just for fun, I wanted to see what I could do with just EVA. So I piloted a ship so that it passed within 2km (thus "waking up" the rescuee), but that's the only involvement that any craft had. Having done that, the Kerbal was able to rescue herself from munar orbit with no ship whatsoever. 1. She used EVA to accelerate to munar escape and get a Kerbin periapsis of ~45km. 2. On entering atmosphere, she aerobraked as easy as a feather. No heating at all. Not even any Mach effects. 3. She dropped into the ocean and survived impact. No special "try to use EVA to slow the fall," she just kerplunked in and was fine. This seems completely ridiculous to me. Yeah, I know, it's a game, and though I like realism, I'm fine with putting gameplay decisions above realism. But rescuing yourself from munar orbit without a ship? Seriously? It seems like poor gameplay-- what's the point of sending a ship up there if it's not actually needed? There was virtually no skill involved in any of this, other than being able to bring a craft within 2km of the rescuee (no need to match velocities). IMHO, they ought to do the following: - Nerf EVA dV. Lower it to, say, 100 m/s. That's still better than reality, but not so ludicrously overpowered. - Kerbals hitting atmosphere should heat up, and should have a very low heat tolerance. Re-entering without a ship should be deadly. - Falling at terminal velocity onto any surface (even water) should be, well, terminal. What do folks think?

Docking steps: 0. make sure that you and the target have compatible docking ports 1. Rendezvous with the target so you're nearby and at zero relative velocity 2. Maneuver around (usually with RCS) so that your docking port is lined up with the target's 3. very gently accelerate towards the target, very slowly (best to keep your relative velocity under 0.3, reduce to 0.1 when you get close) 4. Dock! I'll assume that you've got 0 and 1 covered, and that your issue is with #2 and/or #3? Couple of things that help with that: - after step 1, click on the target's docking port and choose "Set Target", to make sure that you're tracking the docking port itself and not the target's CoM - click on your own docking port and choose "Control from Here" so that your navball indicator is based on your docking port and not your command module To be properly lined up for docking, you need two conditions: A. you're aligned correctly (i.e. your docking port's axis is precisely parallel to the target docking port's) B. you're positioned correctly (i.e. the lateral offset from your docking port's axis to the target's is close to zero) The stock game doesn't give you much help with condition A; basically you just have to play games with the camera and look from all angles to make sure you've got it right. A very helpful (and lightweight) mod for that is Navball Docking Alignment Indicator, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54303. It adds a red icon to the navball indicating the correct alignment (it pops up whenever your target is a docking port). If you rotate so that it's centered, your alignment is good. As for condition B, that's just a matter of "the target indicator on the navball is centered on your crosshairs", so you can use lateral RCS thrusting to adjust that. Hope this helps!

Should be the opposite-- you want your center of mass as far forward as possible, so that it's in front of the center of lift and the center of drag. (Bearing in mind that center of drag isn't visible in VAB.) As JTpopcorn suggested, put fins at the bottom of your rocket, as far down as possible (i.e. not on the spaceplane part-- on the booster part). For even more stability, use something like the Delta Deluxe Winglet, which can actively steer to assist SAS, rather than just passive fins.

Also, one little technique that I didn't discover until I'd been playing KSP for a month or two: If you are already on an intercept course (that is, you're out in interplanetary space on your way, and you've adjusted your course so that it intercepts the target planet's SoI): Drop a maneuver node right in front of your craft, but leave it alone for now (i.e. at 0 dV). Then go to map view, click on the target planet, and choose "Focus View". It will now focus there and will render your trajectory relative to the planet, so you can see what your approach will look like. Now, while focused on the planet, rotate the camera around so you can see the maneuver node you just dropped. You can see it an manipulate it, even though it's not in the SoI of the planet you're focused on. You can fiddle with the drag handles (very gently!) to adjust your periapsis around the planet so that it is over the N or S pole. If you do it when you're still way out in interplanetary space, rather than waiting until you're in the target planet's SoI, you can generally accomplish what you need to do with only microscopic adjustments, like a couple of m/s.

+1 to Outer Planets. It's just beautifully done. Great eye candy, and thoughtfully designed (celestial bodies that are different enough to make interesting challenges, without being gimmicky). Feels very "finished" and professional-- if Squad had dropped this content into the stock game, I'd have accepted it without an eyeblink.

By the way, about recovering the science: It's true that you get a fraction if you transmit... but then the science is gone from that craft and you'll get nothing for recovering the craft afterwards (unless the craft can take the measurements again). So don't transmit unless you are OK with that. Another option for recovering the science is to land another craft next to it, use a kerbal to manually transfer the science across, and then retrieve that other craft. Gets you 100% of the science.

Also, the Mk3 passenger module holds 16 kerbals and only masses 6.5 tons. Just sayin'. ;-)

Nope, it's just capped at 500.

What really matters for stability (for rockets) is center of drag-- that's the thing you have to make sure stays behind the CoM. Unfortunately, there's no handy CoD indicator in the VAB, since drag is situational. Main thing is to keep drag in mind. In particular, make sure your payload up front is as streamlined as possible, ideally a smooth cylinder with a pointy front end. Service bays are great for this, and are available early in the tech tree. Fairings also help. If you're having trouble debugging why a particular rocket has problems, the aero overlay helps while in flight. Toggle with F12, though you may need to remap the Steam screenshot hotkey to make it usable.

As folks have said, you get more bang for your buck if you combine it with a landing contract. However, if you're not landing, the cheapest dV way is this: Set up your approach so that it has the lowest possible periapsis. At periapsis, burn retrograde just enough to capture (i.e. the highest possible apoapsis). Coast up to apoapsis, then you just need a tiny retrograde burn to lower periapsis below 0, thus completing your contract, then immediately a tiny burn prograde to raise periapsis to something barely above the surface (so you won't crash). Then just orbit the mun until your periapsis direction lines up with your next stop; for example, if you're going back to Kerbin, wait until your periapsis happens about 70 degrees west of the spot on the Mun directly facing Kerbin. Then do the necessary prograde burn right at periapsis, and you're on your way.

Really sorry to hear that. 1.0 seems a bit crashier than before-- prior to 1.0 I hardly ever got an unmodded crash. I'm usually in the habit of making frequent named quicksaves (a reflexive defense against getting crashes from mods I sometimes use, RemoteTech is a particularly bad offender), which also helps with situations like this. Anyway, heartfelt sympathy for the lost game, that really sucks.

They did something to the control parameters for SAS in 1.0, not sure exactly what. I've noticed that the problems seem to pop up if you have "too much" SAS torque authority. For example, my standard craft for rescuing a kerbal from LKO is a Mk1 command pod with a hex probe core perched on top (so I can launch it unmanned). For reentry, it ditches tank + engine, so it's basically just the pod, probe core, and chute coming down. The command pod has 5 units of torque, which appears to be way too much for 1.0 SAS, I get weird effects. But if I disable the command pod's torque and just use the probe core's (which is only 0.5) then it's fine. I really wish they'd make reaction wheel torque tweakable, like they did for engine gimbal in 1.0. Right now, you can only set it to enabled or disabled, which is inconveniently constrained.

Lower the periapsis to about 35 km; that will aerobrake your apoapsis to something reasonable, like a couple of hundred km, in a single pass. Then you have a couple of options. You can just coast up to apoapsis and circularize, or you could adjust periapsis to 40km or so on your second (much slower) aerobrake pass to land. Neither option requires much dV. If you decide to aerobrake to land, turn your craft sideways to maximize drag in the upper atmosphere, so that you have less speed left when you get to the more punishing lower altitudes.

Yeah, good point. One thing that changed with 1.0 is that chutes open gradually now, instead of popping open instantly. On the one hand, that's good (no more sudden G shock sometimes ripping your ship apart)... but on the other hand, it means that the chutes take more distance to slow you down, so you need to allow for that.

Be aware that the Mk25 and Mk12-R are "drogue" chutes, designed to slow you from "really fast" to "still too fast to land". They're not really helpful for landing, they don't have enough drag. For actual landing, you want "normal" chutes, i.e. either the Mk16, Mk16-XL, or Mk2-R. If you've got a Mk16-XL on there, that's a good start. If you need some more chutes than that and want radial, use the Mk2-R, not the Mk12-R.