Aegolius13

Lots of good suggestions here, but I'll add something different: if you have Heavier Rocketry, you have the TwinBoar. It's preposterously good at lifting heavy payloads for cheap (especially in conjunction with Kickbacks for even moar dumb thrust). As mentioned above, if you need more payload than one can lift, you can add a couple more to the sides, Falcon Heavy style. Depending on your mission profile, you could potentially go with something like a Terrier top stage, then a Poodle, then a Skipper, then however many TwinBoars/Kickbacks you need. That should be able to break 10,000 m/s without too much trouble. But yeah, it's advisable to figure out what mission you want to perform, figure out what your needs are for that mission (delta-v, TWR, landing, etc), and design your rocket backwards from the top. Finally, I'm going to respectfully disagree with those who suggest doing things on a modular basis, or refueling in orbit. It is not really more efficient to launch a lot of smaller payloads to orbit, versus doing it in one. If you really economize your rockets it might be slightly cheaper, but I don't see how it's easier. And in some ways it's less efficient - you need docking hardware, duplication of some parts (e.g. probe cores), and you'll end up spending some of your fuel on rendezvous maneuvers.

I don't play RSS, but in regular KSP (and real life) it can be a pretty significant issue. As you say, the atmosphere is rotating along with the earth. So when you reenter from a prograde orbit, to get your speed relative to the air (which determines heating), you can effectively subtract the earth's rotational speed from your orbital velocity. But if you reenter in a retrograde orbit, you're ADDING the earth's rotational speed instead of subtracting it. You can get an idea of the difference by comparing your "orbit" vs. "surface" velocity readouts for both orbit types. This is also related to why rockets usually launch west-to-east. When you launch that way, you get "free" velocity from the earth's rotation so your rocket does not need to spend as much delta-v. The same thing happens in reverse - you need to disperse energy into heat when you reenter, and you don't have to deal with as much heat if the earth's rotation is helping you out.

How often is that? Like, every now and then?

On the 90 science ones. I would prioritize the two engine options, and the fuel one that adds the larger size fuel tanks. The big engines expand your capacity hugely, and the Spark and Ant are great for little craft. Miniaturization is also good, since it offers the first docking port. FYI, you can do Mun (and Minmus) missions without ladders. The jet pack has plenty of thrust to get your kernels back up to the hatch, once you get the hang of it.

Apollo style is probably going to be the easiest one of those; there's no particular disadvantage to launching the command pod and lander together, and this will save you time and fuel not having to do the first rendezvous. By direct ascent, do you mean not getting into a circular orbit around Kerbin before burning for the Mun? You might save a tiny bit of delta v this way, but it might be a little tricky to get the timing just right. So I'd suggest getting into a stable orbit first unless you're specifically looking for that added challenge.

You could try to radially mount your engines near the front of the ship. This also lets you easily detach spent fuel stages from the back of your skip, without needing new engines for each stage. I like to do this with nukes for that reason, even when aerobraking is not an issue. As a side benefit, having your engines mostly pull ratherthan push diminishes wobbling.

The flip to a retrograde orbit will cost less delta-v the further are you are from Kerbol, so you might want to aim to do that at the apoapsis of your target orbit, if not even further (you could possibly save even more detla-v by going out even further, like to Eeloo, but that will add considerable time. As mentioned, you can probably save quite a bit of delta-v by using a gravity assist around Jool. But that could eat up a huge amount of gametime, if that matters. As far as build, I would go with an Ion top stage. Ions are great when you're not in a planet's SOI, as terrible thrust is much less of an issue. One ion engine with a central big xenon tanks and couple more xenon drop tanks can get you a long, long way - likely well over 20,000 m/s for the ion stage alone, depending on how much payload you need for the contract.. If you need to do maneuvers around the Moho end, you'll also get a ton of solar power. Electricity will be more of a challenge at the far end, but even if you're packing a decent amount of weight in solar panels, batteries, RTGs and/or fuel cells and fuel, you should still come out ahead of even nukes. Keep in mind that you don't even need to generate enough electricity to run the engine at full power -TWR is really unimportant in solar orbit, so the limiting factor may be your patience for long burns. The exit burn from Kerbin is not be much fun with ions, but fortunately it's very easy to put a higher TWR chemical/nuke stage (or two) under a light ion probe for the start of your space stuff, and still keep the whole thing small enough to launch with a reasonable rocket.

It takes a little bit of trial and error to get the hang of it. But generally, to go to the Mun from equatorial, low Kerbin orbit, you want to do your burn about 90 degrees "behind" the mun. So, if you imagine the Kerbin sphere of influence is a clock with Kerbin in the center and the Mun at 12 o'clock, you want to do the burn at about 3 o'clock. You want the burn to be somewhere around 860 m/s, all prograde. But those are very general parameters, and it will probably take some adjustment of the burn point or the m/s to get the just the intercept you want.

Are you using more than one of the converter modes at the same time? E.g., do you have it making LF, oxidizer, and LF+O at the same time? I believe each of these modes counts as a separate heat source when it's active. So you may need more radiators if you want to run several at once. Full fuel tanks should not be causing any trouble with heat.

Also, worth noting that "build a ________" contract requirements are independent of what icon the ship has. For example, if it says to build a space station with certain parts, you can complete that even if the game is calling your vessel a lander or something. You just need to have the parts called for, put it in the orbit called for, etc.

If you're doing a single pod mission (i.e., NOT Apollo style), I think the command pod is better overall. It's got better aerodynamics for launch, more SAS torque, more heat resistance, and is cheaper to boot. While the lander pod is lighter, the difference is not that big. If you're doing an Apollo style mission, the best option is probably to use each part like the real thing. Land on Mun with the lander, renter Kerbin with the command pod. More generally, i like the lander for missions that stay in vacuum, and the command pod for stuff that includes reentry.

Fair point. And even without life support, you could save some gameplay time by doing only one long, complicated set of gravity assist maneuvers with a big tanker.

Tankers are certainly feasible, but I'm not sure they make big interplanetary trips easier. That fuel will weigh the same amount, and cost the same delta-v, whether you send it on a tanker or as part of your main ship. And doing a rendezvous and docking will use up some extra fuel as well.

There are a lot of ways you can potentially do it. Some general concepts are below. Some are potentially easier/faster/cheaper, but all of these should be doable in some form if they sound interesting. 1. Treat the base as a big lander. Launch in one piece, and land on legs like a you would a lander. This is probably the easiest way for most base contracts if you just want to keep things simple. If the contract requires a lot of parts, and your lander would be too tall and narrow if built in a single stack, you can always have a couple stacks attached radially. 2. Launch on one piece, but have the base land on its side. I call this the "log" approach, and it's pretty common approach for bases that need to be wheeled. Two particular challenges: first, if you have wheels or landing legs on one side only, that may create aerodynamic / center of mass issues on launch. Second, you may need to have some engines pointing toward the "bottom" of the base, which is perpendicular to the direction you launch from. This also requires making sure those landing engines match the center of mass, which can be a little tricky. On lower-gravity bodies, you may be able to get around this by having the thing land in the normal fashion, and then tip over on its side using reaction wheels, RCS, etc. 3. Launch components into orbit, assemble in orbit, then land together. This might be useful if you want a very wide base, which would be un-aerodynamic to launch on its own. But there are a couple potential complications. First, you have to go through the regular rigmarole of docking each module. Second, you may need to do some fine docking work to sure parts are lined up correctly (i.e., rotated the right way when they land). Third, you may need to make sure the engines of your completed base line up with its center of mass. 4. Land base modules separately but near each other, and use a mod like KAS to join them. This works fairly well once you've gotten the hang of precision landings (which can be pretty tough at first). And it works nicely if you want a "village" look to your base, with a bunch of individual structures. But it requires modding, and the little pipes KAS uses are not the prettiest. 5. Land base modules separately but near each other, and use Alt-F12 to complete the contract once you have all the parts. This could be considered cheating, but might get the job done if you want one of those "village" bases without using mods. However, such a base won't be able to share resources. 5. Land base modules separately, then use Klaws to join. Aside from the precision landing issue, this should not be too tricky. But the Klaws look kind of ugly in my opinion. And you may need wheels on your components to get them where they need to be. 6. Land base modules separately, then use docking ports to join. This can make very nice looking modular bases, but it can be extremely difficult to get those docking ports aligned perfectly. This is somewhat feasible if you're operating on the Minmus flats, but might be near impossible in rocky terrain.

Agreed - it would be really nice if there was mod to let you, say, go into a menu and drag nametags around to swap crew quarters. Yeah, you can do it manually with either EVA or the transfer crew button. But that can take a really long time if you're moving a lot of kerbals (as I have been lately with my tourism industry). And it's fairly easy to forget who's supposed to go where when you have to do them one by one.