Aegolius13

Side note - you COULD operate the lander as desired if you have one of the command pods with the "remote control" ability, and the requisite pilot count, in the "carrier" vessel. That lets you bypass the need to get the signal back to Kerbin. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Probe_Control_Point

When the Kerbal returns to a pod, you should be able to right-click the pod and select "review stored data." Then you can transmit it, delete it, etc.

I'm a little confused about the mission profile - does it land on the Mun and just go back to Mun orbit to refuel? Or does it come back to Kerbin? If you're only going down from Mun orbit and back, you don't need a lot of range so convenience may play a role as well as efficiency. For an ordinary-sized lander, the Terrier is usually a good all-round choice. As mentioned above, they're short so you don't need a ton of landing leg and can stay close to the ground. If one doesn't provide enough thrust, you can always cluster several. Sparks can serve a similar purpose the same thing f

I've never really understood the purpose of this restriction. I get not being able to create a new node. But deleting an existing one doesn't really give you an advantage; it's just nice to reduce the clutter.

First step is making sure your SSTO can make it to orbit at all. Once you've accomplished that, make sure you've disabled your Rapiers. If the nuclear engines are the only ones active, the delta-v readouts from either stock or KER should take into account the ISP of the nukes in calculating your available delta-v. If you want the maximum range possible, it will likely mean a plane that just barely has enough thrust on nuclear propulsion to make orbit, so as @bewing says it can be a very fussy process. When I was building a single-stage-to-laythe and back, I did this kind of iter

I don't think what you're looking for is possible without mods. One option would be to use HyperEdit, which lets you land a craft at a specified latitutde/longitude. If you plunk down your launchpad at an exact coordinate, and then plunk down your rocket on top of that (setting a bit higher altitude for setdown), that might put the rocket in the right place. Or it might all blow up. Amusing either way in my book. There's a mod for extraplanetary launchpads called... Extraplanetary Launchpads. I haven't used it so not familiar with it; dunno if it lets you add pads on Kerbin as w

Having a high TWR at the start is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. For the first few seconds after liftoff, when you're going too slow for aerodynamics to matter and you're losing a large portion of your thrust to fighting gravity, you want all the TWR you can get. Things can get out of hand later in the launch, but if you start to accelerate way too fast, that can be solved by throttling down. The reason people advise something in the 1.4ish range is more about efficiency. If you're familiar with the Rocket Equation, it tells you that rockets get delta-v (and hence range

Been said above, but putting everything from the Ants in a fairing should solve your aero worries. This will also let you lose the nosecone, and not have to worry about blowing up science instruments or anything. I actually like the Soviet capsules for certain things. Since they come with a built-in decoupler and heatshield, it's a decent tradeoff for the needed reaction wheel. Plus, for some reason, the abator burns off incredibly slowly, so you can cut down the amount to save some more weight. And, OP mentioned, they're nice for cramming many Kerbals into a small volume. And I ofte

Not aware of a direct way to do this, but you can always use the cheat menu (alt-f12) to complete the contract.

I mean that the "hot preburner exhaust" is itself a mixture of the CO2 / H20 formed by preburner combustion, and the remainder of the 90% of the methane/oxygen flowing through each respective pump. The "mixing" (probably a poor choice of words by me) occurs at the point of combustion in the preburner - I didn't mean a separate stream of propellant was being added later. What I was trying to say was that in full-flow staged combustion, the propellant entering the combustion chamber would presumably be cooler than whichever propellant was being routed through the turbo in a single-turbo

I think we're saying the same thing, me not very artfully. "Extra" was supposed to mean the majority of the fuel / oxidizer that passes through but doesn't get burned in the respective preburner. Which, presumably, would mix with the hot preburner exhaust such that the mixture is not very hot by the time it reaches the combustion chamber.

Thanks. Makes sense they'd have to also light the preburners. Guess this is one of the (probably many) reasons FFSC is tricky enough no one's flown one before. Not that this is probably ever going to happen, but the Hopper success makes me wonder -- if, hypothetically, SpaceX decided to make an expendable version of SH and a simplified Raptor-based second stage, how much more time / money would that take? Seems like we more or less know Raptor works, assuming (1) that orange flame was not a major problem, (2) the interaction of multiple of Raptors won't pose new problems, N-1 s

The ignition issue with Starhopper on Monday got me wondering - how does ignition on a preburner vs. combustion chamber work? Do they separately ignite them both? In a certain order? I would have thought that in a closed-cycle engine, if the preburner was going, the hot exhaust might be able to light the main chamber without a separate ignition source. Though perhaps not in a FFSC design where the exhausts are getting mixed in with all the extra fuel/oxidizer, and presumably getting cooled substantially.

Whoops. So it does. Was thinking that was some kind of stage/ total thing.

The engineer's report says your rocket has 255 parts. That seems like some kind of glitch. You might want to try removing parts and putting them back on until you see that number normalize. I've had quite a bit of trouble with the symmetry on those bi/tri-couplers, where it stacks multiple instances of the same part in each of the nodes. So I'd suspect that first and foremost. Otherwise, I agree with everything @5thHorseman said, though I tend to like my initial TWR more in the 1.4 to 1.6 range. But since SRBs increase more than LF engines in TWR as they burn out, starting a bit lower