Atkara

I was under the impression that stars are visible in orbit and the reason we don't see them in photos & videos, is the exposure setting on the cameras...

Seems they did. The number reported in the 'load save' tab, does correspond to what is currently deployed and thankfully, flags aren't included.

This got me to rush to the game and make sure it doesn't count flags as flights

ScanSAT propably.

Currently, I have 68 active flights. This includes relays, miners, ATVs, outposts, landers, stations and exploration vessels. I'm expecting to break the 100 mark at some point.

For the most part, I've been using Kerbnet to identify biomes, anomalies and ore concentrations. Hadn't looked at the terrain map, until I started looking for a way to get an estimate of the average slope in the area I plan to deploy surface installations on.

In my career save, I often take mining, rescue and tourism contracts, which can be done by remotely controlled vehicles. But if the said vehicles are crewed, the job can be done a lot more efficiently. And what better way to complete mining and rescues, when your vehicles and their crews are on-site already? And since your rescued kerbals and tourists need to get back home, you also need an interplanetary transportation network of sorts in place. Vessels with 32 passenger seats should be able to cover all needs. Up to this point, it's all about practicality for me. Things become somewhat roleplay-ish, when I include crew rotation as an additional mission objective, for a flight to the 'x' planet/moon. I say 'somewhat', because there's still the matter of training Kerbals to 5 stars. Unless you skip the training part through the options, the only way to do it is to get them to go places. Your on-site Kerbals have seen the region so, let's exchange them with others, bring them home and prep them for somewhere else. Otherwise, they're happy where they are, without ever complaining. The purely roleplay part is me, wanting my guys & gals to 'know' they will see Kerbin again.

I don't know if it's mandatory, but I always transfer control over to the claw, before grabbing anything.

A pack of 7 Rapiers... so, cargo bays are out of the question, assuming the Pelican is a spaceplane -I don't recall ever seeing it, but on the other hand, I didn't sleep well last night. You definitely know this already, but anyway... make sure you grab it properly, because the drag during re-entry will be abysmal.

He'll gain the experience another day. You got your crewman back -that's what matters. Just make sure your plane has some way to generate electricity on it's own, before sending it up again. This morning, I had my own mishap, due to... well, technically not a miscalculation, rather than an oversight. I sent a lander to Duna, to operate as a surface to orbit shuttle and transfer Kerbals between Duna & Ike if necessary -but it's on a tight DV budget. A budget I exceeded, when maneuvering to land next to the surface outpost. It was supposed to be fueled up by a wheeled surface miner, which with everything going on in my career, I forgot to send along. I could just wait for the next transfer window to bring one over there, but there are a couple of mission-related Kerbals I want to send back to Kerbin -and their ride is already in orbit around Duna. Now, the outpost itself has small-form drills & ISRU to feed it's fuel cells (it doesn't use solar panels). I could install KAS and refueling the lander would be as simple as bringing it closer to the outpost (it's currently 146m further) and dragging a hose to it. But I'll do it the 'complicated' way instead: My surface miner is currently landed on Ike, having just finished a local mining contract (it's free money, who am I to say no?). So, I'll load it up with fuel and ore and bring it in LDO. Then, I'll have the lander do what would otherwise be a direct orbital rendezvous -only the rest will be done by the miner, who'll dock with it, push it into stable orbit and fuel it up. I've done enough DORs to feel comfortable so that's a plus. Ofcourse, I'll have to push the lander's apoapsis well above Duna's equivalent of the Karman line, to avoid KSP possibly taking an action it shouldn't. This will be fun

Yeah... even at 4x physics warp, the burn would still be quite long. Splitting the burn by heading for Ike, refueling and then going to Jool would keep things well in range of a LOX transfer vehicle, given what you seem to have to carry there. But I'm not sure if it would be an acceptable tradeoff -and that is, IF you have any kind of infrastructure in the system.

Indeed. After setting the desired throttle/power/pedal (call it however you like) level via the forward trim (Alt+W for anyone who may not know this, Alt+X to reset it) I enable SAS again and let it coast. This, when gravity is around 0.1, like what you find on the Mun, Ike, Eeloo and Vall. On planets like Moho & Duna, I can leave SAS off. This also applies to other bodies with obviously higher gravity, like Eve, Tylo, etc. But I always keep an eye on the vehicle's velocity and apply brakes as needed, since overspeeding can and will result in... interesting situations, to say the least. Ah, if I could only count the times I've had the engineer EVA out of the car and repair it's wheels mid-"flight"

You could also map them all to an action group and get them that way. I don't quite remember the last time I ran experiments one by one -only that it happened.

Back in 1.05, I would disable the rover's/car's reaction wheels in VAB/SPH and map their toggle function to the SAS action group. That way, the reaction wheels would go live only if SAS was engaged. Apparently and as Geonovast mentioned, there's a more straightforward solution in the game nowadays. I admit I always wondered what 'SAS only' did. But my cars remain largely unchanged since 1.05 and the action group assignments got carried over, upon migrating from version to version. So I still use my old 'solution'

I've partially solved that, by slaving the reaction wheels to SAS. When it's off, they're off too. When the car eventually does a big jump in low gravity environments, I turn on SAS (along with the wheels) and adjust it's touchdown attitude & orientation if necessary. Been doing this since 1.05.

I discovered this and it changed everything. In almost an instant, it took off my hands, the entirety of manual driving I couldn't find the nerve to do again for my current career.

Back in 1.05, I drove on the surface of Moho, Eve, Duna, Ike, Dres & Eeloo and got the science out of any biome a car could drive on. On my current career, I have perfectly good 'hardware' sitting on the surface of all the above-mentioned bodies, except Eeloo (transfer window hasn't arrived yet), doing nothing because I simply can't find the nerve to go through this again. And today I found this mod. It's good that a configuration file is included -gave me the means to attach the routine to the MK2 Probe Core I use on my cars. @RealGecko, no matter how many times I thank you for this, they won't be enough.

Me neither. And it's not that you're going with a complete experiments pack from the beginning, to get a significant amount of science. On the other hand, I don't bother with more than the launchpad, the airstrip and the area next to it (named KSC) and that's to unlock very basic things, very early on. Once I get to orbit (usually on the 2nd/3rd launch) I'm also in position to fly-by/orbit the Mun, which gets me the science I need to proceed further. Other than that and somewhat off-topic, on my current career I did a tradeoff: In exchange for having full action groups in VAB/SPH from the start, I opted for entry purchases of the researched parts.

I've seen this happening on slopes of any grade. Landing legs are often set a bit under the surface upon loading and as the legs are re-seated on it, the springs acquire a lot of tension and push upwards -often with destructive results, as the force is too high. At first, I set springs anywhere between 0.05 to 0.3, depending on the gravity of the planet/moon the vessel operates on, except Eve (there I kept it at 1). Lots of save editing there, mind you -but at least I knew what I was editing and for which craft. When that turned out to be not enough, I also set all dampers to 2 (the maximum allowed value). Haven't visited all my installations to verify, but it should be better than before -I hope

Before putting the thing on the pad, you need to play around with their thrust limiters, in order for your Center of Thrust to match your Center of Mass. Post-launch, fuel is being consumed and as a result, the CoM moves. This means you also have to make in-flight adjustments on the thrust limiters. This is why SRBs won't cut it -you need to go LOX. In short, it's a management nightmare -at least for me. Yes, I tried a Buran-Energia-like design once and I did get it into orbit. Haven't used it eversince though, as I moved to SSTOs.

I expressed my opinion, you responded the way you did and I brought a real life example. I didn't try to "force you" to do anything. Anyway, to launch a space shuttle like Buran did, you need to also take a look at the launch vehicle: Energia didn't have 4 side boosters for fun and they weren't arranged like that for the looks. They were counteracting the torque, produced by having a shuttle on the launcher's back. Differential thrust, gimbals, even ballasts were used AFAIK. Buran's engines wouldn't fire at launch -they weren't powerful enough to make any difference but also, they didn't have to.

The United States Air Force, seems to think otherwise

I take it you're doing this as an exercise -otherwise, put it in a fairing and do a traditional launch. It's small enough.

With the game requiring a craft to get back from the 'x' planet/moon, in order for exploration contracts to be satisfied, I had a returning rescue "shuttle" re-enter and splashdown. Prior to this, a spaceplane met up with it and brought the crew (and tourists) back to KSC. The re-entry was satisfactory, the splashdown, not so much. But it did the trick... in part. See, that craft didn't land on either Duna or Ike -it was neither designed, nor supposed to. So I knew the game would pester me for things I had already done. To make sure this would never happen again, I started working on a detachable command module for the lander of my Explorer line of vessels. It would re-enter and a replacement would be flown via spaceplane. But it was making the lander unnecessarily tall and there were problems with the arrangement of the ladders. I hated it. There was an alternative: the lander is attached to the main vessel via a Docking Port Sr. As a result, it's propelled by 4 Terriers, on the back end of radially attached fuel tanks, via unstaged radial decouplers. So, why not decouple these tanks and use a spaceplane to bring back the core of the lander instead? Furthermore, Explorer 1 is currently in LKO, waiting to be refueled and it's lander did visit Duna & Ike. The downside is that sending a whole lander as replacement, costs ~60k for the launch vehicle, vs whatever fuel a spaceplane would burn, carrying a command module in orbit. But given my career's financial state, I'd rather do that, than have a lander I don't like. The dice was cast. A spaceplane flew to Explorer 1, with a claw-equipped maneuvering unit in it. The lander undocked and decoupled it's 4 tanks & engines. The maneuvering unit grabbed the core, docked it inside the spaceplane's main cargo bay, then docked itself. Half an hour later and as the plane touched down at KSC, lo and behold: "we have returned from the surface of Duna & Ike". Thank you, game I wish I hadn't ditched that rescue shuttle in the ocean. Ah well, what's done is done.

I know the feeling. I was there a couple of RL days ago, deploying my own sat network. Two satellites per body: one with orbital survey scanner in polar orbit, another with narrow band scanner in equatorial orbit and both equipped with dual HG-5s. That makes 10 -plus two main relays, equipped with one RA-100 each. For obvious reasons, I grouped them into two flights of 6 satellites each. But still... Group1 flew by Tylo where it delivered. It's current trajectory would also get it to intercept Vall. Group 2 entered Jool's SOI 12 days later, which isn't that much of a margin. So I had to pay close attention to it. That one, flew by Tylo as well, but it's next orbit around Jool, would have it intercept Laythe. Back to Group1, it flew by Vall, delivered and had it's Jool AP tweaked to 240Mm. There, it released the main equatorial relay, which I set up to circularize. Then, I set course for Bop, where I would deliver Group1's remaining relay. Group2 arrived at Laythe, delivered two relays and set course for Pol. After delivering to both, I adjusted it's Jool AP to 250Mm, where it released the main polar relay, which obviously had to go well... polar. Then Group2 set course for Bop, where it delivered it's remaining relay. Once all was said and done, the two vehicles that brought the relays all the way up there, were sent to gracefully burn up in Jool's upper atmosphere. The cherry on top is that while at it, I also had to pay attention to 3 more flights: two en route to Duna and 1 to Moho. Yeah...