legoheli

Basically, if you've never made a station before, I do not suggest making modular space stations. Your first step should be, as in the real world, to launch what is essentially a large satellite with room for people in it. This will teach you rendezvous, docking and crew exchange, and it will be invaluable experience in what is possible, when to launch for a rendezvous and so forth. The basic space station will require the following things: A probe core OR some sort of crewed compartment for launch control. A power source, usually solar panels with a set of batteries, or in some cases a nuclear power station. Some sort of kerbal storage module, like a lander can or a hitchhiker compartment. Fuel for reaction control for future deorbit and for refuelling visiting vessels if needed. A single, maybe two docking port(s). An example of such a station is what I've made below, it does use a lot of mods, however, but none that have any function beyond what you would get from stock parts, they just look nicer: Once you're comfortable with visiting your station, I'd move on to building modular space stations. Make sure that each of your station modules have some sort of power source or find yourself with dead modules orbiting while waiting for your rendezvous (I've done that far more times than I should have).

That is excactly my point x)

After hours of development and fine tuning, after many kerbal lives lost, after many, many lost prototypes, I present to you all: The Kamov-inspired helicopter, LHI-1 Whisk! The Whisk is a single-seater coaxial helicopter, which means it has two rotors on top of each other rotating opposite ways. In other words, this is flying death deluxe for anyone who dares to challenge it. Flight time before running out of fuel is approximately 5 minutes and 10 seconds, and the Whisk will autorotate to a soft landing...or a landing, anyhow. Because of the nature of girders in the game, the helicopter's pilot will most likely survive! The start-up procedure is as follows: Raise all landing gears (G key). Throttle to maximum. Hit action group 1 through 6 in succession, with about a 1 second break between each. Throttle down to 20%. Activate RCS. Hit spacebar to release the helicopter and activate a stabilizing thuster. Your helicopter should now be airborne! Trim the stabilizing thruster using the throttle until the heading is stable. Once this is acheived, the helicopter can indeed be pitched, rolled and yawed as you want it to, but precision landings may pose a problem! Should an emergency arise and you wish to jettison the rotors (because why the hell not?), simply raise the landing gears again, freeing the rotors from their prisons! Parachutes not included. Download: http://www./download/26ie9122fevqfbi/LHI-1_Whisk.zip

Most problems you describe are caused in my experience by only having a single vertical stabilizer. The problem is that you're essentially using wings for vertical stabilization, and a wing pulls you in one direction. If you want to just have a single stabilizer, use part clipping and place them inside each other.

For Science.

Today I designed a controllable, targetable and soon to be mobile SAM system to set up around my base. I know there are no enemies, but we have decided that this is a valid excuse for range safety as well. It consists of a launch platform, a solid launch stage and a liquid cruise stage for the missile. It has a range of 15 km, and can reach altitudes of up to 27 km, but due to limitations I would say that radius of engagement is 12 km. After launch, I switch to each missile and control them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rcc2V328h8 It has now been upgraded to have 5 missiles, all launched individually.

This fits the t-shirt I'm wearing today almost too perfectly:

What you need is some form of engine with HUGE gimbal or ount your engines on hinges that you can control. My shuttle-esque craft work like that.

Right now I have 2 missions en route to Jool, both requiring correctional burns at different times, and both being half orbiters, half landers. Then I have 1 Duna rover, 1 Duna Orbiter, 1 Ike Sample Return Mission, and an ENTIRE COMSAT network en route to Duna, requiring correctional burns, orbit insertion and so forth. Furthermore, I have ongoing space station maintenance and crew rotations going on at one new 3 person crew per 25 game days. While all this is going on, I expand my presence on the Mun and Minmus, while making IRIS and Kepler-like Kerbin trailing or heading missions and so forth. ...not to mention my 32 sat GPS, COMSAT and SARSAT networks. I have something like 52 ongoing flights (and no load issues since all missions are built with no debris in mind).

Exchanged the crew on my tiny, but realistic space station Machiavelli

You're over-engineering massively. The reason your craft falls apart is that it's not a stable construction, for launching that small a satellite into orbit, you just need something like this, just with 1 meter parts: This rocket takes that entire space station core into orbit with plenty of fuel to spare.

I'm not able to play right now, but I'll join in for sure!

I think this sort of challenge has been on WAY too may times to have much interest. Besides, you didn't show off your own first try, which is basically a requirement here for any attention.

I've done a sub-orbital rescue in high Moho orbit. It all came down to me being a moron because: First I made a Moho lander with not enough dV to get back to Kerbin. Then, I made one that could, and flew it to Moho, but ended up in an orbit retrograde to the orbit of my first mission. Solution? Burn with the first mission to get as close as possible to the orbit of the rescue vessel, then EVA burn the rest of the way. Unfortunately, the only proof I have of this is that there's an empty craft called "Moho and back" orbiting Moho and a flag on the planet...

Asparagus staging is ugly, and doing the same boring launch over and over again with the same boring launch vehicle kills the fun of KSP. Challenge your engineering skills. Challenge your creativity.

Usually I use launch vehicles derived from real world designs, similarly to trippytrip, but I mostly prefer to make things centeres and with nothing dropping off to the side. My Orion MPCV-inspires Les Betes-class Crew Vehicle is an example of this. An LV-N is covered by the panels. In general, I try to stick to two stages, but I use both engine clustering and regular mainsail first stages. Here are some other examples: Amerika-class EELV with a station module atop. Zeruel-class spacecraft and launcher. KSS PP-class spacecraft and launcher, the only design I've been using (with minor modifications) since I began playing a year ago. But if you're going to launch a small capsule or satellite into LKO, all you need for an easy launch is: Spacecraft Decoupler ASAS FL-T400 LV-909 Decoupler FL-T800 FL-T800 LV-T45

Hey there, I have flown R/C planes for many years! I would recommend something with 4 channels, not 3 channels for a starter. Why? Because it's simply annoying to have to learn to add the 4th channel to your controls when you've gotten used to 3 channels. And a 4 channel transmitter is useable for more since it has more channels it can control. Simply put, the channels you have are 1: Throttle, 2: Pitch, 3: Yaw, and 4: Roll. Roll is NOT included in a 3-channel aircraft (altough it can of course roll slowly due to the forces of the rudder). Personally, I started out with a Multiplex Minimag, a styrofoam plane that can be repaired with cyanoacrylate (instant glue/super glue/whichever you prefer) no matter the damages to the aircraft, except for a change of propeller. It is not exceptionally fast, but can perform many maneuvers - and upgrade the engine to something a bit more powerful than the standard one and you've got yourself a very fun plane to fly. If you don't have that much room for flying, then I would instead recommend a helicopter. I myself went for the E-Sky Lama v4, and I can not recommend that helicopter. It is not much fun since it is really made for kids and not for somebody with a genuine interest in flight. It does look neat with a home made Kamov shell, though! Mine was unfortunately lost when I let my nephew fly it, though x) Instead I would recommend something like the Walkera Dragonfly 4. It is a simple helicopter that should be easy to start up on, but it does not have changing pitch of the blades (known as collective pitch), instead it is controlled by simply throttling. Spare parts are really cheap too. Also get a training landing gear if you're buying the helicopter. You can make one yourself using piano wire and ping pong balls, it just makes your blades last MUCH longer! Finally, look up where the nearest R/C club is! There will be helpful people and there will be people willing to sell their equipment to you to below the market price. And since it's a club and you'll be seeing them again, chances they'll trick you are pretty low. I saved a lot of money through that, and I have helped many newcomers by selling them stuff that I didn't need anymore as well.

Load times are much faster, memory useage is noticeably down, and it's not as hard on my temperatures as before. So definitely an improvement.

If you ever wondered what Formula One (or DTM and soon, road car) DRS or Drag Reduction System does, here's a small video I made in KSP explaining it. Kerbal style, from a certain point onwards. In neutral configuration, there is a downwards force, downforce, generated by the front and rear spoilers. However, when I pitch the "aircraft", the spoilers suddenly cancel out. What this does is quite simply reduce drag, meaning the car can go faster in a straight line. Why would I want spoilers though? To keep the car firmly on the ground in the corners, of course, but straight line speed is also important, so reducing drag lets me go a lot faster.

Use the structural hardpoints to make your struts longer as well.

You can make it to orbit in one stage with no problem at all using throttling and simple design. The SRBs in KSP are only "really" useable for showing off. Using liquid boosters is much more effecient, and the real world limitation of liquid boosters being expensive is something we are completely able to ignore. Of course it's a lot easier to throw SRBs on than LFBs.

Having gone mad with Evangelion again after the release of 3.33, I made a bunch of related flags, but I only really use the Nerv one. But no one can resist those sunglasses!

Since it's 50 minutes and 3 satellites, you'll have to launch every 50/3=16.67 minutes, so around MET=00:16:40 you'll go back to the launch pad. I'm not sure that'll be enough. Then what you'll do is wait in your 300 km orbit until you are just above KSC again, then wait the 16:40 until you launch the next one.

If you want them to be perfectly spaced, you need to first figure out how long time it takes to orbit Kerbin in the given orbit. With the synchronous orbit, you ideally would want to launch every 2 hours. Burn so your apoapsis is in the desired synchronous altitude. It will take longer than that to coast to apoapsis, so just launch, time warp until MET=1:59:30, go to the space centre, get the next rocket ready to launch, launch and warp to 1:59:30. Then launch the last one.

There is a small trapez-shaped docking port under the last tab in the VAB. That's their docking mechanism.