Strategia

Wow, I'm flattered. Truly. To what do I owe this honour?

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Right now, Career mode is basically sandbox+research, but eventually you'll actually have to earn money, likely by following pre-set objectives. Sure, you COULD strap a whole bunch of SRBs and fuel tanks together for a one-way tour of half the solar system, but all that science isn't going to do you much good if you can't afford to even build a second rocket, or unlock a single part (note that parts now also have unlock costs in credits, much higher than their individual purchase costs). You're likely much better off sticking to whatever objectives you get, building up your cash reserves to when you CAN do basically anything you want.

What I've noticed here is that the data gets "stored" in the transmitter invisibly. I've had situations like that, running an experiment while the comms unit was closing, but if I then ran another experiment after it had properly closed, and clicked "transmit", it transmitted the result of both experiments. It's not lost, but it's no longer accessible directly unless you transmit something else too. Just one of the many parts of the science system that isn't immediately obvious.

That's probably what part costs are for. I wouldn't be too surprised if your initial budget would only cover a suborbital launch at best when money gets added. That way, experienced players can still get to other bodies within a few launches. The biggest problem would be the potential alienation of new players who don't know the ins and outs of rocket design, and build rockets that don't earn their cost back, stranding the entire programme early on. The easiest way to prevent that would be to make the starting budget generous enough to cover a few inefficient launches, but then you'd still have experienced players building huge rockets and going interplanetary with their first launch, so that's got to be a careful balancing act. Also, note that there appear to be separate costs for developing and actually building parts, so where inexperienced players would probably spend most of their money just building new rockets and experimenting, experienced players still need to shell out quite a lot of money to get access to the really good parts. Sure, you can get a few hundred, if not thousand, science in just a few launches with basic technology, but if you're not getting money for that (I'd assume that money would initially be mostly objective-driven), then all that tech won't get you much.

If you get more shadows in, I think you could get a nice film noir effect going.

I don't know if that's how docking ports work, but the obvious solution, which many people use in lieu of cranes, is to have a small probe tug that can move uncontrollable modules around. Depending on where you are (in Kerbin orbit it's just one simple launch, but Jool's another matter entirely), it could salvage your mission.

I've recently seen someone who had the abort sequence also deploy parachutes on his launch vehicle, slowing it down enough for the capsule to actually be pulled clear of the rocket. How you'd go about it is up to you, but the most obvious solution would be a decoupler on top of the capsule, some structural elements, and Sepatrons to pull the capsule away. You could also (as the other person did) add a few more Sepatrons to pull the escape tower clear of the capsule after it fired, although it may not be necessary if the decoupler is powerful enough. You should also add a staging sequence just before your orbital insertion burn which decouples the tower and fires the Sepatrons to remove the LES when it's no longer necessary. For a soft landing, you should obviously have parachutes on your capsule as well, although they should be on a separate stage/action group - if they fired with the abort sequence they'd just anchor the pod to the rocket.

"In latest news, China's production of solid rocket fuel has increased by over 3000%. The new head of China's space programme, identifying himself as Dzhie Be Dia, justified this expense by claiming "moar boosters". When asked how this would impact the safety of the spacecraft being launched, the response was "space tape solves everything". Film at 11."

Well, I didn't manage that, but I've landed on the surface of Jool, so I guess that counts as "breaking the game".

So named, again, because they tap all the way into the MohoroviÄÂić Discontinuity. At least, that's what I've always assumed, since it makes perfect sense.

Which comes, in turn, from the MohoroviÄÂić discontinuity, the boundary between a planet's crust and mantle, which is often simply called Moho.

I don't have the pack (so shame on me for commenting, but I'm gonna do so anyway), but hitting up Wikipedia shows that the TMA is the current manned version, U is the carrier rocket, and Progress is an unmanned resupply ship.

For a first interplanetary craft, less is more. It's a trite saying, but it's true here. You'll just want to use a compact lander design, probably broadly similar to your Münar landers, and for propulsion, you don't need a gigantic fuel reserve powered by eight Mainsails, you'll want a fairly modest stage (one Rockomax 32-200 tank could be enough), and one or a few nuclear rockets. Nuclear rockets, or NERVAs, don't provide much thrust, but they're incredibly fuel-efficient, which makes them a must for interplanetary transfers. They can make a little fuel go a long way. You'll likely be burning for a while - several minutes or so - but you won't need too much fuel. Then, when you arrive at your destination, just put the lander down the way you usually would (but be mindful that Duna's atmosphere is so thin that parachutes alone won't work). Of course, if you want to be able to return your Kerbals home afterwards, it becomes more complicated, but the basic principle remains the same: don't overdo the fuel, and use nuclear engines.

Put some cubic struts (as in, the tiny girders) on your rocket on either side of the decoupler, preferably at 4x symmetry or higher, and connect them using struts ("real" struts, space tape). The game doesn't actually model the struts as objects; they just create an intangible physical link between their attachment points. I used to have the same trouble you're describing, but once I found out about this method, it stopped happening (mostly).

Mouldy patches in a spacesuit.

Kerbin's air is full of spores, far too tiny to see with the naked eye, which naturally seek out and adhere to command capsules. Any time someone builds a manned spaceship, or a piloted plane, the spores rapidly accrue inside and form one or more fully-grown Kerbals. That's why there's always an infinite stream of new Kerbonauts, regardless of how many you kill, and also why the only signs of (modern) civilisation on Kerbin are the two space centres and the airstrip. There literally isn't anything else to Kerbal civilisation.

Jeb: "Are you..... me?" Jeb2: "Yeah....." Jeb: "You know what this means?" Jeb2: "Totally." Jeb&Jeb2: "TWICE THE EXPLOSIONS!" Bill: "So much for being able to afford life insurance premiums." Bob: *facepalm*

I didn't even know about quicksave until recently, and I haven't used it. If something goes wrong, then it goes wrong. Anything can be rebuilt, given enough time.

I had this happen too, with just MechJeb on an otherwise stock build. I was trying to dock a fuel tank to my custom-built space station core, but the tank was about to run out of electric charge, so I tried to switch to the station with the bracket keys, to use its RCS to finish the dock..... and boom, bits of station everywhere. The only mod I had on either of them was MechJeb.

Thompcan Thompgel Roburry Seanfrid Sidbrett Doodmund Enlin Lowin Geofster Antrey Alddrin Halory

"T minus three, T minus two, T minus one, Ignition!..... Stage..... I said stage! Stage, stage! Crap, that's too many stages! Abort! ABORT! OHCRAP DEPLOY PARACHUTES! DEPLOY..... well ****."

MechJeb does absolutely nothing unless you tell it to. And like you've probably noticed, it also has a variety of useful passive information windows. Vessel Information does pretty much what KER does as well, to my knowledge, Orbital Information gives you a neat little readout of everything pertaining to your orbit, and Surface Information displays all sorts of useful stuff as well, including true altitude (as opposed to altitude above sea level (0), which is what the altimeter measures), which is extremely useful when performing a powered landing on higher ground. I use it a lot for these purposes.

How about a refuelling station with liquid fuel and LOX, with a smaller tanker on wheels ferrying the stuff around? A skycrane perhaps, with its own landing cradle, which would be refuelled by the tanker? A large orbital fuel depot with its own tanker ship for resupplying the fuel station on the ground? A rover hangar, with a variety of rovers in it? A taller lookout tower with command seats and cupola pods, for an overview of the base? An aircraft hangar with a lightweight plane for low-altitude flights? Just tossing some ideas out there. If you want to install some mods, you could also add a kethane miner (or, if there's no deposit underneath your base, mobile mining rovers) and refinery, and RemoteTech actually does enable satellite communications. ISA MapSat could also be nice to have orbiting the planet.

That'd be really awesome. Probably hard to design, but very cool when done.

I don't know how either, but I did. It wasn't intentional; it's my first mission to Jool, I aerobraked a bit too effectively, so when I figure out it's doomed I thought "well, why the hell not, let's see what happens", so I fired up the lander engines and deployed the legs. When it actually touched down, I was more surprised than anything. Images here, here and here. I can get there from the tracking station no problem. This was done in .20.2.