Kimberly

Sounds like it would be very useful, though. Basically asking when/how a launch to a body should be scheduled so that, upon arrival, a return window from that body exists. (If we make the fair assumption that landing and surface activity take a negligible amount of time.)

I've been checking many real satellites for inspiration for Kerbal designs, and it seems most modern communication satellites actually do have dedicated receiving antennae for signals from earth, often only one or two small ones, while the main array of antennae is for broadcasting.

I added another strut to move the parachute higher up relative to the goo containers and heat shield, but no luck. The craft's preferred orientation still seems to be with the parachute pointing prograde. (I'm not even sure adding a control system would counter the force.) I checked the and the heat shield's drag is 0.2, while the goo containers have drag of 0.1. I tried moving the containers up, but that didn't help, either. On a different note, do I want my heat shield to be pointing orbit prograde or surface prograde?

I've been building a few small probes lately, and I've been annoyed by the fact that Kerbal Engineer doesn't calculate delta-V for RCS propulsion. For probes that 1000-2000 kg, RCS is a viable means of orbital maneuvering, and it'd be helpful if the Engineer worked. But for other crafts it's not that useful, so I suggest adding a toggle.

Look at your action groups. Did you accidentally put one of the decouplers in the "stage" action group? If so, it'll decouple as soon as the rocket stages, regardless of its position in the stage order.

That's not really fair if you don't have a mission control to help you, though. I know a bunch of people did this for real, and used the web tool that exports data from KSP so they could advise the pilot over radio.

I have no control module at all on the craft, so no SAS or reaction wheels or anything. The parachute keeps the craft stable when deployed, but it can only activate at 0.01 atmospheres, by which time it will have already burnt up if the craft is misaligned. The goo containers themselves seem immune to heat; they don't go above 50 degrees Celsius or so even when pointing down during reentry. I don't have any other girders, but I'll try adding an extra octagonal one and see how that goes.

Your thrust-to-weight ratio is not very relevant in vacuum. Maneuvering with a very low TWR will test your patience, but that's it. However, ISP can safely be ignored, too--delta-V is partially derived from your engines' ISP, so if e.g. Kerbal Engineer says you have enough delta-v, you don't need to worry about ISP. Delta-V is what really counts. You've pretty much got it right. Assuming you have enough delta-V, you want the highest TWR you can, simply because this makes maneuvering easier. But with enough delta-V, you ought to get there either way.

You're probably moving at thousands of m/s relative to each other. Even if you could line up a flyby perfectly, you would never dock; your momentum is far greater than the magnetic strength of docking ports. Because flipping your inclination 180 degrees takes a ridiculous amount of fuel, no doubt more than you have, I suggest scrubbing your rescue mission and sending another.

I'd still call it cheating. Hibernation does not mean zero power drain; probes need energy to monitor their components and keep them at a proper temperature. A probe without power will soon break beyond repair. When Rosetta went on "standby", it was running off of battery power.

I'm playing Better Than Starting Manned, which includes DeadlyReentry. I'm trying to launch a craft with four goo containers up to a height of 250 km, then letting it fall back down for recovery. Due to technology constraints and a little bit of personal pride, I'm trying to get the craft to land deadstick--that is, once I separate the final stage on the way down and activate the parachute, I have no more control over it. The problem with this is that my craft won't stay pointing retrogade. It flips over so that the parachute is destroyed by the force and heat of reentry, and the heatshield is uselessly pointing upward! (This is long before the parachute properly deploys.) How can I keep my craft pointing up with no active guidance? I've tried making the center of mass lower, but I don't think I can change the design much further. My current final stage:

There's nothing to scan; you're in a vacuum. Imagine it as being out of the exosphere, there's no longer even the trace atmosphere around Kerbin for you to measure the temperature of.

If you can't get a GPS fix, you won't know your coordinates and won't be able to have the GPS system direct you towards the coordinates you want to go. Map view is unaffected, though.

I think the ideas of science over time and instant experiments can be harmonized if there is a budget. Then, you can split the two ideas into two concepts: Ordinary research and breakthroughs. Breakthroughs work much like science now, allowing you to unlock new things. Ordinary research is expected of you as a space agency and the rate at which you do this kind of research determines the rate at which you earn money. For example, you would earn a lot of money from setting up a system of continually transmitting monitoring stations on Laythe. which continuously transmit data. But you wouldn't make any technological breakthroughs from doing so, because you're just repeating the same thing; you would have to go to a new planet or do a new thing on Laythe to earn those points.

I know that a lot of people just plain do something else while their burn is running. If you check "simulate in the background" in the settings menu, and you have SAS, your probe will merrily keep burning in the right direction while you're on the KSP forums, reading Wikipedia, etc. If you use e.g. the RemoteTech flight computer, there isn't even a risk of burning for too long.