Kimberly

From the looks of it, the playerbase is slightly younger than the average gamer, albeit not by much. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, really.

I'm in a circular 1000km (+/- 1 km) orbit around Kerbin. My satellite has the Mapsat dish. How do I make it start mapping, and where do I see the mapping data? The dish doesn't appear to have any right-click options. On a related note, I also have a kethane detector on the satellite, which appears to be detecting no deposits on Kerbin. (The map view of the detector just shows a black field with a gray line, the path of my satellite across the surface, I assume.)

Presumably, it allows control of the spacecraft's yaw and pitch with the mouse rather than the WASD/arrow keys.

Does this mean that, rather than dragging around the path on the maneuver node until it's close to where I want to go, I can plug in any point on Kerbin's surface or in orbit around Kerbin, and it will tell me where to go? Awesome. Though presumably, I can't do this if I'm outside of the orbit of the satellites.

When you're saving lives, surely it's best to err on the side of caution? I'd agree if it were a routine mission.

After finding out that my new launcher design leaves plenty of fuel for light vehicles to escape the Kerbin system, I'm interested in sending a probe to the sun. I want to establish a circular orbit as close as possible to the sun. (An equatorial orbit would be a bonus.) So, quick question: with standard parts (rated for 3400 degrees, I think), how close can an orbit can be indefinitely maintained?

On three separate occasions on the same day, I managed to ruin a mission by running out of electricity. Standard interplanetary probe launches. Once I arrive at the destination, I get into a proper orbit and separate the probe from the remaining propulsion. But I kept forgetting to extend the solar panels once I reached space, so a few hours later I'd end up wondering why the ship wasn't responding and see that it had run out of power.

Eh, my approach to planetary transfers is still "designate a maneuver, move around the icons until an intercept appears, follow that path".

Speaking of debris, is there a way to manually designate spacecraft as debris? Probes are properly registered as probes, but if the rocket that released them remains in space, it will be considered an active mission rather than debris.

Kerbal physics at its finest. Thanks for the help.

I try to leave space uncluttered. For stuff that lands back on the homeworld, I just cancel the flight, deleting it. If it's in orbit or on another planet, though, I typically just leave it there; I don't want to make trash, but trying to approach a piece of junk and pushing it into an unstable orbit takes far too much time.

I brought my first kerbonaut into orbit! And I got him home safely, too. I designed a new rocket for the purpose, and unlike I usually do I didn't test it with remote control before I manned it...but it turned out alright, after all.

When detaching my booster rockets, I want them to reach the ground safely. (My space program runs frugally and efficiently!) Adding parachutes is a no-brainer, but how do I get the boosters to deploy the parachutes at an appropriate altitude? Including the parachute deployment in the same stage as the booster release means the parachutes are deployed far too high.

I'd also be interested in this. I'm just starting up my space program (first stable unmanned orbit achieved! Beautiful re-entry, too.) and now I'm looking to launch some satellites, but it feels awfully silly just having them on the end of the rocket. I can't imagine it's aerodynamic, either.

I revised the article a while ago, and it is indeed in need of quite a lot of work. It doesn't just need more description of the game itself, but also more meta-information; what's so special about the game, what have people been saying about it? With proper citations, of course. The article actually inspired me to actually try out the game.