Skorpychan

Cyclers don't save dV. They can't; you still need to get into their orbit to dock with them. They DO, however, save resources. You don't need to put up all that mass every time you want to take a big ship to your desired location. However, since Kerbals will happily spend decades crammed into their seats, it's irrelevant unless you're using it for something else, such as a battery charger, refinery, or fuel storage. Your Wikipedia link put me onto reading about space stuff again. Great. There goes my weekend. It did, however, lead me to this: http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html - 1970s space colony artwork.

Telescopic arms, for fitting things into cargo bays and fairings.

Last time I had a proper launch failure at launch, it all ignited properly. Started climbing. Then one of the boosters popped off for some unknown reason and rocketed away into the sunset. The rest of the rocket, now unstable, pitched around to try and sort itself out, before the remaining boosters started to explode. This lead to me pounding through stages, boosters firing off into the air, the main stage abandoned to push it's fuel tank upwards, while the second stage pushed the lander up and away. Then I popped chutes on the lander, forgetting that I was still accelerating upwards. Jeb freaked out as the drogues opened, the whole thing flipped upside down, and it started to descend through the flames and explosions of the rest of the rocket. My most recent 'launch' failure was on this save's first Mun landing. The LANDING was pretty much okay, apart from the slope I landed ON. Jeb got out, set out the flag, did the science, and got back in. Then I had to try and roll the craft around so the engine was downhill, and try to take off a little without destroying anything, and use the legs and SAS to flip back upright. It took three tries to get it to not explode.

The issue with sepratrons is mostly drag, I've found. My best solution so far is to throttle up hard just before releasing the boosters, so the central stack accelerates away from the boosters before they can move. And to balance the decouplers so the boosters leave evenly, instead of pivoting into the central stack.

That's because the shuttle's big wings and control surfaces, big main engines with heavy complex gimbal systems, and empty fuel tanks are all dry mass. The most efficient space shuttle design would have been Buran-style, with the engines under the main fuel tank, and dedicated on-orbit engines making good use of onboard fuel. And also a lifting body rather than big delta wings. On top of that, using a rocket to launch something with wings on seems a little wasteful. I'd rather have seen it air-launched from under a bomber, or maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conroy_Virtus - I found it browsing wikipedia over the weekend, and it seems like a great idea. Get up high and up to a good velocity before releasing the shuttle and igniting the engines.

They slow you down to where regular chutes work safely. And on Eve/Jool, they work as well as regular chutes.

Well, if you want a recoverable rocket, go with the SpaceX Falcon design, and recover the main stage. I mean, if you design it to haul the whole rocket up into space, you can circularise the upper stage and then switch back to the first stage to land it.

For me, it's pretty easy. Admittedly, I use mechjeb to get to within 200m, but I CAN do that on my own. I just don't like to because it makes my brain hurt. Once there, though, the best way is to get near the docking port you want, then rotate around to face it. Then turn the camera around so it's behind the ship, and align it while looking that direction. Once that's done, check it from behind the other ship, and get closer. Control from one port, target the other, and use the navball to judge relative speeds. Approach slowly, then give a final push of a few m/s to make them connect. It's a lot like parking a car, I find. Or like getting a key into a lock. Mind you, my brain works in strange ways. What's easy for me may be tricky for you. There's always mechjeb, though.

That's not a bad idea, actually.

Well, then you need to improve your design. The 2500m/s contract is basically orbital velocity. Without a ship that can do that AND get back, you're not going to get a lot done.

Kerbed testing. If it doesn't kill Jeb, it works. If it does, revert to VAB. If it strands him somewhere, I send a rescue mission and build the rescue's fuel into the next mission.

Generally my return vehicles are the same nuclear space tugs I used to get there. I shuttle them back and forth, and just drag the lander back with me for simplicity's sake. I'm tempted to set up a LKO station for actual return pods, though. Just hitchhiker cans, a probe core, and the re-entry gear needed.

You can mine asteroids. They're bulky and have a lot of mass, but the ore is 100% efficient, you can just dock stuff to them with a Klaw, and you can move them about. And there's no gravity well to them, so you can just haul one into orbit around, say, Duna, and just use it up until it's empty. Then because it'll be way lighter then, either just move it around for use as a base, or punt it out the system to safety. Or aerobrake it to land on Duna itself.

OMG OMG OMG OMG. This will make me actually use aircraft. Or at least jet engines. I'm seeing a jet launchpad; big turbofan engines to get the rocket up as high as possible, pick up some speed, then you light the rockets and dump the wings and jets.

They're incredibly easily amused, and spend their time gazing out the windows in wonder.

For Duna, I'd think you'd need less thrust but big wings to get lots of lift. For Eve, smaller wings due to thicker atmosphere, but more thrust to push through it. Not TINY wings, though, as there's gravity.

You'll need very different planes for each one, I'd think. Duna has a thin atmosphere but low gravity, and Eve has a soupy thick atmosphere but vicious gravity. I'm personally wondering if it's viable to make a spaceplane for Jool, so it can dip down into the atmosphere and boost back to orbit again for science.

A few mods. I like KSP the way it is when stock, but some mods just make it better, or just plain EASIER. For example, KER just gets the guesswork out of rocketry and lets me run numbers. Less frustrating fails, more interesting stuff. MechJeb deals with rendezvouses, which are tricky and try my patience. And I found a mod to switch the contents of fuel tanks around to make LV-Ns worthwhile again without messing with spaceplane parts.

Makes sense to me. I always wanted to get into orbiter, but it was missing something. KSP's building and assembly stuff IS that something.

Of course, the ultimate answer to 'how do I fly planes and land landers' is 'badly'.

As before, breakup on ascent. Refining designs to workable takes a few tries. But it's less random than before, so there's less random RUD events, and more simple atmospheric instability. FINE, I'll put a damn fairing on it to stop it flipping!

If you find career mode to be boring and grindy, nothing is forcing you to play it...

Ideally, I'd like to play KSP with two joysticks (rotation and translation) and a throttle stick. But since a controller has those as well as buttons, I think I can settle for that.

Eve has high gravity and a thick atmosphere. It really is that horrible. Eve ascent is one of the biggest challenges in the game, so don't feel bad about finding it difficult.

Keyboard for landers. If I want to do planes, I'll have to set up my controller for it. But keyboard works fine for landers, because that's mostly a case of setting things up and waiting to see how they turn out.