Skorpychan

They help wonderfully when launching bulky, aerodynamically dirty payloads. Such as a cluster of probes, or station parts with docking ports and girders sticking out all over the place.

Kerbals photosynthesise, and reproduce through spores. The puff of dust you see when one impacts the ground is the spores. They're a distant relative of Orks. Yes, the ones with the WAAAAGH. That's how KSP ships stay together.

You mean an xbox 360 controller? Original XBox controllers don't have proper USB connectors, so you've got to basically scratchbuild an adapter for them. Not really worth it unless you REALLY like the huge clunky feel of the big ones.

With a tiny ship and a good book on hand to read during the burns.

It's possible to land with any TWR. But for landing SAFELY, you probably want at least 1.5. 2.0 is the lowest I'd go myself, because I like to have some extra thrust in reserve in case I'm landing on a slope or something. Or have to tip the lander back onto it's legs again.

The answer is always 'struts'. Or perhaps 'struts and attachment points'.

You're using LV-Ns on a lander, there's your problem.

The correct place for an Engineer is on EVA, fixing the damn rocket that the pilot broke.

Right. Firstly, http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ is the way you FIND the windows. Otherwise, I'm not 100% on it myself.

If you don't want to leave a kerbal there, use a probe core instead.

I tried the same thing in .90 for the Kethane mod. YES, it's possible to land a ship atop another ship. NO, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. It's tricksy to get them aligned. You'll burn a lot of fuel. You'll destroy a lot of solar panels. You'll take ages doing so and probably tip the lower craft over. I suggest doing it horizontally. Put your drilling rig and storage tank on wheels. Land the ascent vehicle nearby, and then drive the drilling rig into it. Either have docking ports on the side, or use the Klaw for the simple approach. This will make it infinitely easier. There is a HUGE difference between putting a lander where you want it on a surface, and landing a 2.5m wide part of your lander exactly onto a 2.5m area on another craft, with enough force to make them snap together but not so much they bounce off or explode, while fighting gravity at the same time. Seriously. Fighting gravity while docking is an entirely different thing from regular docking.

Pushing an EVE probe out while I worked on a relief mission for Jeb's mission to Duna. It didn't work. The window wasn't there, the calculator lied to me, and by the time I GOT there I didn't have enough dV for an insertion burn. 'Oh', I thought. 'I'll just aerobrake'. Boom.

Spaceplane parts, or the mod that lets you adjust fuel tanks to be all LF, LFO, or all oxygen. Unsure why you'd want the latter, but it's there anyway.

The screenshots also don't show any struts in the relevant area. You need to strut past any narrowings of the ship, or it just folds.

I'd say it's that you're pushing two wide things connected by a regular docking port. That can cause a LOT of flex. Reinforce it with struts, or use Sr ports.

For getting it out of LKO efficiently, you can use separate craft as extenders. Have close-in ports covered with fairings, but then have little craft that are basically a long section with docking ports each end, that can be send up efficiently. KSP really has a need for extendable arms.

This. In fact, if you do mun/minimus ascents and then straight back to Kerbin, the same lander will work for both missions. My current Duna mission did that, and there's no problems with the lander. The cruise stage? Hell yes there's an issue, but that's another story. One involving random explosions. The lander made it back into orbit just fine.

Doesn't that first image show your encounter with Ike passing THROUGH Ike?

Okay, that's asymmetric lift from the rocket fuel tanks you have there. Which is... Interesting, considering it should be on both from what I see. I notice, however, that you have wings stuck to wings without strutting. That could be another cause of the crash. Have you tried using more struts? Because I think you should try more struts to see if it's a rigidity problem. But that's just my .9x thinking. Any input from someone who knows about spaceplanes?

It went wrong because of the cyan arrow. Explain what happened, post pictures of your rocket, and show us on the doll where the physics touched you.

Stick it lower down on the rocket, so the CoL isn't so far from the CoM. Asymmetric lift? Stick two on it. Weight? Use a bigger lifter. Alternatively, fairing.

Fuel cells. Solar panels are useless all the way out. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean you can't get creative! - High-thrust chemical rockets. Heavy and expensive, right? Right. However, they don't need to leave the Kerbin SoI. Just use them to knock the probe out of Kerbin orbit, then have them burn back to orbit Kerbin. Either refill the tanks with ISRU for the next boost, or recover them with chutes. - Solar panels. Useless way out, better all the way in. Use gigantors to escape Kerbin, jettison them and any empty xenon tanks/batteries/LFO tanks on the way out. Maybe even recover them like the prior method. - Gravity assists. Use Jool and the muns to tweak your orbit, and maybe go prograde all the way out before using them to flip to retrograde.

I build rockets. Not spaceplanes, not SSTOs, rockets. This means vertical staging, for the most part. Long, slim designs, at least once the boosters are off. The boosters are the key bit, though. Radially-attached fuel tanks and boosters, bolted onto the central stage with fuel line trickery so the main engine runs off their fuel as well. I also use generic lifters. Literally the same over and over again, saved as a subassembly and just bolted onto the bottom.

Sort of. I design the payload top-down, because that's how the staging works. Pod, chutes, science, upper stage, etc. Then the standard lifter is picked out and stuck on from a subassembly. I tend to use one of two standard designs (Large and Extra Large), with the possibility of adding an Absurd size as well.

I'm in the process of assembling a rock and metal soundtrack for KSP. Megadeth's High Speed Dirt is definitely going to make it in there, and some Hammerfall for launches.