daniu

FYI I had the problem that the KER window didn't show up after the upgrade to .24 (despite KER icon in the Toolbar). I had extracted the mod zips into the existing old folders, that might have caused the issue; after I deleted the folders and extracted again, it was fixed.

You need to go to the contracts building first to get the initial contracts; it's small and easy to miss, got confused as well. It's the one between the VAB and the SPH.

Yeah I know... it wasn't there, showed "0" pieces of debris although I saw it lying next to me before the loading screen. Loading into Fly Craft again, it was gone there as well. I'll keep an eye out for this. Thanks, I'll take a look at that. What's .01 atm though? (or rather, "where", guessing it's 1% atmosphere)

Only was able to play one night yet with contract system; I've been putting radial parachutes on the early stages and boosters to be able to retrieve them for the funds. However, although they landed properly - right next to my command pod, Jeb could have walked there -, when I entered the tracking station, they weren't in the Debris section. I did see them once, but it seems to not work all the time... anyone else noticed something like that? Also, I haven't gone into orbit yet so I didn't move too far away from the earlier stages, but is it at all possible to recover first stages which fall back to Kerbin, and you leave Physics Simulation distance from them?

That does not matter. Both normal floats and double precision floats are handled differently between 32 and 64 bit at the edges of precision (because those edges are different between 32 and 64 bit). I was told this by game developers (Total War) so i'll take their word for this. If you store a float or double rounded in 32 bit then load it in 64, this may mean something slightly different to the game. Or not, it really depends - but is worth keeping in mind.

I haven't tried this yet but will when 0.24 comes out to start a new game with it. Just wanted to chip in that I know due to 32 and 64 bit floating point numbers, rounding is different. Loading an existing save may not work, and crashes may very well be attributed to that - while starting a new game may well be stable. Which is why I'm waiting, just thought others should also be aware of that.

So in this what-if http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/, I stumbled upon the statement "Getting to space is easy [...] just by going fast and then steering up [...] The problem is staying there". Well yeah, I'm sure reaching the orbital velocity of ~7km/s at 200km is the larger part of getting into earth orbit; but how much dV is needed for the vertical part exactly? I can't find data on it, and my math fails me... In other words: if I were to use a non-gravity turn lift to go up 200km before doing the 7km/s orbital velocity burn, how much energy/dV would that take? I can't imagine it being that little. And how large a part do gravity and atmospheric drag play in it, respectively?

There is the Plugins/ folder too; I read that KSP also reads mods from there already (not putting mine there though so not positively sure). It sure looks like it's supposed to be the preferred destination folder for mods in the future.

The vessel filter in both the Tracking Station and the Map mode gets initialized to "all except debris" every time. It would be really helpful if it restored its last setting.

Do yourself a favor and install the Radial Experiment Storage Container Mod instead. I attached those to minimal drones I send back so I can reuse my actual experimental craft.

Here is mine (used mods: Kethane and KAS, but Kethane is only used for the center part and KAS for how the miner is docked) It's not that fancy and doesn't use the 6-point hub connectors because I didn't have them at the time (which made it kind of a hassle to add the Kethane part in the middle ) The advantage of keeping it mostly straight is that I can change its orbit more easily (I did change inclination some times - for science!), otherwise it starts pulling to the sides too much when accelerating. I also added KAS struts to strenghten the connections in the center by now (not in the picture) to reduce wobbling... I also had to go with the normal docking ports because I didn't have the Sr. connectors either yet.

I turn to 45° at 10,000m, then look at the time to apoapsis and try to keep it the same (at about 30-45 seconds) until it reaches 75,000-80,000m, then I stop burning and prepare the circularization maneuver node. That gives a good indication of how to adjust the slope and/or throttle.

Yeah I got it from a forum post as well. But I don't think it wastes that much dV; the horizontal kill burn is pretty much (a little less) than the total suicide burn, the second burn is maybe 90dV, and the last one is a small 10s burn (with 100m descent at 10m/s) which therefore wastes 16.3m/s at Mun's gravity. Not too high a price IMO considering I get a nearly riskless landing. Although I've lately not been able to do it anymore anyway because I've only been shooting up unmanned Kethane miners.

I found IVA landings to be almost simpler than external view ones; this way you at least can't get confused with camera position. The idea is to kill the horizontal speed and then look at the vertical speed indicator. At 1000m, the scale changes and you can cut down and stay around 100m/s descent speed. At 100m, the scale changes again and you should go to 10m/s (final landing speed). Or different numbers depending on your engines and taste I guess. I don't remember ever messing this up (although I guess you could have a problem with landing on steep inclines).

When is it marked as a Space Station btw? Mine is shown as a normal craft.