Retread

You don't need four of each instrument - get a Kerbal close on an EVA, right click on the instrument, and retrieve the data. You can store an unlimited amount of data in a capsule. I landed in all nine Minmus biomes, did all of the experiements, returned to the orbiting lab, and transferred the data to my crew transfer vessel. By the time I was done, I had 73 experiments stored on a vessel with no instruments at all.

Very cool. You've obviously spent some time balancing this out, but a question occurs to me: do Kerbals have weight? For most designs it wouldn't matter that much, but for this one, it seems like the weight of a Kerbal cantilevered that far out from the COM could make a difference.

But does it come in black?

I see your Minmus mission, and raise you 2700 science... I kept the science lab in orbit and used it to clean out the sample lab and goo container every time Jeb returned with the lander.

Find the lander. The view out the window Today I learned you can zoom in cockpit view.

My mission this weekend was to explore the new biomes of Minmus in my 0.23 career save. Having successfully drained the Mun of enough science to obtain all of the scientific instruments, I wanted to use the same approach on Minmus as on the Munar mission. The expedition would require four launches. The first was the core module consisting of the lab, crew quarters and a docking hub, the second a fuel ship to allow multiple landings, and the third was the crew transfer vehicle that would take the crew to Minmus and return them safely to Kerbin at the conclusion of the mission. These first three launches were combined in Minmus orbit to form the lab facility. The fourth launch was the lander, which wound up making nine return trips between the orbiting lab and the surface. On each trip, the lander would gather science from a biome and then return to orbit to transfer the science to the CTV, refuel the lander, and clean out the Science Jr. and Goo containers. The crew consisted of five Kerbals: Jeb and Bill performed the landings, with Jeb acting as the lander pilot and Bill as the science officer. Jendan and Tomzer ran the orbital lab facility, while Bob was pilot for the crew transfer vehicle. With not much to do between the outbound and inbound trips, Bob also did most of the cooking and put on occasional puppet shows to entertain the others. All in all the, the mission went off absolutely flawlessly, and by the time Jeb and Bill had returned from their ninth and final landing near the northern pole, the science crew had processed and uploaded 73 experiments to the data banks in the CTV's capsule. On the return trip to Kerbin, a miscalculation for the required fuel load meant that there would be no circularizing the orbit and then landing precisely back at KSC. Rather, the aerobraking maneuver turned directly in to the landing, meaning the landing point was pretty much chosen at random. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the three parachutes deployed at 5 km to signal the final phase of the landing, followed by the full deploy at 500m. It was then that it occurred to Jeb that the lander was about to land in water, and that the lander consisted of simply a three man capsule (occupied only by Bob on the return trip), a Hitchhiker Storage Container for the other four crew, and four lander legs. In a water landing, the legs would be useless, and the HSC did not have the structural rigidity to withstand a water landing at 8 m/s - the legs were meant to absorb the shock. With seconds to spare, Jeb and Bill scrambled up the ladder to the safety of the capsule, but after weeks in space, Jendan and Tomzer were killed instantly as the HSC was crushed on impact. Here's some images: Launch of the core module. Both the Mun and Minmus are visible. Approaching Minmus. Bill is the quiet, contemplative sort. Here he is pondering the mysteries of the universe and feeling small. Jeb, on the other hand, is more the adventurer. During an interview with KTV from the surface, he described the mission as 'kickass!" The lander returns from the surface, on final approach to the station. The lab and quarters are the center module, the fuel ship is on the left, and the CTV on the right. Lander lights viewed from directly overhead, almost abstract. The polar landing had the best views. Here Jeb and Bill are mugging for the camera, with the lander in the background and Kerbin and the Mun visible in the sky. Here's the CTV during aerobraking maneuver at Kerbin, prior to the detachment of the engine and fuel tank. This was followed shortly after by Jendan and Tomzer's unfortunate demise (not shown). Seen here is the result of the trip. Jendan and Tomzer's sacrifice was not in vain, as the returned 4,583.3 science will do much to advance Kerbalkind.

If there isn't a Kerbin mod for Civ V, there should be...

Beating the Whack sounds wrong. Just saying'... You could go blind...

Ever have a sensation your entire life without ever putting it into words? And then one day, you read "geometrically satisfying", and your life becomes a little more complete.

...yet. I would hope science is still very much a work in progress. Eventually I'd like the ability to see all of the possible science experiments as an end state, For example, when you start the game, you know Duna exists, but that's about it. Do a fly-by, and you can see a list of biomes, but no details on what experiments are possible. Not until you've actually landed a probe can you see all of the possible experiments in each biome. Alternatively, it might be interesting if a mapping probe highlighted anomalies that would require specific tests to resolve, e.g. here's a spot on Duna that appears to have an anomaly in the magnetic field. Land a magnetometer there for bonus science, return a sample for even more.

Welcome aboard, Rob. You are absolutely right about this game - it is highly enjoyable and extremely addictive. It has replaced (at least for now) a two year addiction to World of Tanks, and when faced with a little gaming time I'm always choosing KSP lately. Tips? Don't be afraid of using some mods. The game is incomplete yet, and the mod community has made some great tools to help out in the meantime. In particular, I find Mechjeb to be invaluable. I don't use the autopilot features much, but the ability to have the delta-v's (read: capability) of your rockets calculated for you makes you feel like you're actually designing intelligently instead of straight trial-and-error. Another useful mod is RCS Build Aid; this lets you place RCS ports accurately to allow for RCS translation maneuvers that don't induce rotation in your ship. Not a big deal until you try your hand at docking, and then almost a necessity. Lastly, I always have the wiki open on my second monitor, usually to the fantastic delta-v map on the Kerbin page.

Why, exactly, does everyone assume our current crop of Kerbals to be male? It's not like they're anatomically correct. The only clues we have to their gender are the names, and it would seem simple to add "Betty", "Abigail", and "Xenia" to the mix.

I get the funny feeling the dev team works a lot more than 40 hours a week...

Lots of discussion on this subject here.

Good God, man! I salute you and your dedication to, um, size... Plus the sheer leap of faith it took to even imagine such a thing.

In my head, I sang every single verse. Thanks for the smile!

Another way to approach this would be to allow separate tanks for fuel and oxidizer and release them in pairs sized in appropriate ratios. Want to build a standard rocket? Instead of the current orange tank, use the orange fuel tank plus the orange oxidizer tank. Building a spaceplane? Add more fuel tanks than oxidizer to cover the air-breathing portion of the flight. Have a refueling station in orbit that only needs fuel, not oxidizer? Make your payload a fuel-only tank. Both types of tanks could tweakable, and only require one slider each.

Kerbal Engineer, MechJeb, or any other form of calculator that shows you delta v and TWR. I don't see how you can accomplish any type of reasoned design without these.

This seems pretty rooted in reality - inside each fuel tank are separate, pressurized tanks for fuel and oxidizer. When you tweak the fuel tanks, you are changing to what percentage each one of those is filled - not the capacity of the tanks.

I think you're mixing up the gravitational constant (big G, 6.67384 × 10-11 m³/kg.s²) with the acceleration due to gravity at the earth's surface (little g, 9.81 m/s²). G is constant, no matter where in our universe you go (according to Newton, anyway), where g is just a convenient way of expressing the acceleration almost all of us are subjected to every day of our lives.

According to the wiki, Kerbin has a density of 58,484 kg/m³, roughly 5 times the density of lead. Earth's average density (according to wikipedia) is 5.515 g/cm³, or 5,515 kg/m³. So either Kerbin is super-dense, or it exists in a universe with a completely different gravitational constant from our own, take your pick. Or it's just a game...

If this is your first landing, Minmus might be easier - everything happens much slower in the lower gravity. On the other hand, instead of landing on your first attempt, try some orbital missions first. Orbital return missions to the Mun and Minmus have plenty of science potential without landing, if you've never been out of Kerbin SOI before.

Aye think yoo shud go two Jewel.

I think that's the Kerbal Village People. YKCA, baby!

When you transmit using the biggest Communotron, there are numbers written on the inside - one is the launch date for Sputnik 1, the other spells out 'beep' in hexadecimal.