G'th

Most straightforward way is a sub-orbital launch from KSC to some point on one of the poles. Just take any old rocket that can reach LKO and instead of turning east for your gravity turn, turn north our south. Watch your orbital path in the map view and wait until the end of it is 3/4 of the way through the Pole (IE, a bit before you're path ends on the other side of the pole that you came from). Cut your engines at that point and do a reentry as normal. You can also, if your rocket is capable, go into a full orbit and then deorbit wherever you want.

Personally I don't find the actual process of docking all that hard. All the times I ever did Apollo style Mun transfers made that part easy. The hardest part for me is just doing the rendezvous. So tedious to set up that maneuver node if I'm not in the perfect position from the start, which isn't always possible (or astronomically hard) depending on the situation.

Had to laugh when I figured out that my perfect Munar return, that gave me a nice, equatorial orbit with a 26k periapsis (my favorite reentry peri) actually lead my ship straight into the Munar surface. Set it up, did the burn, alt-tabbed for a bit, come back, and I'm literally 100m above the ground and then boom. So I go back, set it up again, thinking I did something wrong, and there it was. My path went right through the moon. D'oh!

The first thing I would do is check to see if they're actually overheating or not. Just becuase the overheat bar comes on doesn't mean you're gonna blow the engine. I'd say test it first and see if the engines actually blow out or if the bar stops at some point.

I think what you'll have to do is fly around in the area until the modules hit the ground. The modules are likely being automatically classified as debris when you eject them, and debris de-spawns if you don't stay close to it while its still in the air. Its the same thing that happens to boosters and such, and the reason why we all don't have massive debris fields surrounding KSC. Once they hit the ground, they should persist, presuming your debris limit is sufficiently high.

The qualifier of a clear orbit is meant to rule out objects that don't have the sufficient mass to make it self more distinctive from the piles of crap its floating in. IE, the exact situation of the Kuiper belt, which Pluto is a part of. This is why its called a dwarf planet, because its big enough to have be formed like a planet or a typical moon, but not large enough to really be that distinct from the thousands of other similarly sized objects around it. This is why Saturn isn't a problem, because the gas giant itself is very distinctive from the extremely small material (the largest bits are only meters across) in its rings. That, and Saturn's rings are a very different phenomenon from whats going on in the Kuiper belt. Anyway, the way asteroids occur in the game seems to be more due to game limitations than anything else. There's no reason asteroids would only come near a single body in a solar system unless its some kind of super dense black hole, and at that point its going to be dragging everything in the system towards it. I don't think the way asteroids are presented should be taken as an accurate simulation, even with the Kerbal planets being way denser than they should be.

Yeah, and I said that. You misunderstood "bigger rockets" as "more parts". I was actually referring the power of the rockets. The problem is that the payloads most people seem to have aren't large enough for the ARM parts to be appropriate, which leads to the idea that ARM parts are overpowered. In reality, you're basically using industrial bleach to clean up a water spill. This problem exists mostly because Squad hasn't created enough reason to create very large payloads. Grand Tours, Jool System exploration, A.I.O space stations, and very over engineered crafts are generally the only things ARM parts are appropriate to use with. Not everyone does any of these things though, and because the few goals in the game can be achieved very efficiently with what was already in the game, people are naturally coming to the conclusion that ARM parts are overpowered, when the real problem is that the solution to difficult goals came before the difficult goals themselves were introduced. Asteroids are the only things currently in the stock game (besides the already mentioned things) that ARM parts are really appropriate to use for (because duh), and while they are a neat goal it doesn't really make up for the fact that for the other 97% of the game, ARM parts are completely unnecessary. It should also be noted that most people play sandbox, and honestly if you're getting overly concerned about how powerful X is in sandbox, you're kind of silly. Sandbox is there so you can use the most powerful parts and nothing else, if you so choose. Something being "overpowered" doesn't mean anything in sandbox, because there's little to no restrictions anyway.

My opinion is that if you're complaining about the ARM parts being too powerful, then you're clearly not utilizing them to their potential. ARM parts aren't meant to carry an average payload to the mun and back without staging. They're meant to lift gigantic payloads that would otherwise require large (and thus laggy, less efficient, and more prone to disaster. Also expensive if we look ahead to currency) arrays of non-ARM rockets. You don't make bigger rockets to lift the same payloads. You make bigger rockets to lift bigger payloads.

Funnily enough, I had only gotten as far as Minmus when I stopped playing last. At least legitimately anyway. Might be time to work towards Duna. BUT, the Renaissance Compilation is totally worth it and totally awesome.

I haven't actually seen an asteroid yet. However, the Renaissance pack released today seems to have done the trick.

Please, for the love of all things good and natural, inspire me to play this game again. I am in desperate need of being hooked to a game again.

Ran in to a bit of an issue between this and MechJeb. Specifically the radial MechJeb. If you place it on a lower stage (Say, in your service module) and then eject that lower stage (like say during reentry), then your view may default to the ejected stage rather than the pod and/or stage above it. Could potentially make certain maneuvers very wonky depending on how you designed your ship. Not quite sure how to deal with that one, and I'm 99% certain its this mod, because I've never actually had this happen.

Do as I'm doing and run all IVA missions.

Just take that top little ladder and angle it ~45 degrees. Shift + WASD if you don't know. Position it so the ends match up where you want to connect.

Not only that, but you lose out on the possible immersion of operating a probe in Mission Control. But anyway, this is turning out fantastically. Downloaded the new version almost immediately I'm also still overjoyed that my suggestion actually became a reality so quickly. Makes me all proud and stuffs.

So, would you like my firstborn son or should I just offer myself up? My that is fantastic and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

This is turning out really nice, even with the placeholder IVA. I might recommend adding 2 or 3 more MFD's to it however. That way people can maintain the basic essential windows (NavBall, resources, and Orbit/TakeOff/Landing) but also utilize cameras and/or other displays.

Build mini cities on Mun interconnected with KAS-marked roads. Colonize Eeloo, build a space station 500km away from the sun, build a mining operation on Moho, build something that can leave Eve, etc etc. All kinds of silly things you can do.

Look for AtmosphereCurve in the .cfg Those two keys change the two ISP's of the engine. Normally the higher one will be Vacuum ISP. Certain mod engines, such as a couple in FASA, do the opposite with atmosphere ISP being higher (Due to those engines being for missiles and not for space rockets), so if you intend to edit one of those engines be sure to note what values you're changing. EDIT: Gah, ninja'd

Holy crap I suggested something and someone is actually doing it? Hurrah!

Of course.

I stage my engines first and then pop all the clamps at once when I get close to ~75% throttle. Gives me a nice smooth, almost cinematic launch.

I would actually imagine they would do it so that when you recover a vessel, you get a "freebie" part for every part on that vessel. IE, if you have a command pod, a decoupler, and a fuel tank and engine and recover it all, then you'll be able to place one copy of those parts for free or minimal cost in your next craft. Also a possibility is that launching an already built craft that uses the same parts will also provide a refund for the recovered parts.

Yep. There's a workaround however. Take the launch clamps off first, set up your fairings how you want them, and then, press L on every fairing piece. What this does is lock the shape of that particular fairing so that it won't change no matter what you place within it or around it. Then you'll be able to place the launch clamps. The faring base will still show the fairing path being all wonky, but your actual fairings won't change. See here: Without locking the fairings, my fairings would also have ended up all fat. Install the mod, then delete all the part folders within the FASA folder that you don't want. You still have to maintain the structure of the whole folder, but you'd just remove everything within it that you don't want.

When using docking ports to connect different parts of a ship, you need to pull it, not push it. What's happening to your ship is a combination of the weakness of docking ports and a lack of rigidity, ie, struts. Even if you replace any docking port connected areas of the ship, without struts your craft will still wobble because of how long and skinny it is.