G'th

Assuming the stage you use to transfer to the Mun is the same one you used to transfer back to Kerbin, then yes, you should be able to use the same craft to go to Minmus, presuming you have a fair amount of fuel left over after the return to kerbin.

^ Well when you set up a free return you likely won't have the path actually shoot straight back to Kerbin unless you get everything just right to mimic the Apollo free returns. (The figure 8) Instead, what you'll see is a path that slings around the Mun and then shoots off to the left or right depending on where your encounter is. If you zoom out you'll notice that that path still puts you back into Kerbin orbit, just a very, very high one. If you set up your transfer burn right, you should be able to set it up so that you fly by the Mun at your desired periapsis and then return to a Kerbin orbit with your desired periapsis. And as for using EVA to get to Minmus' surface. You'd be better off just getting into orbit with your Kerbal, and then using your ship to rendezvous with the Kerbal. It'll be much less complicated that way.

What Brethern asked. The game does have a feature where stats will decay after a certain amount of game time.

Actually, not really, because the only new mods I got today were the ALCOR module and proc fairings. Already had everything else.

That the biggest rocket I've ever built in KSP, is also the most structurally and aerodynamically sound rocket I've ever made? No wobbles, no flexing, no nothing. Just straight flying all the way to the Mun and back. HOW!? lol To bring along some backstory: What I've been trying to do for the last couple of weeks is to try and replicate Apollo 11, from the Saturn V to the L.E.M. So far I've seen varied success in one or two areas. One try might be the best lander I've done, one try might be the best CSM, etc etc. Never have I managed to really combine everything into one single Apollo 11 replica. My Saturn V's in particular have been huge failures, with the most successful ones only managing to lift a very, very, VERY stripped down CSM. But, tonight, through a storm of smoothies and a fresh influx of new mods, I've done it! I finally managed to build a fully functional Apollo 11-like rocket. (Replica doesn't apply, as I changed certain things, either for practicality or aesthetics, or both) It hasn't lifted off yet, though through testing the various stages, I'm certain that the mission will be successful when the time comes. And, here it is! Now, as I said, this is indeed the most structurally sound rocket I've ever made, even despite the fact that everything else I've ever put together that reached this scale (the escape tower reaches into the VAB cieling) usually falls apart on the Launch Pad, even with clamps in place. All in all I'm fairly excited, because it has the delta v and general usability to still reach its stage goals, even if I fly it manually. With this great success, it will definitely necessitate a Mission Report.

What this really depends on is who ends up reading/watching it, presuming you present this in as serious and professional a manner as possible. Some might take to it very well and give you kudos for it. Others, will refuse to look past the fact that its a game and judge you for it. What would be better though, as has been suggested, is to use Orbiter. Not only does it present a more realistic simulation (and thus will be seen as closer to a scientific tool rather than a game) but it will also eliminate red flags that might pop up should a Kerbal be mentioned or if the audience notices how cartoony KSP can be.

Did you turn gimbals off on all but the center most engines? That may or may not be contributing to the wobbling wave of destruction.

This actually reminds me of this: The part of that mission where the rover assembles the base resembles how this challenge could be done. You would just modify it so that it could be done in one launch with a payload of Kerbals. Wouldn't be as big or elaborate as that base ends up being, but it would meet this challenge presuming the base doesn't have to be hard connected (IE, via docking ports rather than KAS's pipes) to one another.

Yes, while in EVA, you should bee able to right click on your lander pod (as well as any instruments or experiments you have attached) and store the data with your kerbal. The kerbal then go enter whatever command pod and take the data with him, thus storing the data in that new command pod.

Deadly Reentry isn't that hard honestly. Presuming your craft is more or less inline with your heatshield (which shouldn't be an issue except for designs that are probably better served utilizing a powered descent rather than an aerobrake) then reentry simply becomes a matter of controlling your perigree so that it produces a less extreme angle of reentry. Its quite simple really, and frankly I find docking a harder procedure than reentry. For almost every single reentry, a periapsis of 30km is perfect.

Did I read that right, FASA style APOLLO parts? Tell me I read that right, because this nerdgasmic spasm I just had must not go to waste.

Welp, I've never tried building a rover completely out of the storage boxes, but what I have done is attached a rover body to a docking port on my lander and then put on the wheels. From there I could decouple and build my rover as I needed to.

Except, its not simple. None of that is actually tested under the conditions its going to face, and the only people on the planet with any real experience actually being out on another body aren't likely to be alive by the time we actually make it to Mars. There's a reason NASA continues to reject Mars Direct, and that reason is that it presumes the technology is going to just work without the proper development leading up to it. It suggests trying to build a heavy traffic bridge across the Hudson river without cement, when the cements only a couple miles away. Sure, we could do it, but what would you gain from skipping out on just going and getting the cement? There is zero practical reason for going to Mars without developing the space around Earth first. Resource mining and long-term habitation of the Moon and nearby asteroids must be developed first, because they will provide cheap resources that will make habitation of Mars practical. We've barely stepped into our own sphere of influence. Jumping the gun and going off to land humans on another planet is pointless right now. Going to Mars right now, regardless of the fact that we technically have the technology to do it, is a waste because all it would amount to is a grand stunt that has little return for the investment. This isn't the Cold War any more, glory and sticking it to the other guy isn't going to fly here.

Anti-energy? We already have the concept of anti-matter after all, so I would imagine it wouldn't be that much of a leap to suggest the same concept for energy. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other, may be the opposing forms of energy repel one another (perhaps one more so than the other, see below) like opposing poles of a magnet. It actually makes some sense thinking of it as a magnetic-like effect. We already have the normal energy from the big bang going in all directions, so as it encounters anti-energy it accelerates as anti-energy repels it. This of course begs the question of why they don't eventually cancel each other out as the repelling forces between both types of energy equal out at some point in the universe. I would imagine this would be because normal energy may not be able to affect anti-energy in the same way the latter affects the former. I always do wonder why the phenomenon's of the universe particularly care that something or someone is observing them.

It boggles the mind how you can even remotely think a manned Mars mission would be that simple. And no, its not a strawman. You suggest we have everything we need to land men on Mars and establish a base. That is completely false and will be for a long time. Just the simple problem of actually feeding the astronauts for the length of the entire mission (The almost year-long trip to Mars + however much time they'll spend there + the trip back) makes the entire mission many times more complicated then you suggest it is. How do you deal with the infrastructure required to sustain these astronauts not only in transit to Mars as well as on the surface? How do you know what you plan to do will even work without any tests on the technologies reliability? What if it fails? Do we make it one big mission, or several smaller ones? Do you send robots first or humans? Do you have robots that can establish infrastructure for a Mars base? How do you know how well they'll perform the task, if they even can at all? How do you deal with radiation, not only in transit but also on the surface? What kind of support will you have in orbit of Mars? Do you have just satellites or do you have a small station? How are you going to deal with signal delay? Is entry into the planets atmosphere going to be automatic, or will the astronauts have control? What kind of fail-safes will you have for any of this? Will your transit craft have the ability to return to Earth if something goes wrong and Mars is a no-go? How do you deal with waste? How do you deal with Martian weather? Landing on the Moon in the short time that we did was relatively easy because of virtually unlimited budget, massive national support, and the simplicity of supporting the entire mission the entire way through. Its easy to pack in the resources and equipment required to make a short-stay Moon landing mission that won't last more than a week on one rocket, and when you have the go ahead from everyone else and literally all the money to do it it wont' take you long to get there. NASA no longer has any of this. Its budget is a fraction of what it once was, support is scattered (and edging very close to non-existent in Congress), and the sheer complexity of such a mission is staggering. Picking up rocks is easy. Picking up rocks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is not, and neither is picking up rocks on Mars.

I'm guessing thats why NASA just went straight to the Moon and didn't bother with any of that development nonsense. Nope, put something together that'll probably work and throw it at the Moon without testing any of it. Real Kerbal logic right there. You simply cannot just do something to the scale of manned mission to Mars (very much less establishing a base there) without testing the technology first. The only way we can do that is to go back to the Moon. NASA didn't go into space once and then just decide to go the Moon. It took years of experience in space to accomplish what Apollo did. The only way we're going to develop the establish a presence on Mars is to do it on the Moon first. And thats just for the whole living on a whole other body in space part of it. We haven't landed men on the surface of another celestial body in over 40 years, and we've yet to send men beyond our sphere of influence. Suggesting that we can establish any sort of presence on Mars, very much less just landing on it (and returning), without the development process to support it, is, well, stupid.

I don't see the benefit to the US to fund an administration whose only apparent purpose is to accomplish "firsts" in spaceflight and nothing else.

Moon. We should establish a presence within our own sphere of influence before we seriously consider establishing one on another planet. Mostly because it makes sense not to jump the gun like that, but also because experience on the Moon will help on Mars, as failures and accidents (not to mention the technology to do it) can be studied with a relative amount of safety (a rescue mission won't take most of a year to get there). It would be more efficient and less risky to work out the kinks of such a mission where a rescue mission could be scrambled and executed within a week rather than several months.

Surely there couldn't be a problem with just merely flinging them into the sun? Right?

Well with SLS, it seems to me to just be something that's meant to break NASA away from the Space Shuttle (which for years has been what most of NASA's major mission have been centered around) and bring them back to where they were before the Shuttle program, with rockets launching dedicated space craft (and not hybrids) into space. Obviously beyond that basic premise SLS has little defined goals (I mean, SLS' uses can range anywhere from a return to the Moon to simple ISS resupply runs), but I mean I can't blame necessarily blame them considering they're basically trying to reinvent the Saturn V's capabilities (If not the Saturn V itself). Just the idea that they're having to basically reinvent something they put together themselves (Yes, I know why this is) is cause enough for SLS' existence.

Hmm, interesting. So this would mean then that, as space expands then matter/energy also expand out thus forming what see in the universe no? Presuming that then this leads me back to what I originally suggested. If the initial state of the universe was a singularity before the big bang, then could the acceleration of space simply be a matter of space just getting away from that gravity well, as the initial expansion rate would grow as the forces acting against it become weaker?

scratch this, see below

Give them the same freedom and budget to do what they need to do (and thus actually complete their projects) as the military gets. You hardly ever hear about Congress burying something the Air Force is doing in red tape, but there's countless NASA projects that got buried. Granted, there's more behind why that is, but regardless. Congress generally doesn't tell any branch of the military what they can and can't work on*. The same should be had for NASA. *I could be wrong on that end. Feel free to correct me.

Hmm, well here's an idea straight out of the stadium based nothing but a thought that popped into my head. What if there's some kind of universal gravity? And what I mean by that is, what if in the universe there is some minuscule amount of "gravity" affecting the content of the universe, which would be localized (ie, strongest) wherever the universe originates (For the big bang to have happened then there had to have been one location where everything expanded out from, as otherwise the idea of the entirety of the universe being a singularity before the big bang doesn't make sense, because then the singularity would occupy the same amount of space as the universe that is about to expand from that singularity) and as such, as the content of the universe expands away from this central location, it accelerates as the "gravity" becomes weaker? Just as with a normal planet, the farther away from its gravity well, the more able is an object able to accelerate away from it compared to being much deeper into it.

The way I did it without it being a numbing grind fest was to first get your freebie science (remember to get EVA reports both while on the capsule ladder and when on the actual ground)off the launch pad the grassy area next to it. That should unlock 2 or 3 nodes. Then you can build a functional rocket and start your suborbital hops to different biomes. Keep experimenting with early parts and you'll eventually hit orbit which will net you a good amount of science. One you get partway into the third column of nodes, you should be able to do flybys (if not straight up orbits) of Mun and Minmus, which if you plan it right will net you stupid amounts of science depending on how low you can get your periapsis (as you'll get science from the different altitudes) and whether or not you decide to put yourself into Munar/Minar orbit, which will also net you more science as you get EVA reports from the different biomes. From there, landings on both moons. Standard stuff. After that you should be ready to go interplanetary. Just breaking Kerbin's SOI will give you a good boost to grab a node or two if you bring enough experiments and return them to Kerbin. From there, its the same procedure. Flybys, orbits, then landings. If you have mods then the game can get really interesting at this point, as you'll have unlocked enough to start digging into some of the really neat toys that some mods have. Doing it this way (and making sure you get yourself all the science you can from wherever you are. EVA and Crew reports from all kinds of places, positions, and altitudes are your bread and butter) gives you a good progression that's not too grindy and dull but also not handicapped by the low technology you'll have. Its also mostly realistic if you're into that sort of thing. And remember, if you're ever in a stump (using my approach its usually somewhere between orbits and landings that you want science but can't get it), always go for probe impacts on various bodies. Bring as many experiments as you can reasonably put on a probe, load it up with batteries and solar panels, and crash it into one of the Moons (or even some other planet or other planets moons). You can pop experiments at various altitudes on the way down and transmit before you impact the surface. Won't get you the full science (and you'll have to land to get the rest), but with the high base science, the transmitted values will add up to a good enough boost to get a node. Another good way early on is to go interplanetary early and go for Kerbol, ie, the sun. You should be able to easily push a probe into solar orbit. As with good flybys, get your periapsis as low as you can so you can get the different science values.