problemecium

^ This. It continues to boggle me why SQUAD insists on putting the 1.25m core way out at the end so we have to compromise using small cores and struts or service bays. Putting the CPU in a bigger case really isn't a technological miracle. Maybe the 2.5m core can be at the end, but the 1.25 should be much earlier, possibly right after the Stayputnik in place of the OKTO. And if people need the builtin SAS later, perhaps SQUAD can add a feature where it is "disabled" but the part itself remains available a la Procedural Fairings.

I did this to Jeb recently. He stowed away aboard my 1-Kerbal rescue ship, and I didn't catch him until I was already in space, so I EVA'd him and had him skydive back to Kerbin. To my surprise it totally worked xD It is my hope that if SQUAD does "patch" this, it coincides with the addition of some little Kerbal parachutes, a feature I think KSP has been missing for a while now.

This is neat, but it makes me sad that SQUAD never made it so you can go through the middle of stack decouplers / separators. P.S. Sorry for sounding noobular, but what mod gave you the "Robotic Arms" part category we saw at the beginning? Is that Infernal Robotics? Actually, who am I kidding? A full modlist please xD

^ I got the Eve -> Gilly thing too, but since that's already posted I may as well repost this:

The easiest way to get the old aero back is to go to the KSP Store and download the 0.90 beta version. I doubt your 4-year-old will terribly miss the ISRU feature anyway, and if he needs female Kerbals there's always Texture Replacer.

I build "space tugs" for basically every KSP version I play, and in my case they tend to be RCS-only since they're only making small orbital corrections to carry stuff, so precision is more important than fuel efficiency (and with some practice rendezvousing, I've realized that the game makes it easy to provide massive amounts of extra Monopropellant). These were for 0.90, but if you're in Sandbox Mode they should still work fine: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68977

The gizmo tools are at the top left, "hovering in the air" just to the right of the Parts list and below the Crew and Action Groups icons. I don't remember for sure if they're available in the Tier 1 VAB (I think they are), but they're definitely in the Tier 2 VAB and above.

Please do not blame SQUAD for this. Many of us have made that mistake and regretted it once we figured out what to do. The new aerodynamic model is much more sensitive to the mass distribution of the craft than the old, less accurate model was. Before, only winglets would affect the center of drag, so as long as those were behind the center of mass you would be stable. Now, ALL parts contribute to drag, so as your rocket burns through the fuel at the top, the top tanks continue to apply drag while the center of mass moves down. Eventually the ship has a center of mass near the bottom and a bunch of empty tanks causing drag at the top, and without massive amounts of winglets it's doomed to flip. There is a solution! You have to design the rocket with the direction of fuel drain in mind, as is done with real rockets. Look for a way to make it pump fuel from the bottom to the top, or at least roughly evenly, and observe what the center of mass does in the VAB with different fuel levels in the tanks. The rocket should keep its center of mass closer to the front while flying. Unfortunately there is not currently an indicator for the center of drag, so you just have to estimate it and run some tests. If you're at the beginning of Career Mode and don't have the fancy fuel flow stuff, have a look at this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/119232 (No this is not just a plug. It'll really help).

I still can't quite get a grasp on the attraction to the Skipper. According to my calculations, in 1.0 it's both less efficient and has an inferior TWR to a cluster of LV-T30/45 engines, while the Mainsail, which unlocks one node later, is far more powerful and efficient.

^ What these people have said. The Klaw has a surprisingly strong grip, more than enough to carry down a parachute-less ship of several tons. I've successfully recovered space debris several times before using a small tug fitted with a bunch of extra parachutes and a Klaw.

Huh. I'd always presumed that SQUAD had made up the name "Stayputnik" o.O

I'm seconding Kerbal Alarm Clock and PlanetShine.

I almost invariably include some OX-STAT panels on my ships.

I'll start wanting 5 meter super-engines as soon as we start getting 5 meter super-tanks and other parts. For now though, we should fill out the 3.75 meter category with some large station parts, e.g. Science labs.

I don't see Option 5: I don't really care.

Yeah, I strongly recommend doing what I do and when launching a major mission, quicksave on the launch pad just in case the game steals your revert. Using the game's designed and intended quicksave feature isn't cheating anyway.

Wow... I got this exact same mission recently o_O In fact this thread threw me for a loop because at first I thought that was my picture up there xD

-9 / 10 for killing the thread and making me have to revive it.

54 Team Zero all the way!

I picked "Neither" but what I really wanted to pick was "both." As mentioned, NASA contracts SpaceX to do stuff for them, and as a team they're able to do SpaceX stuff like develop reusable lift stages on a much better budget and do NASA stuff like maintain the ISS without having to spend all their time reinventing the Space Shuttle. So, uh, in relation to OP, I'm sure that the two of them as a team will get someone to Mars, likely with a NASA astronaut aboard a ship half built by SpaceX.

Another pro tip that as far as I can tell nobody else has mentioned: The Mobile Processing Lab does not require the experiments from which it got its data to be present while performing research. So you can, say, do an EVA report, process it for data, and then delete the EVA report with no effect on the Science generation rate.

Pro tip that as far as I can tell nobody mentioned: The Mobile Processing Lab does not require the experiments from which it got its data to be present while performing research. So you can, say, do an EVA report, process it for data, and then delete the EVA report with no effect on the Science generation rate.

And this one's funny just because of how hard it is, while they still expect me to do it:

I'm with Aerindel. I don't have one of those 16384x8192 displays that are all the rage among hardcore gamers, so that cursor ends up being about twice as big as the one I use for Windows. And the one I use for Windows is one I made myself and would like to be able to keep when playing KSP.