cantab

Well, plenty of people find 6.4x or Real Solar System fun. The chief gameplay difference with a larger system is longer launches to orbit. Larger rockets too but that can be balanced out by changing engine and tank performance.

No. And *sigh* Hint 4: We know exactly when the next one will be.

7/10. Nice grabbydoo. But why does that little thing have its propellers on sideways?

Well the dwarf elephant in the room is the scale. Impossibly dense celestials, an unphysical Sun, and probably a too-small gas planet. But beyond that, I don't think we can really know. Yes Minmus seems a mystery, yes Eve and Jool's vivid colours seem unlikely, but then we have such a small sample IRL. Beyond our solar system we know little more than masses, sizes, and orbits. Maybe there are shocking purple terrestrial planets. As for the atmospheric behaviour, the lack of n-body mechanics, and so on, I'd call them game limitations. The question is how realistic is the Kerbol system, not how realistic is KSP.

It's thought to be a poor man's optimisation - making a part physicsless reduces its load on the game engine. Small ancillary parts like the science instruments have a negligible mass on typical-sized ships anyway so can be made physicsless with little concern, though even that can make small probes more capable than they should be. However there are some parts that I don't feel Squad thought through when sticking the physicsless tag on them, like the 0-10 engine (which gains an excessive TWR) and the Kerbodyne decoupler (which was flat-out buggy in .23.5).

10/10 That is the business! Awesome Soyuz replica.

I've not seen the details of your tree, but I'd bear in mind that even the basic jet, normally on a 90 science node, can have a significant impact in career by enabling lighter launchers. Indeed it's one of the unlocks that enables a single launch Kerballed Mun landing and return in the 18 ton / 30 part limit. (The other option being the node with the 48-7S and fuel lines, both widely accepted as godly parts.) So the turbojet on a 90 science node seems rather early.

Sent a small kethane lander to Minmus, just to try things out again. First time in a long time designing something without KER (not got it on the kethane install yet) and despite an error in the hand calculations it worked out OK. No FAR either but I used a fairing anyway, and I launched it on a SpaceY "Moa" engine - low efficiency but high TWR. Did the job excellently. Made a few polar orbits looking for kethane deposits, selected one on a high plateau, and did a routine albeit not very precise landing that was nonetheless in the deposit. Unfortunately it can't land Jeb back on Kerbin - no chutes and a <1 Kerbin TWR. So something else will have to take him down.

It's rock stable and no mods that I know of disable themselves on it. The problems are with the Windows 64-bit version of KSP. It's just a lot of people don't even recognise Linux as existing and say "64-bit" when they mean the Windows 64-bit version. As mentioned, if you have an AMD graphics card you can expect it to underperform on Linux whether you use the proprietary drivers or the free software ones. KSP isn't a demanding game though so I expect a decent AMD GPU will still handle it fine on Linux.

So even unmanned rovers can fix their wheels in sandbox? That's a new thing certainly. Will make driving them less annoying, but also give less reason to take a Kerbal. As for crew reports, for as long as I can remember there has been no requirement for the command pod to be occupied to take them. It's not a bug per se, just an unexpected omission in that the experiment - which is a function of the pod, not of a kerbal - doesn't check for presence of a Kerbal.

Game bug, obviously. Also, it is not recommended to be in physics warp (the 2x/3x/4x warp) when parachutes go from partly to fully open. Physics warp makes your ship extra prone to falling apart.

Indeed. Which makes it hard to set an absolute upper limit. One of the first bugs to show up is the Space Centre looking like it's built on corrugated ground when you return to it. I believe the altimeter can go into the Exametre range

8/10. An icon. And I haven't even seen the film.

7.8/10 Too much landing gear.

The values look reasonable. As far as saving fuel goes, firstly look at aerobraking opportunities. Secondly consider having the lander do some of the orbital transfers to and from the small bodies. For example leave the mothership in Duna orbit and have the lander go to ike and back.

I've seen this before. KER is incorrectly assuming you will decouple your rover before expending your fuel, throwing the calculations *seriously* off. You can see this in the stage-by-stage breakdown - reports 0 m/s in stage 1, the current stage, and all the delta-V in stage 0.

Edit: I'm a slowpoke. Errrm, 7/10 for that plane. Hard to see any detail to give a fair judgement, but hey, it's red!

In my experience short fat rockets have stability issues - they don't want to fly forwards. For example this little guy needs the fins to fly stably, without them it will just tumble out of control: https://flic.kr/p/quQPAd Although I could probably force it to fly straight with a big reaction wheel and caution on the controls.

9/10. That thing was dead cool. Bit impractical though, the line of development never really got anywhere.

It is not.

Neither 10char

Economy class seating. That is, cram it with external seats and put kerbals in them

No and no. And if I come up with more that won't be giveaways I might give some hints.

Yeah, maybe it is Earth-centric, but it's still reasonable. It makes it fairly obvious that you need a fuel and an oxidizer - two fuels or two oxidizers generally won't work. (Notwithstanding a few compounds that can be either, or monopropellants). You also know that the oxidizer is liable to oxidize your metal components if you aren't careful.

8/10. Nice! Not seen that before, it's a different and striking approach.