cantab

Pretty solid entry from the OP. I goofed around with this myself a bit but never got far. Although that's rather a lot of control surfaces, are you sure infinigliding was unimportant?

The black heatshielding was indeed for a cool purpose, but with re-entry heat not in stock it's not needed.

I'll clarify. It could well be a ground-up remodel, but visually it looks a lot like the current Mk1 cockpit. The nose is virtually unchanged with its recesses, the quasi-ladder bits either side of the glass are the same, it's still got the ventral heat-shielding (though that's something that if it's present will always look much the same). The cockpit glass area and the side bulges at the rear are the main areas that have been tweaked.If you want ideas of what I'd call "a whole new design", compare the old and new versions of the LV-T30 or the Mk1 pod for example. Oh, and EnderSpace, I assume they're 1.25 m. EDIT: Or maybe I'm wrong. CaptRobau noticed that the fuselage and engine-scoop fuselage might actually be Mk3 parts, you can just about see some heatshielding at the bottom.

One thing that was learnt a while ago when discovering the moons of the gas giants is that numbering satellites in order of distance from their primary is a bad idea, because new discoveries mess up the numbers. That's why today we designate exoplanets in order of discovery. So for our solar system, I would say the Earth is Sun g, since it was only recognised as a planet after the naked-eye planets. The naming of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn would be somewhat arbitrary, it might be better to just go in order rather than try and research historical observations. What the OP is talking about is more akin to a classification scheme. They're popular in sci-fi and such a classification would be useful for databases, but computing will probably develop enough to be able to handle freeform descriptions obviating the need for a code. PS: No planet is ever called "Starname a", the first discovered is b. Possibly a is implicitly the star itself.

Plan for an E massing 3000 tons. It might be lighter, but it's very unlikely to be heavier though I have heard rumours. A D might be 500 or so, a C on the order of 100, and an A can be as light as a few tons. The most fuel-efficient approach to capture a large asteroid is to intercept it in solar orbit, then you need only a small correction to set up an aerocapture. You'll only need a few hundred m/s with the asteroid for that, depending on how picky you are about your orbit. For your E class if you can get to it pronto you might be able to make a radial burn and put it onto an aerocapture course, but I'm not sure how much delta-V you'll need. My Macbeth 3 mission, https://flic.kr/s/aHsjXR1JAr , is my sole asteroid capture at Kerbin. A 500-ton D class I met it in solar orbit and only had about 100 m/s with it in tow, but that was enough. You can see the design in the album. For a fully powered capture I suggest aiming for 2000 m/s of delta-V with the asteroid, plus whatever you need to get to meet it.

I would assume there will still be a structural fuselage sans intake. And if you want the scoop for looks but it mucks up your intakeair flow, can't you just close it? New Mk-1 looks OK. It's an overhaul rather than a whole new design, not sure if that was the right approach. The Mk-2 (old stock one not SP+ ones) is the one I really want to see what they've done with though.

I vote Slender. Because I've never heard of it.

Sweet. It's small but you've got the rings there alright.

I just realised my replacement Laythe boat has the boosters that are meant to get the crew back into space tweaked to zero thrust. Time for some savefile editing I think.

Quicksave regularly, and have a backup program backup your saves.

Any performance improvements?

With the replacement Laythe boat on its way, I'm testing a copy on Kerbin to determine safe and unsafe operations. For something not designed for it it does pretty well on land actually, and if I'm paying attention there's no danger of rolling it, it starts to tip but isn't hard to straighten up or even drive it on two (well, three) wheels. Now for the water.

Of course the crucial factor is that not all else is equal. Chances are you've saved some dry mass. So even though the ship using less efficient engines will need more fuel as a percentage of its mass, it may not be that much heavier overall or could even be lighter.By way of example a while back I did a couple of Duna ship sketches. Pretty simple jobbies with a three-man orbiter powered by either an LV-N or a pair of 48-7S's and a common two-man lander. The nuclear ship massed 16.7 tons while the 48-7S ship was 18.6, so an Isp less than half as good resulted in a mass increase of a mere 11%. And that's at a TWR of just .3 or so where the LV-N should be really "in its zone", if I wanted more TWR the 48-7S would have given the lighter ship. PS: The stock KR-2L is lolhuge for a service module engine on an Apollo-style ship. The real SPS engine was a version of the AJ-10. Size-wise comparable to a Mainsail or Skipper, but much much lighter (most of the size was just a big bell for efficiency in vacuum) and with a thrust of about 90 kN, about the same as a pair of LV-909's.

That intakes even store air at all is down to a game limitation. It's just needed as a buffer for the air to go from the intakes that make it into the engines that consume it. As long as it's not empty your jets will be running fine.

All reasonable goals except maybe the burn time.2500 m/s should suffice for the ejection burn to anywhere provided you use sensible transfers. Don't need to be perfect just don't be silly. You'd need a TWR of around 0.7 for that in 6 minutes, which is rather high. A TWR of 0.5 is more sensible and will still give you an ejection burn of 9 minutes at worst. 10 km/s is overkill for Jool. You can aerocapture both ways, so 2000-2500 m/s out is enough, and you can get home with 1000-1500 m/s so long as you're sensible. Add a bit more for getting around the system of course.If you must have that much delta-V, you'll need to consider multiple transfer stages. As you've found, in a single stage the TWR plummets. And you don't necessarily have to wait for the exact transfer window, but try and go at a sensible time. There will be dates when it's really bad to attempt to go to a certain planet. In terms of engines, if you're sending big things and want quick burns, use the KR-2L. The Isp's nearly as good as the best chemical engines and the TWR is massive.

Congrats. It's not far from the KSC but I didn't find it without being told. As mentioned there are various "anomalies" scattered about the system. Many can be spotted visually from low orbit, but if you want some help you can use a mapping mod such as ScanSat, or the website kerbalmaps.com. Either will tell you where the anomalies are, but you still won't know what they are until you look. Be aware that while most are on the surface a few are buried underground and others are floating high in the air. Also, the "obelisk" you found is based on the monoliths from 2001: A Space Oddysey.

For a Duna mission chemical engines can be competitive, less mass of engine offsetting more mass of fuel. Four nuclear engines weigh 9 tons, or the same as a Rockomax-16 tank. Since you've got chemical engines anyway, you might well get more delta-V without the LV-Ns. If not, consider switching to one or two nuclear engines not four.

What was the previous challenge?

Well, there's a lot of real-world factors KSP doesn't cover. But I think it's the case that a physics class can teach you orbital mechanics, and you'd be able to calculate the burns to make to get from one orbit to another in the available delta-V and time, but it takes a simulation like KSP to really learn to intuit things. In the early days of spaceflight NASA themselves, who of course didn't have anything of the sort, took a few goes before they succeeded in an orbital rendezvous. And now making a retrograde burn to catch up with something ahead of me is the most natural thing in the world.

Well it would seem odd for celestials to just magically appear. I do think some sort of discovery mechanic would be interesting though. Start with vague blurry impressions of the celestials, and for anything without a moon you'll only have a rough estimate of its mass (with consequent uncertain trajectory prediction). Putting a space telescope up gets you better images and values but only when you actually get to the SOI can you see all the detail and get a precise mass figure.

Stock KSP is based on real-world spaceflight technologies, and mostly 60's and 70's stuff at that. It's no surprise that lofting ginormous things into orbit isn't always easy. Although if you don't mind cheating then hack gravity and infinite fuel are big helps.

No revert is generally known as "Ironman" mode. I sort of do that, though maybe it's more like Aluminiumman mode, I try not to use reverts but if I make a mistake from being careless or absent-minded as opposed to a "real" design error or piloting misjudgement then I might. Also, FAR and DRE are pretty much essential parts of any realism playthrough.

I've yet to use Mechjeb myself, but orbital rendezvous in general lets you trade between time and fuel.

From the Youtube video I saw it just looks like an armoured rover capable of a powered landing. Very possible on most bodies in KSP; the smaller airless bodies shouldn't be too hard and all the bodies with atmosphere barring Duna will slow you down plenty in stock even without chutes so you'll only need a little for final touchdown. The Mako looks reasonably deep in its centre so there should be space for fuel. I suggest a mod like RCS Build Aid to help you get the longitudinal balance on the rockets right. Also, the Mass Effect Wiki mentions it using thrusters to aid traction on low-gravity worlds, an approach already popular with KSPers.

Pretty much. Of course you'd still need electricity to run the integrated reaction wheel, as well as any science equipment and so on. Having the basic controllability not depend on it would just make things a bit more forgiving, no more missions being spoiled when the solar panels get themselves facing away from the sun or stuff like that.