cantab

Right-handed, and I almost always use my right hand for the mouse. It's only if it's on the left of the keyboard already that I might use my left hand, and then I'm pretty slow and awkward with it. The poll would have been better broken down by handedness. I expect almost all right-handed people will almost always use their right hand for the mouse, but for left-handed users it will probably be a lot more variable. (Right-handed, left-handed with right-handed buttons, left-handed with left-handed buttons, etc.) And there also needs to be an option for "I use a trackpad/ball/point."

Well, what is "the kerbal way"? Although I think a good candidate would be my mishap with the Leonardo ship in the Jool Kollab. I'd tested it in my normal save and noted the antenna was missing, so I fixed that and made some other tweaks. Once in orbit I noticed this iteration of the Leonardo had two antennas, due to incorrect symmetry, so I decided I'd shoot the unwanted one off with Whack-a-Kerbal. Command pod, say bye-bye to ship. Split it cleanly apart. No Kerbal deaths, the Kraken must have been smiling on me that day, but that meant relaunch time.

Near Future has bigger inline batteries, the .625m one having 2800 Ec.

Ensure North Korea win the World Cup.

For rendezvous, if you have a low TWR you'll want to enter a phasing orbit that's not too far from your target orbit, so your initial relative velocity at the intercept isn't too fast to stop in time. This may mean waiting more orbits before you get your close encounter. For docking, you do need to be more precise on your approach with a bigger ship, as the magnetism in the docking ports won't be as able to pull the ships into position. Try and get your big things to handle well, so give them plenty of RCS thrusters and torque, and make sure everything's well-balanced. Imbalanced RCS will make docking a nightmare, as will incomplete RCS (ie not able to thrust in every direction). If you plan on leaving the ship permanently docked during its service life (eg if it's a station module) and you're worried about part count, mount the RCS thrusters on jetissonable blocks. You may also want a mod to give your more instrumentation. I've used http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54303-0-23-5-Navball-docking-alignment-indicator-v3 , which is very simple but suffices to ensure your ship's docking port is parallel to the target's. Other more sophisticated docking aids are available.

I've tended to do a mix of manned and unmanned missions, but then I'm not playing career "properly", I cheated to unlock all the tech so it's basically sandbox but I can collect science. For that matter, I've got a one-way manned mission running, and while I've not done one there's no reason I couldn't do a returning probe. And yes, once you unlock the Stayputnik you can do unmanned missions, though you'll need to further unlock batteries and solar panels for them to be really useful. Of course you can't take EVA reports or surface samples, though you can take a crew report with an empty command pod provided you have a separate probe core to control the ship. There's easily more than enough science in the system to fill out the tech tree, even without the asteroids. (With the asteroids there's unlimited science). You can get almost everything, if not absolutely everything, unlocked just from the science on Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus.

All of them. But my ships most commonly use a 2.5m main body, simply because that's the size of all the parts that hold multiple Kerbals. (Well, apart from the Mk3 cockpit).

A one-way mission is easier. And you can never lose science -if yiu get some by transmitting you can always get the rest by returning later.

For a Hohmann transfer, periapsis and apoapsis matching the orbital radii of your start and destination planets. Semi-major axis of the transfer orbit is the average of those, remember to consider the size of the sun. Orbital period by Kepler's Third Law, and your transfer time is half that period.

If you want to return repeat results in a single mission, you can carry multiple instruments, carry multiple command pods, or store the data in the science lab (which can take repeats). I think you can also return a Kerbal on a lawnch chair and have him holding the repeat results.

If I'm not mistaken you have the LV-N and you have that claw. All you need is a small tug that can grab stuff and deorbit it. Don't forget plenty of torque so you can handle imbalanced loads.

In the stock game it makes no difference. The lower-gain antennae transmit more slowly, but you can run a small experiment, click transmit, and immediately rerun it, there's no need to wait until the transmission finishes. So even in a busy time, such as a Munar flyby, slow transmission needn't be a problem. The only case it would be is if your craft is an impactor and you need to send off the science before it's destroyed. As regards other considerations, the higher gain antennae use more power. Do try and make sure your battery doesn't run dry when transmitting or the interruption can cost you a little science. Currently the low gain antenna (the red-and-white straight one) and the high-gain antenna (the orange dish) are both physicsless, meaning their mass and drag is disregarded in flight, while the medium-gain antenna (grey curved one) is not. Besides those factors, antenna choice is down to aesthetics. If you want to boost science transmission, your only option is to use the Mobile Lab. But that's quite big and heavy, and needs a crew, so it's not always useful.

Edit your original post and click "Go Advanced". And hmmm, if 2800 is likely too low then I think I'll have to tweak my own planned ascender a bit.

I don't think it would be good to give KSP an "arcade mode" option like that. As I see it the core idea is about doing cool space stuff in a realistic - with a few compromises - setting. "Cheats" notwithstanding, allowing the player to turn off that physical realism would not sit well I feel.

There does seem to be a lot more variation in what delta-V maps give for a launch from Laythe than for a launch from Kerbin. I've seen 2800, 3200 (above) and even 3400. Hard to know what the "true" value - which of course should assume a good ascent profile - is.

Known bug, usually fixable. Thread on it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/75586-Master-Thread-Unresponsive-Kerbals-in-EVA

I've made a horizontal take-off from the Mun one time, with this early career jerry-rigged lander. I benefited from fairly smooth terrain, and actually took off facing downhill. Probably the broad shape of the lander helped - widest in the middle, narrower at the front and (if only slightly) the back. That would give it the ability to start pitching up while still dragging on the ground.

Lobbed a bunch of oil rigs into the sea just offshore from KSC. I'm trying to understand the water physics.

I don't know how well they integrate with career, but you could look at Kethane and Extraplanetary Launchpads.

I tried allmhuran's experiment (placing the craft flat), and the one with the single 800 tank naturally floated slightly lower at the tank end, while the one with 2 400 tanks floated level and maybe a shade higher. The discrepancy was small, but noticeable. I did it with default/medium terrain detail. Subsequently, I've run experiments using a common "pontoon" and varying loads on top of it., which have determined, in line with what Tw1 said, that water in KSP doesn't provide a normal buoyancy force. Doubling the weight of a ship considerably less than doubles the amount of water it displaces, contrary to reality. I still need to chart up the results and see if I can figure out a formula to model it.

The only experiment is a surface sample, for which you need to EVA a Kerbal close enough and right-click the asteroid. Make sure you have the whole asteroid in view or the right-click menu might end up off-screen. This surface sample is treated like any other experiment and thus returns different results for different situations. And yes, you need to return the sample, and in fact return multiple samples, to get the full science for each situation.

My understanding is that one of the bigger "buffs" currently is that air pressure makes engines consume more fuel, when for real rockets it would instead make them produce less thrust. Also, a brief look over wiki reveals more variation in Isp range for real engines than for KSP's. For example the RD-170 has an Isp of 310/340 s sea level/vacuum, and consequently very little dropoff in thrust, while the J-2 - "prototype" for the game's KR-2L - has an Isp of 200/420, consequently producing less than half the thrust at sea level that it can in vacuum. We've seen a bit of this variety in the ARM engines, and I really hope it can be expanded on. Even with modest delta-V requirements to get into orbit, if some engines are clearly at their best at low altitudes and others only come into their own near space then that increases the benefits of staging.

Considering that link in the current version of the game, as well as the doubtless large number of links around the web, I'm a bit surprised a redirection to curse wasn't maintained.

Gain some better professional certifications and move into a job with more chance of advancement. Oh, you mean in KSP? Well, my "pipe dreams" that I've yet to actually attempt: Jool-5, of course, but with some extra twist. Thinking of one with using purely ion engines (apart from the launches to LKO). I think it should be possible. NFP has engines capable of enough TWR to make a Tylo lander. Laythe might be the bigger challenge, since the NFP engines don't work in atmosphere, but I think the PB-ION should be able to propel a glider into orbit. Land an E-class on Tylo. Create a ship capable of "express" interplanetary trips. Duna in a week, Jool in a month, that kind of thing. Likely to need mods to do that, though I'm going to consider KSPI's warp drive "doesn't count".

I've used the escape rockets for extra delta-V before now, though I fired them soon after reaching orbit - after all, it's better to use your lower Isp propulsion first. (For the same reason, if you actually EXPECT to have to complete a burn on your RCS, do the RCS bit first then fire the main engines.)