cantab

Remember that the real Apollo LM was horribly unaerodynamic. That's why it went up inside a fairing. In stock KSP you can make fairings using the structural panels, though it can be a bit fidddly. I've seen people use the structural wings (the rectangular ones) too. Attach them to decouplers or separators to jetisson them, optionally aided by sepratrons. You'll get sleeker results with mod parts; Procedural Fairings you can reshape to fit your payload, while I believe KW Rocketry has fixed-size fairings.

A space station in direct solar orbit isn't very useful for anything. As alluded to you won't get any help from the Oberth effect, making it more difficult to reach and to get anywhere from. The real killer, though, will be transfer windows. Say you're going to Moho, then instead of just waiting for a Kerbin-Moho window, you'll have to wait for a Kerbin-station window then wait for a station-Moho window. Better to have stations in orbit around planets and moons.

The simpler solution to multiple star systems is to compress the interstellar distances more. Considering that in our own solar system Sedna at its furthest is still less than 1% of the way to the nearest star, this might be viable. Interstellar distances a hundred or even a thousand times closer than in the real world wouldn't be unreasonable and would bring the transfer times down, though I would would still want interstellar distances to seem large compared to interplanetary ones. As for delta-V, the 400 km/s estimate is way too large. It looks like you've taken Kerbol's escape velocity and quadrupled it, but that's the speed you need at Kerbol's surface. From LKO you're looking at a little under 3 km/s to reach Kerbol escape velocity, as per this map http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/41652-A-more-accurate-delta-v-map So a round trip to another star will run around 10-20 km/s, depending on how big the other star is and what (if any) planet you stop at. From a delta-V perspective, it's perfectly reasonable with the parts we have. Indeed, noting that it doesn't take that much more dV to escape Kerbol than it does to encounter Eeloo, I realise my previous assumption that the game can't be balanced for both interplanetary and interstellar travel is wrong.

The cfg mentions an asteroid module, that may be connected to the spawn mechanics. Presumably said module isn't activated if you've just dropped the part in the VAB.

The main reason not to use the MechJeb part is using it would mean making MechJeb an obligatory mod. Better for those who want it to just use a module manager cfg to get the functionality in the regular command pods, which would still be needed anyway for ships that have been built without the part. Same goes for Engineer Redux if you want to use that. Monoprop, looking forward to seeing more of the station.

Of course that's only practical for ships that are light enough and in a low enough orbit, and have a Kerbal. Otherwise, you can tow or simply refuel a ship using the Advanced Grabbing Unit (AKA the claw).

I've heard rumours of 5000-tonners, but it seems like anything much above 3000 tons is rare. My design for wrangling a C class used four little SAS/RCS units with their own claws, distributed around the asteroid. Made it handle nicely, though I don't know how well it would scale up. The drive section's a pusher and a bit underpowered with a single LV-N, I'm going to swap it out for a cluster of six when the rock flies by Kerbin on its way to Duna.

As mentioned, a direct ascent Mun landing is entirely viable thanks to the Kerbol system being smaller and thus requiring less delta-V to get around than the real solar system. In fact it's the better option in career mode since you'll get more science for returning the lander. Even if you do choose a Munar orbit rendezvous, you don't need to dock. Just rendezvous the lander to within a hundred metres or two of the orbiter then EVA the Kerbals over. That's how I've tended to do my early career Mun landings. Don't forget the science!

The green for the gas giant is probably because that's the colour of Spotify's branding, given the voiceover mentions Spotify. The other two celestials aren't a strong likeness to anything in KSP, any more than they are to real-world bodies.

Here's one with Near Future Propulsion, and my only successful Kethane miner so far, the Leonardo. Landed, testing the drills: Cruising: Meant as a multi-purpose science/exploration/kethane ship for small moons, the idea is it hovers on the ion engine clusters and uses RCS for forward/reverse thrust. (In practice the RCS is wimpy so I sometimes pitch forward instead.) It's got enough xenon, hidden in the kerbodyne adapters, to fly for several hours, and fully loaded excluding the Rockomax tank (which is just for structure) it has over 9000 m/s of delta-V and enough thrust to get off Minmus and smaller easily. It could do Ike or Dres if I wanted, though not with a full kethane tank. Old I know, but loving this design. Really clever way of making something that can go to both atmo and vacuum places.Loving the beetle and the mozzy that got posted earlier too.

An absolute pig of a docking, bringing the Ike lander, hab module, and transfer stage of my Duna ship (bottom middle) in one piece up to my station. Took me an hour or two, didn't time exactly. The ship was heavy and had off-balance RCS, a problem with my modular designs when I join different modules together. Because the hab module is attached cupola-to-docking port I couldn't split it up. The station had 550 parts because of having two of the Duna lander-rovers docked to it (bottom left), making for some pretty terrible lag. Now I just need to add one science return module (top left) and one lander-rover to the ship, then top up the tanks and prepare for rendezvousing with asteroid 2 Bob, that's already on course for Duna. Next time I'm using a fuel tanker.

Near Future Technologies (formerly near Future Propulsion) is also good for nuclear electric and solar electric propulsion. A simpler and more focussed mod than Interstellar I believe. Of course in NFT and I assume KSPI, even if the engines have nominally high Isp the benefits may be undone by the weight of the ancilliaries like the reactors. Generally speaking the more delta-V you need the more important Isp and the less important drive system mass are.

Well delta-V per unit of fuel depends on the dry mass of the rocket and on the engine. The fuels used are a major factor in the engine's Isp but not the only one. But all the stats should be visible in the game anyway.

Supported. It's good to hear that ISEE may yet see more.

Or a guided missile, as the world learnt in 2001.But anyway, there's going to be a minimum size of object that can make a safe re-entry. The kind of amateur orbital rockets being talked about are sending stuff up that's probably too small. Though the fact that the same rocket could loft a larger payload in a suborbital trajectory may be a concern. Also, a rocket launch is going to be noticeable and is already regulated. Follow the regulations, get approval, and you and the world will be fine. Launch without approval and you won't be launching more than once. (You *might* launch without being noticed from the middle of the ocean, but that just looks suspicious and you'll probably have an unpleasant time when your launch does get found out about.)

Good Eeloo windows, like good Moho windows, will be rarer though. But yes, for superior planets (those with wider orbits than Kerbin) the launch windows interval will approach one Kerbin year as the planet is further out. It's already fairly close for Jool and Eeloo I believe, and not that far off for Dres (though Dres, like Eeloo and Moho, has a lot of variation between windows).

Your Kerbal can hold them though.

Shameless loophole abuse entry Ready to launch: Wings? Where we're going we don't need wings! by cantab314, on Flickr Proof that it got off the ground, if only by about 1 1/2 metres. Catching some air by cantab314, on Flickr During its one second flight it unsurprisingly did not flip. Figures, in case you want them. The figures by cantab314, on Flickr So, I make my score 91 * 1/0 * 2 = infinity points And I expect a requirement for future entries to include at least one wing.

This one, definitely

For anyone not checking it (heck, I hadn't until just now), I see Sierra's been commenting in the Google Doc. As you may know, the new NFP has come out. So long as nobody's used hydrogen tanks or engines we could switch to it, though we can't use the optional LV-N reconfiguration. The PB-ION nerf may break the Tenzing, but that's only a diddy little thing and we can still use it for a crew shuttle in orbit. Or dock a science package to it and throw it into Jool. I don't think the new version changes any other parts but it probably wants checking. In any case, it's obviously best to make a decision sooner rather than later.

For me the seismicity is still a worry with fracking. Best thing would be to try and minimise it altogether. Earthquakes in general are, after all, something we still don't fully understand the causes of, in that we can't say what made a major quake happen when it happened.

With just a bare science lab on the pad, crewed with two Kerbals, I was able to click the hatch and EVA them out as normal. However, clicking the hatch can be finicky, sometimes the tooltip doesn't show up right away or only shows when you point the mouse at just the right spot. This is a general issue, unrelated to presence or absence of a working command module, and may be your problem. Try carefully moving the mouse around the hatch untill you get the tooltip popping up, and try using both hatches. Finally, remember this menu comes up on a LEFT click, unlike the normal part menus. If all else fails, call it a bug and modify your persistence file to put a Kerbal in the command pod.

For rigidity, use senior docking ports, and use multiple docking ports if need be (though that makes design and docking harder). Also, try not to have big pieces sticking out sideways, or if you must consider putting engines on them so the thrust is spread out instead of all in one place. If you do have one main engine section, try and have "control from here" set on a part close to it, either a probe core placed for the purpose or else the docking point that joins it to the module in front, that way SAS responds to the motion of the engine section and ignores the rest of the ship flexing. For long slender ships, pulling can be more stable than pushing, but remember to lock the gimbal on puller engines because SAS gets confused by them. And watch your reaction wheel placement, and consider disabling wheels on your payloads that you don't need when doing the transfer. (This is especially likely to be an issue with asteroid tugs since they need lots of torque.) Or, as mentioned, use KAS or Quantum Struts to place struts in flight. If all else fails, you may have to reduce thrust. As for the engines for your transfers, for medium and large ships the nuclear engines (LV-N) are the go-to choice, being much more efficient than any of the chemical engines, and more powerful than the ion engines. Using a cluster of ion engines on a big ship is perfectly possible but results in a high part count since the stock ion parts are so tiny. For small ships making short journeys, say to the Mun, though a lighter chemical engine like the LV-909 or Rockomax 48-7S can work out better, while for small ships making longer journeys the ion engines are very viable, just watch out for darkness stopping your burns. For very large ships or impatient people, the KR-2L can be a good choice due to its high thrust.

Could you fly the ship yourself? If yes, then there's no problem. If no, do you want to be good at manual flying? If no, then there's no problem.

I'd credit a few factors: Low TWR engines making it harder to build tall rockets. Coupled with An aerodynamic model that encourages high launch TWRs. The tanks having such poor mass ratios encouraging dropping them quickly. No failure rates on parts and no real penalty for complexity, allowing players to use a gazillion stages. OP fuel lines allowing whole fields of asparagus. Above all else, though, credit an effort by many players to maximise payload fraction, part count, complexity, looks and realism be damned.