cantab

In space. I've yet to make a ground colony.

The 2.5 m ASAS is a notorious weakpoint as it is. It can cause problems in a Rockomax stack, never mind a kerbodyne one, and I usually have to strut past it. Instead, I suggest sticking a cubic octagonal strut on the side of your rocket and mounting a reaction wheel on that. Or you can use Editor Extensions or SurfaceNodes (shameless plug!) and ditch the cuboct strut. Use symmetry if you're concerned about balance.

Since I have a dual monitor setup, I do something similar to Vanamonde's solution. Hold down the direction key then click on another window. When I want to stop, click back on the KSP window and make WASD input, no ship switching required. (Disclaimer: this is on Linux. Behaviour on other OSes may differ.)

Don't dock two 400 part ships! As you say, that's going to be sluggish on just about any computer. When designing stuff, try and be mindful of the part count. For example stacking an FL-T400, 200, and 100 might get you a slightly lighter ship but it's pushing the part count up compared to just using one 800 tank.

I think the KSP parts being "scaled down" isn't the problem, given they already span a range of sizes.

You can right-click it and disable the internal battery (you can do the same with the manned command pods and the stand-alone batteries), and can still re-enable it later. Think of it as like a hibernate mode. Combined with using an engine that has an alternator (so not the LV-909!), this means you can actually do unmanned missions before you've unlocked solar panels. You might not be able to transmit science mind since that'll instantly flatten the Stayputnik's tiny battery.

Added a parking lot to my space station, somewhere to keep the modular ship bits I have, and shuffled things around. Knocked up a simple large moons lander, not to be confused with a large Mun lander. It'll probably do a shakedown run to the Mun then be used for Ike. Then explored some ideas for a rover-lander, and blew them up lots driving like a nutter around the space centre.

Be careful with the pitchover. A rocket with wings at the top isn't stable and if you jerk it over 45 degrees suddenly it's going to lose control.

Killed four Kerbals, including Jeb, when their rocket collapsed on the pad due to lack of struts

For missions beyond Earth orbit where the science objective is not to study how humans ourselves respond to the environment, unmanned missions beat manned ones hands down in terms of cost-effectiveness. However, a manned mission will be far better in terms of time-effectiveness. The Mars rovers have done amazing things, but they are literally slower than a snail. (About ten times slower for Opportunity).

When you've just unlocked it it's a bit limited because you need power to have control and you don't have any solar panels. With some rocket designs you could use it to deorbit your upper stage though. Once you have some solar panels, you can use it for lightweight science missions. You won't get as much science from the same place as with a Kerballed mission since you can't do crew or EVA reports and can't keep multiple experimental runs, but you can make up for it by going further more easily.

The more you can launch in one go the less orbital assembly you need to do. Saves you time and can give you a more rigid ship.

Clever idea. So basically you just have to have at least one part that lands on the Mun and comes back to Kerbin? Or does it need to be a command module?

I believe Near Future Propulsion has some similar aspects to KSP Interstellar, but is generally simpler. Mainly focussed on solar-electric and nuclear-electric propulsion, so if you like having crazy amounts of delta-V and don't mind long burns to use it it's worth checking it out. It's also got some nice parts for space stations. Wait until the update that's coming in a week or two though, since it's going to break compatibility with craft using the current version.

For the example I posted I ended up strutting diagonally, the lateral parts of the payload to the central lifter core and vice-versa. Only needed 8 struts in all for that, and no need for girderwork. That was after my first attempt left ugly strut ends on the nuclear engines. For strengthening straight-sided rockets I'll indeed typically use cubic octagonal struts as anchor points, or the small hardpoints can make a more aesthetic, but heavier, alternative. And on the topic of rovers, my Collins 1 mission was a comedy of errors with the nexus being a runaway rover. It ended up over 4 km from the landing site before Neilgee caught up with it, then promptly hit a bump while driving back up the hill in the dark. That'll teach me not to forget the parking brake!

250 km is probably too high, but I do wonder if a very low orbit costs you fuel because you're in the upper atmosphere for long. Establish a 70 km apoapsis and you're experience drag nearly the whole way there; establish a 90 or 100 km apoapsis and you get out of the atmosphere well before it. Indeed. This is something I managed once in KSP, with a small probe launched atop a big SRB. No fins, no reaction wheel, canted over five degrees on the pad and it flew pretty much ballistically to an apopasis where the probe circularised. Or you're docking two or more similarly heavy things together, which is very likely if you're assembling a big ship in orbit from parts especially if you design the parts to fit a standard launcher's capacity.Back on to the main topic, in terms of delta-V or fuel usage my standard heavy launcher core is not efficient. And it has a liftoff TWR of something like 1.2. But it's eleven parts in one 3.75 m stack and will get 45 tons into LKO. If I need to lift more I stick two or more cores together - that's why I made it be one stack even though it meant a fuel-spending low launch TWR - and/or add some SRBs. (From top to bottom: Large ASAS, Rockomax-Kerbodyne adapter, 14400 tank, KR-2L, kerbodyne decoupler, 14400 tank, 14400 tank, cluster engine. Battery and cuboct strut stuck to the ASAS, OKTO2 on the cuboct strut.)

How did you get him on the roof? VTOL?

Vaguely. .18.3 demo. I went through the tutorial and for lulz decided to put the fuel tank on top of the command pod. Then found the tutorial wouldn't let me launch. If it had, I'd probably have been surprised since doing that WORKS. And my first orbital rocket had about 18 small SRBs on the bottom, because I didn't know about going too fast causing drag. I also recall my first rescue mission. I didn't think I'd be very good at controlling the Kerbal on EVA so I *covered* the rescue ship in ladders.

As far as planetary tours go, how about doing one with NO orbital rendezvous, ie it's direct ascent from body to body. You can stage, but it means everything you want for the future landings has to go down and come back up on every planet.

At the moment the joint strength compared to the joint stiffness is way out of whack. That's 175 tons of weight hanging on joints bent nearly 90 degrees from their original state. I could have left this forever and it wouldn't have broken.

None of the poll options really. What I did was build a big core, with the fuel and monopropellant storage (which I see as the main things) and plenty of space and docking ports for expansion. Then I've sent up stuff to add as I fancy. By making the core as big as I felt able (it's about a VAB tall), I know I won't need to worry much about future modules interfering with each other's space. Core: https://flic.kr/p/neQGWv Current state: https://flic.kr/p/nvDyw2 My next addition planned is a "parking lot" with a bunch of senior docking ports, since my modular ships use senior ports but the station, designed earlier, mainly uses regulars. After that I'll probably add a kethane and an NFP section.

I'd venture that almost any mod that lets you make an Eve SSTO is by definition unbalanced. With the possible exception of scaled-up PB-IONs, xenon tanks, and solar panels/RTGs, but then I'm not even sure if that'd reach Eve orbit - it's tough to get an ion glider into Kerbin orbit. Remember that unbalanced does not mean unrealistic. Competing in the Tour de France on a motorcycle would be unbalanced, for example.

Why complicate the design?

Well, the Leonardo is complete and ready to head for Jool, so I'll hand over the save to the next participant. Save file: http://1drv.ms/1n26SqG The ship's listed as Fermi-Szilard in the game, which is the name of the transfer stage. We're a little over on part count I'm afraid at 324 parts, breaking down as 135 in the Leonardo proper, 32 in the Tenzing (the little scout craft), and 157 in the Fermi-Szilard. Album with more pics including the odd mishap. I'll put fuller info in the Google Doc shortly, but for now note that action group 5 toggles the transfer stage engines, and I suggest controlling from the RGU that's tucked in the middle of the 6 nuke cluster for the transfer burn. Should be about 4 1/2 thousand m/s of delta-V in the transfer stage, enough to make Jool without needing to aerobrake. PS: Also got three asteroids tracked that I consider candidates for hauling over to Jool, but never got round to making the tug for them.

Have you tried adding some rear-facing inlets. Forward-facing inlets won't work very well when the plane is moving backwards.