cantab

I can think of many more reliable ways. It's true that most rocket explosions do look like fireballs, but more generally some deflagrations can be fast enough to to create a strong pressure wave, and a big deflagration will create more power than a small detonation by simple scale. I've not seen a clear pressure wave in any footage of rocket failures, but then I've not seen much high-quality footage, a lot of it's old. You can see one quite nicely in this explosion of a ton of gunpowder, showing a deflagration in general can be more than just a fireball: http://youtu.be/eFytcsA9mU8?t=1m21s. For fuel/air mixtures, or presumably fuel/oxidizer ones, I believe getting such a wave requires a quite precise mixture ratio of fuel vs air/oxidizer, making it unlikely in a rocket failure - but I wouldn't want to risk assuming it's impossible.

Read it off from the navball. It won't be super precise but hopefully you'll get a good estimate.

I mined some Kethane for the first time. And I'm loving the Near Future Propulsion stuff. Filled up the tanks and I have 32 tons of kethane and 9,500 m/s of delta-V to take it pretty much anywhere I like. (Well, apart from the surface of places bigger than Minmus.)

Would orbital photovoltaics not be viable for meeting peak loads, something that's worth more. I believe solar cells don't suffer any adverse effects from being exposed to sunlight with an open circuit (correct me if I'm wrong), and the reciever is all electronics, no mechanical parts to spin up, so if power is needed the orbital station could come online as quickly if not quicker than hydro (the current go-to for meeting load spikes).I still doubt it will be commercially viable without a significant drop in the cost of launching mass to orbit mind. But it might be that Japan sees it as a strategic asset, and compared to more regular military expenses it'll probably be pretty affordable. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised to see an operational pilot plant. The tides are really weak on most of said coastline, though there are some decent bits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M2_tidal_constituent.jpg Not many volcanoes in Japan, and IIRC subduction zones actually give reduced geothermal heat flow, since the cool ocean plate is being pushed down replacing the warm asthenosphere. I think it would have to be designed to be damage tolerant. Sure, over time the micrometeorite hits will damage cells and thus reduce power output, but the whole thing stays operational. The expensive bit might be decommissioning; if the mechanism to fold the thing back up compactly fails (because I'm assuming you aren't just going to stick it in a graveyard orbit still at its full huge size) then there may need to be a manned or robotic servicing mission to sort things out. It may also be possible to design it to minimise cascade effects from micrometeorite hits so it doesn't produce more debris. Transparent whipple shielding over the cells perhaps?

There are some nuclear thermal designs that WOULD severely leak the radioactive fuel, like the open-cycle gas core designs mentioned. Nobody's yet been silly enough to build one though.Of course, it's a fair point that nuclea-phobia would probably stop a NERVA-like engine flying today. With the possible exception of military purposes where F YEAH 'MURICA can trump OH NOES NUCULAR RADIATION. The N1 explosion was huge, reckoned to be among the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, and it was RP-1/LOX. True, it may not be a detonation strictly speaking, but with enough of the stuff that doesn't really matter, so long as it mixes reasonably well. Fuel-air bombs are plenty explosive enough to see military use - and indeed, raise the point that in a rocket failure the fuel can still react with the surrounding air even if it doesn't mix well with the oxidizer.

I would say it's one stage, with drop tanks (and drop science modules). It's not the most authoritative source, but according to Wiki, "A multistage (or multi-stage) rocket is a rocket that uses two or more stages, each of which contains its own engines and propellant." So dropping a part that is just a fuel tank, just an engine, or neither a tank nor an engine doesn't count as true staging. Though the early Atlas rockets, which dropped engines but not tanks, were sometimes described as "stage-and-a-half".

The same as single player, but with other people. Maybe helping you, maybe competing with you, maybe even trying to sabotage you.For me the big questions are 1) "Small" multiplayer or massively multiplayer? I reckon Kerbal Space Program would be great as an MMO, a whole system buzzing with hundreds, even thousands, of active players and ships, but I can also see how that would be a real challenge to handle. At the very least there'd need to be a way to avoid performance degradation when lots of high-part-count ships get together. Of course if the server is distributed we could have both: the official Squad servers for MMOness, or our own private ones for playing with a few friends. 2) How's timewarp handled. As I understand it the Kerbal Multi Player mod has shown one way, I don't know the details. For non-massive multiplayer, a viable option might be to just put the server admin in charge of the timewarp, maybe with some "safety checks" so timewarp isn't activated when someone's flying in atmosphere.

As LethalDose says, when you're controlling a Kerbal on EVA, if you're close to a command module or an experiment you can right-click it and take the data out. Then do the same to put it in a new pod (or board said new pod). But if it's a Kerballed mission, then if your engine gimbals as suggested you can use that for control. If your engine doesn't gimbal (the LV-T30, the first engine in career mode, doesn't), turn SAS off, run the engine briefly anyway to get some electricity and start your ship slowly rotating. If your engine doesn't gimbal or generate electricity (ie it's an LV-1 or LV-1R "ant engine"), have your Kerbal get out and set the ship gently rotating, then burn when it's pointing in the right general direction.

Whatever you like. Personally I often end up with using 1.25 m engines with 2.5 m tanks, usually with the flat Rockomax adapter for aesthetics.

Probes last until they run out of fuel. Well, they still work after that, but there ceases being much point doing anything with them. Of course they might die quicker from lack of electricity. The game doesn't implement life support, so I'm happy to have my Kerbals go on long missions. That said, I won't deliberately waste time with them. For an unmanned probe I enjoy a nice gravity assist, but for a manned mission I'd rather do a direct transfer. For my space station, it tends to be a waiting facility for Kerbals to then go on proper missions, especially with ships that I don't think are safe to launch manned so need to stop at the station for a crew up. So far I haven't accumulated enough game time in my .23.5 save to think anyone's been there too long. I remove debris because I'm concerned about game performance. I did have it outright turned off, but put it back on after the debris cleanup ate my Mun lander's descent stage that I wanted to keep. I design most of my lifters to deorbit their upper stages under their own control, but if I don't do that I just terminate it in the tracking station. I've not done any serious missions on Kerbin in .23.5.

I think a discovery mechanic of sorts has been mooted. Not so much actually finding the celestials, but finding stuff about them. Like when you start, Dres say will just be a fuzzy grey orb in map view, and only shows detail once you've sent a probe. I wouldn't mind seeing stuff like mass and surface gravity poorly known for moonless bodies until you do a flyby, with the orbit predictions fuzzy or just omitted, that could make things really fun.

For the Mun and Minmus I generally use a single-stage lander, but may have it ditch unneeded parts on ascent - especially the jerry rigged girder legs I was using in early career mode, since they were heavy. I typically use a separate orbiter; don't think I've done a direct ascent mission with stock parts. (I just now did a direct ascent to Minmus with a ship using Near Future Propulsion, but then NFP makes silly amounts of delta-V practical.) A 2-stage lander does have the appeal of leaving a landmark on the surface - but watch the debris cleanup doesn't get it!

Yet another vote for Alexmoon's. Along with Precise Node, so I can just copy the numbers across. A few minor tweaks will correct for non-zero inclination of my Kerbin orbit, and help me fine-tune my periapsis at the target (though that's arguably better done with a mid-course correction). However, I am somewhat conscious that I don't know how to work out an interplanetary transfer for myself. It's one of the few aspects of KSP I can't do "manually".

I planned on taking this little ionolifter for a spin on Minmus, but I landed a bit too hard. Smashed the ion engine, tore the solar panels off, and split the ship into two entangled pieces

Well, I got sidetracked from my asteroid plans, here's what I've been quietly working on: The Leonardo, a mobile Kethane base for Bop and/or Pol. It's designed to fly about by hovering on the four ion-engine clusters and using the RCS thrusters for propulsion and braking. With two of the octogirder xenon tanks inside the Kerbodyne adapters, it's got several hours of flight time or about 12 thousand m/s of delta-V. As per the overall project goals it includes a science lab and all the vacuum science instruments except the materials bay (couldn't fit it anywhere that looked good, sorry). Handles fine in orbit, but is something of an ocean liner under hover. I suppose it is a 90 ton ship after all. Doing forward movement by pitching turned out better than using the RCS. Note that the Rockomax 32 tank is empty, it's there to put the crew section further forward so the ship is balanced. Now just got to launch it in the collab save. Including the antenna this time, and maybe adding more monopropellant and RCS thrusters. I'll also provide a transfer stage, it doesn't technically need one but I'm sure you'll appreciate a quicker burn. I also made a smaller ship along the same lines, the Redgrave, but that has huge flaws and oversights and probably won't go in the collab, and a little scout craft, the Tenzing, which I crashed on landing but should work fine if you don't crash it. Full album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52548818@N05/sets/72157644688356583/

Tested in my clean .23.5 install and it seems build order matters. With a ship built from probe core, battery, xenon tank, and ion engine, with the clamp attached to the probe core, I retained control. It "came and went" a bit, occasionally the throttle would stick, but more often than not it responded. Attaching the clamp directly to the ion engine, things seemed less responsive, so electricity source position may matter, but I was still able to kill the engines with X.When I built the ship in the reverse order, ion engine first, with the clamp attaches to the engine I could still kill the throttle with X but the engine kept running, but not forever. After a minute or two I noted my electric charge reserves refilling again and had control. I built another craft powered by an ox-stat, and was able to get that to be uncontrollable for at least a few minutes once, but on a repeat test I retained control, so there may be some unpredictable factor at work. Throttle setting on the ion engine might be important as well; on the same craft I could reliable lose control only if I had the ion engine down so it just barely drained the battery, and remained in "Status: Nominal". I suspect it's the engine "flaming out" that allows the probe core to get some electricity. Even then, there's another way to regain control. Right-click the xenon tanks and disable them. That's something you can always do, to all resource storing parts, even when you don't have control. The attack craft can make this difficult by using a large number of hidden xenon tanks, so they can't be clicked directly and not all show when clicking the resources pane, but even then appropriate camera manipulation might allow the rest to be right-clicked and disabled. (Clipping tanks on top of each other will prevent disabling them all, but if debug menu abuse is allowed the defender can simply enable infinite fuel.)

KSP's own screenshot key is F1. The shots will be saved in the game's installation directory, but you can put a shortcut somewhere more convenient of course. Also, you can right-click an engine and shut it down, to prevent accidental throttle-ups like you had.

I thought you could just manually extend deployable panels on EVA. For future reference, 55 km is low enough for aerobraking, though it would take several orbits before you can land. However, only the active ship and ships within 2.2 km of the active ship will be affected by atmospheric drag. If you're in the tracking station, or flying another mission, you won't aerobrake.Also, when on EVA near a command pod, right-click the pod and you can take the experiment data out, then carry it to the new pod. So you didn't need to abandon it.

Launched my first Kethane expedition, to Minmus. It's mainly serving as a test of some ship designs that will go to Bop and/or Pol in the Jool collab. Doing a thorough Kethane scan is surprisingly time-consuming, though it didn't take so long just to spot a few deposits.

Opposite where you would make the burn if you were leaving from LKO, so that when you leave Minmus and drop your periapsis, that periapsis is where you need to make your final ejection burn. You might find it helpful to set a node on a spare craft in LKO for reference. As mentioned, it's worth factoring in the time taken to reach periapsis. I think I'd sort things out at the Kerbin ejection burn. As you say, what matters is the ejection vector, and you're not starting massively out of plane. You could make a correction at the ascending/descending node but I don't think it'll save that much. TWR during the Kerbin ejection burn, since you can't split it. Darkness if you're using solar-electric propulsion (but you probably aren't). And the Mun messing things up.

Though note that command pods are limited to one run of each experiment per biome and situation. So if you want to take and use four Goo canisters all on the ground at your landing site - which you'll need to do to get all the science - landing just one command pod back on Kerbin won't cut it.

Minmus Extreme EVA. Ie land and return to orbit by EVA. That was actually my first Minmus landing too.

I finally completed the first manned mission I launched in my 0.23.5 save. Over a month real-world time after the launch. That's what happens when you run lots of stuff at once. Full album

No also, sorry. Hence it being a big 50% bonus. And another addition for clarity: Deflection attempts must be made in good faith expectation they'll succeed. Ie, you can't just stick a single stack separator on an E-class, set it off, and claim 250 points.

Well, I put together a five-part design, but haven't been able to pull off the landing. The ship's more than capable of the mission, my problems are two-fold. Firstly the finite electricity supply, that forced an abort of my first landing attempt. Secondly my lack of piloting skills. I managed two touch-and-goes (ie the ship touches the ground then immediately lifts off, no flag planting), but my panicked takeoffs put me on a Kerbin escape trajectory first time and slamming into the Mun's surface due to misreading the navball second time., and another touch-and-go followed by a crash because I didn't read the navball properly. Right now I feel discinclined to try again, frankly I had my fill of poorly-controllable ships long ago. I looked at a design like yours Aphobious, but for some reason I didn't think of using the nuclear engine, and it didn't look like I'd get enough delta-V from a chemical one. Props for the lowest-part entry yet. Now, can anyone do three parts?