cantab

You can still get a good saving on the inclination change. If you want to reduce your insertion burn, that can be done with repeated Moho assists. IIRC someone doing a "get to Moho with minimum delta-V" challenge made seven, though you'll probably get most of the benefit with two or three.

I've played quite a bit in both. My current, though, I call "Science Sandbox". Make new career save, edit persistent.sfs to have 99999 science, unlock everything, edit back to have 0 science, and off I go with all the parts already had and all the science still to do.

And now I want to build the Epoch and the Black Omen in KSP.

Ultimately that is one of the primary advantages: Being able to use the same components in different complete machines. It saves development costs, and thus money. We see this pretty much everywhere, not just in rocketry.

In my new save things have been more like this. Jeb: Hey hey are we going to the Mun in this thing? Me: No. An asteroid. A few days later Genery: So...now that we've put the ship back together, where are we taking this thing? Minmus? Me: No. An asteroid. A few more days later Wehrble: We're going to Moho? Me: No. An asteroid.

As it happens, no, it can take more delta-V to reach a high circular orbit than to escape, at least if you use a Hohmann transfer.It won't, though, take more fuel to reach that elliptic orbit than to escape. In your case the likely culprit is inconsistent launch efficiency. Poor choices of speed and direction during the various phases of the launch will cost you fuel; getting "good enough" isn't hard but getting really great takes an expert or an autopilot.

Bug hunting

Warning: I've not actually been to Moho yet, so take my advice with a pinch of salt. NO! Make your full ejection burn from Low Kerbin orbit, getting your periapsis down to the level of Moho's orbit. If you try and do that while in direct Kerbol orbit it'll take insane amounts of fuel. You want your orbit to be tangent to or intersect Moho's. Probably not. Sometimes the best option is to sort your inclination out to start with from the ejection burn, getting directly on course for a Moho intercept. Maccollo mentions this is the case in the best Moho windows. In a good Moho window you can get from equatorial LKO to low Moho orbit for a bit over 4000 m/s delta-V, while in a bad window it might take over 5000. (Still much less than if it's completely out of window, in that case you're looking at ten, twenty, even thirty thousand m/s.)Other times you'll want to make a mid-course correction, but that may not always be cheapest at the AN, so experiment with manouevre nodes. If you wait for a good window, go directly to Moho, and sort things out properly, you'll only need to make one half-orbit transfer. Of course if you're gravity assisting you're liable to have waits.

"Saturn 5 style launch vehicle: 3 stages to LKO." I'd take that as counting out asparagus, onion, bamboo, or kumquat staging.

I'd say a Mun flyby and return is actually harder than entering orbit. You need to be pretty precise to set up a free-return trajectory, and if you just go for the Mun by any old route (or make a hashup of your trans-Munar-injection burn) you'll probably either get in a high Kerbin orbit that takes a lot of fuel to deorbit from, or be completely ejected from Kerbin's SOI. A Mun flyby without return is of course simple.

The natural progression I think is to orbit the Mun or Minmus. You'll learn how to set up and carry out manouevres, how to control your orbit on arriving at a body, and how to control your orbit around the primary upon leaving that of a satellite. For Minmus, you can add in how to match inclinations. Also worth doing is playing around in Kerbin orbit. Transfer into a higher orbit, then back into a lower one. Make a plane change, then make one without also raising your orbit at the same time. Observe what radial burns do. Also try some more launches. Put something into an inclined or retrograde orbit. Try and launch into as near a polar orbit as you can (hint: just going north won't do it); once you're there, do lots of EVA reports over all the biomes for SCIENCE! While you're at it, practice EVAing and using the jetpack - an essential skills for transferring Kerbals between craft, itself invaluable for bigger missions. Be gentle and patient, little taps on the buttons, and don't forget you can turn your headlamps on with L. Once you're comfortable with EVAing and making orbital changes in Kerbin orbit, work on rendezvousing - getting two ships to within a few dozen metres of each other with practically no relative motion. I learnt with the short guide here: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Basic_maneuvers . Rendezvousing and docking are different skills, both can be used alone, and I suggest practicing them separately. Docking ports in any case aren't unlocked until later in the tech tree.

With appropriate invocation of the Kraken, now I believe. You could probably simulate the effect with mods too.

Set up you're manouevre node so you have an intercept. Once that's done, use the most throttle you can while retaining precision. I tend to go full-throttle to start with, but really wind it down for the final corrections. If I want real precision, such as if I'm making corrections for planetary gravity assists, I'll bring the thrust limiter down too. You can be half a solar orbit away and get your periapsis right to within a hundred, even ten, metres that way. (Of course, don't timewarp through the SOI change or the orbit shift will undo your work.)

I've always thought of them as kays and kyears. True, not everything needs to start with a k, but it works for me.

Whackjob's probably one of the safer people to be in the space program of. His launches take so long in the real world that he can't make as many of them.

Oh yes, I'd like to be able to override this. There are plenty of cases where I might want to place some parts with high symmetry, then more on them with a lower symmetry. Asparagus fuel lines, for example, or putting reaction wheels on top of only some of my boosters.Also, another thing: No flat 2.5-3.75 m adapter. The big tanks need adapters to cover their ends up, and only having the tapered one is limiting.

Are you measuring the angles correctly?Are you waiting for the appropriate launch window (based on the desired phase angle) then setting up your manouevre node, and not vice versa? Have you put yourself in a retrograde or highly-inclined orbit around Dres?

Lol, reminds me of seeing a pic of a ship at Moho - named "Improved Eeloo Lander". My exact thought was go home lander, you're drunk.

So far I've avoided the Kraken. I've just got the Crashen now on one of my rockets, will work on diagnosing the bug tomorrow.

My main concern is how far down would even a big E class sit, and what happens to an asteroid resting on top of it but not clawed once you leave physics range?

Find an interesting mod you haven't tried before. I've yet to actually try it, but Professor Phineas Kerbenstein's Wonderous Vertical Propulsion Emporium looks fantastic.

Spaceliners, either suborbital or fractional-orbital, may be a good one. Though even then the main issue is whether enough people are willing to pay enough money to get from Europe to America in 60 minutes.Business spacecraft for the super-rich will work too I reckon. Some of the biggest yachts out there are estimated to have cost comparable sums to the development cost of SpaceShipTwo.

Wished my computer was less rubbish. I was exploring a modular rocket design that looked pretty good, 60 tons to LKO in one 3.75m core, which took some work doing. But then I stopped and realised that 26 parts in my first stage was just too much for the intended use of ganging between 3 and 7 such cores together for bigger payloads :-( (7 big SRBs, 7 reaction wheels, and 12 struts, in case you're wondering.) Back to just building the simplest and most boring rocket possible then.

Build a rocket that can reach LKO. Then build one that can get THAT into LKO. You're still short of what you need for Eve.

Possibly my periodic efforts to make a rocket with nothing but separators. Other than that, I tend to attempt the possible. Difficult, maybe, but possible.