cantab

IIRC one of the Scott Manley videos demonstrated this. It's tricky, but possible, to fly the rocket close enough that you can switch to the Kerbal and grab the ladder. If you can't do it, send a ship up with better RCS and moar ladders.

Worth bearing in mind that even though adding the boosters lowers the nominal delta-v, by raising TWR they will probably raise the effective dV. A change to the design you might try, for your first stage instead of using 2.5m tanks with 4 engines, use seven stacks of 1.25m tanks (one central and 6-fold radial) with 7 engines. Then a decoupler under each engine, and a booster below that. That should give you better TWR and better dV, though it means a long rocket. Another thing you might try is mounting an appropriate structural part radially, then a stack decoupler below that, then your booster, thus giving you a pseudo-radial decoupler. Oh, and move the fins to the bottom, they work better that way.

And it's Microsoft who, in their official training materials, have misrepresented the 4GB memory limit for 32-bit OSes as something inherent in the hardware. I know better, others not familiar with *ix might not.But that's a bit off-topic.

Clearly, it wasn't big enough

ASL probably means At Sea Level in this context. Although for worlds without oceans, IIRC "sea level" or datum is the lowest point, if not lower, because KSP doesn't like negative altitudes. And yes, it means that a Kerbin TWR of 0.166:1 would be a Mun TWR of 1:1.

I go into IVA for the radar altimeter, but I typically pop back out for the very final touchdown.ww

Did lots of short hops around Kerbin to different biomes with the Goo. Still rubbish at landing accurately, but getting better. Then I landed on the Mun again, WITHOUT tipping the lander over this time.

In career I have a bunch of debris about in orbit. Since I haven't unlocked probes, deorbiting's not very practical, and it's enough work to get where I want without worrying about which stages drop when. Although the paired decouplers connecting my Mun lander and orbiter are kind of needless littering. I recover from Kerbin, and I'll probably terminate on other worlds, to try and keep the performance under control. If need be I'll get rid of orbiting stuff, but I like having it there for now.

And then someone installs that N-body mod along with real solar system and makes Mars into an Earth rover.

You'll want to double-check, and maybe rethink, your staging. I'm not sure on the detailed maths, but you want your boosters helping to lift your rocket and not your rocket having to lift your boosters.

IIRC you can land on Duna mostly with aerobraking and parachutes, and a little rocket thrust at the end.

inb4 the OP decides it's judged by the semi-major axis. But yeah, unless the intention is to allow suborbital trajectories and orbits that may eventually hit terrain, the requirement should be revised to one complete orbit.

So far, my first successful EVA landing and return on Minmus. Dang that tested my skills.

Asparagus per se doesn't have to be ugly, but the designs that maximally exploit it are wide "pancake" rockets. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but they certainly don't look anything like real rockets.

An obvious reason for this to not happen occurs to me: the claw might be single-use.

You certainly can leave Tylo, go once round Jool, and re-enter Tylo's SOI for a gravity assist. The MESSENGER spacecraft did the same thing from Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MESSENGER_trajectory.svg (Dark blue is its first trajectory after launch until Earth encounter.) This might not be THAT hard to set up. Burn to only just leave Tylo's SOI (which face it, you're doing anyway if you're low on dV), then make a small correction to come back in around an orbit later.

There's a fair chance the laptop drives are still OK, and you should be able to get brackets and adapters to fit them in a desktop if you like. Or, if you just want the data off them, get an external drive housing.

Early exploration: Nuclear pulse propulsion. It's the nearest to being feasible, and for a first expedition I would want to be self-sufficient. If you're relying on beamed power, what if Earth by mishap or choice switches off the beam? Medium stage: A high Isp decent thrust electric propulsion system, powered by beamed power and fusion reactors. By this time things will be more established, the beams will be considered reliable and synergise well with the reactors; likely beams for when you're near a settled system and fusion for deep space. Late stage: Antimatter, powering anything. Best energy-to-mass ratio you can get. By this point ships will be capable of 1 g accelerations for months or even years on end, which gets them up to a good fraction of light-speed. The nearest stars remain too far away for holidaying, but emigration becomes feasible. Don't forget that along with these developments, we'll probably extend our lifespan. A 50 year journey becomes reasonable when you expect to live for a thousand years.

The thousand yard walk, http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html Really illustrates the scale of the solar system, and it's something direct and easy to understand.

When multiplayer becomes available, steal people's fuel.

Damn that sucks.

The Jr docking port has plenty of uses. If you want to detach a small probe and have it return, or simply want your craft to be refuellable, it's the lightest option. It's also the right size to go on the small end of the Mk 1 command pod.

So far just the two. ShowFPS, for keeping an eye on performance, and Kerbal Engineer Redux so I don't have to manually crunch delta-Vs. I don't tend to use KER's flight engineer though, it seemed to hurt performance and it's easy enough to check my dV in flight thanks to quicksave.

So far most of my rockets have been early career mode. Without radial decouplers building wide would be tricky, and without fuel lines building asparagus is impossible. A central 1.25m stack with one "layer" of radial stacks is the most I've been able to keep control of. Some of the other kludges and jerry-rigs I've used do give ugly results mind. Like the landing legs made from girders and empty fuel tanks.

Indeed. What I'm just saying is that if you can get to Laythe and back to Kerbin on a single stage, you can certainly get to Laythe and back into Laythe orbit on multiple stages. You should save fuel if you use a carrier aircraft compared to an SSTO. I suggest using liquid fuel only for the rocket section, not solid boosters, that way you can refuel it more easily, though you could dock replacement boosters if you like. A reusable spaceplane/rocket and carrier aircraft would do well for Laythe operations I reckon.