SkyRender

Sure, should be doable. Just replace the basic jet engines with sufficiently powerful rocket engines (probably aerospikes). But the fuel efficiency would drop through the floor that way. Better just to build fat landers that are designed for specific bodies instead of making a jack-of-all-trades lander that's good at none of them.

I built a FAR-compatible VTOL spaceplane. With a bit of tweaking, it can now reach orbit, land, reach orbit again, and land again. I made it as a nice little gift for a fellow KSP player who wanted a Laythe multi-trip spaceplane that could do VTOL. 'Twas fun to build.

So, I decided to see if I could improve upon my design. As it transpires, I can! I've even provided the .craft this time. This one is properly FAR-balanced, and flies pretty much like a dream. It's a little shaky on the way up and down, but very controllable just the same. And I managed to rebalance it so the rear fuel tank can hold fuel, so it has an even more comfortable margin. Don't let the fuel levels in the screenshot fool you, that was before I finished fuel balancing and was also from a decidedly less-than-ideal ascent. Also, it was not to Laythe orbit but rather to Kerbin orbit, which takes around 33% more fuel than Laythe anyway. I've left detailed instructions on its use in the description, and would like to add that putting the brakes on during lift-off is generally a good idea.

Help yourself! I believe in sharing my designs freely. Just a few notes when rebuilding it from screenshot: 1. The jet engines on the wings need to be as close to the center of mass as possible. 2. The rear fuel tank needs to always be empty of fuel (as I said before). 3. You'll need to adjust the side tanks' positions so that fuel drain on them does not change center of mass. 4. You'd be smart to set up action groups for toggling the 3 types of engines independently of one another, as well as the intakes. 5. As with any spaceplane, center of lift needs to be behind center of mass at least slightly.

So I got to thinking about your problem, and designed this: It was built with a FAR-enabled install, so it would need beefier fuel tanks for stock, but the basic concept is solid. Basically, you take off vertically with the jet engines on the wing, then enable the horizontal turbojets once you're high enough, and when you've gained enough altitude that the basic jet engines are about to flame out, you shut them off. Other than that, it behaves exactly like any other spaceplane. The various values for winglets, fuel levels, etc. are not optimized on my own build of this thing, but I can tell from my test flight that once it is optimized, it can easily do 2 round trips to Laythe's surface on one pair of 360/440 tanks. (NEVER put fuel in that rear tank, or the whole thing gets horribly unbalanced!)

Shouldn't be too hard to come up with something for Laythe, particularly if you have Ferram Aerospace Research installed. Even with stock engines, a combination of turbojets and an LV-N should do it and give you a reliable enough multi-trip Laythe-worthy craft. Really it comes down to your technique and piloting skill in that case. Of course, a lot does depend on how many Kerbals you're trying to move back and forth. 1 to 5, no big deal. More than 5, you're gonna need a bigger spaceplane.

I've been using FAR for ages. Once you get the hang of it, launches cost far less fuel to get into orbit than the stock aerodynamic model.

The Ant is my go-to engine for tiny space probes. Don't know why anyone would hate them, they're perfect for those things.

Unfortunately for you, the demo is hardcoded to only recognize the parts it comes with. Though the last version before the paid release (0.13.3 was it?) does have a few old mods floating around for it.

Just for future reference, we tend to refer to situations where something has more logical and social ramifications as an ethical dilemma, not a moral one. Moral dilemmas stem more from emotional and secular issues. I personally don't use part clipping. I don't really need it, so why bother? I won't begrudge others the option, of course, though I personally will be less impressed with their achievements if they do. Not that they have any reason to feel obligated to impress me, so it works out well for everyone in the end.

I wouldn't jump to any conclusions just yet on those clouds. It looks a lot like Environmental Visual Enhancement's clouds, in fact. Could just be that Porkjet had the mod installed at the time and forgot to disable it for the demonstration shots.

What we have here is failure to communicate. Context is your friend, and you have provided basically none. Please elaborate on what you mean, because it's really not clear at all.

This might help you: http://www.skyrender.net/ksp_sync_calculator.html As long as the orbit you're putting your satellites into happens to be some form of synchronous, just input how many are in the constellation and it can calculate how long the orbit's period needs to be in either direction (ie. raising or lowering the period to synchronize it). Basically you just put the satellites in an orbit where either the periapsis or apoapsis is at the desired height and the overall period of the orbit is either the Synchronization Factor or Counter-Sync Factor value. Then bring one of them up to the correct synchronous orbit per orbit of the satellites still on the non-synchronous orbit.

Fortunately I have a mental checklist of basic features now, so most of my rockets make it up without major features missing. Unfortunately, one item on that list (antennae) tends to not get checked nearly as often as it should. I also tend not to include RCS at all, just because it's such a hassle and because I am awesome at docking without it.

You should definitely take note of what mods (if any) you have installed, too. The bug is so poorly documented due to its sheer randomness at this point that it's not even known if it's caused by mods or if it's something that can happen in a 100% stock save file.

That will take quite a while. I have successfully depleted very large Kethane deposits before, but it took several trips to do so. If you want it to be doable within a sane amount of time, you'll have to construct a truly Whackjobian solution. Why you want to bring raw Kethane to Kerbin orbit is beyond me, of course; that's its least efficient form. Kethane is meaningfully more useful if you convert it to fuel on the surface first and then bring it to orbit.

If you want your wobbly rockets back, just build with the 2.75m and 3.5m parts. You'll get more wobble than you can stand.

I just changed the minRate and maxRates so that science->funds and rep->funds are 10x more valuable, and funds->science + funds->rep are 10x less valuable. It's a pretty solid fix.

Alternatively, you could do something ambitious on the scale of the proposed Mars Direct mission (ie. build a long-term base on Duna and return to Kerbin once the two planets are properly aligned again). Maybe even add in a few difficulty-enhancing mods like TAC Life Support, Ferram Aerospace Research, perhaps Deadly Re-Entry and RemoteTech as well.

More of a "what I've been doing in KSP lately" update, I decided to get back to an old idea I had of a Career mode story of sorts. It's gotten pretty far, all things considered, with the culmination of the first LKO "space hotel": Escape Velocity Headquarters (or EVHQ for short) is a pretty spacious place. Just need to get a few Kerbal tourists on board now...

I'm partial to the term "apophenia" myself. It would be cool if at some point in the future some form of procedural parts do find their way into the stock game. It would open up a whole new range of potential parts to add, including fairings (admittedly a beauty feature in stock at this point, but any sort of change to the drag model on stock aerodynamics is going to change that fast!) and scalability on parts like rover wheels. HarvesteR is correct in his summation of what a pain it would be to implement such a feature, however, as procedural sizing options would have to be considered for almost all of the existing parts.

Huh. I seem to be pretty close as well. Interesting...

Noted and edited for the first post.

I run the non-Steam version, so I can only make a best estimate. I've been playing KSP for 3 years almost to the day, and generally have clocked an average of 2 hours a day on it, so that's around 2200 hours, give or take.

You know your rocket's overbuilt when you decide to send your Mun land-and-return mission out to Eve for a land-and-return mission instead... and succeed.