SkyRender

As I said, I tested it on 0.23 and Alt+F5 does not do anything in that version. Meaning it was actually added to this one. Alt+F9 has worked as a load-any-SFS file feature for a long time, but now it has extra utility thanks to Alt+F5's functionality.

It gets better. At least one of the asteroid model names is "potatoroid". You can find this by, for example, blasting the surface of one with your engines.

I have just confirmed that Alt+F5 does not work in 0.23. Alt+F9 always has allowed you to load any saved SFS file. Its usefulness has simply been expanded now that saving SFS files by any name you'd like in-game is a feature.

Ah, Dres isn't so bad. It's like a miniature Mun! It even has this wonderful canyon near the equator for you to visit, with extra-steep walls and everything.

Using Tylo as your exit vector from the Jool system also tends to save a bit of delta-V. Also, technically most transfers out of Kerbin orbit are using Kerbin as a gravitational slingshot. Though if you're trying to go from Duna or Dres to Eve or Moho, it can be a useful tool to that end since its gravity is so high.

Honestly, the Skipper caused me to shelve the Mainsail long ago. Better I(sp) and easier part-per-engine requirements for getting optimal lift out of it. What's not to love?

I once built an inverted rocket off the cuff to see if I could land it on the Mun. The whole mission went really well, at least until I was returning to the command module and decided to see what happens when you retract a ladder out from under a Kerbal...

Funnily enough, my biggest parachute-related disaster was due to having the parachutes at all... Back before I knew what a drogue chute was, I sent a mission out to Duna with nothing but radial drag chutes for slowing power. A quick simulation run resulting in spontaneous unplanned disassembly upon the parachutes opening made me realize my mistake pretty quick. It's kind of amazing the Kerbals got out of that one alive, actually. I had just enough fuel to do a powered landing, or rather just short of enough fuel to do one. It proved to be sufficient to allow the capsule and two rovers to survive the crash, anyway. A rescue had to be mounted, naturally, and at least that went off without a hitch.

Even Scott has admitted that he's not the best KSP player out there by a long shot. Easily one of the most influential, and very good at orbital mechanics, but he frequently acknowledges that his skills at things like landing and docking are under par.

Want to test your asteroid capture rig's capabilities before you've gotten to the asteroid? Now you can! This pack of .craft files includes simulated asteroid sizes for all of the most common weights: 20T, 50T, 100T, 250T, 550T, 1000T, 2000T, and of course, 3000T. By using a mod such as Kerbal Engineer Redux, you can measure how well your planned asteroid catcher will fare with your target asteroid. Download: Simulated Asteroid Craft Pack

With all due respect, Whackjob, sometimes simple is better. I'm not one to tell someone how to do their job, but 3000 parts for the legs is kind of missing the idea here. If you want the tower to shake the heavens, you need to know where to focus your part concentration, and it's not in the feet. My advice: make something simple and clean for the base, and go nuts on the actual tower body for absurd part counts. This little 72-part darling, for example, is only slightly smaller than what you built and would work just fine as a single foot of a massive tower.

Since I like finding ways to break game systems, I pretty much try to find ways to (reasonably!) get the tech tree unlocked as fast as possible. Minmus having biomes now made that much simpler. Mission 1: low polar Minmus orbit, 9 EVAs (1 per biome) to get reports and surface samples. Mission 2: massive Mun expedition with a combination lander and science lab with spare fuel on board, milking all 15 Mun biomes dry of every bit of science they have to offer. It works surprisingly well.

Sometimes it's good to take time off from a game. Especially one as engaging as KSP. Burning yourself out on it will just make it take that much longer to get back into it again at a later date.

Amusingly, the highest I ever bothered to track was almost exactly half of the original poster's (55 vs. 111). There shouldn't be any limits, apparently, save whatever your PC's RAM/CPU cycles can handle.

I've actually confirmed that you can clear out the tech tree with just Minmus and the Mun. I recently came up with a Career mode path that takes 2 launches to unlock the entire tech tree, exploiting Minmus' and the Mun's biomes (as well as the absurd amount of EVA fuel Kerbals have and the fact that they get infinite free refills from command pods).

I used to hand-calculate the TWR and dV. Nowadays I let Kerbal Engineer do it for me, to save time. During release interim when KER doesn't work yet, I just go by past experience for what they can handle.

I just updated the Wiki's control page with this discovery. Very useful indeed!

I try to stick to my "bare essentials": KER, FAR, Procedural Fairings, and the Environmental Visual Enhancement mod that adds (now volumetric!) clouds. Though I do often stick on Kethane and KAS as well, just for added fun times.

Listed mass in orbit is 545T. It was not an SSTO, and it has enough dV left to reach Jool and circularize without aerobraking if I so desire.

I wasn't really challenging anything, just making an observation that we've managed to overcome some major engineering hurdles in rocket design in recent years. I find it to be impressive, to say the least! No real implications beyond the fact that technology marches on and it's amazing to watch it in action.

I noticed, actually, that a few of the screenshots predate even the Steam release. The title screenshot is from 0.16! Actually, all 5 of those first few screens are clearly from a much earlier version, and two of them even have the old pre-EVA 3-Kerbal command pod in them.

Actually, if you follow recent history in rocketry advances, you'll realize that the long-held belief of "we can't improve the design any further" is proving itself to be just as inaccurate as the old mantra of "3GHz is the fastest we can make a processor" for computer hardware. The performance improvements on more modern engines over their earlier-era counterparts is impressive indeed, especially with SpaceX's Merlin 1D over the original 1C. They managed to get about 50% more thrust while reducing its weight, something that would have been deemed impossible not so long ago.

Personally, I'm glad when I see others trying new ways to play the game. I don't feel that my style should be the "only" one; quite the contrary. Seeing new parts that actually improve upon performance is quite encouraging to me as well, since it shows that the developers aren't sacrificing the potential of Career mode for some misguided attempt to keep Sandbox mode "balanced" (a task that made sense back when it was the only mode, but now we have a mode for that sort of thing, and thus it's not necessary any longer). I stand by my declaration of "if you don't like it, don't use it". Should you desire to keep the lower efficiency of the earlier lifter engines while still using the higher-capacity fuel tanks, just make clusters of them in place of the larger, more efficient engines that ARM brings. Such a simple, elegant, and even creative solution. Or get a mod that weakens the newer engines down, if appearances matter to you. Asking everyone to suffer for your specific desires, however, is unreasonable. What is there is there, take it, leave it, or modify it for your own personal use.

I'm sure the maker of TAS Life Support is just thrilled by the change. For some time there was discussion on whether life support should be stored in 6-hour or 24-hour lots for each "day" worth of supplies. Now the player can have it either way.

I started a new Career file today, and tested my theory on unlocking all of the tech tree in 2 launches without even leaving the Kerbin system. Said plan involves a jaunt out to Minmus and 9 EVAs to the surface, followed by a large-scale Mun mission to milk all 15 biomes dry. It worked precisely as planned.