Reactordrone

There's no science there to transmit. If you have a contract to transmit science from around the Mun you can hit the transmit button and that should send 25 mits of data to fulfill the contract but you won't get any extra science for it because you've already got all the transmitted science that was available for that experiment in that situation. In order to get that 46 science it will need to be recovered back on Kerbin, either by landing the probe or by grabbing the science and returning it in another ship. Unless your mods are changing something the only reason you'd be getting an "aborting transmission" message is if you don't have enough power to transmit 25 mits of data.

There's an issue with the airstream shells and struts at the moment that causes rockets to explode on the launchpad when physics kicks in. Try it without the payload shroud.

Yep, those old ICBMs get a wiggle on.

Aborting transmission can come up if you have insufficient battery to transmit the full packet of data. Try clicking on the antennas and enabling partial transmission.

The only time you have to work out the Isp for multiple engines is when you have engines with different performance combined. if they all have the same Isp then the group Isp is the same as that for an individual engine.

A Wheesley has about the same thrust as a CFM-56. That's the same engine used on the 737 so build a 50-70 tonnes aircraft powered by two of them and see how fast you can get.

You can shoot probes to Duna fairly cheaply and if you send a few at a time they can act as mutual relay satellites.

Since we didn't get a launch today here's 6 first stage landings with a nice bit of Blue Danube waltz.

Yeah, slight miscalculation. Break even is around about the Muns orbit or just under 12,000km so anything that has to be between the Mun and Minmus you'd be better off launching east. Having said that it is quite cheap to raise your apoapsis from that point (and essentially free to lower it again afterwards using aerobraking) so you may still be better off with an eastward launch for orbits of around 8000km. For example, raising your apoapsis from 8000km to 15000km costs about 50m/s and reversal there will cost about 265m/s for a total of 315m/s which is lower than the 350m/s extra that you spend to launch Westwards. If you don't need an orbit that high it's obviously not worth spending 830m/s pushing up to 8000km in the first place.

If the orbit's out at about 8000km it'll cost about the same to launch East and reverse orbit at apoapsis as it would to launch west. If it's a higher orbit than that you might actually save some delta-v requirement launching East rather than doing a direct Westerly launch.

It should be fine unless it's moving off the retrograde marker due to asymmetric mass. You do still have a fair amount of delta-v so try to reduce your speed just before atmosphere entry (angle up a little so you don't drop your periapsis too low) but a light probe with a full heatshield shouldn't have overheating issues coming back from the Mun if it's holding retrograde.

Well the first time you stand outside a plane in flight it takes a few seconds for your brain to process the situation.

Even if you get the lift vector the right way up it's quite nose heavy with landing gear right at the back of the fuselage. This will make it very difficult to rotate for take off and when you deflect the horizontal tail fins they will obstruct the engine thrust.

For most of my ships that have RCS I usually only use the command pod monopropellant to feed them since I do the majority of rendezvous and docking using the main engine. For stations and interplanetary ships I might add an extra monoprop storage tank. If the ship doesn't have RCS thrusters (and if I remember) I'll drain the pods monoprop.

I just threw together a lookalike and it flew fine so it might be something specific to the craft file or your game.

If you have no intention of returning just launch him there on a Kerbal X. Plenty of fuel in those for a one way mission to Duna. If you want to test interplanetary flight without having to wait for another transfer window you can F5 now and fly as many simulated missions as you like and just reset the game with the F9 key.

You could also consider using the Mun lander to partially boost the crew to orbit and bail out and circularise using the jetpack. You can take all of the science with you and then you only have to send up a Munar orbiter to bring them back.

I would suggest not enough vertical stabiliser so not enough natural stability in yaw, leading to a spin when you add large amounts of rudder input.

Given that it's on a collision course I would suggest a rendezvous on a reverse orbit (same orbital plane but opposite direction). If you meet it beyond the Mun's orbit the cost of stopping and reversing direction to capture it with the klaw won't be that high, then it's just a matter of raising the periapsis, riding it down and capturing into orbit.

Don't feel too bad about not getting to the Mun in the demo. It is much, much harder to do in the demo than it is in the full game. Lack of control parts and only having the reliant liquid fuel engine and 1 tonne fuel tanks really hampers efficiency and the awful 1.0.0 drag model will try to kill you when you reenter. Having said that, it is possible. It took a few attempts but I managed to land on the Mun and return safely this afternoon. single pod, 1 reliant engine and 7x 1 tonne fuel tanks on the lander and a 2 stage rocket to get it almost into Kerbin orbit. Lots of RCS and reaction wheels to try to keep it pointing in the right direction on the way up.

Figure out what you want to do at Duna and build a vehicle that can do that. Build a transfer stage that can take that vehicle to Duna and then build a launcher that can take all of that into low Kerbin orbit. Do you want to land on Duna? Are you planning on aerocapturing with a small ship or bringing in a large station/lander combination? Do you also want to explore Ike? do you want to bring along all of your fuel or set up an ISRU. Basically, start at the top and work your way down the rocket remembering that a little extra weight at the top adds a lot more weight at the bottom of the rocket.

Even with wheels and landing gear lack of friction is a problem. I lost a rover on Eve that just slid down a hill with the brakes on until it had a RUD from excessive speed. Eve is probably particularly bad due the high gravity. Anything more than about a 5° slope and things just keep sliding.

It is. Four years ago it may have been in Celsius.

Just the number of parts needed to build something over 80km long would probably kill it.

As long as you land on the Kerbin side of the Mun the HG-5 should give you good comms.