Reactordrone

You may have adjusted your periapsis down into the atmosphere to get a close intercept showing for the next orbit. Always keep an eye on your orbit when setting up a rendezvous to avoid dipping into the atmosphere or running into high terrain on airless bodies. You can always go to a higher orbit and let the other vehicle catch up to you if you can't safely drop low to catch up to them.

Landed near a Kerbal for a Mun rescue contract and when I switched to them I found the Kerbal was buried up to the neck in Munar regolith and a few seconds later exploded. Totally not my fault.

You may have toggled the information off with the F4 key at some point.

This was how I picked up a Mk 2 lander can recently. I landed a regular lander to pick up the Kerbal and assess the scene then sent a specialised retriever. Land nearby, drive over the top of the part and retract the gear. Take off, ditch the landing gear and return home.

Alternatively you could have docking ports with something like the free pivot function on the claw so that you could unlock the ports and roll the sections into the desired alignment.

You could strip some weight out of the lander to improve its Delta v. You're carrying over a tonne of RCS fuel and you could probably get by with a single LV-909 rather than three saving another tonne. The ASAS unit is probably unnecessary, the 3 man pod had plenty of reaction wheel torque. Overall it's not too bad though, my first three man Mun vehicles were monsters by comparison.

Given that the small ISRU unit dumps 90% of the ore, it makes some sense that it goes through the ore at a faster rate. The Big unit goes slow and gets a 100% conversion efficiency, the small one steams through the ore picking the best material and only converting 10%.

Something like this should do the job. Fly almost straight up and cut engines when your apoapsis hits 49km. You should slow down to the test speed range inside the altitude limits then ride the thumper into a sub-orbit .

ATV, Progress and Soyuz all use the older SSVP probe/drogue system rather than the newer APAS system (although Soyuz has been test flown with APAS back on Mir).

Yes, mid winter seems to be the best time for viewing Orion in the northern hemisphere. You can enter your location on the heavens above website to get star charts specific to your area. http://www.heavens-above.com/

The bright star that is approximately the height of Orion across from the right foot (left as you look at it) is Sirius.

Looks like time for a repair mission to fit a new docking port to the station with a claw.

You may find this thread useful, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/114789-speed-of-sound-in-10/

The highest speed of sound value you should encounter on Kerbin will be 340m/s. It reduces a little at higher altitudes and then increases again but if you aim for 340 you should be ok for a "break the sound barrier" contract. ETA- the X-1 itself got to just under 361m/s on its first supersonic flight at 13,100m.

I assume he wasn't in orbit. On a straight up and down flight you don't get fast enough to burn any of the ablator and your pod won't have time to slow down enough to deploy the parachute. Sub orbital flights need to be flown as long ballistic paths now to allow the ships time to decelerate. ETA- you will just survive a straight up and down if you don't have a heatshield. The shield is just dead weight in that situation and it only serves to increase the terminal velocity of the ship.

The default setup also makes the WASD keys aligned like compass points, W-S being north-south and A-D being west-east. Makes sense to push up for north, down for south and right for east, left for west.

And at the other end of the scale this one can cruise at 15,000m and zoom up to 16,500m and is just supersonic at lower altitudes. It can also land although it's a little light on stability and control.

Sub-orbital tourist/VIP contracts aren't location specific (apart from the planet obviously). As long as you get them above the atmosphere with the periapsis still within the atmosphere the contract parameters should be fulfilled. Splashdown tests have to be conducted in the water so fly or drive the part into the ocean and then perform the test.

And a slight variation to the hands free profile I used above. Same deal, boosters first stage, LV-T45 into the second stage. SAS off and 15° turn on lift off with continuous burn of liquid fuel stage at 100% until 188km Apoapsis is indicated. Cut throttle and coast to apo (which has dropped to 183km due to drag) then circularize. 180km x 184km with 170LF remaining.

The chutes have pressure switches so provided you're flying above the maximum deployment pressure ( I think 0.5 atmospheres) you can drop staged chutes and have them deploy when they're clear of the aircraft. Might have to do a test flight with a barometer to work out the altitudes/pressures. ETA- just checked the Mk16XL and that can be set to 0.75 atmo so you can drop above 2km and the chute won't activate immediately (obviously keep an eye on the speed).

Gave it another go see if I could improve. This was a hands free ascent SAS off. Immediately upon clearing the pad pushed over 15° and allowed the ship to do a natural gravity turn until apoapsis was 70km. At around 65km altitude I pushed the apoapsis up to 180km then coasted up and circularized, 181km x 180km with 168LF left Seems fairly reproduceable, I had 164 LF left the first time I tried but I overcooked that one and brought my apo up to 208km and had to reduce it. A HHGTTG quote seems apt, Trillian- Oh, that's better. have you managed to make sense of the controls? Ford- No...we just stopped fiddling with them. Also I should mention that I had the LV-T45 in the second stage as on my first run.

In my game the large drill weighs 1.25 tonnes vs 0.25 tonnes for the small one. I've done some Kerbin testing with the small drill but never used them operationally.

Is it being destroyed or is the indicator turning red to show that it is unsafe to deploy? If the background is red it's just an indicator and you're fine, if the chute is red then you've probably staged the chute on launch.

This is my usual. Has plenty of delta v so it can hit high latitudes from an equatorial station and easy enough to lift to the Mun and refuel for repeat trips.

It's a space program, you need systems redundancy in your controls