Reactordrone

It has a built in fairing to cover the gap. That makes it more aerodynamic.

Tried the docking training. Everything was fine until undocking when the rescue ship glitched, wouldn't move when thrust was applied and it dissassembled and exploded on time warp. Tried it a second time, again all was good until undocking. After undock focus was on the stranded ship so I "]" keyed to change ships. The speed indicator on the navball looked glitchy so I hit the "]" key again to change back the rescue ship and it again dissassembled itself. The game then needed to be shut down and re started.

For a bit of light relief I thought I'd try out the Kerbal X with the new aero model and take a trip to the Mun. Even with the nerfed engines it makes it there and back easily and didn't even burn up despite the lack of a heat shield.

There is a heat bug at the moment that can cause ships to explode if you've used F9 so it could be that. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117856-Random-Exploding-Space-Rendezvous

I've been using a claw equipped probe to get stranded pods into low Kerbin orbit and then sending up a ship to recover the Kerbals before I de-orbit the pods but I do have a current contract that asks for the pod to be recovered as well so I'll have to send up a new claw with some chutes for that one.

This might be why,

Did a little rovering on Minmus to finish the tech tree on one of my old saves.....may have exceeded the wheel speed limit on the way down from the highlands. On the other hand the inline reaction wheel really kept the rover stable during the slide out and having a level three engineer on board helped.

Do you have SAS engaged? The ship won't hold a stable heading and will need to be flown constantly to keep it aligned if you don't. The only other thing I can think of is if you align to prograde early and then complete part of an orbit the heading will change, go around half an orbit and you'll be pointing retrograde.

The negative gravioli detector doesn't work while flying so you'll have to do the "above X m" parts of the contract from orbit.

In addition to pressurised bladder tanks there's also surface tension tanks, that use the surface tension of the fuel between the tank wall and a conical collector to keep fuel at the bottom of the tank, and centrifuge tanks that use spin. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11254-new-spacecraft-fuel-gauge-may-reduce-space-junk.html#.VTCBMpPQOVI

45045.5 in my 0.25 career save. The next best is my first 0.90 career save with 25,986.5.

And just in case the OP doesn't know about it, if you focus on the targeted object your trajectory will be displayed relative to that object so you'll be able to see which way you're entering and leaving its sphere of influence. You can then do a minor course correction if you're coming in the wrong way.

Well obviously it was Flash Gordon on a hawkman rocket cycle. or maybe cloud.

Collided with the launchpad at 62km.

Docking ports work as decouplers in stock as well. Although I don't often use the LES, when I do I generally attach it to a docking port and set up an action group to fire the LES and decouple the docking port to get rid of the unused escape system. The abort action group fires the LES and a decoupler/separator under the command pod.

You have to consider the geometry of the different frames of reference. Ejection angle changes how your speed changes relative to the parent body, e.g adding or subtracting velocity from Kerbin's orbital velocity. A large plane change in a small diameter orbit around Kerbin will translate to a small plane change when you get into the much larger diameter of a solar orbit. That method of intercepting asteroids is what I use, i.e matching time and location of entry and exit then waiting for both objects to be in the same SOI. Targeting mode on the navball doesn't really work for objects that are are in different spheres of influence.

The acceleration at the time of impact is the sudden deceleration when you hit the ground. Acceleration due to gravity will frequently be cancelled out by drag so the only relevant acceleration is when you go from whatever speed you're falling at to 0m/s in a very short space of time.

Just ran a test while I was in sandbox. Mine are showing as blocked when they're 50% covered by shade from the large structural panel mounted on the same vehicle.

Vanilla, it's the finest of the flavours

Captured a 2000 tonne class E asteroid into Kerbin orbit and a far more manageable 75 tonne class B one into Minmus orbit.

Launched an unmanned Mun base yesterday using a modified orbital station as a core. Removed batteries and placed extra fuel tanks and landing gear on it....then forgot to put batteries back on... and launched at night. And that's when you realise the KR-1x2 doesn't have any electrical generation as it becomes a sub-orbital lawndart.

Definitely 2.5km in the current version, no idea whether it's ever been shorter though.

If your initial orbital insertion is polar or highly elliptical it shouldn't cost that much Delta v to do the polar orbit component first. From polar orbit the lander can drop close to the equator to make for a simple equatorial plane return.

Yeah, even with small ships the the SAS direction holds cause vibrations as they try to constantly adjust the ship heading.

18 at the moment. I've never deleted a save so every career start from every version since I bought the game and a few different sandboxes.