Norcalplanner

Couple of thoughts: 1. You undoubtedly have a lot of science gear in the bay, and science gear is more expensive in 1.2, so that drives the cost up. 2. You're using a ton of the Oscar Bs, which is the single most expensive tank per unit of LFO delivered. It's 1.75 funds/unit, compared to 1.25 funds/unit for an FLT-400 and 1 fund/unit for an FLT-800. 3. Each of those Thuds costs almost as much as a Thumper, and then you need to add fuel tanks to make them work. Consider ditching the Thuds and the radial tanks, and instead use two pairs of Thumpers with different thrust levels (so you can stage one pair earlier) and put three FLT-800s on top of a Swivel in the middle instead of a Reliant. 4. The two Sparks are more expensive than a Terrier (although they are lighter, but also with a lower Isp). 5. Based in part on some of the points above, most of my first time Mun landers have an FLT-400 and a Terrier, with just a thermometer and a barometer surface attached to the capsule (high up enough that they'll survive reentry). No goo canisters or science bays - those generally wait until the second or third Mun landing. 6. And yes, you're being a bit hard on yourself.

Seems I wasn't clear - you don't actually have it do any of the work for you, just show the information. MJ can display predicted landing location on a body with or without atmosphere, so you don't necessarily have to install Trajectories to get that sort of data.

Mechjeb's landing module can also work - put it in information mode so it will show the predicted landing site, select the base as your target, and will give you a readout on the distance between your predicted landing spot and your target. Once in th he ballpark, it's very similar to docking in that you push around the anti-velocity marker to line up with the anti-target marker. Just don't forget to watch the altimeter. ;-)

You can also split the difference - I launched a nice 700 ton station in two big pieces, joined inline in orbit using SpaceY 5m docking ports (with assistance from KJR).

Totally agree. If you look at the stock version of the thread I linked above, my recommendation is to launch at an initial SLT TWR of 1.4 to 1.7. But don't be afraid to let the TWR increase as the stage burns fuel. Many of my rockets have a TWR of 4 or 5 just before a staging event. If your rocket has the thrust and is shaped properly, there's no reason why you shouldn't already be going 600 to 700 m/s at 10 km, at 40 degrees above the horizon.

It depends on a lot of factors. Designing for highest payload mass fraction in sandbox is very different from designing for lowest funds/ton in career. There's some good info and discussion in a thread I did a few months ago: This version is specific to RSS, but there's a link in the OP to another thread with more testing in stock scale. And to those who are throttling down, I'd strongly encourage you not to. Unless your craft is uncontrollable, burning up, or otherwise having trouble, keep the pedal to the metal for the entire ascent. Ignore the flames - it's purely a visual effect. Pay attention to any thermometers which appear, and slow down only if it's needed to keep the temperature bar from filling up.

Ayup. It affected my decision to only go with 3.2x scale in my new career, since you can still do decent aerobraking at that scale in only 70 km.

With really low tech (two HG-5s per commsat) I'd stick with 4 in equatorial orbits, but at an altitude of no more than 700 or 750 km. It's possible to get really high accuracy now with a good orbital readout (such as KER or MechJeb), as the Ant can now be thrust limited to 0.5 percent on the fly. I got my equatorial satellites synced to within 1/100th of a second using a thrust-limited Ant.

Shuttle was a lot of ideas that looked great on paper, but didn't quite pan out in reality. And history showed quite emphatically that placing a spaceplane on the side of a rocket is a really bad idea. Cheaper than an expendable rocket? Nope. Safer than an expendable rocket? Nope. More utility than an expendable rocket? Kinda/sorta if you focus on a narrow set of criteria, otherwise nope. Cheaper recovery? Yep - no naval task force waiting around. The major advantage of the shuttle touted during its design was the ability to capture a satellite, bring it back to earth, and then launch it again. Unfortunately for the shuttle program, economics and technology continued their forward march during its development, making this mission impractical and a money loser by the time the shuttle came online. It seems to me that if a more cost-effective recovery method had been instituted for whatever followed Apollo, with some greater level of cross-range capability (but still less than that of the shuttle) then there wouldn't have been any advantages in the shuttle's corner. Of course, hindsight is usually clearer than foresight.

Do I still use MechJeb? Yes. Yes I do.

XKCD and a high school friend on facebook. Jumped aboard at 0.23.5 (back when the Kickback and the Mammoth were the new hotness) and never looked back.

The first time? 9.2. It ratchets down by some increment each time you do it though, so if you're a quick learner (and your increment is 1.5 instead of 0.8) it'll be down at 1 before you know it.

If it could somehow be configured so that the steering angle if the front pair of wheels follows the angle of the tow bar, it would solve a lot of problems. It's what real life multi-trailer setups do.

There are a few good reasons for having a satellite or station in equatorial orbit to help with mission planning. Not only can you determine ascending/descending nodes as discussed, but it's great for transfer window planning. Just plot a node that has the transfer you want, note how far in the future it is, then launch your actual expedition vehicle right before it's time to go. Saves a lot of life support.

I found that adding two of the NoM 25000s radially works really well. Have one run in agroponics mode, and the other run in recycler mode. Although the recycler mode uses a lot of power (34 EC/s iirc) it recycles at 77%, meaning that your Kerbals go through less than half the food compared to using the MPL recycler (which admittedly is much cheaper in EC use). If you're looking to do more than four Kerbals, however, you'll probably need a total of 4 of the radially attached NoM 25000s, with two set at each function. Going to use a heck of a lot of power when transiting the dark side of a planet, though.

@magico13 Thanks so much for working on this mod - it really adds a lot to career gameplay. As a rocket person (as opposed to being a spaceplane person) I'm certainly rooting for some form of the inventory system to be included at some point, even if it doesn't work with tweakscale or procedural parts - recovering some of the parts from a dropped stage is better than recovering none. Thanks again for all your hard work and for such an awesome mod!

Or, one can just chalk this up to being one of the charming quirks of Sigma Dimensions. When it comes to anomalies, I go where I'm supposed to go, but if the system doesn't show the contract as fulfilled, then I have no compunction about going into the Alt-F12 menu and marking the contract as completed. And thanks so much for updating this, even if it's not 100% polished! Love this mod!

Other mods render a part un-upgradable too, such as Interstellar Fuel Switch. With my typical mods (such as SpaceY and Fuel Tanks Plus), this means that the mod fuel tanks can't be upgraded. Happily, this means that there's once again a use for the stock tanks, since those can still be upgraded - unless I'm using Color Coded Canisters, which modifies the colors of the stock tanks, and renders those un-upgradable too.

Need to wait for Sigma Dimensions to get updated at this point.

Vertical velocity is temporary, but horizontal velocity is yours to keep.

If I understand correctly, you're only using the ground station at KSC, and none of the others. In that case, you can only go to the Mun when KSC is facing the Mun - at least until you unlock some better antennas. I'd concentrate on science on and around Kerbin until better antennas are available.

It is, and it would, but with three up there I can launch at any time without waiting for a sat to come over the horizon.

I use three because the HG-5, the first relay dish that's available, doesn't have enough range to work in geosynchronous orbit. If you wait until the fixed dishes are available, then what you describe works fine. I'm a bit impatient, though. And I only think to check map view prior to launch when I'm rendezvousing with something.

A slightly blunter nose will reduce heating at the cost of some drag, as the game's thermo model does include detached shock waves. This is one of the reasons why a lot of spaceplanes use the shielded docking port as a nose cone - in addition to having a high temperature tolerance, it's just blunt enough to get the detached shick wave going.

That blind spot is annoying, but I bet that it's intentional. In the same way that the stock craft aren't perfect to encourage you to tweak them, I'd bet that the ground base coverage isn't perfect to encourage you to loft some commsats. Btw, three commsats each with two Hg-5s or one of the fixed dishes in a 600 km orbit should get rid of the blind spot, assuming roughly equidistant spacing.