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My mind just keeps thinking "jet ski... jet ski... jet ski..." Yeah, this could get interesting, funny and tragic very quickly.

I think my only suggestion would be to just change the wording a little. That's what threw me off a bit at first, the way the contract is worded - such as "radial decoupler landed", instead of something a bit more clear, like "Test fire the radial decoupler while on the ground".

I'm running mod-less for now. I don't see a single 0.24 listed here yet. http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal

Okay, yes, that clears it up, I agree with your last sentence Tiberion. I just wasn't sure if that's what I was going on or not. Makes sense, turn it into a fun game! The funny ones will be challenges to be conquered - "test fire booster rocket splashed down".

It was the same way on 0.23.5, no? I never had to unlock each part separately, just unlock each "group".

When I go into Contracts building, I see a lot of Contracts that say something like "Radial Decoupler landed". Apparently, the "landed" part means the contract is to simply activate the radial decoupler while landed. Kind of odd... but okay. Let me try it. I put a capsule with a decoupler, then an engine. No fuel, just those three parts. I go to the launch pad, set the first "stage" to activate the decoupler, and hit the space bar. Done! Contract finished. I just find the "landed" part kind of odd. Who ever uses a radial decoupler when on the ground? (Go ahead, educate me and prove that I have no imagination. LOL)

So it seems I just wasn't using these boosters in my previous games. As Scott's video shows, this overheating is clearly not new in 0.24. Thanks!

oops already answered, didn't see page 2 Oh well. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin Atmosphere Kerbin's atmosphere contains oxygen and extends to roughly 69,078 meters. Its atmosphere exponentially rarefies with altitude with a scale height of 5 km.[3] The atmospheric pressure on Kerbin at an altitude expressed in meters, generally is: The thickness of Kerbin's atmosphere makes it suitable for aerobraking and using parachutes to save fuel during reentry and landing. Debris above approximately 23 km will not be removed.

Argh that sux, yeah might be too late. I just made a post in another thread, Scott Manley gave advice on how to prevent this type of thing... but since it already started, prob too late to save your 0.23.5, perhaps someone else can help you save it. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86437-Proper-Way-to-Back-Up-23-5-Game-Data

Well there's a wiki page for it http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Overheating But it says you can basically ignore overheating... LOL Gonna be a lot of wiki changes coming! "As of version 0.23.5, overheat only really matters if the overheat bar reaches 100%. If the bar fills up, the engine explodes; if it doesn't fill up, there's no problem. In practice, this means that overheating can often be entirely ignored. Fuel supply is frequently exhausted long before it reaches 100%, or the burn is completed and the engine shutdown again."

Scott Manley had a great suggestion in his tutorial videos... for Steam users. Go into Steam/steamapps/common and copy the Kerbal Space Program folder to another location. He says this is all legal to do. Then you always have a pristine, untouched version in the Steam folder... and you run your actual KSP games from the other folder that you copied. Then you can add mods, do whatever you like, without worry. Plus, you don't even have to load up Steam to run the game. I don't need Steam running in the background all the time. I have a KSP 0.23 folder for the previous version's games, and now I made a KSP 0.24 folder for my new games. I deleted local content thru Steam for the old KSP, and then I clicked "Install game" to get the newest version today.

So I was just doing my first few contracts, got a decoupler and added one booster surrounded by four more in symmetry. When I launched, the 5 boosters got to 100% overheat fairly quickly, and the outside ring of four boosters made a bang and disappeared. The fifth booster kept pushing me upward. Is this new behavior in 0.24, or am I just a forgetful person and nothing changed from 0.23?

I dunno if it will help anyone at all, but this reddit post is one I've been saving for quite a while (knowing that someday I would play KSP and probably want to have this sort of information). Sub's Plane/SSTO Design for Beginners *Long Post* submitted 10 months ago * by subhumann

Don't quote me, and I can't quote where I read it (while studying and trying to learn this game), but he said "light rovers" and I believe I remember reading that in higher gravity planets, the wheels literally break off. I think it's right in the wiki, hang on... yep. It's in the "bugs" section for Eve. I'll be following this thread because Eve is my next big goal, never been there. It's quite the challenge, I'm realizing! I gotta get going with planes and gliders first, it seems...

This same exact thing happened to me just now. I was landing at Mun, I hit the M key to zoom out to orbital map, and suddenly a HUGE explosion happened and my lander was gone. I had no idea what exploded or why, although I think I narrowed it down because I almost always do an F5 quicksave unless I forget. In this case, I had a quicksave, so I loaded it up and I discovered my monopropellant tank (for the RCS thrusters) was almost empty. So what I think happened was that I was controlling my lander from the orbital map and made a correction that didn't execute properly because of the fuel running out. I must have impacted the surface. But wow did it ever scare me because it was a very loud explosion with a lot of bright flashes and, of course, I was not expecting it at all. Clearly this doesn't apply to the OP because it doesn't seem they were anywhere near the Mun surface. I definitely was near it.

Which is why this really needs to be first and foremost, in the next game update - an "economy" of some sort. I just started playing KSP but that's my opinion after about 2 weeks of play. I fully understand I purchased a "work in progress", not a fully fleshed-out game yet. I hope they keep improving the "game" part, the astrophysics is already very well done (harmless atmospheric friction and lack of re-entry worries notwithstanding).

So you mean you do a lot of probes and stuff like that? Or do you mean that, at a certain point in career mode, you can do lander missions without having any Kerbals on board? Some sort of automatic lander, and you have to transmit everything? Having a Kerbal there means you get crew report and eva report points tho, could you get those with probes and such? I'm still early in my first game, all I've been doing is going to Minimus and landing at different biomes, each time I come back with 600 science points if not more. Of course, eventually I guess I'll find all the biomes but I haven't even begun Mun yet. Until I finish my first game I won't really know how much "excess" of science is out there for the taking. Is there plenty, or do you have to visit almost every planet and moons before you have enough science points to fill out the career unlock screen?

The end result of this (to my way of thinking as a beginner) is that you know you will be returning to the same place multiple times... because no experiment will give you 100% of the science points available the very first time you run them... and because you can't run two of the experiments until you DO return a second time (science Jr. and mystery goo). Therefore, since I know I will be going to every biome at least twice (I think I've found that it even takes THREE visits to get 100% of the science points available), I don't worry about running multiple experiments. I do my one experiment with each device and then I get back home ASAP, and immediately do another trip back to wherever I was. I think science could be designed better, for better gameplay, because I really don't look forward to making two or three trips to every location in the game. One trip is plenty, thank you very much! But... it's not my game, and perhaps I'm not seeing the reason (strategy) for their decision to make science work this way. It certainly makes career mode take longer, which we obviously want - I don't want to complete career mode in a few days of gameplay! Career mode should last months if not years before complete IMO. I don't know how long it takes yet because I'm still playing my first game.

Good question, I had the same one looking at the new antenna I just unlocked in Career mode. Comparing the two of them, I was like... how do these stats make any sense? Then again... I still don't have a good grasp on science yet, so it isn't really any surprise to me when things don't make sense. People keep explaining it to me, but I don't know why it isn't "clicking" in my brain. I never transmit anything, usually because I forgot to put antennas on my capsule (lol), but why take less science points when you can just return home and get full points? This is the part I just don't get. Scott Manley showed me a trick in his beginner's tutorial, but I often forget to use it... something like (a) do an EVA, ( take data, © store data, (d) re-enter capsule. This is the important trick to use so that you don't have to transmit stuff, correct? I've set my landers up like Scott showed - all the science is in its own stage, and after I've landed and done all my science, I go around and have Jebediah collect all the experiments and return them to the capsule. Then I can just detach the science stage as it's now all just dead weight.

Yeah I click on the target object to see its distance, then I set my apoapsis to that distance, and then I swing it around my orbit to see if I can find an encounter. If the vertical is quite a ways off, I might not get one and I might try to use the magenta sliders (up/down) to see if I can get on real quick (but not spend too much time on those).

I got Jebediah stuck too while following along with Scotts videos. hehe But I actually did what Scott suggested, and I used the little thrusters to get myself off Minimus and back into a Kerbin orbit... and then when I had used up all my thruster fuel and was REALLY "dead in the water", I did about 20 EVA's with good guy Jeb pushing on the back of the capsule to slow down my orbit until it fell onto Kerbin... and somehow Jebediah returned home safe and sound! Here's the thread I made last week about it - I guess it's a common problem? Anyhoo... yeah, getting an encounter is hit or miss with me too, I struggle with doing the orbits but it's almost more a function of the oftentimes problematic adjustment sliders. I zoom out, they go away and its so small I can't click to re-open them... so I have to zoom back in, click to get the sliders out, then zoom out again... I'm sure this is a routine everyone goes thru, but that's why I post here and read the forums to try and learn how others do it and hopefully pick up some easy tips to make playing KSP easier. I def do two maneuvers to Minimus, like Scott showed, one to get out to the general vicinity (hopefully with an encounter showing but if not I can usually get there anyways) and then a second "burn" at the ascending node or somewhere near there. The second burn is more "up/down" (the magenta sliders) than anything else.

I was curious... and I think I found the answer. See post from Mr. Orion at bottom of page 1 here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/9793-Does-anyone-renember-0-9 So it appears version 0.10.1 had OVR THR and then it changed to the current RCS. That's a real old image of a navball!!! Google search for the win. hehe P.S. This thread was very helpful to me, as a noob. Good explanations from everyone. The navball always working "backwards" on one axis confused me, why it was doing that...

Does it make any difference which side of the Mun we "intercept" when we make a transit or a transfer or whatever you call it? In other words, we always have an unlimited variety of ways we can approach a target... so is it better to orbit a planet or moon in a particular direction (relative to that planet or moons orbital direction around Kerbol)? Let's say that, as seen from a view far above a planet or moon, it's circling Kerbol in counter-clockwise fashion. Does it matter whether we enter our orbit going "clockwise" or "counterclockwise"?

I think the hardest part is realizing that, in order to plot an orbit to intercept a planet or moon, you have to "fish" for it somewhere way out ahead of where it currently is located... because by the time your rocketship gets out there, the target will have moved quite a bit. Scott explained this very well in episode 6 where he plots a course out to Minimus and shows how it's done.

He figured correctly. I just started playing KSP, and one of my first posts here was about a crash, and the possibility of rescue. Little did I know that a few episodes later, Scott would come to the rescue. He put the parachute in the same stage as the capsule engine. So if you used that engine in space, the chute would pop open. Or if you opened the chute in Kerbin atmosphere, then (and only then) would that engine ignite. Not sure that's exactly what he wanted. hehe Perhaps he left it for us as a test, to see if we were paying attention? I felt very proud of myself for realizing the staging was wrong before I launched, but I'm not exactly the most confident noob just yet at KSP so I need all the self-confidence I can get.