Wanderfound

If you think your rep is uselessly high, go for Aggressive Negotiations. That's what it's for.

I would be a big fan of this. Any time you can reduce clicks or avoid a mouse-keyboard switch increases the user-friendliness appeal of the mod.

Whatever you like or don't is fine, but variety does appear. I just put a Fine Print-ed Scansat mapper into a 100km polar orbit around the Mun. As well as netting me a bucket of cash and science for the satellite contract, it also let me get a full topo map of the Mun, which I radioed in to fulfil a "science from around the Mun" contract for more loot and science. Only cost about √40,000, and it has enough juice left to go repeat the job around Minmus when it's done. Those lightweight satellite payloads are much easier to fling about than a full Kerballed capsule. It would be nice if you could easily see the orbital parameters before choosing to accept it, though. And a few more low-orbit missions might not be a bad idea.

It's not the bulk of the mods, I don't think. I've similarly got an old, battered and underspecced computer that is running lowish resolution graphics settings and a fairly modest mods list (all flight, contract and build utilities, no parts except DRE, TAC-LS, Scansat and RPM). Even if I scrub the install and redownload everything regularly, it reliably crashes after every 3 or 4 uses of quickload or revert. It doesn't like too many scene changes or big subassemblies in the construction buildings, either. I get less crashes if I strip down the mods list, but it's never zero. (no, not x64)

Cost after recovery on a large (> orange tank) spaceplane tanker is about √6,000. No way am I flying in stock, but if you do a FAR/DRE category I'll put something up.

I can build something with that basic airframe shape (i.e. a lifting body delta with wingtip vertical stabilisers), sure. What do you want it to be able to do? That image looks like a pure rocket rather than the usual spaceplane jet/rocket hybrid. Is that factor important?

SABREs or not, you won't be getting too much above 1,500m/s on jets in FAR (about 1,750m/s is the max for a lightweight low-drag speedster, which this ain't). As soon as you max out your jet speed, light the rockets.

Docking aids: unnecessary if you're good at docking, and totally redundant if you have RPM. Docking from IVA is easy with the docking cameras. Also: NRAP was not updated for .25 compatability, as far as I knew... I'd be inclined to swap in Kerbal Flight Indicators in place of NavUtilities; just put your prograde marker on the runway and cruise in.

It depends on both your piloting and your aircraft design. Something built specifically for low altitude speed can tolerate fairly extreme forces: And at high altitude, even a comparatively fragile craft can manage much higher speeds: As a general guideline, try to stay below hypersonic speeds (i.e., < Mach 5) until you're above 25,000m, and be gentle with your control inputs if you're low and fast enough to be generating atmospheric effects.

There already is one; it's in the difficulty menu. Along with the "give funds" and "give rep". The difficulty of career mode is fully customisable, and that is a good thing. KSP works from kindergarten to NASA.

You turn it off by toggling off RCS with the R key or by throttling down when your main engines are deactivated. And you shouldn't be using RCS in atmosphere; it's not strong enough to overcome aerodynamic forces, so you're mostly just wasting RCS fuel. Also, any force on a spaceplane is effectively a lever on to the CoM; the closer the thruster is to CoM in regards to the relevant axis, the less rotation authority it has. Your blocks are very close to the longitudinal axis, hence the lack of roll authority. If you want RCS control from four 4-way RCS blocks, you need them all placed bang on top of CoM. Either one on each flank plus one each on top and below, or all four placed at 45°. If you don't want them on top of CoM (or if you want more rotation authority, rather than just translation), you need to use eight blocks, placed in two sets of four balanced either side of CoM. Like so: In atmosphere, you control roll with your aerodynamic surfaces. In vacuum, the cockpit torque (possibly aided by an optional SAS unit) is plenty strong enough to control rotation; RCS is primarily for translation during docking. Again, however, I highly recommend the RCS Build Aid mod. As well as helping to place your thrusters, it will tell you exactly how much power they have (in terms of both torque and thrust) in any direction you choose.

While you do have something of a point (most of which will be dealt with in the soon-to-come post-scope-completion polishing updates, however), there is an important difference that weakens your analogy: Mario Bros is a point-scoring level-beating competitive game that is based around "winning" and "losing". KSP isn't. There is no scoreboard, there is no victory condition, there is no Princess. The only way to lose is to not have fun. Some people have more fun with tight game-imposed limitations; some people prefer the freedom of the sandbox. And a lot of KSP fans appear to enjoy a bit of both. Keeping it flexible and allowing everyone to play the sort of KSP that they want to play is a fundamental part of the game's success.

Well, the simplest answer is: why do you care what inclination you're on when you're orbiting Duna? A high inclination orbit is no more difficult to land from than an equatorial orbit. If it's about returning from interplanetary, well, again: you don't have to travel in the equatorial plane all the time (it can be more efficient to do so, but it isn't compulsory). If you do have a need to change inclinations (e.g. to rendezvous with a fuel depot), though: the higher and slower [1] you are when you make the change, the lower the delta-V required. Change the inclination on the way in to the encounter, not after you've circularised into a low orbit. [1] These naturally go together. Although it's a bit counter-intuitive (due to the fact that you accelerate to raise an orbit), you're always going slower at apoapsis than at periapsis. Think of an orbit as like a playground swing; the apoapsis is the bit at the top of your swing, where you stop [2] and come back down, while the periapsis is at the bottom, where you're going really fast. [2] Your horizontal speed doesn't actually stop and reverse, but your vertical speed does. And, while it's doing that, your horizontal speed reaches its orbital minimum [3]. [3] Nested footnotes! Yay!

Finally got a clean lap done. Nothing too spectacular, but just for the sake of getting a time on the board: Start at 6:00 Finish at 7:46 Route: So, 1:46 for Team Kerbodyne Racing​.

It does sound like a piloting issue. In a craft with a decent amount of thrust, it's quite easy to hit escape velocity while still in Kerbin's atmosphere: During ascent, shut down engines as soon as your apoapsis reaches the altitude of your desired orbit. Then, coast until just before apoapsis, point just below prograde and do your circularisation burn. You don't burn all the way up unless you're doing an extremely shallow ascent: Even then, you'll still usually shut down and coast for a bit before apoapsis.

Keep in mind that stock parachutes will detach as soon as your wheels touch ground, however. If you want proper landing drag chutes, you need the Realchutes mod.

We need screenshots to diagnose properly. However, for balancing spaceplane RCS (and many other spaceplane building tricks), the RCS Build Aid mod is invaluable.

Many ways. For some examples, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1527285&viewfull=1#post1527285 and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97802-Fun-with-IVA-reentry-(lotsa-images) and http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1504987&viewfull=1#post1504987 for a few different ways of doing it. If you're not going VTOL, it's more about post-touchdown stability rather than super-low stall speed. So, wideset gear, good ground clearance, tailstrike guards. And possibly retrothrust for emergency braking: RCS and Vernors for the reasonable version, Sepratrons for the extreme version.

Incidentally, life support mods like TAC-LS (which does use fairly realistic mass for life support supplies) can easily provide several years of supply with just a few small parts. Kerbals are small, and Kerbin days are short; life support isn't that big a burden. The only real danger in TAC-LS is in running out of electricity, and that is easily dealt with by sensible design.

Nah, get testing; "how user-friendly is this ship to a novice pilot?" is a legitimate criteria. And if nothing else, it should produce some entertaining screenshots. And, as usual, see the reentry and landing guide in the Kerbodyne thread. The ​Skua should make a decent landing trainer, BTW; good low-altitude stability, tailstrike proof and not too narrow landing gear.

Small-winged ships where you can't spare a control surface, lifting body ships that don't have normal control surfaces; Duna flyers; etc. Or if you just want more of 'em. If you really, really, really hate waiting to decelerate during reentry, smother the rear fuselage in the things. But, as mentioned: they're nearly always a convenience rather than a necessity. Reentry is not that long a process if you do it right; scrub off as much speed as possible before hitting atmosphere, and don't come in so steep that you can't level out in time. Your first job during spaceplane reentry is always to level off; once you've done that and are in control of your altitude, then you can start pushing the limits. Do it right and orbit-to-runway can be done in about ten minutes, even with FAR and DRE in play. Once you get out of the hypersonic (< Mach 5), your main threat is aerodynamic failure rather than overheating. And, thanks to FAR's new wing strength tweakable, aero failures are nowhere near as threatening as they used to be.

I find it more the other way, actually. With a manned ship, there's always the option to get out and push in order to spin the solar the right way or rescue a decaying orbit, but get an unKerballed probe into a bad spot and you're out of luck.

No chance that it managed a gravity assist from something?

Also: to keep chutes intact through heating, they need to be shielded. You can achieve this by just putting them in the shadow of the heated parts (i.e. on top of the fuselage, towards the rear), or by using a parachute bay: Regardless, you shouldn't be burning anything off during the ascent. Climb a bit faster to start with, and level off once you get above the danger zone. Heat is a function of air density as well as temperature; a lethal temp at 15,000m is often a perfectly safe temp at 30,000m. You'd likely also benefit from DaMichel's Kerbal Flight Data mod. Amongst many other useful functions, it also allows for easy temperature monitoring:

If you're flying with FAR, no extra parts are needed. Just set a pair of control surfaces as maxed-out spoilers, and another pair as either maxed-out flaps or negative max spoilers. Like so: Whatever you use, balance them vertically; you don't want them to be introducing any pitch up or pitch down. Make sure they're behind CoM. They make reentry deceleration quicker and easier, but they're not actually necessary. Control your descent rate by pitch, level off just above burn-up altitude, and descend as your speed drops to keep it riding the edge of the fire. Stay at about 30,000m until you reach Mach 5, then gradually drop to 5,000m as you slow to Mach 2. Once you're there, S-turns can scrub the rest of the speed quickly.