Wanderfound

OTOH, the new solar panels make Ions rather impractical in the outer system. Looks like the nukes are still the king of interplanetary.

All of the 45's are open, five of the 90's. EVA only requires a single upgrade to the astronaut complex; √75,000 on standard difficulty (Mission Planning is the thing that requires both Mission Control and the Tracking Station to be upgraded). EVA sharply accelerates your science gathering; just hanging onto the outside of a capsule, collecting and storing EVA reports over different biomes as you orbit Kerbin can deliver quite a bit. A single Munar landing and return will deliver a couple of hundred science points; if you hop around biomes while you're up there, you can multiply that. A Science Jr returned from the Mun is worth about 100 science all by itself. Raising funds is all about efficient design and stacking missions. None of your early rockets should cost more than √40,000 (and that's for a Munshot, LKO stuff can be done for half of that), and you should be trying to fulfil multiple contracts with every flight. Don't just fly to orbit, test a part on the launchpad, collect science from space and rescue a Kerbal or something while you're up there. Flight #6 involved completing four "rescue Kerbal" missions (and the "rendezvous in space" one) in a single launch. There's currently about √500,000 in the bank, but I just blew half a million upgrading the R&D centre. Launchpad, Tracking Station, Astronaut Complex, Mission Control, Admin Building, R&D and the VAB are all at level 2. Obviously, I've been playing this game for a while. But the basic principles hold whether it's a new player or an advanced one.

While science grinding is certainly tedious, it's by no means necessary. You get enough science from a single Mun run that the tiny scraps of science around KSC aren't worth bothering with. Current career progression, restarted after the release of 1.0.2: Flight 1: altitude records, atmospheric and grounded goo pods and crew reports. Flight 2: suborbital hop, crew reports and goo pods from space. Flight 3: orbit, Science Jr and temperature scans from space. Flight 4: Munar flyby, assorted science in high Kerbin and Munar space. Flight 5: Munar landing, bulk science. From then on, science pretty much looks after itself while I go about my business; just grab it whenever convenient, and throw up another Mun/Minmus lander if you need a bit in a hurry. All science returned rather than transmitted; if you're bringing a Kerbal home anyway, she may as well go and collect the goo results etc. before reentry. You're still reentering with just a bare pod. If you get stuck for science in there somewhere, ye olde RT-10/Stayputnik/Science Jr/parachute method is a much faster way of collecting easy science than driving around KSC. Fire one into the ocean, one into the mountains, one over the desert, one into the grasslands...

Incidentally, if you come out of timewarp at just the right moment, it's possible to make your craft appear deep inside Kerbin's atmosphere while still at well above escape velocity. Boom.

Opened up the FAR thread, saw a bunch of posts celebrating the release of the new version, started my happy dance. Then I realised that I'd accidentally opened up a bit of the thread from a year ago, which was coincidentally just after an old new FAR release. Poot.

As previously, if you want realism, go FAR. Stock aero is less fanciful than it was before, but it's still a long way from the real thing. Incidentally, though: see Skylon and the assorted other real-world spaceplane proposals. Big wings are about carrying heavy loads or making high-G turns at low speed; if you want to go fast, the wings need to shrink or disappear entirely. Hence the prevalence of lifting bodies and stub wings. With enough power, even a brick will fly.

Change the root part; either press "4" or use the bit up with the translation/rotation icons. Then select the fuselage, then the probe core.

One issue with the altitude records: how to differentiate genuine level flight from a screenshot taken at the apoapsis of a zoom climb? Perhaps two screenshots, ten seconds apart or so?

Temp-gauge crashes are not inevitable, BTW. Had them open most of the way to orbit with this one:

Of some relevance to this discussion: http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html

1) Mk2 fuselage pieces do attach radially. Mk2 cargo bays don't (and don't like to be radially attached to, either). 2) When all else fails, cubic octagonal struts. Instant attachment node wherever you need it.

Most important, though: what's the range if you refuel in LKO? Almost all of my old interplanetary ships were designed to take an LKO topup.

As others are saying, the problem is most likely a too-rapid ascent. You want a launch TWR of around 1.5 or so. OTOH, there could be some heat conduction issue. F11 to get the heat overlay in flight, F10 to get the progress bars (but be aware that the F10 thingie is currently causing a memory leak, so may induce computer crashes). Screenshot of the rocket, and some speed/altitude details of when it's exploding?

Apparently there's a memory leak issue with the new heat gauges; F10 to disable them if you're having trouble.

By "landing engine" they mean the Mun. To land a rocket in atmosphere, use parachutes. Apart from the aerospike, any rocket with good vacuum efficiency is going to have relatively lousy atmospheric thrust. That's just a consequence of how rockets work. This is a part of the game that was broken pre-1.0; now it's fixed.

You'd probably get better results if you lost the middle fins. You might get away with it if you keep it close to prograde, but as a general rule, drag near the nose is to be minimised as much as possible.

Toolbar buttons to open it don't even show up when I install it. I'm sure it'll be sorted shortly.

Echoing many others: your poll is missing FAR. OldStock was horrid, NuStock (either version) is tolerable, but if you're into aircraft you want the full monty.

It's a pain to do without having RCS Build Aid working, but I'm thinking that there'll be good possibilities in vertically stacked turbo/RAPIER and turbo/nuke combos.

The engines designed to be used in a first stage are still fine at sea level. LV-T30, LV-T45, Mainsail, Skipper, etc.

The LV-909 is a high-efficiency small vacuum engine. It's not intended to be used at sea level.

Kerbodyne Triske. Turbos and RAPIERs, singing in harmony. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ga8orb9xrpxgk21/Kerbodyne%20Triske.craft?dl=0

Not to forget hyper-economical deployment of satellites and microprobes. Another demonstrator... Kerbodyne Triske. Turbos and RAPIERs, singing in harmony. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ga8orb9xrpxgk21/Kerbodyne%20Triske.craft?dl=0

Kerbodyne Triske. Turbos and RAPIERs, singing in harmony. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ga8orb9xrpxgk21/Kerbodyne%20Triske.craft?dl=0

Tried some RAPIER/Turbo/RAPIER builds? If the different engines have flat spots at different speeds, they may cover for each other nicely.