ElWanderer

Were you flying the craft at the time it crossed the sphere of influence boundary? I remember reading somewhere that the contract system doesn't always trigger if the craft wasn't active (i.e. you were controlling something else or in the space centre) at the time of transition. I've not tested it myself, though I dif have an early career probe failed to trigger a Mun fly-by contract for reasons I never got to the bottom of. I'd be interested to know if that's true or just hearsay!

Sounds like phantom control inputs, perhaps. With SAS off, what are the pitch, roll and yaw indicators showing? If they're not centred hit modifier-x to cancel trim (modifier is alt on Windows) Do you have a joystick? Alternatively, this sounds a bit like the "universe gone mad" that I've heard described after using the klaw causes a game-breaking bug (klaws are kraken-bait), but I've no experience of it myself.

Yes, it's the act of planting that gives you XP, not the existence of the flag. I plant a flag then immediately take it back down to avoid clutter.

Yeah, as you mouse over placed parts it likes to pick up their symmetry. I understand the frustration. You should be able to tame it by hitting the R key to toggle between radial and mirror symmetry just before placing the part. There's also F for switching between symmetry around vessel and symmetry around part, but I've not got to work last time I tried. Lastly X and shift-X toggle through/back through the number of symmetry.

I often get this "encounter, no encounter, encounter, no encounter..." effect when transferring to Minmus (the smaller the target's sphere of influence, the smaller the change or error in trajectory calculation needed to miss it - Jool's sphere of influence is massive). It's quite distracting as Kerbal Alarm Clock keeps creating then deleting a sphere of influence change alarm. I find that going into time warp makes the 'wrong', no encounter orbit show, but if I do nothing, I end up where I was aiming rather than where the game showed me I was going. I'm not sure if this is a problem with floating point calculations or a display issue. Or both. The one thing I find that helps is to plot a dummy manoeuvre node just outside the sphere of influence change. That often kicks it into showing the right trajectory. If not, Kerbal Alarm Clock will let me know when I'm close so I don't warp through the encounter.

Hmmm, you mean the whole part explodes/vanishes? :/ What does the F3 log say after the chute has gone? It should tell you if a part has been destroyed by heat. If it's not saying that, I'm pretty sure it's because they are semi-deploying. I don't think the log tells you when an exposed chute or extended solar panel is burnt off. If it does tell you that it is the heat destroying the whole part, then that would be weird*, but at least it's not down to the staging! If you hit alt+F12 -> thermal tab, there is an option to add the temperature details to the right-click parts menu. Then in flight you can right-click on parts to see how hot they're getting. I can't remember what the heat tolerance of the chutes is, but that can be looked up in the VAB. * given how gentle re-entry heat is, even at 120%, from an 80km by 30km orbit.

Are you staging the parachutes before re-entry? The default semi-deploy pressure will trigger them in the midst of the flames if they have been staged... tweaking that setting to something much higher (0.25-0.5) means they'll pop out much lower. If you have just a chute, pod and heat shield and you are flying shield to prograde (which happens by itself with SAS off), it won't be heat transference.

I think both those engines require a right-click -> run test rather than staging. I remember being caught out by this in v0.90 when I staged off lots of bits from craft, all the while wondering why the contract to test an LV-N wouldn't complete.

What velocity were you doing at the time? I think there is a change in the atmosphere's temperature curve above 8km, but it sounds like what you're seeing is the result of drag going up a great deal in the transonic region I.e. near mach one which is about 340m/s.

I'll admit I usually guess where abouts to place a burn, then slide the manouevre node around. On your second question - Set up two manoeuvre nodes before you do any burns. First an ejection that takes you to the right Ap (46.4Mm) then a mid-course plane correction at the AN/DN. The game will then show the resultant orbit as if you had done both burns perfectly. You will probably need to slide these nodes around before you get this orbit to intercept Minmus. Also, its likely your first burn won't be perfect - you may need to recalculate the second one afterwards. As said above, this is a fairly standard way of getting to other planets, so worth learning.

Yes (to your edit). To be more precise about "burning at the AN/DN", you burn near (not necessarily precisely at) one node such that your apoapsis is at the right altitude at the opposite node, at the right time to intercept the target. It's where your apoapsis ends up that is important, though you'll only need to burn far from the node if your starting orbit is very eccentric.

That would definitely work, though to match inclination fully you'd want the launch site to line up with one of the ascending/descending nodes. Hard to judge when on the pad, but if you have any other craft in an equatorial orbit you could target Minmus with that and so find out where the nodes are.

It's more efficient to burn at the ascending or descending node, but that requires waiting until Minmus is in the right place such that you'll get an intercept. It's more efficient because you don't need to make a plane change. There must be a phase angle between the nodes and Minmus that is the best time to burn, but I don't know it. Making a plane change in low Kerbin orbit is more expensive, but makes setting an intercept easier. In the middle is plotting two burns - an intercept then a mid-course plane change at the AN/DN. Trickier as you may have to fiddle both manoeuvre nodes to get an intercept in the first place, and.the first burn never quite goes to plan so you may need to re-plot the plane change. Your burn from Kerbin orbit should put your Kerbin apoapsis close to the distance that Minmus orbits (about 46-47Mm) - that way you'll be going very slowly when you reach Minmus. If your burn puts you in an orbit that takes you out to 80Mm such that you meet Minmus going out or coming back, you'll be going much faster at intercept and it'll cost more to get into orbit.

Ziv's original text refers to training five crew "to land" on each moon as there "wouldn't be time" to train one Kerbal for all five moons. That was written long before Kerbals could have specific roles so while it could now be read strictly to require five pilots, having five scientists specialised for each moon is an interesting twist that I would have thought everyone would be happy with. Especially as a probe core could be doing all the flying! I'm pretty sure you can take more Kerbals than are required if you want to. It's more mass to drag around to give them each somewhere to sit, after all. Generally if something makes a mission harder, it'll be considered okay.

I'm pretty sure that they fixed that in v1.0.1. Ejecting a fairing will shed mass. I tend to wait until 40km, though I've not experimented with getting rid lower in the atmosphere to see if anything untoward happens. (quote follows as my tablet is going a bit mad)

Right-click on each parachute and change the minimum deploy pressure setting to something like 0.3. That way they won't deploy until about 6-7km up, by which time outside temperatures will be much lower and they won't burn off. I set mine up this way in the VAB so I don't have to remember to trigger them on the way down. I don't think there is a way to reset the state in-game, but you could probably do it by editing the savegame file, if you know what you're doing.

That looks like it needs struts, lots of struts. I'd be tempted to replace the second stage with 2.5m parts even though it'll be overpowered - perhaps couple that with a less powerful first stage. If you transition from 2.5m to 1.25m at the docking port on the bottom of your payload, you can put struts inside the fairing (strut upwards). I've taken to putting (going downwards) payload, docking port, probe core to control rocket once detached from payload, rockomax adaptor type 2, fairing base. Then I strut upwards from the adaptor to the payload. I didn't have much success trying to strut from the fairing base, hence the adaptor.

I'm not the OP or Ziv, but as I love this challenge (and wish I had the time to do one - was halfway through a v0.90 attempt when Squad dropped v1 and my wife gave birth...) I'll chime in: The spirit of Ziv's original challenge was a one-ship-from-Kerbin-orbit mission. The rule about being able to do one refuelling mission was intended as a last resort for people who've got close but run out of fuel. You shouldn't plan the mission around being able to refuel. Not taking a convertor saves you a few tons of mass Some of the maps have been updated. The only real change is the delta-v required to reach Kerbin orbit and land/return from Laythe. Ziv's rules always said that a mod that gave information was absolutely fine. It's over-powered part mods he didn't like. Yes, but because you'll be using resources in-situ, it'll be an in-situ resource usage (ISRU) mission i.e. different scoreboard. This gave me a headache, but I'm lacking sleep. My opinion would be to leave it as-is or else it'll make reviewing submissions much, much harder. I never wrote up my first attempt as there were just too many screenshots and it turned out my notes weren't as complete as I thought they were - was hard enough for me to go through it all, let alone get someone else to do so! Also, loading an experiment into a lab as data to be processed doesn't use up the experiment - the experiment itself can still be taken home. So I don't see the need to allow transmissions.

It didn't work when I tried it earlier. Could've sworn I used it successfully in v0.90 :s

There is a button that toggles between symmetry on the vessel and symmetry on the part you're attaching to. Checking the wiki, it's the F key.

It's more awkward now the nuclear engines don't use oxidiser. Simply swapping one in for another engine won't show it in its best light unless you also change the tanks. Anyway, this sounds like a question that could be answered by the awesome engine comparison http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/121565-Optimal-engine-charts-for-1-0-2 thread in the General KSP Discussion forum.

Changing inclination is cheaper the slower you are going. To do a complete u-turn you need to burn twice your current velocity - better to do that when you're travelling at 200m/s far from Kerbin than at 2200m/s when in Low Kerbin Orbit.

To answer your PS, I think you mean a retrograde orbit. Prograde orbits are rotating the same way as the parent, retrograde orbits are in the opposite direction. If you intend to accept a lot of rescue contracts and your rescue craft need top-ups, then it sounds like a retrograde tanker could work for you. I usually aim to have enough delta-v off the launch pad so don't use tankers in Kerbin orbit (yet), though I might be cutting it pretty fine for the example you've given.

There have been a couple of threads that I've noticed, but not much comment. I keep meaning to post my own experiences with landers that drain symmetrically-mounted tanks unevenly for no apparent reason, but haven't got around to it yet

Usually if I rescue someone from Kerbin orbit, they are given 2XP on landing due to having orbited Kerbin, so yes I think it would track their experience if you sent them off to other bodies rather than returning to ground immediately. Interesting idea, though note that not all stranded Kerbals start in a nice, low, equatorial orbit of Kerbin now...