butterknife

I don't believe I've got aerospikes yet. I really haven't messed with the space plane tree at all. It's been all rocketry, research, and probes. There's a big chunk in the middle where I haven't even really touched. I've neglected to even get the nuclear engines. My kerbals fear the big triangular warning signs. I like the idea of a lander can rover, though. I think I'll do that. The lander they came in on got knocked over. Totally the fault of Solar Winds, and not shoddy piloting or engineering. Yup. Solar winds. Anyway, it's not getting back up. My only real option is to send a new ship down. And also, it'll have to be able to gather the same research they had. Because science cannot be left behind. I'm kind of considering leaving a science lab, and one volunteer behind. You know. For research purposes. I don't have a claw available. Claws are scary.

I'd also like to send a rover, in case I can't land close enough to them. But I had a heck of a time trying to detach the last one and get it down to the ground on the one I sent with our three heros. Should I just use like, a probe core to guide a mini rocket pack lander?

I got ambitious. I didn't plan enough. I sent Jeb, Bill, and Bob to Duna without enough DV to even get back into orbit for a return flight. I need to send a rescue. The three may have sent back a sizable amount of science, but it wasn't worth their lives. They were able to transmit enough science, that Kerbodyne was able to create the KL-2L and requisite fuel tanks in anticipation for this mission's booster requirements. But I'm not really sure what the rest of the ship should look like. Any tips?

I don't think it's really essential information. Honestly, the fun as a beginner here is finding out if my back-of-napkin calculations pan out the way I think they should. The game part of the game is getting an intuitive feel for the parts and their thrust requirements.

Yeah. I'd seen that, but I don't really dig the look of the models. They don't really look kerbal-ish. Kerbish? Kerbash? And from the screen shots I'd seen, the balloons, not the airships, seemed like solid structures. So it's more like implementing an antigravity part than a balloon.

I just started playing KSP a week or two ago. I tinkered with it a while back when it first came out, but with the introduction of Career mode and the non-spammable science experiments, it seemed more fun. I finally crash landed on Eve with a probe, and I'm almost through all the upgrade stages. I think I'm gonna build some more probe rovers before I commit any of my Kerbals to anything beyond the Kerbin system. Safety is Job 1. And because of that, I ended up thinking it'd be really rad if I could build a probe that uses balloons to get a measure of a planet's barometric readings, temperature ranges, and be able to map out the different biomes. It could even be used to probe Jool. They might even be useful for extended EVA travel on Eve, Duna, and Laythe. As far as ease of implementation, I think you could just change the models on Parachutes, and give the canopy a constant minimum lift at low barometric pressures. The difference being, though, that the balloon expands the higher it gets, where a parachute acts conversely.