AbacusWizard

That means it counts as a landing!

Thanks--I find the old "Earthrise" photo very inspiring and wanted to incorporate that general idea into a picture that captures the loneliness of being that far away from home. The tricky part (because of tidal locking) was finding a landing zone where Kerbin would be at a nice-looking angle above the horizon. After landing I realized there was a big crater nearby and figured that would be a nice foreground. I like the way it turned out.

For duplicates I often use the same name followed by Greek letters, such as "Orbital Skiff Alpha," "Orbital Skiff Beta," etc. For permanent orbital stations I alter the name based on the location: "Mun Orbital Command," "Minmus Orbital Command," etc. For "workhorse" designs I don't bother with separate names but often append a parenthetical describing its current task: several Phoenix III - class atomic tugs might be "P3 (spaceplane to Laythe)," "P3 (base to Duna)," and "P3 (returning from Eve)," for instance.

If you want to transfer data--for example, from a science part to a command pod--you move the kerbalnaut close to the science part, then right-click the science part and select "take data," then move the kerbalnaut close the the command pod, right-click the pod, and select "store experiments." You don't need to right-click the kerbalnaut herself unless you want her to collect a surface sample or write an EVA report. Any other "not as good as it used to be" issues?

I use the existing service bays occasionally early in the game... and then once I unlock fairings, I never use them again. The Mk3 cargo bays, though, I use all the time! They're great!

Yeah, that's the one! Clarke was an amazing writer.

I was extremely pleased when I first discovered that KSP had a demo version, and my positive experience with the demo version was one of the main reasons I decided to buy the game. It seems that very few games have demo versions now-a-days, and that is unfortunate. It's good to see one excellent exception.

Go to Dres and make a rock garden (complete with visitor center and landing pads) with asteroids!

Nice--I'm also reminded of an Arthur C. Clarke story (I think it's called "Birthright"?) about a father taking his young son out of the underground moon colony in a rover for the first time, driving out over the horizon, and showing him--for the first time in his life--Earth. Then it turns into even more of a tear-jerker when he tells the kid that someday, when the radiation dies down, maybe he or his children or his grandchildren might go back and re-colonize it.

I also gained a lot of insight--and inspiration!--from reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Exploration of Space around the time I first started playing KSP. It's a little dated, but most of the stuff in there is still valid today (notable exceptions include speculation about what might be under Venus's clouds, the notion that zero-g orbital hospitals would be a good idea, and failing to predict that most future spaceflight would be uncrewed). Most of the time I was reading it I was constantly thinking either "Yup, that's exactly how I do it in Kerbal" or "Oh hey, I bet I could do that in Kerbal!"

You might also find it helpful to read Buzz Aldrin's PhD thesis, "Line-Of-Sight Guidance Techniques For Manned Orbital Rendezvous."

"Homesick"

There may be a reason why terrain scatter is OFF by default. (I usually turn it back on anyway because I like those spiky rocks on Pol. Too bad they're intangible though.)

I love the idea of high-level pilots being able to put the game clock on "bullet time."

I do think the requirement to return home in order to "cash in" the experience points makes a certain amount of sense--as I see it, the kerbalnauts are debriefed on their experiences, discuss with admin/HR/trainers/etc., and incorporate what they've learned into their further training. However, it would be very nice if this could be done (even with some limitations) on board a sufficiently advanced space station as well.

For science I always use landers, but I do find rovers useful for scouting out hotspots with higher concentrations of ore--especially on the flats of Minmus where driving is much easier.

I like it! That would give a lot more motivation for "exploring" the far outer reaches (and inner reaches) of the solar system.

In a previous version I made a small two-seater ship called the H-Wing designed to harpoon orbital debris (using KIS/KAS), drag it into a suborbital trajectory, release it, and thrust itself back onto a stable orbit... and then move on to rendezvous with the next piece of debris. Cleaning up the debris turned out to be a lot of fun and I learned plenty about optimizing my orbital maneuvers too. These days I've gotten pretty good at designing launchers to jettison stages while still sub-orbital, but I've been taking so many "rescue from low Kerbin orbit" missions that it may be time to dust off the ol' H-Wing to clean up all those empty cockpits.

I usually use either a spaceplane or an traditional multi-stage rocket to get crew up to Starbase Alpha in low Kerbin orbit, then use a four-seat atomic-powered orbital skiff to move them back and forth between there and Mun Orbital Command or Minmus Orbital Command (each of which has a dedicated lander). When they need to return to the surface, they get back in the spaceplane or rocket, re-enter the atmosphere, and parachute back to home. (Thanks to Arthur C. Clarke's magnificent nonfiction book The Exploration of Space for the general idea.) Once the infrastructure's in place, everything's re-usable except for the occasional surface-to-orbit rocket. The only cost beyond that is sending up an occasional fuel depot, and if I bother making a refinery on Minmus, that becomes free too.

Yet another reason not to trust wireless devices.

I once tried using extendable solar panels as aerobrakes, in a desperate attempt to land safely after my first big ion probe accidentally entered Eve's atmosphere. Didn't work so well.

I'd love to be able to plan out maneuver nodes for a hypothetical craft (at the tracking station, presumably, or maybe mission control) without having to have an actual craft out in space. It'd make so much more sense for planning transfer windows especially.

Congratulations! Docking is one of the most useful skills in KSP; it opens up so many more options for refueling, crew transfer, space station construction, etc. These days I try to include a docking port on almost everything I make, just in case I need one later.

4.5 km is totally safe. It's only a legitimate threat if it comes within rs+rd meters of your spacecraft, where rs is the radius of your spacecraft and rd is the radius of the debris.

I wanted to send a bunch of drop probes to Eve, so I bundled them onto a probe rack and put it in the aft cargo bay of my flagship, the Voyager. (The forward cargo bay holds a lab and a three-seat lander.) The same approach would work just as well for satellites--in fact these drop probes would themselves be fine satellites if I removed the parachute.