moogoob

Once in 0.23 or so (after the NASA pack but before joints were as strong as they are now) I put a design on the pad that I'd used a million times - big Mammoth-powered core with four asparagussed LRBs. This time, I forgot struts. The whole thing just collapsed on the pad before I could hit "stage". Big bada boom. Revert to VAB. Add struts. Never forgot them again.

My much-neglected 1.04 career save. That's what I did prior to 0.9.0 too. About to do my first interplanetary mission (in this save) - an unmanned Eve probe.

For me, it's the fact that atmospheric heating effects appear (in my opinion) way too high up, long after the atmosphere has faded to the point of not even affecting your craft. Maybe an astronaut can chime in. ("When I rode in Soyuz, the flames started appearing long before we felt any drag from it, so KSP is indeed realistic!")

In my recent career save, I got over a thousand science from just one return trip to Minmus, not counting what the Explore contract paid. I have no need to increase that even higher through lab usage, so I only use them for completeness (IE role play) in my stations. EDIT: Ever since scientists got to reset goo canisters, biome-hopping for mucho science has become incredibly easy. That aforementioned trip only hit three biomes, but had five goo readings (space high, space low, greater flats, lowlands and midlands) without having to bring five canisters along. I only left as I was getting short on fuel. Thanks Bob!

Once I had similar issues that involved accidentally gluing the fairing (and everything behind it, by extension) with struts to the next stage. Every separation event was potentially explosion city. I now double check to make sure I'm not doing that any more.

Fun thread. Payload is relative. My transfer stage + interplanetary probe are my launcher's payload, and the probe is the transfer stage's payload. Makes sense, no?

Making a working space shuttle that did useful work (launch a small satellite and/or transport a bunch of Kerbals to a station) was my last big project. I've also put lander probes on every body with gravity in the solar system (even Jool, though that was more like swimming/floating/crushing as opposed to landing and Gilly, which was more like docking than landing). I guess my next shebang would be more manned missions - I've done Duna (included a lander) and in much older files Jool (but no lander with that one - they were just along for the ride), to one-up that I'd need to send Kerbals to Gilly or Dres or something.

About fairings - sometimes they're useful, sometimes not worth the weight and hassle. I tend to plop a nose cone with reversed decoupler on the tip of said fuel payloads and just eject it before circularization - that's more than enough for what you have planned. As to wobbly payloads, that's what struts are for. A rigid payload is worth any drag or mass added by struts. I use a decoupler on one side and docking port on the other - the extra push doesn't screw up your orbit that much.

As others have said, don't worry too much unless it's your only controllable part. I just place it anywhere I feel like it.

Dusted off my 1.04 career save, fired a sounding rocket for science around Kerbin (made a profit) then launched a successful first manned landing to the moon (and return!). While I play sandbox mostly, I have to admit that career makes even simple accomplishments feel like a real success.

I got into an argument with someone on Reddit once about my habit of launching interplanetary missions into 650KM orbits just so timewarp would be fast enough. I don't go on Reddit any more.

I'm not averse to cheating, but to me KSP is (as someone else expertly put it in another thread) a fuel-management game at heart, and once you get orbital mechanics out of the way managing your fuel usage is really the key gameplay. I've only used it once - I severely misjudged the amount of fuel needed for a Moho capture in sandbox mode my first time attempting a non-ion trip there. Never made that mistake again!

Sometimes on my space shuttles I use nothing but the place-anywhere RCS ports. Two forward, two backward, two up, two down, two right and two left give you full functionality. Sure, it's 12 parts, but works just fine for me in odd-shaped applications (like space planes/shuttles) where the 4-way ones are either impractical, imprecise or awkward. EDIT: Plus they look nice. Where on the Nastybird 2 would I place the 4-way ports and not have them thrusting into a wing or something?

I've just barely gotten a spaceplane to orbit. No payload, just the spaceplane.

As others have said, target the Mun and it will show you ascending and descending nodes for an equatorial orbit that you can use to match planes.

I use the Ant when I need a light engine, but don't need a GOOD engine. If I need a good engine I use the Spark. The Ant goes onto all my lightest probes and satellites, where it keeps my payload mass nice and under half a ton.

The Mk2 clampotron also includes a good amount of monopropellant storage, so there's that reason to use it.

Most of my launchers either are or contain Size 2 (2.5m) parts. That Skipper is so useful for upper stagers!

I think that using a manned ship to control probes is already planned to be a feature.

A game like KSP is never finished. Nor is it incomplete. At any given time it exists precisely as it means to. (Apologies to Tolkien) EDIT: Perhaps some philosophy behind my answer... I was loading up some old-ish (0.23) saves and got suddenly very nostalgic. I remember time before we got nice airplane parts (there were only two control surfaces!), where orbit from Kerbin still took 4500 m/s through the souposphere, when parachutes could be deployed at 2000m/s, the Stayputnik had reaction wheels and the LV-909 still made a nice ascent engine for Duna. These weren't good, or bad, they just were. It WAS a different game in many regards, and I guarantee that by the time we get to version 1.75 or so it will look like yet another different game. And I'm glad that I get to live through all these different games.

My launchers are all named after Major Arcana cards from the Tarot. In order of size: Magician I, II & III (LV-T series engine(s)) Fool, Fool XL & Fool XXL (Solid first stages of various sizes) Strength I & II (Skipper main engine) Chariot I, II & III (Mainsail main engine(s)) Empress I & IIB (Kerbodyne Advanced (Rhino) main engine & SRBs for the IIB) Emperor I, II, III & IV-Heavy (Mammoth main engine & LRBs in the III and IV-Heavy variants) Upper stages use the same name if they use the same engine as a launch stage (The Strength-US is common), otherwise are: Hermit (Spark main engine, x1 Round 8 & x1 Orscar-b tanks and x2 separatrons for deorbit) Temperance-US (Spark main engine, Size-1 fuel tank, probe core & battery for deorbit) Justice-US (Terrier main engine, Size-1 fuel tank, probe core & battery for deorbit) World-US (AKA WUS) (Poodle main engine; size-2 tanks; reaction wheels, batteries & a mechjeb box for control & deorbit) Fortune-US (Same as World other than huge Size-3 tanks. More for launching awkward payloads & interplanetary missions) Nothing else has such a consistent naming scheme, unless you count my spelling of "probe" as "probbe". Then, my various "Mun Probbe", "Ion Lander Probbe" and so on alongside my unoriginal "Scansat", "Cluttersat" and "Simplesat" satellite names are my second most consistent.

Xbox 360 controller. Works just fine.

Maybe you need to pass the big survey scanner over a polar orbit first?

Technically, my greatest accident rate is "landing of strange experimental and/or unadvisable aircraft, whether planned or due to loss of control." But in serious play, it would have to be spaceplane (shuttle actually) re-entry, on account of aerodynamic breakup. Once I get decellerated, landings typically go fine.

Toyota RAV4 dashboard entertainment system.