SunChaser

Do massless ships count? You can build a craft that escapes Kerbol as soon as it is launched, then it's just a question of how long you are willing to leave the game open in time warp.

When I heard GnR's "Nightrain" for the first time in years, I thought one of the lines in the chorus was "Feeling like a spaceplane" (it's space brain).

I don't know if your craft looks anything like UltraOne's, but the engine doesn't like craft that are made of mostly physicsless parts, i.e. cubic octagonal struts. Might be part of the problem.

Yeah, if you're using part clipping to spam intakes, I'd call it an airhog.

Your first launch at the start of career mode is likely a manned capsule on top of an SRB with no decouplers...and overpowered Admin Facility strategies are the problem?

3rd or 4th thread on this topic so far...while I agree a couple of the strategies are very OP, nobody is forcing you to use them. Just turn up the difficulty.

I agree, this would be very cool. Memory is a concern. This is why earlier games like Halo: CE only allowed a small number of bullet holes to persist before the old ones got deleted. Increased memory usage wouldn't necessarily be a problem, as you could disable them in Settings, same as sample rate, etc. However, I assume it would take a lot of work to implement. I don't know of any mods in particular that do this, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Mods, maybe sticky this? I have the subway-style d-v map open in my browser at all time, it's incredibly useful. Nice work Kowgan!

Well since the flame trenches don't do anything either, I would end up launching my rockets from the crawler if they did that...

This. Balance trumps realism in this case, as I think the Mk2 fuselage would be too good if it had more fuel than the FL-T800. Makes for ugly craft if you put them on rockets, though...

Pretty sure the devs have said ISP will not change with tank density--the current system is an approximation but it works well enough. I don't know about rescaling Kerbin though, as others have said the increased launch times would be a pain. I already use MechJeb for easy launches, while harder launches (code for I don't want to rendezvous several separate launches to build a ship in orbit) already take a long time if you use the old trick involving spikes and a bajillion intakes, which I'm not sure OP's suggestions fix either.

Seconded. OP's design is a little cartoony, maybe a portrait of a Kerbal would work?

Reduce Kash and rep in difficulty settings so you will be less tempted to garnish your paychecks for science.

I take screenshots if it was a spectacular explosion. But real space missions don't need the astronauts for ascent, so experimental rockets are tested many times with boilerplate capsules before any people or expensive payloads are put on a launch pad. That's my justification for reverting, anyway.

Holy necromancy, Batman!

Command pods can only have one copy of each experiment. Using two Kerbals, like somebody said earlier in the thread, you can get infinite EVA and crew reports, so you can finish the tech tree with one mission.

Don't forget EVA reports! Kerbals can also land on and take off from low-gravity moons using EVA fuel. If you have KAS, you can assemble rovers, retrofit landers with new science gear, etc. edit: also, like the last poster wrote, Kerbals can carry science with them. Very useful if you plan to ditch your lander and return to Kerbin with only the Command Pod, or need to rescue a Kerbal whose ride home has no fuel.

I think you want to orbit Duna first. Aerobraking is useful, but won't get you very far--you will likely have to do a periapsis burn on top of the apoapsis burn to bring your periapsis out of Duna's atmosphere. Duna has a better Oberth effect due to its higher gravity. Ike is easy to encounter from Duna and easier to escape. At least that's the way that seems easier intuitively. Ultimately, unless you're using Ike to do a gravity assist, I don't think it matters too much.

This. Massless thrusters only work if your whole craft if a small fuel tank and a probe core (you can make it to orbit with the small SRB's and O-10's by the way). However, there is no downside to slapping a crapload of Vernors and a few O-10's on your ship and binding them to action groups to toggle on/off. That way you can save a little fuel without having to sacrifice delta-v.

All the EVA tricks, definitely. Landing on Minmus and taking off again with just the jetpack was pretty awesome (I got a sub-orbital trajectory to rendezvous with the ship). Like magnemoe said, 'asparagus staging' came as a surprise. I've only heard of the Falcon launch system using fuel crossfeed, and even that's only with 2 boosters. Of course every KSP player has built some monstrosity or other once they discovered that trick. Oh and launching rockets using jet engines...yeah I still think it's weird how air intakes work. You can get a rocket up to very good speeds by abusing ram intakes and aerospikes.

Kerbals are photosynthetic, and can also hibernate indefinitely, like some freaky Earth extremophile. It's the only way to explain how they can survive indefinitely in space with no food, water, or oxygen. Their only weakness is vacuum, which is okay cause they never leave their spacesuits.

Try some mods! FAR, Deadly Re-Entry, etc. add a little more difficulty to whatever you do; B9 and such give you a lot more flexibility as far as design goes; Kethane (my new favorite) gives your Space Program a whole new purpose and allows you to refuel anywhere you have a base. Alternatively, try finding the Easter Eggs. Capture as many asteroids as you can find and put them all in orbit around Kerbin. Land on the Mun with as small a rocket as possible. KSP is a sandbox game, so come up with your own challenge!

Unlikely, as it's still an air-breathing engine. N2O simply allows more efficient combustion without changing the compression ratio (i.e. more thrust per unit of fuel) but I don't think it could replace air. That said, nitrous oxide has been used as an oxidizer in closed-cycle rocket engines before, but then they were designed to work that way.

Well for me, career mode was great--I started playing just last patch and it was a good way to slowly get to know all the stock parts. Now, the science system isn't perfect, as you can easily achieve LKO with Tier 0 parts, and if you want, you can finish the tree without even leaving Kerbin's SOI. I would like the contracts to be 'balanced': it doesn't make sense to get like $200,000 and 140 Science for testing a decoupler, while I get pocket change and very little science for the 'Exploration' contracts and such. Edit: Funds in general I think need to be more balanced: I looked at my manned Sun Diver rocket that I used to get close to the Sun and return to Kerbin (using a Hohmann Transfer, aka the inefficient, faster way) and the thing cost less than a tenth of my current budget. Funding is never a problem because no matter how many rockets I blow up, I can always rig a cheap number designed to fulfill like five contracts in one launch and be swimming in kash again.

I can't pretend to understand all of the intricate ideas behind the 'EmDrive' but the consensus of the scientific community is that as the engine has not been supported by a single peer-reviewed paper, it should be treated as an interesting hypothesis. The NASA Eagleworks Laboratory has tested similar engines with limited success--with a fraction the power and thus thrust as the Chinese tests. It's not entirely impossible, but any 'engine' that operates on relativistic principles we may not fully understand will likely not see widespread use for decades to come. As far as KSP 'Kraken Drives' go, I'm with everybody else. If you like building stuff that might break your game but let you travel at several times the speed of light, then do it. From what I've heard, the Kraken bug is almost non-existent nowadays (assuming you don't go out of your way to find it with struts and girders and so forth) so it's not like it urgently needs to be patched out.