tsotha

Pictures of your ship would be nice. You can run into this kind of trouble if you go too fast and your center of mass is behind your center of pressure. As a design principle you'd like to have the weight at the top of the rocket, which is hard to do because fuel drains from the top. Use the biggest tanks you can and/or add stages, slow down, fly as close to prograde as you can, and if that doesn't do it add fins.

I think this was a good change. In 0.90 I stopped using materials bays, goo containers, and science bays altogether. It was easier just to knock out contracts, and money was always the bottleneck.

That would be an interesting thing to try. My guess would be you can deploy them, but only after opening the bay. I'm sure someone has actually tried it.

They increased the physics distance so much your boosters will make it to the ground now. - - - Updated - - - When are the chutes burning up? Before or after you open them?

In 1.0.2 you don't need a heat shield. Just put your periapsis at 25 km or so and point your ship retrograde. I normally don't pop the chutes until my rocket is under 400 m/sec, though someone here was saying they'll survive up to 900 m/sec.

It's going to take quite a long time for him to rescue 100 kerbals.

This. It's what I did this playthrough and once the SOI change happened my course was going right through the center of the Mun. You probably will require a bit more dV than you do with conics, because you won't be able to see your course relative to the Mun until you enter its SOI. Course changes that were pretty close to free near Kerbin will have a noticeable cost that close to the Mun.

Possible? Yes. But the payout is far too small.

I was playing with this yesterday and the AoA of my pod during reentry didn't seem to affect anything at all.

Are you asking about the physics or how to use this part in particular?

I'm not seeing any indication aero is broke. It's just more realistic, and as such isn't as forgiving as the old cartoon physics.

The other possibility is to use the position the gear is actually in if it's in all the same position, and if not then assume the gear is starting extended. Still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be closer.

If you leave SAS on it will cause this problem if you told it anything other than "hold position". I've seen the RemoteTech flight computer do the same.

Where did you run out of fuel? Did you almost make it, or are you stuck on the surface of the Mun, unable to make Munar orbit?

I think that probably understates things. Most people who install mods keep their Steam installation "clean" and copy the game so they can try out different configurations. As far as Valve knows I haven't played KSP in ages, but I play it almost every day.

Not unless you have a lot of time on your hands, no.

Oh, I see what you mean. I always do aerocapture, so it never came up for me.

Isn't it? You can't just add Eve-Kerbin dV to Kerbin-Jool?

I've had trouble at 500 meters when the chutes open fully, but other than that time compression doesn't give me any problems. On the other hand my rockets are relatively small and don't have hundreds (or even thousands) of parts.

Yes, it's possible. It's also possible (and more efficient, I think) to send an unmanned lander that completes the satellite contract before or after the Mun landing.

This makes no sense to me. Where, exactly, is your Kerbin periapsis when you're on an interplanetary trajectory? Are you saying the instant before you leave orbit your periapsis is inside Kerbin's atmosphere? If so, where is it?

You can use Laythe or Jool to aerobrake on your way to one of the other moons. And Tylo is always good for a gravity assist. An airless, low gravity moon seems like a better choice to me, since otherwise you lose too much fuel getting back into orbit. Unless you were planning to use jet engines, in which case Laythe is your only choice.

I don't see why. Intuitively I would think if you're burning horizontally just out of the atmosphere there's an instant in time where you could stop and be in a stable orbit. Which would imply you could start in that same stable orbit without loss of efficiency. As to the dV cost of raising your periapsis, well, you're already raising it to the Mun's orbit.

Actually you don't need to orbit the Mun, you just need to pass through its SOI.

Eh... it's been awhile since I took a math class, but I'm pretty sure back then e^0 = 1. And the limit as the exponent approaches positive infinity is infinity.