Snark

A few thoughts: First, make your front end more aerodynamic. You have a lot of exposed parts, especially those radial bulgy tanks on the adapter-- that drag is gonna get you. Move all that paraphernalia into a 1.25m service bay (it only masses 0.1t), with an appropriate nosecone in front of it. That makes your ship a nice smooth cylinder. Secondly, you have the "Thumper" SRB driving the thing-- that's way overpowered (by default) for that tiny middle/upper stage, as stibbons has suggested. At the very least, make sure you've put a thrust limiter on that SRB so that it doesn't slam you past Mach1 right away. If you're trying to pick a number, I find a TWR of about 1.5 works pretty well. Look at the craft's total mass on the engineer's report, multiply by 1.5, multiply by 9.8, then divide by 275 (the thrust of a BACC), that'll tell you what to set it at. I'd also suggest that your mass ratio between that huge BACC booster and your tiny 1-ton 2nd stage is a pretty big gap. Maybe consider downgrading the SRB from a Thumper to a Hammer, and then upping your 2nd stage from 1 ton of LFO to 2 tons. (And of course make sure to re-do the math to figure out how to set the thrust limiter on the SRB.)

By the way, I play RemoteTech and am in the regular habit of setting comm satellites to "debris", never had a problem with it (they still communicate, never had a problem with them despawning). Of course, I don't have a very high-debris play style, so I don't think I ever approached the default 250 limit. In any case, if you're ever worried that it could be an issue, just give your satellites distinctive names before making them debris, and then every once in a while go to the tracking station and manually clean out a bunch of non-useful debris, to make sure you don't get close to the limit.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorials#Real_life_missions http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Apollo_11 And no, you can't use funds to train kerbals-- the only way to train them is to go out and do things (e.g. get to Kerbin orbit, land on various celestial bodies), then come back to Kerbin for experience points.

Here's a tip for going to the Joolian system: Do your aerobraking on Laythe, not Jool (even if Laythe isn't your planned first stop--i.e. it's a valid option to use Laythe to aerobrake into Jool capture without actually capturing to Laythe itself). Rationale: If you aerobrake on Jool, you're going to end up in an orbit that has periapsis right down on the surface of Jool. It means you're going to have to do a lot of dV to match with any of its moons, since your orbit will be highly eccentric and have very low angular momentum. On the other hand, if you aerobrake on Laythe, then you're in an orbit whose periapsis is up at Laythe's orbit, rather than down at the surface of Jool, so it's a much lighter dV load to match any of the various moons. Plus, of course, there's always the option of aerobraking all the way to Laythe capture, if you want to make that the first stop on your Joolian tour. But the dV savings is worth it even if you're not doing Laythe first. Timing your approach so that Laythe is in the right spot when you need it to be might sound hard, but actually it's not that much of a hassle as long as you set it up long before you get to the Jool system. I was expecting it to be hard, and the simplicity surprised me the first time I did it: Do your usual maneuvering so you've got a Jool intercept, then plop a maneuver node down long-before-Jool and switch your map focus to Jool. Play with the node handles so that your trajectory is tangent to Laythe's orbit at the right spot. If you're lucky, it'll show a Laythe intercept already. If you're not, play around with the prograde/retrograde versus radial/antiradial handles to adjust your Jool periapsis forward/backward in time while keeping the location pretty much the same. Pretty soon, Laythe will end up doing an intercept. Then you can click on Laythe and focus there, and it'll show your trajectory there, and then you can fine-tune the intercept to exactly where you want it.

Yeah, the whole "try to dock stuff while sitting on the surface" is a notoriously ugly problem in KSP. It makes base assembly an incredible hassle, which is a shame, because "let's build a big base on the surface" is exactly the kind of thing that's fun to do. Among the complications are having a perfectly flat place to work with, the lack of controllable vertical positioning, and the mushiness of leg suspensions (e.g. two things that "ought" to be the same height due to construction end up being slightly different because one of them's heavier and sags more on its legs). I've sunk a lot of time into this game, and have never been able to make it work, at least without such an ungodly amount of frustrating fiddling that the game stops being fun and is just a chore. Here's the closest thing I've seen to a workable solution in stock KSP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/48876-The-art-of-modular-base-building ...a brilliant tutorial, great job Temstar , but even this is at a fun-to-chore ratio that's below my personal threshold. It's not that I can't build a base... just that it's so much of a hassle that there are other things to do that are way more fun, and I end up never doing it. Yeah, I can't make myself use the claw either... it's sufficiently unrealistic that it breaks the whole "willing suspension of disbelief" thing that lets me live happily in the kerbals' world. Also, be warned that the claw is notoriously buggy and kraken-prone; if you use it, save early and often, it can literally destroy the universe. KAS is the other approach, and fun, but you've already looked at that so 'nuff said.

Yeah, the science lab is a real bear for electricity when it's researching. Turning off lights won't help you much (their power drain is tiny), nor will SAS (it doesn't use a lot of power unless you're actively spinning around). Quickest way to determine energy needs is to look it up on the KSP wiki, e.g.: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mobile_Processing_Lab_MPL-LG-2 (5 EC/second researching) ...compared with the energy from the solar panels: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/OX-4W_3x2_Photovoltaic_Panels (1.64 EC/second at Kerbin's distance from sun) ...which says you need slightly more than 3 of them to keep up. In reality, you'd want even more than that, because the 1.64 number assumes that they're pointed directly at the Sun, and none of them are shaded at all from any part of your spacecraft. Usually you won't have that ideal unless you do a lot of manual fiddling. So I'd say play it safe and get like 6 of them, it's not like they weigh much. Also: Any particular reason you're using the 2x3 instead of the 1x6? I almost always use the 1x6, mainly because they're good at putting as much of their area as far away from the main body of the ship as possible, which means that they're less likely to get shaded by their own ship. Plus I can densepack them closer together without having them collide with each other.

The best way to think about it is not in terms of "vertical velocity" or "horizontal velocity", because neither of those is a conserved quantity. Think about what's conserved, then the math will flow from that. For an orbiting body, two things are conserved: 1. Energy (kinetic + potential) 2. Angular momentum Whenever you're flying a rocket, and you want your orbit to be something different than it is now, really what you want is two things: "I want to have a different amount of orbital energy, and I want to have a different amount of orbital angular momentum." Every ounce of rocket fuel you expend is aiming to change those two things. Therefore, when deciding where (and in what direction) to burn, the optimal choice will be the one that maximizes your contribution to those two things. So it comes down to four questions: 1. In what direction should I burn to maximize my impact on orbital energy? 2. In what location should I burn to maximize my impact on orbital energy? 3. In what direction should I burn to maximize my impact on orbital angular momentum? 4. In what location should I burn to maximize my impact on orbital angular momentum? Taking these in order: 1. Burn direction for energy change: This one's easy. Always burn prograde (to increase energy) or retrograde (to decrease it). Any time you're not thrusting directly prograde or retrograde, you're "wasting" fuel to do something other than change your energy, since only the prograde/retrograde component affects your speed. Your efficiency here is basically the cosine of the angle between prograde (or retrograde) and what you're thrusting, so keep that as close to zero as possible. 2. Burn location for energy change: Here's where Oberth effect comes in. You want to do it where you're moving the fastest, e.g. at periapsis. 3. Burn direction for angular momentum change: The optimum direction is when your thrust is at right angles to your "actual radial" direction (i.e. the vector from your ship to the body that you're orbiting around). I put that in quotes and called it "actual radial" because it's not what KSP nav-ball "radial" and "anti-radial" indicators mean. Those indicators are always at right angles to prograde/retrograde, but the direction I refer to is perpendicular to the radius, not perpendicular to your prograde vector. Those two aren't the same as each other unless you're at periapsis or apoapsis. Again, the efficiency factor here is the cosine between your thrust direction and the optimal direction. 4. Burn location for angular momentum change: Angular momentum is the product of your "sideways" velocity and your orbital radius. Therefore, you get the most "bang for your buck" when you're at a really high altitude, i.e. at apoapsis. This is why gravity turns are so important. If you're sitting on the planet and want to be in orbit, you need to increase both your energy and your angular momentum, by a lot. A well-designed gravity turn maximizes both energy and angular-momentum efficiency: you're always thrusting prograde (good for #1 above), you're doing all your burn at low elevation (good for #2), you're doing as much of it as possible in a "sideways" direction (good for #3). The only place it falls short is #4, but you can't do any burning way up high without getting there in the first place.

(The following assumes that what you want is to be in a specific orbit that's low around the sun, e.g. approximately circular at low radius. This wasn't actually explicitly stated in the thread. If what you want is just, for example, to "lower a periapsis so it's close to the sun, but high apoapsis is OK", the strategy would be different.) Anything that involves getting into a low orbit around the Sun is going to be just brutal in terms of dV. The lion's share of the work is going to be lowering your apoapsis once you're down close to the sun, and other than using a planetary gravity assist, there's not a lot that can help you with that. That said, you can at least try to minimize the amount of dV you use on your initial burn that drops your periapsis down to the sun (while apoapsis is still up around Kerbin): you want to make maximum use of the Oberth effect, which means you want to be in as low an orbit as possible around Kerbin, and then accelerate like blue blazes to do a single high-impulse burn at low altitude. You mentioned that you're using nuke engines, which means you can't just go WHAM and do it in one go, but you can at least help yourself out by making a few passes. That is, start out in low circular Kerbin orbit. Figure out where you're going to make your eventual Kerbin-escape burn. Make a burn at that spot, without enough to actually escape-- all you'll do is burn for a minute or so right at that location, which will raise your apoapsis and put you in elliptical orbit around Kerbin with your periapsis still really low. Coast around your orbit, until you come to periapsis again, do another burn. Continue this as many times as necessary to get it so that you're in a highly elliptical orbit around Kerbin with apoapsis really high and periapsis really low. This will have you doing in the neighborhood of 3000 m/s at periapsis. That's when you do your big burn to escape Kerbin. As for lowering your apoapsis when you're around the Sun: wait until you're at periapsis and do all your burn then, again to maximize Oberth effect. You do not want to do a bunch of little burns. Wait until you're lowest and fastest, and then one big huge brutal burn. It might be possible to shave some dV with bielliptic transfers, as folks have suggested, but would need to know the exact orbital parameters to work out the numbers.

Try this: http://ksp.olex.biz/ It's nice because not only does it handle "what's the phase angle between planet A and planet B", but it also tells you what place to start your burn based on how high your circular orbit is.

The basic principles for conserving dV: 1. If you're burning prograde/retrograde, do it at the lowest altitude possible, when you're going really fast. (Oberth effect.) 2. If you're burning normal/antinormal, do it at the highest altitude possible, when you're going really slow. 3. Never burn radial/anti-radial. ...I haven't sat down to work out the math, but I'd guess that probably what would have been your best option would have been to wait until you were up at your 2500km apoapsis, adjust your inclination there (it would have been relatively cheap for dV). Then, once that's done, spend all your remaining fuel doing a retrograde burn at periapsis, to lower the apoapsis as much as possible. That said: As a matter of practicality, I find that going for the completely-polar orbit isn't all that useful (to me, anyway), since my reason for SCANsat'ing is to locate resources, and I'd prefer to do my resource mining close to the equator; the only time I ever go to the poles is to pick up science points, which I don't need SCANSat for. But it's all a matter of what your priorities are.

Also, one thing that won't help you with your current predicament, but could be useful in similar situations in the future: If a kerbal is ragdolling and/or spinning, you can recover by just upping timewarp momentarily, or by switching to KSC and back.

There's another reason to circularize before the homeward burn, besides the advantage of controllability that folks have already pointed out: taking maximum advantage of the Oberth effect. You want as much of your burn as possible to be at as low an altitude as possible. If you just burn straight up, then unless you have a ridiculously high TWR to keep the burn short, you're going to be doing a lot of the burn at high altitude, since you're rapidly putting distance between you and the surface. If, on the other hand, you immediately turn due east upon takeoff and circularize at a really low altitude, then when the time comes to do your homeward burn, you're doing it horizontally, thus finishing the whole burn at low altitude. This conserves your dV.

It's hard to say what the exact problem is without more information, but a few things are clear: It doesn't matter what order you complete the contracts-- every contract is completely independent from every other one. It doesn't matter what order they're listed in the contracts window; you can complete any contract at any time. For missions where you have to enter a specific orbit: my experience has been that it's not super-incredibly finicky about exact alignment. If you get close enough that they line up pretty well in map view and are only off by a pixel or two, it'll be fine. So my guess is that your problem isn't "my orbit is slightly off." Satellite contracts work just fine with liquid fuel engine, you definitely don't need to go to ion propulsion for extra precision. The best way to debug what the problem is, is to look carefully at the contract window. Each contract is going to have a set of requirements, such as "be in orbit of Kerbin" or "have a thermometer on the satellite" or whatever. As-and-when each condition is satisfied, it gets a green check mark next to it. Your contract is completed when all check marks are checked simultaneously. So, if you're ever wondering "why is this contract not completing?", just look at its list of requirements, and see which one doesn't have a green check mark-- that's the issue.

...so I have no idea about the disappeared-but-not-complete one, but am having trouble understanding about the other. You say in your first paragraph that it completed. So it's done, right? You got the cash reward? So how did it "disappear" when you went back to your ship, isn't that what completed contracts normally do? Anyway, I don't actually have any advice to offer about the missing contract(s), have never experienced that myself, sorry I can't be of direct help. However, one comment you made did catch my eye: If I'm understanding correctly, I'm guessing that this is what you meant: You went to map mode, and double-clicked Minmus and other planets/moons to browse around. Then you wanted to focus back to your craft, and the only way you know how to do that is to go back to KSC and then to the tracking center. If that's it, I have good news, there's a quicker way. If you've moved map-window focus away from the current craft (i.e. to a celestial body), you can move the focus back to the active craft by pressing backspace. Apologies if you already know that... I only bring it up because it's not a very discoverable feature, and I was playing KSP for months before I discovered that. Doesn't help your current problem at all, but hopefully may be convenient if you didn't already know about it.

I've run into this problem myself. It definitely seems worse at some times than at others. I've played around with it a little bit, and I have a theory of what's going on: - I think that when they coded it, they didn't code the "click" event very robustly: that the mouse press and mouse release have to happen right on the same spot, i.e. you can't press down, move the mouse slightly, and then release. - When the game slows down (e.g. if you have a big craft with high part count, or your video card is having trouble keeping up with a high-def render of planet's surface), so that the frame rate is lower, it checks for mouse-down and mouse-up more slowly. - This results in the impression that your clicks aren't getting anywhere. - However, you may be able to make it register if you press the mouse down, are very careful not to move even a millimeter, wait a moment or two, and then release the button. YMMV. I haven't had the patience to try controlled experiments with this, since it's pretty sporadic and hard to reproduce. I may have even gotten some of the repro steps a bit wrong. However, what I can say is: It's definitely a thing, has been around since 0.90, and I think it's possible to work around with careful mouse technique.

There are two ways to refuel a craft in stock KSP: - If it has a docking port, you can dock to it and transfer fuel. - If you have a craft with a claw on it, you can grab hold with the claw and transfer fuel as if you were docked. However, if neither of these is available to you, you do have another option: You don't need to recover the craft, just Jeb and the science. So you can do this: 1. Build a rescue craft that has enough fuel to make orbital rendezvous with your stranded one. The rescue craft needs to have a crew module with an empty slot that Jeb can ride in. The easy way to do this is just to have a Mk1 command pod, and put a probe core (like an Okto) on it, so that you can launch it unmanned. 2. IMPORTANT, before you launch, make sure there's an empty seat for Jeb. By default, the game will pick an available kerbal and put them in, so you just need to empty them out. 3. Rendezvous with your stranded craft (i.e. end up right next to it, at zero relative velocity). This is an important skill in KSP, not sure if you've done it before. If you haven't, here's a good opportunity to learn. "How do I rendezvous" is a whole other topic, though, so for now I'll just assume you know how to do this. 4. Send Jeb on EVA and collect all science from your stranded ship. - You may have science that's still sitting in the instruments. Move Jeb next to an instrument, click on it, then click the button to "take data." Repeat for every instrument that has science in it. - You may have science that's sitting in the command module of the stranded craft (e.g. surface samples, whatever). Have Jeb take the science out of there, too, by the same method. 5. Now all your yummy science is being carried by Jeb. Use his EVA thrusters to move across to the rescue craft, and board it. Now the science is on the rescue craft. 6. Bring the rescue craft home 7. Yay science!

Especially in the early game, when you get a lot of your science from materials bay + goo and are making those Mun landings. It's really nice to be able to send a little 1-kerbal craft crewed by a scientist, since 1.0.2 added the ability for scientists to reset those instruments (no more need to lug around that heavy lab with you). But if you have a scientist flying the craft, it's nigh impossible to steer right unless you have an SAS-capable command module to stabilize it for you. Having a scientist fly the thing is a major win. You can get 3 takes on those instruments on a single mission (high orbit, low orbit, surface). 4, if you're clever about it and land close to a biome boundary so you can do a little hop to 2nd biome before heading home. But you gotta have that OKTO to do it.

+1 for RemoteTech. It's really fun, gives the antennas a reason for existence (plus adds a bunch more), and adds a whole new dimension to strategy.

I like that they gave the shrouded panels a reason for existing. (Never ever used them before. Ever.) However, they kinda missed a spot with the editor-- the unshrouded, can't-retract ones still have "Toggle" and "Retract" as options when working with action groups, which leads to the sort of confusion you experienced. Of course, if they did that, it would have just pushed your confusion a bit closer to the source ("Hey! Why isn't there anything but 'extend' available for action groups?") ...but that's better than thinking everything's hunky-dory, launching to space, and then getting an unpleasant surprise.

I vote for Propulsion Systems. The "Spark" is a great little engine for small cheap satellites (e.g. for contracts), particularly when coupled with the Oscar-B (which is much buffed up in 1.0.2, holds 0.2 tons fuel!). Miniaturization goes well with Propulsion Systems (for the size-0 adapters), and also gives you a docking port, which opens up lots of contracts. (It's a real jackpot when you get a "build a station in solar orbit" contract-- those things are worth like 800K funds and are very quick/easy to launch.) Advanced Landing for some up-sized struts is also good. Personally, I can do without Command Modules until later in the game. Those big command modules are heavy, much more massy per crewmember than the good ol' Mk1 lander-can.

Also, besides putting fins on, make sure your payload up front is streamlined. Smooth pointy cylinders. If you're putting up something that's unavoidably draggy, put a fairing around it to reduce drag during atmospheric ascent, it helps a lot.

That's odd, haven't seen it myself. I've launched both 3-stage and 4-stage asparagus in 1.0.2 and never had an issue. The only time I have issues with asparagus is when I get careless or distracted and do something stupid with the fuel lines (e.g. forget to put one in, or put in one too many), but in that case it's pretty obvious pretty quickly that something is amiss , doesn't sound like your problem. I'm curious, just as an experiment, suppose you let one of those out-of-sync stages burn about halfway through (not all the way to flameout), kill throttle, and then examine the tank contents to compare the relative amounts-- will they be the same, or out of sync? (in other words, is this a fuel-tank problem or an engine problem?)

Yeah, that always struck me as kind of a UI hole; seems like the game should provide some way to target the orbit in that case. True, but at least you can target a planet itself, which gives you all the useful visual references. In the case of contracts for putting a craft in a specific orbit, there's much less help. Or even better than pictures would be the numbers-- specifically, the periapsis, apoapsis, and inclination. These are listed in the contract description in Mission Control.

In the stock game, no, it doesn't matter (as far as I know). Mod authors are free to use it, though I'm not sure how many actually do. The only example I know of is Extraplanetary Launchpads, which lets you build rockets on other planets or in orbit: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59545 ...to build rockets, you need to put a bunch of crew in your rocket workshop, and I believe the mod looks at your kerbals' intelligence (er, stupidity) to decide how fast they build. So to get shorter build times, you want to populate it with the lowest-stupidity crew you can get.

The rule for eliminating debris (or your spacecraft, for that matter) when they're "on rails" is this: there's a certain critical altitude (I think it's defined as "1% of Kerbin sea-level atmospheric pressure," something like that), above which they completely ignore the atmosphere, and below which they simply disappear (are destroyed). If you have something with a periapsis in the upper atmosphere, you have to "fly" it to get aerobraking.