Snark

Go to other planets and moons in the solar system. It's the only way. Visiting Mun and Minmus will get you to level 2. If you want to get to level 3, you need to visit Mun/Minmus and at least peek outside Kerbin's SoI. But to get to anything higher than 3, you're going to need to visit the other bodies in the solar system. Level 5's going to require visiting multiple bodies. On a somewhat related note, something to be aware of: one handy ability of the big crewed science lab, other than its science functionality, is as a training center. I mention this just because a lot of players aren't aware of it-- it's one of KSP's lesser-known features. If you have a science lab with you, then when you visit Duna-or-wherever, you can put your kerbals (any profession, doesn't have to be a scientist) into the science lab and train them up. That allows them to raise their level immediately and locally, without having to schlep all the way back to kerbin for the level increase. [EDIT] ha, ninja'd!

Hello, and welcome to the forums! Moving to Technical Support. What are your system specs? And if you look at Task Manager (I'm guessing you're on Windows?), what does it say about KSP's memory usage?

Could you post a screenshot of the map view of Jool system, showing your incoming trajectory and where / how you're intercepting Tylo? Would make it easier to give specific "you need to do X, Y, and Z" type instructions. The technique is going to end up being essentially what I described at length here, but I realize that's awfully long and written in completely general terms. Having your specific example will make it easier to give concrete, specific advice. Aerobraking. Laythe has an atmosphere-- use it, if you can! What sort of vessel are you flying? Does it have a heat shield, i.e. can it survive going through an atmosphere at well over 3000 m/s? Or does it have to worry about overheating and blowing up easily? Anyway, here's what you want to do (I'm assuming that your Jool Ap is something way up high, i.e. much higher than Laythe's orbit, to start with), if you're trying to minimize your dV expenditure and are fine with it taking a lot of time on the KSP clock: Step 1: Set up the geometry of your Laythe encounter. TL;DR: Coast up to Ap, then adjust your Pe to match the radius of Laythe's orbit, and make sure you're zero inclination relative to Laythe. Details in spoiler. Step 2: Set up the timing of your Laythe encounter. TL;DR: Coast down to Pe, then do a small burn to adjust the timing of your orbit so that you'll encounter Laythe at next Pe. Details in spoiler. Step 3: Encounter Laythe TL;DR: Either aerobrake to Laythe orbit, or else do a big burn at your Laythe Pe to capture. Details in spoiler.

To briefly summarize what folks have said in more detail: Kerbals: Pilots have SAS ability. Non-pilots don't. The higher the pilot level, the fancier SAS operations they can do. Probe cores: The Stayputnik has no SAS (it's like a non-pilot Kerbal). All other probe cores (OKTO and higher) have SAS ability. The higher level the probe core, the fancier SAS operations they can do. So if you want SAS, you either need to have a pilot on board, or you need an OKTO-or-better probe core. Yeah, pretty much. Most crew pods make this fairly easy because the hatch is on the "up" side... but some of them have multiple hatches, and of course probe cores are fairly symmetric. So if your ship lacks visual "cues" to show which way is up, then you can add one. For example, in my own ships: I always attach little radial things (like science instruments, or small radial antennas) on the up side of the ship. So I can see at a glance which way is up. Yes. Use the "V" key. There are several different camera "modes", and that key cycles among them. The default view is "Auto", but it has a few other modes, one of which is "Locked", which does exactly what you describe. So, all you have to do is keep hitting "V" until the message "Camera: LOCKED" shows at the top of your screen, and then it'll do exactly what you want. To switch it back to the default mode, hit "V" until the message "Camera: AUTO" appears. (The other modes are "FREE", "ORBITAL", and "CHASE", which I won't go into here but you can play with them to see what they do, in case they're useful to you.)

Moving to Add-on Discussions.

"Wheneverest" Pretty sure the suit's a hard requirement at that altitude.

Unfortunately, for those particular images I can't, because I didn't save the originals-- sorry, didn't occur to me that anyone might want them for anything, I figured they were just quickie throwaways for a forum post that I figured folks might find mildly interesting or amusing. Here are a few others, though, at 1920x1080. By the way, if anyone else wants to play around with BASE jumping off Mount Kerbin (or whatever name Galileo sees fit to bestow upon it), some tips in spoiler that may save some time.

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

Moving to General Mod Development Help & Support.

No. It's fine. That's my point. That's why fine control mode is such a valuable tool, and why you should always have it turned on when you're maneuvering with RCS. As long as your CoM is somewhere in between the ring of thrusters at the top and the ring of thrusters at the bottom, then it will work. It's fine if it's "lopsided" in the sense that the CoM is much closer to one set of thrusters than the other. If your CoM is, way closer to one end than the other, then the game will just apply a lot more thrust to the near ones than the far ones in order to cancel out the torque. It just works. I'm literally telling you that the craft you pictured above is already just fine. You literally only have to hit the CAPS LOCK key when you turn on RCS. That's it. One key press, and then it'll just work for you. Yes. If you want to put 4-way thrusters on all of them, fine, that's your lookout-- all I was saying is that you don't need it. As long as one of your two rings of thrusters has fore/aft capability, that's enough. So, for example, on my own craft, I only use four of the 4-way thrusters, and at the other end I use four of the linear ones instead of another four 4-ways. I do this because the linear ones are lighter than the 4-ways, so I might as well use 'em if I don't need the heavier ones. Or I may not need any at all, if there's RCS functionality built into something else. For example, if I've got a craft that has a Mk 1-2 command pod at one end... it's already got lateral thrusters, just not fore/aft. So for a craft like that, all I need to do is to put a ring of 4-way thrusters at the opposite end of the vessel and I'm done.

A few pics from Val's visit to that 14-km high mountain near Woomerang. That's a fun place. Definitely would love to see a micro-biome or some other reason for players to go there. (maybe put a black monolith on it, too?) Gallery in spoiler.

Per the KSP wiki, Woomerang's at 45° 17′ 24″ N, 136° 6′ 36″ E. Looks like it's at the same spot in JNSQ. The mountain I'm talking about here is a little ways to the southeast of that-- very visible from Woomerang, it's a striking feature with flat top and near-vertical sides, like Devil's Tower in Wyoming grown to monster proportions. Will get more specific coords in a little bit, when I can plop a ship there. [EDIT] Okay, mountain's at 43° 49′ 5″ N, 114° 26′ 19″ E. Looks like it's a bit over 14 km high at the summit.

...So, I happened to find a monolith on Kerbin (not the one by KSC). It doesn't seem to be "active", though (e.g. no tech granted, etc.) I'm guessing it's just there for window dressing? A suggestion: Since it looks as though this is a non-random monolith that's deliberately placed in a specific location (and I'm guessing there may be others?) ... perhaps add a new biome to the Kerbin map, "Kerbin Monoliths"? It would be a very tiny biome, just a very small radius around each of the fixed monoliths (excluding the one at KSC). I think this would be nifty for a few reasons: Should be pretty simple to implement Provides the player with a little "reward" for finding the monolith ("hey, found a new biome, cool!"). Bragging rights, a few extra gatherable science points. You could probably have some fun with the science result descriptions. Doesn't unbalance the game-- since it's on Kerbin, the science values are pretty small, so it's only just a few extra science points. Seems like a lot of player appeal for a fairly modest investment of time. In a similar vein: I happened to notice that there's a humongous mountain not far from Woomerang-- it doesn't look like all that much until you get close, then you realize it's well over 10 km high. However, it appears to just be "Kerbin Mountains", in terms of biome. It's a particularly hard place to land: high enough altitude to make landing a plane tricky, plus it's a fairly small target. Since finding the mountain is a minor geography achievement, and landing atop it takes some effort and skill... how about another micro-biome, as described above? "Kerbin Peaks", or something like that. Would be tiny, would only apply to the very top of the highest mountains. Same rationale as the monolith one above. (I notice that the "micro-biomes" around stock KSC, like "Runway" and so forth, only apply when one is landed-- being in the air over them still counts as "Shores" or whatever. If that's something that's simple to do with config, might be a good touch for the suggested micro-biomes above. i.e. simply flying (or orbiting, for that matter) over a super-high peak or a monolith wouldn't count, one has to land there.) Thoughts?

Actually, I should qualify that. There's one place that I've found gravity assists to be actually helpful and worthwhile, and that's capturing to Jool. A reverse gravity assist (i.e. to lower your speed, rather than increase it) is pretty easy to set up, using Tylo or Laythe (they both work pretty well-- which one's "better" depends on your intended mission profile, but Tylo's probably more common for most cases). A well-executed Tylo reverse gravity assist can get you several hundred meters per second of dV; it's enough that when you set it up right, you can directly capture to Jool on an interplanetary trip from Kerbin without needing to burn at all-- just the assist is enough. (You'll almost certainly want to do a burn afterwards to adjust your orbit and set a course for whichever moon you're heading to, but it's still quite a lot of dV savings.) Detailed step-by-step instructions for setting up a Tylo reverse assist here, for the curious:

Derp. Yes, of course, I and K. Long day, I was tired.

Well yes, that's what I meant. Sorry, I assumed that was obvious; the "location" of the node itself is pretty much irrelevant, there's no reason why anyone would ever want to point at that. is simply "what direction do I burn," which is obviously very useful. Executing a node consists of centering the navball's crosshairs on and then burning until the burn meter reaches zero.

What bewing said. Short version is that maneuver lock points you in the direction of your maneuver node (if there is one), and target lock points you straight at your target's location.

Moving to Add-on Discussions.

Nope, you've pretty much nailed it. Well done. First of all, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. If you're doing it for the challenge of doing so, or to learn about orbital mechanics, great! But if you're trying to use it for practical benefit... honestly I think it's more trouble than it's worth. Hard and finicky to set up, limited in how much oomph it can give, and hard enough to aim that there's a good chance that you lose more dV to lack of precision than you gain from the gravity boost. But if you're just in it for the challenge, of course that's a great reason. Some practical advice: Make your flyby as close as you possibly can. You want your Pe to be the absolute lowest you can manage without hitting surface or atmosphere. Make sure you've got the angles right. You get the maximum benefit when your Pe is directly behind the body. Don't go whizzing past too fast. If you go streaking past the body like a bullet, so that your path doesn't bend much, then you don't get much benefit.

Right, because you don't have enough dV on that rocket. Your first stage has 1362 m/s, your second stage has 1663 m/s. That's only 3025 m/s altogether, which simply isn't enough to get orbit-- you want 3400 m/s minimum, and that's assuming an optimal ascent path and no other problems. If you're fairly new to KSP and still learning the ropes, I'd recommend a few hundred m/s of dV above 3400. In addition to which, there are some other issues with that rocket: Poor streamlining-- the big flat front ends on the top of those boosters is going to kill your aerodynamics, so you'll waste a lot of dV to drag. Put nosecones on them. Your TWR is probably too high. I'm guessing you haven't used the thrust limiters on those SRBs? If you haven't, and they're firing at 100% strength... two of those on a small rocket like that is way overkill. (Try expanding the initial stage in the editor view-- it'll tell you what your launchpad TWR is). In general you don't want your TWR on the pad to be any higher than 2 at most. When your TWR goes way higher than 2, you end up going too fast when you're still too low in the atmosphere, and you end up wasting a lot of dV to aerodynamic drag. (Which is made even worse by the lack of nosecones on your boosters). As to why your changed design has so much less dV than the original... that comes back to the rocket equation, which I can go into if you like but the short answer is that "it's considerably easier to get to orbit with three stages than two", and also "you want your orbital stage to have a small, lightweight engine on it with high Isp".

Hello, and welcome to the forums! Axis groups, my friend. You won't be able to do it for any-arbitrary-key (e.g. it won't work for 1 and 0), but it will work for keys that are bound to control axes (e.g. pitch, yaw, roll, translate up / down / left / right / fore / aft, main throttle, wheel steering, wheel throttle). Here's an example to try in the editor: Place a hinge. Open the action groups UI. Click on the hinge to select it (so it's highlighted in blue, and its various actions appear in the right-hand column of the action group UI). Look at the bottom of the left-hand column of the action group UI. There's a section labeled "Axis Groups". This is what you want. Click on, for example, "Translate U/D" (that's the axis that is bound to the I and J K keys by default). Note that when you do that, the list of available things on the hinge changes. Instead of saying things like "Toggle Hinge" or "Toggle Lock", now it says things like "Target Angle" and "Torque Limit (%)" and so forth. Click on "Target Angle". Note that when you do this, the middle column gets populated with "Target Angle". It has some extra controls on it that you don't need to bother with right now, just leave them at their default settings. ...And that's it. You're done. If you launch that ship, pressing the I and J K keys will make the hinge open and close. Holding down I causes it to start opening, holding down J K causes it to start closing. How to understand what you just did: In step #3, you picked which part you want to control In step #5, you picked which buttons you want to control the part In step #7, you picked what about that part you want the buttons to control Does this help?

I know a lot of people love RCSBuildAid, but I've never bothered with it, because I don't find it necessary. A very simple technique works 100% of the time for me and requires no finicky futzing around, and is completely stock: One 4-way ring of thrusters at one end of my long skinny ship Another 4-way ring of thrusters at the other end of my long skinny ship Only one of those two rings needs fore-and-aft capability. i.e. use the 4-way thrusters at one end, and the linear ones at the other (or none, if I have the Mk1-2 command pod which provides them for free). That's it. That's all there is. That guarantees that the CoM will be somewhere in between the two, and as long as it's between them, it doesn't matter at all where it is. Two other things for the above to work well with minimal hassle (these are whole-game settings, not something I do to individual ships): I don't want to use RCS for ship rotation, ever. I prefer to use reaction wheels for that, since that doesn't spend propellant. It's tedious (and easy to forget) to turn off the rotation actuators on every RCS thruster all the time, so I just use a very simple ModuleManager patch that sets pitch / yaw / roll actuators to off by default for all RCS thrusters all the time. Very important, make sure to always turn "fine maneuvering" on when RCS is active (caps lock key is the default binding for this, at least on PC). This is what activates the magic stock behavior of "automatically adjust the power of all RCS thrusters to compensate for CoM so you don't have to care". If you don't turn that on, then you'll get torque if your thrusters aren't perfectly symmetrically placed around CoM, which of course is a pain. So just turn it on and it's not a thing anymore.

I believe the limit is 10 km on Kerbin. Sure, but the performance of air intakes for running jet engines is going to be affected, too. If intakes & engines run the same on Laythe as on Kerbin for a given air pressure, then that would be an indication of similar O2 content.

Well, not necessarily. My own craft does do that, ...but it doesn't actually need to. It can fly just fine on the helicopter blades alone, i.e. flying somewhat nose-down in order to generate forward motion. It's perfectly happy to do that, can do a vertical takeoff and landing, can cruise on the level at around 35-40 m/s on heli blades alone. The forward-thrust props are just for putting on extra speed. When I'm running those, I can get up to around 60-80 m/s horizontal cruise speed, depending on altitude (Duna air pressure is pretty altitude-sensitive).

Wait... does this mean that I'm only going to find Ore in the inner solar system? i.e. it's completely deliberately excluded from the outer solar system? (So far I've only gotten to Mun and Minmus in this career, Duna comes next.) I've got this whole plot line mapped out in my head, involving exploring the outer solar system and mining for resources to fuel that... but I'm only willing to play with stock Ore, and if that plan is doomed from the get-go I need to rethink my career plans. I'd hate to spend dozens of hours setting up an extensive resource-scanning probe program to map out "where's the ore" and then discover there's nothing at all...