Gaarst

Well it depends on what you want to do: If you just want to go there and leave your probe orbiting, I'd say Duna because it doesn't need a lot of dV to get there and you can aerobrake fairly easily in Duna's atmosphere (though it's not dense at all), be ware of Ike (Duna's satellite) that likes to interfere with your trajectories, often leading you where you really don't want to go. On the other hand, Eve has a big sphere of influence but as its atmosphere is really dense, your probe might explode without warning when you enter the atmosphere. If you want to land your probe, then Eve because if you survive reentry, chutes will be enough to slow down your craft for it to land safely (it has higher gravity than Kerbin so be careful still) whereas Duna's atmosphere is not dense enough and you'll need to brake using rockets before landing. Finally, if you desire to get back from your mission, then you don't want to go anywhere near Eve unless you're very well prepared with a lander designed specifically for the purpose: the atmosphere is very dense (so lots of drag in low atmosphere), gravity is high (so more dV needed) and Isp asl is simply non-existent for most engines. Taking off of Duna is trivial compared to taking off from Eve.

Well you should, like, really. You don't need to get mods that add thousands of parts or completely change the gameplay: if you want to stay really close to vanilla, you could still use mods like KER/MJ or stock bug fix modules that just add info or fixes bugs (duh) . Anyway, do what you want, stay vanilla if you wish. EDIT: Forget about the following:This has to be confirmed, but I think you can toggle fuel tanks use in action groups. That would help you stop fuel flow from the tanks without clicking on every single one of them.

Thus the "AFAIK" (which means "as far as I know"). Or you could complete/correct my post, which would make the discussion go forwards.

KER also has all these kind of information and does show dV. I've always used KER and never really tried MJ, but AFAIK the only real and significant difference is the auto-pilot/auto-staging/auto-whatever features in MJ. Anyway, the one you will prefer is subjective, there have been a lot of debates over which one is the best, with no real outcome. Just try both and pick the one that you feel more comfortable with.

SRBs. I just can't stop putting SRBs in all my rockets. To be fair, my only rocket that hasn't got any SRBs is my interplanetary launcher because Kickbacks are too weak (though with KW Rocketry it's going to change soon). Thing is, I don't only use them for boosters: the crew transfer rocket I use for my main space station has a first stage made of solely 4 Kickbacks, I know it makes it really hard to rotate the rocket but I just love putting these around.

Here and here. They are essentially the same, the GUI is different and MJ has an auto-pilot. Yes they are compatible.

Kinda, but service bays are just in another league concerning these bugs...

Yeah... thing is, AFAIK service bays make very good Kraken magnets: once your ship will suddenly be reduced to pieces for no apparent reason or crash miserably into the ground, you'll reconsider them.

First, speeds are in m/s not in km/h (just a detail) Second, normally, a capsule, even without a heatshield shouldn't blow up during LKO reentry. Your speed was more than acceptable and you don't need fuel to slow down for such a reentry. To be able to help you, some information is needed (to get the cause of the explosion): - what was your reentry profile ? ie: how steep did you reenter, what was the height of your periapsis before reentring. - what did the "crash" menu (don't know its exact name, it's the one that appears when you hit F3 or when your ship is destroyed) said about the explosion ? was it because the pod overheated ? - at what height did you explode ? - was there a service bay in your ship ? (they make excellent Kraken baits) - and anything else I forgot to mention, the more info there is, the easier it is to get the cause of the explosion. Try to recreate the flight and explosion to get this information if you don't have it yet, and, if possible, post a screenshot or video. With this, we might be able to determine the cause of the explosion. EDIT: also, this kind of post should go in the "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" section of the forum

If you mean rocket splashed into water in the F3 menu, that probably means your rocket is destroyed, right ? If so, just wait for a bit, do a few missions, whatever... The original 3 (Jeb, Bob and Bill) are unkillable: they go MIA (Missing in action) if their rocket is destroyed but they will respawn, AFAIK. Although, if you are playing in higher difficulties or using crew other than the original 3, I'm not sure if they will respawn of not; it might depend on some settings. If they don't respawn, you could probably tweak some things in your persistant.sfs file, though I don't know what exactly you'll have to do, so I might not be helpful there. If your rocket is not actually destroyed, just ignore my comment and recover your ship as it has been said above

You can't change the thrust limiter of a SRB outside the VAB, that's for all SRBs, stock included. What I was refering to is the fact that, in the VAB, if you set thrust limiter of a KW SRB to 0, it will still have 50% of its thrust (can be seen in KER and in flight). It is not possible to limit them to less than 50% of their nominal power, only from 100% to 50%.

Concerning the SRB thrust limiter issue that has already been a little discussed, I would like to know if it would be possible to add a setting to the mod that will allow the player to choose to set the thrust limiter "0" setting to 50% or 0%. I have downloaded and used nicogusuarez's fix but I would appreciate if the choice was given to the player in game, rather than having to use DIY fixes.

Succesfully put to low Earth orbit my first RSS probe "Framboise" (French for raspberry), launched from Kourou. And on the first try !

Kerbalespace (my science-save space agency) flag:

I haven't really much experience in that domain, but from what I know things behave quite badly when put in water in stock KSP. If you want to build something as large as an aircraft career, I'd suggest installing a few mods made for the purpose (ship parts, water physics...).

In base KSP reentry effects are not related to craft heat or shock heating but solely to speed. You can have a blazing-red hot ship in very high atmosphere before it even starts to heat. Dut to this, I don't think it is really possible to edit settings to make effects and heat correspond. At least without editing half of the game's config files. Maybe mods can help you here

If your save is from beta KSP, you don't need to create a new save; but due to the changes in aerodynamics and engines thrust asl, it is likely that a significant part of your rockets will not be able to fly well anymore, so keep that in mind. You may even want to redesign your rockets from scratch.

Max settings (120% I think) or Deadly Reentry

Kind of off topic but Kerbol is the Sun; I think you mean Kerbin, which is the Earth-like planet where you take off. And as it has been said above, this seems like a bug. Overheating problem can indeed occur when parts are clipped. Anyway, you should report it using this guide. EDIT: if your bug has been recognised as an unreported-yet one, use Squad's Bugtracker for it to get fixed in the next releases.

I could have, if I only knew mods existed at that time

Reentry effects are now common (since 1.0.3) at higher altitudes (>40 km) even when launching your rocket. They mostly are there just because of your speed and will most likely not harm your rocket. For the VAB thing and the orbital ship overheating (not sure I understood correctly though), this seems like a good ol' bug; there have been quite a few bug with heat reported, so wait for an update, hoping it's not too game-breaking.

This mod might help you. Otherwise, experience (and a bit of guessing) is the best to rely on for targeted landings.

They produce some heat (a lot for some and not enough for others), they consume only LF, no oxidizer, and they have been the source of quite a lot of, say, "discussions" on the forums lately, a significant part of which was complaining about the heat issue

Some time ago, I landed a mobile base on Eve with everything: science instruments, enough wheels, power... aaaaaand I forgot the antenna :/ Luckily I had a probe that did not seem too far from where I landed that had an antenna, so I thought: I'll get there, and use the probe to transmit any science I gathered. 300 km, 5 IG hours (I didn't know I could use physics timewrap at the time, so over 5 hours IRL) and a few dozen crashes/F9 later I arrived at the probe only to realise it is not possible to use it to transmit data from an EVA'd Kerbal... In the end, slightly frustrated by having spent quite a few hours piloting a rover (gosh this is boring) I ended up smashing the small probe with my 15t mobile base

Ca m'a l'air interessant comme projet; et hop un petit peu de rep et un mail de candidature