Gaarst

Considering the actual utility of heatshields, the fairing thing is not a problem at all: unless you come straight down from Eeloo, you don't even need to have those for a lone command pod.

The point of making spaceplanes and SSTOs, in career, is that you recover all of the ship when your mission is done so sending things into orbit cost a lot less. If you intend to jettison the fuel tanks, engines... to keep only the payload, a rocket will be much simpler, and probably cheaper. But if you're playing sandbox mode for fun or just want to experiment, feel free to do so: trial and error is a key point in KSP

Newtonian mechanics and Keplerian laws for orbits and manoeuvres, basics of aerodynamics for the atmospheric part. Knowing typically spaceflight related concepts such as aerobraking, rendez-vous techniques are useful. Rocket equation for delta-v is essential; being able to do quick calculations for TWR, acceleration, fuel... will also be helpful. And a bit of spaceflight history is always interesting when wanting to go "beyond" the game. A thing you have to understand is that even if you know all the equations, master all the physics involved, nothing will replace experience in the game to succeed. Actually, for most players (I guess) the game came first and the science in it after. Knowing the physics will help you, but only when you'll have played the game for a few 100s of hours then you'll be able to say that you truly master it. Don't worry, you don't need to be an astronaut or to have a PhD in aerospace engineering to do well in KSP, you'll learn while playing.

LEO would be enough for me. Earth is the most diverse (and beautiful, IMO) body in the Solar System, all others are just boring freezing/boiling rocks

The real KSC VAB is 160 m tall, 218 m long and 158 m wide, and should weigh (very) roughly 200 000 tons. Measure KSP's VAB, do a little maths and there you go

This would actually be extremely unstable due to the CoM being way too high in the rocket. There's a reason why real rocket boosters are down the rocket; in doubt always look at stuff that works. It would be interesting to see how this behaves though

There's got to be a solar sail mod somewhere

They are worth it for heavy crafts. IMO 20 ton is a good limit: lv-909 (or others) are better under 20t, and the lv-n is better over 20t.

For suborbital flight you need to get you periapsis under 0. Simple intersection would validate a "fly-by" contract.

The rocket equation can tell you delta-v for a stage; or you can install KER which will change your life. And I don't think you can apply real lift calculations in KSP due to some differences between the game and real life.

Service bays can cause clipping of the stuff inside, and the Kraken loves clipping...

Your phase angle is not right and so your are wasting a lot of delta-v to do your manoeuvre. Did you calculate it with Olex or AlexMoon's calculators ? Because they give a phase angle of ~45° and not -70° And it is very possible that this rocket, due to the physics change in 1.0, can no longer do the trip by itself and back; whereas in 0.90 it could do it by itself without refueling in orbit EDIT: I just saw you should have 45° phase angle to go to Duna from Kerbin, but -70° to go back from Duna. My bad

You can rise heat reentry up to 120% in settings menu (I think, or it may be in the debug menu)

It is enabled if you didn't deactivate it in the settings. 1.0.2 reentry heat is far weaker than 1.0 so you may not need a heat shield for LKO reentries, but it is still there

If you load any save on a 1.0.2 KSP, all features of 1.0.2 will be in your save. If you want to play with KSP 0.9 and still have heat/atmospheric features, mods are your friends (FAR and Deadly Reentry)

Yes, a moderator can. No. You don't. Yes, here.

Using the Klaw is the only way then I guess (and you're right, tourists cannot do EVA). Or you can push your ship using EVA jetpack...

Yes, it's a bug or a feature (not sure) and there has already been a similar thread about it, a few days ago, here, though no solution has been found And about the fuel line, it sometimes happens when using symmetry with fuel lines, I already had that, but it's no big deal.

Wow, amazing story, someone could make a movie out of it ! And congrats !

I could get 8 km/s of delta/v from a 25t nuclear powered ship with a 5 t payload using 6 Mk2 jet fuel tank and the stack tri-coupler, the 6 fuel tanks approximately have the size of a Jumbo-64, height and width. So the LV-N engine can still be used with a little imagination.

Yes it's suicide burn. And I think there's no need to cancel horizontal velocity, just burn retrograde until your trajectory touch the ground where you want to land and full thrust to cancel all velocity right before touching the ground. EDIT: not sure at all about that It will require several tries...

It's NASA's Orion command pod

Yes. (5char)

LF and Ox density is 5 kg/L according to the wiki. 720 + 880 = 1600 units of LF+Ox weigh 8 t (X200-16 fuel tank) So 1 t of fuel is 200 units, 1 kg of fuel is 0.2 units; so 1 unit is 5 kg Density is then 5 kg/unit 1 unit = 1 L

It is impossible to execute the manoeuvre exactly as theoretically predicted. You have to first make a general node in the direction with the approximate delta-v needed, then refine it by a few m/s using prograde/retrograde, radial/antiradial and normal/antinormal. Usually, using different directions has following consequences: Prograde/retrograde: moves encounter periapsis left or right when facing target prograde or retrograde (in front or behind planet) Radial/anti-radial: encounter sooner or later (use this if you see that your position will be in front / behind the one of your target at closest approach) Normal/antinormal: moves encounter periapsis up or down And then you will have an encounter but it still may disappear because of the game recalculating trajectories. So after your first "big" burn at Kerbin, you'll have to do a second one, about halfway to the encounter (or closest approach) to refine and to ensure you will actually encounter the target and get the periapsis you desire.