Mastikator

I like my first stage to be a big grid of short boosters to give me an initial kick, so very very early. The second stage mostly keeps the course at first and then at around the 10km mark I might get red flame effects.

The probe's strength improve with higher tracking station level. You can also add extra antennas to your probe. In a lot of ways they are like solid rocket boosters: when in doubt add more.

In many respects the Earth and Moon can be considered a binary system, because of how similar in scale the two are in terms of mass. Ike is ~10 times closer the mass of Duna than the Moon is to the Earth. And what, a hundred times closer? Duna and Ike is a binary system. You can not interact with one without interacting with the other.

How would that even work?

SSTO without airbreating parts and with ISRU is how I like to do it. Mammoth and NERV are your friends in this case, the mammoth has the highest TWR and specific impulse at sea level, the NERV has the highest specific impulse in vacuum (that can refuel from an ISRU). If you can get to Minimus then you can pretty much go anywhere.

The Aerospike lacks a bottom node too so that's hardly a point in favor of the Aerospike. The Mammoth has a TWR of 27 in vacuum, the Aerospike has a TWR of 18 in vacuum. Higher TWR means shorter burns which means less waste, it is significant. I can't find any metrics of the two on Eve sea level so I can't comment on that. But it is worth mentioning that the Mammoth is a good candidate for a SSTO rocket, if you're up to some vertical suicide burn landings then Mammoth is a great choice and the Aerospike is not.

The Mammoth has the highest TWR and Isp at sea level. It's the best by those metrics.

Because IVA Going into orbit while in IVA is awesome.

Ok that was super impressive. Nice

Launch it into space. The cosmic rays will add to the computing power.

With more boosters of course.

4.35 Gigs Very small and reasonable, not surprising.

If you get scansat then you'll doubly have reasons to put probes on every body. Having 3 per (MS, RADAR and ore) body at different altitude at polar orbit with 60degree angle difference will give you sufficient coverage for that 4th probe that lands. I usually make a probe-set payload that detach from the main transfer stage once they arrive at a very high altitude captured orbit. The probe missions in career mode will give you 90%+ coverage so you probably won't need extra probes unless you specifically need 99.9% coverage

Magnificent