Terwin

Currently the training process will allow you to have one additional star compared to what you would have just getting to where the academy is located. But only if you already have someone who has that additional star where ever you have the academy. If you have already done the mun-minmus-kerbol training missions(even in parts) then having an academy(with a teacher and life support, etc) on the Mun or Minmus will let you make a shorter training flight if you land near the academy. Putting one in orbit or on the surface of Kerbin saves almost no effort and seems like a waste of time. Sure you can train all of your raw recruits up to 1 star for a launch/recover, but they would get that much just from reaching orbit, so why bother? For me the big savings is letting me short-cut my training flights to just hitting my Mun way-station. As I have done many many training flights, it is not particularly interesting any more, so I am happy to short-cut it.

If you send a scanner first so you know where some Gypsum is, you can get by with recyclers, Nom-O-Matics, one drill, and a Ranger Crusher set to Fertilizer(g) That will keep everyone alive with only a single resource(plus power and hab-space of course). You could even use the small ISRU to make fertilizer from ore if you cannot find a reasonable spot with gypsum or minerals.

MKS includes GC which is a (partial) replacement for EPL. TAC LS and USI-LS can be run together, but you probably want to set the 'bad stuff' for not enough supplies or EC to 'none' as I think TAC-LS handles that part already. That just leaves you with the habitation and home-sickness parts of USI-LS. (if you really want you can have your kerbals consuming both supplies and TAC-LS supplies, but that seems excessive)

I think most of the R&D went to adding launch capacity to the rockets, after that it was mostly trial and error using fully-paid-for-and-expended first stages as testing platforms. Sure they added a probe-core and extendable fins, but the legs were not added until they were confident that they could land them exactly where they wanted them. It is pretty neat when you can have your clients pay for your on-going R&D and still be the cheapest option available...

Considering how little attention I pay to transfer-windows, you will have to go pretty inefficient to get worse than my interplanetary transfers... I often take > 5km/s getting from lko to Duna orbit for example... (There is a reason I have nerva-powered ore hauler/refiners in systems where I am active, even with GC many of my bases would not get down to the surface without a refuel)

no, that is a list of the bases I need to visit in the correct order to make sure that all required resources are available for the catch-up processing. MKS uses the 'usual catch-up processing' which is why things like the background processing mod cause problems for MKS: they change the catch-up process, potentially breaking needed functionality that is not used much by stock processes. the best fixes I know of are either self-sufficient bases, or large stocks of materials in the planetary stores so that there is little or no lost processing time(good argument for over-producing supporting bases so that they can build up those stocks in case they are needed).

There is no particular need to do so. Just remember to visit the bases in order when you return to a planet after an extended period(example form my game: Mun Automated Drills -> Mun support base -> Mun manufacturing base -> Mun Way-station) Aside from using my way-station as a gas station, my biggest reason for visiting my bases on a regular bases come from a combination of research and colony rewards: if I do not stop by every 30-60 days the Labs will be full of science to return and stop researching, and while I am there, I might as well get the kolony rewards too. There have been comments about working on an interplanetary transport system that would let you do things like send Specialized Parts from a Mun base to a Duna base. Aside from things like 'having appropriate shipping costs' I do not think we have a lot of details just yet.

I have found that the orientation of the crate has little to do with the orientation of the constructed craft. I have often had crates building on-end for long Tundra bases, and when they 'launch' the base is horizontal, just like it was in the VAB/SPH. Over the weekend I finished building a base on Duna where the crate started on-end, then fell over and the deployed base was still right-side up at launch. I also try to place my crates far enough away that they will not intersect anything on launch, usually with a corner pointing towards my construction base so it can be closer more safely. note: you may want to make sure you have a probe and reaction wheels on any craft you make with GC, I have found that they often 'jump' when deployed(think of switching to a base before the physics-easing was added to the stock game, as that is basically what is happening)

http://freedomship.com/ (planned to have ~100K persons on board at any one time) At a current estimated cost of ~$10Bn for the first ship, compared to Musk's goal of ~$200K per person to mars, the cost of living on the ocean on a prototype ship is roughly half of the target price to make mars colonization affordable...

The 'Crew Skills To Function Table' says what skills a kerbal with a given profession will have. For example, a Pilot has the skills: Warehousing, Planetary Logistics, and Hab/Home Timer Immunity. Miner, Technician, and Mechanic are professions, just as Pilot, Engineer, and Scientist are professions. Look in the Astronaut complex to hire a kerbal with a specific profession.

If you mean USI-MKS when you said USI-Kolonization, then you can have all 3 installed and manage the resources for both LS mods at the same time. If you do not want to manage Supplies from USI-LS then set the effect of not having supplies to None, and just never send any.(this can be done in the USI configuration UI available from the USI button at the space center screen) You can do the same with Electricity and/or Habitation as well. (I do not think you can actually turn off electricity consumption from the UI though, you may need to edit the config for that)

https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/wiki/Crew-Skills-Impact-on-Parts The wikis have just about everything you need to know about the USI mods. (but note: each mod has it's own Wiki, so you may need to look in multiple places)

The ISS orbit repeats roughly every 3 days, would that be too long for the second stage before the reentry burn? A skin-mounted solar panel or tiny fuel cell may well be needed for a 'land when it gets close again' approach, but that still seems less weight than any sort of burn-back. Although I suppose buying some land near Macapa may be a more efficient option, assuming it is politically viable.

As the second stage gets into LEO, why would it not complete most of an orbit and land back at it's launch point with just a reentry burn? It seems that not needing a boost-back would greatly reduce the amount of fuel that needs to be reserved. Presumably spending an extra hour or so in space should not be much of a hard-ship compared to reentry...

Habitation has 2 components: Current module: resets any time you EVA and is based on the hab time if your current vessel Homesickness: Resets only on Kerbin and is based on the best vessel that kerbal has been aboard sine they were last on Kerbin.Pilots and explorers are immune to homesickness (and current module time I think) so long as they have at least 1 year of hab-time in the current vessel. Colonization modules can be used to reverse the clock on both timers by consuming Colony supplies(does not work after they become tourists) Medical modules can return Kerbals to work once they have become tourists(or mutinous probably) but consume colony supplies(only works on Kerbals that have stopped working I believe) Any vessel with a hab-time of > 50 years counts as having an indefinite hab time(aka will not have active hab counters). Any vessel landed on a body with a >=500% colonization bonus and at least 1 year of hab time will count as having an indefinite hab-time One possible option is to build a really nice station with huge hab-time in kerbin orbit and dock your small vessel to that to give a high home-sickness counter, then use KAC to EVA before the current vessel hab-timer runs out. Personally I find that a few extra hitchikers and a bunch of viewing couplas(the ones with a 0.7 multiplier) will generally make my kerbals pretty content for a trip to Duna. (Last night I landed my second batch of Kerbals on Duna, while the first batch just did flags and footprints, this batch is currently using GC to assemble a series of facilities that will let them become permanent residents once completed)

Any other mod which allows design-time or flight-time changes to a part will block usage of R&D on that part. Tweakscale for instance, will block nearly all parts from being researchable, while fuel switching mods will block fuel tanks from benefiting from R&D. R&D scans for most of those mods and refuses to work with those parts so that there is not a conflict when two different mods try to change the properties of a part. (if you had set a LFO tank to LF and R&Ded it's dry-weight by 10%, then, on any scene load it could either be LFO with reduced dry mass, or LF with full dry mass. Try this with Tweakscale and you get mission-ending errors potentially happening with every scene switch as half the parts of your rocket apply their tweakscale changes and the other half applying their R&D changes, and which parts do which changes every time you go back to the craft)

All of my rockets VTOL. I even have some with sky-cranes that will lift the cargo box off the long-range rocket-base for depositing it on the ground near by.(primarily for Ground Construction, as you do not want those too close to anything as you deploy them. DIY kit is attached by 2 large docking ports so that the rocket can re-assemble and return after delivering the cargo) If you are talking about planes, I do not often use those as they are not as play-time efficient as rockets.

The save file is just a text file, so changing the profession of a kerbal is as simple as opening the save file in a text editor, searching for the name of the kerbal to find the block where they are defined, then change the profession name from the old profession(Tourist in this case) to the new profession.(I think there are 2 places where it needs to be changed, but I have not done this in a while and that might no longer be the case) As always, make a back-up copy of your save file before making any changes, just in case. I would provide more detailed instructions, but it has been a while since I did this, and I do not have a save file handy to identify the relevant labels and such.

Logged MKS #1245 Looks like 2.5m and 3.75m med-bays both have crew capacity 4, making it impossible for the 3.75m part to treat 12 as the description claims. (Duna and 2.5m part may also have inaccurate descriptions if Scientist must also be in the module) Also updated wiki 'Med-bay and colony supplies' entry to include Duna med-bay, and all 3 colonization modules.

RoverDude said you needed to have the colonization module active to breed kerbals, and I took that to mean turned on and supplied with colony supplies.

Do we have hard numbers for how much a unit of Colony supplies will affect the hab/home time of a kerbal? Do we even know if the ratio is constant between med-bay vs 2.5m vs 3.75m colonization modules? Does the consumption of colony supplies by Colonization modules go down when the hab timers are all maxed out? (if not, does anyone know the ratio of active/inactive time that maximized the utility of your colony supplies?) Seems like good information to put into the wiki, but unlike the manufacturing parts, I do not think all of the information is present in the config files. It would be nice to be able to to determine if/when it is more weight-efficient to rely on colony supplies for a mission as opposed to bulk hab-time/multipliers, much like we can determine when it is better to rely on basic supplies vs a fertilizer cycle.

10.6 supplies/kerbal/day *0.21 for RT 5000 recycler -> 2.226 /11 for fertilizer usage -> 0.2024 * 426 days -> 86.2 fertilzer/kerbal/year ~776 fertilizer per kerbal for 9 years 5.8 kerbals per 2.5m fertilizer tank(4.5k), 19.3 per 3.75m tank(15k). Seems like Hab is the biggest problem, not supplies. Wow, I have been massively over-supplying my inner-system ships with fertilizer... >12 years worth for Duna and Moho (4.5K fertilzer for 4 kerbals)

I had a number of missing categories, but when I uninstalled and reinstalled the RoverDude and Allista mods it was all working fine again. Vacuum tubes came before solid state transistors. It is often easier to do something with a larger form-factor. I assumed that it was deliberate that the bulkier version of Logistics become available first. There is a skycrane under engines. It is no longer Octagonal, it is a 2.5m in-line part that has deployable engines.

When I was setting up my first asteroid capture mission as a way to get my 'dock in Kerbol orbit' exploration task completed, I noticed an asteroid in a highly elliptical orbit of Kerbin. I think it hit the Mun or Minmus SOI and that changed it's trajectory enough to capture it inside the Kerbin SOI(at least until it's next encounter). I do not have any asteroid related mods, so it can certainly happen in the base game. (I plan to collect it as soon as I get my currently hooked asteroid stowed on my science station in LKO, but it may be making stops at Mun or Minmus first for refueling/science collection activities...)

I would not be surprised if RoverDude does something like check for landed in the last minute and currently in range. That would alleviate problems with vessels that are slowly sliding and flicker back and forth between landed and not landed. You might try landing one vessel on a high area then have a vessel orbit within 100m and see if you can transfer that way...