Warzouz

If your ship is equipped and you have a scientist on board, you have a special option when reviewing the sceince data which allow you to research it. If doing so, the data value is added to your lab and you can keep or transmit the science then. The lab will then process the data (500 max) into science at a daily rate (depending on you scientist experience). This science can be transmitted to Kerbin. PS : this should be in to gameplay forum.

If you have nose cones you could put your labs on top of your command pod. Chutes should be on the labs. Add a decoupler under the nose code on the labs (or even no decoupler) or one big chute. A heat shield should be added under the pod. This is a quite odd ship, but the heaviest part (the pod) will stay at the bottom and the ship should not flip Sorry I can't put any pictures, but I'm not in front of KSP.

We discussed about that too on the dedicated topic in the tutorial forum. We acknowledge that VAC value is better than ASL value. Beware that dV is dependent on engine ISP, but also with ship aerodynamics and flight plan. Ascent path is very very important. I discovered that when practicing landing/lifting from Eve. In 1.0.4, I designed a Eve ship with 9400m/s. I hyperedited it at 100km, landed (on 1000m Midlands) and returned to 140km. I had 2900m/s left. So I used 6500m/s (VAC). As the ship was really heavy, I tried to sized it down. The new ship had 7000m/s (VAC). and I failed to return to orbit multiple times...

This is true. ISP rises very fast on Kerbin. At 5000m, you're already at near vacum value. I always calculate my dV as vacuum value. I go to space with 3200 to 3300m/s. My standard Cygnus recoverable SSTO rockets are fueled with 3400m/s, but they're designed to have 100 to 200m/s before detaching payload so they can deorbit, do some minor slowdown burns (since 1.0.5) and do a powered landing (helped with chutes). I think I did a 3150m/s (vac) in 1.0.4 once. My usual flight path was to turn at 60m/s and cross 45° at 8000m. But in 1.0.5, heating is now an issue, so I cross 45° at 10km, even 12km now. That costs a bit more dV, but it's safer.

I use a 10km PE (as in 1.0.4) but heating can be an issue sometimes and drogues are usually necessary for the vehicle I land (usually recoverable SSTO rocket stage from 15T to 450tons). It's true it's harder than in 1.0.4. Noticeably, Airbrakes are unusable now because of very low temperature tolerance.

Yes, beware of dV display. KER or MJ can give false readings (sometimes hard to see). 3400m/s for LKO is a comfortable value even for a reasonably unstreamlined payload.

I would agree with Geschosskopf Kerbin stations don't have to much use. Fuel is very cheap and refueling from station take a long time and need parts (RCS, docking rings...). There are other ways to optimize cash. As for your statement of planing trips, a simple satellite can do as nicely. I have space stations around nearly every planetary body from Moho to Eeloo. I love them. The only one I don't use is the oldest : the Kerbin station, even if it's the biggest of all. Well, this is not totally true, I used it once to refuel my space plane so it could rescue badly designed return vehicles from Dres and Jool stations on a high eccentric Kerbin orbit. But without the stations, I would have created a simple rocket and do the same. It was purely RP. We've discussed a lot on the refueling from Minmus or Mun that take a lot of time and gives very little benefits. A Kerbin space station would be useful if you decide to use and reuse planetary transfer stages. Futher more, if experiences and contracts would not be validated only when landing on kerbin, but also docking with orbiting station, that would add a RP dimension to the need of Kerbin space stations.

I don't get the point of to OP. Without mods (especially KER) or "mental work", there is no way to know what your dV is, or even TWR. KSP is just "stick parts and fly it until it gets to LKO !" At 3500m/s you're not at the maximum payload for a rocket. You can go to LKO with 3200m/s, so you can turn those 300m/s fuel into payload. Then rocket drag can change the "maximum payload" a lot. You may need more fuel to orbit a draggy/large payload. As there is no way to evaluate drag, you have to guess. For my part, I use a rule of thumb. - 3200m/s for a streamlined payload - 3300m/s for a reasonably unstreamlined payload - 3400m/s for a streamlined payload with launch stage recovery near KSP - TWR between 1.35 and 1.6 (ideally 1.45 for my personal taste) - I've pre-build LKO stages sub-assemblies each 25T of payload (15,30,50,75,100,125,150,200,300,400,600T) - I can adjust the launchers to fit my need. But as the only thing I save is fuel, I don't care too much. That's saves me a lot of time an money, in career. (you can check the Cygnus SSTO rockets in my signature for more details).

I agree that science game mode is the best for beginners. You can slowly learn the game core mechanics (building and flying) without additional unrelated constraints (contracts, money, strategies, experience). Sandbox has too much parts to start with, it's useful for designing and testing. Career game mode is nice for a second game. It adds nice new features. I also agree with the very steep learning curve (a learning wall indeed ; nice one). KSP is a hard game, but rewarding, when you succeed in what you had planned ! I remember someone said : "In KSP, if you don't know what you are doing, you'll surely fail" (I think it's Scott Manley). To play KSP, you need to look at some tutorial videos, read some nicely written tutorial posts on this forum, use some external tools and eventually use some mods as well. In other words : do only when you understand what to do. Lucky guesses are heavily subject to Murphy's law.

I wouldn't dare entering Kerbin atmosphere over 4500m/s. Eve is worse. You should do a slowdown before trying aerobraking at a more reasonable speed. BTW how did you end with at 5000m/s ? it seems very high for a Eve encounter (I don't remember well though...)

Yes you're right. I had a contract that nearly auto validate. I realized that my "Voyager" ship had already been on those other world before taking the contract. I was quite sad though... PS : this was in 1.0.4, it may have been fixed in 1.0.5.

I only hope for more professional and user friendly interface, better sound design and a higher part count capacity. I hope with a more solid basis, Squad would add some more planetary bodies.

I don't have much clue to flip a lander back, even the "gravity hack" seems to be the best... But I've a technique to reduce flipping chance : lock suspension on the lower leg and touch down very slowly. I've noticed that suspension make the craft bounce and the CoM pass over the lowest leg contact. Without suspension on the lowest leg, the bouncing is much less important and the CoM is less likely to pass over the leg. It's not miraculous but it helps. Of course touching down very slowly (<1m/s) and having SAS On is very important. Here is my 40 to 60 tons heavy lander on a 27° slop on Bop.

I also did a 2270 m/s landing only but that was a test probe with with high TWR (4.5 starting at 10km)

What TWR do you have ? from which altitude do you start deorbiting ? In beta 0.9, I did it with a low TWR and I used 6000m/s from and to 30km.

I've learnt that most of the heating doesn't come from friction, but from gas compression in front of the ship. So Heating and drag aren't directly related (but I can be wrong...)

That's why I use Rocket SSTO : the flight profile doesn't change much.

Magnetometer is a mod, isn't it ? I've noticed that suspensions mays increase risk of tiping a lander. When I land on a high slope, I always lock suspension of the lower leg. I've noticed that the lander doesn't bounce as much so the gravity center doesn't get past the lower leg. This is my heavy miner landed on a 27° slope on Bop. The other secret is touch down very slowly...

And BTW, heavier rockets are sometime easier to launch to orbit than small ones (especially those 1.25m)

You're true. KER and KAC (in a simpler design) should definitely be stock. Without KAC you can't really play multiple missions or you're probably miss node while time warping. Also, some kind of tool to help finding transfer windows is definitively necessary. Maybe someone at the observatory could warn us of those windows ! that you be RP. External tools and mods are nice to expand the gameplay. But when we need them to play, that means the game is not complete.

I'm 43. When I was a kid, I had the chance to have a Apple IIe with 64kB RAM and a 170kB 5"1/4 floppy disc drive (no HD of course). My first 14400baud modem came 12 years later. I was with Compuserve. I even resigned my contract few months later, because I felt I had done everything interesting I find on internet. I don't remember any forums, even ICQ wasn't created at that time (or I didn't heard of it then). Only static Web, mail and newsgroups. I get a new provider 1 year later. Things started to grow. I don't think I'm capable to remember all the computer I got, let's have a try. Apple IIe 386 SL (Compaq Laptop) Atari Mega STE (cool computer) 486 DX2 66 (what a leap forward) Cyrix 166+ (with my first modem) Pentium II 450Mhz Duron 800MHz Thunderbird 1.4MHz (ADSL time) Athlon ? Mhz Athlon X2 Core 2 Duo Core i5 I remember a 3" 1/2 floppy disc had a 75kB/s transfer speed rate (much better than the old 5"1/4). Now my internet connexion is 3.5MB/s

I don't think if it's tidally lock, but rotation is very slow

For new players, SCIENCE game mode is best to discover the game and get used to it's mechanics

I reported this bug in the support section last week. here

It seems this is a bug, there is few words on it in the Devnote