Warzouz

True, this is the easiest. If you can achieve low mun orbit, the rescue vehicle don't have to land, don't need a docking ring. Just close on the Bob lander so he he can EVA to the recue ship with the precious science experiments.

What is you mission plan ? What do you want your station for ? Remember that stations contracts rarely cover the expenses. So you should use you station for a specific purpose (mostly exploration). Depending on tech you have access, you station might vary a lot. Usually, you would want to have a lander and a return vehicle too. With higher tech you would have some kind of mining capacity. But stations are very efficient to collect science. With a 2000 m/s lander (even less, I don't recall my early landers), you can strip Minmus for science in 2 or 3 drops. And 4 to 5 for Mun. Your lander might need to be upgraded when you get new science equipment (so you'll need to send anther one). Managing crew rotation is also a good way to level up kerbals. Also, I would go to smallest number of tanks. As you usually have to transfer fuel, it's easier if tanks are big. Those small RCS tanks could be replaced with on bigger one. Usually, you don't need that much RCS, though. I would recommend to have an antenna, a probe core and few science light weight equipment (gravity, temp, pressure). theses are cheap and you'd be able to quickly do "get science from space around XXXX" in few seconds even with a uncrewed station. Don't hesitate to send a big tank of fuel, even if mostly empty. I would also suggest to use a Rockamax tank instead of those large Kerbodyne. And as other said, use bigger solar panels (even for the look of it...), but keep your docking rings far from those solar panels, you don't want to mess a docking procedure around solar panels... At low tech, add 2 to 4 small radial engines to be able to change orbit if needed. Favor a large docking ring at the bottom of your station for extensions. BTW, here my Exploration Space Station design : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132464

Same for a Kerbal simply running on Eve surface (not even jumping).

Pol is orbiting slowly around Jool, so you may need more dV to go directly there. I usually do a Pol refuelling but I've enough fuel for that brake. You must tweak your manoeuvre node to encounter Tylo (it's much easier than encounter Pol...). I would do it that way (but I'm not an expert...) : - If planes are too different, try to align to cross Tylo orbital plane in a flattest angle (it's the same as Laythe and Vall) - Then try to find Tylo encounter buy tweaking the node. - Set your trajectory to cross Tylo SOI in _front_ of it (so you'll be slowed). Get a 10km PE to Tylo. - Check you resulting orbit, you may tweak to get descent inclination. - If you need to slowdown, the Tylo PE is the best location. You can evaluate this burn by setting it in advance. - Try to get you resulting orbit up to Pol. Of course you must avoid ending in a retrograde orbit around Jool PS : even if set, I suggest you recheck projected orbits when entering Jool SOI, then when entering Tylo SOI. "Precise node" mod help quite a lot with node tweaking. MJ also has a "node editor" to do the same.

I was preparing a mission and testing a lander using Hyperedit. I deorbited it with 9500 m/s, landed, and took off. Flight was fine and I ended in orbit (100km iirc) with 2900m/s left. This leans I did it with 6500m/s (starting from 1200m). BUT I downsized the lander and failed with 7000m/s. Success with 7200m/s. I never did the real mission though. I'm playing other game for now. So yes it's possible and probably easier than in beta.

I tend to take the middle path. I send big pre-assembled ships to LKO which meet at their target body. For example, I'll try to stitch landers and return ships in VAB, but if I can't or if the result is too unstable, I'll create a separate mission and send them in the same time frame. Back in beta 9, I assembled a space station from 13 flights around Laythe. That was a very cool mission. I remember ships arriving in a 1 year time frame (I planned everything manually, using MJ for executing nodes (11 per ships not counting rendezvous manoeuvres) More recently I sent a mission to Moho. As the return ship was big, I could'nt fit it on the space station. So I had 2 missions. One with the space station and refueler and one with the return ship and lander. Both missions departed in 30min. the used different route, but arrived within 10min into Moho SOI. The only issue was that the SOI is 40min long and the burn is 20min. I did a slowdown burn for one of the ships to increase the time to PE, so I could manage the other capturing burn. Everything went well. I prefer docking around target bodies, it feels more pioneering !

Back in beta 0.9, I was targeting Tylo. I was also very fond of SSTO landers. I wanted to try a low TWR SSTO lander to Tylo (there was ISRU at that time. At the begining of the mission, I wasn't sure my SSTO would make it. So I brought along an additional stages lander. I tried landing the staged lander first. I fell short of fuel few meters above the ground and hit it at 40m/s. The ship didn't bounced back and I didn't break anything, luckily. The very small second stage could bring my kerbal to the tug orbiting Tylo. Then the SSTO lander. It had 6050m/s and a TWR of 0.95 when deorbiting at 30km. I managed to land, do science. The ascent was very short. I ended at LTO with only 50m/s left. The tug had to do the rendez-vous. On Tylo, success is very near failure...

I'm not as good as you for space planes ;D . But I like to tweak my own rockets until they do exactly what I want to. I don't aim to be the most optimized, but I want my ships to do very well and easily what they were meant to do. Then I creat variations of that ship to fit many options For example, I've build a family of SST rocket launchers : their prupose is to put to LKO nearly anything for a cheap price : Cygnus Recoverable SSTO rockets As I like space stations, I've tweak my concept until I feel it fits what I want to do, the created variations. Salamander Exploration Space stations I also created a line of simple 2 seats return vehicles with interplanetary stage from Moho to Eeloo to manage crew rotations. As I play the game, I refined the ships I use on each mission, until I get what I need. But when I'm hapopy with it, I'm already at Moho and Eeloo . That's the case for my Space stations. Sure I find them well balance and efficient, but all my career's planetary bodies already have prototypes orbiting them. So in the end I don't need them

There aren't stock radial separators On one of my designs, I had to put radial satellites on a space station. Those satellites are meant to be deploy at mid course to target a polar orbit (example Duna and Ike), as the station would target a equatorial orbit. So I needed a radial separator. I tried to fix 2 decouplers in reversed (using offset and sub-assembly), which I would fire in sequence to avoid bouncing back. But the whole piece was hard to fix on the satellite and to the central core of the station. Finally I decided to launch the satellites to the front, so I used a 90° double decoupler using a radial decoupler, a small nose cone, and a small stack decoupler. These where much easier to fix on the station. But I was luck to be able to launch the satellites frontward. Do you use radial separators ? How do you create them ? Are they light weight ?

Linguistically right, but operationally wrong. SSTO are heavily linked to reusability (space plane or rocket). The whole point of a SSTO is to keep everything packed so you'll be able to get all back easily. Without reusability SSTO are totally pointless, they cost more and are less efficient.

True, I forgot about that. Landing on a ultra precise point is not required. Landing at KSC will grant you 98% of the dry value. Landing anywhere within 70km will grand you 97%. Don't bother about precision for only 1%. The only "skill" you need is to know where to deorbit. Yes. But I would think the "pancake" shape was more due to the wobbliness of wet noodle joints. It was very hard to do a steady vertical 4 stage rocket such as Saturn V. Pancakes were easier because you could plug many (dragless & weightless) struts. The rocket were more rigid with such a flat design.

With what ? I go to space with a launcher with dV=3200m/s (VAC). On the launch pad KER says it's even around 3000 (KER uses ASL dV). If I use 3400m/s (VAC) in my designs, it's only because I'm deorbiting the recoverable stage and land it around KSC (with a powered landing). Of course if you use a non streamlined payload, you'll need 100 or 200m/s more. Or, I misunderstood what you wrote.

The other day, I was wondering why SSTO rockets are so cheap to use, and why I didn't used them in beta 0.9. Sure I was in Science game mode, and quite a newbee, but there wasn't real SSTO rockets I remember of back then. And then I remembered we used to go to LKO for 4500m/s, not 3200... A very quick and dirty calculations using my Cygnus launchers (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123195) A 15 tons payload to LKO - Needs a 80 tons SSTO stage in 1.0.x (1 mainsail) - Needed a 260 tons SSTO stage in beta 0.9 (3 mainsails) In few words, the changes from beta to 1.0 made rockets 3 times smaller to go to LKO. This allows SSTO rockets to really be efficient, especially if recoverable. Do you share this point of view ?

LKO is 3200m/s (calculated with VAC ISP, using reasonable engine) 3400 is a comfortable margin for error. With a Mammoth, you can go to space with 3000m/s ASL ISP (maybe 2900?), even less with a Mainsail.

I think the higher your reputation is, the less reputation you get (but you'll still get some). In my career, I'm at 95%, but I used contacts to convert 100% science to cash and 100% cash to reputation for a while.

You're right. Usually, you don't need more that the RCS in the command pod to dock.

No,you can deployr REGULAR chutes at 650m/s. Drogues can surely be opened at much high speed, but their low drag make them quite unuseful in a thin atmosophere. Kerbin Regular = 250m/s Drogue = 600m/s Duna Regular = 650m/s Drogue (higher but too little drag) Eve REgular = 200m/s Drogue (unusefull, terminal velocity will slow you down enough to deploy regular chutes)

My Dunian lander is 7 tons and have 6 regular chutes. You can do with less, but you'll have to burn a bit before hitting the ground.

Nothing will blow in Duna atmosphere. You can deploy regular chute at around 650m/s (probably 700m/s). PS : you ship is nice ! Drogue chutes might not be useful. EDIT: but the bottom batteries might not be safe. I think they ave a very low temperature tolerance.

Yep, this limitation is very bad.

Well, my usual recoverable SSTO launch stages are 3400m/s, but they i get into LKO with 150m/s left. A streamlined payload will only need 3200m/s (VAC) to go to 75km. I even did it with 3150 once. 3400m/s is a very comfortable LKO launch. 3300 m/s. 3250m/s would be reasonable without recovery. 3500 would only be needed for very non streamlined payload or underpowered launch stage. For Eve, you won't be able to orbit with only 5500m/s. I did it with 6500m/s one (from 1200m midlands) but after sizing down the vehicle, I failed to orbit with 7000m/s. The dedicated forum thread recommends 8000m/s (which I think is overfueled). 7500m/s is reasonable.

5700 tons in Eve orbit !!! How many parts does it have ? How did you launched it ? As for SSTO to eve, I'm more of a rocket SSTO guy, but my heavier SSTO lifter, capable or reaching LKO with 600tons payload, may not even reach Eve space with a single mk1 pod. Cygnus SSTO launchers

Not much difficulties with CTRL-Z, but it's sometimes awfully long to rollback (10 - 20 seconds).

I think MJ can display expended dV (gravity loss and drag loss). That would be interesting to compare those data with Kerbin ascent.

Who didn't press the full throttle key or even the shift key ! Kerbal law : always shut down you main engines when manoeuvring around station...