Juicy

You mean, kinda like the cross you can put on a planetary map in SCANsat?

Still some thing I haven't tried yet: when the two vessels undock, and the IR parts were never used while they were docked, will they reverted to their original intended behaviour after the undock? I'm just thinking whether IR parts may still be of use to support docking to static objects, like Rovers to Munbases, either by moving the dockingport on the base or by adjusting the height of the rover. I was also thinking of a folding ramp on the base, with a docking port on the bottom of the rover, allowing the rover to drive on top of the base, which would have a dockingport there instead (all my attempts to launch a rigid ramp spun out of control I'm afraid). TESTED: After undocking two vessels, IR parts behaved normal. At least for me. For now.

To me, parachutes are like the old struts. Better safe than sorry

Could it be that one or more of the parts gets mirrored upside down? It doesn't look like a big difference, so it's probably a smaller piece. On some rare occasions, usually when a plane contains rocket parts, I find mirroring doesn't work quite as I'd expect.

That's also a good idea. It might even be possible to have both: everything unlockable through science points, but on rare occasions some mission rewarding an unlock, which may or may not be already accessible through science points (depending how far you progressed). That could result in fun weirdness, like someone who just broke the first 2 tiers of the tech tree finding a mission that rewards Nuclear Propulsion, encouraging him to experiment and try to get that thing to work without all the parts he or she normally has available at that stage. It's what initially drew me to KSP: the potential to find unconventional solutions.

I'd like to see some more progression gameplay to Science Mode, but without the financial management of Career Mode. Starting off, I'd love to see the addition of missions to Science Mode. Something like described here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/121752-science-progression-using-contracts But, what I'd also like to see, is the different levels of buildings and skills of our Kerbals come into play in Science mode. -Missions: add a minor amount of Science Points. (they already do in Career Mode, so why not in Science Mode?). These would be the most common missions on the list, the "fillers". -Building levels: unlocked through missions as well. So you want more Kerbals on your roster? Then do missions to improve your Astronaut Complex. Missions with building upgrades would be less common than the "science point" missions. -Science Progression unlocks, as described in the thread I linked above. Not as common as the science point rewards, but more common than building upgrades. Types of missions can be made similar to the ones we already have. Maybe introduce a new mission type as well, which requires the player to perform a mission in a newly built ship with a pricetag under some predetermined amount, even if finances are not an issue, the parts value can still be used as a validation statistic for mission success.

I prefer Science. It involves some level of progress, while I don't have to worry about picking filler missions just to make money to pay for silly random experiments I want to do myself. I haven't finished even a single Kerbal day in career mode, so maybe there's some "daily grant" that I haven't encountered yet, but getting stuck from running out of money just isn't appealing to me. I like the idea of career mode, and wished more of its components were available in sience mode. Maybe through a different set of missions or something, to enable mission-control and the various levels of buildings, but without the monetary management.

Asparagus still works, but you'll want to start out with a regular 2-4 stage "tall" rocket, and add the asparagus setup only to the bottom stage. There is a turning point somewhere though, where an asparagus might get too big for even the tall component of your rocket to compensate the mass distribution. As such, I don't really see them as part of the rocket, but more as a "detachable vertically accelerating rocket slinging platform". They're just there to give my actual rocket a higher altitude and some initial velocity before it really takes off

As for the science points you're missing: make a really small 1-stage rocket with liquid engine, a whatever to adjust your trajectory, a parachute (just in case) and a couple of science instruments. Launch, aim to land at different locations within your base, (including tops of several roofs), and do experiments after landing. Even with just Goo, a thermometer and a science jr, there are easily 400 science points in your main base, if not more. Just launch, land, experiment and recover a few times. With rovers and some more experiments it's even better, there should be over a thousand science points just in your main base!

I had the same issue today, and through some quirk, I managed to fill up my batteries by speeding up the game to the maximum setting. The batteries were basically instantly full. For now, this might occasionally work. Can't guarantee it will work forever though, nor that it would work in every case.

EVA one of your Kerbals, then right click and click the button. If you're in a rover, you don't even have to go all the way down, but can just hang onto the cockpit to take a surface sample.

I'm just hoping they're expanding on the whole ore/mining thing sometime, allowing us to add production fascilities to our bases to create parts, eventually allowing us even to build entire launchplatforms, rockets and planes at our bases. Colonization!

I found aerobreaking very advantageous when Jeb's fuel ran out on his descent back home, and he went only as low as about 65 km, while his Ap was still about 700 km out. An afternoon making circles later, he finally dipped below 59 km and his AP went below 70km.

For testing (also works as a simple fix) whether it's the Center of Mass of your upper stage being too low, add another fuel to the upper stage, and disable the top fuel tank manually before take-off, wait for re-enabling it untill the bottom fuel tank of the stage is (nearly) empty. Canards also don't go well on rockets. If you add fins, always keep them below the center of mass, or they may generate enough drag to flip you as well.

Every time you do an experiment which generates science points, you get an icon to "process" the data in the lab. This basically takes a bunch of electricity (depending on the data size of the experiment's results) to add the science to the lab, after which the experiment window for the part re-opens, and you get the option to reset/keep/send the experiment data as usual. (subject to change, I bet, but currently, there's no cost other than electricity for adding the data to the lab, it's basically just your lab getting a copy of the data) Depending on the amount of scientists you have on your lab, and the amount of data stored in the lab, it starts to generate science points. Very little at first, like 0.03 to 0.1, but I figure a full data storage could generate somewhere between 3 and 10 science points a day. The science points are stored in the lab, so once every few days, you'll want the lab to send the data back to Kerbal, where they get added to your usable pool of science points. It also uses up stored data while generating science points, so a full storage of data won't last indefinitely. But it will take a while to drain a lab with full data storage. Getting your lab full of data takes a LOT of experiments though. More experiments than a satelite in orbit would generate by itself from just orbitting, so I figure the trick is to have a lab in orbit, and have other ships/satelites collect experiment data but not transmit any of it, then dock them to the lab, and THEN process the experiment data. After that, they can send/retrieve/whatever the experiment data. Processing an experiment to add it to the lab can take a LOT of electricity as well. A small experiment will hardly make an impact on your batteries, but a 200 data experiment can easily drain the smaller and medium batteries while processing. Processing fails when this happens, and you can retry again some other time (for example, when your batteries are full, or when you have more solar panels aimed directly at the sun)

When you sit in an airliner, look at how high the wingtips are relative to yourself while the plane is still standing still on the ground. Next look how high the wingtips are relative to yourself during take off and in flight. Few aircraft have completely stiff wings, and especially on airliners and gliders, which both have relatively wide wings, it's very noticable that the shape of the wing bends into a slight V shape during flight, but especialy during take-off. (for fun, if you know the person next to you is afraid of flying, look wide eyed, and exclaim "Omg! They're gonna snap off!")

You can often get missions that involve parts that are "next in line" in your science unlocks. Especially if your science progress consists of varied tiers between the different categories. A common tactic people use, is researching for all the science parts (mostly on the bottom rows of the tech tree), which also unlocks several wheels, build a rover with a TON of scanning equipment, and then make a trip around the space station doing research on each building and some other small areas, the Kerbin grasslands, the nearby shore, and finally drive their rover into the sea and scan that too.

Short answer: once you leave the atmosphere. Long answer: depending on whether the mass of the fairing is less than the drag caused by whatever it's covering, slightly below leaving the atmosphere, provided the contents of the faring do not overheat. Logically, it's also safer not to jettison farings while accellerating, since you might fly into the debris.

Alternatively, if your plane has a lot of winglift and enough thrust, strap some fuel tanks on top of it with radial decouplers. You'll want to put them more or less above the center of mass, and disable the fuel tanks on your hull. Also remember to add fuel-pipes going from the tanks to your hull. Once they're (nearly) empty, just enable the tanks in your hull again, tip your plane over a bit, and detach the "fuel tank stage". My smallest dual-engine plane using this system has a total of 8 fuel tanks: one on each engine, two on the hull, and a pair of detachable fuel pods of two tanks each. It easily reaches either pole or any of the other landmasses, though it's quite slow, so you need time for a long flight.

I actually started adding inline stabilizers to most of my builds. Even the planes! They take a bit more electricity, but I find them rather preferable over (tail)fins.