HvP

In career mode, only pilots get SAS abilities from experience, not scientists or engineers. If you want to send a mission out without an experienced pilot on board you will need to add a more advanced probe core to your ship. You can check what abilities the probe cores have by right-clicking the part in the VAB parts menu and looking at the extra box that opens up on the right. It will have a list of SAS abilities for that probe such as prograde/retrograde, hold target, etc... When scientists get more stars by leveling up their experience it makes them process data in the science lab faster, and when engineers level up their experience it makes them process ore more efficiently when operating drills and ISRU ore converters. That's what their extra stars mean. When pilots get more stars from their experience it allows them to add more SAS abilities such as the ones you are looking for.

A replica of Drax's Moonraker station from the James Bond film of the same name. This thing is diabolical thanks to production designer Ken Adam.

I wouldn't mind launch sites becoming available on other bodies only AFTER you have performed an orbital survey, landed a surface scanner, performed all surface experiments, traversed X area on EVA for X days, landed a science lab, ore drill and processor, had to fuel your ships up using your ISRU refinery, and had to keep X number of engineers of five star experience on site to complete builds with habitation on site for all of them.

WELCOME to the KSP forums! This actually sounds more like what happens when you slow down so much that you actually start rising upwards again. Pay close attention to your navball. Is it flipping between the prograde and retrograde markers near the surface? If it does then retrograde SAS will usually just default to standard SAS hold, but it has been known to try and flip your craft over to keep pointing retrograde - except that now retrograde is towards the planet's surface. The solution is to either make sure that you watch your velocity (in the window above the navball) and control your throttle carefully so that you don't arrest your descent too early. Or you can switch to normal SAS hold once you slow down enough. Another possibility is that your engine gimbal is providing most of the control that's keeping you stable until you lower your thrust so much that there isn't enough thrust to compensate for the off center torque. Except for a redesign to center your mass better I doubt you have many options. Instead of another engine you could try sending up a similarly weighted fuel tank with a claw on it and stick it to the other side of your lander as Aegolius13 suggested. Or, since you are able to get to within 50 m/s of landing then you might have some luck trying to pull off a well executed suicide burn - where you wait until the last possible moment to activate engines at full throttle so that your velocity reaches zero at the exact moment you touch down. Calculating this would be difficult and probably requires several attempts with ample use of quicksave/load. Without knowing more details about your craft design it would be hard to be more helpful, though.

As Kryxal said, you should check to see if you have the filter turned off for EVA Kerbals. In the map view go to the top of the screen with your mouse so that the bar drops down showing the little white icons for different types of craft. Make sure that the icon showing a little Kerbal isn't toggled off.

Speed Unit Annex uses the little window at the top of the navball to show apoapsis/periapsis, and can even show time to apoapsis, distance to ground level, target docking pitch/roll/yaw degrees, and various other situation dependent info without any extra windows cluttering up the screen.

You have to first click the "Run Analysis" button on the Surface Sanning Module when in each biome to get site specific data in the narrow band scanner's field.

We need a way to combine science gathering off world with the need for gameplay options once you reach other planets to add usefulness to EVA. The developers have signaled opportunities for offworld launch-sites with the introduction of a Mun base site in the new console upgrade. In the stock game we have orbital and surface survey equipment, surface sampling and seismic testing equipment. I vote we should have the option to use this equipment to build an additional planetary overlay that displays suitable sites for planetary base construction. Ideally, such an overlay would not just list ore concentration, but also pitch of the terrain, length of daylight exposure, distance from nearby biomes and anomalies, elevation, latitude and other data that would contribute to a successful surface base. Perhaps a heatmap of EVA activity on the surface could record how much of the area has been explored by your Kerbals. Areas that have been visited frequently and the number and value of science experiments performed could increase the value of the site and raise the percentage of a "construct surface launch site" option becoming available. Whether there is a sufficient concentration of ore in the area, the frequency of quakes in the area as revealed by seismic scans, soil conditions revealed by the surface samples, how level the ground is, etc... could all actually contribute to opening up the option of starting the construction of a surface base.

I just right-click on the full image itself, choose "Copy Image Location" and paste the file link directly into the forum post. It should embed automatically.

Hello @Elroy Jetson and welcome to KSP! Science is sometimes a fiddly process in KSP and it's not always easy to tell what science you can do and in what environment. The wiki articles linked to by @Espatie and @5thHorseman are essential for figuring out what you can do and where. For your question about what you can do in orbit; only EVA reports and the Negative Gravioli Detector will give you biome specific results while in orbit outside of the atmosphere. The Gravioli Detecor, however, is only available much later in the game, when you've already unlocked most of the science tree. Any other experiments will only give you one reading for the whole planet/moon while in the region considered "low in space." You can get another reading for "high in space" which starts at different altitudes for different worlds. My recommendation is to make sure to have an Experiment Storage Unit on your craft and bind it to an action group. Every time you trigger that action it will automatically collect the science results from all over the craft and store it in the container. You can bind your gravity experiment, and any of your other science experiments, to another action group. If you have access to the External Command Seat then your Kerbal can conduct EVA reports without having to hang onto a ladder outside the ship and your Kerbal is still in control of the ship. This also makes it much easier to time warp around the planet without your Kerbal floating away. You can't assign the EVA report to an action group so you should probably right click on the Kerbal in the command seat and pin their action window open so you'll have easy access to it. Now you can much more quickly scoop up science in orbit. Having said all of this, it's likely that you are in an early stage of your career before you have access to either the command seat or the gravity detector. If that's the case then you'll have to content yourself with getting out on EVA every time you want a biome report. The experiment container still comes early enough in career that you should plan on unlocking it for science gathering missions. Many people opt for a strategy of building a lightweight "hopper" than can land on the low gravity moon Minmus and hop around to its different biomes on the surface to gather a boat load of science fairly quickly. If you aren't opposed to using mods, there are a few different ones that help you run science experiments and notify you of new biomes you are entering. Such as: Science Alert ReAlerted or Experiment Tracker Retracked.

@Victor3 If you are controlling from the cockpit at the front of your fuel truck then all of the wheels should be pulling in the correct direction. Be sure to right-click in the cockpit and choose "Control From Here" to be sure. For longer vehicles the game can sometimes make poor decisions regarding which wheels steer and in what direction. You may have to right-click and disable steering for some wheels or even invert their steering direction from their right-click-menu to get the best results. As for the steering direction changing when you undock - are you docking to your station using that small docking port on the top of the truck? The game will often revert to the last active docking port as the new control point for navigation after you undock, and in your case that docking port is aiming up at the sky. Unfortunately, I don't know of any method to prevent this. You'll just have to remember to keep right-clicking your cockpit afterwards to control from there every time. For your third question, there may be a good solution for you. There is now a stock method for setting a priority to the names that each craft retains after docking and undocking. See the linked article below. Changing the name priority is normally only available in the VAB/SPH editors, but you can make a small change to the "settings.cfg" file in your main Kerbal Space Program folder which will allow you to change the name priorities in flight. Find the line called "SHOW_VESSEL_NAMING_IN_FLIGHT" and set it to "True" There are details on how the naming priority works in this article:

I'm not experienced with Eve ascent, but I can give some feedback on the design in general. The aerospike engines don't have any thrust vectoring, so you're only relying on your reaction wheels and tail fins to point you in the right direction. The problem is that because your thrust-to-weight ratio is so low (you're barely hovering on takeoff) not enough wind is passing over your fins to give you any control authority there. You could save weight by taking most of the reaction wheels off and replacing at least the middle aerospike with a vector engine to give you more control. Edit: (ninja'd by @Foxster heh)

Is the docking port you are controlling from in line with the axis of the ship, or is it radially attached? There is a bug in KSP where SAS hold target doesn't aim in the right direction when using an off-axis docking port. https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/20513

Short answer: Because the Space-X Starship has a much different flight profile than any craft ever before built. Current carbon fiber fabrication technology simply cannot build such a large cylinder of carbon fiber without introducing inconsistencies and flaws that could fail during the extreme temperature ranges from launch to deep space to atmospheric reentry. Stainless steel is far more resistant to the heat load that the reusable spacecraft will experience without needing as much insulation or ablator. Aluminum easily transfers heat to the cryo-fuel inside and stainless-steel would transfer less heat, requiring less insulation. Machining aluminum down to the structural mesh pattern used results in 90% waste generated, while stainless steel can have the structural mesh welded directly to a much thinner layer of steel.

It's great to see work continuing on the part updates, and even more so for the much needed attention to consoles. I do hope there are plans to integrate the delta-v calculations for those users who can't use mods on consoles. I have no complaints about the touch-ups for the parts shown except I was hoping that there would be a variant of the Vernor without the long cowling. That cowling on it makes it difficult to place in clusters or at the fore/aft sections of ships. Otherwise, things are looking pretty awesome.

I'm getting the same behavior, too. I like this mod, but it's unfortunate because I use subassemblies pretty extensively which means I have to be really careful not to use it for those or else I'm stuck reorganizing them.

If you have an Olivaw series somewhere out there I'd keep an eye on it. It might just start running your space program for you without you even knowing it. - For my saved craft I usually append an abbreviation for the planetary body they are intended to go to and a prefix including a string of letters that stand for (O)rbiter, (F)lyby, (P)robe, (L)ander, (R)eentry, or (C)rewed followed by the number of crew members it can carry. After this is the series name. Crewed science craft are named after scientists, real or fictional. Crew transport ferries are named after explorers or pilots; fuel tankers after large animals; science probes are named after birds; and communication satellites for authors. So a craft saved as "Du.LRC4 - Fermi" would be a four crew science vessel capable of landing on Duna and reentering on Kerbin. But the "Mo.FP - Raven" would be an unmanned flyby probe to Moho that's never coming back. Launchers are saved as subassemblies with a prefix to indicate tonnage to 100km Kerbin orbit, the payload diameter, and a series name. The "L020T-2.5 - Enterprise" is a lifter that can carry 20 tons to LKO. Lifters are named after famous ships, real or fictional and may get A, B, C designations for minor variants such as extra solid rocket boosters or different fairing sizes. Space stations and surface bases get more fanciful names based on the titles from books, films or television. "The Restaurant and the End of the Universe" may be a space hotel, for example, or "The Devil in the Dark" an ore mining base.

@kevbot5 I highly recommend the Speed Unit Annex mod by flart. It will show you apoapsis and periapsis in the window on the top of the navball once you reach about 30km up, or if you click the navball window to switch to orbital navigation mode. It also has options to display your time to Ap/Pe, target distance, and pitch, yaw and roll increments relative to a targeted docking port. It's very compact and unobtrusive; no extra windows cluttering up the screen, and is up to date with 1.6.1.

Excellent idea! Having it interact with the part descriptions would be a great start, although I still want to see the engine properties in the part menu for quick reference. The engineer's report and certain contract windows could also link to relevant KSPedia entries. The KSPedia overall could be much more useful. It's far to compartmentalized in my opinion. There should be full tutorials in there that are more in depth for those who want to drill down into specifics. The quick overviews are fine, but they are just quick-start introductions at the moment. And now that there is a delta-V tool in the game there is no reason not to include a stock delta-V map and transfer window graph in there also.

Could be, although there also is a real "Sea of Serenity" so named on the Moon as well. (of course, the "Pacific Ocean" literally means the same thing too.) I myself would rather not speculate at this point.

This has become one of my favorite mods, and one I now consider essential. Love this new functionality for docking, thank you!

Having ships waiting in recovery zones is something I've been considering recently, but have never done before. My initial thought was to make a pontoon ship with a cargo bay ramp in the middle with a claw in it to scoop up the capsule. Your clawed sea plane though is so very Kerbal. Much faster than having to plod along at tens of meters a second on the water's surface.

I'm usually listening to orchestral music while playing, and that usually means classical or film soundtracks. Mahler, Hovhaness, John Adams, Horner, Goldsmith, Williams, etc...

@egoego I would guess that this is the bug that happens when you hover over the delta-V icon before selecting a planet. As @OHara said, make sure that you always click the mouse button on the delta-V icon before choosing any settings in that menu. I've also found that sometimes the menu overlaps the icon when I get close to it and it prevents me from clicking through it on the button. If that happens then it helps to move your mouse up to the top of the menu and click-and-drag it downwards to shrink the delta-V menu which also raises the bottom of the menu away from the button so that you can then click on it properly. I'd also encourage you to add an upvote to the bug report that OHara linked to here to raise awareness of this issue for the developers.

I understand that the "eyeball" method for launching into the plane of Minmus is to zoom out until you can overlap the orbit line of the Mun with the orbit line of Minmus until you are looking parallel to both and then time warp until your launch is directly underneath the intersection of both. However, this method is not only inexact but also becomes very difficult when you have multiple craft in orbits that muddle the lines. It's also hard to see when your launch site is actually under the intersecting lines from any distance that keeps Minmus' orbit in the picture. Additionally, if you have to warp more than an hour or two of game time then the rotation of the frame will cause you to have to keep readjusting your map view slightly to keep the orbit lines straight. This would all be unnecessary if map view treated landed craft as if their "orbit" was simply the circle of their latitude on the planet. Then targets in orbit could show a line of ascending/descending nodes which shows you exactly when to launch for a proper inclination. I understand that some latitudes will never have such nodes as the craft might not pass under the orbit of the target, and that launching into any arbitrary inclination could drastically change the node position immediately upon launch - but the latter is already the case in the game, and the former just wouldn't show a node if you don't pass under the target orbit. I'm guessing that adding such a tool must be harder than it seems, because both KER and MechJeb seem have trouble finding the relevant nodes for a proper launch inclination. Even just a projection of the target orbit onto the planet's surface would be fine if calculating the nodes is unrealistic. Am I crazy and the only one that is tired of fumbling with the eyeballing it method? I'm tired of reverting a flight only to find out that I have to time warp another 1/4 Kerbin day while toggling all my orbiting stations and satellites off in the map view so that I can actually see what I'm doing and when I think I have it right finding out that I'm now too far ahead of the best time to launch and do it all over again or live with the wasted fuel. (P.S. I'd welcome the ability to target contract orbits while we're at it.)