HvP

I actually kind of like the look of the roundified monoprop tanks. They look like they were designed for function rather than aesthetics. After all, the greatest ratio of volume to surface area is a sphere and an elongated sphere is one of the most impact resistant shapes known. It reminds me of a propane tank strapped to the side. As for RCS, i usually put them on with 2x mirror symmetry and then embed a single linear RCS port into the middle of each of them. It's a much cleaner look and still gives you control on all axes. Plus, it means less chance that a RCS thruster will end up overlapping another part, like a hatch or solar panel.

@Abastro Don't underestimate the uses of a small fairing clipped into the lander can. You can even put your monoprop tanks inside the fairing. I bet there are plenty of ways you can use similar tricks with your creativity.

@Abastro Do you have access to RCS yet? Those docking ports are going to be a pain if you don't have RCS to control your docking, although not impossible. Also, I really like that cupola module with the 6 passenger cabins around it. That's a clever design and will look pretty cool as a station component. Edited to add that I just saw the RCS on your picture.

If you have access to the EAS Command Seat you can stick a few of those inside a 2.5 meter service bay. The "Take Command" mod lets you assign your Kerbals to the command seats from the VAB without having to transfer them from a pod. And an additional tip, if you add the seats in mirror symmetry and rotate them so that the head of the chairs point radially out the doors (the front of the seats face the prograde direction) then your Kerbals won't spawn on top of your rocket stack when they get out of the seats. Also, you won't accidentally burn in the wrong direction when they get into the seats because they will be pointing the same direction as the command pod. Stick a small probe core inside there and you can dispense with the command pod entirely, leaving room on top for the standard docking port. This also works great as a method to complete orbital rescue contracts.

This is from a recent update of KIS - Kerbal Inventory System. KIS now lets Kerbals carry the science experiment storage container around with them if you put it in their inventory.

Back in .90 I sent the original three on an intrepid mission to Eve. The landing was shaky but ultimately successful. I was aware that the gravity was extraordinary on the surface of Eve, but I didn't consider just how deadly it was to a Kerbal going on EVA. I didn't take into account the height of the landing legs and the ladder was a few meters too high. After surviving a heroic descent through Eve's fiery atmosphere, Bill died ignominiously having fallen off a ladder.

You're certainly welcome. If you're going for the relay idea just remember, things get hot near the sun, very hot, explodey hot - but the orbits are quicker and since any planet you go to later will be on the other side of the sun from Kerbin half the time then a low orbit relay has the opportunity to nearly double your typical range for remote probes. The sun will however also block a signal to your relay sometimes. Outer planet orbits for relays are best when they are put into orbit directly around target planets themselves instead of just solar orbit and electricity from solar panels is extremely weak. Anyway, have fun experimenting.

While it might sound like an attractive place for a pit stop, a solar orbit really isn't very useful as a fuel station. Half of your fuel used to get anywhere in the solar system is used getting into low Kerbin orbit in the first place. Half of what's remaining is used to escape Kerbin orbit and put you on an interplanetary rendezvous. Only minor corrections are usually needed in deep space until it's time to capture into orbit around your target. Chances are that once you try to rendezvous with a solar refueling station then you will waste more fuel trying to get to your destination because you are no longer in a good place to make a transfer orbit to your target. The best places to refuel are in Kerbin orbit to replace the fuel you used to launch through the atmosphere, and at your destination to get back (usually from a mining operation on the surface of the other planet or moon.) A better use for the solar station in my opinion would be to slap a few high gain relay antennas on it, the biggest you can get, and move it to either a very high or very low orbit around the sun -- assuming you have enough delta-v -- so it can act as a comm-net relay. Or, use all that fuel you are bringing along and see if you can get it to one of the other planets for some huge science gains after you've completed the contract.

Hmm, I was under the impression that it would revert back when the old part was undocked again. Considering the time it will take to send your station out to solar orbit @Ncog Nito I would be on the safe side and be sure that you don't dock any parts older than the contract at any point in the construction.

The Advanced Grabbing Unit is nicknamed The Klaw. It gets unlocked at the 160 research level under the "Actuators" tech node. (ninja'd) Assembling your station by docking everything together in Kerbin orbit and then moving it to solar orbit will be much easier and less time consuming than trying to assemble it in solar orbit. Just consider that you want to distribute the weight fairly evenly on both sides of your station so that your thrust won't be off center. Engine vectoring, RCS, and reactions wheels can compensate for a little uneven weight distribution though depending on the mass involved. I'd recommend putting those big fuel tanks inline with the engine though especially if your thrust-to-weight ratio is high. But, the bigger the docking port, the more stable the connection, and the less risk of them bending under high thrust.

You should also be aware that if your contract says "This must be a new station launched after accepting this contract," or similar wording, then all parts of your station must be created and launched AFTER you accept the contract. If any of the parts or tanks you dock to this station were built before you accepted the contract then it won't let you count those towards the completion of the contract. In other words, while you may be able to use a fuel tanker that you already had in orbit, you will have to undock it again before the contract will be marked as complete -- assuming that all the requirements will be met with just the newer parts and fuel capacity remaining on the station.

I'm not great at designing spaceplanes and even worse at flying them efficiently, so vertical rocket engine SSTOs are my preferred method to do tourist contracts and orbital rescues once I have the parts I need to make them. I find that I can do just about anything I need to do in low Kerbin orbit with the right amount of Vector or Aerospike engines for ascent and a sufficiently excessive number of parachutes to land. Of course, the law of diminishing returns tends to limit the size of such craft for my games. I usually skip the command pod and go with a 2.5 meter service bay full of command chairs and a probe core. Hint, rotate the command chairs so that the head points radially out the door of the service bay and they are facing the forward end of the craft. Your Kerbals won't spawn on top of your rocket stack when they get out. This also saves you the pain of the control points being reoriented to the command chairs when the Kerbal boards the seat. Since the seats are facing prograde you won't be accidentally burning in the wrong direction if you forget to fix your "control from here" point. Stick an inflatable heat shield on top and reentry becomes a lot more manageable.

Welcome to the forums @garrett1415. The newest version of KSP now has a communications network requirement for unmanned probes. It requires a line-of-sight connection back to Kerbin or a connection to a relay satellite in order for probes to have full control. You can read a little more about this in the KSPedia in the game However, if you don't have an antenna on that probe, or you'd rather play without needing a comm network, you can disable the requirement from the pause menu. Press escape, choose the "Difficulty" options, and then uncheck the "Enable Comm Network" button. That might fix your problem. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet

A few additional points to what the others have said. In the stock game there are a few experiments that cannot max out the science return value on the first reading. Goo canisters, science jr., surface samples, and I think a couple others will only collect about 60 to 70% of the total value on your first sample (if you are physically recovering the sample.) Bringing along an experienced scientist will increase this value, and you can store an extra copy in a duplicate of the experiment to further increase your return (with diminishing returns for each copy.) Also, adding a science container pod to your craft will greatly streamline the process of collecting science, especially if you have a scientist on board. By right clicking on the science container you can auto-collect all of the science data from all the experiments on your craft without even getting out to do it. This also allows you to keep an extra copy of the same set of science data in the same situation: for example, take a reading with the mystery goo, transfer it to the science container, reset the goo container with a scientist. Now you can take another reading in the same place with the same goo container and then transfer that copy to your command pod, and you could even repeat the process to keep a third copy of the same reading in the goo container itself to return to Kerbin. You now have three copies of that situation's data which should basically max out the potential science you can harvest in that area for that experiment.

Consider it more of a "don't feel bad because every KSP player makes these rookie mistakes eventually" thread.

I still haven't learned my lesson on that one. Gets me almost once every game session. In fact, just today I went into the game specifically to test a jet engine setup and *throttle, ptshhh, dud, face-palm*.

OK, then I can't really add much that the other posters here haven't already covered. It's most important to match relative velocity with your target craft when you get near your closest approach. Have you been able to do that yet? When you click that orbit velocity readout on your navball it should switch between orbit, surface, and then target velocity (as long as you have selected your target) to show you how fast you are going relative to the target craft. In target mode the prograde and retrograde markers actually switch to show you the directions to point in order to speed up or slow down relative to your target not your orbit. If you have matched velocity properly then your blue orbit in map view will perfectly line up with the yellow orbit of your target. If the orbits aren't aligned then you will zoom past your target before you can dock.

And of course, releasing the launch clamps without starting the engines. We've all done it. *sad trombone*

@Kickn4fun Which ship are you controlling when you try to dock them together? I noticed that on your ship with the cupola module that the docking port faces in the opposite direction of your cupola. Make sure you are selecting the docking port on the ship you are piloting and chose "Control From Here". Otherwise your maneuvers could be reversed. And as others have said, be sure to click the navball where it says "Orbit" and change it to "Target" so that you can see your relative velocities. Others have explained the rest fairly well.

Everyone knows that there are really two ways to effectively build a space empire. Either (A) develop the science of psychohistory and then leave messages to your intellectual descendants about what crises need to be overcome in order to spread throughout the galaxy, or (B) embrace the power of the dark side of the Force. Robots and/or droids are optional. Seriously, concerning KSP though... @NSEP I think it's implied in your post, but using the Extraplanetary Launchpads mod, or similar offsite construction mod will be essential to this undertaking. Colonies can begin launching their own ships for further expansion so that when you send your Kerbals out from Kerbin the infrastructure is already waiting for them at the destination.

@linuxgurugamer this mod looks super useful and I'm looking forward to using it. You're maintaining so many of my favorite mods I don't know how you do it all. A quick question / feature request. Would it be possible for this mod to show where a landed surface base or target will be for future points in your orbit? I often find it difficult to predict when I'll be in a good position in my orbit to do a survey contract so that the target rotates into position under my path just at the right time for me to fly over. This feature would also help to see if your current orbital inclination puts you in a good position to start a descent to a surface target in future orbits. No problem of course if that isn't the direction you want to go with this mod. Thanks for your work.

The large antennas at the Kerbin Space Center are sensitive enough to get a good signal in from the much weaker HG-5's. But the HG-5's themselves are too small to resolve a good signal from each other. In the direct case, each antenna has two functions: first, to send a signal from the KSC to remotely control your satellites, and second, to send science data from your craft back to the KSC. The HG-5 antennas will only send a very low power stream of data back to the KSC, but the massive antennas in your tracking station are huge buckets that can pick up extremely faint signals. Inversely, the tracking station antennas send out a broad high power signal that even the tiny dishes on your satellites can resolve easily. But, when one HG-5 tries to relay signals to another HG-5 you end up with small dishes trying to resolve weak signals. This is why you have a good connection to the KSC but poor connections between your satellites. If you just wanted to control those satellites then using the larger RA-2 relay antenna (or preferably the largest relay) as your third comm-net satellite around Kerbin should solve this problem because the bigger dish will be sensitive enough to collect the weak signals from either of your HG-5's when they aren't in direct connection with the KSC tracking station and pass them on. However, you will have a problem if you want to use the HG-5 antennas to pass on signals from other craft further out, because they are best suited for relaying signals from a craft in a low orbit (or one on the surface) back to the large stations on Kerbin.

Are you using the small drills? I believe the Junior Mining Excavators require a minimum of 2.5% ore concentration in order to operate. The only other problems you could be running into would be overheating (not likely in such a short amount of time,) or insufficient electricity. If you don't have enough batteries on board, and you're mining on the night side then your drills could be depleting your probe's charge before shutting down.

It's just because they use the same off-the-shelf forum software by Invision Power Services. The templates are customizable up to a point, but the basic layout is used by lots of different websites.

At the very least, I'm happy for all of the folks around the world that will have a better experience playing KSP due to the localization effort. And the chance to win a custom made official Kerbal modeled on yourself is a treat I'll admit. Ok, maybe it's not my dream update, but it's not bad on it's own. I do think (with constructive criticism in mind) that Squad, as a marketing company, should be careful to not conflate marketing contests with features. Some people like the former or can take it or leave it, but more people were expecting the latter.