bewing

Yeah, there are people on here who play this game who are obsessive about the aesthetics of it -- the corners of the parts all have to match. The shades of white can't be off. For a game that looks like a cartoon, it makes no sense to me.

Not in the part window, no. To do it the hard way: for some, it's hidden in the name of the part. For others, it's the manufacturer that gives it away. For others, there is a measuring reference on the picture. The easiest way is to click the arrow in the upper left, to go into "Advanced mode". The first tab is "filter by cross section" -- choose that. A second column appears, with each specific diameter and shape. Pick the size you want, and it will show every part of that size (on one end or the other).

Welcome to the forums. Hmmm. I did have one funny thing happen to my RCS, but I didn't test it as fully as it sounds like you have. Are you in docking mode? Or are you using IKJLHN? Did you turn on precision control mode (Caps Lock)?

You mean a ppd-12 cupola? Yes, to deorbit and recover almost anything, you use a klaw. Theoretically, there is also a way to use a cargo ramp to do it but I've only seen one person crazy enough to try that. Yes, it needs to land or splash down intact, and then you need to hit the "Recover" button. You have to decide if you want to do this kind of thing with one ship or two. If you do it with one, it'll be a one-shot deal. If you do it with two, you can use the pair to deorbit many things. If you do it with one: then the upper stage needs to have a klaw and a decent number of parachutes -- and some extra fuel, if you are concerned about reentry heating. You fly up, grab the thingy, wait until you are above the west edge of the KSC continent, retroburn to 1500 m/s in surface mode (which completely prevents reentry heating), and land really close to KSC. If you do it with two, then one needs to be a space tug: a robotic craft with a klaw on the nose, and a decent amount of fuel. It goes around in orbit and grabs things, brings them to the other craft, and attaches them. The other craft needs to be a multi-object deorbiter. Here's one example of something I built a long time ago: I build them slightly differently now, but the idea is the same. That right there can deorbit 9 different things to fill 9 separate contracts. You activate all the parachutes once you are in LKO. You use your spacetug to attach your item to one of those klaws. You retroburn to lower your Pe to maybe 66km. You decouple the arm with the thingy on it. You switch focus back to the deorbiter and raise its Pe back above 70km. Then you switch focus back to the thingy. The thingy now has activated parachutes, and the little winglets that give it an extremely high drag. You have to watch it while it descends all the way to the surface. The drag from those winglets is so high that you can deorbit just about anything with no heating problems.

You might want to do a search on the term "ballistic coefficient", and read a bit. The point is that it depends completely on your craft. A high mass, low drag craft will sail for many kilometers past your aim point. A low mass, high drag craft will fall out of the sky way before you expect it to. So no, it's a lot trickier than just picking a burn reference. In any case, you pretty much always want to do your deorbit burn on exactly the opposite side of Kerbin from KSC, but the important part is picking the right Pe for your burn. A Pe of 30km to 35km is often a wise choice. One trick you can sometimes do is just before reentry, you start your craft spinning. This can increase your drag a bit, and slow you down some. It's not a big effect, though.

The basic stock answer is that you need some level of aerodynamic control over your RV. You have to fly your way back down in something resembling an airplane/glider. Secondary stock answer is to reduce your reentry speed with a strong retrograde burn. The slower you are going, the more accurately you can eyeball it. A variation on this theme is to retroburn a bit, come in high and fairly fast still pointed retrograde, and do a second retroburn to <250 m/s surface velocity while you are over KSC and pop some chutes. Third answer is a variation on both methods. When you are ascending, you need low aerodynamic drag. When you are descending, you need high drag. To change your drag configuration, you need deployable control surfaces. So you put some deployable control surfaces on your RV. Before you reenter, you set their authority to 150 (max). As you approach KSC, you deploy the control surfaces (in opposite directions is best). This creates huge drag, puts you in an uncontrollable tumble, and drops you out of the sky on top of KSC. (If you think you might be slowing down too much, you undeploy the control surfaces again.) As I recall, you are playing on xbox? In that case, mods can't help you (but there is one).

Yeah, you're right. Since the target orbit is synchronous, you will need to launch to a lower orbit and then raise your Ap and circularize with the proper timing.

Using MK3 parts is probably a mistake. That's why I was asking you exactly what you want this spaceplane to do, once it gets to orbit. How many crew? Must you also carry some cargo? The larger your spaceplane is, the harder it will be to make it reenter. And MK3 spaceplanes are very very large.

Exactly how many crew? So what you need is an SSTO spaceplane with about 7000 m/s of deltaV? I think you're not going to have any choice other than going with a pure LF whiplash/NERV engine setup. It's going to be nearly impossible to do that with LFO -- unless you are willing to do some cheaty tricks such as engine clipping. Spaceplanes are really tricky. You need to absolutely minimize drag and dry mass. Cut everything that you can. Ignore aesthetics. It won't be easy to fly. So I think we're going to need a picture of what your current design looks like -- but once you've cut everything non-essential off, it may not look like that anymore. As far as reentry goes -- 5.5km/s is horribly fast. You are going to need to get down to an orbit just above the atmosphere, then lower your Pe just inside. Then go to a 90 degree AoA, and hold it. Using SAS Radial Out in Surface mode is helpful. You need maximum drag, and you need to hold it as long as you can. If pumping some fuel around (to change your CoM) will keep the nose up for a few seconds longer, do it. If you have RCS fuel remaining, turn on RCS to hold your attitude. You have to get your speed down before you get to the death zone at 80km. Don't let it drop to a 40 degree AoA until you have no other choice! Either that, or you are going to need to turn around and burn retrograde until you are at a survivable reentry speed.

Welcome to the forums! If you use left joystick up/down, you should be able to climb up or down off the ends of the ladder. Alternately, the "let go" button should get you off the ladder. Once you do that, you need to turn on your RCS jetpack. (You cannot turn on RCS while you are still on the ladder). There are many ways to turn on RCS -- it depends on your preset, of course. It's the same way you turn on RCS for a ship. After you turn on RCS, you pick your direction by moving the camera around -- which you do with the right joystick. Then (sometimes) it's easiest to set your orientation next. Radial preset is LB + L3. This will force your kerbal to turn to face the direction the camera is pointing. Note that with some settings, every time you move the kerbal will automatically turn to orient with the camera, so you don't have to do it by hand. Note that a kerbal's helmet is forced to point North (except in Free camera mode) -- so the kerbal will rarely be pointed exactly away from the camera. You need to use two extra buttons to control the up/down thrusters on the jetpack. Often the next thing you do is to set something nearby as your target. Either use a cursor to double click on it -- or go into map mode, select your target, click on it, and choose "Set Target". Then start flying around using very gentle thrusts. It takes a couple hours practice to get good at it. Good luck!

A single whip antenna is good enough on minmus for transmitting science -- even with just a lvl 2 tracking station. You can really only transmit each experiment once. After that, if there is any remaining science for that experiment, you have to bring the experiment back to kerbin to get any science points for it. So the transmit value will still show zero, even when you have good connectivity. And yes, you will get occasional contracts to transmit more experiments from Minmus, so it's always a good idea to have a few extra stored in your craft. You can augment any craft after it is built by using a klaw (advanced grabbing unit) on one craft. You do not need to have docking ports on both craft.

It could be an LFO-powered staged spaceplane, too, I suppose. It doesn't necessarily need parachutes.

With Alt-F12, you generally use some combination of SetOrbit and infinite fuel to get above the destination and then deorbit yourself and land.

Welcome to the forums. That number is for a constant 1G trip -- which is impossible in the game without cheating.

I think the ejection burn looks like it's a pure prograde burn. So the fact that you had a normal component is what messed you up.

Crew cabins are special. To get a kerbal out of a crew cabin, you must left-click one of the doors on the end of the crew cabin. A window will open, allowing you to EVA both kerbals from the cabin.

Launch the sats exactly 2 hours apart, and perform precisely the same ascent each time. Then adjust the orbits to get them to have the correct periods.

Try retracting the legs on your base as soon as you land, if it has legs.

To be really clear: whenever you test in sandbox mode, you always get all SAS modes -- no matter which kerbal or which probe core is controlling your craft. Otherwise, in career mode, with a pilot: the SAS modes gradually unlock with the number of stars that your pilot has. If you are using a probe core instead of pilots: the SAS modes gradually unlock with higher tech probe cores.

Generally, I build my booster stages to end up in LKO with a little bit of fuel left. I build them specifically to have a docking port or three, a probe core, a couple of solar panels, a battery, and an antenna. So, I end up with maybe 5 of these in orbit, and I dock them all together. One booster of leftover fuel may not be worth much, but five is a heck of a lot. And any time I end up with some extra fuel just before I land, I dock with my booster tank farm and donate a bit more. Once I have the ability to mine for fuel, I send a tanker in from Minmus to fill it all back up for free. And then I have five fully fueled expendable space tugs that I can use for sending interplanetary missions off into the wild black yonder. The one thing you have to be really careful of with a space fuel depot is that there are a lot of contracts (such as satellite contracts) that require you to have a new ship. Once you dock with a station, your craft is no longer new.

Yup, that's a good way to do it. A ladder has offcenter mass, though -- and will slightly destabilize your trainer. You might want to use something more like a barometer, or maybe a whip antenna. It's a little harder to see, but the mass ends up aligned with your center of gravity.

Hmmmm. Sounds like your tutorial file is corrupted. Did you get the game from Steam? Have you done a file verification on the game?

Have you scouted the terrain where you are landing? Do you know for a fact that it's extremely level and its exact altitude? Because you aren't going to have any attention to spare for the actual touchdown details. I've tried tricks like this myself, and it doesn't come out well. The problem is that your off-center mass makes your thrust not be truly retrograde. Which means you build up a horizontal velocity. Which will kill your ship when it touches the ground, unless you're better at flying by hand than I am. Basically, you're going to have to set your SAS to stability mode, and maintain just the right slightly-off-retrograde thrust angle so that it balances out the torque from your crew cabin.

What displays on your screen depends on the SOI of the celestial body with "focus". In map mode, if you click on the Mun, and click "Set Focus" -- you should see a little icon for a kerbal on the surface, next to an icon of a ship.

10m/s for each second of the journey. Time = 2 * sqrt(distance in meters / 10). But at least you can be sure there will be no physical low-G degradation.