bewing

The only way to complete it is with a trick. There is no way in hell you can get more than a kilogram of ore off Eve's surface and into orbit.
The thing is, the game does not track the origin of ore. So you mine 3000 ore on Eve, and don't launch it. Then you land 3000 ore on Gilly and complete the contract. Or mine an additional 3000 ore on Gilly and complete the contract.
But that's cheating ... if you don't want to cheat, don't take the contract.
 

Flying at low (subsonic) speed for extended periods of time is almost never useful. The only reason to use panthers in dry mode is if your plane has low-enough drag that those two engines will make it go supersonic anyway and get to 650 m/s, or if your trip is so short that the cost of climbing to 20km altitude is wasted.
Beyond that, I can't imagine any plane where this engine tradeoff is going to work. Either a single whiplash will be enough to get it to 1200 (or 1400) m/s, or 1 whiplash and 2 panthers is going to be so underpowered that it won't even be able to go supersonic.
So I think you're going to actually have to build it and try it out.
As far as "best fuel efficiency" goes, you get that when you are zooming along in the upper atmosphere at 3 times the speed of sound and your engines have flamed out because your altitude is so high.
 
 
 

That's not how you move resources.
The way you do it is by opening the Part Action Menu for a fuel tank (or more than one) on one craft, and then also opening a Part Action Menu on a tank (or more than one) on the other craft at the same time.
When multiple Part Action Menus are open at the same time, any resource that is shared among ALL the open Part Action Menus on your screen will get an additional pair of buttons that say "In" and "Out". Then you click one of those buttons to start a transfer in or out of that tank (respectively).
There are two ways to open multiple Part Action Menus at the same time. You can open the first one, and then "Pin" it, and then open the second one. Or there is a button combo that will open a second one while not closing the first.
 

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.

For planets, it gets tricky because you have to figure out the proper transfer window (about once a year). You can't just go any old time you feel like it.
For the Mun, it should be pretty easy. You look where the Mun is, in its orbit around Kerbin. You aim 90 degrees ahead of that point. You burn prograde on the opposite side of Kerbin from your aim point.
For Minmus, you aim 60 degrees ahead, instead.

In default commnet mode, Kerbin has ground transmission stations all around the planet. I assume you turned the ground stations off?
Yes. That's exactly it. That's how it works IRL, and in the game.
If you turn off the groundstations, then you need to provide a string of relays between KSC and Duna where every relay has the range to communicate with the next relay. And with 2 RA-2's on each sat, that basically means that they can't be more than 3.5 Gm apart. (Or a bit further if you use five.)
However, if you just include a pilot in your craft, then you do not need continuous signal back to KSC to do anything. Or even if you want to do this as a robotic probe, you can control enough robotic functions to complete (for example) a satellite contract -- unless you decided to be a masochist and you also clicked the "no control without signal" button in the game settings.

To fix it, two possibilities that I know of:
Try opening your cargo bay doors. I don't know why, but sometimes that makes the CoL arrow appear.
When you are building this SSTO, you are going to need to put some incidence on the wings. As soon as you do, the arrow will almost certainly appear. Again, I don't know why.
Is it important if the arrow is missing? No.
 

Are you certain that this is for a brand new rocket? Not for an old craft file that you are loading into the new game?
Once you delete and redownload the game, are you installing any mods?
Do you have other copies of the game stored on your machine in other locations?
What precise method are you using to launch the game? Are you logged into steam at the time?

AeroGav is really big on spaceplanes, and I think the info you want is in here:
https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/165435-basic-mk2-spaceplane-guide

Anomalies show up in all game modes. However, a few of them are randomized on a per-game basis -- just to keep you guessing (a little). The ones that move around are the most interesting ones (hint). Most anomalies give you money when you find them (one exception, see below).
You open KerbNet from a specific probe core (when you have communication connectivity). The probe core that you use sets the detection rate and max/default field of view of KerbNet. If the probe core says it has a detection rate of 50%, that means you can see half of the anomalies per day. At midnight, the set of anomalies that you can see will change. Anomalies show up as question marks on the KerbNet display. You are meant to mark the anomalies with custom waypoints, and then go visit them later.
The intent is for you to visit your ships in orbit multiple times over many days, and just take one quick look with KerbNet each time for new anomalies. It is not really intended for you to sit and stare at KerbNet for hours and hours in a polar orbit or something.
KerbNet scrolls from top to bottom in the direction that you are moving (surface relative). If you thrust to change your inclination, or burn retrograde to a stop -- then the scrolling direction of KerbNet will change a lot. So keeping track of N/S/E/W on the display takes some mental gymnastics.
KerbNet displays both the lat/lon of the center of the screen, and also the lat/lon and biome of a reticle on the display. You move the reticle like a cursor. The game makes up waypoint names as suggestions, but you can override them and type in text -- then click the Waypoint button to set a custom waypoint.
Caveats: The rovemate has a 100% detection rate, but has an extremely narrow field of view. If you take it up to a height where you can see a lot of terrain, then it will start to not display some anomalies. So it works best to look for anomalies from a nice high altitude with some other probe core, and then use the rovemate on your lander.
The anomaly question marks are fixed to a surface altitude of something like 7km or so. So if they move from the side of your display to the center, and you are at a lowish altitude, they will seem to move a bit compared to the surface.
The anomaly markers are intentionally offset from the actual anomaly by up to 2km. The marker for the monolith at KSC is the most offset of all of them.
On Kerbin, the DSN antennas are considered anomalies -- but you don't get any money for finding them. But there are a lot of them, and finding the real anomalies amongst the DSN stations is a bit of a PITA (needles in haystacks).
 

It's just another mediocre part that happens to cost a lot of science. Having to actively monitor it and guess which section of the ground it's referring to as it sweeps past in orbit is not an easy task. The actual information it provides is very difficult to use. It does not update any survey scanner maps.
What it does do is tell you exactly where on the ground to find the very highest ore concentrations. However, that's almost always a completely impractical thing to know. And even if you do want to know that, you can find out the same thing by driving around with a surface scanner.
 

Wow, how do you find all this crazy stuff?
Of your list of troubles, the only one I know about is the undocking problem. It's been an issue in KSP for ages, but almost nobody can manage to make it happen twice. And unless we can do it repeatably, the devs can't fix it. They've tried. The way you fix it after it happens is by using a persistence file editing tool. If you need it in the future, just search the forum for "Can't Undock".
As far as your fuel problem goes:
^ this is correct. If it isn't working like that, then you need to post your craft file here so that other people can test it and verify the problem.
The staging GUI never ever breaks. So the way you keep it from breaking is that you just use it normally and it doesn't break.
So, once again, if you can make some other funky thing happen, then you need to post your craft file so we can all verify that something is broken.
 

Have you validated your files since your last game update from steam?
 

Alternate = Hit ESC to invoke the pause menu, then click "version info" at the bottom.
I don't know of any way to remap it without using a game controller.
If your laptop has an Nvidia graphics package, then there is probably a popup application stealing the Alt-Fx keystrokes for doing graphics setting changes. It's possible to remap or turn off the key capture in that app, and then they will be passed through to KSP.
 

KSP is based on a game engine called Unity. But "joints" in unity have some problems/bugs. They are too flexible, and vibrations do not ever damp down. So the devs gave us all a temporary kludge of these autostrut things until unity gets fixed.
Autostruts are struts that are zero cost, massless, dragless, and are really easy to connect. They have one drawback related to your points 1&2.
1 & 2: Yes, all the autostruts on your craft dynamically recalculate/change their endpoints in flight whenever the make-up of your craft changes through docking, damage, fuel use, or decoupling. However, the disconnect/reconnect process on an autostrut is a very forceful and violent process. So you want to prevent this from happening to your autostruts if at all possible. You prevent it from happening by turning off most/all of your autostruts before you dock/decouple/or when the "heaviest" part on your craft is about to change. Then you turn them back on again once the event is over.
3: Just as you would expect, "Root" creates a strut between the CoM of your current part to the Root part (usually the first part that you placed) of your craft. Heaviest does ditto with the currently most massive part on your craft. If you have a bunch of parts that are equally massive, it just picks one randomly. Root and Heaviest autostruts can be very long, and these long autostruts can either be a godsend or a fatal flaw in your craft. You have to know what you are doing. The "grandparent" part is basically two parts toward the root from your current part. Grandparent autostruts tend to be quite short and they never disconnect/reconnect, and for that reason they are very safe to use. In the Debug menu (Physics tab, iirc), there is a button you can activate: "visualize autostruts" -- it draws lines between each of the parts that are connected by autostruts. So if you'd rather see the autostruts instead of reading a bunch of words, try that.
4. Replace. Grandparent autostruts are better than EAS struts in almost every way. Someday, in some future version, the devs may get rid of them -- but for now they are a nice gift to the players. The only time an EAS strut is better is when you want to connect your current part to someplace really strange.
5. Very effective. Space stations, extremely long rockets, and big surface bases tend to build up large destructive oscillations -- especially if you have reaction wheels active and you turn on SAS. Using a lot of grandparent autostruts can easily rigidize any of these craft in space or on a CB. Just follow two main rules: Be very careful with your autostruts before doing any docking or decoupling, and minimize the number of really long autostruts (let's say a maximum of 5 long ones per craft).
 

#2 is almost always the lowest dV, but the exact answer depends on your TWR.
However, the deltaV difference between #2 and #1 is not large, #1 is definitely faster to get to your destination, #1 is easier if you do not have manuever nodes unlocked, and #1 is easier if you do not have the "prograde hold" SAS mode available yet.
 
 

First, since you are playing stock, I assume you are on the current version of the game? There is a known bug in the current version that causes a small amount of bouncing for landing gears on low-G CBs, by reducing or eliminating the effect of the suspension damper.
Friction control has almost nothing to do with bouncing in the current version.
Does your payload have any fuel or other transferrable resources in it? Pumping fuel around to change the weight distribution can have a major effect on bouncing.
The rigidity of your craft can also affect bouncing. Springy joints between parts can amplify bouncing.
The only real method for minimizing any bounce is to tweak those damper and spring settings, and see if you can find a sweet spot. 

OHara explained it pretty well, but I think the answer to why your problem happened is a little more complicated than what he said.
Please understand that the game is designed to carefully simulate only one craft at a time. There are times when it needs to simulate more (e.g. rendezvous, decoupling, and crashing into each other), and the game tries hard to do it. But there is something called a physics bubble that extends outward in a sphere from the craft that currently has focus. Things that are inside the physics bubble get carefully modeled: deploying parachutes, reacting to atmospheric drag and SAS modes -- and things that are outside the bubble either go "on rails" or get deleted if the game thinks they have crashed or burned up.
So, the point is that the size of the physics bubble depends on what your current vessel is doing. If you look at the bottom of your physics.cfg file, it has all the scenarios listed out, with various distances attached. As OHara said, when you are in the air, the physics bubble size is 22.5km. As long as everything stays within that radius of you it will all be carefully modeled, because it's within the physics bubble.
However, you said there was one special thing about your situation. You said your command pod had the focus and had just landed. The default physics bubble size for a landed vessel is only 300 meters.
So, a few seconds after you land, the game changes the physics bubble size. And, following the game's standard logic -- anything that is outside the physics bubble, and below the autodeletion altitude (25km) gets deleted.
To make this not happen, either change the landed & splashed phsyics bubble size in your physics.cfg file, or, when your command pod lands, immediately hit the [ or ] key to switch focus to one of the floating passenger cabins that's still in the air (to retain the 22.5km physics bubble size), or, set the full deployment altitude for the parachutes on your command pod to 2000 meters so that your command pod lands last.
 
 

They have short range antennas built into the launch sites so that you can launch a probe into orbit. The antennas do not have Tracking Station level power.

F4.

Welcome to the forums.
imgur is the free image hosting service that we all seem to use most.
Klaws (the AGU) are very tricky to use. You may have just gotten lucky in the past. For a klaw to grab something, the klaw has to touch the surface at close to 90 degrees. A klaw can grab anything except a wheel. So I guarantee that it can grab the pod that contains your rescue kerbal. If the pod has a flat surface on it, try grabbing it right there. If it's spinning, you can turn on a little bit of timewarp and then turn timewarp off again -- that always cancels all spin. It's harder to grab a curved surface, because it's much harder to touch it at 90 degrees -- but it can be done if you have patience and try many times. You do not have to jump between ships. I think you have to rearm the klaw between each successful grab and the next one, but you only have to do it once.
Making your approach so that you touch at 90 degrees is just generally difficult. It is necessary to quickly memorize which keys move the klaw in which direction. It is usually necessary to move the camera around a lot so that you can see the approach from several directions. It is often necessary to start your approaching craft rotating slowly, and time it so that at the moment the klaw touches it happens to be as close to 90 degrees as you can judge by eye.
 

Welcome to the forums.
You do understand that putting an orange tank in orbit with an SSTO is considered to be an expert-level SSTO design problem?
To become an expert at SSTO design, you need to concentrate on 1) reducing dry mass, 2) reducing drag, 3) optimizing your flight profiles. Your designs really have too many engines, and getting rid of them would probably help. Using wing parts that hold fuel helps to reduce mass. Getting rid of tailfins reduces drag and mass. Avoiding MK2 parts reduces drag. Using a shallower ascent allows you to swap more inefficient rapiers for very efficient nukes. Moving your engines forward would probably help with stability. Using more shock cones and fewer other intakes would probably help with drag and mass. Adding just the right amount of incidence to your wings helps reduce drag and improves your flight profile. And then there's the trick/cheat of adding inverted cones to the back ends of your rapiers, to reduce drag -- do you know that one?
And no, the Advanced Nose Cone is best for drag. But the shock cone is very close behind and produces all the intake air you need.
AeroGav figures 30 tonnes per rapier, IIRC. But that's the absolute max. I admit I like my SSTOs to perform a little better than that.
There is no optimal wing shape. All wings of all shapes are treated identically. Lifting area per tonne is a religious question. You will get an endless argument about that one. There is the "spaceplanes have wings for a reason" camp -- which promulgates large wing areas, shallow, slow ascents, and nearly horizontal "speed runs". And then you get the "just set your AoA to 30 degrees and blast your way to orbit" crowd. They say that wings are mostly for decoration, so you should have the very very smallest one you can get away with.
 

FleshJeb is right, but I'm a practical guy and don't go in for all this theoretical stuff. Look, the deal is that the devs are trying to make your life hard, all right? They build these parts so that they always have limitations that you have to deal with, and engineer around.
The first basic point about "air" is that engines and intakes are always throttled at all points in their airspeed/thrust curves. The maximum amount of air that an engine needs is based on its maximum thrust -- which can never actually be achieved, because the engine is always limited by its thrust curves (so it's a worthless number). Additionally, you always have to keep in mind that at most one air intake can ever be assigned to a single engine at any one time.
At zero speed, an engine/intake combo is almost always throttled by the intake air requirement. So the important number at a standstill is the effective intake speed -- which corresponds to "how good is the turbofan at sucking in air from the surroundings when standing still". If you plan to do a lot of low-speed taxiing, pay attention to this number. If you have an intake that's got a bad intake speed, then you need to keep your throttle low while taxiing, or you will flame out. This can be problematic if you are driving around the countryside, and trying to go up hills with jet power.
In flight at low altitude, you have so much air getting crammed into your intake that it will always provide more air than any engine will need (because the engines are always limited by their thrust curves). So you don't have to sweat it in this case.
At high altitudes you have to fly fast. At high speeds the various air intakes choke, and the engines also choke because of their respective airspeed/thrust curves. Each of them chokes in different ways and at different speeds -- except for the shock cone intake, which never chokes. In some rare intake/engine combos the intake will choke first. But usually it's the engine that flames out while the intake can still provide enough. All you need to do at high speed is open the context menu of the engine and see if the "Prop. Requirement" is 100% or not. If it's not, then the engine is being limited by the intake. Then you have to decide if you are already flying fast enough to suit your tastes, and whether you actually care about going a few m/s faster. None of the numbers that you see in the part menu in the SPH tell you what the performance curves of the intakes/engines look like. You either have to look them up here online, or you have to learn by doing.
Goliath engines are thrust-limited so they can't go faster than mach 1. Rapiers go really fast. And each of the engines has a sort-of-matching air intake that can provide enough air through that engine's flight envelope.
So when it comes to "air" and the stats you see on the air intakes, the "effective base speed"/"effective air speed" is the only number that gives you any immediate useful feedback. On the engine, look at the Prop Requirement. If you want to know about high speed intake performance, do a search here for some of the graphs that other players have created.
 

It's a bug, and the devs know about it, and they have been looking at it, and version 1.5.0 comes out this month, and beyond that is NDA territory.
 

Yes, plenty of people make vtol spaceplanes or rato ones. Generally by sticking aerospikes on the bottom.
However, I was able to get my version of your base off the water at Laythe with a full load of fuel. So it is theoretically doable -- except it didn't have a relay antenna on it. I can stick a medium-sized antenna in a fairing, though.
And yes, relay antennas are enormous, and have a lot of drag. Depending on how huge and draggy your base already is, it may not make a noticeable difference, though. You'd probably be better off putting a tiny relay sat in orbit before you take this base down to the surface.