suicidejunkie

Good to know that it is possible to make it aerodynamic. This was bumblebee shaped; short and boxy and not intended to land properly or ever take off again. Just bumble over to someone that needs help, plop down on parachutes and be a gas station.

On average, my crews grow slightly during the course of the mission. Initially, just one kerbal in a one-seater to orbit, and then mun return missions. A few 3 seater orbital poppers in the midgame that have 2 butts in chairs (pilot + tourist) on the way up, and 3 (rescuee) on the way down. Later in the game, it is 5 or 6 in a standardized SSTM spaceplane.

I'd want to plump up the first with something like "Transferring Hohmann to HR/TechSupport/TrackingStation", but the second I'd leave as is because a lot of people would think it to be the wrong verb until they look it up, and it relates to initializing a physics engine.

I made a MK1 ISRU plane in 0.95. Incredibly bad speed and fuel economy due to the 2.5m ISRU module comprising the main body, but it could burn a mix of 98% ore + 2% LF, during the night, or 100% ore during the day with a bit of solar panel assistance. It was designed to parachute in and become a semi-mobile fuel refinery to service returning spaceplanes that had to land short in the desert.

Try adding some basic fins to the CoM of the return capsule and you may be able to set it down on the runway's dotted line!

The point of a launch to rendezvous is that you don't have an orbit yet to muck about with. You're doing a 3km/s burn to make rendezvous, starting from the launch pad. No time or fuel to waste! With a little practice on the launch timing, you do a decent gravity turn, and make orbit within a few km of the target; ideally within physics range and promptly get on with the mission. Super effective. Launch to rendezvous using 97% of the fuel, rescue the kerbal, spend your 10 minute safety margin on a snacks break while the badlands roll underneath and then land back at KSC without completing a single orbit. Or if you feel the need for speed, burn some extra fuel, and land the rescue ship immediately in booster bay.

Have a science lab on site, and kerbals can be promoted inside.

If your tanker is as large as it should be, and your docking ports are along the CoM, you can use the tanker as a booster stage. Best of both worlds; fast orbit for making the window, and the interplanetary ship will still have full fuel at the edge of Kerbin's SoI, and the tanker needed to boost its AP anyways. I did this for my Dres mission, but failed to return the booster to Minmus as pushing 10k LF through a pack of LV-Ns caused the control node to explode due to overheating. The next version will include a radiator.

Not at all! This is clearly a pre-existing condition, and any future liquids can be refused coverage as part of it.

As I understand it, the point is how sloshing inside affects the rotation rate of the main craft. Except that in this case he never had anything capable of sloshing around inside the cargo bay. A pile of 50 small stack separators would have been my first choice, although those smaller beachball tanks may have been better. Also, I expected the challenge to be an open-ended bottle with the goal being to flip it 180 without spilling any cargo

Many of you seem to be under the impression that the problem is "navball is in an unexpected mode and you forgot to check before doing a burn" The big problem comes in when the navball CHANGES mode DURING a burn; you are merrily running your engines burning prograde to orbit, when the navball flips to target mode. Your ship then flips out as SAS panic sets in and you do not go to space today. And if you're both parked reasonably close on the surface, this vector should not be changing (other than rotating a leisurely 360 degrees per day), so the target velocity should be near zero, would you not agree? Instead, you'll find that when rovering slowly towards a stationary target, orbital speed is roughly equal to target speed.

This happens to me when launching to rendezvous. Having the hold prograde change suddenly on you when you're in the middle of the main burn to orbit hurts bad. I have to switch the sas to hold early and notch the nose down manually for the middle portion of the gravity turn. Once the nav ball auto-flips to target mode, I can flip it back to orbital mode, and then safely use hold prograde again until I'm in orbit and ready to dock.

Often it is just whatever second thing I've got running on the side while doing a long flight/burn/rove. For a recommendation; Firing Up by Maniacs of Noise will keep things burning for a trip to mun and back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMCUDcmBqw

In game, IIRC, all the wings are just flat boards, symmetrical top to bottom, so flipping them over doesn't affect anything. Most (but not all) wings in real life are not symmetrical, and deflect air downwards when level.

I performed a 40 minute LV-N burn ejecting from Minmus to Dres a little while ago, and the LV-Ns were well within the lower end of the overheat bar. However 5 minutes after the burn ended, the heat was still spreading through the ship and it exploded a lander can that was a couple fuel tanks and a gyro away. The LV-Ns probably can't explode themselves, but they can certainly destroy less resilient parts nearby.

Bill once KAS-cannibalized the Minmus junkyard (I'd left a ton of transfer/descent stages piled up because I didn't want to waste anything) to hand-assemble a terribly lopsided rocket with extra fuel and an emergency can of air. He then popped up into space flying manually and hovered at AP while a bus full of Kerbals blasted into the SoI at 1000m/s. They'd brought a few years worth of snacks but had 5 days of water and air when they left LKO for a nominally 9 day trip, and discovered the problem when supplies hit 10%. Bill slapped the supply can on to the bus with 9 minutes to spare, then brought the ship in to dock and transfer fuel, and they all made it down to the surface base intact.

Well, for one, even if you have a permanent surface base for Tylo ISRU, your surface-orbit shuttle must either get fuel shipped in from other moons, or be capable of both landing & return (or return then land, then refuel which is the same difference). I'd plan for both a surface base and a fuel depot in orbit to halve your dV requirement and allow much more reasonable size and payload. Spaceplanes should be fun for Laythe. Perhaps with pontoons so you can land in more places.

As above, you want to fix your point of control to make the navball show 'forwards' as being on the horizon when you're rovering around. Also, in the key configuration (steering axis & throttle axis as you found), change the rover controls to different keys. I like + and - for forward/reverse and / * for steering. The gyros are completely independent that way, and I can still use WASD for extra torque to keep the wheels pointed down as required.

"recent research"? I'm under the impression that it has been known for quite a long time and expected to be so even longer, but sci-fi authors have always been quite willing to ignore such inconvenient things for the sake of the story. A simple way to put it is that the two ends of the connection can get a series of related but random bits from measuring their entangled particles. You still have to send a conventional message from point A to point B, but you can rig the results of the entangled particles into a high tech one-time-pad that can't be intercepted.

If you're scouting out territory on Minmus, you don't need a vehicle at all. Just a low orbit and a jetpack for taking surface samples.

If you're assembling an SSTO spaceplane, then simply don't recover it (just recover the pilot from EVA for the science and XP). Just add one more docking port to the design, refuel (and recrew) it with a truck on the lawn and send it back up!

Sounds like new flavour for the caveman challenge! Unlock all the tech nodes (while still not upgrading any buildings)

It is quite easy to remember if you think about it this way: Bill (the builder) is often mixed up with Bob (the science guy)

It is really more of a job for a 69.9km polar orbit satellite IMO. Space is above 18km, and the above X have fairly generous Lat/Lon leeway.

I plan to use the science lab for training kerbals on interplanetary missions rather than for science points. Seems to me a great way to make it useful enough to bring without being OP.