N_Danger

I've found this chart helpful to get a visual idea of what the steps are. Since you do not have to dock you can ignore the part about getting a mod. I will second the warnings about MecJeb not being efficient. I'm a long time user of it but you need to learn to do stuff without it. If but to recognize when it is screwing up.

I ignore the passage of time in my games. For example, I now have 6 kerbals in orbit around Duna that have been there for 20 years because I got distracted by putting satellites around every body in the system. Don't worry guys I just have the Jool moons and Pol left to do.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you know something of the subject, all you do is pick apart the inconsistencies and don't enjoy the movie. I'm also a military history buff and I find that almost every war movie is un-watchable because of that. To be fair though space travel is a difficult subject to depict on a big screen in 2 hours. Interstellar and Gravity were good ideas done badly. I think because some movie execs thought "we need more special effects and excitement here"

Big Rockets are the best because Moar D/V hides a multitude of sins.

This is a good thread on this very subject

This morning I sent a Scan Sat to Moho Then sent one to Dres

Lot of movies "based on actual events" are spiced up because of Hollywood's assumption of the average movie goer's ability to follow a difficult subject. I think that was the case. Or it was simply a mistake, they do happen to the best of them. But a test pilot having a panic attack is hard to believe after the most dangerous part of the flight is over.

Isn't the Lounge were one consumes refreshing adult beverages?

One of the movies up on Netflix (NA) right now is, The Right Stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(film) You should watch it if you haven't seen it before. I think it is one of Jeb's favorite movies.

You can't be fishing because not only do you not have a pole, you don't have a cooler full of beer. And when you have a cooler full of beer catching fish while fishing is optional.

There are fuel tanks in stock that are conical and can be used as adapters.

Clear and sunny, sure to be in the 70s F by this afternoon.

Confirmed, there is a cat loose on the internet. And I'm not running 64 bit or 1.1

I've noticed that this forum has been renamed to the Lounge. I didn't notice it yesterday. A sign of things to come?

I think I can answer #2. It gives a rough guide to pressure which affects ISP, Jet engine performance and aerodynamics. I'm not a numbers guy myself so the visual representation is helpful. I'll watch the indicator measuring the bands when testing new boosters. I know that below the 20 KM band I have to be careful about light payloads in a fairing when staging at a some angles of attack. The aerodynamic pressure on the fairing of the rocket below that band along with the shifting CG at staging can over come my control from SAS, gimbal, fins and hopes thus flipping my rocket. I haven't had any thing explode yet from the flame effect and I've hit over 1200 m/s at 35 KM altitude. I've wondered where the setting is to turn the flaming visual effects down as they seem over done IMO.

Landed Val on Duna in .90. Got her back even.

MecJeb also has a Surface Info screen which gives true altitude above the ground plus a read out of current horizontal and vertical velocities that is necessary in manual landings.

Before driving around my rover in the big canyon on Duna, I stopped in at the lander to watch the sun rise.

Docking 30 minutes, didn't have to reload the game even(i did use an alignment mod). Rendezvous now, 2 hours including 2 reloads.

I can install the 1.1 release but I'm not going to. I don't want to do beta testing, been there, done that with other games and didn't even get a t-shirt. I suppose this means I'll lose at KSP by not being first ahead of everyone else.

Welcome! I'm new here too and this part of the forums is full of good advice that has helped me a lot. Just search it or ask a specific question and you'll get lots of great help.

I have this in my craft file, Similar to Harry's, lifting 14.6 tons of an over designed muner lander. T/W starts out low esp. the fourth staging group and its a long ride up. But was able put it into a 112 x 94 orbit If you need to, test your lifters in sand box over and over. This took about 10-15 launches and then tweaking the build or the flight profile after each one for me to it get acceptable.

That's a very good guide that I used to learn the ropes(just in the past month too). It is showing an alignment mod at the bottom that is not stock but very much worth downloading. It will help get you docked in that last 100 meters. And it takes practice, lots of practice to get the first docking but once you get it down it will come naturally to you there after.

I sometime use a radial or anti-radial component to adjust an orbit for rendezvous. To make the orbit at intercept tangent to the target's orbit so that when I match courses I end up almost in the same orbit within a few KMs of the target.

35,000 meters for engine cutoff sounds a little low. One advantage of a lower T/W is that you are higher up in thinner atmosphere after cutoff when you coast to AP. I try to lift off at a 1.5 T/W aiming be at 45,000 to 50,000 meters and be nearly horizontal at engine cutoff. I also leave the center engine in a cluster with 30% or more gimbal for when control surfaces lose their bite in thin air. This helped me to control flippy rockets in the past. I will admit that I haven't done a lot of playing in a contract game so I don't know if this is available to you.