Spricigo

That is personal opnion. I can say what I find Impressive, but the guy next post may just think "meh!". My suggestion its to just try what you think is more fun. Which also is personal opinion, you may consider fun to be challenging, laborious, big, small, modded, stock or anything. So we can just wish you luck or maybe, if you share what is in your mind, try to point you in the right direction.

They are considered similar in difficulty . However you may always try to make your attempt interesting adding more complexity or restraints(mine was a low tech shuttle, mentioned to the weird shuttle award (alas make it a real award and I will make a 'serious' attempt). Also, while some mods will make reduce the difficult (more parts, more options), other may seriously increase it (scaled up system, life support, etc)

The acceleration will change with fuel burnt. Also the formula is indeed invalid because it comes from a assumption of constant mass. As other pointed this is of little practical use, but if you want to know it take a look how or rocket modelists do it: http://www.rocketmime.com/rockets/rckt_eqn.html

Correction: direct antennas can either talk straight to Kerbin or by means of relays. What direct antennas can't it's acting as the mid point of the chain. Given your rover examples you already, but the wording in the part I quoted seems a bit ambiguous.

You can use your direct antennas to reach the relay. On the other hand none of the antennas in KSP are directional, they point in all directions without problem being able to communicate with any relay antenna in range (or directly at KSC if its in range). For Mun/Minmus, if all I have are communutron 16 and HG-5, what I do get some satellite contract and spam a few relay with 1-2 HG-5, and use for the occasional lander probe (which will also have 1-2 HG-5), no need to place a 'proper network' in place, all I need itts signal when doing my maneuvers.

It works for far side of Mun/Minmus if you accept that you don’t need 105% coverage 120% of the time. No, it don't make a spectacular job at it. But if its all you have at hand it get the job done just fine.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet seems to have all the necessary info. 1.you need only to link to kerbin (if you have extra ground station enabled, which is the default) 2.relay antenas 3.antennas don't need to be pointed outwards or inwards; however more antennas may result in a greater range. 4.Read he guide I linked and understand how range is calculated. You don't need relays if your craft have a antenna strong enough to be in range of kerbin's ground station and in line of sight.(e.g. if you have tracking station level 2 any antenna will be strong enough for Kerbin SoI). For most celestial bodies (mun, minmus, duna) a triangular formation will be good enough for relaying signal to the far side. For Mun and Minmus , if you are using HG-5 in your relays and communotron 16 in the vessels the range will be quite short and you probably want the relays as low as possible, for other planets you will probably using stronger antennas.

Rescue missions may be fun also. If you are not playing with life support, and have a few backup astronauts you may even let then in vaction at the mun for a while.

I wonder why... to the op: for any issue craft related post a image. There is several mistakes a inexperienced designer/pilot can make that experienced ones may spot in a glance. In my experience the cause of the problem almost never is the amount of thrust. Common problems are unbalanced drag , shifting mass, to much control authority, bad trajectory, lack of structural rigidity and thrust alignment. In some cases one can still manage to fly the vessel just fine at lower thrust, but the problem its those factors, not thrust. Anyway, we need a image to know for sure what your case is.

welcome to the wonderful world of contract grinding. If you want some help designing a effective vessel for those tourist ship just let us know what tech is available, the level of VAB and launchpad and how many tourist you are trying to carry at each time. (I have a 8 passenger rocket and a 4 passenger SSTO spaceplane available , but those rely in a rather high tech you may not have)

No glitch. The game don't check if the satellite is part of a different contact or a formation.

Required? No Highly recommend? Yes.

@Ignacio Urteaga rockets or spaceplane, it's all about symmetry. When designing a plane there is several parts we place one side or another, messing with the symmetry. Landing gears only underside, vertical stabiliser only on top, engines at the rear, wings at the sides. The trick it's to restrain the effect of each of these to get a balanced result.

Mass and mass/volume... Almost correct, it's dependent in mass and exposed area. A vessel full of ore make things difficult indeed but by no means impossible. On the other hand, the added area to make aerobrake practical comes with a weight penalty.

Confirmed. The probecore need electricity for control. AFAIK command pods uses electricity only for torque, but worth checking if make any difference .

Welcome to the forum. If you are not using a mod (stage recovery) to land the vessel for you then @ForScience6686 is correct. And the tourist are dieing because for what the game is concerned the craft is not landing, rather it crashed hard to the ground killing everyone aboard.

I think this may be useful https://alterbaron.github.io/ksp_aerocalc/ Also, since you are going to rely on aerobrake that much, it's a good idea to design it to be at least barely aerodynamic stable.

Moot point. OP never asked if MJ was necessary or how to do it without MJ. As far as I'm concerned: he don't care how to do manually , so I shouldn't care also. And if he change his mind and ask for help with manually plotting the trajectory I expected better advice than "just eyeball because is easy"

Cover everything necessary, I think. If the sub-assembly/craft is intended to be shared the description can accommodate flight instructions also, plenty of room. But still not exactly the best way to display that info IMHO

Actually both are the rookie engines to use before you learn to launch with a pure SRB 1st stage pointed in the right direction. There is something very satisfying in pressing spacebar and watch the rocket flying itself to orbit.

Well, personally I didn't check it, just carry on with what others said before me. So probably my mistake. If you rocket is aerodynamic stable the rate of turn will be limited by velocity. Since higher TWR get up to velocity quickly it means you need a more aggressive initial tilt. But that is all, just get the initial tilt right and a stable rocket will fly itself to orbit, no control input (nor SAS) necessary. Reducing the thrust later is just a way to give time to a rocket that initially wasn't tilted enough to orient itself.

Maybe that upgrade made the node go away? A serious question : do you have a communication link back to KSC or a pilot aboard? Scientists/engineers can control the vessel but not plan manuevers.

Well, kinda. But there is a lot of drag the stock CoL is clueless about.

For the amount of flight time required I assume even a decoupler may be enough.

If anything else, I would suggest to change the Swivel for a Reliant. This will make the initial tilt more difficult to do right, but after the rocket get up to speed aeroforces will be enough to keep it in the right direction. Anyways, that further steep can wait until the pilot build confidence in doing the initial tilt accurately. For now the gimbal is useful for corrections in case of a less than perfect initial tilting. There is little, if any, advantage to limit TWR to build up. Gravity loss beat drag loss for most launch vehicles nowadays. If your trajectory is not too steep and the rocket is stable just get to orbital velocity ASAP. BTW, 1,8km/s atmospheric is considering the terrible Isp of the Terrier at sea level (and mediocre Swivel's sea level Isp). It would just read "bananas" for the relevance sea level Isp actually have.