maltesh

The Clamp-O-Tron Sr allows fuel crossfeed by default, unless you switch it off in flight mode, so that's something to remember if you're going to use it instead of a decoupler.

The thing about docking with the navball is that those keys /always/ move your velocity vector and anti-velocity director in the same direction across the navball, regardless of how you're roll-oriented. and the target symbol on the Navball will tell you the direction you need to translate. Shown above: A tanker translating to bring its docking port directly in front of a fuel depot's docking port, preparatory to moving forward to dock. As a result, I tend to wind up considering almost everything /except/ the Navball to be a distraction.

North isn't defined by the magnetic field. It's defined by the axis of rotation of the body you're on And it's also currently defined differently based on whether the object is a Planet or Not., but I digress. At any rate, you find the appropriate direction along the rotational axis, and then can use gyroscopic instruments to keep a sense of which direction that is.

The overheating effects in the atmosphere that Moho had in 0.17 was a design choice, not a bug.

And especially important for Minmus, if for some reason you've decided to land on the high areas, remember to manually click on the Navball to switch to Surface Velocity when descending. It's a good habit to get into in general, but several small worlds, including Minmus, Bop, and Gilly, have areas that are higher than the point where the navball automatically switches to Surface Velocity. In the case of Minmus, the difference between Orbital and Surface Velocity can be over 9 m/s horizontal, which can result in a bad time if you're looking at the wrong onel.

Yes, KSP simulates the Oberth Effect. If the Oberth Effect does not work in your orbital simulation, then you are either simulating momentum incorrectly, and the Tsilokovsky Rocket Equation doesn't work, or you are simulating Kinetic Energy and Gravitational Potential Energy incorrectly, and the Keplerian orbital equations don't work, or both.

At some point, fuel cell parts (that generate electrical energy from rocket fuel) were planned, but they have not yet arrived. I imagine that a liquid fuel/intake air electrical power plant would also be workable.

That's not what "cleared the neighborhood of its orbit" requires. It means that the object is, by a wide margin, the most massive object in the region of its orbit around the sun. It does not prevent the object from having long-term satellites; if it did, Earth would not be considered a planet.

I had to to a bit of weird jiggling and jumping on the topmost ladders, but I have gotten a Kerbal to climb from the base of the VAB all the way to the Helipads.

If you're using RCS, you don't have to rotate to kill relative velocity. Requires a bit of practice to get a handle on how the velocity indicator moves with RCS thrusting,though. That said, the design of the Navball does leave a bit to be desired; ideally, it should never be able to hide the the velocity, target, or node direction markers from you, regardless of which direction they are, but the bracket around the navball can easily do so if the relative motion, target, or node is perpendicular to your nose direction.

Ion engines, yes. Rovers, I would disagree. For all but the smallest rovers, it's pretty easy to tuck enough RTGs to supply your necessary power into the structure. Up to the medium-sized wheels, you only need one RTG per powered wheel to keep things running constantly. There are four rtgs tucked into This rover, placed without using Debug mode. They're laid along the underside of the chassis, yet are still high enough to not bottom out on most planetary terrain. I tend to put RTGs on anything that's going to land on a world's surface, if I have any expectation of wanting to use the item during the night. Solar panels and batteries can suffice for things that are going to stay in orbit, but enough batteries to keep running even through a 3-hour Kerbin Night is typically not worth it over RTGs. And of course, then there's that bug that rips off unfurled solar panels when loaded in a planetary atmosphere.

Not on Distant Worlds, exactly. Linked because they reveal the nature of a pair of Kerbin easter eggs. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4057920/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/V0.20/Screenshots/screenshot291.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4057920/Kerbal%20Space%20Program/V0.20/Screenshots/screenshot318.png

If the simulation is operating as intended, from solar orbit, you cannot get any closer to Kerbin than about 84,000 km without entering the sphere of influence of Kerbin.

I'd ask, "Why isn't your wellhead part of your storage/conversion base?" Kethane patches are huge, there must have been a good flat spot to place the base somewhere that doesn't require you to drive long distances overland carrying Kethane.

If your civilization cannot do more than one thing at once, it's not a civilization, it's a single-threaded program.

In 0.18, after the prototype Ion Maiden, I built the Ion Will. KSPX parts for smaller ASAS, smaller RCS, and larger Xenon tank. Twin side-by side ion drives, powered by laterally-placed gigantor solar panels. In early 0.20, the Ion Man. Again, KSPX parts for the same reasons. This is the Ion Cross, from late 0.20. One of the interesting things about Ion drives: THeir thrust isn't blocked by the parts of your ship, so you can stack them. I took her from Kerbin to Eve on an "I want to leave now, screw waiting for windows" course. Given that the spacecraft only had the two ion engines, landing went poorly. I generally only use Ion drives for these weird single-man recreational craft; I don't really consider them worth the extra hassle for sending spacecraft or probes to other destinations. After sending one to Dres in the early days of 0.18, I went back to using the LV-N for Serious Business Spacecraft.

Please don't conflate the colloquial definition of the word "theory" with the concept of "scientific theory."

There is no "knowing." A plant of the ancestral orchid species, due to genetic variation or mutation, winds up with a scent that has some very slight hints of what might be the female wasp pheromone. A few males wasps sotp by, check it out just to be certain, decide it isn't a female wasp, and leave carring some of the pollen away. Perhaps they alight on another closely related plant of the same species nearby that has a few more or a few less hints of that smell, and attempt the same thing, accidentally polllinating the flower. If this works out to raise the chance of the plant to have offspring, even by a tiny, tiny amount, then the number of plants who have the genes to produce those hints of female wasp pheromone will increase in the population over time. Some of those offspring will smell less like female wasps. Some of them will smell more like female wasps. And the ones whose hints are stronger, will produce more offspring, However, you've also got the wasps in there. And some of the male wasps are wasting time and energy checking out these plants that are Not Wasps. These wasps will tend to be less reproductively successful, and have fewer offspring. So over time the wasp population as a whole becomes more discerning about what Is Wasp, and what is Not Wasp. Now the orchid ancestors are also evolving at the same time. The wasp population is becoming more picky about what it hangs around, so the advantage shifts further towards the orchids whose flowers are More Wasplike. Those whose flowers are Less Wasplike get fewer visits from wasps, and thus produce fewer seeds. And the feedback loop continues. The Wasps get more discerning. The Orchids get more wasplike. The wasps start putting more influence on things like shape and color to discern what Is Wasp. The Orchids that are closer to the right shape and color get more visits by wasps and have more offspring. The ones who are less wasplike have fewer offspring. The Orhcids get More Wasplike. The Wasps get More Discerning Note that there's a balance here. An orchid that is Too Wasplike may entice wasps to hang around Too Long, and waste too much time and energy attempting to mate with something that is Not Wasp. That orchid will tend to have fewer offspring, because the mechanism by which the orchid gets pollinated by this point is by having the Wasp mistake its flower for Real Wasp, figure things out after awhile, but then go to another orchid and fall for the same trick. So as the process feeds back and forth, overall, the orchid and waps population winds up centering around a situation where the orchids are sufficiently Wasplike to fool enough of the current wasps to get themselves pollinated, but not so Wasplike that it damages the wasp population.

Two gigantors do let you use two ion drives, though. And allows them to be arrayed, as in the picture you provided, so that regardless of thrust direction, full-insolation can always be achieved by rotating the spacecraft, without unbalancing. And like RCS thrusters, ion drive exhaust isn't blocked by other parts (or at least, it wasn't up through 0.20) , so you can stack one (or more) of the ion drives atop the other for more acceleration, assuming you can provide the power.

It's actually about 120 degrees, same as with the Mun. People used to use the old "Munrise Burn" trick to get there, because when you're at about a 100km parking orbit, the visible edge of Kerbin is is about 30 degrees below the horizontal, so when the Mun, or Minmus rises into view, the angle between you, the center of Kerbin, and the rising object is about 120 degrees.

Whee, let's bend rules. Fifty-five seconds. All-stock, five-part rocket. How? Ye olde 75 km tall launch clamp.

If you're going to calculate it, you really should use the standard Orbital Period formula. If you just want to know what it is in-game, pause the game. Hit F2 to hide the UI. Hover the mouse over your Periapsis to find your Time to Periapsis. Hover it over your apoapsis to find the time to Apoapsis. Subtract the smaller value from the larger value, and multiply the result by two. That's your orbital period.

The distance doesn't have the same ratio as the size. The Moon's about 60 earth radii from Earth. The Mun is exactly 20 Kerbin radii from Kerbin. Th reason for that is because, on the typical wide-view computer screen, a Mun 36,000 km from Kerbin would look tiny.

Indeed. Which is why I went with "Directional change", rather than "orbital plane change.". Probably should have further qualified as "instantaneous directional change,"

Actually, that's incorrect. The minimum delta-V necessary to do a ninety-degree directional change is 1.414x the speed of your spacecraft. Two separate 90-degree changes cost 2.818x the speed of your spacecraft (assuming your spacecraft is moving at the same speed in both locations. The minimum delta-V necessary to do a 180-degree directional change is 2x the velocity of your spacecraft.