Zeiss Ikon

Even NASA doesn't try for that level. That's what station keeping propellant is for. A few (tens of) kilos of hydrazine can keep a comsat on station for ten years, once it's where it needs to be.

This is more or less the process used for MPEG (aka MP3 and MP4) and similar compression methods that have been applied to still images, audio, and video for (in some cases) decades. You start with the original, sampled from analog at a suitably high sample rate and bit depth. You use software to create a data stream or file that will "unpack" into something very much like the original (JPEG is lossy, so the displayed image is never perfect, but GIF, TIFF compression, and PNG are or can be lossless) and, in the case of MP4 for video, that can be unpacked in real time, i.e. at least as fast as the decompressed stream needs to play to produces a seamless playback (this is actually a small fraction of the computing power of even a single core of a modern computing device). Typically, you need more computing power to compress than to decompress -- but audio stream handling with compression and decompression isn't considered a particularly demanding task in today's computing world (for instance, the phone I had three years ago could play back CD-quality MP3 music from internal storage while also running turn-by-turn navigation software in real time and mixing the navigation audio with the music stream, and the one before that, now a seven year old design that wasn't technically "smart," could do both tasks without the mixing).

I've had a number of situations (specifically tiny correction burns, where 1 m/s error can wind up costing tens or hundreds of m/s at the destination orbit) when I wished I could conveniently reduce my RCS thrust to half or a quarter of its installed value. Manually disabling quads is an option, but it takes extra time, is easy to screw up (miss one, and the vessel will try to tumble -- SAS will probably save it, but will waste a lot of RCS fuel in the process), and is also easy to forget to undo afterward (and installed RCS capacity is usually none to much for the usual intended RCS usage, i.e. docking). If I can run my RCS with the regular throttle (after disabling the main engine), I can apply a fraction of my regular H-key thrust, allowing much more precise management of trajectory. As you say, though, you play your way and I play mine. I'm just returning the crew from my first (in career) or second (ever, since getting the game) Duna flyby. If you're an old hand with stations around every planet, I'm probably wrong in thinking more control is needed.

Well, sure, but in another thousand years you'll have trouble getting from Kerbin to Duna without having to dodge sun-orbiting debris -- and getting rid of that stuff is way harder than clearing debris from LKO.

Nice. Depending on conditions (elevation/barometer, temperature) that could be Mach 0.6 or a bit above. Still pretty danged fast for no engine aboard.

The point being, instead of "bang-bang" controls, that gives you smooth(ish) control of thrust in the forward translation direction. For those times when a single tap on the H key is just too much...

Since my career reached the mid-160 tier, I've been deorbiting everything possible. My current launcher core (Twin Boar with a 6400 tank on top, plus a 200 tank most of the time, and two to six boosters built from 3x800 1.25m tanks, a Reliant or, recently, a Skiff, and a Sepratron) is tailored to either run dry a hundred or so m/s short of orbit with the payloads I'm launching at present, or I shut it down at that velocity and separate it with a whisper of fuel left. The 100+ m/s burn to finish LKO insertion doesn't detract significantly from the transfer stage's dV, and it avoids adding still more junk to the LKO/equatorial/80-85km orbit band. I started this after I started seeing space debris on almost every launch, sometimes as close as a a dozen or so km. With the Klaw now available, I'm also starting to deorbit junk on any mission that can spare the dV and doesn't absolutely require a docking port on the nose.

I've been using RCS since my first few flights. I was used to seeing it on real world spacecraft, so I installed it on my Kerbal vessels. And, when it's installed, I routinely use it for burns that would be less than a couple seconds on the main engine(s). You can also set (most conveniently in VAB, where one setting change affects a full set of quads applied with symmetry) your RCS quads to burn on "forward by throttle" -- so once you're in more or less the orbit you want, you can shut down you rmain engine(s) and use the throttle to make really, really gentle forward burns with the RCS quads/balls/Vernors. Edit: This does require that "advanced tweakables" be turned on in your game settings...

There are three issues that can affect your performance. RAM solves one -- your 16 GB is plenty for even a moderate level of "extra parts" mods, providing you're using a 64-bit (or extended addressing 32-bit) Linux distribution. Having an SSD covers the second -- even a cheap SSD is better than any platter hard disk, but for KSP, this only affects time to load the game in the first place, and the time to make or load saves. The other is CPU -- if your cooling port is burning you, it's almost certain you're seeing the kind of thermal throttling I get with my Core i7-3520 (2.9 GHz, 2 cores) Thinkpad T430. I run a CPU clock speed and temperature monitor, and when playing on my laptop I routinely see my CPU temperature reach 100 C, followed immediately by automatic throttling to as low as 350 MHz until the temp drops into the mid-70s. This causes terrific lag for the 30-60 seconds it takes for the CPU to cool down. The likely solution is to use an external laptop cooler, at least while playing. I've been planning to get one, but I mostly play on my desktop at 4 GHz, 16 GB RAM, and with a big, new fan (built the machine in February 2018). I still get yellow clock (that seems to be unavoidable), but I don't get pauses, even with BOINC tasks keeping all 8 cores at 100%/4.1 GHz turbo.

The linked Wikipedia article seems to think F4 is an "ordinary" hyperbolic comet, originating from our own Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt. There's plenty of uncertainty in the orbital elements at this point to suggest it might even be on a closed orbit (with aphelion many light-hours out). Once we have more observation history we'll be able to tell more. There's also the question whether it's an asteroid or comet, which we'll also better know in a few months -- for instance, if it develops a coma or even a tail as it gets closer to the Sun (which 'Oumuamua never did).

There was a rather long period of time (20-30 years, as I recall) where the absolute RC speed record was held by a succession of gliders. Yes, you read that right: unpowered craft were the fastest RC airplanes from the 1980s until the last few years when RC turbojets started to gain ground (pulse jets, flown on RC craft since just after WWII, just couldn't do it for various reasons). The highest record I recall for RC, done with a technique called "dynamic soaring" (flying a tilted circular path through a wind shear, using the velocity differential to harvest energy from the wind; frequently done above sloping ground so the general rise of the air could maintain altitude without giving up speed), was close to 200 m/s (i.e. above 0.5 Mach), with no engine aboard. Hobby RC hasn't, as far as I'm aware, gotten above about 0.6 Mach, largely due to limitations on power sources (afterburning jets are just now becoming practical), legal restrictions (as noted, in the US as well, the operator must maintain visual contact with the model), and more legal restrictions (an FAA waiver would surely be required for a horizontal supersonic attempt on RC, just as it is for a crewed supersonic flight over land). I think it's safe to say that Mach 1 is out of reach for dynamic soaring, due to the high drag of the transsonic regime. It may or may not be possible to get there with modern turbojets because of limitations on thrust vs. diameter.

I agree with above -- if you've already cut the main engines, there's nothing to be gained by dumping the fairing before reaching 70 km. If you're still boosting, I'd wait until the Mach effects have died down (between 40 and 60 km, depending how fast you're going).

I still haven't used the thing in game, but I've played with it in VAB to see the extend/retract appearances. Like some others, I read the description ("Docking node" "attraction range") and could see it was intended as a docking part, plus, to me, it looked a lot more likely (based on its location in the tech tree) to be a Junior size docking part than a full size. I will admit, hjowever, that I'd seen discussion of the part on the forums before purchasing the DLC. I could see immediate utility in this part, independent of any attempts at reconstructing Voskhod or similar. If I have a vessel that needs a lot of other stuff radially attached to a crewed part, but also needs a radial docking port on the crewed part, I can likely squeeze an inflatable airlock in between. It's flat(ish) to the surface of the part when retracted, so it won't cause launch drift or pinwheeling in orbit, but it extends far enough to clear at least 1.25m and 1.875m parts, possibly even 2.5m size (tanks, etc.).

Escape proof pretty much has Eve written all over it. The big issue is the cost to send Kerbals there and get 'em there alive (if you're not going to get them there alive, you may as well just send them on a half-orbit in a Mk. 1 lander can). The simple, cheapest way to do it would be to use a spaceplane SSTO to launch them into orbit, in a command chair probe with the command chair controls disabled (decouple in a physical restraint, like a cargo bay, so the chair can't get away from the probe, but the controls won't operate the probe's engine or attitude control) with just enough dV to make it to Eve atmospheric interface. A Spark/Bobcat and three or four Round 8/Bagel tanks ought to do it. A 10 m inflatable heat shield should easily get such a tiny probe to ground intact, then the probe core can fire decouplers or open bay doors to free the command chair (and Kerbal) from the transport restraint. Best to decouple the engine and tanks after the reentry is set up, to be sure they burn up and don't reach the surface intact. The heat shield will serve as a raft if they land in the ocean. If there are a lot of these Kraken worshippers, you'd have a little flock of these probes headed for Eve every window, but you could store the transportees in LKO between transfer windows (they'd be adequately secure with their chair decoupled inside its cage). Once on Eve's surface, they're there forever, unless you send them power sources, drills, ore converters, rocket parts, and the tools to build rockets (dependent on having the correct mods installed) -- or land (a series of) personnel transports near mountain tops to allow a pilgrimage of Kerbals to be taken off the planet.

Actually, this is more or less backward. You get the most dV from fuel by burning as far down in the gravity well as possible (just barely above 70 km, for Kerbin, just clear of mountain tops for the Mun, etc.), when the fuel you're burning is already going as fast as you can manage. The reason you can change planes (an orbit reversal is nothing more or less than a 180 degree plane change) cheaply at the edge of the SOI is because orbital velocity is so low out there; a tiny bit of dV spent makes a huge difference in the orbit. You can reverse a Kerbin orbit for around 4.7 km/s at 85 km, or you can do it for around 300 m/s at the high end of an orbit that grazes the atmosphere at the bottom, but runs outside Minmus at the top. Which leads toan important addition to @Snark's suggestion -- your orbit must be as eccentric as possible to maximize dV saving by changing plane at the top of the SOI. A circular orbit that far out is significantly higher velocity than the Ap end of an orbit that barely clears the surface at Pe -- higher by the value of a circularizing burn. Don't circularize, and you save up to three times the dV needed to circularize -- by not spending it in the first place, then not having to spend it twice more to reverse orbit. Bottom line: to reverse your Mun orbit and get that second Kerbal in the most efficient way possible will cost you about the same dV as your return burn for direct reentry at 35 km Pe over Kerbin. If you've got the dV, then go for it.

How in the heck did you manage to get zero science recovery from Eloo?

And I play stock except for Better Burn Time.

This is the way I usually do it, but I really need to try the "set up something close-ish and make a correction burn partway there" method. That one has worked well enough that NASA has been using it for, um, about 55 years...

Fortunately, you can set the Mun as your target to check your own craft's orbital inclination; since the Mun is in a perfectly equatorial orbit, your nodes relative to the Mun are the same as your nodes relative to Kerbin's equator. Bad news is, the nodes only read in neaest tenth of a degree, and .05 degrees error still adds up to a good bit of inclination when you're going to Minmus -- even if you arrive perfectly at Minmus's node.

For bodies with shallow gravity wells like Minmus, Gilly, and a couple of the Joolian moons, it's not really worth worrying about orbital plane unless you're on way too tight a dV budget. You can reverse your orbit around Minmus for less than a small plane change in LKO. The problem I see is actually detecting Minmus's equatorial plane. It's not as if the mint moon was marked with latitude and longitude stripes. And with a six day rotation period, it won't do you a lot of good to try to sit and watch it turn...

Let me guess -- that's Russian for "Brensschluss!", right? Well, um, not without a spacecraft of some kind. They can't even survive reentry from LKO in just their suits, if you have reentry heating turned on an anywhere near 100%.

Back a few exchanges, someone pointed out that hydrazine derivatives (themselves long-term storable monopropellants and liquid fuels) give similar performance in an NTR to hydrolox in a chemical rocket. That points to an answer: Lf is hydrazine-ish, likely MMH or UDMH, usable in both NTRs like the NERV (giving higher Isp than hypergolic chemical rockets) and as the fuel in chemical bipropellant engines (even in jets, though standing behind one would be a Bad Idea if you're human). The oxidizer could be MON (mixed oxides of nitrogen) or red fuming nitric acid, either of which is hypergolic with most hydrazine derivatives. Dense, long-term storable, and they'd explain why everything in the Kerbal world explodes when overstressed. In this scheme, monopropellant would likely be straight hydrazine, catalyzed in either a pellet bed or with platinum/rhodium plated stainless or tungsten screen packs (dense elements like these ought to be common and cheap on Kerbin, given its extreme density).

I've never used a NERV, either. Too expensive, too heavy for the thrust, and not enough better than a Poodle (or, now, Wolfhound) to justify for anything closer than Dres. Maybe, if you're going to Jool, Eloo, or Moho, and need to take Kerbals or something else heavy (hence ruling out ion engines due to even lower thrust), the NERV would make sense. I haven't flown such missions yet (career hasn't gone past Minmus yet, and my old Science game had only achieved Duna flyby and Gilly landing). In fact, for my Duna flyby, I used a Rhino for the transfer stage.

One thing to consider with leaving a lander in orbit is that there won't be anyone aboard to stabilize the lander for docking. That means you'll either need to be confident enough at docking to dock with a potentially tumbling lander (which I've done, twice, and would prefer to avoid for the future), okay with using time-warp to stop the tumble between attempt, or you'll need to have a probe core with SAS capability and enough comm range to control it "from the ground" (controlling a probe from a vessel in flight requires a high tech antenna). OTOH, if you bring a fresh lander with you each flight, you can launch it already docked to the crew module, or (if you want to play Apollo) do a transposition and docking while the lander is still attached to the transfer stage, hence much more resistant to tumbling just due to inertia.

Last night, Tridin, Jorlan (both pilots) and Tatiana (scientist) made the second first landing on Minmus in my career game. "Second first landing" -- because of a mistake (loading an old save), I lost 50-ish days and several completed contracts from my career. I'm now approximately caught up with the days and achievements lost, ready to continue forging ahead. The Minmus crew remembered to run their experiments and brought back more than 500 science (from a single landing on the Greater Flats); with the unspent science from Val's recent Mun landing, that's exactly 1000 stored up. The R&D Kerbals will have a field, er, lab day with that. Plenty to open up the remainder of the 160 tier and start on the 300 level of the tech tree. The Minmus landing itself was relatively routine (that's what the "flats" are for). All three Kerbals disembarked from the vessel, using EVA packs to fly down to the surface (and I can now confirm that a two-star Kerbal has an EVA parachute in career 1.4.1). Tatiana forgot the names of both pilots in her excitement to set the first boots on a new body, but Tridin and Jorlan corrected her on their own flags. Surface sample, EVA report, crew report, Goo, temperature, barometric pressure ("It's as if the instrument were in a vacuum!"), and the Science Jr. materials experiment. The routine landing left the lander still oriented, so for takeoff it was just a matter of a quick burp from the Poodle and slap the staging switch to eject the drop tanks and landing legs (had enough fuel to make a biome hop, but we'll leave the fancy stuff for future missions). Then pitch over to the east, and burn to 150 m/s, watch for terrain (no problem, still had upward momentum from launch), and set up a node at Ap to bring Pe above the surface. Then wait through an orbit to make the burn for home. At recovery time, the MET read 26 days and a couple hours. The Mun is usually just over a day each way, plus orbit and surface time; Minimus is 12-13 days, depending how far you swing past the orbit setting up your encounter. Going to need an extra snack cabinet when it's time to visit Duna...