Fraktal

I think what you found is the old model for the Mk1 command pod. It was deprecated around... two years ago, I think?..., but it's still in the game for compatibility purposes with older craft. Same with the old SRB models and some old decoupler models that aren't in the game anymore.

I also had a transfer issue yesterday, though I thought it was only the game not letting me transfer from a LF/OX tank into three LF-only tanks.

And yet it's much better suited for aerobraking, to the point where the community delta-V map says it's easier to get to Gilly than to Ike.

Yep and it renders not just a colored flare in the direction of the other planet, but eclipses as well. You can actually see Moho transiting Kerbol while standing on Kerbin.

Yeah, but nobody uses up 800 ablator. A shallow aerobraking return from Minmus takes about 40 tops unless you do multiple passes.

It's not, actually. That shroud isn't from the decoupler, it's from the heatshield. If you go extremely fast while still in the atmosphere during takeoff, the heatshield starts losing ablator the same way it does during reentry unless you shroud it.

Ah, I see. I'd say sending another ship with mining equipment over to Moho might be an option for now, if your guys don't mind tanning on Moho for another year or so.

You haven't brought any drills and converters with you to Moho?

That's the problem. Mammoths are not very efficient for vacuum (Isp 315). If you need to be able to land the refueling vehicle, use a Rhino (Isp 340), otherwise Poodles (Isp 345 but low thrust) or Nervs (Isp 800 but very low thrust for its weight and doesn't work well with other engines) will do the trick. In-Situ Resource Utilization, AKA cooking your own fuel on-site. That's what you brought the scanner for, I presume?

That's kinda what vacuum Isp is. What engines are you using in your craft? There's also of course the matter that carrying more fuel for more delta-V means carrying more weight and thus less delta-V. Diminishing returns hit fast and hard, especially since the best vacuum engines are all weaklings in terms of thrust. Just yesterday I designed a medium-size refueling craft myself; it has two Rockomax 32 tanks of fuel for itself and another two tanks hauled for refueling purposes, meaning that it can supply any ship with over 3000 LF but can barely squeeze out 2000 m/s of delta-V for itself due to massing over 86 tons when fully loaded and having around 0.32 TWR due to running on two Poodles. Simply put, improving fuel efficiency by selecting the right engine is one option, but it doesn't change the fact that fuel is heavy and you still need to lug that weight around. Hence why ISRU is a thing.

Today marked the first time I decided to try using flaps on my planes. The result: I swiftly re-engineered all of my planes to use the wing root elevons for this purpose only, extended by default and toggled via action group. Of course, I'm yet to figure out why one of my small planes rolls to the side upon reaching 60 m/s on the runway. It's not yawing like overweight landing wheels usually do, it's rolling. I'm also considering timewarping a couple hundred days forward to the next launch window to Duna so that I can get back to space testing, but am not sure if I should. I mean, yes, it's a science sandbox game so time is no factor, but I should be using that time for more testing. I just don't know what I should test...

Actually, I did quite a bit of experimentation with those recently. They are perfectly usable without a fairing, but you need a very high delta-V on the lower stage in order to hold on to the fins for as long as possible. The rocket won't flip while you have the fins and steer carefully but if you drop them too early, you'll flip even without steering.

You need to check two things here. The fins at the back of your rocket. Are there enough of them and are they low enough? Turn on the center-of-mass and center-of-lift indicators in the VAB (three small buttons on the lower right corner of the part selection pane, above the symmetry toggle; you need the left and right ones). If the blue indicator is above the yellow indicator, you either need more fins or need to place them lower. What exactly is on the very top of the rocket? If the front of the rocket has high drag, it will flip even if you have an absurd number of fins.

The only issue with a Terrier as Mun landing engine is that it's too big to fit under a set of Micro Landing Struts unless you offset the legs downwards and use the shrouded variant of the Terrier to hide the fact that the lower attachment point for the legs is free-floating in the air. Same problem with the Poodle and the LT-01 landing gear, except without being able to hide the offset with a shroud.

He means either a Pilot-class kerbal who leveled up at least once (have him fly a stable orbit around Kerbin and come back alive), or any probe core except Stayputnik or OKTO. This will allow you to set SAS to hold during descent. If you do this, you don't have to do any steering, just throttle control. Don't forget, however, to set the probe core to auto-hibernate during warp! Despite the name, probe cores are actually a useful addition to crewed ships. If you put any probe core that isn't a Stayputnik into a crewed vessel, that probe core basically becomes a navigational computer that lets non-pilot kerbals use SAS as if they were pilots themselves without an unmanned vessel's disadvantage of losing control if it drops out of radio contact with Kerbin. This is the simplest and most lightweight way to get a Scientist kerbal to the Mun for reusing single-use experiments while you only have single-seat command pods.

Idea of a Level 4 Runway: in addition to the standard runway, it'd also have a mass driver-style secondary runway running parallel to the main runway but slightly curving upwards a few degrees away from the ground as it goes, specifically meant for SSTO takeoffs. I mean, the side of the runway opposite of the rest of the KSC has plenty of empty space for something like this.

You'd change your tune if the game crashed as often as mine did (and still does).

Check your modlist. Did you unintentionally install something that changes things in that regard? Happened to me a couple of months ago when one day all my previously stable rockets started spinning out and it turned out CKAN randomly installed FAR without my say-so because the person maintaining one of the mods I use accidentally marked it as required instead of recommended.

I played for a long while on a laptop with Win10 and 4 gigs of RAM, so I can say from experience that it will run, but you will really suffer from long (20+ minutes) loading times and constant lag from your OS furiously working your pagefile, even without any mods that add a lot of parts to the game and without literally anything other than Steam running in the background. Once I got another 8 gigs of RAM into the system, the game ran a whole lot better (to the point where I can actually watch Youtube videos in HD on my second monitor while playing KSP and neither the video nor the game stutters; before, I couldn't even run Chrome without my PC completely freezing up from a full RAM). So I highly recommend you do the same because if you don't, there's a high chance you will be disappointed and discouraged by how badly the game will run.

Objectively incorrect. I use docking mode all the time.

Ouch, that landing can there is running very hot, mate! Less than 80 degrees away from exploding!

Wait, asteroids have finite ore capacity...?

Big wings. You're going to be flying high where the air is very thin, so you need a lot of wing surface area if you don't want to stall out. If you don't have enough, you'll start losing altitude due to insufficient lift, forcing you to nose up in order to point your engines downwards to compensate against gravity, which in turn causes you to lose forward airspeed due to the extra drag of flying belly-first, which in turn forces you to expend more fuel to reach orbit, in a vicious cycle. Also, when you're designing the spaceplane, make sure that the plane is not too stable (ie. center of lift should be very close to the center of mass). When you enter the atmosphere, you ideally want to do it belly-first to aerobrake as hard as you can (set SAS to radial-out and use roll controls to keep the wings perpendicular to your trajectory); the plane will instead want to nose down, which carries a real risk of you not decelerating enough during the descent to pull up and thus avoid plowing into the ground at terminal velocity. The more stable the plane is, the harder it will be for you to keep it pointed in any direction other than nose-first unless you pack it with an excessive number of reaction wheels.

How the heck did you pull that off by accident?! That's, like, trillion to one chance! Scott Manley even did a video on it.

Sloooowpooooke~. Started the game in January 27, 2018, got my first SSTO to orbit on February 16, first SSTO Mun flyby on February 26 after a one-week hiatus, first SSTO Mun landing on February 28. Anyway. First SSTO design of mine that reached orbit, using a Mk2 fuselage: Second design, built entirely out of Mk1 parts and with much higher wing surface: Third design with ventral monoprop thrusters to VTOL on the Mun: @Prat4545, feel free to take notes. I used 3-4 Whiplashes and 4 NERVs (two on top, two on bottom) for propulsion instead of Rapiers, so it was running entirely without oxidizer. For the second design, I apparently used a 15° ascent angle while on Whiplashes, then pulled up to 45° upon flameout.