Tokoshoran

Yeah, struts allow a flat surface to connect to, and if you put enough off to the sides they'll allow you to spread your wheels out, you can even turn while driving without needing to worry about much, in case something forces you to veer anyways, or are driving a "car" around for surface readings.

I haven't seen them yet (I'm kind of rubbish at this game), but I'd assume they're good for refuelling stations. Going alongside the idea of hauling empty ones up, you could do that to carry a load of fuel further and further out--Launch the first one not as far out, then an empty one to grab the fuel and carry it further.

Edit: Nevermind. I was thinking of something else.

This seems similar to my problem and inability to reach Mun. I still haven't quite reached yet, but one of the first tips to give is that you want to head east as you're arching out of orbit. You're wasting fuel going against the planet's spin to try and go west, and not getting any help if you're going north or south. My experience working with needing more fuel to get into orbit in the first place is that those side thrusters from Rockomax are rather helpful. Since you can use multiple on one fuel tank, you can throw on a heavier fuel tank and still lift off.

I've had that happen a few times, then upon decoupling, it immediately turns around and goes retrograde. is the pod just shaped in a way that it does that when it's alone?

Eh, maybe it messed up when I hit quote and was trying to shrink down the content. I typically read what's in my own text box rather than scroll up a bit. Either way, I tried out reducing the reaction wheel's authority but to no avail. It was still way too powerful, guess I gotta nudge it repeatedly.

Then you are following extremely outdated techniques @Tokoshoran This kind of flight path was used during KSP's beta period. With the first full release in April of 2015, the aerodynamics model was made much more realistic, and you'll now fare much better if you fly a smooth, gradual turn, and stay at full throttle at all times unless you need to flatten your trajectory. Not sure why you'd call that out to me, I've been trying to arc it. I'll probably resort to limiting the reaction wheel's authority early on so that I can eventually hold it and get that.

Given how this game is with physics, I don't doubt that their roundness is slightly aerodynamic. Edit: Actually, you can put them on upside-down. Wouldn't that increase drag?

That's easily a major problem for me. If I'm told to look for something, I take the directions literally and look for those specific circumstances. Vaguer explantions may take more time to figure out, but they're so much more worth it for me. Thanks, that gives me something to work off of. I didn't even think of looking at the time to apoapsis. I didn't think that would play any effect I guess that explains the weird behavior of the arc.

Hmm, looking into how the Tutorial works, I go straight up until 60m/s, then curve to 70º until the boosters die off, around 400m/s. Finally, once the Ap reaches 80k, cut throttle and wait until you're over 70k altitude, and then burn around 15º. ...On a west heading, following these directions gets me to the desert, which is a new biome for doing some reports, but I'm definitely not reaching orbit. In my goal to reach Mun, I suppose my first step definitely needs to be entering orbit with a "comfortable margin" ship. My reading into the tutorial must be looking at the wrong things, or else the boosters throw it off that much, so what do I have to do?

I don't doubt that lack of skill is the problem, while I've learned a number of the other tricks, existing the atmosphere fluidly is not one of them. Even after repeatedly doing that tutorial mission over and over. I'll go ahead and try out the recommended build and probably swap back into the tutorial a few times to try and hammer the skill in.

You can't change the stock part, but you can copy the existing part and its settings by holding ALT while clicking it. This way you just set the one regular and one drogue, set them up, and then copy them into the other places.

Can't seem to boost myself into orbit anymore. Maybe my science gear is just too dang heavy. What should I be sciencing, then? Should I be trying to orbit around to the "Above altitude" mission objectives (and if so, how do I go about ensuring I actually am above them, even when I normalize/abnormalize my orbit to look like it's going over the point it doesn't work)? I can EVA but I can't collect samples yet.

What building do I need to upgrade to get maneuvers? They're not available for me.

Some launches after I finally got a satellite into low orbit, I took on a mission which required me to launch another satellite to a specific orbit. I figured it'd be an easier one, only to need to launch it slightly beyond Mun. After a few failures I decided to work on other jobs, and eventually came back and managed to do it. I figured, hey, if I could reach a Mun-like orbit, surely I could slap a few struts onto a manned rocket and get it up there with some science experiments, but after testing around with a few different parts, I'm finding it difficult to even get up there. Maybe I hit the sweet spot on my satellite launch, or maybe I'm just using the wrong parts now. I have everything up to the 90-science research, of which I only have Electricity (recharging my reaction wheel is vital). Looking back at the Into Orbit build, it used Hammers instead of Thumpers, AV-R8 instead of Tail Fins, etc. Where do advantages and disadvantages lie with the various pieces I have available?

Are some of the things meant to be empty? If not, that's a 1.4 bug. Edit: This might actually be from a combination of mods. I'll test that out real quick. Tested, and they're empty on their own.