Brofessional

366hrs on Steam, but it's probably over 1000hrs if you count the time before the game was on Steam.

You can get a significant amount of points just for orbiting the Mun and returning without landing on it. If you don't transmit anything the capsule battery has more than enough power for the trip.

Space farmin' to be done

I got into orbit and back with just the tier 0 parts, but the mun is out of reach without decouplers.

i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Two HD6950 2GB in CrossfireX, unlocked to 6970 specs If you're bottlenecking on physics there's not much you can do to improve performance aside from overclocking your CPU.

Seems to me that putting a NERVA on an SSTO is hardly worth it, it's so heavy and has poor TWR. I prefer using 48-7S', but if you're going to spam intakes you may as well just use ions.

With the Editor Extensions mod you can just change symmetry modes inside the VAB.

Well if you calculate it right you don't need to kill speed, you can just come straight in for the landing. Plenty of times I've overshot and had to do a U-turn or loop back around though.

The trick is to keep your wet CoM and dry CoM nearly identical so your CoM doesn't shift as you empty the fuel tanks. If you're using tail mounted engines this means the front of your plane needs some weight to it, as the engines are usually the heaviest part aside from the fuel tanks. CoL should be just a hair behind the CoM, with your main wings next to the CoM and a second pair of wings either in front or behind the CoM to stabilize it, depending on your design. With only a single pair of wings you're likely to end up flipping end over end. You don't necessarily need a lot of control surfaces for SSTO's as they mostly just fly in a straight line. If it's a light plane, a single pair of flaps on your main wings will usually do. The fewer control surfaces you have the less twitchy it will be. If you're having trouble getting into the air, try positioning your landing gear to the tail sits lower than the nose on the runway. I'd recommend getting the Editor Extensions mod and using clusters of the 48-7S engines instead of aerospikes, much better TWR. Also those cylindrical jet fuel tanks usually have more fuel than you need for a single engine SSTO. I recommend using a smaller tank or cruising to burn off excess fuel before switching to rockets, so the rockets have less weight to push.

My smallest SSTO so far.

This mod helps a lot, on top of being handy for placing your RCS thrusters, it lets you see the center of mass when your fuel is empty.

Just keep them genderless and add a color palette/slider for the suit color and accent colors. At most give them aviators when you max all their stats.

The only thing I used was the Editor Extensions mod, to attach those engine clusters. It carries like 30-40% more liquid fuel than it needs so it's best to cruise and burn off some of the excess weight before turning on the rockets.

I've yet to come up with a simpler, more reliable design that gets two kerbals into LKO and back than this little guy.

It was in 0.8.4, back before there was a map view or time warp or a Mun, and when the atmosphere cut off at like 35km.

TWR doesn't really matter for interplanetary trips. Delta-V is more important.

I keep kethane drills and fuel ferries on various low-G bodies, but I don't use orbital fuel stations. Chances are if I need to refuel something it's a large ship, so it's easier to just bring the fuel to the ship rather than try to dock with a station. In LKO it's more efficient to just send up a fuel tank from KSC specifically for that ship, then deorbit the empty tank afterwards. Although when the career mode economy is in, re-usable kethane ferries on the Mun/Minmus will be more cost effective than sending an entire lift vehicle from KSC.

The more practical application is mapping for resource deposits, with the Kethane mod.

Any sort of integrated mapping system will have to be simplified from what we have now. Leaving your game running for 8 hours is not a good solution for the official game. The easiest way would probably just be to make the mapping field ultra-wide so you only need to make a few orbits to map the surface.

Is this from .22? I haven't been to Duna much in .21 but I don't recall it looking like that.

I built this thing based on the Jedi Starfighter warp drives to take spaceplanes to Laythe.

Just time-warp, it only takes a couple minutes.

Get a better mouse.

The info panel in the map view lists the various specs about the planets/moons. Laythe is 80% Kerbin gravity.

Try this. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/editor-extensions/