Brofessional

Since 0.8 iirc.

I've done an SSTO spaceplane with ions instead of rockets.

It would actually be a pretty cool feature for career mode to have fixed sectors on Kerbin and other bodies that you can highlight in map view. Kind of like a RISK map. Then you could have missions to explore specific regions, and rewards for exploring all regions or different sets of regions; like explore all the major craters on the Mun and get a funding boost or a special technology. Perhaps the regions could even be fixed, but with generic numerical type names until the player explores and names them.

It does not require Steam to run.

Photoshop of course.

It's an open source noise map. Squad mirrored it and called it Kerbin, and have since then tweaked it.

Are you sure you have your fuel lines set up correctly? The image is too low-quality to tell. If the engines are turning on and creating exhaust then it's probably them being blocked or just not enough thrust. If they're not turning on at all then it's an issue of fuel/power/staging/etc.

It's all about delta-v. The amount of acceleration you need to accomplish a maneuver is the same for a big ship or a small ship; but the less mass you have, the less thrust you need to accelerate.

Well depending the model of your CPU and cooler you can get significant results from overclocking. My i5 2500k is 3.3Ghz which I have overclocked to 4.5GHz on air cooling. Even so, architecture matters as well, not just cores and clock speeds. As for the engine choice, you have to consider that licensing engines costs money and KSP started as a very small game with a very small budget. Unity can use multiple cores for rendering, but not for physics. Unity is a relatively new engine and the Unity devs are still updating the engine. Given that KSP is now one of the most popular games using their engine, hopefully they'll add the ability to use multiple cores for physics, and/or GPU physics soon, but it's not an easy task.

There are more factors to a CPU's performance than just the number of cores. Higher clock speeds and faster architecture can make the individual cores faster. Also Squad did not design the engine, they license the Unity engine.

KSP's primary bottleneck is the CPU, physics calculations can only run on a single core due to engine limitations which are out of Squad's control. There's a slider for the physics delta time in the settings that will slow down time to allow more frames to be rendered when there's a lot of physics calculations going on. Otherwise the only real option is overclocking your CPU or buying a faster one.

I can't comment on FAR, but if you're not trying to carry a payload it's best to stick to a single jet engine so you don't spin if you have a flameout. Then just put as many RAM air intakes on it as you can so you can keep the jet engine running at very high altitudes to get as much speed as possible before switching to rockets. The RAM intakes work at higher altitudes and they're much lighter than the radially attached intakes. In my experience thrust is more important than lift, a good single engine SSTO can climb at ~70° or higher right off the runway.

That is correct. You have to time the launch so you have enough sunlight to power the ion engines in order to get your periapsis up before re-entering the atmosphere.

Yep, I've done it without rocket engines too, and landed on the runway.

IIRC Unity has multi-threaded rendering since 3.5. So it does help to have a multi-core CPU, but not that much since KSP's bottleneck is physics, not rendering.

It was a little tough getting it into LKO, I had to use the landing engines to help the NTR's finalize the orbit, but once it was there I refueled it, then refueled again at Minmus. Landing was pretty easy thanks to the parachutes, just a puff from the landing engines to set it down gently. Nice thing about that design is that it can rotate in place like a tank.

Who says the crane needs to fly?

There's a nice documentary about Project Orion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4k_YZAXSEI Brief clip of the proof-of-concept prototype flying if you don't want to watch the whole thing here:

I still have the screenshot. Dec. 3rd, 2011

This, it actually was even closer a second before I took the screenshot.

You have to keep the center of mass balanced. You can use RCS or capsule torque to compensate some, but probe cores don't have enough torque to compensate for an imbalanced load on their own.

The Editor Tools mod allowed you to change symmetry modes on the fly, but 0.20 broke it and it's apparently not being updated. I think the Subassembly Loader mod can help move craft between the SPH and VAB but I'm not sure if it works in 0.20 yet. I really wish the devs would add symmetry mode toggling to the game. It's such a simple thing but makes a huge difference when building.

You'll always need to correct a little just because he ground is uneven. If you're using a capsule on your rover you should switch to docking mode when driving.

You don't even need the maneuver nodes to get the Mun, just wait in an equatorial orbit until the Mun rises over the horizon and start burning prograde until you have an intercept.

It's worth it. After refuelling at Minmus I can usually escape Kerbin with 90%+ full fuel tanks. It doesn't really matter when you leave since Kerbals don't need life support, you can just leave Kerbin and orbit the sun until your angle is right.