Brofessional

Made a smaller version of my last design. This one only takes 2 Kerbals to a station, but it's super stable and can do a Mun flyby.

I love how this thing turned out; 18 Kerbals to 500x500km and back.

Took a trip to Laythe

It's certainly viable, you just have to balance the CoM/CoL.

64-bit Windows support might improve when Unity 5 comes out. In the mean time you can use mods like Active Texture Management and/or Load on Demand to lower your memory usage. You can also force OpenGL instead of DirectX, it uses less memory in OpenGL mode but the framerate can suffer. There's also the 64-bit Linux version of KSP, which doesn't have the issues that the Windows 64-bit version has. However, being Linux it uses OpenGL, so you'll still get lower framerates. Hopefully Squad will spend some time on improving the way assets are loaded now that we're officially in beta.

That's just the HUD-mode of Kerbal Engineer.

When wings decide to blink out of existence.

The Linux 64-bit version works, but the game runs significantly worse in OpenGL than it does in DirectX.

There's no difference between the two versions.

5m parts aren't necessary unless they change the scale of the planets. With only 4.5km/s required to orbit the 3.75m parts already make it incredibly easy to get heavy payloads into orbit.

Nothing fancy, but this turned out nicely.

Any idea why the wheel bay doors aren't closing? Everything else works great, but the doors stay open after the wheels fold up.

Back before the Mun had been invented.

Here's another related video

OpenGL definitely shows less RAM usage, but my framerate is halved and the game doesn't render any dynamic shadows with it enabled. The lower framerate might be related to the fact that I have a dual-GPU setup, but still, it's a pretty big sacrifice for less RAM usage.

It's a proven technology, working prototypes have been made in real life, but never flown. In part due to the risk of dispersing radioactive material in the event of a rocket malfunction.

I think for a novice player, doing an interplanetary transfer is still pretty daunting compared to the Mun. That said if you are finding it too easy, install Deadly Reentry and TAC Life Support to add some challenge.

Here's a few more designs. <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="//imgur.com/a/8WWzG/embed"></iframe>

There's a decoupler on the frame that's attached to one of the structural panels on the bottom of the rover. It's made so the entire frame drops down a few iches when it decouples, allowing the rover to clear the frame and drive out. Often I'll put legs on the frame to take the initial impact of landing then fold up, since landing on wheels tends to damage them.

Usually with a frame like this, with rockets some fuel tanks on top instead of parachutes if it's a vacuum landing. Second pic is an earlier prototype but you get the idea.

No specific reason was given afaik. I assume it's because they thought it was too hard to land on. The atmosphere was so thin parachutes were of little use, and so hot that your engines would overheat in seconds, so you had to burn in bursts with a high-TWR engine. They removed the atmosphere and overheating when it got an art-pass in 0.18. It used to look like this.

Landing on Ike is no more difficult than landing on the Mun, and it's easier to return from than Duna.

In 0.17 Moho was supposed to be volcanic and had a very thin but hot atmosphere that made your engines overheat.

There just needs to be a greater variety of contracts. Testing parts isn't very interesting, but they make up at least half of the available contracts.