UmbralRaptor

Yep! It's important that people realize that Duna and Eva are not like our Mars and Venus, but closer to what we thought/hoped they were circa 1900-1950. edit: Uh, something like 14 km to hit 0.2 atm. And your resting blood pressure is enough to keep it from boiling.

Not that I'm aware of. The closest thing that comes to mind would involve cropping the edges of the video.

F2 will toggle the UI, but it sounds like you want it to show up while playing but not in the recording?

(emphasis added)Other posters are giving good information, but I want to clear up this misconception. Thrust is not that important, and depending on a given craft's configuration, adding more can be counterproductive. Raw thrust is of especially little value, and even TWR (thrust to weight ratio) does little good above a certain point (typically around 2.5x the local gravity).

It depends on local gravity, but in general an on-pad TWR of ~1.2-1.8 seems to get the largest payloads. Low TWR engines and rocket SSTOs in particular do better at the lower end of that, while high TWR engines and asparagus staged craft can (and perhaps should) go for the lower gravity losses at the upper end. Upper stages (and obviously orbital ones) can get away with lower TWRs, below 1 in some cases.

The way to tell is if your craft as sufficient ÃŽâ€V and TWR (thrust to weight ratio). ÃŽâ€V (pronounced delta-vee and measured in m/s) comes from the rocket equation, and is literally much much your craft can change its velocity. This is straightforward to calculate it for simpler ships (just Isp*9.82*ln(wet_mass/dry_mass)). You'll also want a ÃŽâ€V map to make sure you have enough. TWR is thrust/(mass * local_gravity). Values for the gravity at the surface of various bodies are on the wiki, though the amount actually required is more complex. If you want more general information about flying, has an extensive set of tutorials. Mod-wise, I would consider something like MechJeb/Kerbal Engineer Redux/VOID if only for their ÃŽâ€V displays. (Though other information that they add may be useful)If you want a theoretical background so you can find out where these numbers come from (and just how much they approximate), intros to orbital mechanics are available on the web. Particularly important are the Vis-viva equation, and Kepler's 3rd law. For interplanetary missions, check out Hohmann transfers and phase angle calculators. And if you want a textbook on the subject, I am partial to Fundamentals of Astrodynamics

Project 9745, submitted for easy mode (and stock aerodynamics): If physicsless parts didn't count, it would be 0.9745 t. Since they do, 1.0045 t. (grr...) Actual flying is pretty boring. Full throttle until you hit terminal velocity, then back off to keep it. Pitchover begins at ~4 km. And the .craft.

I have no idea. The only good news is that depending on how the transfer calculator works, Kerbin's spin may be mostly irrelevant. Even moreso with a difference of <0.6 m/s.

(ram) Intake spam, and keep the TWR reasonably high (on the runway it should be ≥ 1). It's perfectly possible for turbojets to kick you into a 70-80 x 20-24 km orbit. With useful payload.

You can now (well, since 0.23.5) toggle the ingame clock between Kerbin and Earth time. However, Kerbin was not spun up, and still has 6 hour sidereal days/6 hour 51 second synodic days

1) Both are possible, with a tendency for assembly in Earth orbit. Though there's also an architecture that involves multiple launches without so much docking. That said, KSP tends to make direct ascent much easier/more practical. 2) For most designs, the LV-N offers the most ÃŽâ€V / greatest mass efficiency, but requires greater care in lander design. 3) In science/career, at least 1 for EVA/crew reports. For a test mission, I'd be tempted to say 0 to minimize overall craft mass.

EVA on a landed craft, and take the report while hanging off the ladder. Edit: yay, 1000th post.

Technically, whatever you find the most enjoyable. With normal "serious" play assumptions, focus on science instruments, with the occasional side path for critical equipment. Useful things like landing legs, radial parachutes, the LV-909, batteries, and solar panels are all along or next to the science branch(es). Off of those, the major things would be radial decouplers, a largish engine with TVC (typically the LV-T45), struts, and fuel lines. As a bonus, these also give you some additional boosters, launch clamps, and the 48-7S. Mods tend to change what is most important, though. Mod Edit: That we do!

There's more than one thing going on here, even on airless bodies. I actually have a fairly relevant blog post1) Rockets work by changing their momentum (I suppose one could call ÃŽâ€V a measure of momentum change with the mass abstracted out), but orbital parameters work by changing energy. Hence the Oberth effect, etc. Vertical burns tend to keep your speed down, hence the greater ÃŽâ€V requirement. 2) With non-zero burn times, gravity drag comes in. Eric_S gives a good overview.

Isp varies with atmospheric pressure. KSP does something a bit silly and alters fuel consumption rather than thrust, but it still means you need to consider the lower values for Kerbin, Eve, etc. The vacuum ÃŽâ€V should remain unchanged (And be the same for all airless bodies for the obvious reason), though TWR will be different for every body. Also, 7 km/s from where? It might be enough from LKO, but is definitely not from the surface of Kerbin (unless you're doing some very clever flying)

This again? In real life, asparagus staging is not used because fuel pumps are hard while high TWRs and mass ratios are easy. In KSP it's the opposite. Drag has nothing to do with it, and realistic aerodynamics would at most hurt flying pancakes. (Anything up to a full 4 stage/single layer setup would be fine. Possibly multiple layers.) It's worth noting that in real life, a large number of rockets (eg: Titan IIIE/34D/IV, R-7 family, Ariane 5) use horizontal staging as a major component, and a few (STS, Energia) used it exclusively. Costs aren't so much rough on asparagus staging in general as on terribly inefficient/overbuilt designs. You know, the ones that get 5% payload fractions when with a better layout they would be getting 15%. As for the ARM parts, use them or don't. They're more rocket than is strictly needed for a lot of career mode, but money's not that hard to get either. The great thing about 0.24 is that it gave SRBs something that they're clearly better at (cost).

The asterisk was added in 0.13.2 (Which seems sort of ironic, given that 0.13.x had ongoing issues with staging bugs)

A 50-51 s per day difference would be noticeable, as would ~0.5 - 0.6 m/s on the pad.

What Pecan said, but technically it's the mod key. If you are on a Mac, option+right click. On Linux, right shift+right click.

From 0.12 through 0.23.5, Kerbin had a sidereal day of 21600 s (6 h), and a solar day of ~21650.6 s. On the pad, at a distance of ~600,072 m above Kerbin's center, your "orbital" speed was 174.6 m/s (really 174.55 m/s). But as of 0.24.2, the rotation rate appears to be unchanged. 1) With the described spin-up to a ~21541 s sidereal period, the expected speed on the navball in orbital mode is 175.0 m/s. Obviously this is not the case. 2) Over 7 Kerbin days, the sunrise becomes later by ~5 m 54 s. That works out to 354 seconds, or ~50.6 s per day. Perfectly consistent with a UT clock keeping 6 h sidereal days when the solar day remains 6 h 0 m 50.6 s. Any thoughts?

The meaning is literally that they have been reordered. Stages can be dragged around in flight, though often action groups serve the same purpose better.

What I used for my initial mun landing in my 0.24 campaign save: (pros: fairly cheap and only requires 20 science. Cons: No additional science payload, limited battery power, somewhat marginal ÃŽâ€V) While these designs technically predate the campaign, they would also work: ...though I suppose they should be updated to carry goo pods and material bays.

I'm going to assume that replying with a wikipedia link is not rude, since it has a lot of good pictures

The thrust vector is pointing in the correct direction. The lack of apparent thrust is because the engine exhaust is hitting the horizontal tail. (KSP effectively nulls out thrust that hits the craft that produced it) Either remove the winglets, or move them out of the exhaust stream. It's worth noting that real-life craft with engines there would use T-tails.

Pound for pound, OX-STAT wins until you hit the 0 power point due to that PhysicsSignificance flag. But since that is at almost 3x Jool's semi-major axis, you're unlikely to hit that. Even without that flag, OX-STAT > OX-4A/B > Gigantor > RTG. This holds past Eeloo's apoapsis. (In stock, were you get 50% power at Jool instead of 4%)