Vanamonde

I have some thoughts on this subject. 1. Assuming the Kerbals we see belong to one gender is baseless. Another culture's names are not required to follow the conventions we are familiar with, and there are many species even here on earth in which males are not dissimilar to females. Those who interpret these characters as uniformly males are imposing prejudices upon them. 2. If we assign them genders, why stop at two? They are aliens. They could have multiple sexes, or only one. Perhaps they are all worker-caste neuters and there's a queen Kerbal somewhere that births them all. But if inclusiveness with regard to the player base is an issue, there must also be gay, transgender, and other orientations/sexes/genders represented in the game. I am not putting forth those sexual identities as something to be derided, nor is this intended as a reductio ab absurdum, but I am saying it's a can of worms best left unopened. Why complicate the game with a meaningless distinction which has no effect on play? 3. I suspect that the players who want this are not stopping to think through the ramifications of implementation. To wit, how should female Kerbals be represented? If Squad makes them busty, the developers will be setting themselves up for accusations of sexism and imposing body type prejudices. (Bustiness would also imply that these little green creatures are mammals, which brings up yet more questions.) If Squad gives them long hair, might not female players with short hair feel slighted? What constitutes a female name, anyway? I work with someone named Chikezia. Without resorting to Google, how many of you can tell from that whether my co-worker is male or female? In short, implementing Kerbal gender would be a colossal headache which would add nothing to gameplay, and personally, I would rather the people at Squad spent their time squashing bugs and giving us new planets to fly to. If it makes you happy, rename some of your crew Judy or Svetlana, or assume that on Kerbin, Jedediah is a female name, and then get on with the business of killing them in rocket crashes.

(Nevermind. Wrong thread.)

What do you mean by "all" the tutorials? Have you tried mine? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies

Tri-couplers drive your part count through the roof very quickly. Three rings, on each side, plus a tri-coupler, on each side, and then some struts to preventing wiggling, on each side equals around 14 parts to do what 2 Srs. will do. The only reason folks used them in the past is because we didn't have the Srs.

Discussion of such ships: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37952-Round-trip-ships My own 2 designs for download: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/48610-My-roundtrip-ships-for-download

The propulsion seems precarious, but the rest quite practical.

I believe the next game version will have a way to combine saved designs. In the meantime, build a rocket up to a decoupler or docking ring, save it, then when you need it, load it and build the payload on top of the decoupler/ring.

Or ask fellow players on the game's official forum. Oh hey! That's us! There are 6 other planets which have 6 moons between them. There are probably going to be additional worlds as the game develops, but plans are still pretty tentative.

Here's a written walkthrough and a ship you can download to practice with: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25008-How-to-reach-orbit-and-a-rocket-that-can-do-it-a-walkthrough-for-newbies

Design of the ship is also a factor. The lower and wider it is, the less likely it will tip over.

Yes, some people absorb better from listening, some from watching, and some from reading, which is my preference. I'm glad this was helpful.

For ships, copy the craft file to yourKSPfolder/saves/yoursavedgame/ships/VAB, and then the next time you play the game, it will show up in the VAB just like the ships you have made and saved yourself. As for mods, I don't know because only evil people use them. (Kidding!)

There's no single answer to this question. It got easier when they introduced landing gear, easier when they re-did SAS, harder when they re-did the terrain recently, etc.

The default landing gear key is G. Works for plane wheels and landing legs.

Once downloaded, copy a craft file into yourKSPfolder/saves/nameofyoursavedgame/ships/VAB, then when you start up the game next time, the new ship will show up just like your own saved ship designs in the VAB.

Parked a rover on the little hill that marks the precise location of Ike's south pole.

Well, people keep asking for this sort of thing, but when I posted some http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/48610-My-roundtrip-ships-for-download, the thread is getting no attention and only about 11 people have downloaded them. I don't get it.

In the northern temperate lattitudes there's a big Mariner canyon-kind of thing. It's a good landing spot for scenery, because the bottom is almost perfectly flat, and because it's so low that the atmosphere will make parachutes work better.

Okay, when you build and post your own newbie training rocket, you can put as much effort as you like into the precision of the symmetry of the launch stage, and the only difference it will make is 5 or 6 fewer keystrokes during minutes 2-6 of a roughly 800 minute roundtrip. But until you're willing to make a better one and offer it to newbies, please stop criticizing mine. Criticizing a man's rockets is like calling his children ugly.

Some shots from my current Duna/Ike mission: An unusual perspective; Mun transits Kerbin. (Minmus is over on the left.) The pilot's view during a Duna aerobrake. I haven't been to Duna's polar regions in a while, but is that pink/purple terrain shading in the distance new?

Most common mistakes: 1) Are they the same size? 2) Are they facing the right way?

The larger mass you're hauling on this trip is requiring a longer burn. The longer the burn is, the more your current path deviates from the point in space where you placed the original maneuver node. But the burn direction and duration were calculated on the ideal case of an instantaneous acceleration at that point. And so you are finding that your actual burn is deviating from the estimate. Don't worry. It will still get you pretty close. Just plot a mid-course correction to bring yourself back spot-on for the intercept.

Steering is steering; it's only difficult if you don't practice it. You have to use the WASD keys anyway, right? And how much rotation are we talking about, anyway? I've tested that rocket extensively, and it rolls sedately if at all.

Chris_C, your primary difficulty is not that you are doing anything wrong, but that you are trying to cross roughly 54,000,000km and then hit a target that is around 96,000km wide. Use Olex's calculator http://ksp.olex.biz/ to get close, play with a maneuver node until you get the "closest approach" markers, and either finesse those, or plot a mid-course correction to achieve the final intercept. That's how I do it.