Vanamonde

Congratulations. Landing on Mun is the same in theory, but things happen MUCH more quickly, and the consequences of mistakes are much more severe. Don't be discouraged if it takes quite a bit of practice even after you've mastered landing on Minmus.

Lag is an issue for me as well, so I hardly ever put anything on my ships that isn't a working part.

It might be the design of your lander. Is it low and wide? That helps prevent tipping. Also, which planet are you talking about? Landing on one with an atmosphere is vastly different from landing in a vacuum.

I can only give you rough figures because, of course, the mass changes as the bits of payload are deployed, and some of the original fuel total goes with them, and different payloads vary in mass. The Eeloo ship has a thrust of 720kn (12 LV-Ns) and masses 369.33 tons when fully fueled without cargo, and massed 401.45 tons with the Eeloo cargo of small station, 2 mini-rovers, with their deploying landers, and 2 satellites. When fully loaded, these ships accelerate at about 1/3rdG, and here you can see the total fuel capacity of the ship itself (not counting cargo's tanks) vs. what was left after the Eeloo trip. I hope this is helpful.

I thought of a way to make it better and decided to discard and replace the engine segment. Which was really dumb, because I forgot that you should always launch the most awkward ship segment first and then dock the easier-to-fly segments to it while it sits still. So when I launched the replacement engine segment, it had teething problems because this is still a new design I'm perfecting, it flipped around wildly, and by the time I got it flying straight again and went to map view, I found it was on a 45 degree inclined orbit. In short, I realized it would be easier to build a whole new ship starting with the improved engine section than to try to rendezvous and dock a new engine section to the existing ship. So much for making the 8th ship better. I do plan to share the designs eventually, but I don't like to post anything until I'm sure it will be smooth for other players to use, and right now I'm just trying to get the things to work, and not even trying to make them easy to fly. The bridge section of that last ship, for example, is a real kludge. It takes off on Mainsails to get its bulk off the ground, but they waste a lot of fuel so on the way up I pump the fuel into the ship segment itself and ejected the big engines, then it flies most of the way to the other parts of the ship for assembly, then it ejects the engine on the rear to free up the docking ring and flies backward to the dock with a tiny engine just temporarily stuck on the nose. The really successful ship that's made several trips, the fifth one, also needs to be reworked to use the new, big docking rings, which will reduce its part count significantly. I've aerobraked wherever I can, at Eve, Duna, and Kerbin, and Jool's atmosphere was a big help in reaching Vall and Tylo. It's a big fuel savings, which is the main reason I don't think either of these ships could make a Moho trip, even stripped down without cargo.

I think one of two things is happening. If you use the method I describe, your initial burn should drop you, moving quite slowly, just within the edge of Mun's SOI, then its gravity picks up and pulls you in. The first way you might be going wrong is arriving at Mun's SOI going too quickly, so that instead of falling slowly toward it on a near-miss, you are racing right at it on a collision course. That could be remedied by reducing thrust when your apoapsis gets close to Mun's orbital height and shutting down the instant you reach it, leaving you with less extra speed to deal with later. Alternately, it could be that you're having the bad luck of appearing in Mun's SOI at just about zero relative speed, so when you begin to fall toward it, you're coming straight down instead of swinging into a low periapsis pass. Try aiming your transit burn a little more to the right (on map view), so that you arrive slightly trailing Mun and will be swept around to loop it. In either case, watch on map view and see what the golden segment of your projected path is doing in Mun's SOI. You should be able to see right there if you are on a collision path far enough ahead of time to prevent hitting the surface. Can you post a picture of the path your ship is taking?

After building numerous individual rocket designs to deliver various payloads to various destinations, it occurred to me that an advanced space program would not re-invent the wheel for every new mission, and wouldn't be so wasteful as to throw the whole rocket away after each flight. Ever since, my primary goal while playing KSP has been to develop fully re-useable interplanetary ships to which various payloads can be docked for transportation. It's been a huge project because each time I have to design the ship in the VAB, break it down into components small enough to be launched, assemble them in orbit, and only then can I try to fly the thing to another planet to see if it works. Most of the time it doesn't, and I have to start over all the way from the beginning. However, after 6 months, I am closing in on my goal of having a fleet of designs that can access all the worlds in the game, and then come home to be refueled and sent out again. Here, for anyone who might be interested, is a brief history of my project. My first ship was a test and proof of concept. I cringe looking back on it. It had WAY too many parts because I threw in everything I thought a ship might need, and the proportion of fuel to payload was laughably small. It flew a successful test mission to deliver some probes to Minmus and back, and was then retired. My second design actually reached Duna while carrying a considerable payload, but didn't have anywhere near enough fuel for a return trip. Besides, it also had too many non-essential parts, and swayed around like it was dancing the hula when under thrust. The crew had to be rescued by a later mission. My third ship delivered a cargo to Eve, and was my first ship to return to Kerbin (from another planet) after performing its mission. But the flight revealed numerous flaws in the design, so I relucantly scapped the ship despite its successful first trip. My fourth ship delivered 8 probes and a lander to the Jool system, but once more didn't have enough fuel for a return. That crew is currently awaiting rescue on Bop. And then, success! My fifth ship made it to Duna and back, then Eve, then Dres, and then Duna twice more, and is still in use. It is my first truly successful, entirely re-useable interplanetary ship. I plan to build more of them, in improved versions, for use at those three worlds. However, it does not have the range to reach farther planets, so I continued with my project. My sixth design was especially frustrating. After spending many hours making the thing in the VAB and assembling it in orbit, the workaround I thought had found to have more than one secure docking link to the same parts didn't work, and the fuel tanks flopped around and couldn't get fuel to the engines anyway. That one was a total write-off. My seventh design actually made it to Vall and back while delivering cargo, but I was disappointed to learn, it was too big for the job. It came back with excess fuel, meaning it could be smaller and still make the trip to the Jool system. But the real problem was, the part count just about put my PC into a coma, and flying it to Vall was a terrible chore because the lag was so bad that the game was running at 1/4th real time. Sadly, even though this ship worked in the sense that it performed the mission, I had to retire the design. But now, I'm pleased to be able to report that my 8th ship has delivered cargo to Tylo and returned, and Eeloo and back. (Okay, that last one was actually my 9th ship after my 8th ship suffered a mishap. Pilot error. Don't ask.) However, it came back with an alarmingly small fuel reserve, so I don't believe it can reach Moho, at least on a round-trip. So right now, Moho is the only world that I still can't reach with a fully re-useable ship, and that will be the next and final phase of this project I've given myself. So I'm sure I'm not the only one building round-trip vessels, but I don't recall seeing any posted on the forum. Who else is doing this, and what do your ships look like? (No offense, but I'm only interested in stock designs so that I can compare/contrast with my own.)

I find using 3 radials to be a little easier on the crew of a capsule, but actually, I was talking about the general utility of drogues.

To help new players, I made a guide to the navball instrument here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30238-How-to-Read-the-Navball a guide to reaching orbit and a ship you can download to fly it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25008-How-to-reach-orbit-and-a-rocket-that-can-do-it-a-walkthrough-for-newbies and a couple of easy-to-fly airplanes which you can download here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25413-Trainer-and-Example-Aircraft-for-Newbie-Pilots Do those look helpful?

A drogue will help you reach a lower speed before the main chutes fully open, lessening the shock of that sudden deceleration.

From the position in your picture, point your nose 90 degrees to the west of the prograde marker and burn. (What's the technical term? Anti-radial?) That will turn the retrograde-into-impact trajectory in that picture into a low prograde orbital approach. If you want to see what an approach should look like on map view, check out the illustrations in my walkthrough: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies (It's the 8th picture down.)

I'm not exactly sure what you're describing, so forgive me if I'm pointing out the obvious, but when flying by maneuver nodes, the only marker you ever need to aim for is the blue maneuver-prograde one. The relative positions of the other markers are already accounted for by the maneuver system.

This http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25008-How-to-reach-orbit-and-a-rocket-that-can-do-it-a-walkthrough-for-newbies discusses, among other things, how to fly your ship to an equatorial orbit.

Quite a bit. It helps stabilize ships during docking without wasting all your RCS fuel on spasms. It also helps keep rovers from flipping.

Keep in mind that reaching Kerbin orbit is the single largest component of most trips, after which, surprisingly small additional increments of speed with yield surprisingly large increases in distance covered. Take your ship. It expended 80% of its fuel reaching a 100km, so now point prograde and burn, and see how far the remaining 20% takes you. You'll see that getting to orbit with 20% of your original fuel really isn't bad. But if you want to go farther, there are several things you can do. 1) Add fuel. This is the worst method, since it also increases mass and therefore reduces efficiency. It may take you farther, or it may actually reduce your range. 2) Reduce the mass of that ship so that the same fuel takes you farther. This is a much better choice, as it can ONLY increase efficiency and range. However, you eventually reach a limit beyond which you'd have to sacrifice mission-critical parts. So the next best thing is to 3) keep the rocket you've got and build another stage underneath it, so that your original rocket BEGINS its flight at an altitude of a few thousand meters and a speed of a couple hundred m/s. Repeat and combine steps 2 and 3 until your payload can get to the place you want it to go.

I'm quite surprised that the age ranges are skewing toward the younger. I suspect that the breakdown would have been quite different before the Steam release, when players were coming to this game through their interest in space rather than their interest in games. In fact, I seem to recall that was the case in previous age polls, though they were wiped out by the forum implosion.

For those who want to play the game instead of watch Mechjeb play it, inigma was kind enough to collect some useful information. If you don't appreciate or need his efforts, then there's still no need to denigrate them.

Reaching Minmus is harder, which is why I suggest going to Mun first, but you're right, once at the moon in question, Minmus is much easier to land upon. Let me know how it goes. 　 Instead of waiting for me, I suggest you go ahead and sponge that off now. But thank you for the kind words. It always makes me very happy to learn that I have helped somebody else enjoy this game that I like so much.

Batteries only store power, but do not generate it. Do you mean you want the rovers to be solar powered? 'Cause the ones I posted are not.

What do you mean by "battery power alone"? The large one of this RTG-powered set can do a bit over 20m/s on Mun, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35916-Small-Medium-and-Large-moon-rovers-from-Yeahletstrythatdyne, but ANY rover will crash if the terrain isn't favorable or if you drive it with an excess of enthusiasm.

Thanks for giving me an answer you determined yourself rather than quoting a source without verifying it.

I've never seen that happen, either. Any mods installed?

the shaking is mostly likely caused by the fact that, currently, SAS mode tries too hard to hold a station still and actually CAUSES shaking instead of stopping it. Try leaving SAS turned off on the target station. If it starts to drift, go in and out of warp for a second, which automatically kills all rotations.

Did you fix your picture? I couldn't see it last night, but I can now. Anyway, what's that little docked thing that looks like a bug?

A common new player mistake is to try to increase the range by adding more fuel, which can instead make the rocket heavier and reduce its range. Try reducing weight instead of adding parts. Meanwhile, if you'd like to observe a tested rocket, I made one as an example. You can download it and read a guide for getting to the moons here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies