Kizarvexis

Depends on if I am flying or if Mechjeb is flying. If I'm flying, I start the turn (5-10 degrees) as soon as I clear the tower to generate separation from the KSC facilities as they can 'sploda. I started this before exploding buildings to get into the habit. Whenever I use Mechjeb, to save myself time, I set the ascent profile to start the turn as early as I can, which is usually 3 or so km. So far, I have not 'sploda a building yet.

What? No sliderules?

A mun shot with the vanilla Demo. I spent about 2 min swanning back and forth just meters over the Mun until I finally cancelled the sideways motion. Got back to Kerbin with no fuel. Yes, the fins were the landing legs.

Another old huge old rocket. As soon as I launched, the heat spiked. I shut off the engines, but the heat climbed until it exploded. A quick application of SPAS saved the crew. I took the rocket apart and found that Jeb was over enthusiastic with adding boosters. (A click that I thought did nothing, stuck a booster in the mainsail.)

Here is an old landing leg test to make sure the legs extended past the engines. I decided to try an engine test as well, but my flying skills are not that great. As I remember I clipped the tower and below is the result.

... and the circularization burn, ... and part of the landing burn, ... and you only stage because this part of the rocket was never meant to land. This is EVERY rocket I send to Minmus.

I flirted with an actually abort system once, but I use SPAS also. The SPacebar Abort System, where you frantically hit the spacebar until the capsule separates and the Kerbals gently descend amongst the the exploding parts.

When the music starts. (70km) I usually shoot for 80 km orbits and am happy with anything between 70-100km.

I second this

Hey, you're flying my space program!

Ah, shiny. I knew you could reset the Science Jr's with a lab module and did that with my Skylab craft. I then landed the lab module to recover all the science. I didn't know you could do that with Kerbalnauts too. Thanks

I thought it could. I'm right in that it is my poor piloting that wastes all that fuel. Also, did the struts break? I thought I had strutted the parachutes to the lower half of the lander. In the Mercury-V, there are more struts and a 3m reaction wheel in the center stack to make it more stable. Well, I was doubling up on science. I tried biome hopping on Minmus will modest success. I took this lander there and back multiple times. I just had bad luck on the Mun. I also would sometimes do science on Kerbin after returning from a single biome on Minmus and be able to do new science on Kerbin if I landed in a new biome there too. The Mercury-V only has two Science Jr's now, as I replaced the other two with fuel tanks. BTW, my Kerbalnauts are scared of the dark, so there is lots of redundancy on the power. I have the 48-7s as I have everything through the 160 level and some of the 300 level. Like I said, I'm not a very good pilot, so without a ladder, the Kerbalnauts flail around for a while before finally grabbing the capsule. I had the idea of using the probe to put the debris back on the ground by leaving some fuel, but then I started taking it to Minmus and using it for the first part of the descent and crashing it there. THAT is how I land. The video up thread has a neat way to doing a landing, so I'm going to hit the sandbox simulator to practice. Don't you want to return those for more science? I downloaded you craft file and will try it out in the sandbox simulator.

I had to find a file sharing program and FileSnack seems to fit the bill. Here are the files for both the Mercury IV and the upgraded Mercury V that is in the pics in the first post. It is vanilla with 2013-12-Engineer-Redux-v0.6.2.2 as the only mod. Mercury-V => http://snk.to/f-chp52kj1 This one has a reaction wheel in the center stack and seems more stable than the Mercury IV. Mercury-IV => http://snk.to/f-c7h90tcd Rolls sometimes for some reason I could never determine.

Only the Aerospike has a better ISP in Atmo and the 909, Poodle and Aerospike all have better in space. With the low thrust of the 909 and poodle, I went with the T30's and T45's. I don't have the Aerospike yet. Besides, 49 engines at liftoff is almost as good as MOAR BOOSTERS. I usually over-engineer rockets to bring extra fuel as I need it for landings.

The Mercury-IV, which had less lander fuel, made Minmus and back. I can land there, because the gravity is so low, but the Mun is another kettle of kish.