magnemoe

yes, my last missions with 0.19 was totally reusable launchers. Typically reusable boosters dropped before gravity turn and upper stage who either returned to spaceport or was capable of landing on next continent. Then putting thing in orbit I either leave the engine on, if you drop it like in space station parts add an probe core and some small solar panels and you can deorbit it. Then going to Mun or outward, either drop main stage before circulating or keep it on until you are almost to the Mun, no point of doing an 200 m/s burn with main stage on an Mun mission, if you take it most of the way to Mun, leave 50m/s dV fuel and have an probe core and some small solar panels and you can deorbit it without problems, drop transfer stage during deorbit burn or later. on interplanetary missions you hardly need to drop stuff before this.

An landing require an kerbal or probe on surface at least in my book. My 6.000 m/s landing attempt on Moho does not qualify as successful.

In real world this will work, however using the airship mod, kerbals are unable to walk on decks if the airship floats, some other has tried to make an centrifuge and it does not work either.

Main issue with steam is autoupdates who ignore the do not update check. For an game under development this is an huge issue, as updates might break saves, or at least cause problems for saves, if they activate reentry heat in 0.3 it will have effects on ships who need to aerobreak without heatshields. Also issues with mods and updates, more critical than for skyrim and some other games as more mods are affected by updates as they are more than bugfixes.

Yes balloons bring the dV requirements below 6000 m/s.

Think I used 8-10 tries, first building an rocket using the old demo, then I started getting orbital attitude I remembered that I had to move sideways, then an larger rocket to get into an sort of orbit.

Yes reduce it and transform sas to an general torque module, add some larger ones to control large ships. Note some recon robot designs has been rotating balls, only downside is camera placement,

Most interesting here is probably braking engines, have some forward facing 24-77 on action groups and you don't have to rotate to brake, having some 24-77 back in addition to the mainsail is an good idea to get more accuracy during orbital operations.

One downside with life support is the serialized way we tend to do missions, you send an crew to duna and drive around in an rover, then the launch window for Eeloo come up and you do an Eeloo trip while they wait in the rover. Life support would work nice if we had an infinite life support module for larger bases and ships, say 10-20 ton for 3 kerbals, then an say three ton for an year mission support weighting 3 ton, with one ton resource packs to extend this, just an pod would perhaps last an week and an landing can an month. The huge module also provide life support resources if undermanned. Might divide this in air and food, the huge module provides both, the medium uses power to break co2 to o2, recycle water and store canned food, rockets use oxidizer to provide air and water from fuel+oxidizer if you add an small life support module like an sas module. This let you set up long term bases, it also provides some realism and extra fun, imagine dropping food to kerbals stranded on Tylo while the rescue lander is underway. For me I always use an rescue system, usually this is only eject and parachutes, huge, unique or test launches is always unmanned. I typically launch an space station in one piece and the crew in an SSTO afterwards.

You need struts between the upper and lower stage, I would put one from each of the outer stages to the nuclear outer stages. then one from the central stage to the outer boosters of stage two. Another problem you might run into is that two orange tanks on top of each other might collapse so you should put 2-4 struts between them.

Makes sense, has done the same in KSP and buckets of trashcans to get up to terminal speed fast with low TWR launchers.

Its a bit fishy and probably don't work, however its an high risk/ high payoff project who is pretty inexpensive to test so they test it.

It should, if you fire up an rocket and decouple it it will continue to burn. One tips is to give too low trust to lift the rover and then decople skycrane who will fly away. If you use multiple landing rockets don't send all at once, I did during an test on kerbin and they collided over the base.

Memory uses will not have any speed impact as long as you have enough memory. If you run out of memory or push against 4Gb however you have problems.

Laythe is easier than Tylo as you can aerobrake in. One idea is to make an SSTO lander for Vall and Moho, then dock an extra stage for Laythe and Tylo I made an grand tour with an SSTO kerthane miner who could reach orbit from Kerbin, if it mined after landing it could reach orbit with more fuel everywhere except Tylo.

Some tips for ion probes, first is that you want them as light as possible. 1-3 tanks, one ion engine, do not use the large solar panels as they are heavy, use the small one who fold outward and put on an tower of small struts. Payload might be iso mapsat and the small kerthane detector, the large is to heavy and the science packs. Test on launchpad to see how many solar panels you need however if you go to Moho or inward you need fewer, going towards jool and you need 60% more,

"interstellar" ships travel between stars, 5% of light-speed or faster, you do not want to aerobrake them Done in one of the Man Kizin books, however they used an device who made the ship invulnerable and aerobraked in an suns atmosphere after beeing dropped by an bussard ramjet.

This reminds me of an story in an book, a lady was to go back to L5 from an moon city using an long coilgun accelerator, something went wrong so she got to low speed and the pod lost control, she saved herself by exiting the ship with an override, opening both airlock doors at once and gotten shoot out making her miss the mountain with some 100 meters.

This is how I read it, light has the same speed as before, however its not the upper speed, e=m*c^2 is still true. It would have no impact on current and medium future space travel, none of the ideas of interstellar ships will get into speeds where relativity become an important factor.

Probably the Eeloo to Kerbin return after my grand tour. I was a bit inpatient and took an shortcut. Came home pretty fast An interesting aerobrake

Add an probe core, the give enough torque for small rockets and let you use it without crew,

As I see it's its an bug, accent guidance should not be active then window is hidden. Anyway accent guidance features should also not be active outside of accent. Throttle settings might be active with window closed, overheat and max g-force limit is nice and an simple function much like engine computers in cars. One option is to set accent guidance to stop staging at stage 1 or 2, put all emergency systems in stage 0 or 1 and 0 if you separate pod decopler and parachute. Does this myself after an reuseable lander who could drop outer tanks legs and rcs tanks as an emergency

The intercept point is where you and the target orbit intercept, not necessarily the closest point, also the burn to match orbits might change this. Once I passed an space station within meters and ended up on the other side during the 30m/s adjustment burn. I want to do the burn exactly at the intercept to get the orbit similar. Final approach is much safer as you have visual and speed is lower.

Pods already have an heat shield, we will get heat shield to put on other items, however we will probably need mods to get the huge ones to protect large ships depending on design For this ship something in front over the landing can cockpit, an wider one below to protect the 3.75 meter home modules, then smaller shields to protect the front of the engines. I would lose the forward docking port at least during aerobraking. Another option would be an huge 10 meter inflatable shield in front' this would let me dock stuff on the sides behind it. Some chance we get two types an light one for one time use and an heavier one who can be reused like on the shuttle. I do not see this as an huge issue, except that it will make existing ships unable to aerobrake.

Yes, sometimes you have to search for it,