Crush

Delta-V (change of speed) is Delta-V, no matter if it is in vacuum or in atmosphere. It's just that the Delta-V capacity of a craft is reduced while being in the atmosphere because engines have a lower Isp. Also, any speed you lose due to atmospheric drag or overcomming gravity drag is wasted Delta-V. You can't generalize this loss in Delta-V, because it largely depends on the ascension speed and how well you execute the gravity turn. The actual Delta-V you need to get to Kerbin orbit is thus hard to estimate. Delta-V budgets become a lot more useful as a measure when you travel from orbit to orbit.

Wings on a vertically-launched vehicle are always problematic. The moment you aren't ascending perfectly vertical, they start to generate lift which results in rotation. For that reason you should wait with your gravity turn until you are outside the atmosphere.

SAS modules (but not ASAS) also add rotation torque. Much more than probe cores, by the way. Even when taking the mass into account.

CalculusWarrior described it pretty well, but I would like to add one thing: Don't be a chicken. Wait until the last moment before you start retro-burning. The faster you approach the surface the less time you spend in the gravity field and the less acceleration you have to kill by expending fuel. Braking too early and then spending time hovering thousands of meters above the surface is just a waste of precious fuel. But when is the last moment? That depends on the acceleration power (thrust/mass ratio) of your lander. It might sound counter-intuitive, but a lander with more and bigger engines can actually be more fuel-efficient, because you can wait longer before you brake.

Or just add wheels to the lander itself and call it a rove-lander. Often, the simple solutions are the best:

On planets with an atmosphere, paradropping the rover shortly before touchdown is also an option: Test flight of the whole craft on Kerbin:

I am the author of that tutorial. It is possible to do a mun-return mission with a lot less hardware: 1. It is possible to do this with a much smaller lift rocket when using asparagus staging. 2. The service-module is quite overpowered for a mun mission. A smaller engine and fuel tank would also get the job done. 3. Because there is no reentry heat in KSP yet, there is little reason for using different pods for landing on Mun and landing on Kerbin, so the command capsule could also work as a lander. The service module could be controlled by a probe core in the meantime. 4. And why does the service module need an engine anyway when you have engines on the landing module? So the CSM could be reduced to a fuel tank with a probe core (+energy supply) and a docking port. The reason why I didn't do any of that in the tutorial was because I wanted to make the mission profile as similar to the real Apollo 11 as possible... within reason, though. One important feature I omitted was a two-stage lander with a descent-stage which would be left behind on the surface. I tried building something like that, but with the parts available in KSP it just looked stupid and even less than the real Eagle. By the way: When you want to save some weight on your landers, only leave the empty tanks on the surface, not the engine.

I never understood why Homeworld has so many die-hard fans. The 3d gameplay is an interesting gimmick, but in the end it only makes it harder to keep track of what is going on and more cumbersome to move units. But it barely adds any actual depth to the gameplay. Otherwise the game is just strategic rock-paper-scissors - the only thing which matters is to have the right counter-units available for whatever you are facing. The mostly featureless space scenario doesn't offer much opportunity for tactical terrain use either.

When going to the outer planets like Jool, doing a gravity-assist around Duna can save some fuel. But while this might even save mission-time, it costs you real-world time, because a gravity-assist maneuver takes a lot of time to plan and execute.

You can always save a bit delta-v with a well-timed mun encounter when leaving Kerbin, but it's not much because the vector of Mun is not much different from the vector of Kerbin on an interplanetary scale and the gravity well of Mun is not particularly deep. It's usually not worth the hassle. Much better examples where a gravity assist really helps is when using Duna to get to Jool or when using Eve to get to Moho (passing over/under Eve when near its descending/ascending node to Moho can save you all the fuel you need to get the orbital inclination like that of Moho).

Authors of good videos explain what they are doing and why they are doing it. Mechjeb doesn't. Seriously, you are defending using MechJeb with realism? In reality, humanity learned about rocket science through experiments and analysis. Not because some higher intelligence gave them a magic computer program which controls their rockets. Sure, nowadays rockets are computer-controlled, but the computer programs are the result of a long understanding process. And that's what KSP is about: understanding rocket science (or its limited simulation thereof). When you take that away, there is no game which remains.

When you learn more about science, you will soon realize that you need to understand math to understand science. But fortunately it is much easier to get a connection to math when you have an actual application. What frustrates students the most, is that math is taught in an abstract way. Most math lessons are just about juggling around numbers and variables without any connection to what they mean and what you get from learning it. But when you have a goal, like "I need to understand integration to understand particle physics", or "I need to understand non-euclidian geometry to understand special relativity", you actually have a reason to learn math which is much more motivating. That means as long as you are really interested in science, and not just shiny technology which become possible through application science. I learned a lot about math through game programming. I didn't really get sine and cosine before I programmed a physics simulation and I was never able to wrap my head around matrix multiplication before I had to learn it to program a 3d engine. Now it makes just so much sense.

IMO the only legitimate use of MechJeb. When you can't do it yourself, then you should either go back to the VAB and design a better ship or practice some more. When you let MechJeb do it for you, you are just cheating yourself. In that case I would rather recommend to read some tutorials, look at some YouTube videos or even better figure it out on your own through trial&error and analysis. You might learn something while doing this. Not just how it works but also why it works.

Why NASA? Space exploration should be a cooperative global effort.

Or we could just accept the fact that KSP isn't a game for everyone. But when you would like to involve yourself in writing some tutorials, the wiki is the right place to go.

But you could put some wheels under it and place it somewhere near the space center as a monument.

It is? Without the mun encounter, that orbit would be outside of Minmus, as can be seen in the tracking station where gravity assists aren't considered:

The general rules about gravity assists: 1. Pass in front of a moon (on its orbital path) to lose speed and behind a moon to gain speed. 2. the closer the better I wrote a tutorial on the wiki: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Gravity_Assist

This is my Solar-Sailor. 24 OX-STAT solar panels on a 2x2 Structural Panel. No batteries, but it has a PB-NUK on the other side of the panel for emergencies. The solar cells are easily able to keep the ion engine at full thrust, as long as they are kept oriented towards the sun. But that's not as hard as it sounds, because they have about 45° of tolerance. Just hope that this is the general direction where you want to go Total mass: 920 kg

akinator.com It's a self-learning 20-questions engine which is so well-trained by now that it recognizes even the most obscure characters.

I am already seeing thousands of science-nerds all around the world typing and comparing lists of factual errors, nitpicking every detail and writing angry blog posts and emails to the producers while totally forgetting that they are watching a movie made to entertain, not a documentary.

Yes, but we were talking about aerodynamics.

You mean except for the Ariane V, the Soyouz, almost all members of the Delta family, the Proton, the retired Space Shuttle, the SLS, the Falcon Heavy or pretty much every heavy lifter used or designed in this century?

Geometry changes due to relativistic changes might be hard, but I think it wouldn't be that hard to simulate red-shift and blue-shift with a shader effect... Still, the only way to reach relativistic speeds is by cheating. Either through overpowered mods or by activating infinite fuel through the debug menu. When playing normally, this shouldn't occur, so the developers don't really have a reason to plan for it.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the Alcubierre drive is unlikely to ever exist. It requires large amounts of matter with negative mass. Most accepted models of physics don't even allow particles with negative mass to exist, and in those where its existence is possible, it is in form of particles which do not interact with normal matter and thus are impossible to collect and utilize.