Alistone

Two convenient tips: 1. If you accept multiple contracts to build a station in orbit of Kerbin/mun/minmus and to build a stationin orbit of or landed on mun/minmus then you can launch a single station and complete the first contract on your way to completing the 2nd contract. (Accidentally discovered when a kerbin orbit station contract completing during the mission to put it on minmus.) Just have to make sure both of them are accepted before you launch your station so they both qualify as "new" and to maintain stability in the appropriate seeting for 10 seconds. And of course the fuel/capacity/charge requirements for both must also be met... 2. You can mount small fully functional rescue ships/return vessels to your station with radial decouplers. Then the kerbal capacity and engine/fuel requirements of the "outpost" aren't dead weight since they can be used later for other missions.

I'm sensing that your frustration is coming from a lack of funds. I'm still relatively early in 1.0, but I have found the stations to be quite lucrative so far and easily combined with other plant flag, launch satellite, or rescue missions (I use 4 or more side mounted rescue ships on my stations which are each fully functional with probe cores solar panels and a pod so the required kerbal capacity isn't just a bunch of useless hitchiker containers). A satellite anywhere around Kerbin/minmus/mun doesn't need to cost more than 20,000 to launch and generally yields 100k+ if you just start small and put the bare minimum couple of panels, antenna, . The funds seem to come primarily from learning to do things better and cheaper. I know it is a bit of a grind to get enough to upgrade the buildings to level 3. But every time I do it I get better at it. It really helps to figure out what smaller or larger parts you can use to get things done more cheaply. That's what makes the game so much fun.

When in low kerbin orbit (about 85km) I like to try to do about 2/3 of burn before the node. Generally doing your burn lower in the gravity well to be more efficient and starting early enables me to get more of the burn done before I rise into higher orbits. I also like to burn along the horizon just ahead of my blue indicator so that I'm burning horizontally. When the blue indicator reaches and passes the horizon I then follow it (out of the brown and into the blue). This helps minimize losses due to gravity (but it may add steering losses). But overall 50/50 is fine also. Just make sure you don't accidentally end up in the atmosphere because you started your burn early...

You really need to use RCS translation for docking. In the bottom left hand corner there are different input modes. The top one is rotational where it changes which direction your ship points when you press w/s (up/down), a/d(left/right). In the bottom left hand corncer there is if you press the middle button below the top one it puts you into "translational" mode where w is forward, s is backward, a is slide to the left and d is slided to the right. Shift is slide up and control is slide down. Using the rotational point your ship at the pink target circle. Engage SAS (and RCS and I usually disable my engines so I don't accidentally throttle them up). Switch to translational "docking" mode and then press the "w" key and your RCS will push your forward and your yellow prograde vector should appear. Using a/d and shift/ctrl you can see that they directly change your prograde vector on the nav ball. This makes it very easy to line up perfectly with the port you are targeting. Briefly using time warp to kill any rotation can help. (just tap up to 5x and back down to 1x using the "." and "," keys). But you may have to switch back to the other mode to point your docking port back in the direction of the target. Also, you may have to turn off SAS to allow your vessel to completely dock if they are't lined up perfectly at first.

In the map view there is a small "i" button on the right. It will tell you your current status about orbiting, sub-orbital, escape, or landed on the nearby object. The "orbit" that you refer to in your speed indicator does not mean you are in orbit; it is only saying what your speed is relative to. I think to be considered in orbit of kerbin you must have your periapsis above (higher than) 70km. (EDIT: Said you needed both apoapsis and periapsis above 70km and realized that was redundant since if periapsis is above then apoapsis will be as well...)

To complete the mission you have to activate it under the required conditions using "staging". But you can activate it before that point by using action groups and actually use the rocket to help power your ascent and transfer. Just as long as you don't "stage" it prematurely you can still use it ahead of time to help reach the desired location. That should help make it a lot easier.

For some of those odd atmospheric testing ones, especially the solid rocket boosters, I do them with used/empty engines. What matters is where you press the space bar to "stage it". But you can use it before then by manually activating it or by using an action group. Then it isn't just empty mass your dragging into the atmosphere. Similarly I put "cut parachute" on an action group and tested some parachutes during ascent to meet their speed/altitude criteria. This was mirrored well by activating empty/used SRBs during freefall to achieve fast enough low altitude speeds for those contracts. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/89050-Activating-empty-used-SRBs-via-staging-successfuly-completes-contracts

So several contracts require speeds and/or altitudes that don't make sense. Specifically for Solid Rocket Boosters I find it easier to use the booster during ascent with an action group and then later whenever I achieve the parameters (usually at apoapsis or during re-entry) I use the staging to "activate" the engine. Despite the engine already being spent the contracts complete just fine. It works, all is good; funding keeps growing and growing. (I think I'm only on day 2...) Is this cheating? Is it a glitch? Is it working as intended?

How fast is your ship going when it breaks apart? Due to expended fuel decreasing mass and an increasing T/W ratio I used to have large vessels break apart near 8-12km. Also, the flameout of your SRBs could cause a springback effect. Your ship is compressed between the boosters and the air resistance and when the boosters stop it elongates like a sprink which can cause damage. Either way, I suspect you can fix the problem by simply throttling back to 50% thrust or something just before your SRB burnout then slowly accelerate back to full throttle.

For optimal ascent you want to *ideally* be as close to terminal velocity as possible. This means accelerating to 100 m/s as quickly as possible. Your core may have a T/W ratio of 3, but if there is 6 times as much mass on the radial boosters which all have a T/W ratio of 1 then your vessel only has a T/W ratio of 1.29 (core has 3 thrust units and 1 mass unit; radials have 1 thrust unit and 1 mass unit. Total of 7 mass unit and 9 thrust units; 9/7 nets 1.29 T/W). Suddenly it will take you 30+ seconds to get up to 100 m/s and you'll have been suffering excessive gravity losses due to your slow acceleration to terminal velocity. Your rocket has been running for 30 seconds and you are still below 1500m; a similar vehicle with better T/W ratio at the start is already at 4,000m and moving faster. As you drop radial tanks your T/W ratio improves; which is good because above 12,000m the higher T/W ratio will allow you to reduce your gravity losses significantly as you can "gravity turn" toward the horizon more instead of thrusting straight up against gravity. But during your climb from 1,000m to 12,000m your speed only needs to increase from 100 m/s up to 250 m/s. That's only 150m/s increase during the 60 seconds of trudging through thick atmosphere. If you go faster than terminal velocity you lose more to atmospheric drag than you save in gravity losses. That slow trudge requires a pretty low T/W ratio (fine with about 1.15 T/W). Much lower than the initial burst to get up to 100 m/s within the first 1000m. Different parts of your ascent are optimal with different T/W ratios. For this reason you may be better off adding some extra fuel tanks to the stages that are consumed during the 1,000 - 12,000m atmosphere portion of your flight because the reduced T/W they cause doesn't cost you any real performance. Similarly it is a good reason to use small SRB at liftoff to ensure you quickly reach 100m/s. You find that during the slow trudge through atmosphere stage it may even pay off to have a radial stage that begins with less than 1 T/W ratio because as it loses fuel it brings the average T/W closer to the optimal needed while providing more fuel for future stages. The efficiency of asparagus is approximate; it keeps a relatively consistent T/W ratio by jettisoning dead weight engines at the same time it jettisons the empty tanks. The reason this is good is because in atmosphere you don't just want as high a T/W ratio as possible due to excessive air resistance losses. But because it is only approximate you are forced to adjust your speed to match terminal velocity by throttling back during the thick atmosphere portion and the extra engines power you aren't using is essentially just additional dead weight causing gravity losses. The other reason to jettison the booster engines is due to their ISP. Most launch engines have a high T/W ratio, but have a relatively low ISP. High ISP engines tend to be heavier and require a certain run period; a certain amount of fuel to pass through them before they pay back that added weight. The radial engines tend to have low ISP but a very high T/W ratio. The T/W is highly beneficial for the lifting power it provides lower stages of a rocket in escaping a gravity well. But in space the higher ISP of other engines makes them much better for orbital maneuvers and if possible you prefer to jettison the ineffecient low ISP engine prior to actually reaching orbit.

Just wanted to confirm you are in career mode. If you are in sandbox mode then everything gives 0 science because science is irrelevant in the sandbox.

Each experiment has a different transmission efficiency. But each experiment has a limit as to how much science is transmittable. Once you reach that amount of science you have to return and recover the experiment in order to gain more science from it. The transmission efficiencies can be found in this chart on the wiki http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science#Modules It is possible to unlock lots of science without actually returning experiments/reports/samples/ships to kerbin, but it is likely more difficult. If you really wanted to try then you should really consider the mobile processing lab http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mobile_Processing_Lab_MPL-LG-2 so you can reset and reuse some experiments and so you get a slightly higher value for transmitting them. It is a heavy module the most people don't bother with for near Kerbin missions because it is easier to carry more fuel and fly home than to haul all that dead weight and enough people to crew it. I'd also like to confirm that you are in the "career mode" because if you are in the "sandbox mode" then (if I recall correctly) nothing gives any science because it is irrelevant to the sandbox mode.

The issue isn't SOI. You have to land the vessel (intact) on Kerbin. Either landed on land or splashed down in the ocean. Then you have the option to "recover vessel". This is what will recover the science experiments and provide you the science. Alternately you could send up a group with a mobile laboratory and then you could get a little bit more science by simply processing in the lab and transmitting... But it's really easier to put on the correct number of parachutes and land back on Kerbin to recover the vessel and the science. EDIT: The vessel doesn't technically have to be intact. As long as the module carrying the science survives; even if it breaks off it can be recovered with its science. You can find it in the tracking station under debris if that happens.

I would suggest that you not copy Scott Manleys craft for use in the same mission that he uses them. He has practiced enough that he will likely be more fuel efficient during liftoff and with his orbital and landing maneuvers. If you are still learning I would suggest using a ship designed to land and return from the mun in order to practice landing and returning from minmus. That way you'll have plenty of deltaV to use hovering as you try to land. I do the same thing as LethalDose (quoted below) does. Basically set up a direct prograde burn (yellow circle only) that has your orbit intersect Minmus. Once you set that maneuver up you add orbits (or just wait) until you get small closest approach or encounter with minmus. Once you see the timing will get you close you can fine tune the maneuver with the blue/pink/yellow to lower your Minmus periapsis to 13km. Then just execut the maneuver and you should be on your way. Protip; for large/long burns don't bother with the last 10-20 dV of the maneuver. Just save your fuel for a small correction burn at another maneuver node you set up in a minute or two. You could try to match inclination and match orbit, but it feels so much simpler to just get a simple maneuver that puts in onto it's orbit and just wait for the timing to match so that it is present when you get there. Inclination changes are always easier at slower (higher) parts of an orbit and this method is actually letting minmus gravity help pull you in its direction thus doing some of your inclination change for you.

Subtract the time between Ap and Pe => double that time. That is your orbital period. If you reach Ap in 5 minutes and Pe in 2 days 2 hours and 36 minutes then your "half orbit" period is Pe - Ap => 2 days 2 hours 31 minutes. Doubling gives your orbital period of 4 days 5 hours 2 minutes.