Dictator Dan

Drop a Kerbal from a REALLY high point.

Holy cow, those ships look awesome. Im looking forward to you continuing this.

Aerobraking. A lot of it. With a minor course correction when you enter Eves sphere of influence, you can burn off a lot of excess velocity for very, very little fuel. Also, Gilly is very hilly, so make sure to land on the light side, or have some downward facing lights.

^This, I find it best to put a small Round-8 tank on all my stations. I find one or two of those full of fuel into a booster allows me to deorbit it easily. Short of that, youll have to resort to the fuel balancer mod that Awaras linked.

Mainsails coupled to orange tanks tend to overheat, you can put a smaller buffer tank between them to act as a heat sink, or just run at lower power. Dont forget to strut tanks together, otherwise you get some serious wobble. Try radial mounted tanks, asparagus staged, as it will allow you to shed dead weight as you climb. <- video for asparagus staging, brief view it looks to do a good job explaining it.To mount several smaller engines to a large tank, put the cubic strut at the bottom on the tank, near the edge, just have it selected to place 4, symmetrically, and then you can place smaller engines on them. Alternatively, you can put the long tappered nosecone-ish piece from the jet parts on the side of a tank. You can fit 6 of those on one orange tank. To zoom the camera out or in inside the VAB, use the + and - keys. Hope this helps, or at least makes sense, Im pretty tired. If I remember Ill check back on this later, and see if I can give it a better pass.

Try changing your inclination at your ascending/descending nodes. If youve set Minmus as the target, they will be the dotted lines with a green DN and AN on them.

Congrats! First the Mun, then the UNIVERSE! *evil laughter*

Happy to help!

Place a maneuver node, to do that, click on your current path in the map view. Then click and drag the purple triangles, those will change your inclination.

By vertical do you mean polar? As in it goes over the north and south pole of the mun?

Youre right, my derp. I guess we just approach these differently, I usually send a station core, with docking ports, and probes attached to the ports, get where I want, deploy the probes, then send follow up missions as multipart ships to build the station, hence my view on it. Holy crap, that sounds awesome. Got any pictures/a mission report of that ship? EDIT: Also, forgot from my original post, Extreme EVA I rank the highest, simply because its only achievable on a handful of places.

I say impactors are the lowest, for sure, the exception being for the sun, because that means you actually got to the sun, as opposed to just leaving Kerbins sphere of influence. After that, unmanned probes in orbit, because most of the time if you have landed, you probably entered orbit first. Then unmanned lander, with unmanned rover right above it. Moving on to manned things, the capsule is the lowest, while impressive, you have stranded people on a one way trip, above that I would put lander, as something designed to get your Kerbals to and from the surface of an alien planet is a large achievement. Then manned rover, a rover, specially a manned one, you can delivery both Kerbals and a payload to the surface of a planet safely. After that, Id say plane, because it means you hauled a lot of dead weight with you, and your design was still capable of preforming the mission of other vehicles, while having the advantage/disadvantage of atmospheric flight. Now for the big ones, multipart ship, station and base. I say multipart ship is the lowest of these, as both a station and a base require many launches and dockings, in addition to doing more, the exception being if you are doing a grand tour, which can raise this ones prestige. Above multipart ship, Id say is station, as a station requires sustained flights, and dockings, as well as giving you a large, permanent presence around another body. The base is like the station, only you add in the fact you have to land it, probably land rovers as well, maybe even a satellite network, and it gives you a permanent presence on surface of the alien planet, something incredibly hard to achieve in real life. TL;DR, impactor < probe < probe lander < probe rover < capsule < lander < manned rover < aircraft < multipart ship < station < base.

I like your station/transport design.

This. Also, test on Kerbin before you deploy the system anywhere, otherwise you might risk it being just barely off, and then useless.

Hey ya go! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/23979-Kethane-Pack-0-1-3-Find-it-mine-it-burn-it!-%28project-has-a-new-home%29

That moment when your super heavy launch vehicle is climbing so slowly that you hear jettisoned stages hitting the ground.

I think the Kerbal actions are more you have to set the maneuver nodes, or a set action a certain point, as opposed to 'I want to dock with that' or 'land me RIGHT THERE!'

Thats it. Every other suggestion is trash compared to that.

Personally, I think its a good thing. While some mods will stop being developed, overall it means several of the best modders out there are working together to create a game that functions seamlessly and incorporates a wider spread of parts and functions. So its a matter of short term =( long term =D. Yes, I use smiles to make points.

*gets the popcorn, and starts to sell snacks to random forum members*

I havent noticed the landing leg noise, but I know the parachutes still make noise. Or at least they did last time I took notice of it. Ill try to remember next time I return to Kerbin to see if theres parachute noise or not. Are you using modded legs or parachutes? They may not have a deploy noise, or they may rely on a stock noise that was renamed, thus making them play silence.

About how many parts are we talking? Ill start to get some frame rate drop around 500 parts, and a 3-5 second pause when passing the 2.3-2.5km point, the more parts the greater the lag and pause. I find it good to find out what my PC can handle by just putting ships of 100, 200, 300, ect parts on the launch pad and checking the lag, so I dont end up in the bad spot of trying to dock a 400 part ship to a 1000 part station. That makes my computer cry tears of a defeated Kerbal.

More optimization?! \o/ Always welcome!

O.o Very impressive, even if it failed hilariously.

Makes me think that the entire Kerbal industry is based around rocket parts. And that third world countries have to make do with what survives reentry. Also, stock car racers with mainsail engines on the back.