N_Molson

Add parts that resist to 80 m/s impact and use them as armor to protect frail parts. You can put landing legs on the top (but they have to be protected too) so that you can deploy them to put back the vehicle on its wheels after a rollover. Center of gravity is very important, I found that adding useless dead mass like RCS tanks under the chassis adds stability. Wheeled vehicles need a significant gravity to work and keep grip, on bodies smaller than Mun you can consider using RCS-powered platforms or similar stuff. Oh and about braking, see in the Action Groups menu, click on the rear wheels, and assign a key to brakes. That way you can brake only with the rear wheels, which prevents nearly all risk of tipping. KSP don't really take skidding into account, so that technique works. In real life doing so makes the vehicle uncontrollable.

I wouldn't be surprised if the specs were tuned down in the future, to be honest jetpacks are too powerful, especially given you can refuel-at-will in any ship.

As said above. Imagine you make a minishuttle with a cockpit at the fore and a docking port at the aft. You're going to have a pain to achieve docking, because you'll have to make it reverse ! But if you control things from the aft docking port, all nav tools will be configured in the right direction. Very handy. Basically, it changes the "point of view".

Yep, head full North or South, and remember that you will need a little more power than for a "classical" Eastward launch (because you don't take any advantage of the planet rotation speed). If you want to pass right over the poles, wait to be over the equator and make an inclination correction manoeuver (the purple triangles in the manoeuver tool).

SRMs (Solid Rocket Motors) deliver a lot of thrust in a short amount of time, and have a mediocre specific impulse (Isp). They are also simple to ignite and to store (they make excellent ICBMs), and have a decent performance at sea level. Liquid engines, especially the ones that use "light" fuels like liquid hydrogen (oxydizer is often but not always LOX or liquid oxygen), deliver less thrust in the same amount of time, but have an higher specific impulse. They tend to be mechanically complex, and their ignition requires a complex infrastructure and pre-launch sequence. By the way, specific impulse is the key of spaceflight, so those inconveniences are bearable. They tend to give their best in vacuum.

Thank you for that one, that's going to be put in good use !

Yes. To sum it up, it avoids engines under ASAS control to fight themselves. Which, on large stacks, can have the catastrophic consequences we know. I also used that feature as a "trim" (I wish there was a real one !) to control airplanes : you can lock the gimbals in any position. Just hold the controls as you wish and click "lock".

To begin with, you can pile up two orange tanks, the Mainsails are powerful enough for that. Then you lack a second stage. Once empty, all those first stage tanks and engines are a lot of dead mass.

If you look at things more globally, the 11% of structure mass is quite realistic. "Tanks" IRL are only the metallic sheet that holds the propellant, you have to take into account all the structure around (the "skin" of the rocket and the structural stringers). In KSP, all is included in the part. In the Delta IV Heavy case (figures from Encyclopedia Astronautica) Boosters : Gross Mass: 226,400 kg. Empty Mass: 26,760 kg (x2 each). Stage 1 : Gross Mass: 226,400 kg. Empty Mass: 26,760 kg (boosters & first stage are identical, hence the "Common Booster Core" concept). Stage 2 : Gross Mass: 30,710 kg. Empty Mass: 3,490 kg. Payload : up to 25,800 kg. If we add everything up : Gross Mass = 226,400 kg * 3 + 30,710 kg + 25,800 kg Gross Mass = 735,710 kg Empty Mass (with payload) = 26,760 kg * 3 + 3,490 kg + 25,800 kg Empty Mass = 109,570 kg Empty Mass (without payload) = 26,760 kg * 3 + 3,490 kg Empty Mass (without payload) = 83,770 kg So, for the real-life Delta IV Heavy : Empty Mass / Gross Mass ratio (%) With payload : 14.89 % Without payload : 11.39 %

Not sure of what you mean, but if you want to change your plane relatively to a fixed point on the ground at a precise moment : - from the point (IE a crater), continue to orbit roughly 90° (a 1/4 of munar orbit) - when there, point your vessel to Zenith (+90° "blue or up" on the ADI ball) or Nadir (-90° "brown or down"). - engage your thrusters and adjust your inclination as you wish. - the Mun rotates slowly (like the Moon), so after some amount of time, your orbital path will slip away from the target (the effect is much more dramatic on Kerbin/Earth). Hope it helps

Or AfriKa, simply. A first step would be to define what is a continent IMHO. On Earth, we have divided landmasses that are physically linked. Like "North America", "South America". The boundary between "Europe" and "Asia" is quite arbitrary (the Ural mountains). Arabia makes the "joint" between those two previous and Africa. The most obviouses are Australia and Antartica, as they are clearly island-continents. We need to know more about Kerbin's plates tectonics I think. On Earth we had a Pangea when all the plates where shrinked together at the same spot.