Mediosthenes

From what I've seen of the game, and the dev notes, it seems that science is just an attribute of ship parts: if you remove a part that has science, that science is removed as well. This is usually fine, though it made EVA reports a bit challenging to code, but it seems that until .23, once a kerbal enters any command pod or stores any science anywhere, they will be unable to pull it back out. Until you store the science in a part, recovering the kerbal on EVA will recover all science. If you do store the science, that science is now stuck in that part, and only recovering that part will recover the science. If you want fully reusable ships in 0.22, I'd suggest docking the command pod to the spaceship, so that you only ever need to launch the command pods and fuel when going on a mission. With 0.23, it looks like the kerbals will be able to pull out science from any part and put it somewhere else on EVAs, but until then, all science must be sent home in the part it was first stored in.

If you encounter the Deep Space Kraken hard enough to remove the solar system from map view, all of the digits of the altitude meter line up. Before about 0.18.4, Modular Girder Segment XLs were

Technically, the conservation of energy equation states that if you want to get to a specific altitude, it uses just as much energy if you go straight up as if you go up at an angle. The big difference is how much force it takes. Going straight up requires maximum thrust for the entire journey, while going at an angle requires less force at any given time. Because fuel used is vastly more important for rockets than total energy used, however, gravity turns are going to be more efficient, because they allow you to switch to smaller engines that burn fuel much more efficiently. Another benefit to gravity turns is that they make gravity assists practical. If you do a gravity turn, you would be able to do a fly-by of the Mun, and steal some of its momentum at no cost to you, saving even more fuel.

Basically, you're describing the main problem with the rocket equation: your ability to get to places is determined by the percentage of your rocket, by mass, that MUST be fuel. Most rockets are by necessity more than 80% fuel, and less than 20% rocket. There are some ways to help keep this slightly reasonable, though, especially in KSP, because of the inaccuracy of its physics modeling. Due to how drag is calculated in KSP, the most efficient design is asparagus staging, which is where you have every rocket engine start at the same time, and have a double spiral of fuel tanks, attaching two tanks to the center, and two more tanks attached to those, and so on, with fuel pipes transfering fuel from the outermost two tanks in to the next two in, and so on. After the outer tanks empty, jettison them, and then wait for the next two to empty. Also, if your rocket has trouble lifting off due to the amount of tanks, use solid rocket boosters to help it gain the first few kilometers of height. Mainsail engines provide a lot of thrust relative to wait, allowing them to lift a lot of fuel up, but are not very efficient, so have smaller engines in the center stages, because you only need massive amounts of thrust when you are in low atmosphere, and the big engines will have drained most of your fuel by the time you get into Kerbin orbit. Although more fuel is required by the math, the main skill in the game is figuring out ways to use that fuel more efficiently. Another thing that helps is burning for the Mun at your periapsis, because burning effects the opposite side of your orbit, which would in this case already be closer to where you want to go. If you arrive at the Mun with enough fuel, but run out because of the difficulties of doing a soft landing, keep in mind that until about 5km, your main concern is not how fast you are falling, but how fast you are going sideways. First eliminate most of your horizontal movement, and only then worry about how fast the ground is coming. Good landing legs can take about 3-6 m/s of landing speed, but going back up can quickly add up in fuel usage, so keep a close eye on the vertical speed gauge near the altitude meter, and avoid hovering. Most importantly, don't give up. Experiment with what designs works best, and you should eventually get it! Rockets take practice.

479. Insted fo wasing space telling me about perpiwhats, y not just say how high I gonna go? 480. There's this annoying bug where stations go invisible at about 2.5 km. Please fix this.

462. An accurate recount of current suggestion numbers, removing all discrepancy caused by repeat suggestions. 463. The ability to determine the atmospheric qualities of exoplanets by observing them transit distant stars. Your skybox is unrealistic and hinders gameplay. 464. A bug-free version. 465. Planets have magnetic fields, and metal is conductive. Model this perfectly for all parts by next update. 466. Make a single download file, that has full support for every existing OS, as well as DOS, Unix, and that fancy one that is coming out in 23 years. 467. x100 Physical acceleration. 468. Fix floating point precision, and have planet orbits defined with non-rational numbers. 469. Implement time travel in a way that has no downsides whatsoever, then alter reality to match. 470. Rework game engine so that it defines positions of objects relative to all other objects in the universe, rather than with Cartesian coordinates, whilst improving frame-rates and memory usage. Steal Julian Barbour's Nobel.

Burning on the normal or anti-normal should rotate the orbit like a ring on a gyro. Burn on the poles, because where you burn is like the location of the hinge on which the orbit rotates. Because you are messing with velocities, whenever you burn, you are always either stretching or rotating your orbit. Pro-grade/retrograde stretch, normal/anti-normal rotate, like on a gyro, and radial-in/radial-out spin, like on a tire.