Panzerbeard

I use nodes for the most part, but sometimes I do it by eye, depending on how I'm feeling. I originally learned to do it by eye (I wasn't actually using a tutorial for getting there, I was just mucking about and decided to point myself at the Mun and go full burn) before I knew about maneuver nodes, but now I just use the nodes for more or less everything except launching and circularizing. It's the exact same process, you still need to know when and where to burn, it just lets you be a bit more precise and efficient.

Well, the best answer is, of course whatever you want . I personally just land them and end flight; they can get a taxi back to the space center, and if they landed on some distant continent, then they get a free holiday, so it's all good.

KSP isn't a game about 'why'. It's a game about 'why not?'.

Hey, just think, every time you leave or return to Kerbin, you'll be able to re-enact the Star Trek Voyager intro by flying through the rings

Well, if I may interject. You probably don't need that much fuel (or engines, for that matter) on your lander, that's a lot of unnecessary weight that you have to get into orbit and get to the Mun. Other than that though, I can't see anything that should cause you too much trouble with regards to actually getting to the Mun (I'm rather new though, so I'm no expert).

Dear god... Give it time, Kerbal with have it's own planetary ring built entirely from spacejunk

I just drop it and forget about it. The chances of actually hitting anything is extremely low; when you look at the circumference of the orbit, then look at how tiny the debris and ships are in comparison, you'd have to be extremely unlucky to actually hit anything unless you put some effort into it. Hell, I can't even get close to stuff when I'm actually trying to, let alone accidentally If my map view gets too cluttered to work with, or I start to get some lag, I may just turn off persistent debris, but for now they're fine where they are.

You can use http://tinypic.com/, it doesn't require an account. I don't know about imgur, I never use it, I just tend to upload my screens directly through steam.

I have to respectfully disagree; if you're going to just watch something else do it for you and try to learn from observation, then it's better to watch a video where they explain how and why they're doing things, rather than just copying what MJ does. Just my opinion though

A: What problems, specifically, are you having with aligning your orbit? Make sure you're in a fairly circular low-kerbin-orbit, and then start burning prograde when the moon is just coming up over the horizon (if you look at the map of Kerbin from above, the Mun should be at a ~90° angle to you, I think), keeping an eye on your orbit in the map view. You should get a close enough orbit to enter the Mun's SOI, and then you can burn retrograde to establish an orbit. If you plan this out ahead of time with Maneuver Nodes, you can fine-tune it and have a better chance of hitting it. B: Mind if I see a screenshot of your craft? Once you're in LKO, you don't need a massive amount of fuel for a Munar mission. C: You need to kill your velocity a bit earlier, then. Burn retrograde until your velocity is extremely low, this should kill off your horizontal speed, so you'll just fall directly down. Then you can keep applying short bursts of thrust to keep your velocity fairly low, making sure it's below 10m/s when you actually hit the ground. This is going to waste a lot more fuel than just freefalling until you get close, but I found it really helped with my first landing, until you get a feel for it. I certainly don't have the best way of doing it, but those are the methods I used when I was first messing about with Munar missions, and I found they helped a lot. Hope I helped

The rover should count as a seperate vehicle as soon as you decouple it; you should just be able to use the [ and ] keys to cycle through until you've got the rover selected. Hope this helped

Well, just to play devil's advocate here, a screenshot does not need to display your craft to be good or artistic. A screenshot of the sunset over Minmus is a lot more creative that just snapping a plain shot of your fully-lit craft, unless you're specifically showcasing your design instead of going for aesthetic and artistic screenshots. But just to inform you, there is already a sticky for screenshots located here

Yeah, you don't really get a true sense of scale until you jetpack Jeb up to the top of it. When I first saw it, I'd just crested a ridge with my rover and saw the little black speck in the distance, I thought it was something small, like a rock or something, and then when I got close and saw what it was... I love this game

I constantly quicksave, but generally speaking if something goes wrong I either handle it or accept the consequences; it's just useful to quicksave incase something completely beyond my control happens, like a bug or crash. Losing a few hours of work because I screwed up my landing is fine, losing it because my power goes out, for example, is not.

Purist Pilot, personally. I'm fine with people using mechjeb, if that's fun for them, but for me, it takes the fun and experimentation out of the game. I haven't killed anybody yet, so I must be doing something right, no?

It's definitely worth seeking out

Did I say 40m/s? I meant 31, Jebediah is very careful about those speeding tickets, you know . That being said, apparently leaving your moonlander in a supermarket car park is a parking violation, so speeding is the least of his worries.

Except jetpacking around the place like a hyperactive wasp for an hour or two, of course

Yeaahp, I just had to do that with my first manned rover, I missed my target LZ by some 35km. Fortunately I could go about 40m/s-ish, so it didn't take too long

Thanks again, all; I just gave it a shot with the vertical lander, as Dmagic suggested. Worked fine, but I was a bit heavy-handed with landing; the rover itself landed safely, if not gracefully, but the lander may have exploded slightly. It's certainly a lot faster than the small probe; I was hitting speeds in excess of 40 m/s, but I've noticed that it tends to flip over quite violently if it hits a bump. It's a little risky, but luckily I can use the Roll keys to ensure that I land on the wheels, which are easily repairable .

Thanks very much for the help guys, I'll try out a few of those suggestions and see what works And @DMagic: thanks for that tip with Subassembly Loader, that was my main problem, really, not being able to get it into the VAB . One thing though, wouldn't the launcher be extremely wobbly and unstable, with that long rover design stuck on top of it?

Alright, hi, all; so, I built a small automated rover, very similar to the stock one, and managed to safely land it using a skycrane. It all works fine, and I managed to stumble across the Armstrong Memorial by accident. But I decided that my next project needs to be faster, and needs to be manned; after a bit of experimentation, I came up with this: I've driven it around Kerbin a bit, it's mostly stable, it can manage bumps and slopes without too much trouble, caps at around 22m/s (I imagine it'll do more on the Mun), and can last a decent amount of time in the dark. My primary problem is this: how on earth am I going to get this to the Mun? I think it's a bit too big to practically attach to a lander, and I'm not sure how I'd go about building a skycrane for this. Getting Jeb back home isn't a worry, my plan was to get the car onto the mun, do a bit of exploring, and drop a lander down to pick him up later on. He's got a packed lunch, he'll be fine. More to the point, I don't see any way of porting this into the VAB, since it was designed in the Spaceplane Hangar. While I do use Subassembly Loader, I'm not able to save this as a subassembly. And I'm pretty sure I won't be able to build the rocket and skycrane in the Spaceplane Hangar because of the wonky symmetry and height restrictions. Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated, thanks. And if there are any glaring faults with my rover design, please shout at me for it Oh, yeah, and I don't use any mods except Subassembly Loader, so I'll have to stick with stock parts.

Obligatory Star Trek reference aside, hello all. Introductory thread, and stuff. Hi. So, I'm Ashflare, because I was not very imaginative 9 years ago when I chose my screen name, and, alas, it kinda stuck. Professional slacker, nerd by nature, and excessive gamer. Which, all in all, makes this my perfect game. I'm still something of a noob in this; I've managed to land on the Mun a couple times, with only the occasional fiery explosion. I once managed an orbital rendezvous, but never managed to replicate it again. I've also managed to, on one occasion, miss the Mun entirely and end up in a solar orbit. Happy days. More to the point, I've been tentatively wading into the dark murky world of rovers today. My first tiny, unmanned testing probe worked fairly well, I explored the Mun's surface a little, and by happy chance, found the Neil Armstrong memorial, which increased my love for the game tenfold. Seriously, I had no idea there was anything actually on the Mun, I was just driving around for the sake of it, spotted something in the distance, and broke out into cries of childish glee when I got close enough to see what it was. Having some minor trouble designing a larger, manned rover, due to reasons, but I'm sure I'll get that figured out. Oh, yeah, and I play purely vanilla, I refuse to use any mods except Subassembly Loader, which doesn't really do anything except save time while building. So, that's me, and stuff. Keep flying, Kerbalnauts!

Hey, quick question, since my design for my first manned rover is similar to this; how did you build this? Did you make this in the VAB, or the Spaceplane Hangar? Because when I try to make the rover in the VAB, the wheel and landing gear symmetry is all wrong, because, obviously, I'm having to build it vertically when the rover itself will be horizontal, and if I do it in the Hangar, I can't get the launcher on it. I do use Subassembly Loader, since that's the only mod I can tolerate using, but it doesn't let me save the rover. Cheers