Sirrobert

I have the utmost respect for modders, mostly because I would never be able to do something like that myself. Both in skill, and in creativity. I'm pritty good at imagining how a concept would play out, but I suck at thinking of new concepts. Fun story about my modding experience: I once wanted to add an enchantment from 1 Skyrim mod onto a set of boots from another mod. It took me 2 hours and 5 trys to get it right

Can you still switch between regular vessles with those keys? If not, they may be bound to something else If you can, sounds like it's bugged cause it should work

Still easier than waiting for both the AN AND the transfer window to line up at the same time

Wow your topic got expertly burried under useless discussion. On to the actual questions from the OP: If you want to get in a retrograde solar orbit, you are going to need ALOT of fuel. Kerbin has an orbital velocity of 9284m/s (and since you are at the same solar altitude as Kerbin, so do your rockets). In order to get into a retrograde solar orbit, you'll need to cancel that, and than match it in the opposite direction. So you'll need 20km/s deltaV AFTER you got in orbit (getting to orbit costs 4500m/s deltaV). Now you can probably shave a few kilometers/s off of this by doing some tricks with the oberth effect, but the point is it's going to cost alot of fuel. Now to go there: You'll want to start in the same way you do when you try to go to an inner planet, or simply a lower solar orbit. Burn retrograde (solar orbit retrograde, not Kerbin orbit). Go to map mode and zoom out, so you can see Kerbin's orbit. Observe which way is retrograde for Kerbin, that's the direction you want to eject yourself from Kerbin's SOI. Asuming you are in an equatorial, prograde orbit around Kerbin, make a manouver node somewhere near 270 degrees and burn prograde ( Picture for illustration. I don't have anything in Kerbin Orbit atm so this will have to do ). Just place a node, pull it out until the projected new orbit is basicly a straight line, and move the node until that line lines up with Kerbin's orbit. Now if you zoom out on the map view, you'll see that your new Solar orbit has a lower Periaps. If you'd burn a full 20000m/s deltaV at this point, you'd end up in a retrograde Solar orbit. You can save some fuel if you first drop your periaps down low (say, less than a million KM). Than at this Periaps, burn out to a very high Apoaps. The higher your apoaps, the cheaper it'll be to reverse your orbital velocity (because you are going slower. Less velocity to cancel out). This would however take a LONG time to get out to such a high apoaps, and solar panels don't work very well at higher solar altitudes. Regarding docking in Solar orbits: Yes, you can be way less precise in these scenarios. An encounter of several hundred kilometers is already pritty close at those scales (offcourse, the closer the better still counts). So first get this close, and than start closing the distance by burning towards the target Good luck

Are you within 2km of your target? If you are, you can use [ and ] to switch between crafts, including kerbals

I'm pritty sure it's way more efficient to just burn out at the launc window, and make your plane change along the way

It's funny how some people refuse to accept they are wrong even if someone provides them with a website telling the truth (notice how the logo is the same?). AND a mod explaining why you are confused. Or do you somehow think the Indie dev Squad made a website dedicated entirely to PR as a part of making a game? Squad is a PR company, and Harvester used to work for them. He deceided to make a game, and instead of quiting, Squad deceided to let him create a new branch to make the game

If your rocket is wobbling under accelration, it's not stable. Replacing the docking ports with a solic structure isn't going to fix that, you need some wider reinforcement Check KAS, it has struts you can assamble in space

You already have choices aplenty. Install a mod and boom, exactly what you want

You still haven't provided us with a SINGLE bit of information regarding this 'bug', other than 'it's buggy' How the hell do you expect people to help you if you don't tell them anything? Show some screenshots. Sounds to me like you're using the SR docking ports, and mounted one of them upside down. It's a common mistake

It's probably just a bug though. There is no physics when you're timewarping, so it's even possible for ships to float through eachother (they'll explode if you stop timewarp at that point though) You don't really need to bother about a different orbit either. Just make sure you give it a kick with RCS. Once it starts drifiting away at like 1m/s, it'll keep drifiting away and you'll be good

Going to other planets is a litle different than going to moons. Instead, you can compare it to going to Minmus from Mun, with Kerbin staying in the middle

Ha, that takes me back. I learned english from Red Alert 2 and Pokemon before we ever had english lessons

Congratulations on your docking! The next time will be twice as easy, I promise you. As for exploding, not a clue from just that info, but it's probably a bug. Did you quicksave? (if you didn't, extra kudos for docking the first time in 1 go) So why don't you show us some pictures to show us this bug of yours? Than we'll be able to identify the problem ourselves, and everyone will believe you

There is already a use planned for extra science. They are going to let us convert it into Funds (and vice versa)

The weaker one costs half as much funds So if you're trying to save money, and don't need that much torque anyway, you can put the weaker one on your smaller crafts

I don't think you can compare Gary's Incident with this. Those guys were trying to bully what they thought was a small guy, while TB was fully in his right (and had a million fans and a media company behind him). That said, I don't think Squad has any intention to agressivly deal with content creators. I'm pritty sure they are actually embracing it. See for example, the redirect link they introduced that lets content creators claim a portion of the money from sales caused by them (See this for further info about that) I'm also pritty sure that there was a dev blog not to long ago where they said they were indeed at work to simplify the media rules (or is that the one you came acros? I don't remember the details) The way I read the 'use Kerbal name' thing, I interpeted it as people using the Kerbal name for original content (so storys about unnamed creatures, and calling them Kerbals). So I do believe they are working on it. In the meantime, I'm sure you can message Rowsdower (the CM) directly and ask for clairification

What you want is realism, for the sake of realism. This is something that should never be done. On the probes side: The point of the game is to shoot Kerbals into space. That's what you start with

It might be cheaper if you burn out to the edge of the SOI and make the plane change there, than burn back

Either way, we need some devider to make it easier to see how big the numbers are

Ok I found a small problem with your flatter Rovemate. You made it wider, but the attachment nodes are still on the old spots. AKA, inside the rovemate. So I can't put my KAS wrench on them like this Picture to show what I mean: http://oi59.tinypic.com/6oopso.jpg

Burn when you see the Mun rise over the horizon, and you'll get an encounter Though do you have any way of knowing WHEN you get an encounter if you'll be in cockpit only? If not, you'll have no way to know when to stop burning

Feels like there are missing a few words here. Control of WHAT?

Here's what will happen if your test mission randomly explodes: Most of the people will sigh in annoyance, and than revert and do it again. The rest, who doesn't like revert, will sigh in even MORe annoyence, since the game just randomly blew up a bunch of funds, and maybe even a Kerbal, and relaunch the test. That's it. It'll be annoying, nothing else. How exactly is that an improvement?

There is no way to get your old save back without quicksaves. But you can manually fix the state, with a little cheating. Open the persistance file with notepad (KSP->saves->"name of your save"->persistent.sfs). There is a line there that records how much science you have (sci = "number of science you have") Edit that number to the amount of science you want/need to have to fix it. Save file, and load it. You can also manually place back your rockets with Hyperedit. You can always deleted it after you're done if you don't want to use it