Superfluous J

I loaded your craft and it looks like picture 2 (broken) immediately. My first thought is, how did you get them attached via those radial docking ports? I'm not asking this in awe I can think of at least 2 ways to do it I'm just wondering how you did it, as maybe that caused the problem. I know for a fact you can't just straight-up build something like this by taking parts and attaching them, you need to do some root-part doohickery at some point. UPDATE: I think you've found a bug, but I'm not 100% sure what the bug is yet. I started with a fresh craft, simple just a fuel tank with radial jr ports, and was able to kind of recreate your problem.

Hold on! Actually, could you hold off on holding on until we've determined up from down?

I never change the profile. if your rocket is similarly streamlined and has similar TWR throughout the launch, then your launches will generally be the same no matter the mass of the rocket. More TWR may require a harder turn, but it will also cause your Ap to rise faster so if you're turning to meet Ap goals, you turn harder by design.

That has not been a standard launch since v0.90 Unless you mean start turning at 100m/s and gradually turn so you're at 45 at about 10km? Then that's pretty good, but can be tweaked. First off, I much prefer starting at 50m/s. 100 is too high IMO. I prefer to use my apoapsis height and time to apoapsis as a better guide. Try to get to 50 seconds quickly and then to not ever be too far from 50 seconds. Also try to gradually turn so you're at maybe 60-70 degrees tilt when your apoapsis is at 10km, 40 when it's at 20km, and 10 by the time it's at 50-60km. If I can do both of those without throttling down or steering at all after clicking "hold prograde" I consider that a perfect launch (and launcher). I almost never have a perfect launch or launcher in stock, though. So don't break your back trying.

Because you define "playable" more stringently than most.

It doesn't. The ONLY thing that really matters with time is transfer windows and the timings of encounters and burns. The rest is really skippable and there is no penalty in game. I agree though that it's hard to do. I think that probe is usable though I agree it could use a bigger antenna. I'd suggest the HG55 and a level 2 tracking station (you probably have that already, as going interplanetary without patched conics and maneuver nodes is crazy hard), though I bet 2 DTS-M1s would do you fine in a pinch. Also note, with the HECS probe core you can still aim prograde and retrograde, and fire the engines full blast, without communications so not having connection isn't a death sentence. As for returning, use up all your fuel slowing down so that when you run out, your periapsis is around 30-40km and your orbit is under Mun's, and you should be fine. If you trigger the parachute early (in space even), running out of charge isn't a big deal with the probe as it should be heavy on the side of the heat shield. One thing you could do, upgrade that heat shield to the next size up, and be 100% sure that not only will it be the heavy side, but it'll also protect the probe core from heat even if it's a bit wobbly coming down through the thicker atmosphere at high speed.

You basically have 2 options when it comes to interplanetary missions. Do things in between and never get there. Time warp no matter how hard it hurts and explore the system.

So now all we need is a Buffy antibody

I assumed it was because the Explore contract tacked "Recover a vessel from a flyby of Eve" to the end, but it's by no means guaranteed. That's the only reason I ever come back to Kerbin anymore.

@Selective Genius that made me cry. You were such a positive influence in those tiny little precious lives.

On a whim I reinstalled Portal and played through it yesterday. I then reinstalled Portal 2 and am doing the same. I'm just to the beginning of the "Cave Johnson" levels and I'm looking forward to J.K. Simmons' voice-overs. Steam says I've not played either since 2012 and that sounds about right. So the last time I played them, I didn't even know Kerbal Space Program existed.

While you can't trial-and-error, you can fly by the seat of your pants. Your Eve flyby, if close, will likely change your Sun orbit. if it's far out (past Gilly's orbit) then it won't alter it too much. The important thing to remember though is YOU get to decide how it alters your Sun orbit and by how much. About halfway to Eve, the maneuver planner will likely place a maneuver node (or have you place one) to actually encounter Eve. Once you have that in place, fiddle with it, either with Precise Node or with the stock maneuver node widget, whichever you prefer (I've moved to using the latter exclusively). Use it to make tiny changes in the maneuver node to modify how you pass by Eve, and then zoom out and look at what your resultant Sun orbit does. Keep fiddling until you can see what passing by in different ways does, and then keep fiddling until you have a resultant Sun orbit that is similar to your current one in one important way: It passes really close to Kerbin's orbit, hopefully just touching it near Apoapsis before heading back down toward Eve's orbit. Then after your flyby, you'll be in an orbit that goes up to Kerbin's orbit. Kerbin won't be there (unless you're ridiculously lucky) but now you can kind of pretend Kerbin is a space ship, the Sun is Kerbin, and your ship needs to do a typical rendezvous. Set up a maneuver node just past your encounter with Kerbin and see if burning prograde gets you an encounter on the next orbit. If you must, jump forward an orbit and check again. It may take years to get back but what's time to a Kerbal?

“Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want.” ― David H. Levy, Comets: Creators and Destroyers

Make sure you explain that you pay their salary.

Welcome back! I assume you're going to stop fiddling around at some point and make something BIG?

I do to, in business. Regarding the second one, my job is intricately intertwined with a vast knowledge store that is available to every customer of our product free of charge. I create, edit, curate, and index this knowledge, but mostly I create it. It is both the least favorite part of my job and the thing that I'm most proud of. Of course this has nothing to do with my thoughts on modders.

Two things: 1. Mod makers make mods for themselves. If they add documentation it's because they want to. That's just a fact of life.it's not elitism or anything like that, it's they only have so much spare time and they'd rather spend it making the game closer to their ideal than teaching others the intricacies of their mod. 2. I have had similar problems with Principia.

You don't post anything here, you put it somewhere else on the Internet and then post a link here. Regarding the problem, you mean your fuel tanks are empty on the launchpad? Are they empty in the VAB? If you right click a tank it will tell you how much LF and O are in it. Post a list of your mods and maybe one will stick out. Any mod that changes fuel tanks in general is suspect though.

Just don't drop them on your way down the stairs.

If we're counting age in floppies, I'm "Why buy a 2-sided floppy when you can cut a notch on the other side of a 1-sided floppy and use both sides?" years old. If just storage systems, I'm "Listen to this cassette it's the program I'm writing." years old.

You talk like scifi is alone in glorifying war. What about all other fiction, almost without exception, from all of time? And that's just restricting it to FICTION.

Do they have a model of if we had treated it like we normally do the flu? Because this sounds to me like the precautions taken were akin to dodging a bullet.

Okay I did it. MechJeb took far longer than GravityTurn in real time and also seemed to not like its own ascent profile (I like low TWR upper stages so I think it expected more at that phase of the flight. It spent the majority of the time locked at 5 degrees up from prograde). In spite of that, MechJeb blew us both out of the water. Beat me by 131m/s and GT by 142. And it auto-circularized.

Ew then i'd have to install MechJeb. Actually I was thinking about it due to GT not circularizing afterward, but I hate the idea of installing the other 99% of of MechJeb for the 1% I want.

Pfft amateurs. My birth year is closer to the start of World War 2 than the current year. By a significant margin, I might add. That means my birth is more "history" than World War 2 was when I was a kid.