Superfluous J

You can get creative with translation and/or cargo bays. But yes I think a stock inline drill is needed.

My furthest foray into the future had been in my grand tour save. I think I was in the 70s or 80s there, mostly due to a 60 year trip to Eeloo.

If you don't care about the actual science you can right click the antenna and turn off the "revert transmission without power" functionality. You'll get less total science from the experiment (It's math. I don't feel like explaining it but it's a thing) but - presuming you can regenerate power in some way - you'll eventually get it sent off and complete your contract or whatever. But for actual science retrieval, yes. You want enough battery power to transmit it in one go or you want to bring it back, and bringing it back is almost always better.

I know all this. I just expected KER to know it too

In my experience KER ALWAYS underestimates the suicide burn. I tend to burn first when it's at 1000m even though that's egregious. 500's probably better. Lower than that and you're asking to become a splat mark.

I think the name's fine. It's an effect. A result of things being set up a certain way, not a cause. The wrong word would have been affect. Law works just fine though too. "In this space ship we obey the Oberth Law."

What exactly is this? I did a search for WildBlueIndustries and found a mod, but it seems to be a big pack. I don't want to hunt around unnecessarily, so could you provide a link to the mod's page on spacedock or curse or wherever?

I guess we'll need to see when we play if you can - once zoomed out - zoom in on another location. If so, one or just a few satellite(s) will be enough. If not, then we'd need more, or those who need this functionality will need to turn to mods.

I'd say try both, because I for one found Minmus quite daunting and Mun very easy, when staring. It depends on if you are comfortable with the plane change (or figure out how to ignore it). So the beginner should try both, and whichever one seems easier they should do first.

You stated that it only took 200 to get from Keosynchronous to Mun, but you didn't ask specifically how much more THAT took from, say, the surface of Kerbin. That's actually answered with many of the common dV maps including this one. Assuming you launched, got into LKO of 80km, then got into Keosynchonous orbit from there, it would have cost you 3400+1115 m/s. I don't know the savings to Keosynchronous directly from launch but I'd be surprised if it was more than 100 m/s. Probably closer to 50 or less. Let's say it's 50 and anybody want to calculate/test it I'll happily edit this. Launch to LKO to Mun is 3400+930 or 4330. Your launch to KSO to Mun would have been (3400+1065)+200 or 4665. So how much more efficient is 100km over KSO, to transfer to Mun? 335 m/s more efficient.

"Nigh on" (which I did misspell. Oops) means "nearly." In stock, 5500m/s is pretty fast. I stand by my words. Except of course "neigh, " which should have been "nigh"

Actually those two things are one and the same. You save the dV because of the Oberth Effect.

Remember that while it's true that burning off prograde "wastes" dV, efficiency is a far more complex idea. If you waste a few hundred m/s of dV but gain thousands from using that ship over another, then to me it sounds like the ion ship is the way to go.

I don't. I just have fun playing. Pretty much how I play KSP, too.

I'll look at this when I can, but in the meantime look at the cfg file in the All Y'all directory. It's pretty simple if you've looked at them before. It looks for a module that all science parts have, and adds my module if it finds them. If you can find a module that all stock science parts have but that your modded parts do not, you could change my cfg to look for that module instead.

This is not the game for everyone, as no game is. Either you like it or you don't. I like it. Others don't. I have no desire to fight robots or deal with other people. I have no problem mining minerals to stock up, upgrade, refuel, and all the rest. I like finding monoliths and reading the text that litters about telling a loose story. I like the Atlas storyline - what I've seen of it so far. If none of this sounds fun to you then no, you're not missing anything.

Same here, at least roughly with the hours. I just can't put the game down. Shallow and repetitive? Sure. But fun as all get out.

I'll pm it in a bit. I doubt it but remember I rendezvoused with it (quite hard) already. Maybe the contract bugs out if you don't complete it on the first encounter? I know things become "more real" when you first encounter them, like Asteroids and stranded Kerbals.

I was actually going to ask you (but I forgot oops), did you change the last contract to just win because it was causing some sort of problem? I actually did expect the big ending I got the first time, and didn't get it. So I cobbled the ending I did get (which turned out pretty well I think) instead. I've not touched the save since, if you'd like to check it out.

Maybe. It's been over a year (since 1.0 came out) since I've used PF. I just have vague memories of sticking a half-cylinder where it doesn't look like one should go, and having a fairing magically appear. It was nice that it got me a fairing, but other than that I was happy to not have to do it anymore.

I think the problem here, @AlamoVampire, is that you absolutely love the Procedural Fairings mod and think that we all love stock fairings to the same extent. At least for me, that's not the case. I just don't hate them as much as you do. Stock fairings work well enough for me in every single case, except when they were not big enough which I consider a design constraint that I must work around. I don't feel the need to install a mod to get around that because: a) It's not difficult to do. b) I almost never go outside the limits imposed. c) When I DO go outside those limits, it's generally because I didn't make my rocket well enough, and the required redesign results in a better rocket. I will tell you this, though: I much, much prefer clicking out a fairing to placing a fairing part onto a floating node, even though the clicking part is more fidgety. I'm more in control of it. I would like a "smooth" option, though, and suspect the only reason that's not been modded into the game is that all the people who know how and want it, use the mod that already exists

Mathematically yes, but practically speaking I personally save more dV by setting up a maneuver node in LKO, over going right to Mun from launch and then having to fix my imperfect trajectory midway there. It's the difference between theory and practice. In theory, there's no difference. In practice, though...

No worries, I've set up a couple challenges in the past and I've never gotten it right on the first go Also, I don't actually care about the points so much personally, I just want to try interesting things and this sounds like an interesting challenge. I've got a ship that can leave Mun, land on Kerbin, get to and land back on Mun, get to and land on Minmus, and then get home from Minmus. I've just now got to figure out how to get it to Mun. It's already 50 tons so it looks like that tier's out for me

But what if you have 3 Kerbals (150% added) and land on Minmus (20% added) is that 170% added? 100 base points + 150 for Kerbals + 20 for Minmus = 270 points Or is it 100 base points * 2.5 for Kerbals * 1.2 for Minmus = 300 points

Do you get the 5% bonus for planting a flag on Minmus? So the most you can get for the flags is 5 plantings and 25%?