Superfluous J

It doesn't HAVE to move that far at all, if it starts out low. An empty bathtub can hold lots of water. One that's already full can spill over if you just add a drop. Still I'm surprised a bit that it flips before you even drop the side boosters. If I have time I'll try to build it and see what it does. One thing I noticed,you said you tilt 15 degrees at start I usually tilt 5 degrees at a time, and only slowly go over as I rise. I usually don't rock that much engine at the back though, and it may just be that the drag at the front is too much for your poor rocket. My rockets almost always do this: 1.5ish TWR (you can tell this at launch by the G meter on the right of the navball. Whatever that says when you launch, that's your TWR) 50m/s, tilt to 85 degrees (off Vertical) Switch to map mode and watch your Apoapsis. Fly with the navball and map mode. Or install KER so you can see Ap in normal mode. Tilt over as your rocket rises. Hold 85 until Ap is 4000, then tilt 5 degrees every 2000 meters. Again, I can't stress these are Ap meters, not rocket height meters. If you follow this, you should be at about 45 degrees when your Ap is at about 20km, and your rocket is at about 10km. Stop following this rule. Now you want to be at 40 degrees, and go down 5 degrees for every 5000 meters. So 35 degrees when Ap is at 25km, 30 degrees at 30km, 25 at 35, 20 at 40, 10 at 50, and 0 at 60. You can actually cut it down to 0 degrees when your Ap gets to 50 or so. If you do that and your rocket flips out, it's either back-heavy (yours is), not aerodynamic enough (yours looks fine from that perspective), or has too much TWR which is causing too much drag at the front (I think yours is).

This is extremely important and more importantly, your ship must remain that way throughout the flight. Next time your ship flips out, cut the engines and right click the fuel tanks to see which ones are empty and which ones are full. Then to back into the VAB and empty those tanks which are empty, and turn on the COM icon. Note that the COM icon will have shifted downward in your rocket, causing the instability. The easy fix here is to not make your rocket so tall. A different fix is to disable the top couple tanks until all the bottom tanks drain, keeping some mass up top where you want it (then, enable them again as you run out of fuel in the bottom tanks). SEE BELOW FOR AN EDIT: The best fix (imo) is to have an upper stage with a less powerful engine (The terrier is great for this) and using the top 2-3 tanks instead of your lower Reliant/Swivel. This will not only stabilize your rocket through launch but frequently give it MORE dV, without sacrificing much launch TWR. I also agree that your rocket has far too much TWR at launch. 3 engines is way overkill. EDIT: On a 2nd look I see you DO have a Terrier. I'd remove that one small fuel tank, and move one or two of the larger tanks from the center bottom stack into place instead. That should both fix your launch problems and give you more dV. After you fix the launch TWR problem

You don't You highlight the text in the post you want to quote, and a little "quote this" box comes up. You click that, and it inserts the quote. Then you repeat for other sections.

I was far more sure about it before you said: I will go to my fallback position: The game is not even remotely complete and expecting it to be so is folly. Two things: 1. This is kinda true. It doesn't always work in the VAB/SPH (again a sign the game isn't complete) but it does always work on the launchpad. Put your ship there and make sure all the boxes are checked. 2. Cheat. Go into the cheat menu and complete the contract. You'll get the money and rep and shouldn't feel bad about it at all. It's there to mitigate these kinds of problems with the game.

The problem is, the contract internally DOESN'T want a "SC-9001 Science Jr." It wants a part with the module that does materials bay science, which just so happens to be the science Jr only in the stock game. I'd much prefer the game to state that the probe be able to, say, "Perform materials bay science" and have that be hoverable or clickable, and when you hover or click it shows all the parts that do that thing, highlighted red if you don't own them yet, or with an X or something. And if you hover or click on THOSE then it tells you their stats and actually says if you own them, or what it'd cost in science to unlock them. And regarding "ISRU Units" there actually ARE two now, aren't there? I'll admit, I've not played 1.0.5 very much but I distinctly recall pics of mini drills and a mini converter. The main thing is the parts list interface, contracts interface, and part descriptions are incomplete and of pre-release quality. That we have this in a post-1.0 game is because - apparently - version numbers don't actually mean anything anymore now that we're in a post-neo-software-cycle world.

Achievements on consoles and in Steam are tracked on a per-game basis, not a per-save basis. So if there is an achievement for - say - landing on Mun you'll get it the first time you ever land on Mun, and then never, ever again. One nice thing about it you'll always be able to look up the exact date you first did something. Well, not us, but anybody who starts playing after these are put in place. Note: I have no idea how they'll work in KSP. This is just how they work in general.

Actually, most of THIS is outdated http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki

My signature shows it all | V

I like the idea. I've never once while playing a game seen an achievement pop up and thought "that's terrible! I hate it!" In fact, just the opposite.

TIL that temperature and density in KSP vary by time of day. I assumed this wasn't the case. Nice to know!

Meh. We'll just fight over something else.

Which to me is one of the best reasons to make some mods stock. In general "fun" is subjective. In this case, though, "fun" can pretty easily be defined by "What HarvesteR finds fun" or "What a group of Squad employees agree is fun," which pretty much is exactly the paradigm of the game they're trying to make.

Interesting. It cuts efficiency (only if you utilize it of course) for flexibility. Worth exploring, though I'll admit since 1.0 I've limited my asparagus usage quite a bit. It'd work on uncooperative 2-stage lifters as well.

1am-7am for me. Or right in the middle of my work day. I'll need something else to do in my down moments.

I'm going to take a different tack on this, and describe why I think a lot of these "should be stock" mods should not be stock. In the order mentioned above: Kerbal Engineer - I actually think that KER gives too much information. I know it sounds crazy, but I think stock should only give dV (per stage and total) an TWR, both in flight and the VAB. Most other stuff should just be part of the interface or not included at all. For example, if they want you to know what biomes are around there should be some sort of hud overlay or whatnot, not a box with "you're over the xxxx biome right now" readout. Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - I don't use this so obviously don't think it's necessary. KAS/KIS - It needs a UI/UX streamlining but otherwise I agree Infernal Robotics - Not until that terrible bug is fixed. I know it's a Unity thing but until it's fixed, no. Docking Port Alignment Indicator, or the navball docking aid - I'd prefer the 2nd. A separate window is a bit clunky IMO. RasterPropMonitor - I have never used this. If it doesn't add a lot of bloat to the main game then sure. Though I think it should be an actual integrated mode instead of the tack-on that RPM does now. Nothing against it - it's part of being a mod. Kerbal Alarm Clock - Agreed, though it should be more integrated into the game. Transfer Window Planner - Transfer window planning should be in the game, but it should just be a part of map mode or the tracking station. Alternate Resource Panel - This one I agree with. This is a perfect example of how to make a mod almost seamlessly become "stock". Trajectories - Again, this should just be something that happens. You shouldn't have to turn it on or even think about it. ScienceAlert - This mod puts a band-aid over the clunky way the game wants you to collect science. I'd much rather they make this mod unnecessary than integrate it into the game. RadiatorToggle - I don't know what this is. BetterBurnTime - Or this. RCS Build Aid - This should just turn on when you turn on any of the 3 markers (com/col/cot) but otherwise yes, I love the interface. ModuleManager - Agreed. A few more, that I actually think should be stock as well, pretty much in their current form: EditorExtensions NoOffsetLimits StockClamshellFairings QuckScroll and QuickSearch (and most of the Quick* mods) StockBugFix MenuStabalizer

I'll assume that reply was to me, so let me be more clear. Spaceplanes have had their time and the rest of the game needs some love now.

No more parts until you can more easily find the one you want. This would require a better way to select parts, or the removal of parts for a procedural alternative. Wings are the obvious choice for proceduralness, as they are both difficult to find the correct part for AND fill up the aero tab making other parts harder to find as well. But I still voted the last option, even though it's much more strongly worded than my opinion: That planes have had their time and the rest of the game needs some love now.

...in the presence of oxygen, of course

Just make sure you're not burning the fuel while drilling and converting it. The game notices a tiny fuel expenditure and drills a (figurative) ton of rock and converts it into another (figurative) ton of fuel to replace it, tossing the extra away. So come with big tanks and fill them first. Also, once you're in orbit around Dres you have an infinite supply of asteroids that you can reach with a few dozen m/s of dV, without having to carry the fuel out of a huge gravity well. Dang it. Now I want to set up a Dres refueling operation.

If it's in stock, it'll work out of the gate. Well, probably. You get the point. If it's a mod, it can: Become broken with an update, and may not be fixable. See Kerbal Konstructs. Become abandoned, possibly never being picked up by someone else. Generally if a mod is popular someone will pick it up, but it's never a guarantee. Change in a way you don't like. Granted so can Squad, so I suppose that's a wash but at least complaining that Squad broke your toy doesn't make you a jerk, as you paid for that toy. You didn't pay for the mod. There are arguments on the other side, of course. A favorite of many is "Squad can do nothing right so why even bother?" but I'll never understand that one. If I seriously thought that for more than 30 seconds I would have left this forum years ago.

That's a near-perfect distillation of why I stopped watching TV news.

If you went to the theater and they showed you a trailer for the movie you thought you were going to see, calling it a crappy movie seems pretty accurate. Same with a professor who just tossed you the syllabus before checking out for the remainder of the term (which I've heard is pretty close to what happens sometimes). But we're arguing semantics and I'll stop that now as it'll get us nowhere.

I did, but figured a tease-filled fluff piece of an article could only really be expected to lead to the same, only in a far more time-wasting form. I didn't even bother letting Flash load on the page before closing it. Radio is just far too mundane for me.

Very cool. I much perfer "one and done" type mods to large, try-to-do-everything mods like MechJeb. I understand why the larger mods exist and use them when they fit my play style (KER I'm looking at you) but I'd be far more likely to install this than MechJeb. I agree though that outside of testing, the main draw for me for this mod would be the ability to tell it to launch and then go and do something else for a couple minutes. Sadly, that would frequently end up with me coming back and seeing my poor ship either plummeting through the atmosphere, or already crashed. As was said, not all mods are for all people and this looks to be a very well-done mod. I could totally see installing it to quickly test not just designs but launch profiles.

Because Aptur. The Aptur-Kerbin relationship is one of those wonderfully unique things that MechJeb just can't figure out. And unlike docking and rendezvous, you can't just throw more fuel at it. You have to do it yourself.