BluetoothThePirate

That is exactly what that means, yes.

I think what people don't like is the sheer yield of it, they think it makes clearing the tree too easy. Let's be honest here, the lab is heavy and expensive to put in place, and hiring and leveling up scientists is really expensive. And more to the point, finding 500 data is really easy almost anywhere, so it ultimately doesn't matter of you pass the same experiments around or just get new ones everywhere, 500 data is 500 data.

You can transmit or recover the science after you process it in a lab. You don't lose the result when you process it. If you're really obsessed with minmaxing the system you can hold onto your results and launch a lot of labs, but given that it's easy to find enough data to fill a lab almost anywhere it's probably not worth it.

As the lab runs, the stored data goes down and the stored science goes up (five times as fast). The conversion rate is based on the stored data so it slows down over time. Yes, you can hold on to those experiments in the command pod for as long as you like and process them when there's room. The best part is that once you've processed the experiments into data, you still have them. So you can take them to another lab or return them to Kerbin or transmit them and get their original science payout. The one thing you can't do is process the same result in the same lab twice.

I didn't say land all your ships to refuel, have storage in space and do the refining on the ground. The reason being that if you don't have a fuel supply on the ground then your lander needs to land with all the fuel for the return trip on board. The landing phase is the least efficient part of the trip, you're going slow and burning straight down, so the heavier the ship is on landing the more fuel you're going to waste on the round-trip even if on paper the delta-v is the same. That is the only difference, but it is a big one in terms of return per trip.

Put the refinery on the ground, that's the key. If your refinery is in orbit then your lander needs to land carrying all the fuel it needs to return to orbit with a full load. If your refinery is at the mine, then your lander can land almost empty, no need to spend fuel slowing down a lot of extra mass. If you're just looking to max out your return a land-based refinery is better, unless your ore source is asteroids.

I'd like to see a two-kerbal pod in the 1.25m size. Maybe a tandem plane cockpit?

So, we've all encountered the problem of having a lot of satellites going thanks to our relentless pursuit of that sweet corporate contract money, and we kind of like leaving them up there as record of how much we've done. But, I'd like to be able to turn off the satellites for clarity's sake without turning off useful unmanned probes. I think they should have two separate categories.

The missions rely on the claw, those contracts only unlock once the claw is researched.

A helmet stripe would be super useful, but at the same time the helmets are off in a fair fraction of the IVAs.

You don't have to launch with oxidizer tanks full. If you have a surplus of oxidizer in your station, make or launch less of it, you're not required to always make LFO in equal amounts, you can make each separately.

Another wrinkle is the fact that engines have reduced thrust according to air pressure now, so the TWR of a rocket might not be enough on the pad even if it's plenty high 1000 meters up. Solids do a great job adding that bit of front loaded thrust right there at the start. Of course you never use them for anything post-launch unless it's some kind of stunt (cf. Abyssal Lurker or Scott Manley).

Or the rotation widget. That's usually even better.

Two labs docked together retain their data payload from before docking and work fine. The problem is in the mechanism used to make experiment results into data. RoverDude didn't seem to account for multiple labs per vessel when he wrote the interface changes. The "convert to data" button works no matter where an experiment is stored on a vessel and doesn't include a way to specify, so it will always send it to the same lab and ignore any others. I don't see any easy work-arounds in the interface logic, so this is probably how it's going to be for the forseeable future. If you still want to cheese it, this works: Store all the experiment results in one lab with an EVA. Review them and convert them to data. After the conversion they pop up again with the green and blue options for keep and transmit, keep them all. When all the processing is over, use and EVA and take the data back out of the lab. Walk or fly it over to the other lab nearby (but not docked), store the experiments in the lab and repeat. Once all the labs have their data buffers full you can dock them back together if you want and they'll work. That said I don't see the point. I have several labs on the go on the Mun and on Minmus. Just the science I collected en route and on landing for each was enough to fill the buffers, and I left off the materials bay for engineering reasons. After I converted it to data I just transmitted it all. Once the buffers run down a bit lower I'll have rovers landed nearby to go get new data from nearby biomes and keep it all running. As it stands I recheck each lab in turn after a typical Mun or Minmus mission and I have 20-40 science per lab to transmit. The downside is all the Kerbals I have on semi-permanent assignment, but they were mostly rescues anyway.

This tutorial is based on my own experience in career and RoverDude's information from this answered question thread. This is a basic tutorial with just text for now, pictures to follow if I think of it later or something needs clarity. It also ignores how to go and get the results because earlier tutorials from past versions still cover that part in fine detail. First, some terms as I'm using them. Science is the blue currency you spend in the R&D building to unlock the tech tree. Data is the raw material used to make science in the lab. Experiments are the physical science parts themselves. Results are the part you can take out of the experiment with a Kerbal and move around from pod to pod. How the lab works (now) At the most basic level, the lab analyses a result, makes data from it, and converts data into stored science over time (even when not on the focused vessel). At the command of the player, it will take its stored science and transmit it back to Kerbin and into your science bank account. Generating data from a result does not destroy the result, once a lab has made data from a result that result can be used in other ways. It can be returned to Kerbin for the full payout or transmitted for a fraction, just like before. The transmission bonus for processing in the lab is gone now, replaced by this new system. A lab can still be used to reset the goo and science jr. experiments as before, but now a scientist on EVA can do that job so it's mostly a matter of convenience. A lab needs to be manned by two scientist kerbals, and their levels affect its efficiency and yield, so level them up any way you can. They will not level up from doing their work in the lab, you need to take them places to grow their levels. A lab can produce data from one unique result exactly once, but it's tracked per-lab. Meaning, you can take the results from one goo canister, transfer it to a lab, process it for data, then transfer it to another lab and process it for more data, but you can't take a second goo measurement (or crew report or surface sample or whichever) from the same biome and altitude and get more data in the same lab. The amount of data you get from an experiment is determined by where the lab is when you process the result. There's a bonus for being on or around the same body as the result is from, and being landed is more valuable than being in orbit (this is reversed on Kerbin, a landed lab there yields almost no data). The data yields scale with the raw science payout from the result, so surface samples are big and crew reports are small. Also remember, a lab can get full data from a result even if it's been returned to Kerbin and all its direct science yield is depleted. Doesn't matter what the blue bar says, if this particular lab hasn't seen it it's valuable! A lab can only hold 500 data in reserve. If you have extra results and try to process them, it will refuse if it can't hold the data. The lab can hold an arbitrary number of stored results just like any manned part, so you can hold onto results for the future without processing them. When the lab is processing or researching it consumes a lot of power and converts data to science in a 5:1 ratio. The rate of conversion is based on how much data is in storage so it falls off over time. A lab with full data and two one-star scientists yields about 1 science every 4 days. When the lab's science buffer is full work stops. You must switch to the vessel with the lab and manually transmit the stored science to resume work. Some important things to note The kerbals in the lab must both be scientists. Their level matters. Other scientists on the same vessel will also contribute. The lab draws a lot of power. Load up on solar panels and batteries. You can still return experiments after the lab has analysed them, so make it a point to get all your results into labs if you can. The stored science in a lab has to be transmitted, returning and recovering a lab does nothing, so you need to have an antenna on a lab vessel. Check on your science bases periodically since they need to transmit manually. Smart use of renaming vessels and assigning categories can make this easier, if you're doing this aggressively you might have a lot of stations and bases. The Mun has a long night, so expect your solar-powered science base to be shut down half the time. It doesn't need to be on to produce science in your absence but it needs to be on to transmit. It might be worth it to fill the lab with data on the ground for the bonus but then let it do its work in orbit. Being on the surface or on a more distant body increases data yields so the lab's data buffer will fill up sooner, but it still takes the same amount of time to process it into science no matter where it's located. The science per day is determined by how much data is stored, so it slows down over time to a trickle. Keep the lab topped up with data to keep the yield high. Some contracts will pay you to put lab-bearing stations in various places, so don't waste the opportunity if someone else is willing to foot the bill. If they ask for a station in orbit of Kerbin, put on some extra delta-V, complete the contract for the payout then fly it to Minmus or Munar orbit (or land it, if it's really overbuilt). Do the rescue contracts, getting enough scientists to fill out the bases can get expensive if you pay for all the hiring but if you aggressively recruit via rescue you get about a third scientists, and they gain a full star of XP in the process of being rescued. Remember that the lab isn't a command pod, so you can't do anything without a command pod (with a third kerbal in it) or probe core (and then you can't do anything when the power runs out.) EVA reports in orbit are biome-specific when almost nothing else is, so an easy source of early-mid-game data is to pop one of the scientists out for EVA reports from the ladder as your station orbits Kerbin. You can transmit those for full science afterwards. Don't put two labs on one vessel, it doesn't work the way you expect. You can have two parked near each other, just not docked. Labs are still useful after the tech tree is fully unlocked because your administrators can convert science income into funds and reputation. High-end parts are pricey and everyone needs a little PR once in a while. I'll add to this as I learn more. Questions or corrections below please!

I just did a major teardown and rebuild on the lab module now that it has a new function. It's not perfect but a burn of a million meters per second begins with the first spark. Thanks to all the editors who got it to the state it's in, and if some of the long-timers can proofread my linking and formatting that'd be great. I plan on getting in there and doing revisions where I can but I feel like there's a crisis of confidence in the community in terms of who feels qualified to write with authority on the minutiae of the systems. In my case I was mostly just transcribing RoverDude's forum comments on the lab into an article.

So here's a question: will the price of a fuel tank or SRB update in real time if we tweak out some of the fuel? I assume they'd have to do it that way, but I don't know if the team caught that yet. Also, if we're taking votes as to what to call the currency, my vote is for the Keso. Sounds like a Kerbal version of a peso, and it makes it sound like they pay for stuff in cheese.

I think the ability to transfer science from the experiment part to the capsule is the undersold game-changer of the update. With this, you don't need to try and get a ridiculously heavy lander all the way back from Eve to get a good science payout, and you can do an actual Apollo-style moon mission (as in, carry the surface samples home in the command module.) I also think it'll be cool to watch what the clever chaps like Scott Manley, Danny and Abyssal Lurker get up to with carefully-tweaked solid rockets. Carefully calibrated they'd be a fun way to do a landing burn.

After you do the setup and raise your apoapsis to the goal altitude (2868750 M), make your periapsis such that you'll be in a four orbit. Don't deploy any sats yet. Keep in this orbit and look down every time you get to apoapsis. You'll see three different views of the planet that will be the same each time. Figure out which third has KSC in it, and about how many degrees east or west of you it is at apoapsis. That's a critical number. If KSC is east of you then your orbit needs to be temporarily shortened, if it's west it needs to be lengthened. If KSC is 12 degrees to your west then burn prograde at apoapsis until your period is 4 hrs and 4 minutes (4 minutes is one third of 12) so three orbits later you'll be right over KSC. Same for any other number of degrees you need to correct, add one third of the time in minutes to move west, subtract to move east. The designers were very kind to give Kerbin a 6 hour rotation, it rotates 360 degrees in 360 minutes, that makes changing your longitude cake. Once you're over KSC at apoapsis, burn to bring your orbital period back to four hours then wait three more orbits and check your work, you should be right back above KSC again. From there, drop a sat and circularize its orbit to a 6 hour period each time you get back to apoapsis again, you'll wind up with a perfect 120 degree spacing. You can use the same technique to fix a sat that drifts out of place. If you can figure out how many degrees off it is, shorten or lengthen its orbital period by that many minutes and it'll be back in place next apoapsis (although be careful, if you lengthen the orbit to correct west the nodes will flip, make sure that the one you circularize at is the one with the proper altitude.) For big corrections (more than 5 degrees or so) it's better to do it in multiple orbits to save on Delta-V. None of this requires much fuel, mind. Even a pretty heavy sat won't need more than one Oscar tank and an ant engine to circularize once it's off the carrier vessel.

I like this plan overall. I think I'd also want to see the state of each part included with a color code, just like with chutes. I especially like being able to exclude parts from staging altogether if we choose. It'd be like an automatic setting of the staging lock after we pass a certain point.

I tend to think of transitioning from one building to another by going outside first to be an unneeded waste of time and CPU cycles. I don't hate the exterior scene by any stretch, but maybe a quick-switch menu in each building (like a schematic map of the complex with a "you are here" spot that drops down from the top of the screen) so you can go direct from one building to another without loading the exterior scene.

How about a dedicated tab in the interface for parts already used on the current ship? That way it customizes itself to the current task as you go.

IRL communication sats usually librate back and forth over a couple degrees, at that distance they're basically broadcasting to the entire hemisphere anyway, not super critical. What's really critical is getting the period dead on or else it'll drift. Feel free to mess with it more, but you're already (literally) close enough for government work.

With a glider, you think of its speed and altitude as being its fuel supply, with the caveat that it needs to get rid of all of it to land. The reentry trajectory is calculated to give it a surplus of kinetic and potential energy so if something unexpected happened it wouldn't fall short (if it hit an unexpected headwind or something.)

You can very kind of sort of that now. You set up a maneuver that just barely escapes, that gives you a planned orbit that closely matches Kerbin's, then you plan a second maneuver on the new orbit you just made that you can play with to get intercepts and whatnot. Or, put a probe on an orbit close to Kerbin and use it as a reference, that one will give you a live delta-V meter if not an accurate burn time. I agree it's a good suggestion but the stock game is most of the way there.