jebster

+1, neat and practical idea

Hello! I am trying to get to Jool. Is there a rule of thumb or some way to calculate when you should launch to get the easiest encounter?

+1. Neat idea.

I think balloons would be pretty neat! They could be like the opposite of parachutes. Mount them somewhere on your ship and then add a wet container of some kerbal version of helium. When the stage is activated, the balloons fill up and drain the wet containers. They would have unique physics and functionalities, such as not working in vacuum but being especially effective in denser atmospheres like that of Eve's. I didn't see this on the already suggested list so I thought I'd share. Thanks for reading!

Is it possible in KSP to burn directly towards the body you are orbiting and increase your velocity?

However if you press F5 you can quicksave. Hold down F9 at any point and you can load that quicksave back.

+1 very useful

Here is the first video that I found helpful, it is a bit outdated but all of the parts and functionality is the same:

But do you have any visual evidence that it doesn't exist?

#1 Rule of KSP: simple is better. #37 Rule of KSP: wing connectors suck. Building surface-to-orbit launchers in the spaceplane hangar don't often work well. I'd instead recommend a spaceplane with jet engines and powerful air intakes - use the liquid fuel and oxidizer tanks instead of the liquid-fuel-only tanks. Those extremely fuel-efficient jet engines can get you up higher than 20 kilometers, burning no less than 50 units of fuel. Take off from the runway, use jet engines until you're out of air. From then on, use a liquid fuel and oxidizer engine. I wouldn't recommend the atomic engine because of how heavy and weak in thrust it is. You'll need to make orbit with that engine. Once you're in orbit, you probably won't have a lot of fuel left. Time to use those orbital refueling stations that you surely have! Check out this video/miniseries by Macey Dean, it makes spaceplanes look easy.

Struts are more powerful than they look. Take those tiny trusses that only cost 10 credits and put them all over your craft on separate parts, then attach them with struts. I started looking through my screenshots folder for an example of this and I found this one. It isn't great but if you look on the right side of the ladder you can kind of see the trusses with the struts between them: Prior to those struts my craft would immediately separate and explode once the parachutes were fully deployed. They're very very useful!

This won't tell you what they are, but it does show you where: http://www.kerbalmaps.com/ Just hit the button on the left side then check the box for Anomalies. This is also very useful for picking sites to build/land. Thanks saik0!

There isn't a way to point it directly retrograde or prograde without mods or manual steering, but you should look at the design of your plane. Is your center of mass at the same spot as your center of lift? Do you have control surfaces on your wings?

The lander isn't making a return trip to the space station and unfortunately the port had to be put on the main view-port of the pod. Once the lander clears the space station for deorbiting, it ditches the extra weight and I can see through the lovely view-port.

I've got two ports lined up perfectly and pressed together but the magnetism doesn't take over and they won't dock together. Screenshots: