Kerbart

Reaction wheels supply torque. RCS and engines supply force which, when applied from a distance of the COM (the "lever") results in torque. Therefore, it does matter where you place RCS or engines, as it will affect how much torque they will create when running them (which might or might not be the desired side-effect). For reaction wheels it does not matter as their output is direct torque, and not a force.

And that is assuming that the “good guys” are really the good guys!

Flat rectangular panels. While I can understand the resistance against procedural engines and tanks, because (a) it's against the "lego mindset" of the game and (b) that's not how things work in real life either, I don't think sheet metal should come in prefixed sizes only. We can get fairings any shape and size we want, why not panels, too?

“...on his mission to explore new features, and strange new bugs. to boldly go where no author has gone before!” not sure how I came up with that.

248.6km. Make it 250. You probably want a bit more above that in case you do not have a perfect 90° spread.

That’s not how Progres™ works, though. While pop culture has gotten us used to envision oil coming out if a faucet and that stream suddenly stops, reality is a bit more complex. As an oil field depletes, you just have to work harder (pressurize it, heat it, etc) to get the oil out. As demand starts to outstrip supply, price goes up and suddenly those fields that where not economic to exploit, now are. I have heard multiple times that, for that reason, we will never run out of oil. Consumption will go down, prices will go up, alternative energy sources become viable (it's already happening). But complete depletion, Mad Max style, is unlikely to take place.

Pretty much what @ElWanderer says. My deorbit procedure is maybe a bit laborious but perfectly reproducable: From high altitude, burn to a x × 90km orbit At periapsis, burn to 90×80km orbit At periapsis, burn to 80×80km orbit (doing it in three steps guarantees that you end up with 80×80, not 81×79) Depending on the vessel wait until a certain longitude (I keep a list for my standard vessels) and burn for 80×30 with SAS pointing retrograde At 60km altitude, turn off SAS, and stage (ditching the deorbit engine and activating parachutes that are preset to the right altitude) This lands me within a few km of the KSC, every time. If you overshoot or undershoot, just adjust the longitude for that vessel class.

Helium being a finite resource that we literally blow on birthday balloons, I'm always wondering how large airships can be growth industry.

You need a way to add some creepy music to that last paragraph. Excellent suspense!

Ah, the good ole' Duna-Moho transfer...

You could organize something locally and do it in a VFW hall or something like that; they cost little to rent and the cost can be covered by a modest entry fee. It wouldn't really be a "kerbalkon," more a local meetup but that could be a start for bigger things.

Technically not an aspect of designing, but I think the biggest hurdle to overcome in real life is execution. You can trust your Kerbals, silly as they are, to put your design perfectly together. Sensors are never mounted upside down, docking ports are not mounted the wrong way around (unless specifically ordered to do so in your design), there are no wrenches left behind in fuel tanks, instruments don't suffer from misalignment due to vendors using the wrong units, etc. I once saw a quote from a CEO of a large bank, saying how he could leave his strategy plan for the next five years in the plane, without worrying that his competitors would get anything out of it; it was the execution of the plan that mattered, and without that, they could never copy their success. And good execution doesn't come from a 20 page business plan; it takes blood, sweat, tears and commitment. A large part of NASA's success in the 1960s was due to that. When you'd ask a sanitation worker what they did they wouldn't say “I clean the toilet floor,” but rather “I'm helping to put men on the moon” (or so I'm told). I will check out that mini-series though. It looks cool!

I don't think it's broken, it seems to be in great shape, emphasis great. I'm just surprised you guys get that far. As soon as i launch anything with the centrifuge in it, everything disappears. My ship, the KSC, Kerbin, even the Sun... the whole kittenkaboodle.

I love the way it looks! It's totally not my style and I will likely never use it, but that doesn't mean it isn't pretty! I love to see big fuel tanks, with lots of rivets, cochran-style boilers and wood panelling!

If you have an iPad you should try "Paper," it's a really nice app that mimics drawing on paper. Congrats on being retired, by the way

Why yes! Although it wasn't debris before I hit it (usually an overly enthousiastic transfer burn forgetting that the space station you just decoupled from is still there, a few km away). Lesson learned; after decoupling from a station I always burn retrograde to change altitude with a few km. That guarantees that you'll be ahead of said station when boosting your orbit, and out of the way when lowering it.

Nothing wrong with using “old fashioned” tools like paper, pencil and pen and then digitizing the result. Pre-digital tools offer possibilities, as well as constraints, that can be quite stimulating for creativity.

One solution is to use a Mk I lander can and clip it into whatever you want to have an airlock. I use them all the time for that reason. It has a nice hatch the Kerbal can hold onto, and it's relative light weight (660 kg) is just right for such a purpose. You can usually offset the weight with something useful on the opposite side anyway. or mount another "air lock" on the opposite side.

In my mind, career mode is fine if you don't think too much about it, which is they way Kerbals seem to operate anyway, so that covers the “realism” angle as well then. As to if career mode “meets its goals” is highly dependend on what those goals should be. Historically, KSP was sandbox only and that suited the initial wave of players just fine. As the game progressed, new players wanted “things to do” and Science was added, with the tech tree; career mode with its contracts is a mere refinement of that. In the sense of “give the player some direction,” it fulfills its role. Is it historically accurate? I’m not an expert on Kerbal history, so I really can’t tell. But who is? Is there logic in ladders and wheels placed in higher tiers? Not from an Earthly historical perspective. But if you put all of the “simple stuff” in the two lower tiers and keep the game challenging and enjoyable, you’ll have to make unpleasant choices regarding the tech tree as well. Squad made the choice to have a tech tree that offers challenges and rewards (better parts), not to make a historical accurate representation of space flight. And perhaps it should be an option to pick the tree at career start; “Kerbal Space,” “From planes to rovers,” and “The Human Space Race.” That would perhaps be the best way to make everyone happy.

As others pointed out, @guigui30000's idea is fantastic. It solves the eclipse problem, continues to make Minmus an excellent outpost for interplanetary missions and keeps things pretty much the same for beginning users. When do we start?

It looks great but it doesn't seem to like other mods (scatterer, sve, texture replacer?). Some things I noticed: The seams. Minmus has a highly visible black squared grid on it. It seems to be part of the texture, so I think it's an artifact from creating the texture images. Lots of crashes, especially when entering the VAB. Crashes disappeared when the mod was removed I have a pair of flags at the end of the runway, like a lot of people do. In the KSC screen they show up in the right spots about half the time, and in the weirdest places (a few 100m in the sky, wrong location, etc) the other half of the time. When it works, it's absolutely amazing! Hopefully you'll be able the problems some of us run into, it's worth having this mod installed.

People are animals. Even if everyone acted with the best interests of the community in mind, it's easy to think of nightmare scenarios where the original creator of the mod has to deal with issues that were not created by him (or even he managed to avoid in his version, but someone else decided to "improve" it with a fork). A quick search around this forum will reveal many of those cases and that's why it's not uncommon for authors to pick restrictive licenses. On a different note, assuming you're referring to US law (as many will now point out that 99% of this forum is not from the US), copyright does not expire after 75 years. Anything published after Disney's “Steamboat Willy” has indefinite copyright (the duration of copyright gets extended with 25 years every 25 years), at least in the US. YMMV depending on where you live though.

When comparing "2001" to contemporary "Godzilla" movies it becomes clear why Japan couldn't do a "moon mission."

The reason for that has more to do with the distribution of torque through the entire construction than anything else. That's true in KSP as much as in real life. If you put your torque wheels at the end of a long construction, part of that torque will be absorbed by bending that construction, inducing nasty vibrations (that don't dampen out so quickly in space as they do on earth).

You're talking about the moment of inertia, which is the equivalent of mass for rotation. The formula for angular acceleration is τ=I×α (similar to F=m×a). If the position of where torque is applied matters, then why does the formula for angular acceleration not take that into account? Torque is force×arm length; for the force to be applied the position matters. But if you apply torque (without any net forces), the place where it gets applied really doesn't matter. I had my teachers at college, when I was studying mechanical engineering, explaining this to me. I'd like to see what you can back up your claims with.