Kerbart

I'm not a lawyer, but trademark infringement is only trademark infringement when there's a "chance of confusion." Ie. a game company named "spacedock" will have reasonable rights to the name, a record company named "spacedock" won't (as the spacedock site, obviously, is not for selling music). Of course you'd need to spend disproportionate amounts of cash to defend against that, so changing the name is easier... Sigh.

Not entirely. Remember that there is a reason the public test-release is released only through Steam; they're the only ones (within Squad distribution network) who can handle the bandwidth that is associated with the rapid (daily?) updates during the test cycle. Contrary to popular belief (read: Tintin and the Cursed Mods) hosting server space and having ample amounts of bandwidth for downloads available is not free and the ability to have several hundred or maybe thousand users download a couple of gigabytes of content on a daily basis is nothing to frown upon. Steam would not be where they are now if they didn't put a tremendous amount of work in it. Conversely, they can charge what they do because, apparently, for Squad, it is worth it; otherwise Squad wouldn't be distributing the game through Steam. If the added value of Steam was minimal (“they can just sit back and watch the money roll in”) that wouldn't be the case.

Which is why I say that it's very hard to use on a day-to-day basis.

Yes, I like my designs as neat and tight as possible, and I run the fuel lines very short It makes it easily into orbit with about 500 m/s DV left, I estimate (I haven’t really checked, but it is about half a tank) — enough to comfortably dock with my Kerbin station at a 300×300km orbit, not enough to visit the moons. But I don’t need more than that; for travel beyond LKO I have a fleet of specialized transporters at my space stations.

The four outer boosters feed into the central core and they drop off first (Vostok/Soyuz style). Does that count as onion staging? I used to use a Skipper and Jumbo tank for this launcher but the Reliants/Swivel get the job done for considerably less money.

Here's my "Apollo" (stop laughing) low orbit crew shuttle. Orbital stage (+ escape tower) weighs 12,500 kg. Launches just fine using Reliants (and one Swivel in the center stage, for control and since it has better Isp higher up)

Would you mind sharing a picture of said lifter?

You didn't need to, but I appreciate that you're proving my point. Of course, you can grind if you want to. Nobody's going to stop you from doing that. But you don't have to. For all intents and purposes, let's observe the task of putting a simple space station in Mun orbit as a basis for surface exploration. Shouldn't cost more than 70,000 to launch, but let's throw in a laboratory and a big fuel tank, and call it 100,000 to launch. Oh boy! Sounds like grinding your way through at least 15 parts test to recover that investment! With a little bit of foresight you've been hoarding the right contracts. First you cash in 75,000 for putting the station in Kerbin orbit (perhaps picking up some pocket change on the way up for hauling & testing parts while you're at it). Don't go straight to Mun from there; let's put in a higher orbit first and cash in 50,000 for a satellite contract (investment: one thermometer), then send it to Mun, receive another 125,000 for putting a station in Munar orbit and then collect another 75,000 for placing a satellite in Mun orbit before placing the station in its final desired orbit. That 275,000 in pure profit for something you wanted to do anyway. I get tons of fun out of figuring out how to maximize contract yield, while juggling my kerbals around the system to expose them to as much experience as I can.

I think there are misconceptions about “the other modes” on either side of the fence. For me, Sandbox is about unlimited possibilities, fantastic projects and unrestricted creativity. Also; testing out stuff. What it's not: “too easy because everything is handed to you.” Sandbox pushes you much harder to build the Perfect Ship as there's no excuse to hide behind regarding bad design. Career is about building crafts within imposed restrictions, which brings out the best in creativity for some. What it's not: “endless grinding of senseless contracts to finance your program.” I don't do the contracts I don't like. The trick is to let the contracts do the work for you and the money will stream in effortlessly (right now I'm at day 30 of a Remote Tech career and I just unlocked all buildings). Both modes can be fun, but you have to play them with the right mind set; if you don't then “the other mode” looks stupid and you can't imagine why people would play it that way.

To be a pedantic ..., geostationary orbit is by definition above Earth; there's no such thing as a geostationary orbit above Kerbin. It would be a kerbostationary orbit.

One might wonder why NASA doesn't use the Saturn 5 rocket for crew rotation runs on the ISS. Or the Space Shuttle for that matter. Of course you can choose to ignore cost. And you're absolutely right. If cost isn't an issue I'd be using Mainsails and Vectors for everything. That depends. My standard shuttle to get a Mk1-2 pod into orbit utilizes a first stage with a Swivel and four Reliants as boosters. And an orbital stage with a terrier. Inadequate? Pray tell, how can 900 m/s DV in orbit be inadequate? It gets me to my transfer station (and back to Kerbin) for a meager 35,000 funds. And I'm talking about a fully decked out launch vehicle with escape tower and party lights. When I build that same configuration with a Skipper or a Mainsail I really have to scrape to stay under 50,000. And for unmanned satellites I hardly ever need anything else than a Swivel and two Thumpers. Why would I build something bigger when it's not needed? That's why it's called rocket science. But really, that totally depends on what you're lifting. For large payloads they won't do of course. But the Vector and Mainsail are equally unfit for light payloads. There's nothing wrong with building big, but I do recommend trying the opposite for a while and build as small and as light as possible. You'll be amazed how far you can get with something super small. One of the really hard parts in this game, especially in Sandbox mode, is fighting the urge to build big. Small can be challenging but it is very powerful. And when building small, Mr. Swivel and Mr. Reliant are your friends!

I'm pretty sure that the acceleration required for a 3 second trip (ignoring unimportant issues like breaking the speed of light) will ensure that there will not be a lot of brain matter left after arriving. Yes; I know you meant 3 days. But that wouldn't make it nearly as funny.

And then someone will complain that when landing their 800 part battlecruiser, after spawning of five 300-part troop pods, that the game becomes sluggish.

If only there were a group of Kerbals hanging out there in space that virtually nobody knows of, and who have plenty of experience in boarding ships. If only!

Sir, you are absolutely correct. I assume of course, that with that you mean that “stock” would include the mods that I usually play with and none of those filthy heretic mods those troglodytes like to ruin their game with (and that I for obvious reasons do not install).

Are the twins free to roam around in the lab? Thompberry is doomed in that case. Their destructive capacity has been proofed in the past, and locking them up in a laboratory seems only a marginally smarter choice than locking MacGyver up in a tool shed. If they're tied to their seats and unable to remove their restraints (but how did they end up like that in the first place?) then it looks a lot better for him.

A little bit longer than that. The experimental pre-release has barely gone live, and on the various youtube and twitch streams is a healthy amount of bugs being demonstrated. I expect at least a week. And to be honest, hopefully a bit longer than that, meaning that Squad is learning about and fixing a jumbo tank full of bugs!

I feel that this is the scene where the Spanish Inquisition makes their entrance.

Houston can handle panamax vessels and oil tankers. You can probably fit a dozen fully assembled rockets on a ship that can enter the port of Houston. Brownsville offers no advantages in that respect.

My only guess is that Squad considered the 0.18.3 based demo a bit too playable. To prevent people from sticking to “I’m content with the demo” they then made the 1.0 based demo far more limited to encourage buying the product. I’m not sure if that is the right approach. The game is rich enough by itself to encourage people to buy the full version anyway, and I think you’ll get more players on board by making the demo playable instead of insanely hard (for those that never played the game before, which, I assume, is the target audience).

The less part mods I can play with, the happier I am. So I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. There's a “clam shell fairings” mod that gets rid of the popcorn deployment, and if that mod breaks my ships can still launch. It will probably break with the update, but then again, the update will bring us clam shell deployment so who cares? As for lack of smoothness; yes. But real world fairings aren't always that smooth either and you can achieve a lot by working with small segments. The truly annoying thing is the aero bug—I can't wait for the 1.1 update in that respect.

Hello Vic, The abilities get unlocked when you upgrade buildings. Right-click on a building to see what becomes available with the next upgrade.

In space there's no friction. That means it doesn't cost you anything to maintain your speed. That also means it does cost you energy to slow down. DV is how much speeding up/slowing down you can do for maneuvering. Consider DV a measure for "how many miles you have in the tank." For instance, it will take you between 3,000 and 3,500 m/s DV to get into Kerbin low orbit (depending on how efficient your launch is). It will take roughly an additional 800 m/s to get a Mun encounter, and another, say, 400 m/s to turn that encounter into an orbit. If you want to return from that orbit to Kerbin it'll take another 200 m/s. So in total you'll need about 5,000 m/s DV to launch, orbit the Mun, and return. DV read-outs will tell you in advance if you're going to complete your mission, or run out of propellant along the way (assuming you don't waste any of it).

Hello Victor, welcome to KSP. You'll find various opinions on this and not everyone agrees with me, but with this disclaimer out of the way: start in Sandbox to get the hang of things like "getting into orbit", "going to the moon," and so on. I see career more as a "challenge" mode than as a tutorial mode, and you're absolutely right that it's hard enough for a starting player to do all those things with the proper tools, let alone without them. The advice against starting in Sandbox is that you might get into the habit of building way too big and too heavy. So just don't do that. Try to keep things as light as possible. In fact, for moon (Mun/Minmus) missions, stick to the 1.25m tanks and engines; that's all you need to get there.