Kerbart

A reliable launch vehicle decided to just skip a stage and left a Mun base component stuck in Kerbin orbit with not enough dV to make it to the mun, trailed by fully fueled up 2nd stage attached to a burned out 1st stage.

Ouch, there are so many inaccuracies in that statement that it almost hurts. Newton's laws are still valid for everyday physics; there's nothing in Einstein's theory that says "You have it 180° wrong regarding everyday physics" Perpetuum Mobile's and reactionless drives are not "an addition to Newton's laws;" they are a complete denial of Newton's laws and our understanding of thermodynamics. Is it possible that we somehow have missed that in the past 500 years? Sure it is. Just like it's possible that from now on, for the rest of my life, I'm going to win the powerball every week. Possible. Just don't bet on it. Einstein's theory explains why Newton's model of the solar system is not accurate once you get into the n-th decimal. It's not like it's describing something entirely different. The planets still go around the sun in (near) elliptical paths; with only slight deviations from Newton's model. The whole "patent clerk" thing is getting kind of stale. Coming out of college Einstein couldn't find a scientific job and did hold a position at a patent office for a few years. But by the time he developed his relativity theory he was already an established scientist who had held teaching positions at various universities. It's like claiming that a Nobel prize winner "is a humble foot soldier" because he or she spent a year in the army as a draftee. As said before: the best way to shut up the cynics (including me): just build the damn machine. Until then you will not find a lot of interest from the scientific community.

You say tomato, I say tomato... I foresee multiplayer becoming a lot more... fascinating As for using the claw as an alternative to docking... My take on that is that it should leave the "clawed" fuel tank with a capacity of zero, as it now has a gaping hole in it. But really, we're speculating on the functionality of a part we haven't even seen a screenshot from.

At that level "major discoveries" are usually extremely arcane and only interesting for a few who specialists (who then tend to get overexcited and think everything else should know this). It's usually something along the lines of "this confirms something that the rest of the world had already taken for granted and it will take a two year university study to understand what we are talking about in the first place"

To answer the question in the subject line: "By doing a bit more role-playing" Of course you can send Jeb all by himself to Eeloo for a 600 day mission. But in reality, would you? What if he gets sick, or lonely? If only for the health of the crew (or in case the health of the crew is problematic) you'd want to send a multi-Kerbal crew. But KSP doesn't force me to do that. Of course. KSP Also doesn't force you to not use HyperEdit, so the most efficient way for an Eeloo landing would just be to HyperEdit your ship onto its surface. Most of us apply a self-imposed rule to not do that; you can apply a similar self-imposed rule to not use single crews on long extended missions.

The great thing is that you can power it with a perpetuum mobile; similar kind of physics are involved.

The little envelope? For "put it in a envelope to save it?" I mean what else would the envelope be for? Not mail, that'd be obsolete

OOOOOOH!!!! I HAD THE SAME LABELS! I used them for my backup tapes. Dry-erase labels. Such a great invention. My floppies I had simply numbered and just kept track of in a dbase file (together with a dbase script to print out my warez catalog)

We're not talking about the enclosure, after all we're calling it a disk, not a square. Ergo, we're talking about the carrier of the magnetic material on the inside. Which is just as floppy for a 3½″ disk as it is for a 5¼″ one.

The Office GUI is one of the most scrutinized parts in the Microsoft line-up and it's something where nothing gets changed without extensive testing (unlike, say, the Windows start menu, but I digress. I do like Metro by the way). The fact that it hasn't changed is an indication that confusion the large group of existing users (for something extremely fundamental) is not worth the "more accurate" icon. And what should it change in? A memory card?

You, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten the great words of the late John Fitzgerald Kerman:

It was late, I was tired. Or at work. Whatever. And you're completely right

Judging by the picture you've decided to build microships now?

The game allows you safe atmospheric re-entry with the lander-can. That is more a shortcoming of current atmospheric modeling than anything else; the descriptions of the lander cans clearly says that they are too flimsy to survive atmospheric re-entry. So one can argue that while they have a better weight, you do not want to use them for role-playing reasons. Do you have to use the Mk I and Mk II pods for atmospheric re-entry? Of course not, that's up to you. In fact, you can safely return those lander cans to Kerbin's surface without atmospheric re-entry at all: just use hyper-edit. How far you're willing to go in self-chosen limitations in the game is up to you and don't let anyone else tell you anything different. But as for a reason why to use the Mk II capsule: well, that's one of them. Because not everyone sees the lander can as an acceptable choice for safe return to Kerbin surface.

“The PC industry reported a surprising uptake in sales in early March 2014...â€Â

Pogo oscillations caused the center engine of the 2nd stage to shut down by itself two minutes prematurely. Had the engine not shutdown, the famous LEM accident would never have happened -- as an unplanned rapid disassembly would likely have ensued.

Parts hit the ground on land and effectively bounce off. Parts hit the ground on water and effectively dig in. Once parts are dug in they get ripped off. This is why landing low-wing propeller aircraft on water (assuming it's not equipped with pontoons) is safer than a high-wing one, as the wings skid the water and allow you to slow down, where with a high-wing configuration the fusealage digs in. For passenger jets it's a different story as the wing-mounted engines will dig in. Sully did a fantastic job with his landing on the Hudson.

The Tutorials Section has a lot of information on docking. What's wrong with the Scott Manley video?

How about a food 3D-printer? Not just for space. Imagine watching food network and just hitting "print" if you want to eat what they're showing!

Science missions. Of course they can radio back the results of the experiments, but that only gets them 40% of the science.

Reverse engineering is gateway behavior. It seems so innocent... reverse engineer a lander here, a rocket there... but it's a slippery slope. Before you know it you're using maneuvering nodes instead of eyeballing your burns (not to mention using the Unholy Navball Abomination "to get your bearings" -- yeah right. And you're reading certain magazines just for the interviews, right?) and from there it's a small step to watching those vile Manley videos. And not just under bed sheets, oh no. IN PUBLIC. Shamelessly! After that it's on to snorting heroin and bestiality. Save your soul! Stay away from reverse engineering!

Well there's the Dunning–Kruger effect of course. Which means anybody who has "gone to space" (mind you, not into orbit) considers themselves and expert while others are not because "they still have to complete docking using the in-cockpit view only while doing atmospheric reentry" “I watched two Manley videos all the way to the ‘fly safe’ part†is missing from the list, by the way.

About finishing up my campaign of getting samples from every single biome. Which you have to do twice per biome to get close to 100% (unless someone knows a trick to do it in one visit).

You might want to take a look at your mods. I've clocked over a thousand hours in KSP and I've think I had one Crash To Desktop. It's behaving pretty flawlessly for me. I don't run a lot of mods (not that I'm against them, I just don't have a high-end machine that can run a lot of mods) and it's really, really stable for me.

Try a 100×100 orbit and a 100×3000 orbit and dock at periapsis. You will find the velocity difference at the same altitude quite well within the realms of possibilities.