RSwordsman

I like the idea of a bonus for limiting debris. But I do oppose penalties for leaving it; it's not always fair. For instance, there have been a few occasions where I've had landers survive contact with the surface of a world, but are non-returnable. In those cases, I have little choice but to extract the crew and leave the lander there. But I don't want a junked lander cluttering up my tracking screen, so before departure, I change the icon on the craft from whatever it was to "debris." I prefer to leave it than to unrealistically delete it from existence. There was also one time I sent up a space station core that was just a docking hub, no probe. It was absolutely a bad idea (as one clunked docking attempt left it in an unstoppable spin) but debris can serve purposes if installed on purpose. There is too much of a reasonable doubt about it for me to consider it all waste that is best avoided.

Is this really an issue to some people? Spaceplanes notwithstanding, I usually ditch my control surfaces with an early stage and don't even notice engine gimbal. But even if I did, two clicks will turn it off.

Wow! I've long waited for the day when we have a reactionless drive, and here it is in KSP at least in a way that is impressively non-cheaty (meaning it was discovered rather than intentionally built in). Bottled Krakens. I never thought I'd see the day.

If you'll notice in the picture above your post, there is a gap region that allows for a buffer zone on those polar nodes. The satellites go around each other.

FWIW, when you do an EVA report on Kerbin, most times they'll say "A spacesuit wasn't entirely necessary to get here, was it?"

Lol, you do have a point there. Some sound overhauling would be nice.

I am not very well-informed about control mods like this, but to point you in the correct direction, I would lean towards no. I don't think there is a way to control a remote ship like this.

My lifters are quite reliable. Within acceptable payload masses, there's no reason why they shouldn't work every single launch, save some uncontrollable physics glitch. But even that is infrequent. How easy (difficult) they are to fly is another matter, but the fact of the matter is that they work. Whackjob, that album is some of the most magnificent destruction I've laid eyes on.

I would say that in an existing orbit at least, it's more efficient to burn at maximum throttle. The theoretical Hohmann transfer uses infinitely short impulses to change course; the closer you can match that, the closer your fuel consumption will be to ideal. And as for whether to use an LV-N or an equally efficient Skipper, I'd go with the nuke. Unless I'm mistaken, it weighs less for the same Isp, so you should get better dV overall.

With six SRBs, they should be almost enough to lift that thing with a respectable TWR all on their own. You could try giving the liquid engines just a little bit of juice to maintain course* and acceleration rate (I've found about 2-2.5 m/s^2 is good with FAR at least) and that should significantly extend the life of your first couple of stages. *It looks like you're using LVT-30s, which don't have thrust vectoring. Is it possible to switch to 45s? IMO there is hardly ever a reason that the 15 extra thrust units of the 30 are worth the loss of gimbaling capability.

As many as I need. More than half of my missions lately have been unmanned. If I do bring Kerbals, ^^exactly what ninja said.

That would definitely be nice. Maybe treating flags like debris to hide by default would be a good option?

I don't think spoilers really help in KSP in their truest sense. They are the little ramp-shaped thing on the back for disrupting (spoiling) the laminar air flow over a car, reducing the "lifting body" effect and giving it better handling. And Kerbal rovers are rarely streamlined or even fast enough for that to be a problem. But if you're talking about a wing, that's a different story. Some people (who are wrong) call them spoilers, but they provide actual downforce. I can see this working as long as you can get KSP to simulate downward lift, and I have no idea if it does.

Until I figure out SSTO spaceplanes, I stick with conventional stack rockets. Shuttles never did it for me-- more advanced than normal rockets, but not advanced enough to get into orbit without a little staged help.

Sexy. I picture years from now a spiritual successor to KSP that looks that magnificent.

The engines I experienced it with were the large stock SRBs and LVT-45s. I will try slowing down to see if that works though. Thanks for the responses so far. EDIT: I slowed my ascent speed to like 1-2 m/s^2 and that seemed to do the trick. It was my aggressive flying all along! XD

I just installed a couple new mods, the most important I'm assuming to be Interstellar. But when launching multiple lifters that were previously tried and true, they are now overheating and exploding before hitting 30,000 meters. And that is on less than 50% thrust! I suspected that it was because Interstellar puts much more importance on waste heat, and offers a bunch of radiators to deal with it. However, the Wiki says nothing about conventional engine waste heat, only that from the mod parts. In practice, I stuck a bunch of radial heatsinks onto the lifter-- no effect; they are reading zero heat load. Is there something I'm missing? Just in case, here's a list of the other mods I installed/updated at the same time (silly, stupid practice, I know. >.<) DRE 4.3 FScience 0.2 KJR 1.7 KAS 4.5 FAR 0.12.5.2 Might it also have something to do with the updated FAR? I've been using a fairly old version until today.

Sounds pretty good to me. It appears to my "wing-it" physics understanding that you're essentially raising your apoapsis veeeery high, making inclination changes much more fuel efficient. The gravity assist from the moon probably helps a ton as well.

That is sexy. How'd it fare in atmospheric flight?

Aah, the easy grace of Kerbal engineering.

I would define it as looking at landing on the Mun as a means to an end, rather than a white-knuckle ordeal that has you cheering if your Kerbals survive the one-way trip. But yeah, Kethane is awesome, and the latest version is fully incorporated into career mode.

That orbital battery is nuts! And congrats on 3/3 placement!

If you're talking about fuel efficiency, I'd also recommend against killing all velocity this way. You can as easily pick a landing spot while using all that horizontal speed to carry you towards it, making adjustments with light burns in between retrograde and vertically up to gradually kill your velocity. I can't actually promise that this way works better fuel-wise as I haven't tested the comparison in person, but I'm working on the assumption that landing is like taking off. You don't go straight up then straight sideways; you do a gravity turn. Just be careful that before you actually hit the dirt (in a flat spot for best results), you are going straight down at ~5m/s or under.

I am also a huge fan of TVTropes, but even if KSP did incorporate asteroids, I highly doubt we'd be able to smash them into larger bodies. If we could though, with all accompanying cataclysmic effects? Uhh I'd have fun with asteroid bombs.

Games that get pushed out invariably suck. With time to work, they will put their heart and soul into the game, making it from a "meh" into a "holy balls they just created a cultural icon." Granted it has already passed "meh" status, but that's generally how it goes if a release date is announced months in advance.