MatzahMan

Personally, when I am stuck or without a clear goal in mind, I build crazy contraptions. Rocket-powered cars, jet powered cars, building a space station then sending a craft the splits apart and watch the wreckage (never can get tired of the f5 key), "making" rescue mission scenarios, etc. Eventually an idea pops into my head and I start doing something on Laythe or Duna, with a clear goal and interest in what I am doing.

I don't know if this is answering your question very well, but if nothing works then you can always launch them separately and dock them. It add a whole lot more fun, and if you wanted your rover and manned module in a different location, they are both able to land separately.

I used to not use them because they show up in the staging bar and they are a pain to organize. Before using them I was always vaguely concerned about huge tanks dropping inches away from my main rocket stack. Then one mission I did my routine staging and all of a sudden my rocket started leaning to the side. I instantly made sure my SAS was toggled on, but that wasn't the problem. As I fought for control of my craft, I was looking desperately on the upper end of my rocket to see if anything fell off/was destroyed/etc. Finding nothing wrong, I found pressing the "D" key constantly and turning on my RCS approximately canceled out the craft leaning to the left. I managed to get into orbit, and when I decoupled that stage, I took a short trip around it for one last check. I found that one of my four LV-T45 custer was gone (career mode, only I only had unlocked skippers not mainsails). I guess I had a little Apollo 13 moment there. Ever since then, I use sepratons a lot.

1001010101010010010111010101010101010...etc.

What if parts had a limited time before they wore out and needed to be replaced? This would mean that space stations couldn't orbit forever, without consequences, probes would have a limited life, and a whole new type of mission might be created: maintenance missions. In my mind, parts would not wear out annoyingly fast, would not need always to be constantly replaced, and be not be frustrating overall. This would add another dimension to the game because we couldn't launch rockets and not worry about them anymore, we would have to maintain them, take care of them, and think ahead before recklessly sending a rocket into space. Space Stations: Eventually habitation modules would wear down and would need to be replaced. Solar and power generators would burn out or short circuit and need to be worked on by Kerbals, to continue generating power. Tool kits and replacement parts might be a necessary parts to a functional space station. Kerbals might regularly inspect the station and scheduled maintenance rockets might be a must to bring a space station to its full potential. Probes: Instead of probes orbiting endlessly around Jool, probes could eventually wear out and turn into debris. We would be forced to think smart, choose durable parts capable of lasting the journey and sustaining themselves in a high radiation environment like Jool's. We would also have to fulfill the science experiments and observations in reasonable time. Problems: They big flaw in this idea is time warp. You could be concentrating on a mission to Duna, only to switch back to your space station to find it in complete shambles. Also, I don't know about you guys, but I dislike doing one mission over and over, and launching routine maintenance rockets would be extremely boring and repetitive. Another problem is I like to switch up my missions and work on a variety of missions at once. (ex. docking a module to a space station, then deciding to work on a Duna mission instead of launching another module.) this would make playing very difficult because I would need to constantly switch back to all of my other satillites/probes/stations/etc. and maintain them. I know there is more problems than ideas, but this is just an idea I wanted to throw out there and see what people say. Please mention improvements/ideas/solutions and people can discuss it.

Thank you, that's going to help immensely.

I hate when a whole list of flags fills up the tracking station list and it takes me longer to find what I am looking for because I have to sort out the flags. Did the game do this in .21? I can't remember.

Although I do like cosmetics, having your ships labeled correctly help with organization and faster identification at the tracking center.

Thank you very much for all the responses, you are all very helpful

At the tracking station and on the map view they both have tabs at the top of the screen that let you select ships, landers, bases, stations, etc. I am confused on how they classify these things. I know something with a lander can turns into a "lander" icon, and i think any kind of capsule is a "ship", but when I launch my space station in career mode with stayputniks, it says its a a "ship" not a "station." Is there any way of changing the classification of stuff?

So I was wondering today: What is the lowest possible orbit around Kerbol? I have always had a dream of building a space station/fuel depot around every body in the Kerbol system. So I was thinking the sun might be a fun one to knock off, so does anyone know how low to the sun you can be before burning up/exploding/whatever?

Definitely when I figured out how to dock. It opened a whole new world for me. The actual docking wasn't super cool, but when I parked to ships next to each other, I flung my arms up and I was so happy, my family looked at me strangely and wondered how I could get so excited about "some stupid game." My dad recently has been pretty supportive of the game though.

What I do with my old tugs/obsolete ships/etc. is leave them in orbit an use them as fuel depots by connecting them to other useless fuel containers I have floating around. It's an excuse to build a space station/fuel depot anyway around Minmus, which can also help with interplanetary stuff because its a final stop/refueling before you go out, and its easy to escape Kerbin's gravity from there.

Try and replicate current or past satellites/rovers/other missions. Some ideas: Curiosity, the voyagers, Cassini-Huygens, etc. Here is a list on interplanetary stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interplanetary_voyages

Thank you for mentioning that parachute, I always looked at the stats and it looked like it had less drag so I never used it. But now you mentioned this I am going to be using these a lot.

The nuke engine on the back probably pushes the CoG back(those are heavy), so putting a LV-T45/30 might be better. Also the nuke engine may not provide enough thrust to get into orbit, another reason for trying the LV-T45/30

A cool planet to add, even if it has no real world equivalent, would be a planet/captured asteroid in a polar orbit. All of the plane changes from Kerbin's orbit would be expensive and challenging. To make it even more difficult, the planet could have a periapsis around Moho's orbit and an apoapsis around Eeloo's. This drastic change in velocity would make it challenging to estimate how much to lead the planet in its orbit.

I would redesign your rocket. I don't know if you know about different kinds of staging (asparagus, onion, etc.) its extremely helpful and lifting larger objects into LKO and beyond. Also, building a designated rocket for lifting heavy items is good because you can make a lot of different types of payloads using the same rocket design.

When I was first learning the game, I sent my spaceships into a westerly orbit...then I realized it was an easterly orbit was standard. So I still had a few ships orbiting the opposite way of most on my satellites in ~100 km orbit that i was to lazy to go anywhere with. I was at first nervous every time the icons on the map would get close to each other, but I soon realized it wasn't much of a threat because they were passing 5-20 km from one one another...or so I thought. One day, as I was waiting for my refueling tanker to catch up to my space station, two icons on the map got close to each other, and then disappeared. At first I thought it was a bug, but after looking at debris in the area, I realized my ships had collided. Very little debris survived, two orbital velocities in opposite directions is not pretty.

After going to the moon, reaching Duna, and putting 80 hours in the game, I decided it might be a good time to learn how to Rendezvous. Before it looked hard and complex, but I finally watched a couple quality tutorials (thanks ksp forum and Scott Manley!!) I decided it might not be as hard as I thought it was. After docking two capsules, I was pumped, so I created a space station. Now I have a lifetime supply of rocket fuel, more docking ports than I will ever need (different types too), and a lot of kerbals. Then I realized I didn't really have an objective, I was just launching the same stuff over and over. So do you have any ideas of what to do with rendezvous and space stations now?

Another idea might be to get into a 70-80,000m orbit instead of a 100,000m or 300,000m. I don't know if it saves any fuel, but its a lot easier to get to, and since its only a temporary orbit, you don't need to make it all nice and pretty and circularized. I know I'm not answering your main question, but it might be an idea you want to consider. Hope this helps!

Thank you very much for the information

Thank you very much for all your helpful replies. Just wondering though, if I add more intakes, can I get higher in the atmosphere without spinning?

Hello, I am relatively new to Kerbal Space Program, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. After I made it to Minmus, I got really interested in space planes. But as I grew more comfortable with them, I wanted to but one into orbit. But I encountered a problem, at a high altitude with very low intake air, my plane starts to spin violently to the left, and sparks fly out the engines. It takes at least 30 seconds to recover from the spin, and even SAS and RCS, cant stop it for a while. The highest I got was 35,000m before it started spinning. I am also not using any mods. I have tried transferring fuel to the nose so the CoG doesn't move to much, but it doesn't affect it. Why is this happening? Thank you in advance.