technion

You say that like you can't play the game without specific stats. I've returned from sea level on Eve, without ever knowing the stats of any part of the rocket that did so. I did that using experience. What more do think mechjeb is needed for? Assuming that's a stock rocket.. I'd accept that challenge. .craft file? http://imageshack.us/scaled/large/35/cq4g.png

Having just been to eeloo without Mechjeb, I had no issues finding the right intersects and to say it took about five hours means it took about two hours to launch three stages and dock them in LKO, and an hour to appreciate the view on the ground. And I'm yet to build anything not ion probe driven that can remain stable during a physics warp.

If you were already planning on making the rescue, the easy way to do this in future would be: don't transmit. You would get more science having brought it all back anyway.

It makes more sense than you realise. Gathering science means EVA reports, crew reports and surface samples - things you can't do on a probe. Once you unlock a temperature probe, you'll notice it doesn't actually generate a significant amount of science, particularly if you plan on transmitting that data instead of recovering it. The later science parts do more, but you can unlock the probe you want by then. The .22 story of "send a probe everywhere and gather science from every part of the system" just doesn't work now that they've ended transmit spam.

Seriously how was anything more than the mun possible at that point?

Haven't tried struts. Whilst it's the obvious answer, I just didn't think two of the lowest thrust engines in the game would actually need them- the implication would be that the bi-coupler would be just about unusable as a part without struts if they were needed in this simple case.

Hey guys, I wouldn't have thought this could be simpler. One orange tank, one bicoupler underneath, and two nuclear engines. I'm not sure if it's the engines of the coupler, but trying to accelerate in a kerbin orbit and these things wobble to heck. I was planning on using this as a tug but there's no way I would put any weight on it in its current state. Any idea what would cause this?

Congrats! Honestly this is the part of the game that opens up all the harder gameplay.

Hey guys, I seem to be having this bug: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/1220 Specifically, when the docking ports are 1m away and looking right at each other, the sigil on my navball suggests I'm off by about 45 degrees. The bug referenced is quite old (.21) yet I haven't seen much complaining about it here, so is there something specific in my build hat caused this? Docking two landers has been incredibly time consuming and repetitive without a working navball.

The bottom one doesn't look far off being mun capable. Just to confirm, does it make a nice orbit around kerbin before those LV-909's fire? I think the only trick there is to build out the bottom stage to make that the case, because the top part is certainly capable of making it there and landing.

Try sending an unmanned rescue mission

I'm just preparing for a Joolian tour, and I still don't see it. I can pack a science jr and goo canister for each moon, and it's less weight to haul out there than a science lab. It does mean I'll only get one reading from each moon, but by the time a person has enough tech to perform a Joolian tour, they can finish off the entire tree with what I'm planning on bringing back anyway.

Awesome mission. Hitting up all those planetary bodies in a single launch is impressive, regardless of the Gilly situation. I think Dres is underestimated in general, it burns a lot more dv than it looks like it should.

My method of contrary to every other user, so take this with a grain of salt. I never had success with lateral docking movements once the craft was of any size. I do a process of jumping back and forth between crafts and making sure they are pointing in the right direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyline_(film) This is probably one of the worst movies ever made. I'm disappointed by how highly it was rated in that Wikipedia article. It does however have a relevant premise: The alien weapons are automated, probably a relic from some earlier war, they saw a civilisation and killed on site.

Coming in to land. On the ground. You can clearly see there's 10 "stored data". Woop! I plan on repeating this on Eeloo and Dres. That should unlock the tree enough for a Joolian tour.

Launch! This was supposed to be asparagus staged. Oh well, it made orbit before the fuel was low enough to manually transfer some around. Now for the most important bit. Once you start your EVA, "take data" from the lander. That means your kerbal grabs all your gathered science. As before, climbing inside the rocket will clearly show you all the science you've just brought onboard. Firing the external stages of the interplanetary unit. We were almost home at this point. There's a lot of extra dv on this tug.

When you first EVA, you should perform an EVA report and take a surface sample. Here's where it gets interesting. Climb up to the lander and "Store Experiments". Climb in now and perform the experiments. There's a science jr, a goo canister, and four instruments sitting on top to be used. Guess what! You can do another EVA report because you stored the first one. Although it will let you do another one on the ground, you won't get credit for the same report. Just jetpacking a little way up however, and we're "flying". Then climb up to the top, and collect them all. You need to be very close to each unit. When you climb back inside, the screen will make it clear that you've recovered ALLLL that science. Now you can blow that decoupler. All those science materials are inactive and we don't need to keep them.

There's not a lot of aerobraking at Duna, it took a burn to circularise even at this altitude: It's important to prepare the mothership orbit to be flat and circular. Note we only took one kerbal - once we leave, its' up to the lander to rendezvous. After a which EVA, the lander goes down: This lander has two mystery goo. We observe one while still in the atmosphere, on our way down. Packed a tonne of parachutes:

Hey guys, I've been real appreciative of the career mode in 0.23. I first went to Duna in sandbox. I strapped together mainsails and jumbo orange tanks, then sat there adding struts until it didn't explode on launch. It's great looking at something smaller. This mission explains how I gathered over 1000 science points from one launch. This was not rigged to involve any excessive or cheap options, we just did all the science on the surface and returned. This is what we launched: Take off: Once the lifter does its job, a skipper helps us start the long burn:

Both your answers make similar points, I was high up and fast. I'll come down for the next try.

Hey guys, I'm trying to use the barometer for the first time outside Kerbin. I'm at a height of 22km over Duna. The wiki tells me the atmosphere is 40km+. If I "toggle display" it assures me it's at 0.04 pressure. However, attempting to take a reading still says "Atmospheric pressure scan can't be done right now". That's what I see when you're in a vacuum. What's required to make this work?

Don't be afraid to quicksave right before you start your ascent.. and reload if you crash. Also, if you're in orbit, you can just sit and wait until you're on the daylight side.

I keep hearing this, but my experience is always "kill SAS and one will start rotating uncontrollably".

To comment on this moreso than your original question, I saw it as cheap that people on Tier 0 were building massive probes to go and survey the half the solar system on the first launch. The new transmit system makes this unuseful. Yes you can still do it, but it max out the tree for you. I've made three trips to the Mun and two to Minmus in my new career mode - both of which are places I'd only been once in my large sandbox game. And they are actually enjoyable now, as opposed to me just saying "well I haven't left the Kerbin system yet.. that sucks".