700NitroXpress

My method of slack tank asparagus staging can lift over double the max payload that I saw on his post with the same number of engines. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57409-Leviathan-Heavy-Lifter

This is a rocket chair lander that has SSTO capability. This means it can land anywhere, it can land on Kerban without parachutes, it can land on moons and get back into orbit. It can also be refueled in orbit at your ship and then sent back. This uses relatively low fuel for a lander. If you don't need all the power, shut down four of the engines with an action group to save on fuel. Just add a ladder if you need to, otherwise its good to go and has infinite power supply thanks to a single power generator. Part count: 76 Total Mass: 15.21 tons Download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzQldOZ3E5bHdjSzQ/edit?usp=sharing Pod on the bottom not included.

Not by much, if you start the turn early enough, then the tiny boost you get from the rotation gets canceled out and you end up with the same result as shown below. About 4% difference in fuel consumption.

No, you would be orbiting at the same speed rather it's clockwise or counter clockwise. Your orbital speed in relation to a point on the surface would be greater if you were going opposite of the planet's rotation. You would need to burn the same amount of fuel to land no matter which way you're orbiting.

Or you can use a design without SAS modules, but still get the SAS advantages with the super lightweight probe core. Shown here is my SSTO Rocket Chair:

You don't really have to wait for the planets to align. Just escape Kerban SOI and plot a maneuver node in the right place and go to Duna. Treat it like a regular intercept the way you would if you were docking ships in orbit around Kerban. When you escape the Kerban SOI, it helps if you're going prograde in relation to the planet Kerban's orbit around the sun. Think of Kerban as a periapsis.

As long as your ship isn't over 250 tons try using mine. The Leviathan super max lifter. Download it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzQkEtUTBCNHpIMW8/edit?usp=sharing See how to operate it here: A slack tank asparagus design doesn't suffer from the sudden deceleration jolt like asparagus with engines attached to them. Once the orange tanks are all dropped, throttle down to 3/4 and that way the jolt will be less intense. You'll have plenty of power to get anything into orbit that isn't over 250 tons. If you're ship is over 250 tons, just add more fuel on top of the orange tanks and add nose cones to reduce drag. Structurally reinforce all of the tanks to the center and your payload to the lifter. You can also add 8 of the Mark 55 radial engines to the center for more power if the outer engines experience structural failure.

Luckily I only lost one fuel tank which throws off the center of mass and makes it harder to fly, but I'm going to continue the mission. The other thing is, it seriously compromised my staging that I had set up so I'm going to have to do it manually for a while. There's no re-launching or do-overs during challenges, you have to work with what cards you're dealt, just like in Apollo 13. This makes my mission more challenging now because I have less fuel than I had planned on. As you can see hear, something's missing. It just decided it wants to fall off and almost destroy my ship. This shot was taken later on during the flight so I could angle it at the sun. However, I was able to reach my mothership and successfully dock it. And even with a compromised ship, I was able to maintain fuel symmetry and now the crew is in orbit around Vall searching for the mythical landing zone. Judging by the coordinates it's somewhere close to the south pole, but I haven't located it yet, it might be on the dark side. Working on achieving a polar orbit now. Mission Log: Vall polar orbit achieved, ship fuel symmetry stabilized. We are a go for landing. Target LZ located and locked in. Cpt. Jeb will attempt the first landing and survey the area.

Yeah, you would need the 24-77's or the 48-7S Otherwise, don't underestimate the power of the Mark 55 radial engines. Get rid of the big engine on the bottom and instead mount 2 of the Mark 55 radials on the craft, you get a little more power and you'll have more clearance underneath the craft. Another suggestion, is that you could put larger fuel tanks on the LVN's and instead, flip them upside down. This way you'll have clearance and since you don't use them for landing, it would work. Even if you wanted to use them for landing, you could and then just flip the ship over and finish the landing with the radial engines. Make sure your center of mass is low or in the middle of the ship otherwise it might flip over. You could always mount the Goo on the sides of the LVN engine's fuel tanks.

Honestly it doesn't matter at all. The difference would be how you plot your landing zone. Rotating with the planet and you overshoot the LZ a little because you're compensating for the rotation. Rotating against the planet means that you have to undershoot your LZ. It boils down to personal flight preference. This would only be different if you're landing on a planet with atmosphere because you would want to overshoot the LZ due to the aerobraking of re-entry. Trying to land back on Kerban rotating against the planet would be difficult if you're trying to aim at the KSC as being your LZ. Unless your lander has a lot of power and can come in straight down instead of at an angle.

Gotta love those G forces!

Use an SAS module for stability or put the smallest octagonal probe core on the top and then add the chair to that, smallest core is 0.6 mass. Or use a combination of both, shown here. This craft flies well with the kerbal on top of it, it has a small probe core as the main pod and an advanced SAS module for better stability.

I have the perfect solution for you. All you have to do is build a hive ship for the probes. Then attach it to an asparagus nuclear transfer stage and launch that sucker up into orbit with a super lifter. Take this idea that I used for my Vall Challenge ship build, all you would have to do is replace the Mk1 pods with your probes, remove the lander that's shown on top, and launch it up with the super lifter in the second image. The Leviathan super max lifter can get payloads in excess of 200 tons into orbit with no problem. If you build something that uses the same transfer stage design that I have shown on the Vall mothership, then you'll have no problem getting to Jool and back to Kerban, just add another round of those 360 fuel tanks to the asparagus and you're good to go. You can download my Leviathan lifter here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vTRL2n8wvzQkEtUTBCNHpIMW8/edit?usp=sharing Here's a video that shows you how it works:

Post pictures and then people can tell you what's wrong.

KSP's engine uses single core much similar to the Unity game engine. This means no hyperthreading. Model poly count and texture resolutions aren't really a factor for this game. Those both use RAM anyway.

The Kraken attacked my supply ship!!!

The maximum part ship that I ever launched was around 2500 parts. 4.0ghz processor 32gb of RAM EVGA GTX 690 graphics card

Here's a video showcase of the lifter and how to fly it.

Yeah, they help support the craft and prevent structural failures when it loads in the physics on the launch pad. This also helps you put more launch clamps on the inside to support the payload because the other ones aren't in the way. It's a useful technique for launching any craft.

It looks right to me. The decouplers on the bottom are hiding the engines. This method allows for better stability on the launch pad when you put a heavy craft on top of it. On the bottom of those decouplers is a metal plate that attaches to the launch clamps. When you go to launch a craft with it. The decouplers will detach and the lifter will slide out of the fairings. Everything looks the way it should here, there's the right part count and everything so you should be good. When you first launch, you want to hit the space bar again after the launch because there will be an empty sage in between the next stage. After that, watch the fuel of the orange tanks by right clicking on them. When the meter hits 0, hit the space bar for the next set and right click to watch the fuel again. You only have to do this for the orange tanks. I usually don't start a gravity turn with it until the all of the orange tanks have depleted.

Post a picture please so I can see what you're seeing.

What you could do is build a super lifter to get this large craft into orbit without using the craft's fuel, that way there is no refueling required.

Move the tanks up and you could take out that poodle engine and instead use the smaller radially mounted engines.

If you had problems with the landing gear being on the wings, your problem is that wings flex so that throws off the alignment on the runway. A way to fix this issue is to just use struts on the wings so they don't flex. Otherwise, it looks like you found a good solution for a thin plane design.

It would certainly help if you did and save the fuel of your main transfer stage, but this is only really useful if you're going to distant planets or Moho.