DeMatt

...that's a three-year-old video, there's been several major changes, both to the Whiplash and to the atmosphere, since that was recorded. Try doing a seaplane instead of a VTOL instead, the latest changes to oceans make them viable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofkH4Z80IrY if you want a Scott Manley demo.

Is that "on the launchpad" or "approaching Minmus"? If the former, then you definitely need more fuel. A typical rocket launching to low Kerbin orbit (LKO) takes about 3500 m/s dV. That leaves you about 800 m/s to get to Minmus, land, and return. This dV map thinks you'll need more than that just to get to Minmus, so if you're actually able to touch down successfully, then you're doing fine on the piloting front, but need a bigger rocket. If the latter... then you need to work on your piloting, instead. 4300 m/s dV, when entering Minmus's Sphere of Influence, is enough to let you bounce around Minmus like a ping-pong ball. Either way, a screenshot of your rocket (in the VAB) will let us give you more pointers on design and pilotage.

How much data does the lab already have in it?

F5 basically just creates a save named "quicksave", while F9 loads the save named "quicksave". Alt+F5 lets you name your save, while Alt+F9 lets you choose which save to load.

This.

Um, no? Keep in mind that the arrows on the TR-38D point to the side that detaches - and that while it may officially detach, if there's other parts which prevent it from moving away, it won't leave. D'you have a saved craft that does this every time, that you can share with us?

...that gap is because you have heavy stuff stretching your rocket out from where it's supported. Try taking away the launch clamps (just let it rest on the engines) and see whether there's still a gap. As to your rocket design, yes, as mentioned you'll need a fairing for the scanner. I would further suggest increasing the size of your side boosters from FL-T400's to FL-T800's, and putting much larger steerable fins on them; fire just the side boosters to get you off the launch pad, then keep the throttle and speed low and your steering gentle until you've gotten out of the thick atmosphere, say 12km altitude.

The "x.yz%" is an exact amount of ore at that landing site. The "(x.yz% avg.)" is an average amount of ore over the entire planet. If the Surface Scanning Module is showing the average, tell it to run its analysis. That will change its report to the exact amount of ore where the scanner is. Note that you conveniently only have to run one analysis per biome.

Assuming you're using fine controls (turn Caps Lock on, the control input indicators in the lower-left turn blue), then the RCS thrusters really aren't that far from your roll axis. I'd also suggest putting a second ring of RCS quads on the opposite end of your rocket. It'll improve your handling SO much to have a balanced setup, instead of just the one ring on one side of the CoM.

Every planet's orbit, and their "Sphere of Influence", has been constant since about version 0.19. So the Olex planner and the Alexmoon planner have not needed to be updated since then. Feel free to use them both. Note that they will tend to produce slightly different results due to different mathematical assumptions - use a maneuver node to plot your own maneuver.

Polar orbit or equatorial orbit, if you need to change the orbit's inclination, it'll cost the same amount of dV for the same change in angle.What a polar orbit does do, however, is position your craft's orbit at a right angle to the planet's rotation. So, your craft goes around the planet, the planet rotates a new bit of land underneath the craft when it comes back around. With enough patience (and an orbital period that isn't a simple multiple or fraction of the planet's rotation), every bit of the planet will eventually pass under your craft.

For a craft intended to orbit the Mun, but not land on it, I see the following issues: You have two decouplers for each of the solid rocket boosters. Don't do that, the SRBs only attach to one - the one you click the SRB into place on. Feel free to use struts if you have problems with them wobbling - they'll automatically break when the decoupler fires. Needs solar panels and batteries to power the reaction wheels in the capsule. Radiator's unnecessary. Use a heat shield, and dump everything but the capsule before reentry. The Mk1 Command Pod is both cheaper and lighter than the Mk1 Cockpit, and it even has a node for precisely the parachute capable of landing it. You lack fins. A set of AV-R8's will give you extra steering authority in the atmosphere. The Thud engines are unnecessary for the LKO-Mun-and-back part of the flight, and poorly designed for the launch-to-LKO part. I assume the decoupler beneath the center LV-909 is there for adding another stage, and you're not trying to fly with it.

The problem here is not that you're not "in flight". The problem is that, if you're using the PresMat Barometer, you're using the wrong instrument. The contract wants an "atmospheric analysis" - that's the reading which the "Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer" gives you. So you need to make sure one of those is on your plane.

Assuming the wings are just buckling under aerodynamic forces (F3 for the after-action report), then I'd suggest using bigger wing pieces. Bigger pieces, like the FAT-455 Aeroplane Main Wing, means fewer joints to buckle. I'd also check that your ailerons are on the right way - they seem to be pointing "in" rather than "back".

Hence why I suggested moving half one way and half the other, so the net thrust remains balanced. Moving them further away from the CoM also means they'll be better placed to assist with rotational thrust, too. Well, now you know - ever-so-slightly-off containment detection is determining that the non-firing thrusters are "contained" when they're not intended to be.

I note you're using more than one such thruster... any reason you can't move half forewards to the cockpit module, and the other half aftwards?

For the reaction wheel, yes, I forgot. The xenon tank should let you just toggle off fuel flow from it - the little blue triangle beside the fuel gauge. 'Cuz your engine is apparently still (trying to) run - the resource panel shows it drawing xenon.

Yeah, have to agree that even with the engine off, between the sensors and the probe core, you're still drawing more electricity than the solar panels give. Make sure the reaction wheel is disabled, the engine is off (toggle the xenon tank if you need to), everything but the probe core itself. You can always resort to save-file editing to give yourself some electric charge if you have to. Except it's not four panels. It's two. And then you've got the reaction wheel, the sensors, the antenna...

Add another vote for "needs a rudder on the shuttle", which in turn means "needs an equivalent-but-opposite rudder on the fuel tank". The shuttle could probably do with a reaction wheel, yes. A Mk2 Drone Core will not only give you reaction wheels but also unmanned control, and will fit nicely into the stack. The Advanced Inline Stabilizer (the medium reaction wheel) would probably need to be hidden in the cargo bay. You also might want more RCS blocks - remember, for every set you put on one side of your center of mass, you want another set on the opposite side.

That would be because your rocket has more drag at the front than it does at the rear. Try adding a set of fins to the rear. It's not specifically altitude that burns the parachute, it's the speed. If you right-click on the parachute while in flight, the popup shows a warning as to whether the parachute can be safely deployed. Generally 250m/s is safe, but a particularly aerodynamic payload may still be going too fast when it reaches the ground.Solution? Make your payload less aerodynamic (once detached). Airbrakes, fins, odd shape under a fairing, whatever works. Drogue chutes are also good - they can be deployed at faster speeds.

Nonsense, that contract is perfectly doable! The scientists want to find out how big of a bang the parachute makes, that's all - nobody ever said the parachute had to SURVIVE it. Or that you had to open the parachute on the way DOWN.

Assuming you've set up the links properly, such that each relay has links to each side and to ground, then the likeliest reason you're not getting comm on a test satellite is because that test satellite doesn't have an antenna capable of reaching the relays. RemoteTech, by default, requires that each end of a communications link be capable of reaching the other. A KR-7 and a KR-14, aimed at each other, will only connect if they are within the KR-7's range. You can change this by digging into RemoteTech_Settings.cfg and changing "RangeModelType" from Standard to Additive - then a big antenna on one end will offset a small antenna on the other.

Hm... that's not a stock landing gear... what happens if you land it, then retract the landing gear and let it settle directly on the ground? Does it still get deleted?

Higher orbit. Increase your apoapsis, leave your periapsis around 70 km. All orbits in KSP are Keplerian; higher apoapsis = faster speed at (fixed) periapsis. 2.5km/s isn't going to kick you out of Kerbin sphere of influence (that takes more like 3.4km/s).

...The Space Shuttle did do that - burn main engines and SRBs until AP was in the right altitude and PE was mostly there, coast to AP, then burn OMS engines to finish circularizing. Anyways, it boils down to proper design and gravity turn. Relative to Kerbin, KSP's engines are more efficient and powerful than real-life engines are relative to Earth. Because of this, it's easy to stick together a rocket that "mostly" works, and then just brute-force past the "mostly" part. Real-life rockets don't get that option (they cost lotsa money, yo!), so they design them to be "precisely" capable instead of "definitely" capable. Also, the thrust of real-life solid rockets varies over time, and is designed to maintain roughly correct acceleration; KSP solids maintain constant thrust, making them more difficult to design for an entire flight, but easier for the "off the launch pad" part. Performing an ideal gravity turn is equally important. Essentially, you start your rocket turning from the vertical at the launch pad, it burns continuously (barring staging actions) and turns continuously (due to gravity pulling the nose down), and it reaches the horizontal when it reaches apoapsis and thus performs the last bit of circularization with the last bit of thrust. Us KSP players are generally less than skilled at making this turn, so we take advantage of the lack of cost and build bigger, less efficient, rockets to work around our piloting inadequacies.