DeMatt

Vehicle Assembly Building (for vertical rockets) or Spaceplane Hangar (for airplanes)? You're trying to connect "bottom of fuel tank" to "top of engine" and not the other way around? Holding Alt to force node attachment doesn't affect it?

It looks like the explosion is of your Mk2 Drone Core, which is preceded by MechJeb burping the throttle during 2x physics warp. I suspect it's not "thermal" problems, but rather the part is getting crushed. The thermal bars (they're not durability bars) only show up after the initial explosion, when the separated cabin starts twisting in the airstream. The flight log (F3) will tell you what was destroyed and how.

In a bit of randomness, KSP decided that Minmus's Highlands biome would have 0% ore, and the basic orbital scan more-or-less told me that. Going down to the surface and performing a surface scan, however, changed the display from "Ore[surf]: (0% avg.)" to "Ore[surf]: (Unknown avg.)". This "Unknown avg." continues to display even with the narrow scanner. Save started in KSP 1.0.2, the update to 1.0.4 (via Steam) doesn't seem to have affected anything.

Lemme see... No fins. A set of 4 Delta-Deluxe Winglets on your main stack will help you SO much. Weird two-part fairing. Try making it three parts, or better yet, moving the fairing base up to the top of the Materials Bay so you only include the under-1.25m parts. Underfueled boosters. Try reducing the side stacks from 4 to 2, and then doubling the fuel in the side stacks. Or more, and add fuel lines running inwards so the center engine draws from the side stacks. Or switching 'em out for solids. Underthrottle. You reduced throttle because the side boosters were too powerful, then didn't increase it when you staged them off. Steep launch. This is more of an effect and not a cause, solve the above problems and you should be better able to handle the atmospheric flight. Late node planning. You kept making "fussy" burns during the coast from burnout to circularization, when you should've been planning the circularization burn instead. That's my commentary on that design and launch.

From what I can see, you have too much jet engine power and not enough rocket engine power. The slanted Elevon 5's are probably confusing SAS; switch 'em out for 3's or 4's. The zillion Engine Pre-coolers are a waste of space - too little LF compared to the Mk1 Liquid Fuel Fuselage, miniscule Air Intake capability. I assume you don't have RAPIER engines yet, and are just trying for a low Kerbin orbit with your two kerbonauts; in that case, you might want to look at Scott Manley's tutorial videos, where he's building a spaceplane with about the same level of technology and performance.

I'd have to say "trial and error". You might consider the Big-S wings... they can hold LF for your jet phase, while the fuselage tanks are reserved for rocket fuel. You can try pumping fuel rearwards.

Verify the local game cache through Steam. It will replace any missing or incorrect files.

Those would be METRIC tons (properly spelled "tonnes"), which are exactly 1000 kg each. Because it is a thrust-to-WEIGHT ratio. Weight requires a gravity source, so Kerbin's gravity is chosen as the most relevant.The similar thrust-to-MASS ratio would, instead of giving you "how many times stronger than gravity can this engine accelerate itself?", give you "how many metres-per-second-per-second can this engine accelerate itself by?".

There is a parachute calculator at http://ksp.freeiz.com/; unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in nearly two years. I think it's good enough for an estimate, however, and if you put landing legs or wheels on, they can absorb (some of) the shock of landing.

...it's worth noting that that's, apparently, a crewed vessel. I can't see from this angle whether it actually has a command pod, but crewed vessels merely get "Connected" because they're piloted by the kerbals - locally.Why he's using the Flight Computer, instead of piloting by hand... I don't know. Precision?

You're going to have to deviate from the contract orbit. See, the contracts that call for line-of-sight with a ground station ALSO ask for a synchronous orbit. So despite Minmus spinning fast, your satellite (if it is in the contract orbit) is orbiting at the exact same rate, and will never arrive in line-of-sight.If you're behind the ground station, do a small retrograde burn at the designated apoapsis; this will shorten your orbit and let you "catch up" to it. If you're ahead, do a prograde burn at periapsis. In both cases, you're trying to only adjust your orbit by a minimal amount - 1 or 2 metres per second. It may take several orbits to achieve line-of-sight (watch the contracts tab for the tick mark), after which you do the reverse burn to put you back on the contract orbit. Larger burns will obviously make the process faster, but cost more fuel at both ends. Also, if you're having trouble with your engine being too powerful for these fine maneuvers, you can right-click on it and adjust the "Throttle Limiter" down. Combined with the standard throttle, you can fine-tune your engine thrust down to less than 1% of its rated maximum.

Floating-point precision errors. Since the numbers KSP uses to calculate orbits have a limited precision (= number of digits behind the decimal place), the further out you ask KSP to calculate a trajectory, the more sensitive the calculation becomes to even minor changes - like turning your ship. Accept that you'll need to make corrections all the way up to your final orbit and rendezvous. Instead of doing your orbit planning while at 1x time acceleration, do it at 5x time acceleration. This "turns off" the physics calculations and sets your ship on a fixed course.

F3 shows the in-flight log. Only events that occurred during the current session are retained, so don't switch away from your accident craft if you want to read about it. KSP uses a "tree" system to determine what parts are connected where. Thus, a part may have only one "parent". This in turn means that yes, your bottom decouplers are not attached to the SRBs, because the top decouplers are already the SRBs' parents.You'll want to replace the bottom decouplers with EAS-4 Strut Connectors (under "General Construction" in the research tree, and "Structural" in the parts list). They'll hold your SRBs in place, and detach when the top decouplers do. If, instead, aerodynamic forces are causing your SRBs to smash inwards when they're detached, you'll want to add Sepratrons ("Precision Propulsion" in the research tree, and "Engines" in the parts list). Attach a pair to each SRB, roughly in the middle and pointed more-or-less inwards, so they push the SRB away.

The ISRU and the heat shield don't permit for surface attachment, so I'm not surprised they don't permit a fairing to close on them. I was able to get fairings to close on the other parts. Straight fairings, with no angle inwards or outwards, can close on the rims; angled fairings coming inwards can close on the sides or rims; angled fairings opening outwards can't close at all. Beyond that, we'd have to see the fairing you're trying to build in order to replicate it.

Alternatively, you can crank up the rate of radiation in the same debug menu. The default (and minimum) setting is 1; it can go as high as 100, which will ensure that your LV-N's never overheat just by running.

If you hold down the Shift key, you can rotate your parts in 5-degree increments. Similarly, Shift reduces the snap increments on the Rotation gizmo, allowing you greater precision when rotating the parts after placing them. Remember that there are three different axes of rotation: QE, AD, and WS. I don't think there's anybody who can tell you which axis matches which pair of keys, so try 'em all - and remember that Space resets the part's rotation to default.

If you've only just orbited Kerbin, going directly for a landing (even on Minmus) is a very ambitious jump. Try doing flybys and orbits of Mun and Minmus first. That'll give you science from low and high orbits, as well as a better feel for how big a rocket you need to get all the way there and back.

Both your CPU and GPU are woefully out of date, being at least 6 years old. The GPU is a particular offender, because it's a crappy integrated graphics card. Even a current-generation 500-buck all-in-one budget computer will beat the pants off of both of those specs, so I'd say you're about due for a complete system replacement.

KSP version: 1.0.2.842 Windows 32-bit, Steam What happens: The Mobile Processing Lab accumulates Science, but does not decrement Data, while flown at 1x realtime or 2x physics warp. Mods: Stock Steps to replicate: Assemble a station including a MPL and enough scientists/data to run it at a respectable rate. E.g. 7x 3-star scientists + 500 Data yields a processing rate of about 6 Data per day = approximately 0.001 science per second. Start the MPL running, leaving the right-click menu open to monitor the numbers. At 1x realtime warp or 2x physics warp, the Science will tick up, but the Data will not tick down. At 3x or 4x physics warp, or 5x or higher rails warp, the Science will tick up and the Data will tick down.

A couple suggestions... move the fairing base to on top of the FL-T400, so it only encloses the satellite proper instead of including the orbital engine - you can stage it at the same time if you want, or after switching to the orbital engine; either way, it'll help with cost and mass. Also, if you find the Kickback punting you too hard in the lower atmosphere, right-click it in the VAB and tweak its thrust down. On a fairly similar launcher, I set mine to the 65% range.

What KSP is telling you with that, is that your apoapsis DOESN'T intersect the asteroid's orbit. Try right-clicking and moving the camera around. As to how to set up the intercept, the first thing I would do is to bring your orbiting tug into the same plane as the asteroid - set up a maneuver at the ascending or descending node and burn as necessary to bring that to zero. Then you can push your apoapsis out to where the asteroid will be.

As with most orbital mechanics, the delta-V necessary to travel one direction is the same as the delta-V necessary to travel the opposite direction. So if MechJeb thinks it needs 3 km/s to get down to Sanrys, it'll need 3 km/s to get back up to Kerbin. But... I think MechJeb is lying to you. To reach low Moho orbit from LKO requires more than 4 km/s of delta-V, and you're trying to reach an orbit even deeper in Kerbol's gravity well. Double-check that MechJeb is also accounting for the circularization burn you'll need to match orbits (not just altitudes) with Sanrys.

I'll second the fairing. This is precisely the type of structure that fairings are supposed to cover. Additionally, I'll suggest looking at the Z-1k batteries instead of the Z-200's, and maybe swapping the Stratus-V Cylinders for FL-R25 monoprop tanks. Then I'll suggest strutting "around" the floppy docking port joint, connecting from below it on the booster to above it on e.g. the solar panel "arms". Oh yeah, and a screenie of the module on its booster would probably help with diagnosis. It's not a terribly large module, after all.

/Kerbal Space Program/Ships is for the "stock" ship designs. You want /Kerbal Space Program/saves/*savename*/Ships.

Yes.4chars.