LethalDose

Even without the Mun mucking up your ejection, the image provided is evidence that you're making the burn at the wrong time. The image provided shows Kerbin about 120 degrees behind Duna. The appropriate phase angle for a Kerbin-to-Duna transfer (a Hohmann transfer) is when Kerbin is ~ 45 degrees behind Duna, regardless of what the planner says. I suspect the issue is the 6hr day vs 24hr day discordance noted above. I seem to recall the first Duna window openint around day 200 or 220 in 6 he day notation.

Well, it's usually where the nearest Kraken is lurking, except on Duna and Moho. On Duna, it points the the third closest Kraken. On Moho, it's points to the nearest Kraken to the west of your current position. Everything is above is overridden by the "Tuesday Rule" though. On Tuesdays, the direction is just random.

I only use nukes on vessels that are going to be operating in space for long periods of time (tugs, and such). IMO, the NERVA's abysmal TWR makes it more trouble than it's worth for most simple transfer stages. Having a decent TWR can save a substantally save burn dV, Which makes those graphs really misleading. It's also a bit harder to design the vessel around the 1.25m size. Basically, in my games nukes have their place, but it's not for everything under (around?) the sun.

The fact that Max is sticking to the contra point here simply demonstrates how futile it is to try to communicate with Squad. The lead dev, or whatever his title, is arguing that the company's own website and forums are not the primary point of communication with their community! smh Seriously, what's the point?

Sounds like a glitch. How high was your PE and what was your orbital speed?

Like the posters above have stated, KSP's aero model doesn't really work. It's a big simplification that calculates drag per part based on the parts mass and a part-specific multiplier. The good news is that they're improving it for release. You mad, bro? You gotta go through the atmosphere to get to space, and then you gotta come back through to get home, not to mention the surface of several planets and a moon. NASA's done tons of atmospheric work with aircraft to improve their abilities to explore space. Or, SPACE, if you have to shout it every time. Aerodynamics are also important for building SSTOs, that go to space. Atmospherics and aerodynamics are an important part of spaceflight. Squad decided to include it, I'm glad they did.

I do everything I can to bring my little green volunteers back to the surface of Kerbin.

Well, if FAR is any indication, yes, aircraft won't decelerate as quickly as they do now in stock. There are ways around this, though, including flaring during landing and serpentine maneuvers prior to landing. For ~ 90% of situations, landing drogues are more of a kludge than a good solution. I agree that adding a bunch more tweakable options would be awesome, and not just for 'chutes. I would be all for including this mod in stock under one condition: There's an option in the config that allows me set the "RealchutesDrama" parameter to 0.

What they said. KCT also adds research time (or at least it used to. I've barely played 0.90) so you have to wait to implement your new tech. You're probably never going to see this in stock because the devs are dead set against anything that adds waiting to the game because they don't think time based mechanics can't be fun. Though they also said dV meters "added to the mystery of the game", but are apparently adding that now, too.

I really doubt they're going to change. A year ago I was critical of how they were sharing information, Rosdower called me out on it and asked specifically what I would change. I made it very clear that the way Squad is 'communicating' with the community through every channel but their official forum was a massive headache. The response was basically "Yeeaaaaaah we aren't gonna change that."

Basically, this. The game has needed a stock dV display for years. Squad's "Numbers aren't fun' stance has been idiotic. They don't get a pat on the back for figuring out what the community has been telling them the whole time. This is what I think about it. Probably going to get a reprimand for it (again), but it's worth it. Also, parroting klg above, why is this all going through reddit instead of here on the their own freakin' forums?!

The OP said the CoL was "way behind" the CoM. In those situations you get a lawn dart with almost no pitch control, which is problematic when you're trying to land or slow down.

This is typically my solution. They're still useful if they got antennae

I plot my course to other planets with nukes the same as everything else. I just don't build rockets that require 60 minute burns to Duna. Seriously, that's just absurd. A few options are better engineering, periapsis kicks, and Minmus-Kerbin assists. IMO the best option is just building a rocket with better TWR. Any gains your getting from the nukes is offset by the horrid accuracy caused by the low TWR. Reduce the size of your payload (my recommendation) or use bigger engines. If you insist on using a rocket with such abysmal TWR, you can try using a series of periapsis kicks. Thrust as long as you can near your PE to raise your AP near where you want to exit. When you get too far from your PE, stop burning, and then go back around until you're back at PE. I think Manley did this for his Eve Explorer, but I couldn't find it. The final option is to get into orbit around Minmus, then exit Minmus retrograde with a very low Kerbin PE where your ejection burn should be, and then your burn can be as low as 100 m/s or less to eject to Duna (I've done this). This can be tricky, to time, though.

IIRC, the toroidal tanks don't allow surface attachment, so you can't attach fuel lines to them directly. Why not attach the engines and the tank to something that allows crossfeed?

I'm pretty sure it was 0.24 where this change was discussed by the devs. The problem is, it doesn't appear to have happened. I've set orbital periods to what the sidereal day was supposed to be, but the satellite sped up in orbit, advancing ~ 30 deg longitude over several game months. This has been confirmed by other players, and the Kerbin's sidereal rotation appears to remain 6 hrs. The wiki entry still lists the sidereal day as 6 hrs. Basically, it looks like the devs screwed up: they announced the change, even though its not in the game. I also had a question about synchonous orbits around Tylo and Laythe in a rep comment (Thanks! I appreciate it!). According to the wiki, neither is possible, since the orbital altitude for synchronous orbits lie outside the moons' spheres of influence. Laythe's circular synchonous orbit altitude is ~4.7 Mm, but it's SoI only extends to 3.7 Mm. Tylo's circular synchronous orbit is > 14 Mm, but it's SoI extends < 11 Mm. Except for Minmus and, shockingly, Gilly, all the moons in the game are tidally locked to their parent. Tidally locked bodies have very slow rotation, requiring much higher orbital altitudes for synchronous orbits. The wiki actually states synchronous orbits are possible around Minmus and Gilly, though I've never tried either. Again, everything above is supported using the Wiki. I haven't confirmed the data with my own calculations, but I've found the wiki to be extremely accurate.

"I keep going higher and higher up but I'm not getting into orbit! What am I doing wrong!?"

Technically, no, since Earth isn't in the game. Geostationary orbits are, by definition, around the Earth. But enough smart***ery. Stationary orbits are totally possible around most planets, including Kerbin. Most moons have SoI's that are too small for stationary orbits, though. The "how" is to get into an orbit with orbital period is equivalent to the parent body's sidereal day. Previous posts have done an excellent job describing the how in more detail. If you want to understand it, though, it's gonna take 'teh maths.' Oh, and for it to be perfectly stationary, it has to have a perfectly equatorial, circular orbit. Orbital eccentricity will cause E-W libration, and orbital inclination will cause N-S libration.

Try holding down alt (or whatever you've set the 'mod' key to) when placing the port. That should disable surface connections.

I've seen this issue many times on my Minmus transfers, and I don't think it's a bug exactly. Though, that doesn't mean it's working as intended. I think what is happening in these situations has to do with how the the game renders predicted trajectories. If you get really big, ecliptic orbits, you can start to see that the predicted trajectories aren't rendered as smooth curves, but as line segments drawn between points (aka vertices; probably every so many radians/degrees around the orbit). The points seem to get further apart near Ap and closer together in Pe. I think what happens is that the game gets confused about how the cursor and the rendered trajectory interact when the points are far apart, resulting in the player's inability to create nodes near Ap. The vertices being far apart may also be partly responsible for the 'disappearing' intercepts as was described in the OP. Or I'm totally off and rambling. Regardless, you got the best advice possible: create a node elsewhere on the trajectory and drag it to the desired location. Panning to different camera angles can help occasionally, but I can't give any advice about how to reliably fix the problem this way. PreciseNode is a mod that may help, though I don't use it personally.

It's not that bad... Asteroids that are on a collision course typically have lower relative speeds with they enter Kerbin's SOI. Basically, lower speed -> more effected by gravity -> pulled closer to Kerbin. However, if you want to land it gently, yeah, you're gonna need some serious dV. Try to intercept it as far out as possible and nudge it into a good aerobraking trajectory. That'll probably be your lowest dV solution.

Also, for future reference, you're gonna want a lot more thrust for a better TWR on future landing attempts. For ~ 5 tons, you'd probably want at least 100 kN of thrust to get of Tylo's surface (TWR ~ 2.5), which would be at least 2 909s.

I vote Steam. It's better equipped to deal with the flood of downloads when new updates get released.

The justification is rocket complexity, and part count is a proxy measure of complexity. Until you upgrade your VAB, you can't build more complex rockets. I'm fine with the part count as a limit, however where they've drawn the lines for parts and mass seem freaking bizarre.

Like Norpo said, you'll probably have to physically return an experiment to get full values. There's basically a total value for each experiment in each situation (e.g. Gravioli high over Kerbin), the reduced returns only really affect how you get the data back to the KSC.