Sabreur

Probes are sent for two reasons - safety, and weight. The first reason is safety. Our solar system is full of things like extreme heat, corrosive atmospheres, abrasive sands, static electricity, and radiation, all of which can kill an astronaut. Until we send a probe, we don't know what's out there. In KSP, none of that exists - a kerbal can walk on the surface of Eve in the same spacesuit he'd use to walk on the Mun. Also, horrible as it sounds, there's no reason to keep your kerbals alive outside of your own conscience. The second reason is weight. Food, water, air, temperature control, waste disposal, protection from radiation, exercise, companionship - real astronauts need all these things, and these things are heavy. Especially if the trip will take a long time (which trips to other planets inevitably will). Probes still have needs, but nearly as much as an astronaut. As a result, it is much easier and cheaper to send a probe first. KSP's astronauts have minimal needs - you can send a lone Kerbal in a tiny pod on a ten-year mission without a problem. You can still save on weight by using a probe - but not by much, and there's no reason to save money right now. What I'd like to see is randomly-generated hazards on each planet, and heavy protective equipment needed to survive those hazards. It wouldn't be practical to protect against every possible hazard simultaneously - there's so many possible hazards that full protection would weigh hundreds of tons. Instead, you'd have to tailor your missions to each planet - but since the hazards are randomly generated, you'd have to send a probe first to know what the hazards are. Heat, radiation, acid, abrasive sandstorms, electromagnetic interference, static electricity discharges, angry monoliths, whatever. You might even make it so that you can't research astronaut protection in career mode until you've sent a probe and found a planet that requires that type of protection. Nobody is going to fund radiation-proof spacesuits at first, but they will when you learn that Duna is a celestial microwave oven.

1. Forgot the solar panels. 2. Accidentally warped past my maneuver node. 3. Accidentally hit spacebar. 4. Forgot to assign a critical action group. 5. Forgot to check crew assignments. 6. Symmetry Error, usually with a fuel line. 7. Parachutes ripped the craft in half when they opened. 8. Got all the way to the destination, then realized I forgot the science modules.

Whoops, wrong probe core.

If you have access to docking modules, I strongly recommend designing and launching two craft - one for the actual Duna landing, and the other as an interplanetary module to get the lander to Duna and back. This makes it much easier to get everything into orbit and still have fuel. It also means that if you miscalculate and are low on fuel after launching, you can send up a fuel-bearing probe to dock with your spacecraft and top off the tanks. It's also very handy for the Duna landing itself, since you're not forced to drop tons of fuel into Duna's gravity well only to lift it back out when you leave. The interplanetary module will have the highest-ISP engines you can manage - nuclear engines if you have them. If not, just grab whatever engines have the highest ISP value. The basic design is a ring of engines around a big fuel tank. You don't need much thrust for this module, but don't skimp too much on engine power or your maneuvers will take ages to complete - that hurts efficiency, but mostly it's just a drain on your patience. I usually go with 4 nuclear engines, although that's probably overkill. Two is the minimum I'm willing to use, although you can probably get away with a single nuclear engine if you've got enough patience. The lander module will have a bunch of parachutes - probably twice what you need for landing on Kerbin - and some high-efficiency engines. Duna's atmosphere is thin, but aerobraking is still the most efficient way to land there. Make sure you enter Duna at a very shallow angle to maximize the amount of time spent aerobraking. Even with parachutes, you might need a little bit of engine power to keep the landing soft, but if you've done it right you'll land with 99% of your fuel remaining. One upshot of the thin atmosphere is that engines which are most effective in vacuum are still decent on Duna. Nuclear engines are a bit heavy and awkward for a lander, but the other high-ISP engines work fine. Duna's gravity is low enough that you don't need much thrust to make it back up out of the atmosphere. If you're having trouble getting back into orbit, make your lander such that the science modules can be detached and abandoned on the surface of Duna - you can have your Kerbal get out and physically move the science into the crew module for return to Kerbin so you don't have to haul the weight of the science modules everywhere. One thing that helps a lot is to make your Duna transfer a the right time - a quick search for "Kerbal Interplanetary Transfer" should show you some good guides for how to get that done so that your delta-V requirements are as low as possible. Just don't get too obsessed with transferring at exactly the right time - an error of a few days will cost you some delta-V, but Duna is big enough that you don't have to be super-precise with your intercept. If you don't have docking modules yet, your job gets harder - but not impossible. Instead of having separate spacecraft, you'll use separate stages. Just make sure that both the lander and the interplanetary stage have crew capacity. Use the lander stage to land on Duna and get your science, then rendezvous with the interplanetary stage. EVA to move your kerbal to the interplanetary stage (don't forget to take your science with you!), then abandon your lander stage in Duna orbit and return home. The main disadvantages of this method are that you have to launch everything in one piece and you don't have the option of refueling once you are in orbit.

One way to make a fuel station more practical is to put your fuel station in low orbit around Kerbin while your actual mining/refinement operation takes place on Minimus. Run a few trips to Minimus and back to fill up your station with absurd amounts of fuel, then use the station as a waypoint for any big interplanetary missions that need to top off their tanks after reaching orbit. I don't know how resource efficient this would be, but once the fuel station is in place it would be a huge timesaver.

That's true, but you can limit how hard you have to fight it. I don't have the calculations in front of me, but I'm pretty sure the most efficient way is to first reach orbit, then to use a free-return trajectory to get home.

Career mode. It feels vaguely satisfying to know that I earned that NERVA engine, and it made for some interesting early-game design challenges.

My rockets are very reliable! With one tiny problem. Barrel Rolls. I don't know what the exact issue is. Maybe I forgot to add a strut somewhere, maybe the thrust is just a tiny bit off center, something. Whatever it is, my rockets spin the entire way up. Extra SAS modules slow the spin down a bit, but never eliminate it. The spin is relatively slow - the rocket is still controllable, nothing flies off, and it makes it to orbit with plenty of delta-V remaining. It's just... odd. I suspect the problem is due to the massive cluster of engines I have at the bottom - I've been experimenting with replacing my usual mainsails with large groups of smaller engines to see if I can achieve roughly the same TWR with greater fuel efficiency. I'm going to try strutting the engine clusters together and disabling the gimbals on most of the engines to see if that has an effect. Until then, the DABR (Do A Barrel Roll) Mk II remains in service with a perfect record.

I dislike that I have to install a mod like mechjeb or engineer to get basic information about my rocket, like total mass and thrust-to-weight ratio. I feel like this information should be included in the game itself.

I don't know how you feel about mods, but this is one area where mechjeb is damn near essential. The ability to set a maneuver node and just let the autopilot handle things while you go grab a sandwich or something is critical to using ion engines without losing your mind. I've used ion engines in two places - one for a Moho probe, and a big cluster of them for a high-efficiency ferry that would take fuel from my orbital fuel depo to whatever vessel needed it. Even then I ended up replacing the fuel ferry with a nuclear-engine version. Not quite as efficient, but much easier on my sanity.

I just find it slightly amusing. I know it's not particularly clever, but I like it. Besides, it's easier to laugh about the tragic rapid midair disassembly of the Kerpollo 2 and the loss of its brave Kerbalnauts than it is to laugh about something more seriously named. If I was running a 'real' space program, then I'd be more careful about my naming conventions and make sure things actually make sense. But right now? I'm working on a 100-ton mobile Mun base that I've dubbed the Munsanity. Seriousness doesn't really apply.

Oh jeez, this brings back memories. I had a delta-winged probe that took several minutes to go from 100 meters to 0. The problem with Eve (well, one of many problems with Eve) is that the atmosphere has the consistency of soup, and the default aerodynamics model means that even a tiny amount of lift will keep a plane aloft for ridiculous amounts of time. Honestly, I think your best bet is to stick a parachute on it so that it falls wheels-first, cut the engines, and go have a sandwich while it drifts down.

Okay, I'll be brutally honest here - I cheated. I've done the early campaign "honestly" a couple of times (no mods, no cheats), but I just got tired of doing the first basic missions. I've put rockets into orbit so many times that there's no real challenge to doing it anymore, and biome-hopping around Kerbin bores me to tears. So, for my most recent career, I edited my config files to give me some extra science at the start. Nothing much - just enough to get me some landing legs and science modules for my first Minmus and Mun landings. I found that made the start of career mode significantly less tedious! It's up to you - different people have different ideas about what constitutes "acceptable" behavior in KSP. If you're okay with modding the config files and have tried the legitimate path at least once, I highly recommend letting yourself cheat for a change.

The Mun feels cozy to me. I think it's because I can look up and see Kerbin like, right there. I did feel a touch nervous during a far-side Mun landing, though. Jool... that's the one that creeps me out. Being on one of the Joolian moons and seeing that giant green sphere rising on the horizon is an awesome sight, but it's also a powerful remind of just how far away 'home' really is.

Laythe gave me the most trouble, mostly because I was dead-set on using a manned, jet-powered VTOL for the landing stage. Finally conquered it, though!

I've been trying to design my launchers for efficiency, so I haven't had quite the same problem. It really bugs me when a rocket makes it to orbit with plenty of fuel remaining - that means I could have lifted the same payload with a much smaller rocket! As a result, I have several "perfect" launchers that I've only used a couple times because I figured out a more efficient design later. Right now I'm experimenting with replacing large single engines with clusters of aerospike engines, and my next plan is to experiment with reusable rockets that parachute down safely after their stage is spent. It's basically pointless right now, but I'm betting it will all pay off once we have to worry about a budget!

It's not quite fear for me, and not quite loneliness. It's something else, an emotion I'm not sure we have an accurate word for. The closest I can come to describing it is to call it a brief understanding of scale - not just of the Kerbin solar system, but of our own world and how utterly small I am. The feeling is the most powerful when I'm pushing my limits. I kept catching myself holding my breath on my first trip to Duna. Seeing the growing green sphere of Jool was particularly powerful. I'm currently getting ready for my first trip to Eeloo, and just planning it is a little weird for me.

I wish I had screenshots, but I had an amusing SNAFU on launch. I was experimenting with using clusters of aerospike engines, supported by a single Skipper booster to provide directional thrust. About 5000 meters up, I noticed that one of my (25) engines wasn't draining fuel at all - a quick visual inspection of my rocket revealed that the skipper engine had fallen off and was sitting on the launchpad. The sheer amount of exhaust from the engine clusters had kept me from noticing the problem. The rocket made it all the way to orbit, and actually steered pretty well due to having a significant amount of reaction wheels. I'm considering getting rid of the skipper engines on purpose to see if I can get away with using the more efficient aerospike engines instead.

Yes, but mostly because I really like making VTOL's - with those, gliding isn't really an option, and the sheer size of my planes means that drogue chutes are necessary to keep parts from snapping off due to sudden deceleration when the main chutes open.

Managed to massively screw up a Duna insertion burn, successfully achieving orbit but in the least efficient way possible. Had to send a whole separate refueling mission in order to bring my kerbalnauts (and all their precious science) back home.

Wow. Most impressive!

This right here! I never realized how much I used that thing until I played career mode. Getting to the last tech tier was such a hapy moment. Mainsail engines? Forget it. Large probe core? Don't make me laugh. Cubic strut? HELL YES, TAKE MY 550 SCIENCE.

Okay, this explains a LOT! I didn't realize you could move experiment data from the data collection modules to the lab module itself - I was under the mistaken impression that the data was always stored inside the data collection modules until recovery or transmission. That makes the 'reset' functionality make a lot more sense. Thanks for the explanation! Just in time, too - I just finished hopping all over Minimus with a big stack of science modules and was about to try the same thing on the Mun. Making a tiny 'land and return' setup with a big orbital fuel station + lab will be much easier!

First up, I love the looks of the new science lab module, and I really like the concept of doing critical science on-site when a return isn't practical. But I'm having trouble figuring out where this thing would actually be useful. For starters, the mass is pretty significant, even if you plan on leaving the lab behind on whatever world you visit - especially if you want to land somewhere without a convenient atmosphere to slow you down. Second, the science gains seem to be pretty minimal - usually around 10-20% improvements, compared to the 90% you get for just bringing back the (extremely lightweight) experiments themselves. The only place I can see where it would make sense would be for a manned Eve mission - the thick atmosphere would let you parachute it down with ease, and given the extreme delta-V requirements to get back into orbit, even the small added mass of the science experiments might be prohibitive. Alternatively, I could see it being useful in a case where you don't plan to return at all, but that requires abandoning two kerbals and I just can't bring myself to do that. Do you use the science lab? If so, where and why? Edit: To summarize the helpful answers below for those of you with the same question, the big reason to use the lab is because you can move experiment data into the lab and store it, then reset the experiment and use it again. Rinse and repeat until it's time to go home, then collect the full recovery science value on all the data you recovered. This lets you do things like have a tiny efficient lander collecting science from every biome and anomaly while bringing it back to a big return vehicle between trips. I was under the misconception that the lab only boosted the transmission value of the data and didn't realize experiments could be moved around and stored in the lab itself.

To make things interesting, you'd have to add an accretion disk and maybe figure out a decent gravitational lensing shader, possibly some orbiting dwarf planets and such.