bptrav

Yep you'd really have to exhaust every biome on Kerbin and Mun/Minmus to come anywhere close to unlocking the whole tech tree. Kerbin's biomes give so little science. They are okay when you are first starting career mode but further down the tech tree it would become pretty boring. You get a lot more science for exploring the moons and other planets. A one way probe to Duna/Eve really doesn't require that much delta-V either, not much more than Mun if you make use of aerobraking and parachutes.

Good to see KSP getting some mainstream press attention. It's one of the most interesting game ideas in recent years IMO, and I think a lot of people would enjoy it if they tried it. Minecraft showed there is a huge audience of people who want to build things. They have said sandbox mode will always be in the game so no worries there, and even if it somehow wasn't the game could be easily modded to unlock all the parts.

I can feel the lag through your screenshot.

Yep that's what I do as well, and I try to drop empty tanks/weight as I go along. The nuclear engines are just so much more efficient in the vacuum of space. They will nearly double your delta-v in most cases, even if their TWR isn't great. If you have both nuclear and non-nuclear engines on your craft you can also shut down your non-nuclear engines which will greatly increase your delta-v. I also try to make use of docking ports so that I can leave some fuel tanks in orbit while I land on the planet/moon, then rendezvous back with them for the return trip.

I was trying to build a huge fuel tanker today that could bring 4-5 full orange tanks into orbit. It didn't go well...

I just started my first space station yesterday, but one thing I found very helpful for modular designs is to save each "piece" of the station as a sub-assembly. That way you can stick them together inside the hangar and see exactly how they will look/work before you actually bring them to space.

Very nice ship, always loved the way Rifter looked in Eve. It was a fun little ship to fly as well.

As others mentioned there is no way a single chart can account for every possible transfer. You might find this chart more appropriate for that case:

I launched the core of my first space station in a 250km orbit around Kerbin. Right now Jebediah is up there all alone, being the first Kerbal to stay on a space station. Very cool, that must have taken awhile to make

Really cool looking station Bluntie, reminds me of Deep Space 9. Was trying to figure out how you assembled it, but then saw you launched the whole thing at once, wow.

Just finished my final science gathering mission on the Mun in career mode, completing experiments at the polar regions/crater and canyons. I ended up with almost 4000 science for the mission It was also sort of a dry run test for a Duna landing. On a side note, is it just me or is it actually easier to dock without RCS? I towed up all this RCS fuel with me then didn't use a single liter of it.

I started career mode a couple days ago and like many others my Jeb is also stuck at the Mun, after being the first Kerbal to walk on it. He has enough fuel to reach Mun orbit but not enough to get back home to Kerbin. He got too greedy exploring the various biomes on the Mun. We are currently working on a rescue operation to get him back. EDIT: Rescue mission success!

Dustywolf1 In addition to the forums Vanamonde mentioned there are also a lot of great tutorials on youtube (in fact most of the tutorial threads link to youtube videos). It's a lot easier to understand when you can actually watch other people building them. Scott Manley in particular has some , as do many others.Apart from that, part of the fun of the game is just messing around with different parts and configurations and seeing what happens. Sometimes they will end up as complete and utter catastrophes, but if you can figure out what went wrong hopefully you can improve your future designs. Even most of NASA's early missions had huge problems.

^ Yep doing it without Mechjeb mainly just requires a lot of patience and fiddling around with the maneuver nodes. My first trip to Duna (before I had Mechjeb) it took probably half an hour of doing orbits and maneuver nodes before I found something that was acceptable. This part is really important. It's pretty easy to get an intercept, but if you come in at too great a speed/angle you will end up wasting a ton of delta-V trying to match the trajectory of your target. The difficult/time-consuming part is timing your intercept correctly.

I do this one too.