Pecan

3,000 hours of anything means you aren't a rookie. Around now perhaps you are even entitled to worry about why NASA lets all those amateurs mess about in the Space Station. At least they keep the real rockets on autopilot so the kids can't break things. (Poe's law indicator: I'm kidding). On the other hand you have to be honest with yourself about what you've been doing during those 3,000 hours. If you've been building submarines, 'planes and/or trains you may be awesome with the building tools but how are you in space. At the other extreme, you might be confident of landing on any body people name but have never designed an aircraft. I stopped playing KSP somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 hours because I'd never play anything else if I didn't make the effort. I'd also achieved everything I personally wanted to. In the end, that's the only judgement that counts - can you do what you want to do.

I told you so last year, when the sequel was first announced. Good old KSP forum = consideration and tolerance for diverse opinions. Modern toxic KSP forum = burn the heretic. I haven't been around since then but I hope you're all doing well and recovering your sanity.

Is the very reason I say no game is worth buying for $60; I expect to buy better for less than half the price.

Corporate Espionage, also known as industrial spying or, in KSP, starting a sandbox game so you can develop, test and improve your vehicles for free, only 'stealing' the most cost-effective designs to launch in your career save. Really good to hear how well you're doing though. Hope you're really enjoying your hard-earned skills :-)

KSP 2: Pro, it'll be newer than KSP 1, include interstellar travel and more colony-building. Con, it doesn't exist. Price $60 can't be justified. Buy it if you want the new shiny stuff with new shiny bugs, don't care when it comes or what it costs. KSP 1: Pro, It's been constantly improved for 5 years, has thousands of hours of content and more thousands of mods, including interstellar travel and colony-building. Con, the graphics have never been leading-edge and it's still a bit buggy. Price $30, plus DLC, is hard to justify to be honest, but it's often on sale for a lot less. Unfortunately, you've just missed a 75% discount in the Steam sale, for instance. Buy it on sale for everything time and the modding community can do to polish it then decide in a year or two if you want to upgrade to KSP 2 - by which time it should also be on sale.

Kerbal Space Program has changed over the years to make SSTOs easier and easier. The simplest is just 3 parts and can launch a considerable amount.

In theory we're all stars, in practice we're all stardust.

Congruous or analagous?

The problem is it just can't cope with Kerbin gravity. Some struts and/or autostrutting may help but I can't really see what the overall structure is meant to be like anyway.

OK Boomer (Need to grab my half-year advantage)

It's not like the files are locked in some magical way, just that there's no readily-available reader that makes them easily comprehensible. Compliments on the avatar image. A fine looking yacht.

That would come down to what he means by mapping and to what resolution. It's in the same category as asking what the length of an earth coastline is (coasts are fractal so you get a longer and longer answer depending on the amount of detail you look for). By the same token - would that person say we've "mapped" the Amazon basin? Yes, a single satellite in a (near) polar orbit will cover an entire body, as long as it isn't in a resonant orbit (orbiting 'in time' with the body, which would mean it keeps covering the same paths). It does usually take several orbits though, depending on its field of view - the amount of the surface it can 'see' on each pass. Then there's the matter of what type of mapping you're after. For instance, I used to be friends with one of the team who were radar-mapping Mars. Does a complete height-map count as 'mapped'? Would a complete set of ordinary photographs count as 'mapped' if they were at 10km resolution? Anyway: +1 for Scansat in KSP.

Did you use Navball Docking Alignment Indicator ? There are, as my old Sergeant Major told me, no extra points for doing it the hard way - I'm just asking what you thought of the mod, if you used it. Just for anyone who isn't aware, it's one I always recommend, as Snark does.

At 30 you're on the younger side of all computer games players (just). Eg; Polygon (2016 but I haven't got time to look for a newer figure) "The average guy who plays games is 35; the average woman is 44" (https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-esa-essential-facts)

Seems like a very reasonable result to me, there's no benefit to a pad-landing so no reason to make it harder than it needs to be.

Why does anyone start on career, with its added complications of strategies, contracts, reputation, costs, recruting, deaths, deadlines? Start with sandbox and get to know how things work or, if you need a more directed 'game' start with science.

@Laie has completely covered it for every rocket you will ever build, not just asparagus. Except that it's all a bit more complicated for a launch vehicle (everything is). i) Only your first stage will use sea-level ISP and thrust so if you're trying to be completely accurate ... have fun, no one else is. ii) Drag, especially with very wide designs (more than one tier around the core), iii) Steering losses on gravity turn But there are slightly easier ways ... Just build it and believe what KSP tells you in the VAB Use KER/MJ and believe their estimates Make-up a 'dV to orbit' figure, launch your design and add the remaining dV in orbit to the number you first thought of

As a general rule build three rockets, not one: launch vehicle, transfer vehicle, mission vehicle/lander (then join them together) Removing monopropellant from command pods can save a significant amount of mass Eating all the snacks doesn't

Which save? Peter Pan? Day 0 - lots of saved vehicles, test flights Career? Day 116 - meh, you need to look at the contracts/tech tree sometimes Net? Year 2 - 74 flights in progress Contest? Year 64 - a christmas challenge a couple of years ago took until year 45 and I've sort of been accelerating time from there ... (nothing very special, really) Stack? Year 124 - 270 flights in progress. I haven't looked at it for a while, it makes my head hurt

Yeah, I like that too. There are many games that let you specify per-save mods, although different versions of KSP itself might be tough to do. I'd particularly like it if I could at least load ships with missing/invalid parts so that I can edit them, instead of having to start from scratch. On the other hand, I can see that this is both hard to do and adds hard to justify - you don't get new sales from backwards compatibility.

To take it to the extreme - once you can dock you only ever need one fully-equipped science module. After launching it, position it as required with tugs/landers, extract and return the science separately, clean, refuel, reposition and reuse the module.

That's just too important not to follow-up :-) Say, Kerbart, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Staging can be locked and unlocked and, more recently, the staging stack can be hidden. That aside, it sounds like you're having a whole lot of issues so good luck!

As soon as you have FL-T200 fuel tank you have everything you need to go to Mun. Do you have any more specific problem with that?

MJ has much more convenient custom windows if it's an info-display you're after but I'd think they'd all be too hard to see across a classroom. There's no mods I'd use just for a KSP demonstration, although is KSP Education edition still going?