Pecan

No docking-ports in the demo, unfortunately, so you wouldn't be able to construct things like this in orbit.

Oh there's no competition* (or pictures). That's the first crewed orbiter I made in career - one Kerbal to orbit, then back again. (*Literally, there's no competition. That's the only vehicle I've made in career, about 3 years ago)

There is nothing to calculate. Go to Mun any time and make the intercept a polar one. Circularise into polar orbit; job done. If you want a polar Mun orbit normal to Kerbin you're out of luck because it will change over the course of a Mun month.

I don't and haven't because it makes it impossible to share craft.

Good point! It's only strictly true for vacuum launches

It depends whether you: a. Go from sea-level b. Start from the top of a mountain c. Decide that everything everywhere else is more fun than an Eve ascent d. Can I interest you in a holiday package at Dres's sun-drenched beaches? Seriously - if you have to ask about Eve then you don't want to drive yourself crazy with it. Go anywhere else. Go everywhere else. Do everything everywhere else before coming back to Eve!!

Can't check at the moment (holidays *pftt*) but mods seem likely. Will report as soon as possible.

Hehehe - to put it another way ... you're already achieving a lot more than you thought you ever could when you asked your first questions :-) Corollary:- you've accidentally learnt and are using a lot more real space-flight physics & maths than you imagined. Cool, isn't it? Applause!

Is this a good time to say I've never returned from Eve? The job of any stage is to accelerate/lift everything else so that after staging 'everything else' starts faster/higher. Do you want to go faster or higher with your first stage? Probably higher so, if you know a particular engine can lift a specific mass to X altitude, you know how to lift ANY mass to X altitude (engines & fuel required = required mass / tested mass). That is - if a particular engine & fuel combination can lift 2t to 3,000m then two of them strapped together can lift 4t to 3,000m. (NB: Does not say that two of them can lift 2t to 6,000m!) How useful the metric is is up to you, but you were only asking for a 1st stage metric *shrug*

Then you're simply aiming too low in the atmosphere. Aiming at a Kerbin Pe of 50km you should pass right through several-to-many times as your Ap is reduced from Mun to Kerbin by the minimal aerobraking. The lower you aim the quicker you'll brake but the more you'll heat up.

I never use direct-launch, it's just too annoying to time correctly and is only suitable for one-shot missions. In contrast, lauch-to-orbit then transfer is exactly the same for one-shot, orbital refuelling, orbital construction and reusable infrastructure. It uses standard, dedicated, launch vehicles and space-only transfer vehicles so is as cheap as any other launch.

In 1.6 part-selection in the VAB has been screwed-up for me if I use any of the filters (eg; cross-section).

Had ETS 2 more than two years but, yeah, just bounced off it and never felt the need to go back. It's even the only game I have on Steam for which I've disabled updates because of the constant downloads of there-but-locked paintjobs and similar DLC. Thing is, I like KSP because it takes a lot of thinking about. When I want to chill and do (almost) nothing I go to Farming Simulator or Sailaway, so ETS/2 has no particular appeal for me. Of all those games/simulators though I'm sure ETS/2 is the most popular.

Worse than nothing - once I click a filter (eg; cross-section) I can't change selection at all, such as click on fuel tanks, engines, nothing. 1.6 by the way.

Don't worry, you're welcome here and this community does not get toxic, except about MechJeb. The moderators wouldn't have it any other way *grin*. You've just got to have a better explanation for your counter-opinions. You aren't the only one who says Mun is easier though. The essential truth here is that the landing gear are currently disfunctional, so what should be 'easy' landings are too bouncy or result in a runway exploding, etc.

It depends somewhat on how long/high the stage is aimed at but I've always liked the (generally Kerbin) SSTO measures. Presumably you could compare similar 1km Eve quantities or whatever. Simply: What total mass, therefore TWR, can a given engine lift to a specific altitude. Nearly all of that mass apart from the engine is going to be fuel, which is where the ISP comes in, so you have a combined TWR/ISP rating. Conversely, how high can an engine lift a specific payload mass - any mass just being a multiple of that engine+fuel.

Practice. Pretty soon you'll have a whole new skill and have to put up with Jeb pushing-in on every flight again.

I say Minmus is easier. Lower gravity and big flat spaces make it much easier than Mun. In addition it's much easier to design and build a Minmus return lander because TWR and dV requirements are lower. The only bit about a Minmus trip that is harder is the potential plane-change. Whoever says Mun is closer clearly still thinks distance is the governing feature of spaceflight and calling people who disagree liars is a way to win arguments.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a 2012 game, so KSP is hardly past-it. Of course there is an almost constant flow of paid-for DLC for that game (mainly paint-jobs). Space Engineers is originally from 2013, still in Early Access and complete pants as a simulator of just about anything. It's sci-fi Minecraft. (Yes, I have them all. KSP ~4,000hrs, ETS 2hrs, ETS 2 5hrs, SE 5hrs) If it's not age is it just that KSP isn't getting the new players or that we're all less excited about it now?

It's not your lander bouncing. Minmus is ticklish, so it moves every time you touch it. (Honest).

Also just wanted to say that those AV-8 fins at the bottom of your ship are each twice the mass of a basic fin plus elevon 4. With 4 fins that's only a difference of 0.2t but it all adds up!

Craft wobble when they have lots of weak joints. Autostrut can help but the simple option is - get bigger fuel tanks so you don't need to have lots of small ones. Check the deltaV map (https://i.imgur.com/gBoLsSt.png) for how much energy you need to get to Mun and back. Mun is at the bottom-left and requires 3,400m/s to Kerbin orbit, plus 860m/s to transfer to Mun, 310m/s to capture into Mun orbit and 580m/s to land. Conveniently, that's calculated for you under where it says 'Mun' as 5,150m/s. Your ship has 4,825m/s according to the KER display, so you can't even get there if you want to land; it's ok if you just want to get into Mun orbit though. Coming back is more or less the same as getting there, so 5,150 x 2 = 10,300m/s but you can make a few shortcuts. Most importantly and obviously you don't need to spend that 3,400m/s to launch from Kerbin, so no more than 6,900m/s is necessary. In practice you don't need to re-establish Kerbin orbit either and can save a bit there but it would be good practice to stick with that total until you know what you're doing. Ultimately then, you need a ship with another 2,075m/s for a return Mun landing. If you just want to orbit the total needed is still 5,740m/s (because the biggest non-atmosphere part is the 860m/s Kerbin-Mun-Kerbin transfer), still leaving you nearly 1km/s to find. Edit: Your basic design is fine, although I'm not sure exactly what you have apart from the science juniour. If not landing, just make sure your top (space-faring) stage has 2,540m/s for the return orbit-orbit-orbit trip (if you're making Kerbin orbit on the way back this gives the 'safest' return, with 200m/s left for deorbit). Then, obviously, your launch stage(s) need 3,400m/s to get the whole lot up there. Just with the science juniour I made that an FL 400 fuel tank plus FL 200 (or 3 x 200) and a terrier engine on top, 2 x FL 800 (or 4 x 400, or 8 x 200), a reliant engine and the two thumper SRBs for launch. Help yourself by removing all the monopropellant from the command pod and thrust-limiting the SRBs to ~75% (1.5 TWR at launch - you can comfortably go down to 1.3 if you prefer)

Are you sure of that? Not at my computer today but I always go from nosecones to tanks because - maybe it's just an old thing that got changed - struts would never attach to nosecones, only from them.

Do you have a strange laptop or other keyboard that shares digits, "[" and "]" with other characters/symbols? Lots of those keyboards use separate FN (function) and FN-LOCK options. Action groups should be simple 0 - 9 so what happens normally when you press those keys, in Notepad or similar, for instance?

My preferred route is dedicated, reusable landers everywhere docking at spacestations with dedicated, reusable never-landing shuttles between them.