Pecan

77 votes is hardly a representative sample of KSP players but from the comments here would it be fair to say that career mode is doing exactly what it was designed for; providing purpose and guidance to those that want it, leaving sandbox for those that don't. Look like more of us should make use of both and get the best of both worlds :-) (if only there was time for both!)

First make sure you leave when there is a transfer window. Easiest way is to make 4 burns; leave Kerbin's SOI, match planes at AN/DN, rendezvous, orbit. Mind you, I always seem to come in way too fast and burn a hell of a lot of fuel slowing down to orbital velocity.

Add a reaction wheel to help stop the thing falling over, struts to keep it all stable and not wobbling around. Do you have too much thrust? Over about 2.5 TWR can cause all sorts of unpleasantness up to tearing the thing in half. You have cuploas on both those? That's a very heavy part so make sure that's at the bottom of the rover at launch or all its mass will be right at the end - which makes all my rockets flip as soon as they move from vertical.

If you can't dock reliably there's still the option of EVA so you can leave the lander behind in space but recover the science and crew ... as long as you can rendezvous.

When you build your rocket under the rover make sure you have a probe-core that faces 'up' and ensure you 'control from here' on that part when you launch so your navball is pointing in the direction you want to go. As long as you balance the Centre of Mass, point in the right direction and have enough thrust and deltaV you will go to space today.

Good point - a deltaV map is pretty useful (google it) so you know how hard it is to get somewhere. Kerbal Engineer Redux (KER), MechJeb (MJ) and VOID (just, VOID, I can't be bothered to type its full name!) are all mods which will do all the necessary calculations for you. Things that need calculating, once you know the deltaV required for your mission are your ship's launch TWR and deltaV (roughly whether it take off and how far it can go). Read-up on these and do the calculations or get the mods.

You say that like it's a bad thing ;-0

Flybys aside and assuming these are crewed so you want to bring them back - the order of difficulty is first Mun orbit and return (you should be able to do this with just the skills you have now), Minmus orbit (requires plane change), Minmus landing (you know you want to!), Mun landing (higher gravity than Minmus makes it a bit harder), rendezvous/docking (two different skills as cantab says, but you need them both if you're going to use a space-station). All that means learning to - increase orbit to intercept Mun, return, plane change to intercept Minmus, land, rendezvous and dock. Which is pretty much everything! Somewhere in there you might also want to branch out into making (space)planes and/or rovers and bases. These last two are pretty useless but fun nevertheless. Messing around in Kerbin's system or even in its atmosphere there's quite a lot of cool things you can do and transfer windows to go interplanetary don't come around for a while anyway.

Sandbox, because career - at the moment - is just about unlocking parts so you can eventually ... do exactly what you can do in sandbox. Interestingly, after I had voted there were exactly the same number for career and for sandbox (7 each) with more voting "both as good" (10). At this stage of the voting they seem to be right regarding popular opinion :-) [ETA: At 33 votes all options are tied.] [ETA: At 77 votes career has pulled ahead with 30, sandbox/both are at 24 and 23.]

As soon as you touch-down engage SAS (T) to help hold you in position. You can counter any tendency to tip over using the rotation (WASD) keys. If that's not successful and you still fall over it is sometimes enough to right yourself again.

This is a necro'd September thread.

Note that IR is not working in 0.23.5

Ignoring them for now. Do they float or sink? I may build a causeway to the island airfield later ^^

Things you 'must' do in KSP (choose 1 or more): have fun, experiment, be interested, learn stuff, feel cool. Things you 'should' do in KSP (if they meet the criteria chosen above): find easter-egss, explode, fly, explode, reach orbit, fly to orbit, work out what Ap and Pe are, explode. Do these in a vehicle you designed and built yourself (for a given value of 'designed', eg; close copies are allowed). Become adroit at getting to orbit, reach moons, explode, land on moons, explode, get back again, don't explode. Become blase about Kerbin's SOI (and learn what 'SOI' means), wave 'bye bye' and go interplanetary. Explode. Find out it's the same, but bigger, plant flags. Make a 20% launch vehicle, 40t-payload spaceplane, (any) Eve lander. Explode a lot. Decide to emulate Whackjob, explode everything including your computer (don't try this at home). Try lots of mods. Go even more mad. Write about it (no more videos please!). Things you 'can' do in KSP: Katapults, round-KSC races, submarines, challenges. It takes a bit longer to master than 'The Sims' - about 2 years more. Somewhat more seriously: Build, fly, navigate. Build something efficient, fly it without crashing, rendezvous, dock, land and bring it back. There's only six things to do here! Do those six for any target or combination of targets the might present and you'll stop being a noob. Please send a postcard.

Aren't we nice :-) There is no 'point' to accommodation but so many of us are making the extra (rocket) effort to roleplay to care. Phttt! I just wrote a load of stuff about the physical and mental conditions and conditioning for people like submariners. Deleted it all because it comes down to "we don't know what conditions are most conducive to Kerbals' mental health".

Talking rubbish in the pub mostly. Tonight we covered the concepts of open-source software -> commercial software encouraging mods, how Squad as a marketing company are doing pretty well as a software-house, why you need to click here to donate and other such stuff. Then we hit re-usable space programmes and why ecology is important. Oddly enough, the odd people I talk to accept that one of my oddities is that I spend a lot of time on an odd space-simulator programme. ;-0 People are inspired by a) dinosaurs, pyramids, c) space - give 'em an excuse and they'll join in. [Tooks?] [ETA: ex-wife 'phoned not long after I got KSP and asked what I'd been doing. Normally I then have 5s to respond before she talks at me for 40 minutes or so. On hearing that "I've learnt the importance of a Kerbin periapsis above 70km and the steps required to avoid the consequences of one below that which is, of course, to burn prograde at apoapsis" she was amused enough that I was able to make my excuses and cut short the call. Now, if only I'd reversed the polarity of the neutron flow ...]

The creepiest thing I find is when I've just left one orbit/SOI and haven't yet got the new one. For a minute or so "I've got no strings, to hold me down", no orbit lines, no velocity markers, etc.

That's so cool, I think the longest game time any of my saves have lastest is about 3 years - once. Others are in the 1 year or less category.

They certainly must be Amp. If those figures work for you then stick with them but I think you're being harder than yourself than you need to be. The NASA mercury capsule, for instance, performed a 30 hour manned mission .

Woot! Alt-F2 is new to me - nice one.

Ooooh Yeah! Solar panels, solar panels, must remember solar panels. Now, if only MJ would find the sun for me. Most useful on the night side of course but I'd probably use it after every maneuvre.

A lot of the most interesting places to visit are on Kerbin or Mun. I like easter-egg hunts :-) Descriptions would give to much away to those who prefer to find them themselves, otherwise there are other threads and tools that will reveal them.

Yes. I have minimum crew requirements (but crew-in-transit count) and a 'two seat' rule; there must be at least twice as many places as there are crew+passengers for interplanetary and spacestations (short-stay excepted). On the other hand I prefer to build a reusable infrastructure of stations and never-landing tractors rather than launch everything in one go. That means for Moho, or anywhere else, I just launch the lander/mission vehicle to LKO station, refuel/crew as required, interplanetary tractor transfer to Moho station.

Good call chaps - pictures of mounting multiple stuff on a ship: Or perhaps not; imgur seems to be asleep.

At the moment career mode is almost only about doing science so you can get parts, which is somewhat the wrong way around (although better parts partly means the ability to get more science, of course, it's iterative) which is why I use mods or imagination to create non science-based programmes (sets of missions, within projects, within "why we choose to do these things"). Since it is very much still being worked on I'm happy to wait to see what Squad do with it, until then I stick to sandbox.