Pecan

Well it sounds like you've got the hang of it all ;-0 Hints: 1) Don't forget the joys of improbable aircraft too; SPH as well as VAB 2) Once you've messed around as much as you like it is worth reading the tutorials on how to make things that work (although an awful lot of stuff seems to be in video form, assuming you can't read and don't have meterd broadband fees) 3) Ships that work or don't are always welcome in these forums so ask whenever you have specific questions 4) It's really fun the first time you a) get to orbit, visit a moon, c) land on one, d) rendezvous and dock (and others) And more seriously and specifically: The KER (Kerbal Engineer Redux) or MJ (MechJeb - also an autopilot) mods both show you information you need to know in the VAB in order to make a 'good' rocket (not to say that 'good' doesn't = spectacular explosion). Mainsails and boosters are powerful - often too powerful. Struts will help but too much thrust can tear your ships apart - with hilarious consequences - and wastes fuel when you're, sort of, trying to do it 'right'. Read about TWR and deltaV ((very) basically how fast and how far a thing can go) enough to understand the figures KER/MJ tell you. Practice. Have fun. Practice having fun. Have fun practicing. All of the above.

The 'ocean bug' is well know and affects Kerbin, Laythe and Eve. Open settings.cfg in notepad, or some other text-editor and search for 'ocean'. You will find a section like this: { name = KerbinOcean minDistance = 2 minSubdivision = 1 maxSubdivision = 2 } Where the default settings - have higher settings. Change minDistance and maxSubdivision to 2 as above (or experiment) and this should at least partly solve it. Apparently the problem is that there are two surfaces that have to be rendered instead of one. Above 160km (IIRC) the effect disappears and you should get 'normal' operation. NB: There are 2 (or 3?) 'ocean' sections in settings for each of the three affected planets. Change both/all the Kerbin ones and those for the other planets too, if you are likely to be visiting them soon.

Make a 10-minute taxi ("the car will be with you in 10 minutes" ranks alongside "the cheque's in the post" and other standard lies) - 1) Pick a spot on the map of Kerbin 2) Launch/take-off from KSC 3) Land at your selected spot within 10 minutes (met) Yes, you should be able to do it with a sub-orbital ship/plane. Popping into space for a while is up to you.

The 650 was what I'd intended to buy as it happens, had it not been for the PSU. In the UK it'll cost a bit more than $150 but it's not a bank-buster. I'll probably end-up just building a new machine though since most of the components of this one are getting weak by today's standards. The 610 will make a good reserve card when I do, no problems with it yet, installed smoothly, runs quietly, no complaints from any of the games I've thrown at it (apart from those too old themselves to know what a 610 is!).

My old nVidia 8300 gave up the ghost yesterday *boo* So I've just upgraded *hooray* Unfortunately, since the rest of the system is fairly old too the best my PSU could push was a 610 *boo* Compared to how it used to look & run KSP is fantastic though *hooray* (even if most of the rest of you wouldn't rate it). Sometime I'll get around to upgrading the PSU so I can get a quality card. And then improve the motherboard, with a better CPU. And memory ... doh!

Film? Sorry, I don't do film. “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.†― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Take a break - there's no point doing things just for the sake of it.

I'm with Vanamonde and 5th Horseman - make sure you've got 'autowarp' activated in MJ and the rest is just how long it takes to get an intercept. If you're in the same orbit height (or close) but far away MJ should make a 'phasing orbit' to change relative speeds. How far does it go? How quickly the positions in orbit coincide depends on the distance (thus orbital period) between the two orbits. Also, if you're low, the game sets a limit on how quickly you can warp - only 2x under 10km IIRC. Try setting your station higher if that's the case or getting your vehicle into a much higher orbit, just so you can warp more. In close orbits a time-to-transfer of a couple of hours is not unlikely but with warp that should happen in 5 minutes or less real-time. Otherwise everything's just too low or you're not using warp.

I can never bring myself to do a fly-by. Once I've got there I have to orbit it, even if not land on it. I'm so lame (or at least several Kerbals are from rash missions)

Just back from the pub where I was showing my KSP tutorial pictures - including the first manned mission in the orbiter known as 'Gagarin'. Even if I've spelt it wrong (I'm, just back from the pub, after all) he will be remembered.

This. Nothing has seemed quite so 'yes' as establishing my first space-station.

I concur with Claw - your staging looks fine provided those are the correct separatons in stages 7 - 9 (I'm sure that's what you've already checked and anyway you'd see the 'wrong' ones firing on still-attached tanks if they weren't) so unless you've disabled them in the VAB it's probably an artefact of the game. Another consideration with separatons though - they are currently pointing at your central tank and when they fire you'll likely get damage recorded in the flight-log (F3). I've never seen any actual damage from them but you might find they work better - once you get them working at all! - so they push 'up and out' rather than just out. I think Kasuha wrote an article on separaton placement but I can't find a link to it at the moment... [Edit: Thank you Red Iron Crown :-)]

This is the mainly the well-known "Ocean bug" - on Kerbin, Laythe and Eve there is huge lag whenever there is ocean to render. It can be more-or-less cured with an edit of the settings.cfg file but otherwise it affects all views up to c160km IIRC. Just posting this to let you know you aren't alone and that it is a known bug. I'll try to find a thread (there have been several) with details of the fix.

The green tank in the first picture is from the Kethane mod and the fairing on launch is Procedural Fairings. Not sure about the balloons on ascent from Eve (because I haven't used them) but try Hooligan Labs.

Apart from the central nukes are those T30s you're using Kasuha?

I asked the same question when I started - and got the same answer :-) Crew Manifest is good as 5thHorseman suggests but there is a newer/better option I think (I'm still using CM) - Ship Manifest allows you to transfer more than just crew so you might want to check that out too.

You're off to a good start. Now make 8 stacks with those at the base, joined by girders ... ... sorry, I seem to be channeling Whackjob

An early agile software development method (DSDM) defined what is known as the MoSCoW rules for defining the scope of a release: Must Haves - there's no point to the release without any of these Should haves - important but not essential Could haves - while we're at it, it's easy to do this Would likes - write a letter to santa Once you have a list like that the 'timebox' approach is to take the time it will need (with testing, etc) to include the top/most do-able 'must haves' (which define the release). Add on a bit of time for one or two easier 'should haves' and contingency and say "that's when we'll release". Any unused contingency (you planned well) is used for a 'could have' or maybe even a 'would like' if one of the developers feels like it. If you run out of time you release with what you've got, as long as it includes at least one 'must have'. This approach is particularly useful where you have to co-ordinate and schedule with outside teams/agencies because you're telling them exactly when you'll be ready (if not what they'll get ^^). An alternative is the 'workbox' approach where you decide on very specific functions that will be included but can't estimate how long it'll take (perhaps you know you have to have multiplayer but you don't even know where to start yet). In this you say "It'll be ready when it's ready" - and people know what to expect, but not when. This is useful if you have long lead-times on things like printing manuals and publicity as they can plan accordingly. In practice, of course, it's usually a bit of both and, in any case, modern agile methods are designed to allow for changes as you go along. The older methods came from physical engineering and construction and mean you spend most of your time in planning meetings and by the time you make something it isn't what you'd intended or the customer wants any more. [incidentally - you might like to ask this in the modding forum - all those poor developers get requests for additions and changes all the time and have to work out what they can do, when]

Like Claw I admire what you've done and might use the same sort of thing in some designs. Apart from anything else the parts just look more streamlined than girders & struts. In my first post I'd only intended to point out that this sort of design is neither lighter nor narrower than the 'conventional' way of doing things. There is far less torque and movement on the struts too - fewer joints to flex, nearer to CoM, etc. - so the thing is very stable. (Also the "calling my ship a dog" line was tongue-in-cheek, I know it doesn't look too bad but you said 'asparagus' like it was a bad thing *grin*.) 'Stack' decouplers placed sideways on the struts let you stage radials without much mass if you want to. It's a simple - although, I agree, slightly cheaty - way of doing things. All that aside you say you want things realistic - how long do you thing it would take a welder to stick one tank on the side of another, compared to all the couplers? Anyway - congratulations on what you have done. If there's anything you think I've missed from the alternative I've shown just let me know. Have fun :-)

Should we all point out to minority that can't dock at the moment that a) not caring is fine as long as you're having fun, if you want to learn remember we ALL* had to learn and "You're human - if a thing is humanly possible then it is possible for you" [*Even those who say "first time and every time" weren't born with the skill]

I'm sorry, I can't possibly comment until our lord Whackjob has made a pronouncement.

Sooo cheap! Try seeing what that money would get you in the UK! [Edit for below - you pay roughly half what we'd have to. USD$740 would be GBP£440 (just checked) which would be a good-ish laptop - something more than just surfing the web and twitface but not much in the way of graphics.]

Getting a high apoapsis isn't the problem, it's building up enough speed to get your periapsis up that's where the efficiency of turbojets pays. To get a high apoapsis you just need to go up as fast as possible but that'll leave you with a big circularisation burn on rockets. 38km is definitely high for jets but - somewhat lower than that, before you need to cut the throttle right back - you should be flying more or less level, which means your apoapsis might only be a kilometre or two higher than you, As your speed increases in the thin air there though your periapsis will rise then, eventually, you nose-up and add rockets to raise apoapsis, coast there and do a small circularisation burn.

It must be a hell of a lot since that Roman has started a really tight gravity turn.

Are you calling my ship a dog? (Non-stock Procedural Fairings on the payload, but you get the point). Bet my way of putting 12 engines on your ship is lighter than yours ;-0 All stock, no clipping - not even that allowed by the editor. Cubic octhangol struts and fuel-lines are also massless in flight (the VAB lies). I don't see any decouplers on your original post so I haven't put them here and, since you have tanks on the radials there's already somewhere there to attach the engines*. I used the quad coupler for the nukes but that isn't necessary either; octhagonal struts are again the usual and massless way to do it - really, they're the king of structural parts. [*Oops, I was trying to knock this together quickly and not paying attention. I should have only put the FL-T100 tanks on every other (symmetry 4) engine-mount. Nevertheless the RCS tanks would have served the same purpose.]