Pecan

You've already made things hard for yourself by starting in career mode so removing mods that make such fundamental changes sounds like a good plan, what's your question?

Huh? All controls are always available in the VAB/SPH and you only need to click on a part (other than the root) to detach it and its sub-tree.

None. Don't use rapiers. Both. Don't use wings. Protective Rocket Nose Mk7 is about your only choice. It's just counterproductive to add all those parts. No. Neither. Fine control like that's only needed for docking - your payload can do that. Normal rocket ascent, you'll probably even have a better orbit at the end of it. Redesign your rocket. Mk3 spaceplane anything mostly, except the passenger module. Cargo/storage bays and claws are kraken-bait. Like Starhawk, I don't know any more but assume nothing is truely insignificant now. Yes, because 8 above, even though they shouldn't. Following these guidelines you'll be able to design the most efficient SSTOs possibly, delivering more tons to orbit than parts needed to build them. Or you could build spaceplanes, but since you said SSTO I assumed you meant rockets, as they're so much easier. [A bit less tongue-in-cheek - what exactly is your measure of 'efficient'. You say 'fuel to spare' but that's neither here nor there. Do you want lowest dV to orbit, lowest cost/t of payload to orbit, infinite-range with ISRU, etc?]

Welcome to the forums. The first two engines are the reliant and the swivel. You can easily build a SSTO rocket with those, but neither is air-breathing so I don't understand why you are having a problem reaching 10km (or a lot more) or why you think adding air intakes would solve it. Mk1 command pod with mk16 parachute on top and decoupler below. Right at the bottom a swivel engine with all the fuel tanks it can lift between it and the decoupler. SSTO rocket.

Tethers would be good in any case because, sanity! Then again ... tech 5 ladders :-( Seriously we shouldn't all have to be Leonov in order to get back in our ships, especially beginners (he was tethered, of course, but that's about the only thing he had going for him)

Excellent, criticism is welcome, exemplars even better :-) So this does Minmus return landings? I'll give it a go. Not getting a low enough Pe to re-enter is only a matter of tweak and there's always the GOAP option. I must admit I never designed anything specifically for Minmus but a demonstration vehicle that can do that but not Mun would help emphasise to beginners that Minmus is the easier/better first choice, despite being harder to get to. ETA: Trying to build from the picture I see no radial decouplers. Am I right in thinking the side-stacks are fixed and this SSTOs?

As cantab said, the demo now include Minmus as well as Mun, Kerbin and the sun. What is it that you think is overdone on the rocket? I am keen to see alternatives - tutorials and tools for absolute beginners are my thing - but no-one has ever offered any other that could launch, go to either moon, land and return safely. For those that don't have the demo (and can't be bothered to get it), you should be aware that the aerodynamics are from 1.0.1, so a little different from 1.0.5 - especially heat. These are all the parts available: mk1 command pod stayputnik FL-T100 and FL-T200 LFO tanks Fuel ducts Stratus-V monopropellant tank LV-T30 LFO engine (no gimbal) RT-5 and -10 SRBs RCS thruster block, small inline reaction wheel Srruts, modular girder, launch clamp TR-18A stack and TT-38K radial decouplers Nosecone, AV-T1 winglet LT-1 legs, mk16 parachute, OX-4L solar panels, Pegasus 1 ladder, Z-100 battery communotron 16, mystery goo and science jr. cantab's suggestion for an RCS-lander is interesting but MJ and KER don't like telling me RCS dV and TWR so I'd have to work it out by hand - perish the thought! It's going to be difficult to place the thrusters and radial monopropellant tanks needed, I would think, unless you keep an empty LFO tank just to give you some structure. In any case, you'll presumably still need the T30 for transfer to the moon of your choice anyway.

I've been trying to recreate this, but I can't. If you go too fast too long in atmosphere so the parachute overheats you get 'xxx exploded due to overheating'. 'Destroyed by ...' only appears to happen if you deploy the parachute outside the safe parameters. Check your staging and keyboard mashing again, I'm afraid. [Separately and possibly amusingly: Test rig 1: RC-L01, mk16 parachute, X200-8 fuel tank, mammoth engine. TWR 20-odd, reaches 300m/s below 500m but burns-out before any heating effects. Test rig 2: OKTO2, mk16 parachute, thumper. TWR 3-ish, doesn't reach 300m/s until nearly 2km but keeps on burning until the whole thing explodes.]

Right, I had to experiment a bit to work out how to describe it and I still don't think I can explain it... Although a sub-assembly has its own 'root' part, it is assumed that it will become attached to the rest of whatever ship you are building and that ship, by definition, also has to have a root part. In an empty VAB or SPH if you load a sub-assembly it's 'loose' and not counted as a whole ship and there is no root part. In other words you have to attach a sub-assembly to something. You can un-freeze everything by clicking any allowed part from the list of parts and putting it into the VAB/SPH. That then becomes the root part for the ship and you can attach the sub-assembly to it. If you just wanted the sub-assembly as a complete ship you can then use the re-root tool to select a part on the original sub-assembly and delete the command pod you put in as a placeholder root part. What you can't do is just load a sub-assembly on its own. I don't know what the technical reasons for this are but you can see the same 'locked' effect by ... loading or building a ship, detaching everything from the root and then deleting the root part. Without one you, again, can't move the camera or select anything in the VAB/SPH scene, the only thing you can do is add a new root part from the list of parts and attach the floating section of the ship to it. There is also a 'merge' option for complete ships from the 'load' list, but I haven't used that much so can't comment. Usually I both 'save' ships, so I can start with them (as KSP sees them as complete ships) and store them as sub-assemblies (which it doesn't). There is probably a better way of doing things ^^.

Is true (I think the associated right-click text is "marginal") but doesn't appear for long unless you're having real problems slowing down. It's "not quite safe".

Wanderfound told you what to do, below is a ship to do it with. Explanation at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117782-how-can-i-orbit-kerbin-and-the-moon-in-demo/&do=findComment&comment=2109334 This can land on and return from either of Kerbin's moons. Note that it is much easier to do Minmus than Mun, because it has lower gravity and more flat areas.

Yeah, gimbal does it but in practice that's an in-between design I chucked together for the the screenpic. Lighter you can remove the docking port, one of the solar panels and one of the engines, replace the other engine with an ant. Heavier I'd usually use a space-scooter like this (and I do, because it's fun) as illustrated and explained in http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72093-exploring-the-system-a-design-tutorial-campaign-090-final/&do=findComment&comment=1185911. At 0,7t that gives a SSTO lander that "Can land on and re-orbit from any body except Tylo, Laythe and Eve. Landing OR re-orbit is possible on Tylo, but not both. You can even take this to Mun [from LKO] on its own if you really want to."

And I would say that is entirely dependent on your preferred play-style of ISRU at other planets and ships that never return to Kerbin SOI. That's all fair enough, of course, but it's only one play-style.

Did someone say small? It's always good to start small. When you get to adding a couple of extra pieces you end up with something bigger, like this: It's 580m/s each way for Mun so you have plenty of fuel here. Probably too much thrust though, might want to turn those powerful engines down.

For the second part of that to be true then without using orbital refuelling all your ships must either be single-shot, expendable, vehicles or SSTOs that drag all their atmospheric bits and pieces around space with them. Both approaches are very wasteful. If, on the other hand, you DO use orbital refuelling but not stations then i) you have to launch exactly the fuel required when it is required by each single ship that requires it, ii) any excess fuel is wasted when a ship lands back on Kerbin. Both approaches are quite wasteful. Perhaps you just have half-empty tanks/ships scattered around the system in any old orbit. I'd say those are just being hard-to-reach stations, since they aren't doing anything else. Rendezvous and dock, suck fuel, not full yet rendezvous and dock with another one, suck fuel, rendezvous and dock with SSTO bringing new crew into orbit. A very complicated and time-consuming (but not necessarily wasteful) way to do things. I have a small station around most bodies. When I have any vehicle coming into a system I know it needs to rendezvous and dock with that one thing, in a known and tweaked orbit. There will be fuel and crew waiting there (unless the ship is bringing them to the station, of course). My space-vehicles never land, just top-up and move on. My SSTOs are each designed for the body they operate from. THAT's efficiency.

I think you are taking things out of context simply to 'defend' career-mode; as if it needed it. Would you care to explain why money, contracts, strategies, building-limitations and having to re-launch from Kerbin every time just to practice lunar landings helps a new user, who is just trying to learn how to fly and build?

This. Plus writing tutorials.

Tech 6: Tech 4:

Or just look at things this way. You have two hands. I give you a plate of food and a wine glass, as any good host would. How do you shake hands when someone greets you? 64-bit - with one of the other hands I've got. 64-bit dude! 32-bit without 'paging' - I crash because 'out of hands' 32-paging - I put down the plate and now have a free hand (write from memory to Hard Disk to temporarily free it for new use). It takes me three minutes to find somewhere to put the plate

Hehe. It's good for what it is but it is what it is and one size never fits all. I'm happy, I have an imagination of my own and can follow it in sandbox. I think it's probably fair to say career is 'the' game, it's just not one I enjoy playing - most linear games suffer the same way - and too many extraneous complications, right from the start, to be good for beginners, who first need to learn how to fly and build.

Same way you used to do it - but then I have developed SSTO rockets and planes as body-specific landers. My space-only vehicles never land, so they are very cheap. On the other hand, you are also right that a simple one-shot ship for a simple one-shot mission is simpler - that's why Apollo did it that way, even though resuable 'shuttle-type' plans were available right from the start (to paraphrase XKCD: it works in Race Into Space). I don't bother with Kerbin-SOI ISRU though; SSTO launches from Kerbin are cheap enough for me.

Exactly so - it's worth reading the announcement of releases and the many threads they generate. 1.0.5 devblog here - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/developerarticles.html/ksp-105-is-live-r179/. "Readme.txt" is well named; it's in the main KSP folder on your computer (and in that devblog, so no need to go looking for it now). Specifically, * Contract Decline Penalty: A small reputation penalty is incurred when a contract is declined, to prevent Mission Control from being abused as a slot machine.

Your 1.0.x game? Singular? Noob! (teasing, in case the tone doesn't come across in text) I have two installs of 1.0.5, one of 1.0.4 (compatibiity check) and one of the demo (testing). In each except the demo there are about 5 games, generally 3 sandbox and 1 each of career and science. No idea how many saves there are within each game ^^.

That would be because you didn't pick the 'Difficulty Options' at the bottom of the 'Start New' screen and then select 'Hard' or otherwise disallow quickload, It's allowed by default. People who have way too much time on their hands can turn it off, if they wish.

Sandbox. Avoid the insane tech-tree. People have often said that career is a grind until you have the tech you want, then it's sandbox ... so I'm just skipping the grind. I have played it a couple of times to make sure I can but, yeah, after about five launches I might as well be back in sandbox, so I am. Science mode still has the same insane tech-tree, of course. it's a good way to learn the parts for a beginner though, without all the complexity of money, contracts and strategies. Those are irrelevant to learning how things work in space and KSP so get the basics under your belt before messing with all that extra stuff.