Pecan

He - and I - said Science mode! You can't run out of money because there isn't any. Without money 'no reverts' doesn't really have any effect, since you'd have to re-launch a failed mission anyway. The biggest 'hard' in science mode is no quicksave/load, which means you can't, for instance, quicksave in orbit and just practice re-entry/landings from that point by quickloading again. Instead you have to start again from launch which is a whole bundle of frustration (especially if you were practicing landing on Eeloo ^^).

I just SSTO these days, it's so easy now to chuck a single-stage rocket into orbit and such fun to watch any crew/pax as they fall back to Kerbin in a ball of fire. Sometimes I let them know it'll land ok, but most of the time ... nah - let them scream.

Oh well, since you ask ... The latest update is broken. Your turn. (See the name, see the avatar? Ridicule is nothing to be scared off (although quoting Adam Ant might be) *grin*) FWIW, I have had no problem with the towers going to space in 1.0.5 but I stopped using the towers because the umbilicals just don't seem to function at all. This, presumably, is because I haven't read the thread for the many time this has been raised and answered before. Now that really is worthy of ridicule. (I'll be back when I update my 10 year old computer to something that can cope with parts-mods).

A lot depends on what you want. I've outlined my preferred 'traffic separation' rules before. Briefly, they are: 70km - (de)orbit = ships waiting for the right burn-point to deorbit. 75km - launch orbit/low phasing-orbit = target launch altitude and phasing-orbit for ships going higher 150km - low parking/rendezvous orbit = shipts waiting for something to come up to them 250km - Station orbit 400km - high phasing orbit = usually for ships coming back to Kerbin station, sometimes meeting high-parked ships 600km - high parking orbit = waiting for interplanetary windows The idea is simply, as others have pointed out for their own preferences, that this gives you room for all your orbital-work below the station without being too hard for launching vehicles to reach. Anything that can barely make it to orbit can be met by one of the station tugs to bring it up to dock. I tend to have nine or ten ships 'working' in Kerbin orbit at any one time, apart from the stations themselves, with a few more waiting for transfer windows so I need to keep things organised! Plus, I just find it helps with mission-planning to know at what altitudes everything will be when I need to meet them.

I like option B - one at the front, one underneath or on top. The trick with multi-docking is getting your orientation relative to the ports right but, given that they're going to be pretty close if you're trying at all, their magnets will be pulling them 'close'. If the first one docks and the second isn't aligned - undock. Magnet on number 2 will do the work and number 1 won't re-dock while it stays within the 'safe' range. That might sound like a problem ... until you switch to KSC or another ship out of physics range, quicksave/quickload or whatever; number 1 will re-dock all on its own. Expand concept for more than two ports ...

Heat IS an issue (but not with most rocket launches). Aerodynamics are an issue. Re-entry is a big issue. Plus just about all the parts have changed in the past year; you might recognise them but it's likely their stats have changed. After a year, you're starting again, have to un-learn a lot of what you learnt about KSP design, construction and flight but at least you keep 'real-world' undertanding of orbital mechanics, etc.

Like this http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/23083-10x-ksp-keyboard-map-v25-old-school-gaming-aug-5/ ?

No idea what the Isp is, but it provides 600m/s dV IIRC, so if you look-up the mass of Kerbal you should be able to work it out. Pretty much bound to be constant though, since anything with enough atmosphere to affect it is going to have loads more gravity than EVA RCS can cope with.

Minmus is MUCH easier for first landing missions because of its gravity and wide flat areas. In order to get there, however, you've almost certainly had to use the manoeuvre nodes to change your orbital inclincation to match planes with Minmus as well as just increase your Ap to get there. Give yourself another pat on the back for that.

Conversely, I think every iteration of career has got better - but not nearly enough to compensate for the tech-tree. Squad's problem is having to make things fun and exciting at the beginning, starting manned and all that, letting flight-simulator fans make incredibly unrealistic spaceplanes almost immediately and keeping space-fans content. It's what the community kept shouting for, but I'll stay in my sandbox until I can take a ladder on every flight and start with rocket-launched satellites. Having said that, I've always found it easy in career mode to get started with a few contracts/firsts and let that pay for everything else. I don't find the limitations interesting enough to make it worth any 'hard mode' adjustments but I still find designing space-vehicles interesting. So I'm still playing KSP after two years.

No (but see below). Yes. Career mode adds ALL sorts of complications that you really, really don't want if you're learning what the parts do. Start with science mode, where you have similar part-restrictions but don't have to worry about money, reputation and - especially - (mission) contracts. The first thing you'll want to learn is how to launch and get to space. You can do that with the tutorials, but getting to orbit, so you stay in space is much harder. You will need to practice and will probably want to read more about what a 'gravity turn' is and what 'apoapsis', 'periapsis', 'prograde' and other terms mean. At a guess, you can be in space within a few minutes if you want to but you'll have no idea how and will fall back down spectacularly (which can be fun too!). Expect getting to space in a controlled way you understand to take at least an hour or two, getting to orbit reliably several hours to a couple of days - game time. Do NOT expect failure at this point - define your goals as 'learn a bit more before I crash this time', that way the only way to fail is by not learning anything :-) Next is building your own vehicles instead of using the stock ones (which are fairly bad). Again, the tutorials will get you started and making monstrous craft is only minutes away. You'll probably be able to build rockets that fly reasonably well within a few hours but the finer points of staging, building any sort of 'plane and optimising for payload-delivery, minimum-fuel or whatever will keep you occupied for years, if you're into engineering. Expect many, many launch-failures (try not to put the parachutes in the same stage as your main engine - we've all done it) but also expect to learn a huge amount about how a rocket (or 'plane, if you play a space-simulator to fly aircraft) actually works. Isp, deltaV and TWR are the phrases to learn for design. Once you can build and fly a ship to orbit, the next challenge is landing safely. Landing can be dead easy on Kerbin (parachutes) or just dead (re-entry heating or 'lithobraking' which is joke-jargon for 'stopping by hitting the ground'). On vacuum bodies like Kerbin's moons it takes a bit more practice but is not awful. Four or five attempts, if you have an idea of what you're doing, should get you down alive. What is there not fun about falling 70km in a ball of fire? The important thing for your sanity - and not having to start all over again - is quicksave and quickload in orbit so you can just practice the descent. For most people rendezvous and docking are the last major challenge. They take a bit more understanding of orbital mechanics than most people have and it took NASA a while to work it all out. On the other hand - NASA didn't have the benefit of playing KSP for days (or weeks) in order to get all that understanding. Every one of us probably has more computer power sat on their desks/laps than NASA had in total in the 50s/60s. Practice! And if that doesn't do it for you, you'll be looking at mods by now so install MechJeb and let if autopilot for you. The thing is, you learn all these things as you progress, at your own pace. Some failures are fun in themselve, some you learn from and, yes, some are frustrating. Every success feels great though! Especially your first 'Aha' moment when you understand how to get to orbit, your first moon-landing (Minmus is MUCH easier than Mun), your first docking/station and your first interplanetary. Depending on the person I'd say: someone who can master KSP in a week will be bored of it in two someone who doesn't want to spend a month learning as they progress will not stick with KSP someone who enjoys doing new, and hard, things and is willing to learn and practice can be 'competent-to-good' in, very roughly, a month Everyone still crashes sometimes For your originals questions - Moonbase in a couple of days (for a given value of 'base'), spacestations in a week, if you really want and have an apptitude for it. Fairly good ones in a month. Perfect ones, never. You will make everything much harder for yourself if you don't use external sources of information.

The equation you want is the reverse rocket equation and, yes, Slashy amongst others has published a thread all about it http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/92716-the-quotreverse-rocket-equationquot-explained/#comment-1581147

Reaction wheels are good for re-orienting your ship and don't use fuel (although they do need power, of course). RCS is about the only way you have of accelerating sideways or backwards. I only use RCS for docking and only add monopropellant tanks to a ship if it's meant to be a tug doing a lot of docking and/or handling awkward loads. That means most of my ships have very limited fuel for RCS and I don't want it wasted doing the job of reaction wheels. If I want to rotate - RCS and SAS off, WASDQE and reaction wheels. If I want to translate - RCS and SAS on, HIJKLN and monopropellant while reaction wheels compensate for any RCS imbalance.

Lots Absurd number of intakes no longer has any value whatsoever If you have lots of thrust - launch! Go up! Nothing wrong with rocket SSTOs No reason to stay at sea level if you can accelerate in a climb. If you can't, you don't have oodles of thrust ^^ Why cut throttle, when the whole point is to gain speed? You should be well over 1km/s before reaching 20km if you're using a flat profile Low-20s is the max altitude you'll be able to get and still run air-breathing engines There is no such thing as an absurd amount of orbital velocity unless you accidentally find yourself leaving Kerbin SOI The final burn to orbit sounds good though.

The closer you are to a body the faster you need to go in order to maintain an orbit. At any given altitude there is exactly one orbital velocity - go faster than that and your orbit rises, go slower and it falls. If you slow down, you fall, which increases your velocity. Hence the totally obvious orbital mechanics rule "if you want to go faster, slow down".1 For a landing I usually first establish orbit at 10km or lower - you will accelerate even from that altitude and initial higher speed anyway as you fall towards the surface. The easiest way to land (but not most efficient) is to burn slowly, keeping your nose facing retrograde (assuming the engines face the other way). Initially this slows your horizontal/orbital speed but as you start to fall more quickly retrograde rises above the horizon and more thrust is directed towards countering your vertical fall. Just remember to throttle-up if necessary during the last stages so you land gently enough to survive! [1Seriously - it gets even more fun when you start doing orbital rendezvous and docking. To catch up with something ahead of you, slow down (a bit), so you fall (a bit) and then orbit faster, accelerate to go back up and slow down again once you've closed the angular gap. To let something behind you catch up, go faster, so you rise and orbit slower. It's rocket science, it doesn't have to make sense too! (This is really real, not just a KSP thing, by the way)]

If the 'start fuel cell' button is missing; are you in timewarp (accelerated time)? This deactivates many conrols.

There is a display on physics warp warning that almost anything could happen in atmosphere, with a big, high part-count vehicle. Since the planets are on rails you haven't moved that but you might have invented a new type of Kraken drive. (Except that it isn't really a bug/Kraken as such because physics warp isn't meant to work in those circumstances)..

Tylo is a moon. If your mission is to every airless planet that's Moho, Dres and Eeloo. If you're not sure of where to put all this, maybe Mission Reports? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/51-mission-reports/

I've just watched today's launch of the Soyuz to the ISS and thought I'd comment on the excellent view of the Korolev Cross as the boosters separated ... but I couldn't remember whether it might have been spelt Korol'ov' (apologies to Russian-speakers) so I asked Google. Not only did it give me 'Korolev Cross' as soon as I'd got as far as 'Ko' but it also suggested I look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1oIcKzhToY, which is pretty clearly from KSP. Whose is it though? I don't recognise the name - take a bow, whoever you are :-)

The EVA RCS packs that Kerbals wear has 600m/s dV, IIRC, which isn't really enough to get back from the surface of Mun. When you send a rescue ship just look in map mode for the landed vehicle or Kerbal on EVA, if he's got out. If you can't see EVA Kerbals then move your mouse to the top of the display in map mode and make sure they're selected. ETA: Actually landing anywhere near the Kerbal might be difficult. MJ's landing guidance does a good job *grin*.

Never mind - I see this is a duplicate thread and the original has more/better answers

I totally agree with all those saying use a mod. You need the results from the maths but you don't need to do the calculations yourself, let alone by hand. It helps to understand the results if you know how they're derived but a dV map, transfer window mod and info-mod (KER, MJ, VOID) are all you need.

None. I don't use jets on most of my SSTOs. When I do use jets they're usually on 'planes small enough that about the only thing that will fit are the radial ramps.

OBS: Open Broadcaster Software

So you're asking how your un-named mods work because the un-named mods creators are on holiday and there's no response in the un-named mods threads from other un-named mods users? Hmmm, Nope, crystal ball is out of power. (Which mods!!) OR - edit your persistent.sfs and give yourself a couple of million rep points.