Pecan

No, that's called modding ^^. If you're copying stock parts then Squad specifically gave us permission to do exactly that - if you publish for other people make sure you follow the add-ons guidelines though. Coincidentally, I've just written about Patcher.exe in the beginner's guide I'm doing. It verifies an install against Squad's servers and applies any patches. Staying up to date and in control manually is better though. And welcome to the forums, even though this isn't your first post (questions should really go in http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forums/15-Gameplay-Questions-and-Tutorials, rather than here, which is just for 'hello' threads).

Doh! I meant to say a combined lander/rover is an excellent way to do things. Nicely desscribed too :-)

2km/s just isn't going to cut it for a rescue mission near Moho orbit. You need at least 6km/s unless you're being clever with an Eve slingshot or similar. Beyond that, I'd say get the astrophysicists and mathmaticians to plan the mission very carefully ... then put their results into MechJeb for the rendezvous.

It's also completely irrelevant as a source of information for the game itself! Why should we take any notice of Newton, he never played KSP! Pah! Thanks for all the comments so far guys - first draft published for comments.

PDF download on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/45q1qu1scdvx5sd/Induction%200.90.zip?dl=0 Edit: 6.3.15 - minor rephrasing and typo-corrections Update 28.4.15 - Version 1.0 edition and expansion started but there are a Lot Of Bugs in version 1.0, so walking a minefield here.

In writing the beginner's guide to KSP I'm trying to compile a list of sources of information (for the game itself, not orbital mechanics, etc.) I have the KSP site, wiki and forums, obviously, along with reddit and twitch - and Curse and KerbalStuff for mods. Does anyone have the details for following KSP/Squad on twitter or other places/media I haven't gathered yet?

Rovers feel really slow. In reality, they're not - 40mph or so isn't bad - but on any but the smallest moons it takes a loooong time to get anywhere. Unless you originally land near the border of a biome that means they're not even practical for getting science from more than the one place. On that, yes, you can get science with unmanned vehicles. If you transmit the data home you get fewer science points for it, recovering the vehicle and bringing it back to Kerbin gets better results but is obviously a harder mission.

I will if you want one - although there's an awful lot of MJ I've never used. Beginner's Guide first though, so I'm busy for a few weeks.

While the thread is somewhat old, Temstar's The art of modular base building is probably the source of the ideas you're looking at: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/48876-The-art-of-modular-base-building

Crew Manifest - relocate Kerbals within a ship without EVA Enhanced Navball - (anti)normal, radial, etc. markers Procedural Fairings - to come in 1.0 MechJeb - SmartASS, anyway

^ This - we are playing THE only beta release, without all those features as they are planned for 1.0. There isn't going to be a (public, as has been pointed-out elsewhere) beta version that includes all those rather massive changes, just straight to "yep, that's the full game, as we intended".

Your tips for building and flying SSTOs appear to be about spaceplanes, not SSTOs in general.

32-bit is the life of KSP as far as I'm concerned - at least until I can afford a new machine.

Did you also hear that apart from changing Isp/Fuel Flow: There will be a completely new aerodynamics model (similar to, but not, FAR). There will be a rebalance of all the engines and other parts. And LOTS of other things. Which means: The specifications to which you design need to change. The parts you build with will need to change. How you fly will need to change. Squad really are asking for trouble making this the release version without a single beta test. We are all going to be back at square 1, without even the assumption that it requires ~4,500m/s to reach orbit.

Unless you need an extranode, just attach to any existing one, then use the rotate and offset tools in the VAB/SPH to position your new part where you really wanted it.

As Starhawk said; Gameplay Questions and Tutorials, especially Tutorials. Specifically - THE place to find things, rather than scrolling through pages and pages of titles, is The Drawing Board, maintained by Specialist290 and as linked in my signature.

Still Chapter 7 of the Exploring tutorial in my signature

Chapter 7 of the exploring tutorial in my signature. Note especially that you'll need much, much less monopropellant than people expect, the large tank could do for an entire space program, let alone refuelling a few trips. As you'll have gathered, there's no such thing as 'ideal' because so much is up to what you want to do with it. Science parts and a lab can help with 'science from space' contracts and more, but you haven't told us whether you're in sandbox, science or career mode.

... And not a single beta release to test any of it 'in the field'. Good luck Squad!

Avoid wings of any sort because they unbalance the rocket all the way. If you must have them, for FAR stability or similar, place them radially around the base of the rocket. If you want the aerodynamics and are not against mods Procedural Fairings makes much better cargo-bays than the stock ones. Otherwise, SSTOs are as simple as any rocket - you just need a couple of 100m/s extra dV for de-orbit and landing if you add a couple of drogues. The Mk3 parts are currently ridiculously heavy though - use anything else in preference. As Doc said though, all this is going to change a lot with the release of 1.0; probably to the extent that we'll all have to go back to school with all the parts rebalancing and changed aerodynamics.

Very nice albums and too good for your 'hello' thread I think. They deserve their own thread in http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forums/55-Mission-Reports

Yep, that's the way. As long as you don't try to take too much payload at once with a single tractor medium ('light' as was) it's quite capable of ferrying all the other things anywhere in the system; just dock extra fuel to it. The old 'medium' carried so much engine mass for its extra thrust and was so time-consuming to assemble in orbit that I pretty soon stopped using it. I know what you mean about sending Cartographers on a one-way trip too. The satellites never worried me as I knew they were doing a job but it always seemed wrong somehow to deliberately crash the transfer vehicles when I'd finished with them. Such waste is the impetus for fully-reusable vehicles in the last chapters :-) I've avoided the claw because I think anything that's intended to refuel should have a docking port - see SciSat and Science Module in the new Chapter 6. Simply stabbing them with the claw always seems a bit vicious so I only use it for asteroids and, to be honest, there just doesn't seem to be a logical place for such a one-time mission in the flow of the campaign. Personally, I think the rendezvous requirements are harder than for interplanetary too, so it's somewhat beyond the scope of this as a tutorial. In the early drafts I toyed with making a 'Cartographer Jewel' to deliver satellites to all Jool's moons in one go but that got quite large compared to the other vehicles in the early chapters and suffered from the same one-time drawback. Of course, the same could be said for the Tylo and Laythe landers here but I think it's safe to assume someone will want to land several times, in different biomes.

Use a decoupler or docking port. Attach it to the cargo bay and then the payload to the decoupler/port.

Use thrust-limiting to get it to orbit, changing several times during the flight. It is as possible as it is pointless - either a rocket or a spaceplane is easier. What's wrong is that it's a plane being launched on a rocket, which is very hard to do well in KSP, even if Squad had wanted to.

Well done, you must really be paying attention to each version! Yes the 'tractor medium' used to be 'tractor light'. It has changed because 'tractor light' will, in other related tutorials, be an altogether lighter vehicle with only two engines. What was 'tractor medium' has gone for two reasons, i) it was never very effective in practice, ii) I wanted Chapter 8 to be just about landers. This has all been a pretty major re-organisation of the campaign rather than a straightforward update. I think the logic works better now and each chapter has a clearer purpose - although I still want to 'unweave' the Cartographer vehicles and missions from Chapters 4 and 5. In short - No vehicles Simple vehicles Satellites Manned orbital / satellites Lunar landings / satellites Tiny things that stay in space (satellites & tugs) Big things that stay in space (stations & tractors) Landers Suggestions and requests are welcome, if you don't think this arrangement works.