Pecan

You say that so much. What speed is it? At what altitude? I'll get you at playtime! (eg; PM) *grin* m/s is "a thing" and can be displayed in KSP, Mach X isn't, and can't.

Thank you for the information. I will try it and see if it takes some of the tedium out of my current spaceplane ascents, which is 20km, then start flattening out, then have a cup of coffee before 50km or so.

What to do after tech tree: START

Richard Branson. No, I'll only watch videos if they are short and show something specific.

Welcone. The tutorial in my signature will guide you through basic vehicle and mission design from a KSC rover to interplanetary spacestations. Since it goes in a logical sequence Mun orbits (with satellites) are in Chapter 4, manned lunar landings (Minmus is easier than Mun) and interplanetary satellites in Chapter 5.

I can see some very outspoken posters in lots of threads about the topic but not many in number. It seems the same people are posting the same issues in many places. I worry that a few loud voices are riding roughshod over a less vocal majority who would not mind stats meaning something. Guess who I'm talking about John FX? Please show me these stentorian posts that say they don't want stats to mean something. I have seen very, very few (3?) people saying they don't want Kerbal experience or upgradable buildings. I have seen lots (20?) people saying they don't want those to affect parts or physics. I think the topic is dead anyway but I'd really like to ask something else - why are you so keen to make parts/physics variable rather than have any of the other options considered?

I have only just found the very excellent "Kronal Vessel Viewer" mod, which lets me make 'exploded' pictures of the vehicles in the VAB/SPH like this: Please comment on how useful you think this, or other enhancements would be to the tutorial.

Wonderful! Never seen any pics like that, never heard of the mod. Downloading it right now. Thanks to both of you for bringing it to my attention.

Coincidentally - I am citing mhoram's as an exemplar in the introduction for my next tutorial, "...why I hadn't published any vehicles in the Spacecraft Exchange. The simple answer is that ... those I do use I still don't think are as good for a general audience as some of those that are already published such as Temstar's (somewhat old) Zenith (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24787-0-19-1-Zenith-rocket-family) and mhoram's Lopac Lifter (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74395-Low-Partcount-Lifters) families." There are some great engineers around here :-)

Once more I find myself echoing the general consensus - there is so much more in the full version and so many changes have been made since the (0.18) demo version that you will want to start again anyway. To put it another way, while the demo will give you a taste of what you can do, it won't be the way you want to do it in the full version. That said, the manoeuvre techniques and rocket science you can try in demo are the same :-) Take the experience you gain with you into the full version, leave the ships behind.

The drag in real-life (and FAR) depends on the cross-sectional area of the rocket, so keeping things thin is more aerodynamic in that respect. In stock drag is only dependent on mass.

Reconnaissance (and another mod - SCANSat) That is (map the surface with satellites first then) land a pilotless drone to see what the surface is really like. If it's safe use the drone as a target.

I'm the sort of player who doesn't like bringing Kerbals or forum posts back from the dead.

More of the same as everyone else again I think - I use it when I'm making something as mass-efficient as possible, but limit myself to a single 'layer' so it's no less aerodynamic than any other radial staging. Since I've 'perfected' asparagus and am concentrating on SSTO launch vehicles and cost-optimisation for a tutorial at the moment I rarely need mass-efficient, so no asparagus.

NO - We have been told that experience will NOT improve the performance of parts through better ISP, more thrust, and so on. That's what Squad intended to do and exactly what so many people objected to. The same objections apply for the same reasons to such 'improvements' via upgradeable buildings. NO - Hardly anyone said that upgradeable buildings and Kerbal experience will ruin the game and should not be implemented. People have suggested several alternative ways these could be useful, interesting and/or fun without affecting basic mechanics or physics. Nooo, but I understand what you mean. You probably have quite a different definition of 'fun' than Squad or most new players would though. Masochists, maybe, but not the average KSP player (if there is such a thing). Then again, my own favourite option is for Kerbal experience to implement features of MechJeb - navigator/pilots can plot/execute manoeuvre nodes for the player if requested. There are quite a few people who think it's critical to KSP that the player is always the pilot so hate that idea. I think we all have to accept that Squad started with the 'simulator' side of things, so stuff works more or less. As the game gets closer to beta they're concentrating on the 'game' parts to flesh things out and appeal to a broader range of customers. Naturally, the people who liked 'simulator' are less likely to be excited about watering that down for 'game' components we don't care about at best or, at worst, actively dislike. As such whatever Squad do now there are likely to be existing/old players who hate it.

The forum search is not very good so it's best to read the thread titles in Gameplay Questions And Tutorials for specific questions. The best way to find tutorials is to look in The Drawing Board, which is an index of them all. What though do you mean by "an answer" to specific missions? You start with "launch a new spacecraft" - do you have a problem with that? "Reach an altitude of 5,000 meters" - not a problem, right? "Get into orbit" - may well want to read about the difference between getting into space and getting into orbit. Part-test contracts 'in flight' cause quite a bit of confusion, you'll find several threads about them. Or are you looking for someone else's vehicles? My tutorial (link in signature) goes through 30-odd vehicle and 50-something mission designs in a logical order. For sandbox, not career, since the tech-tree in that doesn't make any sense.

The language-translation analogy is even worse than that. A literal translation is not usually a good or even useful translation. In anything you need to translate the concepts as well as the instantiation. Homer's "wine-dark sea" for instance (eg; http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/) nice bit of poetic analogy or because ancient Greek had no word for "blue"? If the latter and for some odd reason ancient Greek became all the rage again, how would you translate "blue sky thinking"? "Wine-dark" might have rather too many suggestions of being drunk! Abdu - in some ways you are right because at least by this stage of development a team has a better idea of what they want, what does and doesn't work in (play) practice, what appeals most to customers; all things that could only be outlined at best before the programme was released. For the actual programming it's usually quicker and easier to throw away everything you've written so far and start again, making much faster progress because of your improved experience and understanding, plus resuable graphics, etc. Nevertheless it's a lot of extra work so there has to be a very compelling reason to change this close to completion.

There is also no Mk2 decoupler, battery or command core (doh!) SAS unit at the moment but I'm pretty relaxed about it, knowing that all the parts (and especially the 'plane' ones) are still being updated. Especially looking forward to seeing some Mk3 things that are useful, as well.

This ^^, recursively. What's the rocket-equation for experience changing physics? dV = ((Isp*G)*LN(Full_Mass/Empty_Mass)) + A_Bit_Of_Pilot_Magic ? Pilots don't change the way a rocket works, they FLY it better, so let them fly it. Since it'll be optional YOU won't have to turn it on when you don't want it. Almost everyone said Kerbal experience and individualisation was a great idea, just that "ye cannae break the laws of physics" (as an engineer, let alone a pilot) by changing part stats depending on who happens to be in the ship. Several other good and uncontroversial ideas were suggested, some requiring more or less of the developers; which may be a major decider of what we end up with. They may or may not be inspiring or interesting to as many people but they certainly didn't upset as many either.

:-) 10 char :-)

Thank you. Yes, less really is more in space-flight :-) As I've said before most of the designs in this tutorial are not great in themselves (although I hope they're fairly good) as they are intended more to demonstrate design points than represent any sort of "authoritative" way of doing things. That said, I also quite often find myself still adding stuff "I think I want ..." and referring back. However - *cough* "I've never built a successful SSTO" *cough* - the Mk1 Rocket in Chapter 2 is a 3-part SSTO; it doesn't get simpler. In career mode you can SSTO with start-tech; it doesn't get lower-tech. Coincidentally, I've just been testing that to see to what extent and in what combination SRBs help with that.

Half-listening to the news on the radio I just heard about a (smaller than Antares) 'explosion' that scared the people of South-East England today. Not much of a story to it (it was just a sonic boom) but that's one-hell of a well-timed photograph!

It's caught most of us at one time or another, usually more than once. It's pretty specific to the lander-cans which face forward but are oriented up, the other command pods 'point' in the direction they're expected to go. Apart from rovers (make sure the navball is pointing more-or-less at the horizon) the big time to watch out is when building with a sub-assembly such that the default probe core, or whatever, is upside-down at launch and the navball is pointing at the ground - those launches tend not to go well ^^.

More of the same really; - Science is what you're after at the moment, so get the tools for the job. - Nukes are nice (is that the first time anyone's ever said that?!) but you probably don't need them yet. - Turbojets are excellent BUT i) you can easily SSTO without them, ii) Single Stage further than To Orbit is inefficient, iii) spaceplanes (and jet SSTOs in general) are harder to design and fly when you're just starting, iv) A spaceplane/jet-SSTO big enough to lift a meaningful amount of fuel is even harder and, depending on your computer, could be a lag-beast. - Spacesuits don't need ioning.

Two threads, two posts, same subject, same answers (with some more suggestions). Play the tutorials in-game. Watch some 'getting to orbit' tutorial videos. READ some details if it's still not clear. ALL you need - a Stayputnik probe-core, an FL-T100 fuel tank, a 48-7S engine. 'Launch' from the VAB, press 'T' to engage SAS, press 'Space' to go there. If any of that is unclear; welcome to the world of orbital mechanics and spacecraft design. It IS rocket science!