Once you have a good design (with just enough control surfaces, good aerodynamics and appropriate thrust-to-weight ratio), you get to low orbit with almost zero input [1][2]. If it requires a lot of input after picking up some speed off the launchpad, it might be a bad design.

The controls feel "wonky" for the most part because, since it's a game more than a simulator, you tend to have way more control authority than is realistically possible, specially with reaction wheels. There are some mods to rebalance that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_turn

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q_8TO4Ag0E

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wheel

PS: For someone who always dreamt about working in aerospace, KSP is a blast!

A lot of the fun in KSP can be finding the line between bad design and good design, and then trying to pilot your way through it (IMHO). I will never forget my first Apollo-style mission and just how many dozens of struts it took to hold together (this was before they added the current largest-diameter tanks/engines), and how hair-raising the piloting of it all was. To me, no game has ever matched the intensity of that experience, before or since.

Agreed. In my current game, I built a station that's in about 100 km orbit of Kerbin, and I've been using Apollo style CSMs and LEMs for munar and minmur missions, but I honestly hate the ships. They have often don't have quite enough fuel for the return trip, so I ended up having to put a tanker out in minmur orbit. It sucks. I've tried to redesign them, but I'm kinda of in a local maximum in designs right now, which kinda sucks.

Assuming you're in career mode, where are you in the tech tree? Some of the later fuel tanks and engine make it a lot easier to haul huge amounts of mass around the solar system.

Also if you don't do it already pay a great attention to you engine's specific impulse. It's often a lot more important than thrust, at least outside of first stages and landers.

My go-to combination in the mid game is Mainsail engine for first stage from kerbin launchpad (high thrust and good Isp in the atmosphere) and then switch to the Poodle while in space (not-so-great thrust but high Isp in vacuum). Oh and a healthy amount of "asparagus" staging, it's always a bit annoying to set up but well worth it in KSP.

Later on you unlock even more efficient engines, such as the "Nerv" nuclear engine with an Isp of 800 in vacuum.

Finally you can also mine fuel on planets and asteroid to refuel your tanks, I generally like setting up a "filling station" on minmus to avoid having to haul massive amounts of fuel out of the kerbin gravity well.

I've played a lot of my games in my life so far but very few, if any, have matched the thrill of landing on Mun for the first time (and making it back).

There are mods for that. MechJeb and kOS come to mind: MechJeb includes an autopilot, kOS lets you program your own. There's also kRPC which lets you control KSP craft via RPC, so you can use a language that you like such as Python or Node.

MechJeb is about the only mod that I use on a vanilla install of KSP. I honestly feel that it's something that should be part of the game (although I can understand the hesitation to include it).

I never use MechJeb because I feel like it's cheating, however I agree that some base functionality is missing from the vanilla game. In particular dV and thrust-to-weight ratio indicators for your rockets while you build them, as well as flight info while in flight without having to switch to map mode every two seconds (for instance your current apoapsis and periapsis and the time needed to reach them while climbing to orbit, and also the amount of dV left in your rockets when you plan your maneuvers).

However MechJeb is a bit overkill for that, I prefer to use Kerbal Engineer[0]. It's simple and offers a few quality of life improvements without actually playing the game for you.

The other mod I consider vital is the docking alignment indicator[1] which makes docking massively less painful.

[0] https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/222685-kerbal-enginee... [1] https://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/220299-docking-port-a...

MechJeb is awesome, but I only tend to use it once I got the launching manually thing down properly - MechJeb can compensate for some bad design decisions. Some, that is.

Ah yes, because after a hard day of programming I want to come home and relax by programming.

Different people, different tastes. After a hard day of programming I love to relax by doing programming, but this time on something I care about and not $dayjob related nonsense.

Well, maybe not "relax" in the sense of sit quietly, but watching a movie or having a conversation aren't strictly relaxing either.

Sorry you don't also enjoy programming after a hard day of (presumably) work.

You need to get used to kOS scripting language but it is extremely powerful. You can script your whole mission from launch to landing to return. So it can be used for autonomous probes simulations or to automate parts of the mission (Apollo style).

It sounds like you want MechJeb, which removes a lot of the manual guesswork - it'll do automated ascent, descent, docking, hohmann transfers, etc. - I played vanilla for years but would always get tired of the tedious guesswork and was dubious about MJ, thinking it'd be game-breaking - but rather it's made the game 30x more playable and enjoyable, and doesn't sap the challenge one bit.

Only yesterday I ended up doing a return from mun orbit with bingo fuel by spinning a craft up to crazy longitudinal rpm and decoupling the descent stage at just the right moment.

> KSP controls are a bit too wonky

You can always use mechjeb for that.

My first interest in programing, outside of the simple office automation scripting I was doing, started when I built an orbital rendevous calculator in KSP (back before they had orbit planning built in).

I eventually merged my mod into mechjeb, adding a whole slew of orbital calculation functions, and many fun space times were had by all.

Thank you for contributing! I love KSP, and Mechjeb helped me get past the frustrating stage of learning the basics. I usually only use it for TWR and ΔV now but I think I'd have given up without it at first.