tsotha

Is anyone else having odd problems with the 1.24 release? I have a ship that keeps accelerating out of KEO in the absence of a source of thrust. The problem coincides with this release.

From a dV perspective a Duna shot is only a tiny bit more than a Mün mission, so if you're just going to land, plant a flag, and do some science there's no reason to build your ship in orbit beyond the entertainment value.

Ahahaha. Every software developer knows that feeling.

KIS/KAS is fine. There aren't that many extra parts. One thing I would do, though, is hook the ships up though one of the ground pylons instead of hooking them up directly. Things tend to be more stable, and if you put out a grid of pylons you don't have to worry about ground handling with the tanker.

Conservation of Energy. It's not just a good idea - it's the law!

Europeans are more relaxed on sex and less on violence. In the '80s there was cop show named Dempsey and Makepeace which (unusually) aired in both the UK and the US. Supposedly each episode was shot long; the UK version had to be trimmed of violence and the US version trimmed of sex. Hard to imagine censors anywhere would have a problem with KSP.

The maneuver node problem sounds like you selected "control from here" on your grabber and forget to change back to the capsule or probe core. Is your grabber not pointing forward?

This. Grabbing something with the klaw makes it part of your ship, so you can transfer fuel and kerbals to between your original ship and whatever you grabbed. Also, EVA is fun when you get the hang of it. I'm getting no end of enjoyment building up stations using KIS and KAS. Like in real life, the key is to take it really slow at first.

Why the order? Ad Astra already has a functioning VASIMR engine which can be driven by solar cells for smaller applications, whereas nobody is even working on nuclear thermal.

VASIMR is an ion engine, though its design is a bit different than the ones in use today. IMO that's definitely the one that makes it into space near-term. And if you have enough power you can scale up VASIMR. It would require a nuclear power plant, but the hurdles to making that happen are more political than technical. After that some sort of fusion drive is probably likely, but I don't think any of us will live to see it. We might see a gas core nuclear rocket, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

I went around and around with thrusters when I started with RO. Usually the problem is the thruster isn't configured for the fuel you're using. You seem to have checked that, though, so another thing you might check is that the parts between the thrusters and the tank allow cross-feed. When I mounted my thrusters on a capsule it didn't work until I configured the capsule to allow cross-feed.

I've had this happen, but not for a year at least (and I play almost every day). It's true EVA isn't completely bug free, and you should always save before exiting the capsule. But you did get unlucky.

There's no way to make a game stable such that you can have multiple external groups modifying the same game state. That's really up to the people who write mods to sort out, and the best we're likely to do is something like CKAN which warns about common incompatibilities. There's no reason for the 64 bit version to be slower, though adding 64 bit references will make the same program chew up more memory. The multi-threading should make some things faster, though it adds new opportunities for bugs as well.

If we ever build one, it will be on the earth. The moon is a lifeless rock - it might be less of a technical challenge to build an elevator there, but what would be the point of putting that kind of effort into an elevator that goes from nowhere to nowhere? Even if you had a reason to be there, the same lack of gravity that makes the space elevator easier makes rockets easier too.

The answer to you questions is probably unknowable even by Squad, at this point. I'm not planning to delete my 1.0.5 directory until my must-have mods are working again.