Zoidos

Thanks for sharing! The conf rooms at my previous job were named after famous hungarian scientists (guess I just gave away where I come from :P) Opposite from my workplace there is a university with an observatory on top of one of the buildings (guess I also gave away to any potential countrymen which company I work for) There is a meeting room where you can look right at it. I never schedule meetings there because I know I would just stare at it and not pay attention to the meeting.

Nice. I started out in tech support as well (service desk agent for out of office hours, more a 1st+2nd level job, so probably not what you are/were doing). My specialty was incident management so I went down the management road, lacking specialized knowledge but having a big mouth. Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, I should have thought that I'm not the first one to start a thread like this. Thanks for the links though, very interesting.

Ever since I started playing this marvel of a game and reading the forums, I realized that the people who gather here are not the usual gaming community as you would expect from games like World of Tanks, CS or GTA. The people who find merit in KSP are mostly highly intelligent, interested in science and sometimes at least a bit nerdy. This is an obvious consequence of the theme and the steep learning curve of the game and also clearly visible when reading posts or looking at the content that people here create. With this comes also the greatness of this community: Where else can an absolute newbie boast with his first orbit and get complimented and motivated to reach further even by players who by now do a Jool grand tour with nothing but a command seat, 2 solar panels and a can of spam? Where else can new players post questions that have been answered a thousand times and get a friendly, encouraging, helpful answer? Where else do you find mods that require a working knowledge of orbital mechanics, mathematics, rocket science and programming to even think of? My point is (...got a little side-tracked here...): I would be interested in the personal background of you guys. Of course I know, this is the internet, nobody likes to (or should) give out personal information more than absolutely necessary. All I'm interested in is what is your profession? How closely related is it to the game? If not related at all, why do you KSP? When did you find this interest that drives you to KSP? Since you should not ask questions you are not prepared to answer, I'll make a start: I am a Service Delivery Manager with a major european IT-Company. My work has (unfortunately) nothing to do with space travel or rocket science. When I was 16, my sister gave me Stephen Hawking's "A brief history of time" and later Bill Bryson's mind-bending "A short history of nearly everything" for Christmas. Ever since I have been hooked on science, how we came to be, how the solar system was born, etc... The reason I am a manager is that I suck at maths. I would much rather be a scientist (astrophysicist to be exact). So now it's your turn, I'm looking forward to and appreciate any constructive answers.

I always go nuclear for stations and bases further away than Duna or bases on bodies which have very long day-night cycles. The fissionable material of nuclear generators lasts for approx 2 years minimum and is only used up as long as the base/station is the active vessel (Unless you have background processing installed, that is). Even if you have background processing installed or choose to timewarp with the vessel active, it is still a lot easier to resupply more uranium/plutonium/whatever from Kerbin than to build up a mining operation dedicated for fuel cells. Fuel cells make sense on a planetary base where you can just add a small drill and converter and there is no need for getting the fuel into orbit. Although, some mods allow you to mine the fissionable material using ISRU which is even more efficient.

After about 2 hrs of impacting the Mun with enough force to decrease its rotational velocity and reverting to the last save in orbit and with the help of several youtube vids I finally managed to set down the overengineered monstrosity I dared call a mun lander on the surface intact. I even had enough fuel to return to Kerbin and noticed just as I entered the atmosphere that I forgot to plant a flag.

-snip- SQUAD has explained how it came to this decision: Being a small indie-dev company, they NEED the players for the final testing and for updating the mods. Being a small indie-dev, they DO NOT HAVE the infrastructure to make several updates a day available throught their own store to thousands of users. Being a small indie-dev that works closely with its community the chose make the extend this opportunity to as many users as possible without unreasonable expense or effort on their side. Having bought the game does not ENTITLE you to anything besides playing the most up-to-date version of the game as soon as it is realeased. You do not DESERVE anything except to play the game in its given actual state. Every bit of effort SQUAD still puts in this game is a FREE BONUS we should be thankful for. The way I see it the only mistake SQUAD made when making this decision was the assumption that the player community is reasonable and mature enough to understand that this is the best they were able to make of the situation.

Sorry if this has been adressed before, but I've found a minor well... cause for confusion (can't really call that a bug/error): In the <celstial body> program strategies, you have to plant a flag on the given body to succesfully complete the mission. Although it should be obvious that you plant a flag when you first land on a planet/moon, it is not stated in the strategy description. I started to think that there was sthg. wrong with the Minmus program, when I returned and the strategy was still active. I did another Minmus mission and this time planted a flag (I just forgot the first time). The strategy was instantly completed. Obviously this was caused by my stupidity, but it might help others to understand why the strategy is not completed after a successful mission if the description states that a flag must be planted.

Just had an incredibly close SSTO mission which I think fits in here: I started a new save yesterday and just reached enough plane parts in the tech tree to make a first attempt for a spaceplane (first in this save that is). The "kick off space tourism" mission from Tourism+ seemed like the perfect occasion for this because taking the first tourist in kerbal history to orbit in an untested spaceplane prototype piloted by a suicidally reckless mental patient called Jeb is obviously the way to go. Anyway, I had serious doubts that this thing will even reach orbit, but eventually it did (that was the time I started making screenshots) - with just a few drops of LF sloshing around in the tank. Next problem was: Do I have enough fuel left to lower my orbit below 70km? I did - and with pure dumb luck and to my utter amazement I even hit the X-key just in time to land just a few km short of the KSC. The landing itself was rather rough (Yes, the plane had a front landing gear before) BUT the important thing is, everyone survived and with the completed contract the mission was a success! (Although I seriously doubt that Tito Kerman will be looking for further space adventures any time soon). Pics or it didn't happen:

This is simply genius! Gives a whole new layer of depth to carreer mode. Thanks a lot for this, @nightingale!

I don't because no stability control. It only makes sense as a probe without any controls put into orbit with a spaceplane. But by the time you have the techs for an LKO-capable spaceplane, you have more advanced probes available that are a lot more useful.

After using PF for over a year without any problems since about 2 weeks ago I too have this problem. The craft is loaded and the game crashes. Removing PF from the Gamedata folder fixes the issue instantly. Which is a shame, as I really think THIS is how fairings should work in this game (no offense, SQUAD). I have no idea what could have caused this as this has always been a very stable mod. Anyway, if there's any way I can help to fix this, please let me know, @e-dog

Thanks!

Try to assemble from as few parts as possibly. Rather 3 big launches than 15 small ones. This also saves on parts (docking ports for example) and adds to the rigidity of the station. Plan your station ahead (build the whole thing in the SPH and then divide it into dockable parts). This also helps in avoiding docking a new segment and realizing that you no longer can extend a solar panel. This is especially true when you are using mods with lots of extendable parts like UKS.

1.1 out??? 1.1 installing??? *hype intensifies* oh, just Steam acting stupid. *hype recedeing*

I have eyed with this mod for a while but only donwloaded it recently when it was featured in modding mondays (pathetic, I know). And I love it! Finally a reason to keep exploring after unlocking the tech tree. Thank you!

This is awesome, thank you!

Ok, then I might have mixed sthg up. I think I remember that just after the release of 1.0. one of the devs left who meant to develop a game for smartphones with a similar theme as KSP. Thanks for the clarification.

Wasn't simple rockets developed by a former Squad-dev? If I remember correctly, he left just after the release of 1.0.

Right, I wanted to add "Sorry if this has been posted before" in the original post. It was new to me.

NASA is preparing their marketing material for when interplanetary travel will be as easy and affordable as air travel today. And thankfully they shared it with us. All that's left to do is to figure out the technology. Enjoy (ignore the hungarian text, it's just the translation) http://kepek.444.hu/2016/02/10/csodalatos-urposzterekkel-rukkolt-elo-a-nasa

I meant that a potential release date is a fixed point in time, whereas "never" is a very long time

My PC is about 3,5 years old now and handles my needs pretty well. I think (with my very limited understanding of how a program actually works) 1.1 will not have a higher demand on my HW. The only relevant difference I see is that the game will be more forgiving towards my mod-addiction that is bordering on the absurd. An upgrade from 8 to 16 GB RAM is the only change I can imagine might make sense, but I still doubt it.

You do realize, you can't win this bet?

I really don't care, there's a mod for that. All I care about is 64bit and better yesterday than tomorrow.