JoeSchmuckatelli

That's my point. You are expecting to hear progress made on fixing the product as shipped. They want to dangle new shineys.

Point... Missed. Jim tried to explain it. Think about a car. Someone builds engines. Someone builds windshields. Someone builds tires. You don't take the guy who knows glass off the windshield line just because the lady who builds tires keeps putting out triangles. You either get a better tire maker or teach her why the circular shape was chosen back in the stone age. So even if the car won't be ready for a while due to engine and tire issues - if you tell the window guy to go home without pay, by the time the tires and engine are resolved you won't have a windshield... And still won't have a car that works. Edit - that said, I don't disagree that Nate's post was crafted in a way to almost guarantee annoying people. They really need to talk to a Crisis Communication consultant. Comm strategy since release has been really poorly done.

From what I read, the average person can see celestial objects as dim as +6.5. Trained astronomers / people with really good eyesight in ideal terrestrial conditions (high, dry, clear and dark) have seen galaxies as dim as +7.2. Centaurus A, M81 and NGC 253 have all been seen naked eye and are between 12 and 13.7 Mly away. They have AMs of +6.8 to +7.2. So what is going to matter is the combination of both distance and brightness such that the apparent magnitude is above +7.2 from the location of the observer - as a floor. I've read that the 'average' distance between galaxies is about 9.9 Mly. Average is in quotes because galaxies are not uniformly distributed - clusters, suoerclusters, sheets, filaments, etc. The opposite of a cluster is a void. The largest void I could find a definition of is the Bootes. It's apparently 300Mly in diameter. So, yeah, drive out there and you will see a whole Lotta Nuthin with the Mark 1 Eyeball. Hubble and Webb would see just fine and you probably could use IR goggles... Which isn't the point of this exercise. Place the observer in any region of intergalactic space that isn't a void - and because of the way 'averages' work, the organization of cluster, supercluster, sheet, filament, etc means that most likely you will have a relatively higher density than normal... Meaning the observer should have several galaxies inside a sphere less than 10 Mly in diameter. So if these galaxies aren't tiny, or obscured by dust etc - they should have an apparent magnitude above 7, and your intrepid explorer should be able to see them without enhancement. cc: @farmerben

Deleted repetitive post.

I'm guessing this lander still has the engines on the bottom? Why do we not see designs with (*) some kind of landing engine up higher on the rocket and pointed down at an angle to allow some offset between the rocket and the regolith? *there has to be a name for what I'm describing... I just don't know it. The SS/SH launch plume makes me now think that landing anything with some tonnage to it would need to have the landing rockets elevated - and maybe angled away from the craft itself.

Perhaps. Some are "ZOMG that's amazing" like they're seeing a kindergartener draw a hand with fingers for the first time; it's not a great hand - but you want to encourage them to keep going. Some are 'Oh jeez, why do you keep peeing in my wheaties?' Neither are particularly helpful when dealing with adults. For those who think they're peeing in your wheaties - the old saw of "_____ me once, shame on you, _____ me twice, shame on me' comes to mind. ... The amusement I'm getting is all the people trying to still read leaves from these infrequent remarks. Nate said 'They're making improvements. Period. They created some new parts. Period. They improved lens flare. Period. Based on history with this team, the simple fact that all of those statements were in a post about the next patch, EXPRESSLY DOES NOT mean that they will all be in the next or even the same patch. We want to believe that. We'd like to believe that. But experience should tell us that what we believe and what we receive are very, very different things. We could see all or none of those things in the next patch. We could see all or none of those things by the time they declare the game 1.0. ... The only prognostication I can derive is that they're trying to move to a new paradigm; under promise and over perform. Does not seem like they're very good at it. Oh look - a challenge! Let's build bunnies on Moho! Shrug.

I am kind of amazed at how much emotional content people still experience at this point. Like on both sides of this coin.

I'm guessing Raptor wins that argument.

Necro Explanation Reading recently into a completely unrelated subject (Laramide Orogeny - the events that created the Rocky Mountains) I ran into an interesting talk about a paradigm shift in geologists' understanding of how the Rockies formed.* I find that description for shifting paradigms in science relevant here. The quote comes from Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". For a paradigm shift (a change in basic assumptions within the ruling framework of science) these steps occur: Accumulation of anomalies Crisis and emergence of Scientific theories Extraordinary science and scientific revolutions Resolution to revolution and paradigm shift I list a bunch of articles in the third post of this thread - all of which relate to either Accumulation of Anomalies or Crisis and Emergence of Scientific Theories. Webb offers us the ability to conduct Extraordinary Science. The only question that remains is whether we are witnessing the emergence of a scientific revolution! Here's a couple of 'Post Webb' articles to add to the fray: Cosmology in turmoil | CNRS News Is there a crisis in cosmology? Some scientists say yes - Big Think JWST’s early, massive galaxies agree with ΛCDM cosmology | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | May, 2023 | Medium I'll add this bit from Kuhn: "The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another... And the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other." There are a lot of people who's careers are established upon the LCDM model, and to the extent that Webb data or pre-Webb observations conflict with that model, they're going to take a LOT of convincing. I bring this up - because it wasn't long ago that Plate Techtonics was a rejected theory. Accepting it did not come easily. In fact, you pretty much had to have all the proponents of the old paradigm retire / die off for the new paradigm to be accepted. I have no way of knowing whether something similar is taking place... but, again, it's fun to watch. *For reference, the orogeny (formation) of the Rocky Mountains is very different from most mountain ranges.

I have not played more than an hour of this patch but I have heard they won't let you place a MN unless you have the fuel for it. @alfrank- I think you are discovering the fun of KSP. Literally 'almost' doing a thing until you finally accomplish the thing. That is literally the joy of the game. It's hard! So... I'm interpreting here, but it is entirely possible that you got to the Mun intercept but not efficiently enough to manage a landing - meaning not enough fuel to survive. If my guess is correct - you might need to relaunch. One of the hardest things to learn is an efficient launch to orbit. If you watch this - I set my capture burn at the PE of my encounter with the Mun and pull retrograde until I circularize. If you get it right, you get a good circle from the start. Hope it helps!

You've never heard of Puffery, have you?

one that is commonly used in ecological investigations involves establishing greater than 95 percent probability of survival for more than 100 years. Since different species have different life spans, however, a time benchmark of 40 generations also may be used, especially when making comparisons between species ... They created the “50/500” rule, which suggested that a minimum population size of 50 was necessary to combat inbreeding and a minimum of 500 individuals was needed to reduce genetic drift. Management agencies tended to use the 50/500 rule under the assumption that it was applicable to species generally. (general rule, variable applicability based on mating habits and gestational trends - think multiple litters & parent combos per year for rats vs long gestation plus preference for older, larger and dominant males among elephants (females stay in groups, prefer the same dominant male in any given year - although the available males change from year to year) Now... This article says the number is 98 - for humans specifically. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/mach/amp/ncna900151 They do mention the 50/500 rule and your guy who came up with 14,000.

@SunlitZelkova- I suspect you have moved on, but I found this informative: "Different populations were affected at different times and suffered varying rates of mortality. Diseases such as treponemiasis and tuberculosis were already present in the New World, along with diseases such as tularemia, giardia, rabies, amebic dysentery, hepatitis, herpes, pertussis, and poliomyelitis, although the prevalence of almost all of these was probably low in any given group. Old World diseases that were not present in the Americas until contact include bubonic plague, measles, smallpox, mumps, chickenpox, influenza, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, malaria, leprosy, and yellow fever. Indians in the Americas had no acquired immunity to these infectious diseases, and these diseases caused what Crosby referred to as “virgin soil epidemics,” in which all members of a population would be infected simultaneously." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071659/#:~:text=Diseases such as treponemiasis and,low in any given group.

300,000 year old relatives. Scientists have discovered human footprints thought to be 300,000 years old and the earliest ever found in Germany. Experts believe the perfectly-preserved prints were left by a family of Heidelberg people, a long-extinct species of human. Heidelberg people, formally known as Homo heidelbergensis, were the first humans known to build homes and routinely hunt large animals. They were identified in both Africa and western Eurasia from roughly 700,000 years ago onwards until around 200,000 years ago. https://news.sky.com/story/300-000-year-old-human-footprints-discovered-in-germany-12882699

Every coastal launch site deluge system article I've read has talked about the corrosive nature of sea water. I'm guessing they're aware of the consensus. It's just when I think about not only the design of the Table and the area around it - I'm having a hard time figuring how they'll contain and collect that much water w/o some kind of trenching - which they apparently don't want to do b/c of the water table. And yet - aside from acoustic concern - I can't figure out how a water filled pool around the table could be a bad thing ...unless building a pool effectively guarantees focusing shockwaves back at the vehicle

So... The new plan is to use tons of water to quickly erode the sand around the launch table during takeoff? B/c if they don't light the candle on time and convert it to steam... Won't that be the result?

PayPal, Tesla and SX belie that conclusion. You could make an argument about his political choices or personal shenanigans all day - but if you conclude from that mental /cognitive incompetence? I think you're missing something in your analysis

Did not know that it had been banned. Was a real 'skilled labor' feat for folks to build and tie all that together. I've seen shows on it and was simply amazed that people would rely on that much craft, so very high up! Figured it was China-wide given the ubiquitousness of bamboo.

I think the 'Waiting for Godot' nature of the updates is a pretty good explanation. I played 80 some-odd hours between the Release & Patch 1, hoping that I was doing something good by providing bug reports, videos and feedback. By the time Patch 2 dropped I was so frustrated and bored by what KSP2 offered I just walked away. Maybe an hour into Patch 2. Just could not muster the interest in fighting bugs to keep playing. Part of my initial burst of interest was directly driven by the years of waiting and desire to see what was new - but the fundamental bugginess along with my negative reaction to the then Comm Strategy of 'everything is fine, let's do a challenge!' just drove me away. So... To the extent there are a lot of people like me, we're waiting for the next drop. Will check it out without much hope for anything other than some bug fixes & QOL tweaks. Likely to see a bump and another drop. The promise of Science will bring back more of us. The new content, along with some further anticipation of bug fixes & QOL work might keep us around longer... and then numbers will drop again as they keep patching stuff that should have been working before the EA release. Colonies? That is gonna bring people out of the woodwork - and likely see a slew of new purchases. I don't disagree with what you wrote below this quote - but 10 years ago, KSP offered something unique, quirky and fun. No one had seen a game like this - and knowing it was from a small indie studio, along with a relatively negligible price compared to actual release games incentivized people to be charitable. KSP2 is a totally different story, not only given what you wrote - but also the fact that we had every reason to expect a whole lot more than we got. Seeing as that horse has been beaten long enough - I'll jump to the good; if they can manage to pull this out, there will be a solid percentage of the (what? 5 million?) people who bought and played KSP coming back for a crack at KSP2 when the buzz says 'it's finally working, it's finally playable.' Add 'new' people to the title and if they get it working, Console Kids: they have a chance to be a success story. (Still, despite my optimism, I think the reputational harm will linger and they'll be more notorious for following an industry practice of dumping incomplete games as BS "EA" for early monetization, giving players poor quality for the money in the way that NMS and others have 'succeeded' through failure. People talk about those 'success' stories, but not without a strong whiff of resentment.)

Just for an example: they could have fudged up some reports kind of like what you see here from Mercury, as imaged from Messenger. The player would have built a probe with a spectrometer, the tool tip would have told the player what it was and what it did - and then with the spectrometer in action above a CB - we'd get an image added to the Kerbilopedia page on the CB that looked like this: If your probe had a magnetometer on board, you'd also get this: or this (cribbed from the video, above) ... While I think that would have made for an excellent SP experience and continued the tradition of KSP getting people excited about space and science... it probably did not fit into the whole 'make it multiplayer' thing - which rockets, planes and Colonies likely will.

I was today years old when I learned Mercury is NOT tidally locked to the Sun. 7:07 on for the relevant segment

After reading this - I had to go back and look at my numbers... poor coffee addled brain failed to write the answer to 10k * 1.75 correctly. I've fixed that. 7,500 mod users for 10k Steam players is what I meant to write. That would account for your 4k downloads better than the 750 I originally typed in! (SMH / Self-Own) ... That said - I agree with the emotional content of your post above. I'm in the after stages of being massively disappointed (heck, perplexed and offended) by the state of the game on Release to EA, given what we were led to believe it would be like. Still - I'm moderately hopeful they can pull it off, if only because I want to play the game we were promised. Yeah - see above. Not enough Coffee.

You need the ever cheerful can-do guy on the team. Otherwise nothing gets done. I've done my share of being critical of the Comm Strategy and state of Release - but honestly, the last thing we need is a glum and apologetic Nate Simpson. He needs to be 'Yeah, okay, release wasn't great - we get that (and I'm not going into why it was) - but we have a plan it's gonna be great, hang in there!'

I don't think that number is generally correct. It may be with the very small number of people still playing that the majority remaining have found mods they like and are going in through the exe or bypassing Steam / never bought through Steam. (Observation - those still playing seem like the Krazy Kraft / Sandbox only people, anyway) But when the numbers were higher, my incredibly scientific poll suggested that the actual number of non-Steam players was about 75% of the Steam players. Meaning if Steamdb showed 10k playing, you could expect the actual number to be 17,500 ish. I'm guessing there are a whole bunch of us who are station keeping at this point awaiting each update. When they drop the next bug fix, we will see a few thousand jump on, check it out for a day or two and then dwindle again b/c Sandbox is boring and the game still has bugs - and then a considerable number more will jump on for Science. That said - I don't foresee any meaningful jump until Colonies b/c Science is going to disappoint. Colonies, however, is not only new to us - but it's also the thing the team is building towards. That is when I think /hope we can feel the game making progress towards the finish line.

Were you part of the Long-running conversations about what we hoped for from Science last year? Many of us had the same hopes you write about. Limited initial knowledge of the CBs that grows incrementally via orbital telescopes, visits, scansats, rovers and placeable science among others. Absolute 'fog of discovery' for each play-through. My idea was an ever-growing Kerbilopedia that filled itself out as you gained knowledge - complete with simulated charts and graphs, and data sets. Something like that would be a cool resource for planning missions (knowledge of gravity / atmospheric content & density added incrementally). That would be - from a 'introduce new gamers to the wonder of spaceflight and exploration' perspective a fantastic feature for KSP2. They never responded to any of it. In fact I don't remember any of the 'hype' videos ever being enthusiastic about the Science milestone. It's one of the reasons why I suspect the game direction will be Satisfactory-like once Colonies and Resources are implemented. Science will just give us a few extra payloads and maybe some things to do - but the purpose has to be related to Colony gameplay, which seems to be Resource location. How they will tie a Science that looks like this with a progression system remains to be seen.