Rickenbacker

Nope. I start over every major patch anyway, I don't mind.

The Mercury Seven were indeed put through some pretty bizarre, and unnecessary tests. Later astronauts went though a much improved testing regime.

Am I the only one thinking "Great place for a miner, right on the equator!" when I see this? - - - Updated - - - Are we looking at the same thing? The dark parts look like shadows, but the possible wind streaks are the lighter smudges. Looks quite likely to me.

I got to Jupiter, then cheated my way to Pluto .

As others have said, the game doesn't really access the HD much. I put it on an SSD, and noticed that the initial loading time went down a little, though not very much. That's it.

No. They don't need the money, and even if they did, it'd make them feel obliged to listen to what the players wanted instead of sticking with their own plan. Which is almost always a huge mistake in game development.

So did I, until I found out that backspace focuses on your ship .

Rimmer, is that you?

Maybe not, but now they work quite well!

THe heat shields have to be able to take interplanetary reentries, so it makes sense that they wouldn't take much of a hit from a slower reentry. That said, if you do a high-ish reentry from Minmus (35K periapsis), you'll burn away almost 40% of the ablator!

That big cloud around the front of the vehicle appears so fast, and changes shape so rapidly that it looks like condensation to me. So perhaps something broke loose, or started to, and this caused the entire vehicle to break up very quickly. Anyway, it's sad, but I'm sure SpaceX will keep trying and succeed.

I generally name stuff with some kind of description before launch, like "Mun base 1" or "Duna lander 1". Then, if they make it to orbit and work as expected, I'll change it to something a bit more poetic .

I turn over a few degrees right off the pad, then leave it. It usually ends up pretty flat by 45K on its own, if it's got a few fins at the back and isn't too bottom-heavy.

They were both great ways to waste huge amounts of money while accomplishing very little. But at least the Shuttle WORKED, and had a budget, so that it did manage to put some stuff in orbit. But just imagine where we'd be if we'd spent the same money on going to other planets and so on. That said, the Buran is a little prettier .

Slightly more to GET to Minmus, but a lot less to land and take off again. So yeah, you'll need less Delta-V overall if you head for Minmus.

I get a pretty good mix, slightly more pilots than anything else, though. I'm going to guess it's entirely random.

All you need to go suborbital is a TWR above 1... Any rocket engine can do that with a light-ish craft .

Yep. So if you have 6350 m/s Delta-V on board, you can get to orbit, go to Duna and return with some fuel left!

I hate the 2.5m decoupler with all my heart. I go out of my way to avoid using it unless I absolutely have to.

Just re-posting this here from the "heat and aero" thread: We need dedicated radiators, if we're to have heat. And the best, easiest way to handle those, IMO, is to make them work like the batteries and electricity producers do - if you have any radiators installed, any heat generated anywhere gets transferred to them automagically through invisible heat pipes, and radiated at whatever rate the radiators can handle. Any heat the radiators CAN'T handle gets transferred to the parts next to the heat source, the way it works now. This should probably also apply to reentry heat, but that wouldn't make it an easy cheat to avoid the weight of heat shields, as any decent size radiators would probably break off from aerodynamic forces during reentry. So heatshields would still be needed there. No need to make it overly complicated. We need radiators that let us use hotter engines, and we need a reason to use heat shields. The above suggestion covers both, I think.

We need dedicated radiators, if we're to have heat. And the best, easiest way to handle those, IMO, is to make them work like the batteries and electricity producers do - if you have any radiators installed, any heat generated anywhere gets transferred to them automagically through invisible heat pipes, and radiated at whatever rate the radiators can handle. Any heat the radiators CAN'T handle gets transferred to the parts next to the heat source, the way it works now. This should probably also apply to reentry heat, but that wouldn't make it an easy cheat to avoid the weight of heat shields, as any decent size radiators would probably break off from aerodynamic forces during reentry. So heatshields would still be needed there. No need to make it overly complicated. We need radiators that let us use hotter engines, and we need a reason to use heat shields. The above suggestion covers both, I think.

The ShuttleBot is a tiny (for an SSTO) pilotless, clean, single engine SSTO for ferrying four kerbals to or from orbit. Takes a bit of diving to get supersonic, but after that it accelerates through 20K and easily gets into orbit with 800 m/s Delta-V remaining. Here it is if anyone wants to give it a try: http://kerbal.curseforge.com/shareables/231611-shuttlebot

I see what you did there! Anyway, attach them to a big tank, maybe put a few small wing parts (from the "aerodynamic" tab) on the bottom of it as radiators, and you're good to go for at least a several minute long burn.

Makes sense. Space planes are a bad idea, at least with today's technology, and the Shuttle ended up costing way too much for what it did - imagine what NASA could have done with all that money if spent on other stuff! Then again, maybe they wouldn't have gotten all that money if they hadn't had a prestige project like the shuttle... Shame about the Buran, though. Seems like it was, if not better than the American shuttle, it was at least as good. And it doesn't hurt to have more than one way to get into space...

Here you go: http://www.edy.es/dev/2015/06/kerbal-space-program-will-use-vehicle-physics-pro/ Better wheel physics, in the upcoming Unity 5 release, thanks to a plugin by Edy. Surely that's it, right? Or is it something to do with this, such as more and more tweakable wheels?