Scotius

Fog-shmog Lightning effects in the clouds visible on night side - that would be sight to behold!

I hope for couple of new parts: proper rover seats, animated cargo bay, fairings. And some sort of connector plate allowing for clustering engines without fiddling with cubic trusses.

Anti-gravitation cores made of exotic matter.

Oh, well...Anyways - are you planning some kind of grapple cannon? It could be useful for cleaning orbital junk. Mount it on orbital tug with lots of fuel, rendez-vous with pesky piece of junk, fire grapple to connect two crafts, then use tug engines to slow junk enough to deorbit it. Then disconnect, stabilise tug's orbit and go for another piece of trash. Sure, kerbonaut can do it in EVA, but probe controlled tug would have more fuel, better TWR, and catching orbiting junk from dozens of meters without flailing about in EVA would save lots of time. Just a though, of course - this mod is awesome as it is.

Screenshots, please? Is grappling hook hand-held? Can kerbonauts carry it with them, fire it and use internal winch to get on top of Mun Arch Batman-style? Oh, the possibilities...

Yup. Harvester confirmed it. We'll get an assortiment of pre-made textures, and will be able to add our own. Yipppeeeee!

Well, we've seen some pretty neat animations of kerbal picking up and examining rocks - so we do know devs are working on this part of the game. I would love to have more scientific stuff to do on the surface too.

I remember someone using a lot of ladder parts as heat sinks on his Moho lander. It was back in 0.17 days, when your craft would overheat and explode on Moho from solar radiation.

I second that. It climbed into orbit exactly as intended, and without a hitch - pretty good for first real test flight. It's a workhorse, not an "living investment" horse - it doesn't have to look good, but get the job done.

Meh. Engines that don't produce beautiful pillar of flame, or at least pretty glow are not worth modelling Anyways - i've been reading more about Dusty variant of FFR. It might be a good idea to make it when we get resources update, and blutonium with it. Of course if blutonium is useable as a fuel/consumable for NERVAs and RTGs, and not only as component in building process. SM FFR II could use modest amounts of blutonium as a fuel, just like Dusty uses fissionable dust. It could have slightly increased thrust, to compensate for necessary fuel's weight. What do you think?

You mean you have to lick rocks? And examine their hardness using your noses instead of pickaxes? But...but kerbals do not have noses!

RTGs already have radiator fins. When career mode is implemented, it's probable we'll get some sort of nuclear and fusion reactors in mid to late stages of technological progress. Maybe there will be radiators as separate parts, or maybe to cut down part count radiators will be integral parts of reactors. It's hard to tell now.

Nano-FET looks interesting. If it really can be scaled up into hundreds of kilowatts range it might be a good thruster for station-keeping. Rival for VASIMR? Maybe, but considering that AdAstra is almost ready to test their engine in space, and nano-FET is still mostly theoretical it won't be anytime soon. And spraying LEO with clouds of nanotubes might not be a good idea. Outside of magnetosphere solar wind will take care of them, but inside? I hope it will not turn into another idea that is great on paper, but doesn't work well in RL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangui_Magnetic_Anomaly Here's article about magnetic anomaly in Africa probably being caused by ancient asteroid impact.

Thank you very much RR I will take her for a spin as soon as i get on my gaming rig and download NovaPunch. @The Jedi Master: You can use RoboRay's ship, or use two other kindly shared by Brotoro (which are fully stock) http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25030-Single-Stage-Stuff-pic-heavy/page2 Here's the link to the page with .craft files. SSTO's are incredibly cool (and difficult to handle sometimes), but they require some serious tech-fu to properly assemble - more than i currently possess Fortunately we can rely on more talented community members.

Yeah. SLS launchers meant for lunar missions are comparable in size to Saturn V. Until we come up with non-chemical engines for upper stages, we'll need to build big.

I would like to think we, as a technological civilisation grew beyond the need for self-sacrificing, one way missions. Sure, in extreme cases there is little choice - but if we do have this choice it should really be last resort. Right now we don't have technical means and more important political will. But in 30-50 years it might change due to scientific breakthroughts and sociological developments. With new nuclear, plasma and fusion engines currently being developed mission to Mars would take about a month of travel one way - not too long ago sea trip from Europe to Asia or Australia would take as much, or even more time.

Well, if you don't mind never again seeing anyone you used to knew, and suffering from severe culture shock when you return after 500 years or so...Such reality would be like ancient Polynesia - groups of would-be colonists left their home islands knowing they will probably never return, their families will never know if they survived the journey and found new island to inhabit - or if they just perished in the middle of the ocean. Nah, too depressing for me - i prefer worlds where humans keep in touch with each other, sometimes fight, sometimes help each other.

Seven seater? Awesome! That means it should be possible to swap Hitchhiker for one of smaller Rockomax fuel tanks, and use Clipper as a light tanker or even rescue vessel if someone gets stuck in space without fuel to deorbit. Possibilities...possibilities...

Probably his parts look too hi-tech for the whole "Early space age" vibe KSP uses. Even our real life current constructions are far from looking so sleek and advanced. But something like this should be included in career mode, to better show technological progress of the space program - though as purely graphic fluff i don't expect it to be made anytime soon (if ever ).

As always great pieces of engineering Temstar. But wouldn't be easier to use couple of retro-firing separatrons to slow down booster stage while escape tower pulls the capsule to safety?

Whew. It works! At least 1-man version. After couple of snags with flaming jets i've managed to climb into stable orbit, with enough fuel to deorbit, if not land on flame. I need to work more on ascent profile to save more fuel. Now: what we need are SABRE engines, using liquid oxygen from the tanks to push jets beyond flameout threshold.

They would require enormous landing space. Skylon, arguably most promising project so far is HUGE. And would land at high speed.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Now, off to check if my piloting skills are sufficient for the task:D

Fission-fragment rocket is a very hot idea , but have you heard about Fusion Driven Rocket? This puppy can get the ship to Mars in 30 day. http://msnwllc.com/Papers/FDR_JPC_2012.pdf Here's the link. It's good to see smart people working on something other than big, chemicals burning rockets to get us to other planets.