JakeGrey

If I wanted meaningless, arbitary targets that create as many problems as they solve I'd join the civil service, but if that's your idea of a good time then good luck.

How about punching a hole in the asteroid by kinetic energy, then? A hardened kinetic penetrator (and that's the most Freudian phrase I've typed in... well, ever!) combined with a rocket motor could probably do the trick.

If these aren't big enough then look for BFT Conformal Tanks.

- Testing rockets that run on Chlorine Trifluoride - Waiting for our ears to stop ringing - Sweeping up broken window glass - Finding bits of unsuccessful prototype - Naming craft beers after rocket parts - Acquiring public liability insurance

Whatever else you do, wear proper protective equipment and keep a fire extinguisher handy.

This is why EVA Parachutes is one of my absolute favourite KSP mods ever.

Heh. Go ahead and add "The Next Frontier", but don't name the media it's crossed over with; I want to keep new readers guessing until the reveal.

Come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with the Irish Travellers who own the junkyard on the edge of town (half the takings plus the chance to get back at the presenters of Top Gear) and go into the spacelift business.

I aim to start mine around the 10-12km mark, partly because I use FAR and have found that even my best designs will go tumbling if I try and turn below that. I've also found it advisable to hold off until the booster stage is away to prevent mid-air collisions.

You might want to look into the EVA parachutes mod...

For the benefit of anyone wanting to reenact a historic mission like Apollo or Mercury, I propose a simple toggle to switch between desplaying all units of measurement in the default metric and American Customary Measurements. Possibly a unique Kerbal one as well for the benefit of the fanfic writers.

Open the casing and clean the dust out with canned air and lint-free cloth. That's classic symptoms of overheating.

Yep. Called it.

Now there's an idea! And not just for tablets, either. I bet a lot of people are in a sImilar position to me; my laptop can't run the full game but I'd like to be able to tinker with my designs while I'm away from my gaming rig.

I took it to mean they'd come up with reaction wheels while the KIS had skipped directly to thrusters.

"Bob's right. We do need to unionise."

Oh, hell yes! This piece made me grin the whole way through; Bill as a connoiseur of fine wines and Gene as a Real Ale fan hadn't previously occurred to me, but somehow it fits perfectly. And never mind flags and footprints, you know you've made your mark on history when you get a beer named after you! Liking the sound of the Probodyne Prizes as well; adds a reason besides mere prestige for both sides to be keen on achieving a couple of firsts.

If SRV Ron's suggestion is impractical, install Windows from scratch; use the license key on the side of the box and torrent a copy if you have to. Long load times are one of those things you're just going to have to live with for the time being though, at least if you want to play anything but stock. I suggest buying a tablet or small netbook and settling in to browse the net or read an ebook while you wait, because it's also useful for those long missions when there's not much to do between course correction burns.

KSP's TV Tropes page now has its own Fanfic Recommendations sub-page. Just thought you'd all want to know.

I can't for the life of me remember the author's name or title (something with the word "Yggdrasil" in it), but the central conceit of the book was about a counter-grav system that made spaceplanes easy. So easy, in fact, that people were using them to put homebuilt space stations in orbit. This was the only really enjoyable aspect of the book, actually, because there wasn't a single likeable character in it. Still, can anyone name the author and/or title so I can riff it mercilessly through the medium of KSP fanfiction?

You're talking about something called a range safety device, and there's a couple of mods providing one.

Maybe you could get some sort of discount or even a few freebies, depending on your reputation, in return for allowing this? Maybe it could be extended to some billboards around the public viewing galleries, sports stadium-style. And if Squad wanted to offer a few real world companies the chance to be included in such a game mechanic for the right price, then I say why the hell not?

Connecting fuel, power and eventually O2 and water lines between ships, similar to KAS but a little less hacky. Attaching small, remote-triggered SRBs to space junk to clean up Low Kerbin Orbit. Manually deploy solar panels if the batteries run out.

That's a good idea actually. Wish I'd thought olf that for TNF now!

I can see one good reason to live in space, actually. If and when we get serious about mining asteroids, we'll probably end up building a smelter and refinery up there so we don't have to try and de-orbit anything larger than a decent-sized cargo plane. Those will need some personnel onboard, even if it's just a few service engineers and two guys in the control room. They'll need accommodation and probably some amenities like a canteen and a gym and the like. That's a fair-sized population already. But then, maybe we'll start building other factories up there, taking advantage of the readily available raw materials, cheap and easy disposal of hazardous waste -with built-in excuse to own a really big railgun!- and possibly the weird and wonderful things you can do with the crystalline structure of metals in zero-g. They'll need some personnel up there as well, and amenities. At that point, the residential habitat is probably getting large enough to need a police force, a health service and possibly a school if people are starting to settle down and raise families there. In short, we'll start to live in space when we have jobs in space.