G'th

Sim City. Then, Command and Conquer. They both have since defined by taste in games. (IE, great degree of freedom, with a touch of realism)

Anything is possible with that thing inbetween things. But for seriously though, I have this question: Wouldn't the driving force behind expansion just be residual kinetic energy from the Big Bang? IF so I can't imagine that there'd be anything special about a shockwave that's still dragging matter along with it.

It might be easier, if only on your computer, to just send that up in parts rather than in one long piece.

As I always suggest in such open ended games as this, I don't believe they should necessarily add such a thing to the game just because, but they still should always provide modders an easy way to code in such things. Certain things might not be necessary right now, or even in the future really, but allowing such things to be modded in (By providing the building blocks for modders to put together) would be nothing but beneficial, as while Squad may never add say, aliens or other star systems, modders will still be able to put them in.

I usually only ever use it for messing around, or, when what i want to bring up into orbit can't be done without a computer killing lifter or orbital construction.

The way I've been my first try at Career is to try and mirror the early history of NASA leading up to Apollo. (Currently up to midway between Mercury and Gemini. Just need to explore Kerbin a bit more then I'll have probes) Then after Apollo, I plan on breaking away from NASA and doing my own thing. IE, skipping that whole shuttle mess.

As far as KSP goes, when the time comes for large amounts of science to progress, so too comes the time for large amounts of ingenuity. Its a matter of going interplanetary and returning your probes with no 2.5m parts.

There's no real way to do this with current technology that isn't overly complicated for the task. At least, not if you want a renewable record, ie, yearly records of the sun, Earth, moon, etc. A record up to the day of launch, if contained in the proper vessel (it have to be micro-etched on something obviously, and contained in several inches of I'd say steel and lead to protect it from any outside influence other than that of someone who wants to open it up) could theoretically last up to 5 billion years. However, if you want something thats going to continually record things up to that point, then you'll need something well beyond our technological capabilities at the moment.

Thing is though is that they've already accomplished a lot of things. The problem is that they didn't go anywhere with it, partly because the US government decided it wasn't worth it anymore despite all the technology that was gleaned off of NASA's endeavours, partly because of the decision to switch to something that was overly complicated for the task set to it (Shuttle). ISS proved we can more or less keep people in Space for longer than a week. A base on the Moon wouldn't be that far of a jump, and the work required to make such a base sustainable (by harvesting the Moon's resources, mostly) would be nothing BUT beneficial for us back on Earth. And just as Gemini lead up to Apollo, a base on the Moon will lead to the first man on Mars. NASA's method of working towards a goal back then does work, and with doing it with modern technology will probably go even better than Gemini/Apollo did in regards to safety, efficiency, and the like.

^ Yep. Plus, its a known bug that Map View things may sometimes show up while in Flight/Ground mode.

Brave, brave Jeb on the first mission of the United Kerbin Space Administration to explore Kerbin's Poles. Here, we see him looking out into the sky to those places he wishes to see one day.

Now, I have a theory as to how to make asparagus type staging really worth it in real life. However, I would like to preface this theory with the disclaimer that I know very little about the inner workings of actual rockets. But, from what I do know, I know that the way KSP handles it is fairly unrealistic (mostly because the rocket parts are exaggerated and because the fuel pipes are just plain silly), and I also know that the reason it isn't done in real life is because it'd be hard to pump the fuel around without spinning the rocket out of control. Now, with that being said, my idea was why not take the outer fuel tanks and integrate them into the core rocket, and have them break off "seed" style. IE, they'd pop off of the core tank like a seed (or whatever the hell those little white things are) popping off of a strawberry. And then, the way you would design it is so that fuel naturally flows into the center tank via a, for lack of a better description, vertical opening on the core rocket (that's exposed to the fuel of the booster)that is controlled by a door like mechanism to adjust fuel flow. Then, when time comes to separate that tank, you can seal off the core rocket door for that booster and then separate. If you compress the rocket enough, you could probably use the same mechanism between boosters. This way, you're not pumping fuel, you're just letting it spill into the center tank as the fuel level drops. Presumably doing it this way would stop any issues with losing control over the rocket, while also providing better aerodynamics what with the rocket being essentially one solid, relatively smooth piece. Now the obvious problem to me is whether or not you'll end up igniting residual fuel when you separate your boosters. Not quite sure how to deal with that one. But anyway, that was my mostly uneducated idea.

use [ or ] to switch vessels/kerbals/rovers/etc. You can detach your rover, switch back to your ship (If it switched control to the rover), and put your Kerbal on EVA, who you can thus put into the rover.

Oh wow, that looks just wee bit like the Mk 1 pod.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LADEE If this was something the person actually saw, and wasn't just a small series of meteors coming into the atmosphere, then LADEE is probably what it was.

Well, I would imagine the issue has to do with MechJeb itself. Its probably not taking into account (or failing to for that matter, considering what you've said) that the two ships are docked and thus not calculating the dV of the entire vessel and only the particular part that has the MechJeb Pod/Box on it. The only way I could see around this is to make sure every part has a MechJeb box/pod. If it still doesn't display the full dV, then your only option if you want a specific number is to check the dV of each part and then do some addition.

This is easy, just lace your ship's hull with cavorite and you're all set.

I don't think anyone thinking about serious expansion into space is even remotely thinking about interstellar endeavors. Most are more than likely looking towards returning to the Moon. The idea isn't to start exploring beyond our Solar System, so much as it is just exploring more of what we already know we can reach. The Moon, Mars, close-by asteroids, hell, even Venus or even Mercury are all destinations we should be looking at before we decide to send anything more than probes beyond Mars. Going to other stars is something for the next century. I don't think that Mars would be a destination for anyone other than actual Astronauts before its either terraformed somehow or set up with extensive, self-sustaining (More or less) infrastructure. By then, travel into space would be more expensive than booking a round-trip flight to Europe (Because it'd have to be for large-scale Mars colonization to even be anything more than an idea, much less an actual possibility).

Indeedly, doing orbital inclination without MechJeb was interesting, what with basically having to eyeball it. Thankfully my lifter stage was overpowered for the payload so my transfer stage had plenty of leftover dV to play with. I actually find it strange that stock KSP doesn't display that kind of information. (Or at least where I can see it anyway).

So, for the first time in my time playing this game, I've gone farther out than the Mun with a legitimate, non-sandbox craft, on my mission to send a Kerbal to orbit Minmus for 3 days. And my oh my, is Minmus fascinating up close. I'm so used to going around and around the Mun, and Minmus is just, so different. It really inspires to me to drive forward into interplanetary efforts, though thats still a long way off in my career save. Currently on the 2 day voyage back home. Here's Bill looking out of his tiny capsule onto the surface of Minmus.

I just wish we could delete these ships in-game. Sometimes I want to get rid of a mod and not have to go through and manually delete the ships that still have some of the parts afterwards.

Naturally its money thats preventing us from really digging into space, as politics locks out access to that money. However, thats not a reason against going into space, its just something stopping us from doing so.

I'd like to hear a reason for not going into space that doesn't have to do with risk (crap argument. Anyone whose ever gone into space didn't do it on the assumption that there would be no risk) or money (also crap, because we spend more money on killing each other).

Yes, the general point of the Lab is to minimize the cost of fully exploring a body. Instead of a dozen launches carrying tons of redundant equipment, you can do one or two launches (Depending on your construction methods) and fully explore a body in the same mission. They are also useful for maintenance runs on deep space science probes. You'd rendezvous then your probe would be able to go off and do more science while you carry the full science value back to Kerbin. Generally I wouldn't want to land it anywhere. Its clearly something meant for orbit.

Personally I think the only thing Squad could or should offer that could be considered DLC, is just new code to support the different things a lot of popular mods try to do. For instance, optimized support for life support mods to build off of. Same thing for things like weapons, new stars, sci-fi propulsion, etc etc.