BLUESTREAK

When I said: I was not expecting such a literal response from @SQUAD! Ah, gaming on the mac. I think I'll wait a couple of weeks (Just to qualify my statement - this game is STILL brilliant; well done on such a massive update!)

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

Did anyone take notes of what was said on last night's Squadcast? It was a bit late to watch in the UK...!

Very nice! I like the Komet, very good... Nose could do with being a little pointier on the harrier, but otherwise they're brilliant Just like the real thing then. A harrier mate that I used to know said that the only mindset to take before strapping in was to ask yourself "how is this aircraft going to try and kill me today?" - not an easy aircraft to fly! The way they used to teach the vertical landing was to thoroughly brief the student pilot that whatever happens during landing - whatever it felt like - they were absolutely not to eject. "If it feels like you're going to crash, don't worry about it. It's meant to feel like that. One way or the other you'll be on the ground soon enough"

Not yet, unfortunately - too bogged down with university work to play...

Ye Gads! Look at the size of that thing! ...I do like the little canards at the front, they look like they were almost added as an afterthought!

Hang on... If I just turn the thing around in the hanger, it'll point the wrong way on the runway, then I have km after km of nice green fields to rumble across. Once I'm airborne, all I have to do is turn prograde and I'm good...

Ah, I can get them off the ground using detachable SRBs. But then, it rather stops being a SSTO craft! More lift is called for, but then bigger wings result in needing bigger engines and the whole thing spirals upwards in mass and ends up smashing into the sea at 250m/s. If they work, my SSTOs are a bit like the original Rolls Royce HOTOL concept - "Great, if you wanted a payload of 7 tons. And if you wanted those 7 tons to be its own hydraulic systems" (Alan Bond - I'm paraphrasing, because I can't find the original quote...).

Runway length. The waters of Booster Bay are littered with shattered spaceplane parts, and salty from the tears of broken Kerbonauts. Perhaps I'm building just a little bit too big...

Ah cool - I'll admit, that's how it plays out in my head, sometimes stuff just breaks! I've not tried TF, I'll give that one a whirl. Just got to figure out what to uninstall first...

This looks very promising; how does it play with Dang It! and Entropy? I've had a brief skim through the thread and couldn't find any major incompatibility issues; has anyone tried it out to confirm it? My clapped out computer is wheezing under the weight of a couple of dozen mods; therefore I'm reluctant to add anything which may cause problems! Having read the thread, the way I see it is that there's potential for significant overlap in how problems are solved - both Dang It! and Entropy use the "spare parts" idea, which adds extra mass - therefore a decision for the player about how much they take - and engineer levels as to what they can/can't fix on EVA, resulting in players taking care of their engineers and having to make a decision about who they take on a mission. I see these mods as two sides of the same coin - stuff broken by DI!/E arising from issues with manufacturing (Think Apollo 13, Gemini 8, etc), random chance and micrometeorites, whereas KKS causes problems because they've been ham fisted about landing/docking too fast, punishing the player for sloppy play but still giving them a way out if they're smart instead of just exploding. Would there be any scope for compatibility, so deformation and damage caused by KKS decreases the mean time between failures for DI!/E, whilst using the same spare parts resource for repairs? It would add depth to what looks like a fantastic mod! Keep up the good work!

Has anyone tried this with Kerbal Krash Systems? The mod looks good, and I'd like to install it, but my machine is creaking under the weight of so many mods as it is and I don't want to install something that may conflict. Compatibility would be awesome, especially in the similar way that KKS uses engineers to fix things and increasing the risk of random failures based on how much you've banged a piece about would be excellent. (The way I see it - Dang It! and Entropy are failures from manufacturing, random chance, micro meteorites etc. Failures from KKS is what I deserve when I've been stupid enough to hit the ground at 20m/s)

Physics bubble aside, the same question arises for real elevators - are there parts strong enough to do this? Even with Gilly's weak gravity, each part will have to be able to support the mass of the parts above it - plus, be stable enough not to topple, as it would be impossible to attach it to the floor without using a mod or two, unless you want a really wide base. Oscillations would have to be dampened, plus a method of actually climbing the thing put in place. Would any elevator be built and then hyper edited in place, or, for the truly daring, would it be built in modules, transported and then constructed in sitieu? Interplanetary launchpads could certainly make that aspect of construction much easier, but still... This level of engineering is beyond my ken, or indeed beyond the knowledge of any mere mortal. There is only one man able enough to construct such a colossus, such a daring, nay, insane feat of engineering. Only one man is worthy of such a task. Summon the Whackjob.

Ah, shame - thought that might have been the case. Too bad, it would have been awesome!

If you had a big enough - and steep enough - ramp on the other side to land on, you might be able to make that without the parachute...

I bought the game as a distraction to take my mind off some personal life stuff. Thought it might distract me for a couple of hours. Getting a successful sub orbital flight got a grin after several failed attempts. Getting orbital (and back!) elicted an involuntary "yes!". Landing on the mun was tough; figuring out docking got two fists in the air and a shout of triumph. Landing a rover on Duna was a solid achievement. Building a space station was tough. This was 3 years ago. What I needed to take my mind off something for three hours has lasted about 8760 times longer than I needed. I come and go depending on how busy work is (I always return after a new version release, and still read devnotes every Wednesday morning) My style involves not killing kerbals and realism mods; I carefully, slowly advance - I've yet to walk on Duna - but after the Mun in my current save game, that's next! still the best game ever

Still my favourite mod. Results in enough failures so you know that it's working, but seldom enough not to rage quit. Had my first launch failure the other day - lost one of two swivels on my first stage just as I was entering max q; I had a split second of "oh, that's not good" before I ended up with an uncontrollable yaw rate, scattering my very expensive geostationary comms satellite all over the bay. And the thing is... I wasn't even mad. I've had enough failures that have been survivable, a nasty one had to happen eventually. And it was brilliant. It means that every single other launch is still tense, with redundancy having to be built in - a constant challenge, keeping the game fresh and new. The balance between failures and boredom is perfect. Unlike the balance on my booster, which was not. @Ippo, @Coffeeman, you guys are the best!

Very nice! I do like the sound of this mod... For the latter deep space manned missions, would you make the orbital construction/shakedown of your ship a mission in itself? Or would that be left up to the player?

Any chance of requesting engine fires for jet aircraft, requiring a shutdown? Losing an engine on takeoff or landing could keep things... Interesting!

I've been thinking about building a glider for a while now - I want to see if it's possible to get one airborne using a KAS winch at one end of the runway, winding it in to generate airspeed and launching like that. You might just be able to get enough altitude to go around and land back on the runway. Can the KAS cables be stretched the length of the runway? Never really used that mod before...!

Funnily enough, that video clip is pretty much what I imagine mission control is like every time I play...

Laptop keyboard and KOS normally has me covered, but Mrs BLUESTREAK has the habit of calmly reaching over my shoulder and mashing the spacebar, usually at the worst possible moment. Teaching her how to play was the worst idea I ever had, she now knows EXACTLY which buttons to press and at what critical moments to do it. (Randomly hitting x and z is another one of her favourites) She then nonchalantly goes back to drinking her tea. I've had to learn how to KOS just to keep one step ahead of her. NASA never had to put up with this...!

A few trips into my Apollo-a-like series of missions, I was taking my solar powered lunar buggy out for a spin on the surface of the Mun with Bob and... some other guy. I was just in the process of completing the last of Kerpollo 16's mission objectives (land, pick up samples, eva report, conduct high speed tomfoolery with new rover) and on my way back to the lander (a scant 100m away) when whats-his-name went a little too fast over the rim of a crater. Idiot. The rover rolled over, both Kerbals banged their heads, rag dolled and then point blank refused to get up. There wasn't enough DeltaV in the command module to make a landing and conduct a rescue that way, but I couldn't just leave them down there, so the CMP remained as the on-orbit incident commander whilst Kerpollo 17 was being scrambled with a crack rescue crew of CDR Jeb, LMP Bill and the CMP... Well, I forget his name too. Something Kerman. Kerpollo 17 launches, orbits, and lands within 200m of the crash site with no problems. By this time, night has fallen. Jeb and Bill EVA to find one Kerbal trapped in his seat, still rag dolling, and Bob standing next to the rover, simply staring at the black, star lit horizon. Neither move. Both are listed as rover debris. Despite successfully flipping the rover back over, neither can be persuaded to move. They just stare, blankly. Batteries failing on all equipment, CAPCOM reluctantly gave the order to abort; the Kerpollo 16 command module began its long journey home. A few simple words were said on the surface by Jeb and Bill, who were more than a little weirded out by Bob constantly staring into the darkness and the rag dolling fellah on the floor. Kerpollo 17 blasted off from the Mun, never to return, leaving the dead. Per Ardua Ad Astra, Bob and whats-his-face, your noble sacrifice will never be forgotten. Or, at least, it wasn't until I wiped the save game out of sheer embarrassment.

Yeah, pretty much that - KSP inspired "you will not go to space today", which was then adopted by the KSP community as a particularly kerbalish thing to say, unaware of its original inspiration. Perhaps I suck at explaining my thoughts!

What I like about this is that the borrowed phrase "you will not go to space today" - which has undeniably become part of the KSP vernacular - was therefore technically inspired by KSP in the first place...!