cantab

A VM's problematic for gaming. But I think katateochi's studies a few pages back were instructive. Many have focussed on what KSP is sending, he studied what it is reading. Nothing concerning when he tested, but that for me is the real privacy concern - that KSP might, by accident or design, send information from my computer that's totally unrelated to the game. Sandboxing an application to prevent that shouldn't be hard conceptually, but I don't know any particular tools to do it. KSP should be a fairly easy one - it only needs to read its install folder (though it writes to some other locations too) as far as I know.

Nicely done! I've done an uneventful Minpollo myself, and likewise will be uploading screenshots later. I chose the (north) Poles as the landing site and the new textures and the low Sun really gave a different look to the place. It might be the first time I've landed on the poles of Minmus. The mission gained me about 1350 science, so very similar to my Mun mission - Minmus having fewer biomes offsets its higher multiplier. I took all four orange suits, Jeb got orbit duty and the other three landed, and that's brought everyone up to level 2. I'll be able to unlock all but 2 of the 160-point nodes now. I don't really want to "waste" a high-science mission like Dunpollo when I'm still missing a lot of the science experiments, and I'm wondering about trying something ambitious (and unnecessary) for Dres, so I might actually go to Moho next. It'll give me a chance to test KSP 1.8 with a big ship, since I don't have the Nerv. Since it's about to become relevant to me, a question: Can we use functions of the MPL other than the science generation? In stock that's resetting goo/materials without EVAing, and leveling up Kerbals. Some mods give the MPL more functions such as for life support.

It helps. But even the biggest of the new SRBs isn't really long enough in proportion to its width. Having gimbal on the SRBs is more important than their overall size. There's been some debate over it, but I think a Mk2 shuttle wants 2.5m boosters and a 5m ET to be to scale, and It'll be around 2/3rds the size of the real thing. It won't be a perfect finescale replica but you can get close. As mentioned short-fuelling the ET is probably needed. That will also help with mass distribution - the real ET had the dense liquid oxygen up front meaning its full centre of mass was well towards the nose. For players with Breaking Ground, the KAL controller can control the thrust limiter on SRBs in flight. This allows you to make realistic thrust curves/tailoff.

If you were someone else, no-one would be you, so you wouldn't exist. But what if I can't imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie?

Granted. I'm struggling to imagine an interpretation of that wish that won't end badly for you. I wish for unlimited.

Hatching

KSP's Kodiak is based not on the RD-170 that powered Energia, but on the RD-107/RD-108 family of engines that have powered the R-7 missile family including Sputnik, Vostok, Luna, and even the current day Soyuz.

A space station. For space trains. With space rails and space platforms and a space ticket office and a space coffee shop that charges ripoff prices.

Delta-V: Infinity

In the event I didn't need it. Moomba has completed the Munpollo mission in one piece. A real old-school Kerbal rocket this time. Stacks of tanks, girders, lots of struts. A throwback to some of the first stuff I did in KSP. Because I have Kerbal experience on, I wanted to send Jeb, Val, and Bob all to the Mun. I need a scientist to reset the science experiments obviously, and I want both pilots to get experience ready for the future orbital rendezvous missions. I also wanted to land back on Kerbin with the Science Jr to conduct more research. I thus built a winged re-entry vehicle, thinking this would be ideal for the role. (It really wasn't). Now that I actually have struts, and tanks that are bigger than a pancake, the launch, transfer, and orbital EVA reports were fairly uneventful. I did have one quirk though: with no solars, and terriers for engines, electricity management became important. I used the main engines, in short bursts on low throttle, to turn the ship for my orbital manouvres, saving the electricity for the Mun landing and the re-entry. Landing, on the other hand ... my excuse is I'm out of practice. Took about 5 goes to not tip over. Had to touch down real gently, under 1 m/s. I never learn not to build tall landers. I found and played around with a Mun Stone, but Breaking Ground science isn't allowed, so I made sure to discard the experiment result. Re-entry. Oh man re-entry. So it was supposed to enter and descend like a space shuttle. I knew when I built it that the Science Jr has bad heat tolerance, so the idea was the front wings would be underneath it and shield it. Yeah ... that didn't work. Whatever periapsis and angle I tried, it burned up. Even a 55 km periapsis was too much heating. I know other players have reported re-entry heating has become much harsher in 1.8. (Actually, OK so a 65 km periapsis was survivable. It was also about as effective as a fart at decelerating the spacecraft.) Now for weight and balance reasons, the Science Jr is between the command pod holding one Kerbal, and the crew cabin holding the other two. And on at least one of my attempts, the ship broke apart and the two pieces exited the atmosphere again on quite different orbits. If I'd kept going with that, they would have ultimately landed in completely different places and times! (Or they might just have burnt up anyway.) That's why I was asking about landing separately. But in the end I took a different approach - I used the landing stage as an improvised heatshield. Its bulk protected the spacecraft, and I used its engine to provide extra control to keep things stable. This still took a few attempts to find the right periapsis, but eventually it got down. I did have plans of gliding around, maybe hitting some extra biomes. The vehicle actually flies quite nicely as a glider. But after how fraught re-entry was, none of this came to pass, I was just glad to be down. The mission brought me the science to complete the 45 and 90 point tiers, and get two nodes in the 160 point tier. Having the command pod, crew cabin, and an experiment storage unit helped me get extra science from my Mun mission. I opted for the node with the 2.5m fairing, and the one with all the command pods. I was tempted by the big engines, but I think I won't need them for Minmus. I also considered extendable solars, but I'll make do with OX-STATs for now. The first two missions have leapt me through the low parts of the tech tree, but it looks like things might slow down a bit now. Normally I'd rush the science experiments but the challenge rules disallow that, so Minmus probably won't be an awful lot better than Mun science-wise. Moomba by cantab314, on Flickr Life's a beach ... one made of grey Mun dust by cantab314, on Flickr The engine is for control, not braking by cantab314, on Flickr Main science return from the Mun by cantab314, on Flickr OUTTAKE: This is what happens if I re-enter like I planned to by cantab314, on Flickr Full pics in the challenge album linked above.

Can I break this rule as long as I don't take ground science from the multiple Kerbin landing biomes? It's just my Munpollo mission is having some problems staying in one piece during re-entry

Well, this made me feel like I suck at Kerbal. I opted for normal difficulty for sliders and percentages, but turned on "features" like Kerbal experience and part pressure limits. I'm also adding the informal rule that after the initial "photo op", KSC science is only for getting that bit extra to unlock a node I can nearly get. No large-scale grubbing around for science points on the ground. The challenge starts with Chocobo, which is just a pod with some goo. Chocobo by cantab314, on Flickr That got me the first two tech tree unlocks. Next up is Kjata, my Kerbin orbiter, and dang this gave me trouble. I went through five design iterations and even more launch attempts. I wanted to use the Soyuz pod because I was concerned about re-entry heating, but it was just hopeless aerodynamically, so I switched to the classic Mercury pod. As a stack of small tanks with no struts or autostruts, the rocket flexes and wobbles and control is a nightmare. In the end I decided to pitch over a bit then turn SAS off and let it more or less turn itself. Kjata was able to limp into an elliptical polar orbit, getting EVA reports of all biomes and also high space, before Jeb had to get out and push to deorbit. And let me tell you, pushing a capsule that has no SAS isn't easy! Eventually I found it was stable to push at an extremely unlikely angle. Because I didn't have enough electricity to transmit and didn't land the Goo containers, I missed out on some potential science, nonetheless after the mission I have all the 45 point nodes except Aviation. Kjata by cantab314, on Flickr Pushing to deorbit by cantab314, on Flickr Challenge album: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmHNUQCF (I'm kind of short on screenshots showing info like the orbital parameters. I've been convinced for years KSP doesn't always take the screenshot when I hit F1, but maybe I'm just forgetting to take them.)

The cost, while it won't stop me buying KSP2 ever, might stop me buying it at launch. For the last several years I've been buying and playing indie and niche games on Steam, and retro console games bought second-hand. My last console was the PS2, my last handheld the 3DS. So a UK price of £50 or £60, while it's "industry standard" for "AAA" games on console and even PC, is more than I've ever spent on a videogame and gives me a serious case of sticker shock. If my PC won't run it adequately then that's obviously an issue. I'm on an i3-6100, 750 Ti, 16 GB RAM. So a gaming PC, but it was budget when it was new and it's getting on a bit now. If there's no Linux port it won't stop me playing KSP2 but it might stop me playing it much. Rebooting into Windows to play a game is a nuisance. (Which means I rarely do it, which means when I DO do it Windows wants a zillion updates, which makes it even more of a nuisance, which means I do it even less often). And of course if it runs like poo I'll dump it. After my experience with KSP 1, I've been left with very little tolerance for games that lag and stutter.

To be honest crap like this comes with running proprietary software.

Granted. However, between the hours of midnight and 8am (your local time), anybody who interacts with you by any means will perceive you as sleepwalking/talking/writing/driving/etc and act accordingly. I wish Microsoft Windows 10 did not exist.

I don't recognize him, but he's holding a newspaper, which have been in decline ever since this guy's little invention,

The minimum listed on Steam is Windows 7 64-bit. Vista and earlier already no longer get security updates from Microsoft and running them should be considered unsafe. Many people and indeed major organizations have ignored this advice and suffered major losses because of it. Windows 7 is going the same way in just a few months time.

That sounds about right. Keep in mind the tank holds 4 tonnes of fuel. SMURFF has reduced its empty mass from 500 to 119 kilograms.

The most crushing moment: At the end of a long and fraught mission that had already killed some Kerbals, the re-entry vehicle re-entered fine and gently came down under chutes onto a nice gentle beach. I fired the braking rockets - a moment too late. The lander touched ground, cut the chutes, then skidded sideways and boom. RIP two more Kerbals. EDIT: And that is why I never land on Kerbin in lander cans or hitchhikers any more. The most facepalm moment: Did a perfect probe landing first time, ran the sciencey doos, went to transmit and ... no antenna. That's not the real fail. The real fail is I had nine more identical probe landers on the mission, all destined for different celestial bodies, and all without antennas. And the dumbest bit of bad planning: I had a Minmus lander using ion engines and the kethane mod. It had a generator that uses kethane to make power to run the ion engines to land on Minmus to mine kethane. (Kethane can also be turned into more xenon). A self-sustaining cycle! But it needs kethane to start, and the stuff cannot be loaded in the vab. So the lander decoupled from its transfer stage, came in to land, and promptly drained its batteries flat leaving it doomed to crash. D'oh! But I suppose the true question is the worst thing I've faced, and the answer to that is simple: VAB lag. Ugh.

@vossiewulf yup, that's the inspiration! @GDJ nicely done.

I did my first air launch to orbit. And despite making a hashup of the ascent, it still got to 150 km around JNSQ Kerbin. Ready to drop by cantab314, on Flickr We're off! by cantab314, on Flickr Boop by cantab314, on Flickr

Granted. The school wifi changes to deadly microwave beams that incinerate everything within a 100-mile radius. I wish I could drift.

Granted. As in Police Constable. I wish I was asleep.