cantab

Rowing in general? Rowing across an ocean? A specific crew that rowed across an ocean?

It's that penultimate verse that is getting me, implying that the rest of the riddle is not describing what the solution is but merely where it can be found. Is it just spaceflight in general?

More thrust in vacuum. In a real rocket engine, the fuel flow is constant. Outside air pressure gets in the way of the exhaust and makes it generate less thrust. The following equation links thrust and specific impulse: Thrust = Specific Impulse * Fuel Flow Rate So reduced thrust and the same fuel flow rate means a lower specific impulse. In KSP as it stands, the engines compensate for the thrust drop by increasing fuel flow. This is technically possible in real life, but there's no reason to do it. As per the above equation, if you hold thrust constant and increase fuel flow rate, again that means a lower specific impulse.

With KSP as a major focus, why not an Intel processor? The http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/42877-CPU-Performance-Database thread shows that they're stronger than AMD's offerings as far as KSP goes.

In the current stock game, none. In the next release, we know there's just going to be a single resource. I don't think there'll be any atmospheric collection of that, it will just be on the surface. As far as mods go, well various mods are able to use the atmosphere as air or some synonym thereof. I think most if not all of these don't use the stock air intakes, but rather custom ones. For example the Kethane mod has the Kethane jet, while some other mods might have nuclear thermal jets, and Firespitter uses it as "coolant" for electric propellers. (Which is a kludge really, needed so the props don't work in space.)

In stock the combination Alt+R (RShift+R for Linuxers - and that's a stretchy key combo!) will force a part to only stack attach. Useful for things like docking ports. But there's no way to make a part radially attachable that otherwise isn't. You need to use an intermediate part that attaches radially and provides a free attachment node. The cubic octagonal strut is most commonly used for this because it's massless, but many parts will work especially now we have the editor gizmos.

Well I can think of three options 1) Find an old version of Mapsat or similar, if one is available. 2) Extract the map from the game files 3) Take a bunch of screenshots of the planet, and somehow warp and stitch them together into a single map.

You could download the old game and try and make one.

I'll miss being able to do crazy aerocaptures with impunity, but I'll be angry if the current chase cam is removed outright. For me it's the only way to fly planes.

I've not looked through the whole list, but certainly space seems to be "in" in gaming now, after perhaps some years of being a bit of a niche genre.

Episodes 10 and 11 saw the design, fuelling, and flying of the Kethane Space Program's first successful mission to Kerbin's nearest neighbour! An all new design, the Red Spark 2 lander touched down safely on the surface of the Mun with masses of fuel to spare and performed a materials science study, while its accompanying orbit was left in a 65° inclined orbit excellent for kethane scanning.

I very much suspect Unity made a math booboo when it comes to wheels and Squad just used the stuff that comes with Unity.Frankly Unity is a shonky physics engine. It's cheap and it works for the majority of games that just need something that works, but it's not very realistic.

The Kethane Space Program completed its first Mun orbit and landing!

Granted. You take lots of exercise, and you hate it. I wish I could fart.

Just stick giant fins on the bottom and job done. The ascent might not be the most efficient, but as long as the rocket is aerodynamically stable it'll fly towards orbit.

Regarding jet engines, I think they'll take a TWR nerf. In the current "soup" they need high TWR to push planes through it. With the newstock aerodynamics expected to reduce drag, jet thrust can be correspondingly reduced and level flight performance remains similar. As for the fuel efficiency, well it would be interesting to see their Isp fixed (a bug/oversight makes it way too high), but at the same time the liquid fuel:oxidizer ratio for the rockets changed to be more realistic, thus winning jets back some of their relative advantage. (On a sidenote, I think an engine that burns onboard oxidizer and atmospheric fuel would be cool. Not sure where it would fly, maybe need a new Titan-like planet for it.) As far as making parts non-physicless goes, I expect nope. The proliferation of physicsless parts is a kludge to improve game performance. They aren't going away until KSP has a better performing game engine. If anything I expect even more. Physicless nosecones perhaps? I expect the tech tree to get a full overhaul of course, but I still think a lot of the structural stuff will stay late in the tree. After all, the cubic octagonal strut may seem simple but it's so powerful - albeit less than it used to be with the new gizmos.

Well, I'm expecting: An across-the-board Isp nerf, to compensate for the reduced delta-V requirement to orbit in the new aerodynamic model. Notable overpowered engines to get nerfed further. Plenty of balance issues and underpowered parts to still be around. Overall, the focus to have been on career, with the currency side of things seriously reworked.

Squad should provide better default rover controls, but for the time being you can remap them. I like to use the number pad. You have no ABS and no analogue brake control, so you'll have to pump the brakes as needed, like we did in racing games before analogue controllers came along. Alternatively use reverse drive to slow down more gently. KSP's planets are big and empty and metres per second are unfamiliar units. The result is we tend to hoon it around at 70 miles an hour off-road on other planets and moons. Crashes are what we deserve for that. And on a final note, if you want to enjoy driving in KSP, set up a controller and use chase cam. The combination is so much more engaging, it's like an actual driving game then.

Well I don't think I'd care much. But I bought KSP because of xkcd. If not having Kerbals had meant xkcd didn't reference it, I might not be playing KSP today.

It's that flyby of Tylo that is preventing "Explore Tylo" from ever appearing.

On similar lines, sweets?

It holds a heading in space, which means the angle relative to the planet drifts. For that matter, a constant heading and a straight flight aren't generally the same thing, because apart from the equator and the meridians great circles aren't rhumb lines.SAS is bad for planes anyway, it has no concept of level wings or turning by banking.

I'm reporting this issue also. KSP 0.90 on Ubuntu 14.04, and a wired XBox 360 controller. "Hat #0 Button 0" corresponds to left on the d-pad. This bug makes the mod basically useless for me, since I can't set any controls up.

Keep in mind PC stuff advances quickly. You might be better off saving until you have the full budget, rather than buying stuff now that you won't be using for months. If you're gonna be sleeping in the same room as your PC is running in then I'd say noise is a factor. Sure you probably don't need total silence, but I've owned some loud hardware. Just be wary of anything criticised for being noisy. Wanting SLI support will force you into somewhat more expensive motherboards. They needn't be super-pricey though, there are options in the £90-100 mark. Yes, to overclock you want a CPU with an unlocked multiplier. On the Intel side the choice is simple: Pentium G3258, i5-4690K, or i7-4790K. You also want a motherboard that supports overclocking. All Z97 boards do, as do some non-Z boards but for them you would have to do your research. For motherboard choice, the first factor is overall size and whether it fits in your case! The next for you is as mentioned SLI support - and also consider the placement of the PCI-E 16x slot, some boards would put your graphics cards closer together than others. Then, while motherboards do vary in overclocking performance the effects are small, around 0.1 GHz of variation usually. More important is the ancillary stuff: number of USB ports, what if any Wifi there is, the M.2 slot if any (for compact and fast SSDs), etc. And of course general build quality and reliability.

As I see it, the spirit of the challenge is to make a small aircraft. I wouldn't score for distance at all. Or if I did, it would just be a pass/fail kind of thing - x bonus points for reaching some milestone distance but no score for going stupidly far.