SkyRender

Mostly I'm hoping for those super-sleek and absurdly aerodynamic Mk2 parts. The cargo bays in particular, though all of them are on my "awesome" list.

And now, proof that RAPIER engines plus FAR equals absurdity. Here's a very sleek and aerodynamic SSTO spaceplane that has the same passenger capacity as Airbus Kerbin. In stock, it would just barely be able to reach orbit. (The parts are from Spaceplane Plus, shortly to be implemented in stock. Fun times.) With FAR, it reaches orbit with over a full third of its fuel remaining. FAR is the best thing.

The RAPIER engines are very useful indeed, as long as you have a well-designed craft. One of my favorites is my Airbus Kerbin. Using FAR, RAPIER engines become even more overpowered, since they're effectively a free semi-efficient rocket engine attached to a turbojet. I managed to get a similar payload to orbit using FAR with literally half the fuel and engines.

You could call it the ÑÂúрþüýыù (Skromnyj). That way its name will be delightfully ironic if it gets particularly large.

Somehow around 2,440 views are logged on my profile. That's more views than I have posts, which is kind of sad in a way.

Here's a useful little tip for you: drop your throttle to zero just before you decouple (this is easily done by hitting X). If your rocket is running solely on inertia when the SRBs decouple, they will come off far more smoothly. You can throttle back up right after decoupling safely, too.

You need to install your boosters lower on the decouplers, and put the decouplers lower on the rocket. It's very hard to keep them from bowing inwards when separating when they've got most of their mass near the top like that. Ideally you want the radial decoupler installation relative to the SRB to be as close to the center of mass of the SRB as possible, tending so that slightly more of the mass of the SRB is below the decoupler. That prevents the issue that's taking out your fuel tank.

I still remember when MechJeb was new. Back then, the divide between "MechJebber" and "not MechJebber" wasn't that big a deal, because quite frankly, the game was so hard at the time that not many really looked down on players resorting to an auto-pilot mod. (Also, this was when the game wasn't even a year old, so technically nobody was good at the game yet!) I was one of the ones who decided that I'd rather not rely on an auto-pilot, and kept playing without MechJeb. I still fly everything manually, and sometimes even without the comforts of SAS enabled. It's just more fun to do it myself.

Current Funds in my main Career file are 10,089,494.6 (yeah, I don't know where the trailing .6 comes from either...), and easily grown well beyond that thanks to all of the probes I have out there around literally everything. I've probably spent around 3,000,000 Funds or so on the various launches, so I guess technically it's worth around 13 million. Though again, it's stupidly easy to up that number with those never-ending "transmit science from (body)" contracts.

The other big difference is that KSP's reaction wheels are absurdly effective compared to their real-world counterparts. Real-world reaction wheels generally can't send a craft from zero to "vomit comet" spin speed in 5 seconds flat the way even a single reaction wheel in KSP can.

Let's not forget Space Oddity's Elton John counterpart song, Rocket Man!

The "Kerman" Paradox One of the stranger aspects of Kerbal society that has been observed by the various and sundry Kerbologists of the galaxy is the prevalance of Kerbals to sport the last name of "Kerman". Indeed, one cannot help but notice that there is not a single Kerbal of note whose name does not end in Kerman. The origins of this strange phenomenon were of interest to at least one of the Kerbologists still alive and intact, and so they have performed some cutting-edge research into the matter. Their results, as ever, are highly questionable and come to no valid conclusions, but we're including them anyway since sales have gone up since we started mentioning Kerbals and the Guide could use the money. Tracing back the earliest example of the name "Kerman" in Kerbal cultural history proved to be a nearly-impossible task, mostly because the Kerbals of the space-faring nation of Lovothoria habitually destroy all records they locate which tell of their pre-space-flight history. However, sources from outside of Lovothoria may shed some light on this naming phenomenon. According to Decsis Kerman, a devout follower of Seaformistry, the Kerman name was placed upon the Kerbal species as a means of mind control by the government in the earliest days of Kerbal society. After pointing out that his last name is also Kerman during his rambling speech about how he has evaded this mind control phenomenon, Decsis Kerman went into an apoplectic fit, and thus we are still unsure of the veracity of his claims. However, given that no other members of the Church of Seaformistry have come forward or even appear to exist, we have been forced to accept that his theory is probably incorrect. Members of the Church of Treerock had a different perspective to provide us on the matter. Their head priest, Fred-Bob Kerman, informed us that the name "Kerman" is part of the Church of Treerock's doctrine about the lack of individuality being a curse. Archbishop Fred-Bob Kerman, several bishop Fred-Bob Kermans, and all of the acolyte Fred-Bob Kermans confirmed this story. We were unable to find any member of the Church of Treerock who was not named Fred-Bob Kerman, thus we must assume that their obsession with eliminating individuality is not in fact species-wide, but rather the byproduct of a very demented faith founded mostly around making oneself miserable. The Sunshipper cult informed us that "Kerman" was the old-world term for the sun, and that any Kerbal blessed with the name Kerman was a true child of the sun. When we pointed out that there was not a single Kerbal with a name that did not end in Kerman, they told us we were no fun any more and walked off in a huff. Unfortunately we must also conclude that the Sunshippers are generally a pack of crazy sorts who have about as much sense as a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys. In the end, the only sensible explanation that we were able to unearth about the subject came from Jebediah Kerman himself. "I dunno, it just sounds cool to call yourself a Kerman. Could you hold this for a second?" After declining to take hold of the proffered command seat attached to an SRB, this Kerbologist promptly evacuated the area so as to avoid becoming the latest victim of a Jebediah-induced explosion. Ultimately we are no closer to finding an answer to the question than we were when we started, but it's hard to argue with Jebediah's point about Kerman being a pretty nifty name.

I suppose another Hitchhiker's Guide to Kerbals entry will be necessary to explain this strange phenomenon... EDIT: And so I did!

Heck, I was doing space tourism all the way back in 0.18. The Kethane mod helped quite a bit in that regard. Not having to lug up sixteen metric tonnes of fuel off the surface of Kerbin every time you need to refill your reusable vessels is quite a blessing.

Some games have a brief flurry of excitement and just vanish from the awareness of the gaming community after a while (a classic example of that being StarTropics; it was heavily promoted by Nintendo and sold well, but was quickly forgotten after the NES era). Others find a niche and stay there forever as an Ur example of that niche (like the original Civilization). Many are lost in the mix of an over-populated genre (who even remembers half of the adventure games that came out for PC during the 90s?). And then there are the games that are one of many in their genre but that stand out and end up getting a dedicated and long-lasting fanbase (one of the best examples being the original StarCraft, which is still much-beloved and played to this day by thousands). I see KSP finding its way into that last category.

I used to run into that sort of day a lot when I was first designing spaceplanes. And again when I first installed FAR. It's been a while since I've had a really high-on-failure day with KSP, though.

The big secret thus far for 0.25 is the Administrative Facility and its functionality. Beyond that, who can really say?

I seem to have no real problem guiding the Kerbals to fame and glory. Then again, I've been doing it for a very, very long time... Rockets are actually not too tough. Keep it simple, straightforward, and pointing in the right direction and you'll do fine. Consult this handy flowchart if you're ever unsure as to how to proceed in your design:

Don't worry, we'll bring SRBs!

What happened was that the developers decided against it once it was in testing and scrapped it. Although we never got official word on why, best guess pegs it at "limited EVA fuel wasn't really very fun". Capsules having monopropellant still is a remnant of that canned feature.

I'm hoping it's some form of Kerbal Engineer Redux. That's pretty much the only mod I consider to be an acceptable exception to the rule regarding "stock only" mentality.

I landed perfectly in the dead of night on the Mun with no SAS enabled once. That was pretty awesome. Jebediah was, of course, the pilot.

Are you using any mods? And what was the rover composed of? If it only had physics-insignificant parts on it, that could well be part of why.

My vote goes for "reputation/funds/science interchange" as a feature, since it's one that we know is coming anyway. Being able to buy and upgrade facilities, however, is going to definitely be a multi-update thing. It's non-trivial to design entire buildings (we had an entire update almost completely dedicated to the Space Center overhaul not that long ago, and that was just one iteration of each building!). The groundwork may be laid with the Administration Facility for it, but I highly doubt it will be particularly robust just yet if it is. As for astronaut training, I'm pretty sure that will actually be an eventual upgrade to the Astronaut Complex, which is pretty barren right now. In fact, my guess would be that (in the long run) the hiring of astronauts will be done at the Administrative Facility, and the training at the Astronaut Complex.

The poles tend to have wonky physics like that. So do the distant bodies, for that matter. Not much you can do about it, sadly.