cpast

Those rockets didn't go into space; the most powerful ones went to around 1 km. No one's saying it's impossible to launch rockets; people are saying that amateurs will have a very hard time getting into space. The first time such a thing has been verified was in 2004; there are no verified claims of a space launch prior to that not performed by professionals as part of their job. That rocket used a class S motor, which is far, far beyond "model rocketry", and substantially past "high-powered rocketry", into the domain of plain "rocketry" (as they were amateurs, "amateur rocketry"). It was not a model rocket by any sane definition of "model". The V2 was not developed by civilians; the Aggregate program was run by the German army from the very beginning. That instantly disqualifies it as amateur rocketry, let alone model rocketry.

The point is, 32-bit and 64-bit are not separate updates. If you go back to 32-bit, you can keep the save without worrying about the different experience (as 32- and 64-bit 0.24.2 are the exact same experience, except for bugs and instability). EDIT: Also, they weren't going to release 64-bit in 0.24, for exactly this reason. They did so, knowing it was buggy, because the community response to Lilleman's thread was so positive despite the bugs people found. The decision they made was "yes, this is unstable, but people want it despite instability; we'll release the 32-bit version and tell everyone that the 64-bit version is less stable, but given the community reaction to buggy 64-bit, we may as well share the handful of bugfixes we'd already done for it".

You probably already answered this somewhere, but the Fustek Resupply Module advertises integration with SDHI. Will there be a matching umbilical connector on that now?

IIRC, saves do not change between the two versions -- you don't need to worry about losing your save between them.

Mine certainly doesn't. Not all do.

I'm even less of an expert, I bet. Also, on searching with some new key terms, it looks like sudden pressure decrease can stop combustion (at the cost of ruining the SRB, but if you're aborting that was gonna happen anyways).

Huh, did not know that. I always thought the idea was just to eliminate net thrust.

Oh god, first Rowsdowser and now you? I'm surrounded by snakes! Really looking forward to it; the not-hiding was getting annoying

This is entirely unnecessary for almost all update checking I've seen. Pretty much all mods with update checks seem to only check the latest version available and alert you when a new version is available; they don't download any executable code. Indeed, they *shouldn't* ever download executable code, because not everyone wants to update right away (e.g. with craft-breaking updates). Version checks don't need cryptography, because faking them provides no benefit - someone who goes to the forum thread or other download location will discover that there is no update anyways, and if the download location itself is compromised, there's still no downside to the automated version check (manual checking would lead to the same outcome), you just have bigger problems.

Solid fuel doesn't flow. A solid-fueled rocket will keep burning until it's burned through all the fuel, or the rocket itself comes apart. The idea of blowout panels is to minimize thrust, but you can't stop the burn.

Why do you think the UAE is doing this? A mission to Mars has no inherent value to the UAE; they just do not have the scientific community needed for that. What does have inherent value is building up a scientific and technological base in the country, which you don't do by paying someone else to do this.

Now that you can enable the only-one-active-at-a-time behavior in the AppLauncher, is there a chance of a 2.4.3.0?

That would likely defeat the whole purpose of the UAE's space program. There really isn't a whole lot of value in paying someone else to send a whole mission to Mars for you; what would be valuable for the UAE would be building up the technological sector in the UAE.

I vaguely remember something in the press that said that while Squad is a marketing company, but the owners are thinking of spinning off the marketing side because marketing in Mexico City is apparently not a fun field to work in. I might be remembering it wrong, or their plans may have changed, but yeah. EDIT: Also, seriously, the kind of company that responds to an employee saying "I quit, I want to do games" with "Well, we don't do games at all, but I see no reason we can't try it out; wanna stay on and have us fund it?" just sounds awesome.

Fortunately, there's time for them to put all their changes in the rules at once before the new rules go into effect.

The advantage of zip files is that all major OSes natively support reading and writing them; there's no need for a separate program.

Because DRM is an optional component in Steamworks, which developers don't have to use, and Squad has chosen not to use. Fair point. I happen to know where Steam keeps its games, but if you didn't already know, it would be substantially more annoying.

It does *not* have DRM of any form that I'm aware of, nor, in my experience, is it any sort of issue at all installing mods on the Steam version [aka the Steam version copied out of the Steam directory, as they're identica] (for some reason, I've never seen the sort of issue that people report happens running KSP from Program Files launching the Steam version through Steam; it seems like Steam automatically handles things to get around the Windows restrictions or something).

The main reason I prefer it on Steam is that that's where most of my other games are, and it's a lot more convenient to me for them all to be managed through the same program. It really depends on how much you like and use Steam -- there's no difference for KSP, but if you like and use Steam a lot it's probably better to use it for KSP as well. If you hate Steam, don't use it for KSP.

That wasn't all of it -- the main Earth orbital rendezvous they were considering had one payload craft and one tanker craft. Earth orbit rendezvous was in fact considered feasible; the main issue was cost and complexity, plus bureaucratic issues (unmanned NASA missions, such as the tanker launch would have been, are run by different people than manned ones, and that isn't ideal for when you have a tight deadline), plus the need for multiple launches. Space launches back then, and even now, have non-trivial failure rates; if crafts 1 and 2 are to rendezvous and craft 2 fails to orbit, craft 1 may have to be basically written off (if craft 1 is the tanker, that does get into fuel lifetime problems to some degree, but also gets into [some] orbital lifetime and possible control issues; if craft 1 is manned, you *will* have to abort then [life support], and you've wasted a lot of astronaut time and NASA money, and forced an additional risky manned launch). Reference on Apollo mode selection: http://history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/apollo6.pdf

Especially for things like multiplayer mods, which literally cannot function properly without sending data to other computers?

Yes and no. The standard boundary of space on Earth is 100km, but that's just the altitude at which the speed you need to stay aloft through lift is orbital velocity -- it is not an altitude at which you can orbit. NASA actually considered entry to start at 122 km for shuttles, because that's where atmospheric drag became noticeable and control surfaces started working (that's when the shuttles stopped using RCS and started using aerodynamic controls). In KSP, an orbit at 70 km will last forever; on Earth, an orbit at 101 km will not last a single orbit, and any orbit below 300 km will only last days. It's not really accurate to compare 69 km in KSP with 100 km on Earth.

Part of the issue is that Unity is in the process of switching to Unity 5 (so Unity 4 is probably only really going to get bugfixes, no new features that weren't already being worked on), and switching KSP from Unity 4 to Unity 5 will be non-trivial.

Hm. @anyone who knows about this sort of thing: is it possible the black ones are for looking at the Sun, or are they just old parts that are no longer any good?

Chad Jenkins is still on the main team list on the website's about page, even though he has stepped down and seemingly should be under "legacy".