Sky_walker

Even if you wouldn't have to have anything in common with it? Ever? Cause as far as I see - everything with exception of life support doesn't affect your gameplay in any way unless you want it to. And a life support, depending on a balance, would propably be unimportant unless you an interplanetary flight or want to build a manned space station without a large stack of resources onboard or a closed ecosystem.

To quote Deadweasel: I wouldn't mind it though if it's in some very non-intrusive way (I liked the idea of ribbons for Kerbals, as long as these ain't huge flashy icons like made in one of the mods).

Right now KSP doesn't even require anyone to leave Kerbin atmosphere. In campaign you can complete a whole research tree on a planet itself. So I wouldn't be too worried about devs ever forcing anyone into mining. Even if they would implement resources as they initially planned to.

Researchers do different stuff for different reasons. Objectives of this mission went beyond just studying geckos ... behaviour - they also wanted to test hardware (came out it was far from perfect) and reentry technologies. Geckos were only a side-effect of a project. What I meant is that they know how to expand capabilities of existing ships - see: Soyuz TMA-M build on TMA variant managed to score a new record for a quickest docking of a manned ship to the ISS, however they still got a problem with designing new stuff or resurrecting old. I won't argue about the rest, I think it's clear enough what's the opinion of each side. Hahahahaha

Yea, I'm sure gecko s.ex experiment would be spoiled by human presence. They build them just, fine all of the mentioned projects, both - these failed that you focus on, and these hugely successful that you so quickly dismiss, like Soyuz. If anything - they lost a design capacity. Driving motor of the CCDev is a private, majority of scientists working on a project are hired by a private entities, major part of the CCDev success is that it stayed away from NASA as much as possible (looks like after upcoming stage we'll have one project staying on it's own, moving even further away from NASA). Which is why they're restructuring their space sector. US build 6 shuttles. 1 never flew in space, 2 ended up in flames. Average launch cost was $1.5 billion with lower payload capacity than Delta IV Heavy, Delta IV Heavy which launch cost is is $375 million according to the Wikipedia. Yes, different eras, but even if we triple the cost of Delta IV - it's still super-attractive comparing to the space shuttle. Sorry, but this data could be just as well obtained using cheaper and more efficient methods, withouth leading to the death of 14 people (ie. smaller robotic spaceplanes similar to the IXV/PRIDE - Buran was the first spaceplane to make a fully automated flight, so it could be done just fine back in a day). Space Shuttle programme was mostly a PR win for NASA. In terms of scientific return per dollar spent - it was a miserable misunderstanding. I hardly can think of other NASA project that would have such a poor return and could be replaced by much more elegant, practical and cheaper solution.

You should really educate yourself on ISS research. We're barely scratching the surface. You mean in what? Flying? So far it haven't done almost anything at all other than that. Let's not go ahead of ourselves Russians meanwhile got stuff like Spektr-R, constant presence and research on ISS, and a dead-Geckos satellite (long live the memory of their space-... adventure), hehehehe At a current rate NASA won't have any manned space craft done ever, cause everything will keep on being delayed and delayed till oblivion.

Depends on a definition, really. Unmanned exploration capability. Which, by the way, even India has. I'm not disputing that. And US doesn't even have an equivalent to that. Right now only Chinese do.

Seen the video, and I'm far from calling it a masterpiece. More like a game for console kiddos. Most likely won't sell well on a PC. It smells more like a Spore than anything else. Only Spore looked more ambitious from an initial trailers.

There's a mod for that. And I hope we'll never see it in a stock game.

TAC life support adds few more. Universal storage also helps. Though as said - there is no mod that reproduces full resource tree as described in the concept.

Well, there are mods like Kethane that already deal with resources and prove that SQUAD was mistaken with their assessment and resources not only can be incredibly fun but also add whole new dimension to the gameplay that perfectly fits the main scope of a game - one of a major reasons being that bases on another planets start to make sense with these mods. However there is no mod that would follow the tree as pictured above.

US lost it's essential leading role, being a driving motor of a manned space exploration, after the space race just like NASA lost a large portion of it's funding. Their only real success in terms of manned missions was ISS... if you can qualify that as an US success - I would argue that you can't cause even though US does provide majority of funding - station couldn't be done without international support, with russians playing key role there - heck: right now it's Russia that keeps ISS alive, not US. US can't even send one person onboard without Russian help. ISS would still be build without US help - as a Mir 2, sure, it'd be delayed and smaller, but still there. On the other hand - Space Station Freedom would never happen on it's own. Ok, to be fair - you might add 171 days of Skylab to that list of successes, as it was put on orbit after the space race though whatever it was a success or a very expensive failure still remains debatable. In either case though - don't overestimate the importance of USA.

Ekhm... no, it won't: Well done managing stuff than. Usually when cinematics are done in a companies of that size - it's done by people who could otherwise focus implementing content into the game - hence the disappointment, as these clips don't even make it into the game itself. But I'm glad to see it wasn't the case.

Whoever renamed this topic - THANK YOU!

Yea, they're not. Click "How to improve KSP" link in my signature - you'll see a post that sparked the whole topic titled "Realism in KSP" that right now got 32 pages - one of the things that gave birth this post was our (me, regex and few other people) disappointment in how much devs energy goes into making clips that never make it to the game instead of the game itself. You really don't want to continue that discussion, cause we'll end up with another 32 pages Yes, you should really look at that link in my signature Here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90612-0-25-Update%21/page21?p=1376039#post1376039

Read some guides around the forums, ask if you have problems. Don't just give up like that

You can't be serious. If they'd ever implement destructable buiuldings - it would look like that: You hit it above velocity threshold, you see one gigantic particle effect and then small 3D model of destroyed building. That's all. Stop dreaming of realistic destruction modeling, cause we don't have that even for the spacecrafts themselves. Yep. That would be nice, and as the guy who originally posted that idea nicely pointed out - it'd be in line with pretty much everything we know of that "secret" feature.

Yep. Basically: US won a space race, but ever since manned space exploration is pretty much lead by USSR/Russia - both: on a practical and technological frontier. Even more so since Space Shuttle got retired (though space shuttles, at least in that form, where a miserable mistake - Russians seen that, US didn't till few years ago, heck: some people in US still consider it to be a great idea - but... I'm going off topic here). It might change in future though - not as much as NASA taking over the lead, cause SLS keeps on being troublesome and Orion will never compete with Soyuz, not in it's current form, but with commercials companies taking over. Space tourism will be a real, large market to explore, and hopefully - this will eventually benefit scientific goals too (it actually already started to happen with Dream Chaser signing contracts to cooperate with ESA and JAXA).

If you'd read through the first page of this topic - you know that NOONE wants to see everything to be realistic. To a degree - it already happened. In a split between Sandbox and Campaign players (it's most obvious is a suggestions forum) But even if we ignore that - split will happen in 0.25 and it's new "difficulty options". It's pretty much unavoidable. IMHO realistic aerodynamics should be mandatory - there is absolutely no reason to have nose cones work as a dead weight. The example you're looking for is probably deadly reentry? That's linked to the areodynamics and more closely related to the difficulty curve (though as far as I seen - majority of new players do expect deadly reentry and already account for that (Eg. descend only a lone capsule) - so it shouldn't be a problem when implemented). Very good points, something I haven't seen mentioned in a topic till now.

What the?! Wow... man... this is one of the most epic things I have seen in KSP! Well done! Well done!

Here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90612-0-25-Update! First post is very messy but it gives you some rough idea on what will be released. Browse through few of the last pages for latest updates on 0.25.

"Atmospheric density" should be put in quotes, as that thing around planets in KSP got more in common with force fields than an atmosphere.

Yea, it looks so. Who said that this sub can swim only in a supersonic speeds? It could be used to approach silently, like every other sub, fire, and then escape so quickly that even regular torpedoes wouldn't be able to catch up. Though it's pure speculation anyway. Come back to me when they'll build a prototype, or at least: a functional scale model.

OK, done updating my ling list of highlights from the stream. Hope you'll enjoy reading it (yep, I just saved you 1 hour of your life. ).

Live Google Hangout with Philae/Rosetta scientists streams now: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c9gb2sk457gharo9tr2m85bsnng Questions can be asked on twitter at #AskRosetta. Highlights: They're still unable to precisely position center of mass for the comet, there are just rough estimations. Tomorrow morning Rosetta approaches closer to the comet - on Wed. next week they'll be 29km away from the center of a comet. So far operations are going very well, C&C (command and control) chain also performs excellent. Two big questions: What they will find when approaching more closely to the comet? They need to be ready for higher activity on a coment. Right now they have 3 emergency pans to contain that in case something would go wrong. Preparations for the landing - where Philae will end up? [*]There are "hundreds of people" supporting the mission. [*]Rosetta is right now on the "edge" of some of the instruments [*]This is probably the most operationally intensive mission that ESA have ever flown [*]Comet shape was the biggest surprise for a scientists [*]In 2 days they begin last testing phase of the Philae - communications test, battery recharging, first pictures from Philae camera, etc. [*]Selecting an optimal landing site proved to be more complicated than initially expected during the detailed analysis. [*]Landing site confirmation will be announced in mid-October. [*]They pulled 10 runners-up in Rosetta "Are We There Yet?" competition during the stream - first time ever ESA awarded rewards during live stream. [*]They still cannot tell the exact altitude at which Philae will be released, but it'll be around 25km [*]Spacecraft will be kept no further than 60km away from the lander [*]Frequency of communication between Philae and Rosetta is as important as keeping safe altitude for the spacecraft, as lander got a limited amount of memory and uploading the data regularly is essential, otherwise some might be lost. [*]Lifetime of lander is limited by the temperatures on a comet. Best scenario estimates end of March for the Philae lifetime. [*]Comets are very unpredictable, so it's hard to say what exactly will happen or if comet will fall apart / split into two. [*]Rosetta/Philae will provide us with the best and most detailed informations on the comet ever collected. [*]They're still work on a naming convention for the features on a comet, but it's probably going to be something in Egyptian theme. They need to look into international standards, they cannot just name stuff like they'd want to. [*]Temperature and solar balance are two major problems to solve when choosing the landing site. [*]There are different spots that "perform different science" but everything needs to be balanced for an optimal science return. [*]Surface is, and will be, probed in a number of wavelenghts giving the team indications on what they might expect on each of the landing site. [*]One of the objectives is to study how comet interacts with a solar wind and how does it shape magnetic charges on a comet. [*]They don't have any good methods of proving if comet is covered with dust or not, they can get some estimations and guesses, but that's all. One of the worries was that Philae will be covered in dust upon landing, though solar arrays got a power overhead, so this problem can be easily migrated. [*]Philae will drill down to 20cm into the comet and "cook samples in an oven" to perform a spectral analysis. [*]Real color of a comet is black. It's blacker than a blackest T-shirt you can buy in a shop, reflecting only 2% of light. Images on a web are overexposed to show it in a black and white. [*]Images from the NavCam are only B&W. OSIRIS camera got numerous color filters. [*]Philae got 5 cameras, one of each side, and can take full 360 degree panorama. One of the objectives is to take a full picture of a comet horizon. [*]Rosetta is most likely not a contact binary, though more studies still need to be done. Knowing the precise center of mass will help to determine uniformity of a comet. The closer Rosetta gets the more data they'll get to explain the origin of 67P. [*]Dust is not affecting spacecraft much, there is no mechanical stress, the only problem are perturbations on a trajectory caused by a huge area of solar panels. [*]Dust won't affect performance of solar panels, however scientists need to be careful about damage to the optics. [*]Core team supporting lander is made of around 15 people though there are many teams supporting different aspects of a mission and there are separate teams for each of the instruments. [*]Landing is fairly automated - they upload commands with emergency plans and Rosetta/Philae performs descent autonomously. [*]15 September - 2 landing sides are selected. Major and a back-up one. ESA plans live stream during the Philae landing streaming from 3 different centres at the same time. ps. Seems like they answered well over a half of questions asked by people on twitter. Impressive. pps. Stream will be available on ESA Youtube channel.