Chewy

After sending Bob to Moho, I was quite a bit short on fuel inserting into Kerbin orbit. I ran the tank dry and still had to somehow kill several hundred dv to avoid taking another trip around the sun. So Bob does something crazy and goes on EVA thinking he can jet pack out of the escape trajectory, only to be rescued days later. Bob empties all but a few drops from his jet pack and is still maybe 100 dv short of getting into Kerbin orbit. So an emergency rescue mission is launched which catches up to Bob just before he leaves Kerbin SOI and returns him safely home.

Just yesterday I had Doodvis Kerman on my asteroid retrieval mission.

Now landing on the mun... different story.

I hope so... I just think any "story mode" rather than being a collection of arbitrary tasks should tie achievement to progression. You start out putting pieces together out of the junkyard and eventually end up turning it into a world class facility. For example, you perform a flyby of minmus and it triggers an invester that wants to help you build a small observatory that will allow you to track planets outside of kerbin's SOI. Before the upgrade, the tracking station was the K-Mart brand telescope on Jeb's back porch, and it turns into something capable of tracking Eve and Duna. Further upgrades allow tracking of other planets and eventually asteroids, but they should only be allowed to be upgraded if you achieve certain objectives (and not just having enough funds, rep, or science, though those can be part of it). There are many types of things that could trigger milestone events... It could be events like landing on moons or other planets or rendezvousing two ships, or setting up a station at a certain location... It could be achieving a certain amount of rep or science, or it could be completing a set number of the normal contracts. I also wouldn't mind if after you fully upgrade all your buildings and unlock the whole tech tree, if there would be further achievements/challenges that give more rep and funds for especially difficult tasks, like hauling around class E asteroids and returning from Eve. Sort of a master spaceman's checklist.

I could see a story mode working well if it wasn't too rigid... Maybe if it had major milestones being required to unlock certain building upgrades or certain nodes of the tech tree. I could see the space program starting in Jeb's shed with limited headroom, so you could only build a rocket a couple meters high, and his small 1-room office where he could accept simple contracts. Would make it interesting if you had to upgrade your VAB (Jeb's shed) before you could reach space or reach orbit (because the constraints of the VAB and tech tree prevent building a rocket capable of more ambitious missions. Then once you complete a couple successful launches, more building upgrades become possible.

I don't think anyone has brought up the point that it now costs money to research parts in the tech tree as well if you have the difficulty set that way. Science only unlocks the node, so using that strategy of converting 50% of your funds to science, doesn't allow you to use any parts until you pay to research them.

I'm guessing its a kerbal memorial or graveyard. If you go to Johnson Space Center in Houston, you see memorials for all astronauts killed in service with a tree planted for each lost life. It meets all the criteria... It wasn't guessed until recently, it would involve the artwork team, and it would only be experienced by those killing kerbals. EDIT: it also makes sense with the administration/ public relations/ reputation system. You kill a kerbal, then you lose rep... But you can restore some of the rep by spending money on a big expensive memorial.

While I realize this would be a fairly big undertaking by the dev's, in my perfect world I wouldn't mind a sort of mission planner mode to help beginners (and veterans) handle the realism with all the tools NASA has access to. The mission planner would let you plan out the major manuevers of your mission. Gene Kerman would analyze your vehicle in comparison to what your mission requires. Gene would let you know that they put a scale model of your rocket in the wind tunnel and it doesn't look like it will fly straight, and his analysis shows that while you have barely enough fuel, you won't have enough life support (snacks) for that trip to Jool and back and that the one battery you're bringing won't last the trip because you don't have any solar panels. Gene would also tell you that you will burn up entering the atmosphere at that angle and that even if you did survive re-entry, your single mk1 parachute is a bit undersized to land both your capsule and the three hitchhiker containers attached to it. Gene gives you his mission analysis and it up to you whether you choose to listen or not. I could even see getting in-flight feedback from mission control that you've used too much fuel in comparison to your mission plan or that you are on a trajectory that could kill your kerbals on re-entry. Of course its always an option that you can risk it and just launch your rocket without Gene's analysis and turn off your radio link to mission control because they start to annoy you with minor problems that you already know about.

It doesn't HAVE to be a laptop, but I prefer them by far because of their versatility. I can use it while sitting on the couch, at the kitchen table, at my desk, at my friends house or on the airplane. I've had desktops in the past and while they have their advantages, I find that I can multi-task with the laptop (like when I play KSP while also passively watching the baseball game on TV).

I did all that... Haven't tried clearing CMOS yet, having a hard time finding out how to do that. I was thinking about getting a new laptop soon anyway since it seems to be wearing out a bit.

I thought that at first and tried re-seating probably a dozen times between the old and new ram.

Two days ago I tried to upgrade the RAM in my laptop from 4GB to 8GB to better handle my KSP mods. When I fired it back up, the keyboard lights up, but it doesn't boot up like the motherboard is fried (no hard drive activity). Put the old RAM back in... same result. The laptop is almost 4 years old and the CPU fan was sounding like its been struggling a bit on startup, so I figure its time for a new gaming laptop. I'm lookin for something for under $2,000 that can handle most of the latest games including KSP with a decent number of mods. Two that I'm considering after a few hours of research are: - Toshiba Qosimo X70-AST3G25 - it's biggest plus is its the only laptop I can find for its price that has 32GB of ram, but it has a less impressive graphics card than others I've found - MSI GS70 StealthPro-024 - it has a better graphics card, but less ram at 16GB, and no Blueray/DVD drive.... And it looks really cool! I might also consider the StealthPro-210 possibly. I'm open to hearing opinions on these two laptops or if you have any suggestions for computers I should be considering.

I'm having trouble getting scansat to work on my install. I am able to access the parts that are unlocked in the tech tree, but they might as well be decorations on my ship: - In the VAB, the right mouse button doesn't give any information - In the VAB, there are no options for action groups for any scansat parts - In flight, there is no functionality to any scansat parts. Right clicking only shows the temperature of the part. I first copied the "SCANsat-release" directory to my GameData folder. Within that folder there are 4 other folders and two files, so after seeing the mod didn't work, I tried moving those 4 folders and 2 files directly into the GameData Folder, which didn't change any results. Does anyone know what may be wrong with my install?

Maybe future versions could allow you to go in the red and eventually have Kerbodyne lawyers repossess your buildings until you pay them back. They would start with your science building so you can't advance through the tech tree, then work their way to the other buildings until the Kerbodyne company completely owns the space program (you lose the game).

Anytime I see a contract for "landed on Kerbin", I just stick it on a girder segment (with a probe core of course) held in launch clamps and fire it up without releasing the clamps. You get 100% recovery with nothing leaving the ground and very little time invested. I don't think you even need to use fuel for the engines.