AbacusWizard

Funny timing: although I had read Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" years (decades?) ago, just a day or two ago I discovered Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Into the Comet," which involves a similar theme but replaces "The Feeling of Power"'s cynicism and despair with heroics and hope. A spaceship with 20 scientists/engineers (and a reporter, who is the viewpoint character) is exploring the interior of a comet when the computer breaks down. Without it they can't make navigational calculations and any orbital maneuver would be useless or worse; usually they'd just radio Earth for directions but interference from the comet cuts off all communications. They're starting to feel resigned to the fact that the comet will be their grave when the reporter suddenly remembers his grandmother, years and years ago, teaching him to use... an abacus. He builds a bunch of them from spare parts, teaches the whole crew how to use them, and they all set to work on doing the navigational calculations by hand.

Much older than that--it's Smokey Stover's fault.

No problem; just send a small craft made mostly of batteries with a klaw on the front, rendezvous, and clamp it on!

OH RIGHT. I totally forgot about n-body effects. Curse you, patched conics approximations!

Even just stock-ifying KAS/KIS would be a huge boost. I installed them when 1.0 came out and since then I haven't even bothered going to other planets (not due to lack of ability; I've landed and returned from every solid surface except Eve and Tylo in previous versions) because I've been having so much fun messing around in Kerbin orbit (and, to be fair, with my mining base on Minmus). Just recently, for instance, I figured out a great way to do "rescue stranded astronaut and recover his/her command capsule" missions at almost no cost. I rendezvous with the stranded capsule with the H-Wing (already in orbit), harpoon it, tow it to rendezvous with the Klaw Construction Co. base (already in orbit), and have an engineer pull a small heat shield off of the heat shield rack and some parachutes from storage and bolt them all onto the capsule, then use the H-Wing to tow the capsule into a sub-orbital trajectory. Detach harpoon, speed up to restore the H-Wing into a stable orbit, switch focus to the capsule, and ride the heat shield and parachutes down to a safe landing. All the infrastructure I needed was already in place, and I can do it 15 more times before I need to send up another rack of spare heat shields. More importantly, building stuff in orbit is loads of fun.

The EVA right-click menu should include more options, like "Admire the view," "Marvel at the mystery of it all," and "Wonder if those green rocks are edible."

"Science Mom? Science Dad? I've got something I have to tell you... I'm... I'm an engineer."

Geosynchronous orbit is about 36 000 km above sea level, and the exosphere (which is hardly anything anyway) tops out at 10 000 km, so a geosynchronous satellite really shouldn't have to worry about atmospheric effects at all--allowing a much greater degree of precision. Of course we can't get absolute accuracy, so I presume important long-term satellites are equipped with maneuvering jets and small propellant tanks so they can make minor course corrections if they start to drift away from their intended position. - - - Updated - - - Side note: while doing research for this post, I glanced at those numbers--36 000 and 10 000--and thought "Those are kinda small; shouldn't they be bigger? On Kerbin the atmosphere goes up to 70 000 meters, so Earth should be... OH! That's 10 000 KILOmeters! Right! Kerbin is tiny!"

Looks like space spores to me. That or star jelly. Make sure you sterilize the whole ship after re-entry and quarantine the astronauts for at least a month.

There is certainly a case for the prefixes "helio-" and "geo-" in descriptions of orbits to be changed to something else, because it could be argued that "geo-" refers specifically to our Earth and "helio-" refers specifically to our Sun. The star and planets seen in KSP, being different, should not use the same prefixes. On the other hand, there's no excuse for "kolniya."

I knew from the start that I'd be wanting lights in the compartment in case I needed to dock at night, and I figured if I'm going to put lights there anyway, why not adjust the color to make it look like a fancy Star Trek shuttle bay?

So true and so much fun. It's like a continent-sized runway. I use landing gear (see big tanker above) to swoop in for a horizontal landing like a plane and coast until I'm close to the refinery. By using the brakes instead of engines to kill my horizontal speed I can actually save a fair bit of fuel... non-destructive lithobraking!

When cargo bays were first introduced I made the Voyager I to try them out. The forward bay houses the science lab and a compact but fully functional three-seat lander; the aft bay has a bunch of docking ports and on its first mission carried a rack of seven tiny drop-probes to Eve. I was especially pleased at how the lighting turned out.

Most of my early-mid-game money (as soon as I get docking ports, really) comes from Mun/Minmus survey contracts. I put a base in orbit around each (with crew quarters, a lab, and plenty of fuel) and send down small landers to the surface and back over and over. I get big bucks from the contracts at no extra cost because I don't need to launch anything (the infrastructure's already there; once in a while I need to send up more fuel but that's it), I have fun exploring, my kerbalnauts get experience (with crew rotation courtesy of small orbital transport skiffs that never need to land), and my tech tree gets plenty of science. Good times. The infrastructure also makes it easy to complete rescue missions and tourist contracts whenever there's an extra seat on the spacebus.

I've tried three different methods: 1) permanent surface mining outpost with drills, permanent orbital refinery with converter, lander with ore tanks (and fuel tanks and engines) to shuttle ore from the former to the latter (yes, I docked my lander with a landing pad on a surface outpost, because I'm just that awesome at docking) 2) permanent orbital refinery with converter, lander with ore tanks (and fuel tanks and engines) and drills to obtain ore from the surface and shuttle it to the refinery 3) permanent mobile combine (drills and converter on wheels), surface-to-orbit tanker with wheels that docks to the combine, receives fuel as it is produced, and then hauls it up to orbit (where it then docks with any ships that need refueling) So far, I'd say #3 is the most convenient and efficient by a huge margin. For one thing the tanker doesn't need to waste space (and mass and part count) on being able to carry both ore and fuel. It also saves me the trouble of manually transferring ore and/or fuel from one thing to another, except when I'm actually using the tanker to refuel another ship. It also looks way cooler. (That central cone, by the way, is the Engineering Bay. It houses the two engineers stationed at the Mobile Ore Combine to boost efficiency (and make repairs or modifications, thanks to KAS/KIS), and it can detach and roam around--with wheels or rockets or both--in search of better ore deposits.

I like to think that Kerbals are the just-barely-into-the-space-age distant ancestors of the crew in the Galaxy Trucker board game. Both involve cartoony little astronauts cobbling together spaceships from spare parts and then barely holding them together (maybe) through various obstacles at breakneck speed.

If pilots blacking out during re-entry becomes a possibility, the only gameplay effect will be that every re-entry capable craft should be built with a small probe core. (I usually do that anyway, so the only effect I'd notice is that I wouldn't be able to use IVA view for a bit.)

I usually use the Spacebus III to send rookies up to Starbridge Station (in low Kerbin orbit), where they await the next orbital skiff to take them to Minmus Orbital Command or Mun Orbital Command. While there, they will operate the laboratory and go on at least one descent to the surface before eventually rotating to the other station to do the same, then returning to Starbridge Station and thence back home. Any vacant seats on the Spacebus III are of course available for tourists. Gotta pay the bills, y'know?

Rover wheels might not be all that useful on Minmus, but landing gear wheels on the bottom and rocket engines on the back are AWESOME on the flats of Minmus. VROOOM!

Jeb: "I need more thrust!" Bill: "We're already at maximum thrust!" Jeb: "Try pushing the Shift key!" Bill: "I'm already pushing Shift!" Jeb: "PUSH HARDER!"

Eh, I kinda lost interest in the Jurassic Park franchise after the first two movies or so. I suspect that the "if a woman dies [in a movie] it's always a big thing" phenomenon is largely due to the fact that there are fewer female characters in the first place.

Hmmmmm. I think I first heard about it in an article that quoted this interview, which says I have not seen the study myself. - - - Updated - - - I don't get it; what about them?

Maybe they're animals whose skin is coated with a thin layer of a symbiotic lichen. The kerbal's body provides a safe place for the lichen to grow (and carbon dioxide and moisture); the lichen provides oxygen, food, and some protection against heat and bright light. Hm, this could actually explain why they don't need life support... - - - Updated - - - I always do that anyway--ever since the first time I tried a Mun landing with just a scientist in the lander. It's also a good bit of insurance in case the occupant becomes incapacitated but the lander still needs to return to orbit (or pick up the poor guy).

I'm fine with anything as long as I still have the option to turn it off. My usual procedure is to listen to the music for the first time or two I play a game and then turn it off, either because I find it easier to concentrate without it or because I prefer to listen to other music of my own choosing while I play. (One notable exception: Uplink. That music is so great I often listen to it while I'm grading papers because my brain so strongly associates it with "quickly and accurately perform a detailed task under pressure." ) If I had to recommend a KSP soundtrack, though, I'd favor "Final Countdown" for launch, "Fanfare for the Common Man" for approaching orbit, "Holding Out for a Hero" for rescue missions, and "Convoy" for hauling ore. Specific themes for each planet (and moon) would be interesting as well--Holst's "Planets" suite might be good for inspiration.

Fun fact: when shown a large group that is roughly 1/6 female, most people will later say when asked that it was about half-and-half; when the large group is more than 1/6 female, people tend to remember it as being mostly female.