AbacusWizard

I've been having similar issues on Mac OSX (version 0.90, stock plus Procedural Fairings). Out in space everything seems to work fine with only an occasional crash, but when I'm in the Vehicle Assembly Building the game seems to freeze up completely, requiring a force-quit, every five or ten minutes. Sometimes I can't even get into the building. In 0.25 I had dozens of outposts and stations and satellites running at once; now I only have eight active missions because building a new one is such a huge pain. The vehicle design portion of the game is nearly unplayable in its current state and I have no idea why.

Clever! I've been thinking of using similar construction techniques to make an orbital dance floor. (I've already designed a disco ball for it.)

I think it's pretty clear that kerbals are meant to be cartoony versions of humans. Same general shape (if exaggerated), same number of eyes, similar level of hairlessness, similar facial expressions, similar rocket components, etc.

This actually IS a bugfix release. It's fixing one of the most glaring bugs that's been with KSP since the beginning: the accidental omission of female astronauts. Seriously though, this is wonderful. I'm looking forward to this so much; it should have been done months if not years ago. I wouldn't mind seeing a variety of hairstyles and shades of green for skintone as well. The notion of kerbals gaining experience and having different careers leads nicely into the notion that kerbals can look different. We humans often tend to think in terms of faces; I for one would find it easier to remember "The light green one with medium brown hair is the pilot, the dark green one with blue pigtails is the scientist, and the medium green one with the purple mohawk is the engineer" than "Jefdan is the pilot, Kirmok is the scientist, and Bikbot is the engineer." As for the claim that kerbals are a single-gender race: yes, at the moment they are, and that gender is clearly male. The default kerbalnaut model has a haircut and jawline that are associated with maleness (in modern western culture, at least); the associated specialists at the space center are generally wearing male-associated clothing, they have male-associated names, and some have facial hair. If you "don't see gender" here then you're not paying attention. This related article is well worth reading to anyone interested in representation of female characters in games: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/02/games-noir-and-the-17.html P.S. Yes, I'd love to see more bugfixes. I'd love to be able to design large ships in the VAB/SPH without the game freezing and force-quitting every third or fourth click I make. I'd love to see improved aerodynamics and n-body simulation and Lagrange points and procedural landing gear and Rockomax-sized xenon tanks. But the addition of female kerbals isn't preventing that. Believe it or not, it is possible for the developers to work on more than one project at a time. Those who say otherwise are reminding me very much of some people I know who say that we shouldn't devote any effort to space exploration until we've solved all of our problems here on Earth.

The Voyager I, which recently visited Eve and Gilly (and is now stuck at Moho awaiting the arrival of a tanker), is hiding two huge cargo bays in its central fuselage. The fore cargo bay holds a science lab and the most compact three-person lander I've ever designed. Had a lot of fun with that one. The aft cargo bay carried a probe rack with seven tiny drop probes, each with a tiny engine capable of entering Eve's atmosphere and a parachute that can take it safely to the surface.

You can fake it using cubic octagonal struts and the offset tool. It'd be nice to have radial attachment by default though.

"Experience" is really a euphemism for radiation. Some planets/moons give off more radiation than others; getting closer to a planet/moon gives you more radiation; planting a flag disturbs the surface and releases more radiation. The "experience" bar for each kerbal is really a counter of that kerbal's total lifetime radiation exposure. ...and, as everyone knows, radiation grants superpowers. Superpowers like the ability to repair rover wheels.

I'd love to see cargo bays in the standard rocket part sizes. In the meantime, though, the Mk3-to-Size3 conversion parts work reasonably well. Size3 part, conversion part, Mk3 cargo bay, conversion part, Size3 part. Looks neat and adds more fuel storage. Example:

In general you want plenty of fuel, efficient engines (probably atomic, though ion can be fun if you're willing to turn on the engine and go do something else for half an hour), crew quarters, a mobile lab if you're going to do any science, batteries, solar panels of your choice, maneuvering jets, monoprop tanks, and enough docking ports for whatever shuttlecrafts or probes you're bringing along. Beyond that, it depends on your intended mission. One very important thing to keep in mind is that your fuel tanks need to supply not only the mothership's ∆v needs, but also refueling for any reusable landers. Even an ion-powered mothership needs some rocket fuel tanks if that's what the landers run on. I generally build interplanetary motherships for ongoing missions of exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going etc etc etc rather than a specific there-and-back-again jaunt, so I don't really start with a specific ∆v budget in mind; instead I pack as much fuel on as I can reasonably get up to orbit and then send tankers to rendezvous with the mothership at its current location whenever it runs low on fuel. If I'm in a planning-ahead sort of mood I send a tanker to the mothership's intended destination ahead of time so it's already there when the mothership needs it. Example for your perusal: This is the Phoenix III, a nuclear-powered mothership from two versions ago that I took to Duna, Ike, Dres, all the moons of Jool, and back home. It has eight orange jumbo tanks, each with a nuclear engine on the aft end and a medium docking port on the fore. The central column includes two giant monoprop tanks (primarily for restocking the landers, which need it to re-dock effectively), a probe core for autonomous operations, a large docking clamp (to dock with tankers and refuel), a mobile lab with all the latest science equipment, and a cupola for the pilot. The crew section (lab and cupola) is detachable and has parachutes and landing gear in case of unplanned lithobraking. During its original mission it carried one single-occupant crew lander and three uncrewed probe landers; my general method was to enter orbit around a planet or moon, send a probe lander down to the surface and bring it back up to make sure it could be done with the available ∆v, and if so, send down the pilot in the crew lander. Ended up leaving probe landers behind on Laythe and Tylo; everything else was able to make it back up. Unexpected bonus: I realized that by removing the crew section (leaving just the tanks, engines, docking clamps, and probe core), I was left with a reasonable utility tug for interplanetary hauling. Over time I launched five or six of these P3-Class Atomic Tugs and used them to carry orbital stations and ground outposts to Gilly, Duna, and Laythe. Good times.

"Experience" is really a misnomer. The kerbalnauts are really getting irradiated. Different planets/moons yield different levels of radiation, and the kerbalnauts get more irradiated the closer they get. Planting a flag is really just an excuse to dig up a bit of topsoil to release even more radiation. And as we all know from comic books, radiation gives people superpowers... like the superpower to re-pack a parachute, for instance.

If and when stock life support is implemented, I really really hope that the relevant resource is "snacks." Or maybe "snaks" or "snax."

I've been seeing an awful lot of crashes recently as well, mostly when in the VAB or SPH. The game just freezes up and I can't do a thing except force-quit. At first I thought it was because I was building something with a huge number of parts, but it just crashed on a craft with only six parts too, so that can't be it. Texture rendering is set to lowest possible, and I'm on a Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM, so that shouldn't be an issue. No mods except Procedural Fairings, and I'm not using any of the parts from that in the current craft anyway. I don't recall anywhere near this many crashes in previous versions.

The way I design rockets, there are really only two possibilities for jettisoned stages: 1) If the stage is jettisoned before I achieve orbit, then the debris is on a suborbital trajectory, which will take care of itself. 2) If I achieve orbit before jettisoning the stage, then the detached part presumably still has fuel in it--in which case that's not debris; that's an orbital refueling depot for future missions to use!

That's troubling. Good thing I had everybody plant a flag anyway just in case.

In KSP, you'll have to MAKE a statue in your honor--preferably on Eeloo--and then you can keep playing if you wish.

Clearly some sort of navigational beacon left behind by the Precursors.

The 1x1 structural panels are pretty reasonable for making orbital disco balls. I bet I could probably use the 2x2's to make a dance floor underneath as well. Are there any mods that add rotating parts so I can get the disco ball to spin independently of the rest of the craft?

Realistic enough to learn a lot about physics; unrealistic enough to be playable and fun. (I've tried the Real Solar System mods. I don't think I even got into orbit.)

Pick your favorite planet or moon. Build a ground base, an orbital base storing plenty of fuel, and a lander or spaceplane capable of ferrying crew back and forth between the two. Bonus points: do this for two or more moons of Jool, and include a ferry to move crew between them.

Definitely offset. I usually rotate parts with the keyboard, and occasionally use re-root when I'm messing around with sub-assemblies, but offset allows me to do all sorts of neat stuff that wasn't previously possible. With clever use of cubic octagonal struts and the offset tool, almost any part can be attached radially!

I haven't done much with the categorization submenus (other than subassemblies, of course), but I like the fact that engines and fuel tanks are in separate categories now, and I really appreciate the ability to sort parts by mass.

I was once trying to land a rather large outpost on the surface of Duna. During the descent it was empty; the crew was hanging out safely in an orbital refueling station just in case something went wrong with the landing. The plan was to use an attached rocket stage to slow down and de-orbit the outpost; once it hit atmosphere, air resistance would slow it down most of the way. I'd use any remaining fuel for small maneuvers to adjust exact landing site, then detach the rocket stage and deploy parachutes to allow the outpost to float down and land gently on the surface. Everything was working just fine during the de-orbiting process. It had slowed down to terminal velocity and the landing site looked pretty good, so I pressed the button to detach the rockets. Separation successful. I pressed the button to deploy parachutes... and nothing happened. I panicked and mashed the button a few more times... and then realized to my dismay that the only probe core in the whole thing had been in the rocket stage I'd just detached. No control whatsoever in the empty outpost. *BOOM*

I got to the Mun in the demo version, barefoot in the snow, up the gravity well both ways!

Fill the command pod with three kerbals you don't care about. Remove the two that are in the seats you want. Tell the two kerbals you do care about to get in. Remove the third kerbal you don't care about. Problem solved.

Small vehicles that can be carried by larger vehicles are always fun--it's always so majestic seeing the cargo bay doors slowly swing open to reveal a rover, a lander, a satellite, a tiny spaceplane, etc. The other day I spent an enjoyable few hours designing a three-kerbal lander that could fit inside a Mk3 cargo bay. After some experimentation I finally settled on three vertically stacked lander can cockpits, each of which had four radially attached FL-T100 fuel tanks (thank you, cubic octagonal struts). It's now running missions on Gilly while the mothership stays in orbit.