Zilentification

Where does this happen? The middle east? If a country's military bullied commercial air-traffic in any part of the modern world the responsible party would be crucified politically (and quite possibly economically). Simply put, no country (maybe North Korea) wants that kind of negative attention on them, its not like it gains them anything. The nations with space programs aren't very hostile to each-other (in regards to space). For example, even Russia and the United States are able to work together and keep the ISS running. Not to mention all the treaties they (and most of the world) have signed regarding conduct in space. If space flight became routine®, then it almost certainly would still be limited to the more developed countries. None of these guys want incidents in space. They'll come up with some set of rules and work together to make space flight safe. The only question is whether the rulebeook will preempt a lot of disasters, or will it be written in blood like the standard aviation one.

Do the New Horizons! Planning a mission around gravity assist is always a great challenge. And you can install the outer planets mod if you want Eeloo to be a lot further out in the Solar System.

Try http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55219-Module-Manager-1-5-6-%28Jan-6%29

I am having the same problem. On a Clean install with just Far and Deadly Reentry my command pod wont slow down enough. I've tried reentry at different periapsis's, and different speeds. All that is attached to the Pod is the default starting parachute. I keep hitting the ground/water at speeds of 400-500m/s which means I never slow down enough allowing me to deploy the parachute. Not sure if this helps but I just did a quick orbital flight to come up with these numbers. Was in a 100 by 100 orbit around Kerbin. Did a retro burn to lower Peri to 25km This is my altitude vs surface speed as I re-entered. 50Km, 2143m/s 40km, 2136m/s 30km, 1975m/s 20km, 1540m/s 10km, 913m/s 05km, 558m/s 01km, 340m/s Splat.

I'm all for the mission (and space exploration in general), but I wonder how much the total cost is going to be. I know very little when it comes to the commercial/financial side of rocket launches and it seems to me that 600,000 pounds is very small amount. So assuming I'm not wrong, where is the other money coming from? Are they really that reliant on Kickstarter? Now I'm going to spend the night trying to think of cool Lunar Lander names on the off-chance I win the draw (assuming we get that far)

Large Karbonite deposits show as these giant Orange bubbles. That's what you're seeing in the background.

Sent Shepnie Kerman on board the Duna Orbiter 1 (I'm great with names) to place three communication satellites around, you guessed it, Duna! The rocket's launch starts with igniting the main liquid fueled engine. Once it is running at full thrust and no problems have been detected, Launch Control ignites the four SRB's and milliseconds later detaches the Launch Clamps. Blast off! Thirty seconds after launch the main engine is throttled down to 11% to limit stress on the aircraft but keep the engine ignited. If all goes well the boosters should carry the Duna Orbiter 1 to a comfortable 100km apopasis before being jettisoned. Then the main engine is throttled back up to 100% for the transfer burn to send it on its way to Duna. The engineers behind the design decided to run with uninsulated tanks to squeeze more fuel into the rocket, so it was important that there was no delay between launch and the transfer burn. Any time wasted would result in precious oxygen boiling away. Once the burn is complete, the liquid fuel engine and its tanks are separated. Lastly, the final stage is powered by a MRS four-in-one nuclear engine. This will do the remaining maneuvers including the capture at Duna. Our scientist are still unsure about Duna's atmosphere so it was deemed too much of a risk to use it to aerobrake. Hopefully valuable SCIENCE from this mission should reveal whether or not we can do so in future. Here's the launch!

Just after I stated playing I did something that HAUNTS me to this day. I attempted to land on the Mun...with a parachute.

I figured the easiest way to solve my Remote Tech troubles was quantity. Instead of worrying about getting some good satellite coverage of Kerbin via a few well placed satellites, I decided to flood the sky and hope that it works. Initial designs were focused on carrying a single satellite in a small, cheap and effective rocket. Thus the Baby Omni was born. A simple 3-Stage rocket that primarily used cheap Solid rocket fuel. In an effort to save on the cost per launch the 1st-Stage was designed to be recoverable in effect reducing the cost by over 50%! Sadly the 2nd-Stage, which would put the payload near LKO, was always too vulnerable to Reentry heating. Although a successful rocket the Baby Omni had one major flaw, you could only send up one satellite at a time. Repeatedly flying multiple unmanned ships put other missions on hiatus and delayed the Mun mission by over a month. The public grew restless, they didn't want to hear about satellites, they wanted to hear about Kerbals! To shorten the time needed to set up the network a new approach was needed... Taking inspiration from a flower, one of the engineers came up with the Spore v1. A 2-Stage rocket that would place the satellites in LKO then deorbit. From there it would be up to the satellite's small SRBs to place them in the correct orbits. Unfortunately, the Spore v1 was rife with design issues. The satellites were very exposed, forcing slow and inefficient launch profiles to avoid mechanical failure. Each satellite requiring differing amounts of solid rocket fuel to achieve their individual orbits meant the center of mass would change for every flight causing a headache for all involved. Finally the cost was insanely high. More than double per launch compared to the Baby Omni. After the 3rd launch suffered from multiple unplanned disassemblies the rocket was retired. Meet the Spore v3. A small albeit long rocket designed to put Omni-directional satellites in orbits ranging from LKO to near Mun distances. The major change was that instead of relying on each satellite having its own engine, the main rocket would carry enough fuel to place them in their correct orbits. This made them much smaller and therefore easier to stack vertically, allowing for a protective fairing. Currently it only carries 10 satellites but recent test have indicated it should be capable of double that number with a more powerful 1st-Stage. So far the Spore v3 has been a HUGE success. With current launch cost per satellite equaling that of the Baby Omni and possibilities for improvement right around the corner the Space Program is free to concentrate on much more exciting stuff. Such as the upcoming Jool transfer window. Although it is getting hard to find the ship I want sometimes.

I cant exactly say whether or not they're worth making. That being said, when a new cinematic comes out I feel very excited. The Patch note style ones? I'll watch once to get a better understanding if I feel I've misunderstood some concept in the Dev thread. I could only speculate about how many people "need" those. Although at the end of the day I believe they quality of both types will only get better. So I'll look forward to the future videos.

For the chance to go to Space I would ride almost anything.

Stargate525 has it right when he points out that you don't make a test mission component part of you vessel. You just shove it on at the end. Decouplers that Decouple nothing, Engines without fuel etc. I think a much easier solution to prevent this is for the mission to encourage use of the component. Instead of a mission reading "Go the Mun and test X." A mission could tell you to "Use X to get to the Mun." I dislike the idea of part failure though. The problem is that this game doesn't give you a lot of troubleshooting options in relation to problems. Just imagine a scenario like this, while in orbit your ship starts rotating. Well, its easy to see whats causing the problem, you just switch to Third person view. A RCS engine is stuck on, so what do you do? You turn it off, or stop fuel flow and the issue is resolved. There is just no challenge to solve the problem. Its interesting to note that I consider 3rd person one of the major hurdles that would need to be overcome. If your stuck in First person it could actually be a challenge to find what's wrong and solve it. The trick is to make a failure fun, and with the current stock KSS I don't think that's possible. I believe part damage is currently planned (along with the capability to repair parts) and maybe then this could be looked at again.