tater

You didn't say it, but it's implicit. The spaceplane parts ARE nice looking, and the rocket parts are objectively ugly. Unless you are advocating for the spaceplane parts to be dragged down tot he level of the rocket parts, there is no kerbal aesthetic to point at as I see it, the 2 are not even close right now (planes vs rockets). They have to start someplace. Since the PJ plane parts, the rocket people have been living with exactly the same issue as if all the rocket parts got PBR, then the plane parts waited a year to get redone to that standard. The rockets would look utterly different and more real/3d, and the planes would look toonish. Just like the planes look sleek now, and the rockets look awful. I think the new engines fit just fine, but I understand that they might not match the plane parts. I'll admit bias, because all the rocket parts could be with new shaders, and the plane parts could never get them, and I'd never notice, as I don't ever use plane parts, ever. I had to snap a few together last night just to remember what they looked like in game (literally the first time I did that since they were first added). Above I pointed out something... that the parts realistically would show an evolution, where spaceplane parts are at an endpoint (currently, until /ifwe get end of tree rocket capsules, etc). Right now, there is literally no connection I see between the 2. The story of rocket parts as a timeline as described by the tech tree is: 1. Sort of 1960s looking manned spaceflight for largest 1.25 liquid parts and the engines, albeit with godawful looking, never should have been modeled as more than a flat ring, decouplers, and the awful small tanks that need to go away. (except any 1.25m part related to spaceplanes, which look nice, because spaceplanes). 2. Apparently after coming up with a largish 1.25m tank that doesn't look awful, kerbals decided to make every single 2.5m tank aside from the jumbo from a rubbish pile. Even the jumbo makes no sense, as there is no cap for it to build the otherwise sort of complete shuttle replica they added. Yuck to that entire part of the timeline, including every engine. 3. They then decided that the largest parts would go back to being OK looking, aside from the stripes not lining up. For spaceplane parts the timeline is: 1. Awesome, space-aged stuff right out of the box. 2. Even more awesome stuff, that perfectly matches the earlier parts such that both sizes ate 100% mix and match. 3. A space shuttle "reality mod" part set, but the smaller parts were designed for mix and match with this as well). There is no evolution, they are all sic-fi. The mk3 parts are copies. Same number of windows, same hatch shape, etc, ad nauseum. If they were meant to be "kerbal" the mk3 would have been made to follow the mk1 and mk2 cockpit lines to the point of being able to use those parts as the nose (as there is a mk2 part that the 1 fits in front of. The difference between the "early" space plane parts and the mk3 is that the mk3 is LESS advanced looking.

They look like they have shaders that the current game doesn't have. The rest of the parts will pop with those as well, and read very differently than they do now. How is it that a rocket engine that looks like and actual rocket engine looks too much like a realism mod, yet the mk3 parts are basically a Space Shuttle copy, and that's OK?

I'm with Nibb31 on this, I've been following the discussions on NSF (including L2) since the accident, and the recent tweets have few ways to be read other than bafflement at the cause. They might well have ruled out broad areas of concern (perhaps even stage 2 itself) due to telemetry, but if it's a GSE issue of entirely unknown origin, that's fairly crippling for any return to flight in the near future. Honestly, my reaction to the "popping" audio was to assume it was someone near the camera interacting with a truck or car. Thinking it might be more shows a lack of real data, IMO. You'd think they'd want to give the impression they have a handle on it, not tweet stuff that makes it look like they have nothing (then again, maybe Shotwell is now thinking her boss needs a handler ).

So "kerbal" WRT aircraft parts means "looks nice," and "kerbal" WRT rocket parts means "ugly?" When/if the whole game gets the new shaders, all the parts will look different, so take the PBR off the table for now. The parts shown look fine to me. The engines in particular are fine, though I think the tank bodies and the boat tail are on the "modern" side for early parts (I'd honestly like to see a choice of textures for parts such that late in the tech tree, you can make your rocket parts every bit as mod looking as the spaceplanes). I, for one, think that the stock rocket parts are profoundly ugly to the extent I no longer use them. For me, the "double take" moment would be to look at a rocket next to a spaceplane, they have no aesthetic similarities whatsoever.

Burma Shave

a place to park.

Spaceplanes have the same style because they should really all appear at the same, late time in the tech tree as they are in effect fantasy parts. Overall, I think there should be more parts, starting with fixing the rockets, then filling in places in the tech tree such that there is an evolution, and ideally even choices/trade-offs in parts. Spaceplane parts will not be redone to look ugly, so that means that rocket parts need to be redone to NOT be ugly... but the parts can implicitly acknowledge a timeline in the kerbal universe and an evolution in a design sense. We know one endpoint is the sleek, spaceplane parts, just as we have seen SF looking NASA concept art that looks nothing like corrugated Mercury and Gemini capsules. One, I think that Squad should really add texture swapping (like SSTU, as an example). Tank parts can have maybe 4 textures. Black and white stripes (early, visual roll detection), bare metal, all white, and orange. Capsules could have white added for the mk1, perhaps. Lander parts need to be seriously worked on, particularly the truly awful mk2 LC (some 45 degree RCS would be nice). Engines can vary a lot, honestly, but the guide should be real engines. For "late" part additions, that;s where perhaps you add in some more high concept parts. "Pure" spacecraft tanks, for example (spheres or something). Station and hab parts that can go from very simple (a better looking version of hitchhiker), to more spaceplane like in appearance. Perhaps a very sleek 3.75m crew part that takes cues from the porkjet spaceplane stuff.

It's hard to find...

Space is dark...

I'm certainly interested in Venus, but the mass/cost budget of doing a human mission has a vast opportunity cost vs sending unmanned instruments.

Manned spaceflight is a PR stunt. Sure, it's my opinion that Venus is not a good PR stunt compared to Mars, but I think it's not an inaccurate opinion. Pictures from Mars would at least look like Mars, HAVOC images would look like any number of airline flights most of us have had. Any argument for humans visiting other worlds needs to look at the interest they generate, nothing else matters, as there is zero scientific reason to send people anywhere, and the benefit of robots over people is increasing with time as our ability to create truly autonomous systems increases. I come down hard sometimes on manned spaceflight, even though I am actually in favor of it, but I think the goals need to be looked at realistically, and the goals are incredibly superficial.

Space is big...

Spaceplanes are powered by magic pixie dust. Ie: they are not a thing in RL. As such, I expect them to have a more sic-fi feel to them (though if I were starting KSP from scratch, my style would have been "retro future" (a 1950s and 60s envisioning of the future)). Rocket parts should always come before spaceplanes, unless they have a starting set of spaceplane parts more akin tot he early X planes like the X-1. As such, the early rocket parts (the 1.25m ones) should have an older look to them, as long as the end point of rocket evolution in KSP ends up in the same place as the spaceplane parts (and you can see the evolution). The part progression need not all match, it needs to tell a story basically, of the evolution of Kerbal spacecraft. It's OK for the early parts to look... early. Then, when that is done, they can add in some sleek parts in the more modern style for later rockets (a set of more Merlin like 1.25m engines, perhaps).

The 1.25m engines are sort of the best of the rocket parts right now. The 2.5m parts are the worst all around (everything except the mk1-2 isn't fit to keep at all, IMO). The smaller engines are also lousy, frankly. All the decouplers are terrible except the largest one and need to be killed with fire (they need to be smaller, and/or flush). The probe parts are mostly clunky.

The plane parts look nothing at all like the rocket parts (aside from maybe the mk1-2 capsule). So the notion of "cartoony" only applies if you consider the spaceplane parts cartoony. I agree they need to pick an aesthetic, but the current paradigm of sleek, cool looking spaceplane parts, and godawful junkyard looking rocket parts doesn't cut it. There are actually people that defend the current rocket parts. Fine, I can live with that, I'll use mods---but then the plane parts need to be dragged down to the awful rocket level to match, pick one style, sleek and cool or; awful, clunky, and cartoony.

The Shuttle cargo bay doors never had solar panels. Those were radiators.

Countermeasures would always be cheaper than SDI itself, but they knew that even in the 1980s. Better to have a countermeasures arms race than piling up more weapons. I think that the ability to knock out a small, or even an accidental attack would be a certain plus as a capability.

Knocking down a few missiles is not implausible (i.e.: a small attack from a rogue state), and the technology should be pursued, IMO. The old 1980s idea of a "ballistic missile shield" was always silly, however. I knew people working on it at the time (many people paid off their student loans writing SBIRs for SDI stuff, lol), and they all knew that even given a magical weapon system that could kill targets X per minute, they'd not be able to parse the targets among various satellites given communications lag without many platforms deciding that the same target was the one to deal with first. So for a few targets, it's just an engineering problem, but for the notional "full strike" of the Cold War era, it just was;t ever going to happen.

Cast in this light, The Martian is not a useful NASA recruiting tool, but a story of a planetary vandal who inoculates Mars with human fecal fauna.

No, you didn't, but I did. Corona688 mentioned the fact that in KSP we cannot "explore" in a real sense (certainly not in replay). This is true, because the destinations are always the same, and the worlds are not minutely detailed enough to make landing near one crater any different than landing near another. I was agreeing with you WRT to this game, but not vs all sandbox games. Clearly MC is sandbox, but every single replay can afford the player a unique place to explore. The same bits rearranged to make interesting, sometimes spectacular (in their blocky way) terrains. Squad doesn't randomize the Kerbol system even as an option, because they have said they want a shared experience (which is weak, IMHO). No kidding... but we're talking about making rovers better in modded, and stock games, right? My point was that offering novel places to explore on the ground might make people want to EVA more.

I'd make the same observation about Mars, honestly. The difference is that you could actually land on Mars, and the selfie taken there is worth it just for the awesome factor. Venus isn't even photogenic...

It's not the nature of a sandbox game at all, IMHO, it's the nature of this sandbox game because of the insistence on a "shared experience." I don't play Minecraft much---maybe a few hours every time there is a big update---because it's sorta boring, though I actually like building stuff (I only play survival). Most importantly, I like building stuff in the context of the local world. I tend to try and protect/increase the villagers by making them larger towns, adding walls, etc., until they are rather huge sometimes. I have made more complex temples, etc, as well (some quite huge)... I then let my kids have the world to poke around in. Guess what, I like just riding around (walking is too slow, lol), looking for cool sites to build stuff. If every, single time I started Minecraft I was in the same seed, I'd not even go back and replay it even the few hours I have in the last couple years, without novel worlds to explore, it would be too boring to bother. Interesting planetary surfaces, plus the feeling of actual exploration would make me more interested in looking around.

You could send rather a lot of probe mass for what that entails for literally zero improvement in scientific return. "Yup, that's Venus!" "Take a selfie in front of the window!" Profit?

FAR was better than the soup, so why bother improving the atmosphere, just use FAR, right? It was before my time (0.23-0.24 was when I started), but didn't there used to be no landing legs? Were there any in mods before stock? Then why add legs to stock, when there were mods for that? If the answer is functionally no more than "I think X should be stock," or "because I like X, it should obviously be stock," then the argument doesn't cut it.

As has been suggested, an out of focus autopilot. 1. Tie the map view to what the player has actually observed---meaning the apparent altitude of the map camera is a function of crewed exploration (a radius around where you happen to be is available the same way you can zoom the camera now, right down to the faceplate). This would require some scansat-like photography parts to map surfaces (include crashers like Ranger, landers like Surveyor, etc). 2. Allow waypoints to be placed on the surface of the map. The rover will then follow them. Choose poorly, and there might be a crash. Allow probe rovers as well, but tie it to the new comms system, and perhaps set a max speed for rovers based upon the proximity of kerbals. Note that if you add waypoints without the map being zoomed in enough via mapping missions, the chances for accidents are greater. 3. Add some science as you go as suggested by regex. Perhaps the amount is tied to rover speed, and scientist crew (the faster you go, the less science). 4. (crazy "end game" stuff follows) In-situ construction. a. Perhaps new regolith moving parts could be added. Land XXX tons of supplies within 100m of some spot (perhaps the construction rover, itself is the spot, via a right-click, "Build here"), plus such a rover (and a certain number of crew/engineers) and a facility can be constructed on the spot (the spot might have to be within certain slope, etc). The facility would be a custom-designed for that world (basically a simple model, covered with regolith as radiation shielding). Another facility would be a construction shack (VAB/SPH-like) with a take off/landing area cleared and marked. b. Related to roving around, perhaps the game could have semi-randomized caves added (rilles). The could appear in the sides of craters or canyons that meet certain requirements (not 100% random, but a random chance at any of many possible locations. These caves would have reduced construction costs in terms of required supplies, otherwise works as "4a," above.