tater

Yeah, I recently watched it in fact. I'm fine with many of the long takes, honestly the only part I really hate is the entire ending sequence.

The robots were OK. Anne Hathaway... is relevant to my interests. So my heart is not entirely cold and black. PH was irredeemably awful. Watch Tora, Tora, Tora, instead.

My reaction to Interstellar was the same as my reaction to Pearl Harbor. Someone gave me a (used) copy of Pearl Harbor since they knew I was a WW2 buff. I thanked them, and threw it in the trash. I could have traded it in someplace, but them some poor soul would have watched it.

Maybe it's a steam issue... I just checked, and I have 6 copies of KSP 1.05 installed right now. 1 is vanilla, the rest are modded. So if I am testing a mod, I use my test copy, and only install that mod. I have a 365, and a 365 with various parts mods added until it got flaky. I have SSTU in testing now, plus an SSTU with Sigma (6.4X), etc. I don't have 1.1 because I didn't buy with steam. If steam would require me to have only 1 copy of KSP... I'd not want it anyway.

I remember seeing a quote that said 2001 was a Great movie, but not a good movie. I tend to agree. It was great in the sense it was important, but it is hard to watch, and utterly fails at telling a story, IMO. If you haven't read the book, you have no real idea what happened.

https://www.blueorigin.com/gallery

Aside from just "bad plot" in general (which is enough), let's see. SSTO Ranger needs SLS (?) to get to orbit. Ranger and cargo ships are SSTOs in the first place. The black hole stuff... hitting the event horizon dilates time infinitely, which sort of makes any time lost on that water planet noise. The water planet? Should be bathed in lethal radiation from the BH, so they'd not bother checking it out in the first place. The energy to get to the water planet would be... excessive. The dilation effects are somehow made out to be only at the planet, but it would be a gradient... if they lost years on the surface, they also lost a lot just getting there. The whole plot around the possible habitable worlds would have worked just as well with no black hole, using a distant binary system with 1 world around 1 star, and the others around the 2d star. Travel times and propellant mass alone could do what they needed without the nuttiness of the BH they introduced. An alien star gate is just something you have to suspend disbelief on... going into a black hole is NOT something I suspend disbelief on.

Watching Interstellar makes Interstellar an awful experience.

Yeah, not as ambitious as an orbital flight, but the vehicle is 100% reused except consumables.

I'll play stock 1.1, including a career, unmodded when it comes out so that when I make comments (largely bashing the terrible career system) I am at least speaking from experience with the unmodded game. I can also then give useful feedback on any possible bugs. I have to wait for release as I'm a 2d class, non-steam customer. Then I will go back to sigma, 365, RSS, or some other rescale mod, the stock size removes so many interesting problems that need solving (staged landers, etc).

The capsule is flight article, and they've now reused it twice. There is no "man rating" in the NASA sense, it's man-rated when they say it is. They could throw one of their own crew on it at any time.

I guess I shouldn't say I see NO reason, they are planning on tourism, so they want to manage the image, and particularly the safety aspect, I imagine.

That seems like nonsense to me, and worth ignoring as long as it's freely distributed. If not, you'd have to get permission to draw a picture of it, and mail it to someone, which is absurd.

I would prefer just raw video. I hate the slick stuff. The media differences are pretty stark. It's like the Soviet Space Program vs NASA. The former only announced and showed film of success, the latter did everything in public, warts and all. I'm fine with the BO mode of less/no hype before doing anything, but I see no reason not to live stream.

I thought they said they replace the chutes in the CC, and otherwise refuel and go. Tanks are not changed. From their website about the 2d flgiht:

Now it's sunny and nice, of course, like the snow never happened: Guess I should take the xmas lights out of the scrub oak... did the front bush, forgot the ones in back.

It would be cool to have a configurable sandbox mode, I suppose. You could turn elements of "career" or "science" on and off, perhaps in a fine-grained way. It's entirely outside the current scope of game (and I've gotten so much value for dollar out of KSP I'd happily pay for an add-on), but I'd love to see AI added---both as kerbals who can do stuff autonomously (even just as eye-candy to have them work on stations, or do EVAs just to add "life"), and possible AI agencies (i.e.: the ability to do a "space race" kind of mode).

Have you seen this tool sarbian made:

I'd give it some time, they have made it clear that modding is something they support, and this update sort of breaks everything.

All LS boils down to mass, and what % is expended vs what % is recycled. Sure, water, O2, food, etc are all recycled at different rates, and CO2 is scrubbed with different mass inputs over time, but it can be distilled down to a daily consumable mass vs the base mass of a LS system. Having to track many components is sort of a waste of time, IMO, as long as the mass numbers come out about right. Complexity is added in that LS instantly makes time meaningful in KSP. You need to think about manned missions as running with a timer going. The biggest issue with LS (which I usually use) is the total inability to plan long missions in stock KSP. As is usually the case, everything is connected... The so-called "Mission Control" building is really a contract office. The Tracking Station is really what real life Mission Control is (monitoring flights in progress). The current "Mission Control" should be renamed to "Mission Planning." It should then include at least some way to estimate mission requirements/duration. I'd like a map mode where you can place a virtual craft in orbit someplace, and some TIME (say current day plus 100 days), then make maneuver nodes for it, and add up the dv. Set a dot in LKO, drag a node to Duna encounter, and not the flight time and dv. Add a braking burn, it gives that dv, plus total. All the elapsed time stuff lets you know how much LS you will likely need. Otherwise you have to spam any mission with way more than you need.

Congrats to them on flight three. Touchdown confirmed (Bezos twitter). Both booster and CC down successfully.

I think they go soon, he tweeted the crew capsule is locked and read for flight... Maybe they'll fly people one of these tries.

I thought about driving down there, but I lack the will to drive ~4.5 hours right now.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/715984864323842049 3d launch, same vehicle

I'm a 2d class citizen, so I have to rely on screenshots.