Coam

KSP Version: 1.05 Mods: Planetshine 0.2.4.2, Distant Object Enhancement 1.6.4 , MechJeb 2.5.6.0. I have a boat floating around 5km from the KSC. Passing within ~2.3 kilometres of it causes lag, and on exiting the lag and passing within 2.2 it disappears, killing the crew on board it. It doesn't leave any debris behind. This happens repeatedly, regardless of the aircraft design used. Two possibilities I can think of are that the ship is being deleted for being too complex and taking too long to load [It contains around 150 parts] or that it collides with the water on loading and is destroyed. However the ship loads fine without damage when selected and flown from the map view, and it seems to load in reasonable time when this is done, so neither seems particularly obvious as the cause. Does anyone have any idea what's causing this and how it can be prevented? Screenshots:

At the moment, the R&D Lab is unavailable in Sandbox mode - which makes sense on one level, because parts cannot be researched once all the parts are unlocked. Unfortunately, this has the consequence that Science-collection instruments are nearly useless in Sandbox. All the science data you collect is unviewable once you close the description or send the data back to KSC. Sure, you get the (often amusing) description, but that's it, and if you want to read it again you'll need to re-create those circumstances. I'd like to see clicking on R&D in Sandbox take you directly to the Science Archives screen where all the planets and the research you conducted on those planets is stored. I'd also like to see science points retained in that window just so you can keep track of the relative value of what you've done. (The points would be unspendable, but collecting them as a form of score alone is quite fun, indeed, I edit my save-files to do just that in Science mode at the moment.) The same general idea applies to contracts - Tourism ones in particular, are enjoyable because they are tracked. I don't conduct contracts for money, but because they often provide interesting goals or design challenges that could be 'roleplayed', but are more fun to conduct using the contract system. Even without financial reward, contracts in sandbox would be quite fun for that reason. (I'm not sure if keeping reputation in Sandbox, with a similar complete lack of effect, is worthwhile.) Neither of these would affect the actual gameplay of Sandbox mode too much, one could continue to ignore Science collection and contracts if they simply wanted to explore locations or design interesting vehicles without having to unlock parts or fly Tourists up to 70,000m to pay for them. The change would however make tracking past gameplay achievements much easier.

I propose we create a new naming system for Kerbals based on the planet they are located on/orbiting. For example: Kerbals on Kerbin will be called Kerbins. Kerbals on the Mun will be called Kuns. Kerbals on Duna will be called Kunas. Kerbals on Eve will be called Keves. Kerbals on Eeloo will be called Keloos. Kerbals on Moho will be called Kohos. Kerbals on Jool will be called Fools.

An interesting thing that occurred to me about the militarisation of KSP is that it seems to invert the real world situation. In our world a fair amount of rocket-technology has roots in or links to military hardware - the R7 ICBM leading onto Vostok and Soyuz, for example. In KSP the situation is inverted - the space-program is an entirely civilian endeavour and (stock) military technology is created by re-purposing civilian hardware. Creating military hardware out of stock parts creates some interesting design challenges, and I wouldn't strictly rule it out on pacifist grounds (Kerbals may not fight wars, but they might still have use for an air-to-air missile to shoot down out of control drones, remove obstructions, etc.). Kerbals seem somewhat like they would design what we would consider 'fighter bombers' for peaceful engineering purposes. (Before you laugh incredulously, it's not as bizarre as some of the things that we've tried). Given the huge space-focus and enjoyment of explosions, I can also see use for A-SAT missiles in the Kerbal world. With what we've seen of Kerbals they don't seem a good match for military situations, so "militarising KSP" in that sense wouldn't fit the tone of the game, but in terms of simply designing pseudo-military hardware I don't see an issue. In multiplayer, I can see a bigger case for warfare, since battling vehicles you've designed yourself would be fun, though part of the challenge of a KSP battle would be how unfit-for-purpose the hardware is and dedicated military mods may detract from that. The current situation is ideal, at least for single player - a civilian space program, where it is in the hands of the player to decide whether they want to build an F-15 with an A-SAT missile to remove outdated communication satellites, or just de-orbit them with a small probe or onboard engine. I'd also make a distinction somewhere between "weapons" that exist purely to destroy automated equipment, and ones that pose a risk to Kerbalkind, but I can't think of a way to fit that into everything else I've written. There's no harm in Kerbals blowing up obsolete planes by radio-control, but blowing up planes/ships with crew inside them is another matter.

It had quite a few incidents through it's service life (as nearly all models of aircraft do.) Here's a list By the time it had come, it was probably already too late for mass-use unfortunately. Concorde was competitive with the original 707 (It was even quieter on take-off and landing!), just as the age of the 747 was beginning. I believe it was still profitable in British Airways service, though.

SA is Something Awful. They charge to view posts older than 6 months, among other things. Real name was probably a pretty good indicator that it was fake, since that's not an existing parameter. Location is more interesting to imagine implemented (I'm interested in how many other users are currently Landed at Eve. I can't see any from here.) Since the original thread is gone, it's becoming increasingly hard to remember what I was thinking at the time.

Yes. Okay, for KSP forums it's not such a realistic prospect, but the first two are already happening in places (SA charges to view old posts, and as far as I know has done for a long time. Using real name rather than a username is encouraged on a lot of sites, not the least youtube. Age and location are already parameters on the forum). The 140 character limit is pretty unrealistic, though more because the effort required to allow tweeting posts would be too high than because it's a bad usability decision. (Too many sites make horrible usability decisions, I have no specific example.) The idea was pretty good as an April fools, but having been done so early it was understandable that it would be taken with complete credulity. Much crazier things have happened online. Also: Congratulations on your repeating digits.

But we don't have a laythe! We have Europa, which may have water, but we're 5 years too late to be allowed a landing there.

I think the worrying thing is that it seemed entirely reasonable to expect that a forum would attempt changes like that. It says bad things about how websites can be run today, and what people expect of them. Although that probably made it more effective as a joke, that decisions like a 140 character limit, tagged age/gender/location, effective up/downvotes (ie, ones that affect the position of a thread instead of simply rating it.), social media integration and charging for basic features all seemed like something that someone would attempt or otherwise consider a good idea. The least plausible feature is probably the interactive forum assistant (Walt). It would also (assuming an option to turn it off) be the only possibly good one. (Tumblr integration might be useful for image hosting images could be grouped like with Imgur, but it's blocked in as one feature in line with Facebook integration, so it's rapidly cancelled out.) So as a joke towards the current state and trend of websites, I like this week early april fools, now that I know that's what it is. For the moment, anyway.

It's not a bug (or 694 bugs), it's a feature.

Rather than fixing bugs, why not make a new science module for taking the bugs into space for research purposes? It would be faster to make one new part than fix all those bugs, so 1.0 would be ready much quicker. I for one welcome our new crash-reporting overlords.

Thinking in a completely irrelevant context: What about occupied/unoccupied? The specific reason this came to mind was the hypothetical addition of launching a living thing that isn't a Kerbal - much like we launched Laika and Enos here on earth. "Crewed" falls short in that case, because "crewed" (to me anyway) gives the impression that they are operating/flying the craft, whereas Laika and Enos were essentially live payloads on a ship outside their control. It's an unlikely situation that non-Kerbal occupants be added - especially since Kerbals are treated as expendable anyway, but the terminology swap did come to mind since occupied is appropriate in both contexts and simplifies the UI down to "This is a probe or empty ship, it's okay to delete" and "This has a living thing on it, please don't!".

I think to most people the Shuttle is the Shuttle Orbiter, the boosters and ET being ignored. I liked the sound of Ess-Tee-Ess personally. SLS isn't so good sounding, but the way it feels sort of off feels appropriate for the general state of space travel feeling off at the present. We developed a moon-rocket, ditched it for a shuttle, then ditched the shuttle for what looks like (but is very different from) a retrofitted Apollo with shuttle boosters strapped to it, feeling like we've gone full circle in a confusing way. If SLS has part of the rocket coloured orange like the ET then treating it as a Shuttle derivative would feel more natural to me. Perhaps SLS - Space Launch Shuttle? Or abandoning the acronym, something conveying a message that is essentially "Space Payload Shuttle." - the Launch vehicle is expendable, but it shuttles payload into orbit reliably. Orion-Shuttle is quite nice, being distinct from just "Shuttle" while keeping it in there. I can see it being truncated to just Orion, but considering this is similar to what happened with Shuttle vs Shuttle Orbiter, maybe that's natural.

Tried moving planets into Kerbin orbit using Hyperedit. Never again. Total loss of control (couldn't even fire rocket motor), sinking into Kerbin, being flung on a Kerbol escape trajectory, and all sorts of other fun glitches resulted.

What percentage of bugs are already covered by Stock Bug Fix Modules?

If you go onto the main page of their site, rather than the KSP page, there's another Kerbal craft in the background. It has solar panels and a large RCS tank from what I can make out, and maybe a grabber unit on the nose. It's quite blurry since the focus is on the other models.

Later Yesterday: I sent a probe to Duna and Jool Orbit. My Intention was to have a try at Laythe, but I couldn't figure out a way of rotating my orbit that didn't require huge amounts of delta-v that i didn't have. No pictures of Jool, but did get some at Duna. I also made a Mun rover, seen here with the large solar panels deployed to recharge it. Today: I returned a crew from the Mun using a new lander design inspired somewhat by Apollo. (Basically it drops 3 FL-T200 tanks and the landing legs for ascent, only carrying them if they have some fuel and abandoning them when they're empty.). After splashdown at Kerbin, I designed the life-raft shown below to drop to it. I've never liked how low the capsule sits in the water, so I designed this - a 3 Kerbal life raft which holds them safely above the water. It's fitted with a probe core and small reaction wheel for stability and control, and a solar panel to keep power going to the reaction wheels. Unfortunately I've yet to find a way of mounting it to my Rockets, so it must be air-dropped near to the waiting capsule. Theoretically this still makes sense - a plane that merely has to drop the life-raft can fly a lot faster than one that has to carry floats to land at sea and pick up the crew.

I wonder, will there be certain pre-made craft available? (perhaps cheaper than custom models since they can be mass produced to an extent.) The Kerbal-X comes to mind as something that would be ideal for that.

If it's related to our creations, I guess parts do that, so I'll bet on new parts (and maybe a scenario?) What came to mind just from the first tweet was something with Space-X, where we get some kind of parts based on the Falcon 9 or Dragon, since they've come up a lot recently. If it's stock Russian/Soviet parts, that would be incredibly useful, especially if they are Soyuz based. Given the talk of different dimensions that I'm overlooking, there's probably a large degree of wishful thinking on my part in this prediction.

I made my first interplanetary flight by sending a Stayputnik based probe to Eve. No calculation of transfer windows, etc, was used. I made a launcher with over 9000 m/s delta-v, put it into Kerbin orbit, then transferred to Solar orbit(all the while playing with maneuver nodes to see if they would show a planetary encounter - which they didn't.), sending gravity data at each stage. At solar apoapsis I burned retrograde until my periapsis was near Eve, where I planned to circularize that before deciding on what I would do next (I was considering either Eve or Moho as a destination. Duna was also considered but I felt Eve was easier.) At periapsis the map indicated if I waited just over a year, I'd have an Eve encounter, so I left things alone and then entered Eve orbit when that time came. After orbiting a few times, I burned to do some aerobreaking in the upper atmosphere and retracted the solar panels. Eventually the probe burned the last of the remaining fuel to set up a suborbital trajectory which would allow it to come down over land. From there, the probe glided down, re-opened the solar panels, and began transmitting data. Saying farewell to Kerbin. I'm not entirely sure why the boosters made that odd shape instead of the usual cross they make when ejected. Probe orbiting Eve. I think it looks better flying sideways than it does sitting vertically, to be honest. Parachuting down safely to land on Eve. Perhaps not the most efficient way of going interplanetary, or the nicest Probe design, but that's my first interplanetary mission completed nonetheless.

My third crewed Mun mission, Persephone 3, nearly ended in disaster due to the low fuel margins of the lander and return craft (not helped by the fact that I was flying everything by hand, including docking, which I'm pretty terrible at.). In the end, to get even a reasonable intercept with the command module I had to burn the lander out of orbit into a shape that would only briefly encounter it, then EVA the crew across, leaving the lander to crash. There was only enough time to EVA one Kerbal across before the two craft separated again, and it looked like there would be insufficient time to rescue the other, who with no fuel would almost certainly be killed if the lander hit the Mun. Fortunately, the RCS system of the landing craft had enough fuel remaining to put the lander into a Mun orbit, allowing a later rescue mission to be mounted. The other two returned to Kerbin in the CM. RCS frequently appears to me as a saviour from total disaster. Also, my first shuttle attempts basically consisted of "[1]Wait for the ship to start spinning, [2]shut down the engines, adjust the thrust levels, wait until it points prograde, fire the engines and see if it keeps spinning, if it does return to [2], otherwise wait for [1] or Orbit."

I'd love to see this. Voskhod or Soyuz 7K-T seems like an ideal base for a two crew capsule and other systems, although maybe a 4 crew one (not accurate) based on a later Soyuz could also be useful in light of Valentina joining the crew, allowing them all to fly together. Perhaps we could also get some Salyut or Mir based station parts?

Are you using a mod that affects how Kerbin looks, alongside shrinking the planet? The water and terrain of Kerbin (while erratic) looks very nice in these pictures. Mini Kerbin is cute.

Doesn't the model for GP2 already exist? There's a picture on the Wiki. I understand there's a lot more to making a planet than just modelling and making biomes, but wouldn't a Gas Giant be the easiest type of planet to add, since it doesn't need biomes and can't be landed on in normal circumstances? I would like to see it added, though for me it would mean getting beyond Minmus first.

Today I decided to build a large station orbiting little over half way between Kerbin and the Mun. The primary component is called "Super Starlab" as the general idea was a StarLab station with a big fuel tank attached, the tank carrying varied docking ports. This part was launched as one piece (and largely abandoned the original design concept). To get to orbit, fuel had to be transferred from the lower stage into the upper stage as the upper stage was emptied of fuel. It was also fitted with 4 prototype MMU style probes. These proved near impossible to dock back with the station, even when automated to try and dock the station with the probe instead of vice-versa. Every attempt was met with the probe wobbling and the docking port on Super Starlab wobbling out of place. In the end, a probe ended up in Munar orbit. Another ended up orbiting around Kerbin. I've decided that I don't like Super Starlab as currently designed anyway. I think I'll assemble a future station to contain a part more similar to the original StarLab, although I like the general look of the big fuel section. De-Orbiting this should be fun.