ThatGuyWithALongUsername

Yes, that was the joke...

Spaceport As long as it isn't Curse...

LabPadre, the StarHopper stream guy, is flying a plane over the site right now, and he's streaming it live... ish... (Stream is actually down at the moment, this happened last time too. Maybe it will come back briefly.) Oh, and that Google Earth landing site thing? Here, have some low-res but neat perspective shots of them. Maybe I'll go back and overlay the HiRISE images later, too. Maybe.

Judging by the shape of the explosions in the pre-alpha footage and the fact that these will be launching on top of, not necessarily next to, bases, I'd say yes, they get that. Radiation is also something they've not answered questions about in a suspicious way (and there appears to be a radiation shield part), so that's probably a concern too (I assume the shot of the Daedelus drive in the trailer was just for scale). I don't expect this to make it in, but I wonder if you could have customizable shapes... no everyone wants to use this thing, er, "conventionally"...

Didn't say it does... again, it's an oddly small step. I never claimed this was evidence that SpaceX is any closer to anywhere, I just get excited at neat little details like this. Makes it seem more real. And they have been moving at an incredible pace, so... Also, it's one thing to pick out a bunch of different possible random landing sites. It's another to have been evaluating this long enough that you have it narrowed down to four in the same geographic area [EDIT: 6 in 2 geographic areas, but still-ish]. Still doesn't mean too much, but it does mean a bit more. It's just... sometimes it's easy to forget that Mars is a whole dang planet. Yes, it doesn't have the added variety of a biosphere like Earth does, but if you sand on two completely different places on Mars, are they going to look the same? No. So I guess this is good for imagining details of what their plans will look like. And yeah, I already mapped out all 4 [EDIT: 6] locations on Google Earth.

Holy cow, check this out: THEY HAVE MARS LANDING SITES ALREADY. A post on the NASASpaceFlight forums pointed to this, where someone found newly released MRO imagery labeled as "Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship." Then they found more. The images found show 6 landing sites. I added the numbering, original pictures do not have numbering. There are pairs of images for each site as a stereo pair. Arcadia Planitia area: Landing site 1: 38.083°N, 189.793°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060416_2195 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060706_2195 Landing Site 2: 39.822°N, 192.058°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060429_2200 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060363_2200 Landing Site 3: 39.809°N, 195.615°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060719_2200 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060785_2200 Landing Site 4: 39.094°N, 196.706°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060376_2195 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060732_2195 Landing Site 5: 40.016°N, 203.330°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060323_2205 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060811_2205 Phlegra Montes area: Landing Site 6: 35.493°N, 163.619°E https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060707_2160 https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060773_2160 That is crazy, but also an interesting detail to decide this early on. I mean, we don't even know anything about what the base is supposed to look like. They have 4 6 alternatives, but they're all in the same area all but one are in the same area. And it's pretty easy to see what all these sites have in common: they all have water ice right nearby, hidden under some kinda weird Mars structures. Personally, I think the Phlegra Montes area site they chose looks cooler with the large hills (also, come to think of it, if their ultra-ultra-long-term plan is to terraform Mars, the other landing sites would be underwater), but clearly they've given more thought to the Arcadia Planitia area. Some neat stuff over there, too, and it's "only" 2000-ish km from Olympus Mons. Great tourist destination if you ask me. But yeah, if (and only if) everything goes to plan over the next decade or so... one of these locations is about to become a lot more well-known... [EDITED TO ADD MORE INFO ON 2 EXTRA LANDING SITES]

Oh, so that sounds more like clouds are still in the game then. Gotcha. (minor sarcasm) Bit odd to keep them secret when you can see them (from space) in the already publicly released pre-alpha footage.

The clouds could just be a thing in pre-alpha that was recently cut due to performance or something. It's possible, I guess.

That's kinda what I meant to say there, that you translated the German interview... I'll have to rephrase that a bit, I guess

To be fair, they started working on this long before the 2019 paper, and, well, we don't know how trustworthy that is. It isn't science if you can't replicate results. So we can't really say for 1000% certain that it isn't metastable. And pretty much everything else you're complaining about I'm not really worried about. They get the "feel" of KSP, they get the need for a balance between realism and gameplay, and they are sticking to realistic possible future technologies. Of course not current technology, if we had the technology for interstellar travel then we would have done that or at least tried to before budget cuts or anything. Metallic hydrogen is really the only possibly iffy thing here, and even that we may need more research in real life to figure that out.

Agreed... I think we're all more worried about the publisher at this point. If anyone messes this up, it seems more likely to be them.

Oh, hang on. Just found this: (Translated from a German interview by @nikokespprfan. To be clear, they translated it, they weren't interviewed. I would reword the original sentence but I'm lazy and bad at words so oh well) So, it looks like the answer to the life support question is yes, there will be life support, but it will be more basic and according to another description of this interview "low-maintenance." Given that they say it's different from mods I'm guessing it has to do with those "habitat" parts from earlier.

And since Elon won't do it, the original: And even a timelapse: Although I'm pretty sure these were posted on here when they were taken about a week ago Anyway back to HOLY CRAP FLYING WATER TOWER AAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

In all aspects, that was definitely one of the most Kerbal things SpaceX has done yet! I've been following this for MONTHS, it was kind of surreal to see it hovering like that! Echoing the comments above- THAT WAS AWESOME!

Oh, and the Steam page mentions a planet called Charr, which is described as "a heat-blasted world of iron." Sounds a lot like it could be this planet. EDIT: Woops, thought the posts would merge

Don't forget its moon! You can see it above the ship in this picture. Judging by the cinematic trailer it has a blue-ish atmosphere, an icy surface, liquid probably water, and is habitable-ish.

The tanks look similar as well, which support this idea. Pretty sure that's the same 3.75m tank in the middle of the lander, surrounded by 1.25m versions.

Did they have to bury the lower 30m during the 20m hop?

The problem is you could, say, launch your starter orbital colony into LKO, send up a sample resupply, then, say, take the space station to Jool and the game wouldn't know the difference. P.S. another very important gameplay mechanic that KSP has been confirmed to have that will be useful here is burning during time warp. This will allow the autopilot recorder thing here to make adjustments while on rails. The alternative would be to just teleport the craft instantly, but I think this would allow for a much more immersive system with a much more... "alive" feel to it. You'll see what I mean, I go into way too much detail on this idea below: What about a kind of "maneuver node editor" where you start with an origin (or orbit around origin, if the origin is on land), then plot a bunch of maneuver nodes (with enhanced maneuver node functionality that lets you change the orbit relative to the target destination) up to a given destination? If that destination changes orbits, then the fancy modified maneuver node things adjust to reach the same point in space (maybe they could have, like, some kind of "rigidity" value to determine how much each maneuver node will stretch to match the orbit). You could even have multiple destinations. At each origin and destination, you could set up how resources should be transferred. If one of the origins or destinations changes SOI, then the game will make you plot a new "mission." Once the mission is plotted, the player will have to do a launch for "testing". This will establish the staging sequence, performance, etc. of the chosen spacecraft for the game to follow. It should be required for all recordings, but it will be especially important in . If the launch is from a surface, the player will have to get into the sample orbit mentioned earlier first. Then, well, the player just follows the maneuver nodes. The game would then automatically repeat the mission on an assigned frequency. It would first detect if the orbital positions mean that the craft does not have enough delta-v (easy to determine, since it already does this for maneuver nodes) or if a gravity assist would mess up the trajectory, send out a push notification, and delay the launch. If it can launch, it would do everything on-rails, including (if the origin was on a surface) the ascent. With the code in place for engine burns during timewarp, this shouldn't be a problem. It could follow the same ascent profile as the player, stage at the same times (leaving debris, yes), all while on-rails, so there wouldn't be a lot of lag. Resources would be consumed as usual, etc. Docking or land would be automatic (once it reaches the destination, just snap into a docked vehicle or landed vehicle while transferring before taking off again). But we can go a step further than this, possibly with the help of multiplayer-related code. Remember that 2.5km physics limit? Well... why not actually perform the maneuvers off-rails when with 2.5km (or when focused on the vessel)? This would be really cool if you're doing something at, say, a ground base, and a spacecraft loads into view, automatically lands (using a mix of pre-recorded actions and perhaps just a bit of simple AI to account for corrections) and then automatically takes off again after a minute or so of refueling and unloading life support stuff. That would add so much atmosphere, I think, to the game. And it wouldn't just apply to colonies, either. You could set these up anywhere. This would be another place where the community could run wild with imagination. With a flexible enough system, you could also start one of these auto-launches on stage separation, allowing RTLS boosters and the like. ...I put way too much effort into this, maybe it should be its own thread. Oh well.

Relevant-ish XKCD: https://m.xkcd.com/1217/

Ah, actually I remember that a bit now. I always found that argument silly since you can turn reentry heating off in the difficulty settings. Here, of course, that doesn't work as well since you cab't turn this off so easily. I still reignited it, though. Oh, and while we're at it #BringBackTheBarn (JK, I was actually on the anti-barn side. Although with a certain rocket company building things next to- not even inside- tents, it may be a bit more realistic now...) Right... because they followed safe reentry practices. I can't remember the last time I forgot solar panels, for example. Same kind of thing. And yet, nobody complains about power generation being a thing! For simpler vessels, yes, it's just one part. But... just one part! Is that really so cumbersome? it's so much more realistic this way! And then there are landers and aerobraking ships that need more complex heat shielding- you can't let your engines be exposed while reentering, and yet you're going to ant them again later. How are you going to deal with this? Yes., of course the answer is heat shields, but you still have to take into account the geometry. (All that being said, I can kinda get behind integrating heat shield functionality into capsules, since you're never going to need one without the other. Obviously don't do it with lander cans, etc. For the rare occasion you might not need a heat shield with your capsule, just remove the ablator before launching. But keep the heating in, so people can learn firsthand why recovering upper stages is hard, etc.!) (And yes, I do remember taking off too much ablator on a heat shield and blowing up at least once. The spaceplane stuff is all from experience too, although again I had no idea what I was doing and haven't touched spaceplanes in a long time. Might have been 1.0.x, so I guess that might not count.)

The idea of an automatic resupply mission that record the player's actions is pretty interesting, since it would have to (in the sandbox spirit of KSP) go beyond that. The problem is that, well, let's say you have an orbital station and you change the orbit. The exact same flight is not going to be possible. The game would have to be pretty smart to scale the players' actions and repeat the mission. But at the same time, a few of the core game mechanics in KSP2 would help facilitate this, as multiplayer means the game will already be built for multiple vehicles being controlled at the same time. Maybe such a flight recorder could be advanced enough to somehow be integrated with a mission builder style thingy. But... at this point, dare I say it, it sounds like this is becoming a pretty big feature. One that could actually work better as... a future DLC. Yes, I said it. They have made it kind of clear that they want to make DLC's for this game much like what we've seen in KSP1. And life support combined with flight recorder stuff (neither on its own would be enough, just like the robotics and new science in Breaking Ground or the history parts and the mission builder in Making History go together) would be the perfect amount of content for a DLC. With the mentioned help from multiplayer code and the focus on colonies where such life support is important, this would make more sense as a DLC for KSP2 than KSP1.

Oh, wow. I started another argument, didn't I... not dropping this *quite* yet, can't resist, sorry. I guess TWO can play at the "write increasingly longer slightly angry posts at each other about opinions, despite both being valid opinions and there being no chance of actually convincing anyone of anyhting" game. #1: Oh, you're right actually. Found an interview just a minute ago actually confirming that slight axial tilt will in fact be added. They *did* say that they don't want the Kerbol system to feel radically different, so they might only be tweaking that slightly. That shows suggest that, say, Duna is not going to become Uranus, despite what the trailer shows. (Source: VGN) I still don't think this will be unfriendly to new players because it's not really that hard of a concept (kind of how you describe it in #2) and it will rqlly only become important when you get to interplanetary travel, which brand new players won't be doing yet. But I still take a huge, huge issue with #2. #2 Seriously?! I've never heard this issue before. Everything in KSP is a "bother." The entire point of the game is to run into problems and fix them. You could say the exact same thing about trying to plot a transfer window in the first place! KSP has always been a game grounded in real physics, and so the most obvious parts of physics (the parts that seem unrealistic when not included) should be implemented. Obviously that does not include many, many more subtle things, but physics you can see outside your window have every right to be included. And that re-entry heating example... what?! That is a pretty famous part of space travel right there. I assume the idea of it not being modeled is just to assume every capsule has heat shielding already. Well, first off, a regular capsule heat shield isn't going to be enough to, say, aerobrake from an interplanetary trajectory. That's a new challenge that I thi k definitely added gameplay. You have to plan trajectories way more carefully now. And what if it isn't a simple capsule? Granted, I may just be really bas at flying spaceplanes... ok, I am really bad at flying spaceplanes... but still, it's not as simple as dice into the atmosphere and assume you'll survive since you have heat shielding with that one. You have to use piloting skills! And it you're trying to, say, aerobrake a mothership st Jool or land on Eve then you have a pretty big design consideration to take into account of how to protect it from heating. It isn't as simple as slapping a heat shield on it.

They've already said that the Kerbol system is staying the same. I think by the time you get to interstellar travel you should be able to handle axial tilt. You have to have new challenges for experienced players, right?

Yeah, USI is absolutely the best implementation for a stock system. The simplicity and really adjustable difficulty settings are exactly what you would want in a stock life support system. (Off-topic, but this may be the first time in my 4 years on the forum I have actually ran out of likes. Yeah, I don't do much here.)