DarkGravity

Maybe get a mission that requires a perfect polar or equatorial orbit and wait for the mission indicator to start flashing green? (Pretty weak answer, I know.)

I'm starting to see contracts to build outposts on the Mun and elsewhere. Without giving too much away (I'm trying to figure out as much of this game on my own as I can), what is an outpost? If I plop down a couple of hitchhiker containers with solar panels and an antenna, will that qualify? Wiki doesn't explain what they are, and searching forums didn't help.

That's one of the things they said in the link I posted. Look at something 20 feet (or more) away for at least 20 seconds every 20 minutes.

- - - Updated - - - Turning off SAS did it! Thanks so much!!

Still won't dock. Can't get any closer than that. - - - Updated - - - A close-up view

Wow, thanks. Thought I was going nuts. So, just to be clear, when I do get around to using those, you just right click on it, yes?

When I right click on the docking port, there is no option to open the port, only "control from here." The Settings doesn't seem to have a key for controlling it. The Wiki just says "don't forget to toggle" it. I successfully docked last week, but I can't remember how I opened the port! Help!

When a rocket already has four-way symmetry, and you want to add something to only 2 of the sides, do you have to do it with manual symmetry or is there a way to force 2 way symmetry onto a piece that is already doing the four-way dance?

I usually play in the dark and don't wear my glasses. After reading the link above, I turned on a room light, and maybe I'll try turning down the brightness a bit as well. Theend3r, if you ever suddenly go blind again, there actually **IS** something you can do: call a doctor or emergency room. Some hospitals have a nurses' hotline you can call. Sometimes with sudden blindness, waiting a day before seeing the doctor can be the difference between temporary and permanent blindness. You might even consider getting your eyes checked by an ophthalmologist (not optometrist) just because it happened once. NO ONE should EVER go blind in an eye, even for a short while from spending too much time at a computer. No one. Ever. Even for a short while. The fact that it did happen to you means there is a real chance there is something wrong. Imagine your eyes are a car. Adding oil when you're a quart low is a good idea, and no big deal. And if it turns out that you need to add a quart every week cuz you developed a leak somewhere, still no big deal. But if you wait till you're 4 quarts low your whole engine can seize. I strongly suggest you get your eyes checked. The fact that this happened to you once is like a light coming on on your dashboard, and it says "Check Eyes."

My eyes bother me sometimes when at the computer. I just came across this and found it interesting. http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/irritated.htm

18 inch "laptop" Core i7 4800 @ 2.7GHZ Twin Nvidia 770s with 3 Gigs each. 32 Gigs Ram. 200G SSD and 750G HDD.

What could possibly be more useless than a long list of candidates for most useless? I therefore vote for this thread.

Scott Manley's wife once said to him "Sure you can cut my hair: the day pigs fly." The next day she saw him pricing pigs on the internet. She just handed him a pair of scissors right then and there.

Good one, Heng!

..brings to mind the Sim City, Sheldonopolis, with its Sheldon Square, Sheldon Towers, Sheldon Stadium (home of the fighting Sheldons) and of course Shel-Mart. :-)

I would disagree in one small area though. I don't believe that Earth is the only place where life is known and everything else is speculation. In fact, we have many direct observations of other celestial bodies in our own solar system. The fact that we have so far failed to discover life on them is not speculation. That is data. So conclusions about the possibility of life elsewhere does not need to based solely on speculation. Also, when you say that there are probably millions of equally well-suited worlds as Earth in our galaxy, that is speculation. If it feels to you like surely there must be, that is not evidence-based. I would agree with you that there "very well might be" millions, but to go as far as saying there "probably are," that is a bridge too far for me.

Hannu, your whole argument seems to be shifting, and I agree with your last post. If there are hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy, simple life on a few million of them sounds quite plausible. It also sounds quite rare to me. But that is still a decent sized "if." None of these so-called exoplanets has ever been seen. What has been observed is mostly just wobbling stars. Considering we still can't account for the movement of galaxies and had to invent terms like "dark energy' and "dark matter" to basically say "we don't understand why the universe moves the way it does," it might be a little premature to rely solidly on the concept that a wobbling star is proof of an exoplanet. It is the best placeholder idea currently available, but skepticism is always advised in research.

Probably need the right gravity too to let the H escape and keep the O. Probably also has something to do with solar wind and whether the planet has a magnetosphere, and whether the planet ever gets too close to its star.

Regardless if the moon is the only location we have studies from good enough to declare sterility, that is not the only evidence available. We have done many studies of many bodies. Maybe not enough to prove sterility, but failing to prove every single thing in our solar system totally sterile is very different than having evidence that there is life. The difference is like confusing up with down. And the argument that Earth has had "extreme swings" in temperature doesn't stand up when compared to the other candidates for hosting life that we know of. Being totally covered in solid water is pretty weak when some of the competition has liquid methane, and having been partly covered by pretty arid continents is a long way from the totally arid conditions on Mercury and Pluto. Compared to the competition, Earth has, in fact, existed in a very narrow temperature band with only trivial variations -- nothing even remotely approaching Venus or Neptune. Earth has been struck by comets and asteroids, but the only thing that I'd actually call "massive" would be when proto-Earth collided with Theia and gave birth to the moon, long before life evolved. The unreplicated Surveyor 3 data may have been from lab contamination, which is why we replicate experiments. Believe whatever you want, but don't for a second pretend there is any scientific basis for it. Life might be common, but then again Leprechauns might actually be real. Maybe we just haven't seen them very often because they are hyper-dimensional beings that can hide from us until we figure out things like the unified field theory. If we eliminate conjecture and stick with the data, the score is roughly 100 to 0 currently.

Things that are "rare" by one perspective can seem quite common if you change the number of zeros on the time axis. When a recipe requires a stable oven for billions of years, all you need is a dozen potential disasters, each with a one-in-ten-billion-chance-per-year to suddenly make success not so likely in getting the soufflé to rise. It could be that life is common, but the available evidence currently suggests otherwise. Of the hundred or so bodies we have examined, all have turned up nothing, except here. It certainly will be interesting to see what comes of deeper exploration of Enceladus and Europa.

Frankly, I'm amazed that any planets have complex life. For evolution to work, an ecosystem, the climate, etc must remain stable for a very long time. One gamma ray burst pointed in your direction from a nearby star, and its game over. Same for killer collisions with other planetoids, extreme comets, etc. There seems to be a need for a molten ferromagnetic core in the planet to set up a magnetic barrier from solar assault, and the sun itself must be friendly and consistently docile. One good coronal mass ejection, and it's all over. Probably any solar systems near the center of a galaxy have too much commotion going on (bad neighborhood syndrome) to ever remain stable long enough for complex life to develop. If a neighboring star wanders by your solar system, suddenly all your orbits are out of whack. The gravity must be strong enough to hold onto an atmosphere, which itself must contain the right ingredients. And the planet must be the right distance from the sun. Plus you can't have too much (or too little) radiation (just enough mutation is very helpful in the long run). Being close to a gas giant might provide some warmth, but it might also provide massive radiation (like Jupiter) and powerful tidal forces that constantly tear at the moon. And on and on and on. So many things must go right, that it is absolutely amazing that it has happened on Earth for as long as it has. Even here, it has been close several times. There have been many times when all life on earth was wiped out except for a small percentage. Life is quite special. Complex life is very very special.

I looked up the phrase "simple problem" in Scott Manley's Encyclopedia of Space and this is what I found.

I reject the premise underlying the question. No one made me get KSP. I followed it on Steam for a few months, then one day it was out of Beta AND on sale at the same time, so I bought it.

I've opened a hatch facing the ground on Kerbin, trying to send the Kerbal on EVA and he exploded into dust. I've had a Kerbal survive a fall of 400m onto Kerbin soil. Neither one seems realistic. In general I agree with the OP, just don't nerf the jetpack too much.

Scott Manley walks into a space bar. Twelve angry Krakens greet him, hissing and baring their teeth. No worries. He never hits the space bar unless he's ready for anything. Thanks for the inspiration, Kenbob