JoeSchmuckatelli

Didn't they just have a major personnel shakeup and / or relocation? I remember seeing a blog from someone in the gaming world that lamented from a human / business standpoint this can mean nothing less than a disruption in the deployment of the game. Even if the core leaders stuck around - even with hiring absolutely brilliant talent, they'd still have to spend a bunch of time getting the new people onboarded with the specifics of KSP2. So... I think we'll be lucky for a Christmas launch - and Feb isn't unlikely, either.

Oh don't I know it! Familiarity breeds contempt, right? Whelp... Laxity kills. I 'knew I had this' despite struggling to get the maneuver node to line up as I liked. I knew it was an easy reentry - heck, I've come back to Kerbin with only RCS... I've got this. No need to EVA for the science. No need to save while still in the Muns SOI... Nope I warped to just before reentry... And noticed that I was waaaay too fast. Sigh. Lessons are painful (game is fun!)

I just managed to bring Valintina back from my first mun flyby (of my second career, after years off). What used to feel routine - getting to the Mun… kicked my butt. But that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was not blowing up the reentry vehicle b/c my early career attempt had me leaving the Mun with a sip of gas and too steep of a descent angle. (Note: you can't just drop straight in from the Mun with a 30k Kerbin perapsis and survive... I forgot to save at the Mun… and so I had a lot of creative maneuvering to do to get enough altitude for a ballistic air-break and reentry. Very seat of the pants. Very stressful. Very 4 tries to lose half the science - but still survive.) Anyway - I hope KSP2 keeps this. The insanely difficult... is actually part of the fun!

Still grinning. I LOLd at the animation of the critter crawler just under your post. -- also major props on (well, I was calling it a C-130... but now I see it's only a 2-engine plane) the cargo plane drop. I'm really looking forward to unlocking that stuff! Oh - given the 'automation' available - is it now possible to put something like an OCTO on a dumped stage to have them parachute down and be recoverable, or does the old 'getting out of physics' range thing happen where dropped stages generally crash?

Then that may, indeed, have been what I saw; the mission took me north. -- Another random question, if you don't mind; is there a limit to how much Science the "Science Collector" can grab?

I saw this - but did not understand what you were talking about... Until I completed my first orbit of this career. Landed... and there were trees on the grassland near me! Trees -- In KSP! … funny thing, though; I tried to approach one - but it looked like it kept moving away (like a mirage). Then I read that they are specular effects; making me think there's nothing to interact with. I'm guessing the baobob is different? It's something, that if you find, you can get the Kerbals to touch?

Monoliths were not in the game when I quit playing way back when... Now I've found the black one just outside the spaceport... but it doesn't seem to do anything. But... Coming back from a high altitude "Test Temp at ____ above 19,000m" Mission, I spotted a small object way below me that cast a shadow. I did not think anything about it at the time - but now I'm wondering if I found a second monolith. Problem is; the "Roland's Knob" or whatever the place was called is now off my map, and I don't know where to go to look (I do have a 'general' idea, but its pretty far from the spaceport). So: Is this shadow casting object likely to be another monolith - and should I try to go find it?

So - somehow I resolved the issue, without fully figuring out what had been happening. My 'victory' run had me landing quite a bit further away from the previous attempts. My flight path was, indeed, East. I did, also, go quite a ways around the planet - to the next continent on those runs. The ambient light was so dark, I never could figure out what was happening; other than being at 1500 feet, with a chute deployed (fully) and then exploding. The chute wasn't cutting out. I would be decelerating in the darkness, over land, and then... boom. So I figured it was merely a tall rocky thing that was getting in the way of an otherwise beautiful flight.

I did resolve the problem - went much higher on the 4th attempt, clearing the mountain and also used a different setting for the chute. Whatever the reason... I survived!

I worried about the same thing during the first two attempts - and took a much lower flight profile on the third run to get a longer burn / better flight path. I'm pretty sure it's mountains. Reentry vehicle is the basic pod with heat shield, goo, thermometer and barometer. Even with a nice long reentry burn (heat indicator on the shield went about 1/2 way down during the reentry) and a fully grey chute icon before deployment - the chute fully deployed, btw, and I was hanging nicely - when I was rudely exploded, again, at 1500m. I'm now thinking that I set the chute deployment for too low of an altitude for the wider variety of Kerbin landing zones - something I never did way back when - but I picked up on the option during the tutorials. Love this game! Been grinding on how to run the mission and save Jeb all night

It's been 5/6 years since I last played, and I've forgotten soooo much! Running a new career campaign, with a simultaneous mission to go out of the atmosphere and test a Flea on a suborbital run (130,000). None of my buildings have been upgraded at all. I've completed the steps for the missions 3 times... except I stick the landing too hard; hitting the mountains somewhere to the east of the launch facility and blowing up at 1500m. (At least that's what I think is happening, b/c its the dark side... can't see terrain, but with the chute deployed and everything looking good... I keep killing Jeb at 1500m). So - what am I missing? Max altitude is about 300,000m (although on my 3d attempt I kept it under 250,000 - going for a shallower profile), and from watching my reentry burns I don't think I'm coming in too hot. Do I just need to turn 90 degrees and aim for the south pole (no mountains)? Thanks for any replies!

I'm chuckling: I followed your advice about just starting off (again) with the basics... no mods. And already I am confused. So much forgotten 'muscle memory' stuff. Like even how to launch the durned rocket. How to manage stages / deploy the chute. I'm back to killing Kerbols again it seems. SMH. Tutorials, here I come... Of course, IIRC - the fun was just learning from mistakes!

Wow - I had forgotten so much -- like just how minimalist it is! I started a "Science" run just for kicks; ease into it kind of thing. Spent the first several minutes wondering what to do: there were no pop-ups, missions, etc. Again -- I've forgotten so much it's insane. So I just loaded up a Command Module with the Engineer and did science on the launch pad. Guess that's what I'm 'supposed' to do? Guess it's starting to come back to me...but for some reason I thought there were missions last time. Maybe I ran a Career... just don't remember.

Okay - now more advice, please: should I just run Sandbox or go for the Science / Career mode? (*feeling nooby all over!)

Hah! - I found it on my old STEAM account! (Don't have to rebuy) Okay - anyone know if STEAM will allow me to only patch to 1.8.1? Edit: NVM - it starts me out at 1.9...

I recall landing on both moons and doing some science - rover driving etc. I had built a couple of good planes and gotten to one of the other planets with some goo and a lab, and probably had a ton of stuff waiting to accomplish - but then I had a kid and no time. It's also a couple of comp builds ago - so I will have to repurchase the game

It's been so long since I played that I'm pretty sure all I ever had was Vanilla KSP. With the quarantine dragging on I've discovered that I have white space on the schedule where KSP might be a good fit. With that in mind... If you active players were to join now - what expansions / mods do you suggest?

Info on 18 Sco? I remember reading years ago that this is one of the closet Sol analog stars - getting even Margaret Turnbull excited - but I can't find much more about it. There was an article about its metalicity and speculation that it is too dusty for it to likely have a rocky planet in the habitable zone... But then I remember talk about excitement to see what the Webb spotted (back when it was on schedule)... So I'm surprised I don't see much about it - but wouldn't it be one of the most studied stars in the recent years? Shouldn't there be rich information from Kepler and TESS studies that are published/available to the average Joe? All I see is 'no planets have been discovered' - but I haven't seen why

Probably a few prestigious universities might host teams. Otherwise - if you have the capability to do it at home, why expose yourself unnecessarily to the NSA? Now, make the prize One Meelion Dollars and I might have to keep an eye out for Mike Meyers entry

Thanks for the response! Never even occurred to me to think in economic terms... Despite having read time and time again about how expensive it is to use RU launch sites for our astronauts and how expensive it is to lift stuff up there in general... And to think; I literally just read a scathing critique of the Shuttle program based on the inefficient and economically unsustainable nature of the continued use of the early designs in a program that initially called for a sort of tick-tock implementation-utilization-improvement cycle. Guessing I'm conditioned to think about space as just 'government expenditures' - and you guys have exposed to me my own hidden bias. Smh - efficiency matters just as much as capacity! Grin

Do we even really need a similar size? Haven't we been using Delta 2s for Mars probes?

Dang - never knew that. Nor that they'd been thought about as g-force moderation. I thought it was only good for meeting aliens on the sea floor! There (also) goes my solution to the manned giant battle robot Commander's Module

Grin - politicians wanting the coolest new toys. @magnemoe - yes, our local infantry support / recon stuff is working and handy, and the Predators (et.al.) have been wildly successful, and the drone swarm stuff looks deadly and promising... TBH - I'm not surprised at industry or political interest in the technology... But that the professionals are not disuading the ground vehicle adventures is surprising. @magnemoe But as someone who has been in the 'keep mechanized fighting vehicles in the fight' game (read: service, supply, recover, repair and reissue taking up far more time than sending rounds downrange) - investment in heavy ground combat vehicles (at this time) is a fools errand. The Russians have always been good at putting simple hard to break easy to fix stuff in the hands of the troops - which isn't a bad idea. They're also really good at artillery and rapidly expanding their emw capabilities - you would think that their collective experience would ameliorate any interest in overly technical solutions to simple problems

I'm highly leery of the Western fascination with the use of drones / unmanned vehicles. Two things come out of Russia's adventures in Syria: their unmanned AFV experience was dismal and their ability to interfere with NATO signals is increasing. Absent the ability to have unrestricted use of the em spectrum for these drones - especially in peer to peer or peer to near-peer conflicts - the risks do not outweigh the benefits.

Theia is a proposal to explain the similarity of earth and lunar rocks... And from what I have seen it makes sense for it to cool into a tidally locked body I'm not familiar with capture and tear - but two questions: * if the moon was captured wouldn't it have retained some of the original pre-capture spin until the denser 'side' settled towards the earth? * why do we need a capture scenario at all? (whether impact or capture) - isn't it possible for two co-orbiting bodies to coalesce from same primordial dust with the larger retaining its angular momentum and spin while the smaller becomes tidally locked?