JoeSchmuckatelli

You might be correct - it does have a weird-angle oddly-shaped faring 'feel' to it as well. Being an actual part... it's kinda 'meh'. Hope, however, springs eternal

How important is a 33 engine static fire test? Presuming there is a risk of damage to the table... would it be better to just go for a launch and capture data from that (or is it pretty much necessary to static-fire test the whole shebang before attempting a launch)?

I went back and re-watched the Announcement Trailer from 2019 (which is still awesome today). I know it's not gameplay footage. I know that - you know that - we all know that. But this part of the trailer - the rocket launch - shows the classic ice chunks dropping off we've all seen in IRL launches. The question is: how graphically challenging is adding in an effect like that? If KSP 2 doesn't include this kind of thing; is it moddable?

Might be. The conventions have meanings, however. Like - there may be an actual Beta going on that we don't know about; folks like Scott Manley and other top streamers, modders and others who are under NDAs but who are also experienced enough with KSP to be contributing to an actual Beta testing period. Mind you, this is pure speculation... but it would make sense if they're labeling things now as "Beta" - which, given the timing (so many, many Pre-Alpha tagged things, then Alpha tags started showing, and now Beta is being displayed.) If this supposition is correct... then we might compress whatever timelines we've made up for how long the EA Roadmap portions might last. I know I've made up and expressed my opinions on this... but if I think that a real Beta is ongoing (that I'm unaware of - but if we suppose it) then we can assume non-studio, non-insider people are play-testing on a variety of PCs and they are finding a lot of the rough patches that otherwise might mar the Early Access experience. Meaning, that EA (Sandbox) might be a lot more polished that I anticipated when they first announced EA. If so, the 'find the bugs during Sandbox' phase could be relatively short. Especially if any of the Beta includes some access to Science - or any other step in the Roadmap - which could make Science playable sooner, and thus Colonies not on some distant horizon. (i.e. the 'What is that thing' thing on top of the rocket) What if that is a Colony / Station part... and it is part of a Beta - even if we don't see it during the EA Sandbox portion, the beta testing of Colony Station parts now basically implies that EA might be kinda quick before a full Release. (Thus endeth the tea-leaf-reading)

By the way - today is a legit Hype Day. Those pics? Yeah, buddy!

I think they're all the same *think*

This one made me smile. All is not lost! ... also... not gonna lie. I clicked my mouse to grab the screen to rotate this and see the back side. Wanted to adjust the view and see what the connections looked like for the rail to the rover to see if there were any robotics parts I could identify... (Didn't work, obviously... but I somehow slipped into KSP mode without thinking about it!)

Wood Wide Web Referencing an analogous function served by the World Wide Web in human communities, the many roles that mycorrhizal networks appear to play in woodland have earned them a colloquial nickname: the Wood Wide Web. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network

As a rule, gymnosperms—flowerless plants with naked seeds—grow slower and live longer than angiosperms, flowering plants with fruits. Gymnosperms include ginkgo and every kind of conifer—including yews, pines, firs, spruces, cedars, redwoods, podocarps, araucarias and cypresses. Roughly 25 gymnosperm species can live 1,000 years or longer. The cypress family contains the most millennials, but the longest-lived species is a pine with an effective age limit of five millennia. By contrast, eight centuries is extremely old for an oak, an angiosperm. And only one kind of flowering plant, a baobab, has been positively dated beyond one millennium. The Science Behind the Oldest Trees on Earth | Science| Smithsonian Magazine

From these images (shown at left), the team searched for faint galaxies that are visible in the infrared but whose spectra abruptly cut off at a critical wavelength known as the Lyman break. Webb’s NIRSpec instrument then yielded a precise measurement of each galaxy’s redshift (shown at right). Four of the galaxies studied are particularly special, as they were revealed to be at an unprecedentedly early epoch. These galaxies date back to less than 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/01GKRX20YPY9XSXRWX31H57P2A Oh - and if you are wondering about the Lyman Break: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman-break_galaxy

I did not know that I did... But I did.

They don't. I agree that it would be unfair to review a game based on a Beta or Test Build Access. The problem comes when the studio monetizes the transaction - and then leaves it in a perpetual 'Early Access' state - ala WOT. If anything, WOT's population went down after going 1.0; because most people who were interested in the game... had already been playing it in an effectively finished state for years. Thus, it's being 'pre-release' was actually a lie. I don't want to sound like I'm accusing Intercept of this. My observations above and here are about the fictions now common in the industry (where our language is still colored by the old conventions). 15 years ago, when a game went Gold... it was finished. Period. DLCs were only just starting then - and don't count. Yeah, there might be bug fixes, etc... but it was basically feature complete. I actually like the EA model - for the most part. Take 'Satisfactory' - it's been in EA since 2019. Players have had access to the game, and they've pretty regularly added content or redone whole parts of how the game works. I'd call that a fair (to the Dev team and paying customers) compromise contrasted with the way WarGaming conducted themselves between 2011 and 2018.* Based on what we know, I think EA is a good solution for Intercept - and us. They have very ambitious goals for the game, and the Roadmap they've laid out looks fair. I have my own forecast that the Sandbox iteration will only last a few months for major bug fixing, then Science drops (which should effectively give us a rebuild of KSP) - and it will last several months while they work on balancing. I'm hopeful we see Colonies in 2023 - preferably by Fall... but I'm not holding much hope for Interstellar before 2024. Colonies and Interstellar give us '2'. The resource management slice is a very different thing from KSP - adding potential elements like Satisfactory - which would need to be layered into and incorporated... which might be kinda complicated. If we get that by mid-2024, I'm happy. MP? I'm confident it will happen in some form or another... but how and when I'm agnostic on. Thus - KSP2 could reasonably be in an EA state for 2-3 years, monetized, and that would be 'fair' to most players. The only tension I perceive is that EA has a lower price point than Release. The longer the game is in EA - the less overall revenue the Publisher will recoup because I think most interested people will buy the game in the next year or two. Going 'Gold' in 2025? How many people do you really think are both interested in KSP and willing to hold off several years just because Resource Management and MP aren't in it yet? *The cynicism of WG in defending their product from reviewers by claiming it was still 'in development' while maximizing their income via the F2P / P2W model in a feature complete game that really only added pixel content & very minor bug fixes for every update (with the exception of 'Physics') was pretty obnoxious.

These distinctions used to exist. Back then there was a convention where reviewers would not criticize (at least not heavily) a game for being rough around the edges or having glaring problems when it was in an unfinished state. Thus, prior to 'going Gold', reviewers would be fairly kind and even encouraging about the product. Starting a little over ten years ago, studios and publishers started putting things out in a pre-release state. My best recollection of this was WOT - which did not go to 1.0 until 2018 - even though it had been effectively 'released' in 2011. It was a convenient fiction; get a bad review? Claim the game isn't yet finished. Get a good one? Elevate it, spread it, link to it on your website. EA is kind of like this; we are accepting a compromise. We get access to the game at a date soon enough that doesn't result in the entire forums shouting 'VAPOR WARE' - and acknowledge that there will likely be some issues. They get to keep working on stuff - with a massive amount of input from the community, but tell the reviewers 'hey, it isn't finished yet; we're working on it!'

"The payoff: do one situp or receive an electric shock." Yeah - that needs funding.

This. Exactly. Thanks Sometimes you think you have communicated effectively... And sometimes you fail

Most likely coming in the 3d iteration of EA. Might have some parts in Science... but I kind of doubt it.

Quibble, Quibble.

Have we ever seen a "cost per unit" on engines? If so that could give a guesstimate of how much they're saving over say something like ULA which flies expendable.

Actually - people conflate the two. In English / Irish / American mythology will-o-the-wisp usually occur in forest / wetlands. Generally still air. Ball lightning is often distinct - graveyards and storms (which is where the conflating happened) ball lightning with a storm is decidedly electrical but around graveyards could be swamp gas or lightning... The stories are mixed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o'-the-wisp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning See also, St. Elmo's Fire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo's_fire

Those can be methane flares. AKA swamp gas. Will-o-the-wisp. I've always thought of those as distinct from ball lightning.

My parents made a soup based around black eyed peas and collared greens.* (Family tradition) Corn Bread with green chili, onions, garlic and corn. Roasted garlic, roasted peppers and potatoes as the sides. Apple Dump Cake with pecans (and actual vanilla ice cream - like the organic stuff made from the vanilla beans which is a flavor treat!). *According to legendary Southern food researcher John Egerton's Southern Food: At Home, On the Road, In History, black-eyed peas are associated with a "mystical and mythical power to bring good luck." As for collard greens, they're green like money and will ensure you a financially prosperous new year https://www.southernliving.com/holidays-occasions/new-years/new-years-traditions-black-eyed-peas

Warning - a lot of ads. But pertinent to the current discussion https://gizmodo.com/that-time-jules-verne-caused-a-ufo-scare-453662253

Furthest West state, right?

Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised. Far better than the Ryan Seacrest drivel on the other channel. FWIW - we had a saying in the Marines: 'Mandatory Fun' was always at least one of those things. (if you get my drift)

Oh - and Happy New Year!