Jonfliesgoats

I agree, Panzer. I start with the Easter egg idea because it wouldn't require new game physics, etc. Active volcanism on some of the moons around Jool would also be fantastic, but I don't know if KSP has the capability to model plumes of salt water spewing from an ice moon etc.. That would probably be for KSP 2.0.

This is really beautiful! Do you have video of it running? Just saw the link! pardon me!

Let's cut each other some slack. We have all been proud to be assigned to a shiny new program on the forefront of NNN. We have all thought that, by being admitted into the ranks of test pilots, flight test engineers, etc, that we have made some cut and are somehow part of an elite group. It's worse when we tell our employees or peers this. Our egos are tempted to run away with these thoughts. I have been a much bigger jerk than this guy in real life and learned that, despite my titles and awards, I wasn't as sharp as the guy next to me. I have been the guy making off color jokes that I thought were really hilarious while very kind people tolerated my attempts at humor. So we all meet up at different phases in our human and professional experience and that sometimes gets us to see each other when we are not at our best. As nasty as any of us may seem, I have been nastier. People forgave me. Please forgive this guy. None of us are that important, really. That's the beautiful human story of flight, when you think about it. The combined efforts of egotists, jerks, maniacs, war criminals, profiteers and fools somehow got a surface-bound group of primates into the air and onto another celestial body. It's not that we stand on the shoulders of giants. We stand on the shoulders of very faulty humans and we still fly! Space flight is something that is bigger and better than any of us as individuals. Ideas from people we assume are uninformed evolve into great products. Imagine telling a young Goddard or Korolev to shut up when they are simply excited to talk about flying and space. You'd shut down a great mind and turn into one of the many unknown pigs of history! In truth we hear about all these great innovators who rose despite the forces acting against them. Imagine how much more knowledge and capability we would have if those forces were weaker. How many great innovations have been suppressed because some body listened when a person in a position of perceived expertise told them to shut up? Its rare to find a community of people excited about flight, exploration, science, etc.. Its rare to find a community of people who will research what they don't know on their own and find solutions to engineering and operational challenges, even if those challenges are simulated. Let's not dial these guys back by silencing them. We need all these people and all this excitement. If you believe in your program and product, you know it can weather a little criticism on the internet.

Planes do make lousy rockets, as someone said. I don't even use them for crew transports or tankers to LKO anymore and prefer reuseable rockets. By the time you factor the general complications of getting your spaceplane to LKO and reliability, it's a wash between reuseable rockets and spaceplanes. I do use spaceplanes for other things, though. If I need to get observations on the far side of Kerbin, it is easier to fly a spaceplane there at 850m/s or pop Ito a brief, suborbital flight rather than launch to orbit, reenter, etc.

With regard to spaceplane design, even the over simplified aerodynamics in stock KSP do a nice job of introducing players to the rudimentary challenges of design and testing of aircraft. After wiping out your craft on the runway to a point where it gets boring, you find yourself investing the time to make sure your wing loading is low enough to get airborne before you overstres your gear, your main landing gear is not too far aft of the CG so you can rotate, and your fuel systems don't burn your CG into an uncontrollable region as you fly. Fun! With spacecraft you can even calculate the altitudes for maximum dynamic pressure and acceleration of reentering spacecraft an given trajectories! They're actually not that far off! When you look at the challenges American engineers faced in designing accurate reentry vehicles of their ICBMs, you see that they faced some real hurdles. You know why we don't have ultra-pointy MIRVs? Pointy parts near the stagnation point get super hot and melt, but sacrificing a little drag and shockwave for some roundness make the craft much more tolerant of thermal stress! Guys figured this stuff out with slide rules, coffee and bad jokes! That engineering feat along with laser gyros, atomic clocks, advances in computing and more coffee, cigarettes and bad jokes meant US nukes could be lower yield weapons while the soviets relied on megaton-scale warheads because their reentry vehicles weren't as accurate. But I digress. I can rant on and on about how we get compressibility and viscosity wrong in KSP, when it comes to planes. Considering we have a game rather than a supercomputer with access to wind tunnels and a production facility o build mock-ups and prototypes, we still get a pretty decent taste of he challenges of flight.

That's not a soviet shuttle. it's the concept art for the X-20 Dyna-Soar. The Soviet version as the Spyral program. The Soviet shuttle looked like ours minus the main engines since they had better boosters.

Great idea!

I think a science overhaul would greatly add depth to our spacefaring experience due to Veeltch's observation. As is we only rarely need to get creative with our orbits. People are suggesting new sensors, new timeframes for experiments and new survey capabilities. I think when we get more depth in space exploration and imaging, we will get incentives to be more ambitious. imagine if we got science from observing aurora or polar weather on Jool? We would find a way to get our sensors positioned for this.

It is heavily implied that Minmus is tectonically active. Our seismometers detect activity, there are few impact craters, etc.. There are frozen lakes too. Would it be possible to have a cryovolcano (even an inactive one) or a glacier on Minmus? If so, wouldn't those be cool Easter eggs? Also, they could have their own miniature biomes like the runway on KSC.

I would do whatever is more enjoyable. In career mode the limitations of your tech marginally affect you during the first, good Duna transfer window. I usually wind up developing labs and bases on all three bodies simultaneously. In my experience The moon is more challenging with regard to terrain (I drive many rovers off cliffs because I have lead thumbs.). Minmus is easy. Duna is more challenging with regard to logistics.

Not sure about procedurally generated planets. I do believe an outer gas giant or three would be good in stock. Also, IRL the solar system is full of surprises. As a child I remember learning that Viking discovered Mars was cold and dead. We assumed the moons around the gas giants were boring rocks. Liquid water only existed on Earth. Between Voyager, subsequent probes, landers and orbiters we find ourselves in a much more vibrant and exciting place than we could have ever imagined! i would love to see volcanism, cryovolcanism, science from excavating below the surface of a planet and other things. Procedurally generated features within biomes could be a great way to duplicate this experience.

Late tech gimballing SRBs would be great. Someone else had a suggestion for modular SRBs like we do with our LFO boosters. I thought that was a pretty slick suggestion too.

That's a really good idea!

True, but we don't have the geopolitics in the game to necessitate independent GPS and GLONASS systems, etc. Commercially there have been constellations launched, like the Sirius network of three satellites, too. I think it could be fun to have stringent satellite contracts based on required surface coverage rather than given orbital characteristics.

Would it be possible to get tweakable wings which allow players to adjust mean camber, leading edge radii, etc? The sliders would affect the performance of given wings and wing panels. If players don't want to get into that level of detail, they can simply avoid playing with the sliders.

What about options to purchase and develop other launch sites? So you start with KSC and you have the option to bring KSC2 or a polar airport online with significant investment?

Many government and commercial programs depend on constellations of satellites rather than individual satellites. Could we get higher value and higher reputation contracts for launching ambitious constellations of satellites? With 1.2 I suspect we already have motivation for biuilding constellations. Commercial contracts to set up satellites to provide continuous coverage of high latitudes or maintain direct communications between given points on the surface of Kerbin, (subject to limitations on transmitter power and elevation of satellite above the horizon) could provide fun engineering and deployment challenges beyond linking probes to KSC. I am on consoles, so I have not had a chance to play 1.2 yet. If this already exists, excuse me.

I got my first contract to place a satellite into a Molniya orbit. Is this a new contract or have I just missed them until now? Also, how cool is it that KSP is actually getting us to experiment with practically useful orbits beyond geosynchronous and semi synchronous orbits?

Having a science payload ride along when you launch to acheive a particular contract is worthwhile. Contracts to move tourists or such and such location pair up nicely with contracts to build orbital space stations.

So I am at work, and I check into my hotel to find a poster with a great satellite picture standing before me. I immediately wanted to go running into a room full of technical Koreans screaming "Hey guys! I like space stuff too! Let's talk about your satellite!!". Then I realized they were probably all meteorologists. And that I don't speak Korean. And that I would be interrupting a work event for these folks. And that I had no useful input. And that I didn't register for this meeting. This is first time KSP has presented me with real life challenges. http://nmsc.kma.go.kr/aomsuc7/oralPresenterGuidelines.jsp

Adsii, not offended at all! I post this stuff to invite precisely this kind of feedback. I only mention the value in public silliness to make sure others feel comfortable sharing their ideas. By similar token, I enjoy a little jabbing input so we all feel comfortable having our ideas critiqued. I really like all of this stuff. I like the idea of Laythe as a molten Europa or Enceledus. Could Laythe's atmosphere contain some very efficient greenhouse gas in addition to oxygen? If a very large fraction of Laythe's atmosphere is has a greenhouse gas as opposed to, say nitrogen, perhaps it could be retaining a lot of the heat from volcanism and solar heating within its atmosphere? The problem is that the blue skies on Laythe seem to be nitrogen rich. I doubt the numbers work to make this even plausible.

Frustration at work. In real life I fly large airplanes and was previously involved in testing aircraft modifications. In the real world, you test a new modification to an airplane through lots of slow, meticulous and many times tedious protocols. Despite my best efforts, I am probably going to spend my life without leaving Eath's atmosphere. KSP sort of takes me back to when I was a kid making model rockets, strapping different engines to models and figuring out how to fly my pets. It sort of keeps me involved with the little spark that sent me down this path some decades ago. Also, I get to be obnoxious. I love the sound of my own voice (sight of my own text?). So there's that too.

I'd much rather look ignorant and wind up more informed, even about a game, than look informed and stay ignorant. This is part of the fun of this game. It gets people to link up and share ideas. I am also happy to be called out on silliness on my part as well. Can we explain why Laythe and Kerbin are so similar despite the different distances from Kerbol?

Gaarst, that was awesome! With regard to it being a game, this is one of the ways in which one has fun with a game. So my young system idea is all wrong. Is it safe to say Kerbin is closer to the center of their galaxy (I hereby dub the galaxy "The Gooey Way")? Also, we have dense planets, but not dense stars?