Godot

Oops, didn´t see it in time

Well, Dwarf Fortress, which as already mentioned and Aurora which is 4X in Space ... and, despite being non Newtonian (but with an explanation given, why) it tries to depict things rather realistical ... for one with space combat (and design of your spaceships), for the other with the universe (you have the sol system, together with the whole solar neighborhood). You even have first encounters as rather tense moments, where you always ask yourself, whether you shoudl raise shields or not (as this could be seen as a sign of aggression) and where you hope that the other ship doesn´t shoot and also have rather limited knowledge about other star empires you might encounter, even if yu are at war (usually you only get knowledge about the capabilities of enemy ships by observing them in combat and recovering wrecks

It says December 12 in the lower part of the pic ... if true, this will be sme time away

If I see this correctly, Jester 3s Debris Periapsis is below 70 km ... therefore, if you keep it as your selected ship (especially during yur pahses near the Periapsis), and don´t have (non physical) time warp activated during this time, its Apoapsis will go down with every orbit ... it is to assume that, after several orbits, it will be lower than the orbit of Jester 4 (with other words, at this time there won´t be any chance anymore, to hit Jester 4s orbit) If I guess this correctly, the Periapsis is at ~45km ... meaning that it is some distance away from meaningful air pressure (below 40km) ... meaning that the degradation of Apoapsis might happen slowly. (all the things I said don´t count, of course, if the debris isn´t your selected ship (or very close to one), as then it is put on rails and air presure isn´t applied)

Btw. that´s the other way round ... flying with the Soyuz to the ISS .. as a diary of one of the astronauts: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition13/journals_williams_1.html I was surprised that they spend such a long time on the Soyuz for the orbital rendesvouz with the ISS ... so much time that they even get out of their spacesuits and eat and sleep in the Soyuz Another interesting thing is, how ascent and separation of stages feels for the Astro-/Kosmonauts inside Soyuz ... now we will understand how our Kerbals feel

I always thought Kerbal babies are found miraculously, lying by the side of the road, and then are raised by the Kerbals who find them, at their own risk

Only had a science pod exploding once ... and that was when my return module was woefully underequipped with parachutes (well, actually it was well equipped with parachutes before entry into Kerbins atmosphere ... but then, reentry heat (as I am playing with the Deadly Reentry Mod) let 3 of my 4 chutes explode) Actually the destruction of the Science pods saved my capsule at this time, slowing it down enough so it would survive

Well, the first time I saw it I thought I was just a large cloud of dust that was created by a hard impact of the craft on the soil ... then I looked closer and saw the flames of the thrusters

Normally you shouldn´t need one ... they remind you of entering a phone number, but you can skip this step without entering one

We all welcome insanity

Depends on the relation to the total rocket weight ... often, especially with small landers, replacing an engine with a (relatively) heavy weight but good Isp with one that has a lower Isp, but also a lower weight, may result in an increase in dV

40 and I design my rockets to with 3 goals in mind: 1. Efficiency (meaning that I like to use onion and asparagus setups ... but I also try to look a little bit at the price ... I may well design rockets at later stages of the career that can carry the same payload, but are cheaprer than their predecessors) 2. Modularity (usually ascent stage. transfer stage, landing stage and return stage are modular components (and often also get tested separately from each other for a certain payload, before being certified for use) so that I can combine them independently 3. Reusability (more for RPG purposes .. means among others, that I put parachutes on all stages that get dropped during early ascent, so my Kervbal recovery teams can recover them and reuse their components) With other words, looks or similarity to RL spacecraft are secondary ... a few of my designs deviate strongly from rocket designs that are in common use ... with not a single central rocket, but multiple rockets on corners of the spacecraft

Somehow those solid fuel braking engines look like a nice to have in KSP ... an lightweight attachment, similar to a docking ring, that produces a similar thrust like one or more sepatrons, for something like 1-3 secs. Could serve several purposes for our creations, like propelling the capsule away from the main rocket in case of an emrgency (with other words, as some kind of escape tower) but also in similar use as they are used in reality, during descent

Well, I guess Komarow (Soyuz 1) on the other hand would had been glad if with his capsule only he retrorockets had failed ... unfortunately in his case the Retrorockets were almost the only thing working

The problem between an abstract concept like "scientific progress" and real things like specific projects, that some projects might be impossible to complete, no matter how much "science points" you invest into the project. For example, maybe we will increase the speed of our computers by a great margin ... but I don´t think we will ever be able to collapse a whle galaxy into a black hole, no matter how much time we invest Same may be true for time travel or for the usage of wormholes as shortcuts to other stars ... although this may be all dependant on the structure of the universe around us

That´s the big problem ... it is nice and has a good degree of realism, but it is seriously lacking content (unless I am mistaken and there were upates adding lots of content since 2010)

We knew that birds can fly ... and there was already leonardo da Vinci who made sketches of an Apparatus that should enable humans to fly by imitating the fight of birds ... something called an ornithopter. Likewise there were several people who tried to fly (or at least glide) long before the Brothers Wright were born ... the Tailor of Ulm for example. Therefore flying was something that was based on natural observations and much more sound than for example, flying to the next star system (especially if we talk about using shortcuts, like wormholes). ->It is easier to predict that, within the next centuries we will fly in the sky (as the birds do) than to predict that we will some day use wormholes for travel to the next stars (which is something we haven´t ever observed in nature) Also, if we talk about generation ships instead of wormholes, the problem of usefulness coms into mind ... flight was of immediate usefulness (for example to cross obstacles, or to observe troop movements in war) ... it made sense to spend money in it. Generation ships are of no special usefulness (except as an adventure for the colonists) at the moment ... we have all we need in our own solar system, even with our current technology reachable within few years of travel ... much less time than we would need to reach a neighboring star ... we can even colonize other planets in the solar system (well, at least mars, after terraforming) at much less costs and risks than it would be to construct a generation ship ... and we can conduct research on nearby star systems with unmanned probes (I assume, even the spanish would have used unmanned probes to research the sea route to india instead of sending columbus, had they possesed the technoligy (and had it been much cheaper sending an unmanned probe than to equip the 3 ships of Columbus)) ... sounds like no good preconditions to get the necessary funds out of any governmental (or private) organization, for the development of generation ships

Seems like noone has mentioned Take on Mars yet. In this game you put probes and rovers with scientific payload of your liking on Mars, in order to fulfill a multitude of scientific missions and then drive them around and earn money and science in order to unlock better eqipment (including probe/rover bodies and better cams) as well as be able to aford missions (and "buy" new landing places Also, photos you make with your on board cams are saved in the game folder and can be viewed outside of ToM. It is still in (a medium stage of) development, but the sights are spectacular Hre a few pics, taken with the cams of some of my probes and rovers: Medium Rover prior to departure from rover base Heatshield debris, seen through the BW Navcam of a rover Crater rim seen by one of the color cams of a (later) probe Heatshield as it is falling towards Mars surface, while the descent of the rover is slowed by the skycrane For more pics (and larger versions of those shown) look at the gallery here: http://imgur.com/a/D6TcP#0

I guess if you install Reentry Heat, you will be successfully in destroying your craft with the heat generated in the lower atmosphre layers due to ascent

It definitely helps to be earlier than the enemy with reching certain goals, so that his funding gets cut and yours increases ... nevertheless sometimes a victory isn´t a true victory because you took so long

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57397-Kerbals-can-swim-%21?p=767316&viewfull=1#post767316

Well, maybe it was eligible because the game will be out for around 1-2 weeks when the voting closes. Better for KSP, as this most probably greatly reduces the number of voters who will vote for it Oh and I voted as well, of course

Yep, they can swim and take samples of water ... it is .... wet

It gets its O2 via diffusion ... and yep, seems like NASA tested it: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/this-is-what-fire-looks-like-in-space--2

Had done Apollo style landings to Duna in the past versions ... sent probes to almost all of the planets in past versions .. and the spaceship I am currently testing in 0.22 career mode should have enough dV to allow me landings (and returns) to/from most bodies in the Kerbol system (excluding just Jool, Eve and Moons that require a dV of 1000+ to land and start again)