Col. Kernel

You guys do know that the "Science guy" is an engineer, and that lately he's put out some info that's far from scientific?

Thanks man!

Pardon my ignorance, but I have a question. Am I correct in thinking that to update this mod I'll have to download it anew and extract the fresh download into the directory? Do I need to do anything like delete the old mod directory first?

It's true, you don't have to go to the moon, but there are advantages for doing so. 1) Accountability. As I said, you aren't sneaking jack across a 240,000 mile vacuum. 2) The Lunar environment is much harsher than the Martian one. 3) There's science to be done. There's some cool stuff that can be done on the moon that can't even be dreamed about on Earth. The thought of a radio telescope on the far side comes to mind. And there's always profit in science.

I suppose that @Aegolius13 and @Helmetman are correct. What I asked for is Sim Colony on top of KSP. I guess that's feature creep about the size of Godzilla. I'm currently playing the stock game to learn my way around, so I won't be adding any of the mods suggested for the time being. But thanks for the suggestions, I will definitely be playing with them down the road.

If it makes you feel better let's say "establish a permanent, self sufficient manned presence" on the moon then. My point being that when it comes to establishing a self sustaining habitat, we have never been successful. Every one of those established on Earth has failed. Resources have been sneaked in, and people have been sneaked out. Put one on the moon and we'll have to figure out what it is that we've been doing wrong without cheating. When materiel or personnel are brought in or out, everyone will know about it. But it's still close enough (a day and a half) that materiel or personnel could be exchanged in an emergency without excessive risk to the people involved. Jumping straight to a Mars colony puts the personnel there at undue risk simply because of the distance involved.

Colonizing the moon would be for practice, practicality (much lower risk to the colonists for the reasons I cited), and for scientific returns. Once we have mastered the technologies and techniques to run a self sustaining base (aka colony) on the moon, then doing on Mars becomes a LOT more realistic. Unlike your Norse comparison, an initial base will be 100% dependent on resources from Earth. As for your concerns with power, thorium salt reactors are five 9s safe and no larger than a shipping container. Any lunar colony should be sub surface anyway since there's no atmosphere to burn up incoming meteorites.

I'm new here, Steam says I've played for 13 hours at this point. I'm not playing now because my sinuses have overridden higher brain functions, so please pardon me if this post is lacking in literary or logical content. Planetary bases are, from what I've read, one of the few points that KSP falls short on. Orbital stations seem to be fairly well fleshed out, so I would like to see if there's any player or dev interest in letting us build functional, aesthetically pleasing bases on the ground. Anyone here play Subnautica? If so, then you know what I'm looking for. Well, aside from the magical gun that shoots base parts out based on what mats you have on your person... I'm not expecting a radical change in the direction KSP plays, so initial parts would have to be delivered to the planet/satellite where you want your base. I'd like it if there were refining and manufacturing modules that players could land, then take their rovers out to find materials to refine (bases not just for fuel any more!) and construct more base parts to add on. Additional missions could be generated to bring rare minerals back to Kerbin, etc. But emergent gameplay aside, I would really like to see bases that look like bases, and Subnautica has what I consider to be very good examples. Well, I was trying to find some examples of people actually building a smallish base, or maybe even a medium one, but all of the base building videos I looked at were some ADHD Twitch streamers doing everything BUT building a base for the first 45 minutes. Still, you can see from the extravaganzas above what I'm after.

As several people already said, it's tough to define cheating in a single player game that has mods. Do you cheat at solitaire (assuming you play with real cards). You can, simply because it has rules. The rules I want to play KSP by are simple, no mods that change physics, add extra components, or automate decision making for me. I'm currently running 2 mods, KerbalX so I can upload my own ships, and The Kaptain's Log so I can document my adventures. Edit: No mods per above ... the first time around. After that I'll look and see what makes the game better or different (OPM)

When is Yellowstone, or one of the other 5 super volcanoes going to blow? When is a wandering asteroid that we haven't detected yet going to come screaming out of the sky and ring the Earth like a bell? All of the eggs our species has are in one basket, and we've just recently become aware just how fragile that basket is. I'd rather see a self sufficient Lunar colony first. It's a lot easier/faster to resupply if we find out that it's not as self sufficient as we think it is. Or, far more likely, it won't start off being self sufficient; we'll have to figure out how to make it that way as we go along. Mars is 8 months away, the moon is a day and a half. The first step towards a Martian colony begins on the Moon. Mars will NEVER be terraformed until we get mass conversion or some other SciFi energy source. Mars' iron core isn't liquid, and can't rotate, therefore Mars does not have a magnetic field. No magnetic field means that the Solar wind will erode any atmosphere we attempt to generate there, almost certainly faster than we can replenish it.

Installed, thanks for a very cool mod! I'm playing KSP as vanilla as I can keep it, I don't want any mods that alter the way the game plays. But I surely do want to have a record of my flights. Some are certain to be worthy of a Mission Report, such as this one.

Sorry @tomf I'm new here. Link to info on said expansion please?

Only power was from the Mk I capsule batteries. I wasn't in orbit long enough to use all 50 of that up. I have no been able to reproduce this issue, therefore I am going to consider this resolved.

I figured it could be done with a regular save game. It's the editing in of the money/science/reputation that would be tricky, in addition to the planetary alignments. But also, being able to lock out certain parts would be cool (or uncool!) for certain challenges.

I've played Elder Scrolls Online, and there is a very nice addon manager called Minion (also works on WoW). Is there a similar mod manager for KSP? I see the mod repository is on Curse.

So I see there are challenges posted by players as well as by Squad personnel, and that some challenges restrict the mods allowed, and have specific requirements. Would it be feasible to make a challenge parameter setting for KSP that would set the goals and allow or disallow specific mods? The challenger would effectively create a pseudo save game file with x amounts of Kerbal bucks, Science, Reputation, techs unlocked, buildings upgraded, goals, and planetary locations, then uploads that file (Dropbox or where ever) for other players to download. The challenge save could be career, sandbox, or science. Re: Planetary locations Put up a top down view of the system and let the player drag the planets into whatever configuration they want. Have the game adjust the date accordingly.

Thanks for the service, and the compliment @Snark

@BjM Correct on both counts. Tracking level 1 and Jeb is headed for Munar orbit (next contract). I probably won't land, I'll wait on the contract to do so. OTOH, if that contract is offered after I complete my first orbit and I don't have to land back on Kerbin and send another ship, I'll probably take it. Hopefully I'll have enough fuel to make it happen.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend the Guide to Kerbal Space Program...for Complete Beginners! by Quill18 on YouTube. I'm brand spanking new to KSP myself and have learned a LOT of good stuff from Quill18. I believe his #5 guide will have some helpful information.

I'm a complete newb to KSP. If you are new to this wonderful game and lost I highly recommend Quill18's Guide to Kerbal Space Program for Complete Beginners. I link Episode 5 below, but you might want to start from the beginning. Edit: I'm adding my ground station info here, as asked in the comments. Both Tracking and Mission Control are at level 1 for this mission. After numerous failures and multiple rocket redesigns I just made my 2nd circularized orbit today, and that's all I was attempting to do. However, it came out so perfectly, and with plenty of fuel left over that I decided to attempt a Munar flyby I'd watched Quill18's beginner's guide #5 2 or 3 times, and knew generally what I needed to do. I did all my science experiments in LKO (Low Kerbin Oribt) between 72 and 78 km high. While still not in Map mode I start watching for The Mun to come over the horizon of Kerbin. When I see it I fire my Terrier engine on full throttle and switch to Map mode to watch my apoapsis extend to just over 11,500km (The Mun is just over 11,400km from Kerbin, just in case you're new here, like I am). I notice that the apoapsis of my new orbit is slightly below The Mun's orbit. I've actually tried to do a flyby previously with my apoapsis below The Mun's orbit, and that didn't end well. My exit trajectory ended up being angled about 45° below the plane of Kerbin's orbit. There was no way I had enough fuel to make that large a correction. So, despite being told that being above/below the plane of The Mun's orbit would be OK, I decided not to chance it again. I got about 1/3 of the way to Munar orbit and did a course correction by boosting to anti normal with minimal thrust. Apoapsis is now on the plane of The Mun's orbit. This is all standard stuff so far, but the entertainment is about to begin for poor Jebidiah. When I enter The Mun's sphere of influence I see I'm on the Kerbin-ward side of a hyperbolic orbit passing through The Mun's center of mass. I decided I wanted to be on the Minmus-ward side of that orbit, and boost accordingly (can't recall exactly, sorry). I then boost towards the nonexistent apoapsis to raise the periapsis outside of The Mun itself. That's when I realize that, while I have plenty of fuel left, my on board battery is down to about 10. Note to self: Add an external battery. The Munar flyby was itself uneventful. However, when I enter Kerbin's sphere of influence again I see that the vector I had leaving The Mun is changed. Periapsis is over 3,000km from Kerbin. I decide that I'm not going to orbit around to apoapsis and boost retrograde to try and drop the periapsis to within 70km of Kerbin. I don't believe I have the fuel or the electricity to hold the retrograde heading long enough, and I can't risk a 2nd encounter with The Mun's gravitational field. (Watch https://youtu.be/aF-nC_iV8Gs to see what Quill18 does when that happens to him.) It appears that skewing my orbit is my best option. So I swing the ship around to radial in and commence a maximum throttle burn, knowing that I won't be able to hold that heading for long. And sure enough I'm out of electricity with periapsis between 2,000km and 2,500km above Kerbin. For some reason my capsule is now rotating, but the nose keeps passing through the radial in heading. So I figure "What the heck", and start making full throttle burns for about 1 second on either side of that heading as I pass through it. And it WORKS!!!! I'm excited, I might just get Jeb home yet! I eventually get periapsis down around 60km, but that's it, I'm out of fuel. As I approach Kerbin I start to worry about the reentry. There's nothing I can do about it, but it would be a shame to burn up after all of that. As it turns out, my heatshield is facing prograde. I jetison my now empty engine, and sure as taxes it manages to turn me sideways. I won't bore you with the mundane details of reentry, suffice to say that the capsule did what it was designed to do. The aerodynamics of the capsule faced the heatshield to prograde, and Jeb landed safely. Jeb brought home over 200 science, but this tale was too long already so I didn't detail every EVA, report, etc.

I'll check the electrical. Where do I find the log file? Pic and link to ship on KerbalX added to OP.

64bit KSP 1.3 on Steam. Windows 8.1 64 bit w/ 16GB RAM and 37 GB available on the D: drive. Only mod installed is KerbalX This has happened with multiple spacecraft, I can link to the current one on KerbalX if desired. Scenario: Launch to LKO (Low Kerbin Oribt if no one else has used that acronym), realize I don't have enough fuel for Munar insertion, perform experiments with barometer, thermometer, Jr. Science, and goo pod. EVA to collect data and do EVA report. Re-enter ship and turn SAS back on. Jeb no longer holds retrograde heading, tell him to go to prograde, no response. Turn SAS off and back on. Still no response. Attempt WASD to fly manually. Roll/Pitch/Yaw indicators do not move when I press keys. Link to ship on KerbalX Aaaand just to add insult to injury attempting to repair the files through Steam also doesn't respond. Restarting Steam fixed that issue. Edit #2: Only power was from the Mk I capsule batteries. I wasn't in orbit long enough to use all 50 of that up. I have not been able to reproduce this issue, therefore I am going to consider this resolved.