Bej Kerman

That's one of few things KSP's aero does good (somewhat good). Why shouldn't a heat shield produce a small amount of lift? It's a flat surface. Command capsules returning from the moon in the 60s used their heatshields and trimmed their center of mass (like the Concorde) to adjust the trajectory. The only problem is that KSP's aero can be broken so hard that heatshields can be made into standalone wings. The "bugs are good" attitude of the community is one possible reason the devs were so slow on fixing things. Fortunately, KSP 2's crew insists on "slaying the Kraken", and it's a completely different game anyway so it won't have any of the bugs from KSP 1.

Ah, yes; "Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!" I have good reasons to expect that the devs won't tackle problems like this. Still, they'd better make the aero model good or I'm going to have one good reason to boycott it. Yes, it's a space simulator, but half the time in KSP the entire point of launching a rocket is to land on another planet, maybe one with an atmosphere. There's no reason to dumb aero physics down given it's just as important as ground physics for rover wheels (another weak link in KSP) and orbital physics for spacecraft.

It's an issue with the aerodynamics, what kind of question is this. Regardless if Kerbin's diameter is 1,200km or 12,000km, the sound barrier shouldn't be so easy to cross.

Help me out then… is it the density gradient? Something more fundamental about the tradeoff between lift and heat? What am I missing? Why are you asking me to come up with a solution? I brought up the problem but I'm not writing up an academic paper for you. Breaking the sound barrier with Juno/propellers is a problem, there's literally nothing to debate about that. Relevant, you know how Sonic 06 would give you >10s of loading screen for 2 seconds of character dialog then >20s of loading for the level you are waiting to play? Having to sit through a loading time in KSP just to get to a novelty 3D display of the space center so I can then select the place I want to go evokes the exact same feelings. There's literally no reason to not have a dialog box to instantly access different scenes from any other scene. There should only be one loading screen between any Space Center building, not two. The space center screen should only be optional. Even if we reduced loading times as much as possible (e.g. everything is all in one scene), it still saps a bit of time away to have to go through this middleman for the thing we want. It's pointless fluff. I'm sure there are better ways to enhance the game's presentation without making things take longer.

Surely it's possible to have a 1/10th rescale and make it so a tiny Scooty-Puff-Jr brand jet engine can't break the sound barrier. You're vastly underestimating how important terrestrial aerodynamics are for those things and the importance of aircrafts in space travel.

Addressed with procedural wings. Either way, more parts is no use without direly needed improvements to aero.

One and the same to anyone that understands aero. There's a line between simplifying physics and completely misrepresenting it e.g. two-body patched conics vs airplanes in space, a la Elite. KSP's aero lands right on that line, which isn't good enough given that planes don't only have a minor role in aerospace.

Anyone with two seconds in a half competent flight sim (e.g. KSP w/ FAR) knows KSP's stock aero is just messed up - aerodynamics is most certainly a problem.

Simple, but striking

What use is telling us it's done without pictures?

I'll spell it out for you: I'm saying that the devs won't generate entire solar systems. That's what I mean by "everything is handcrafted" and "no large-scale proc gen". I figured this'd be very self-explanatory and that I wouldn't have to argue about the semantics. You can stop picking everything apart now. End of.

What’s your definition of large-scale procedural generation? You seem to be ditching the “everything is handcrafted” stance I just called you out on. I'm saying the developers won't be generating entire solar systems. Stop deliberately misinterpreting my words and using them as a "gotcha!" argument.

Your conclusions are mere speculation ("the skybox has stars, ergo they must be accessible" is not a "decent explanation"), mine are based on what KSP 1 did and the fact the developers would have told us years ago if large-scale procedural generation was involved.

I can see NASA and SpaceX logos on the side

We don't know how many they have made or not have made, that's the magical part of a game in development. We don't know everything. We do know they won't handcraft several hundreds of star systems and we know they won't be using procedural generation for anything more than fine terrain details.

So, we cannot speculate that there is more planets and solar systems than the very very few planets we have seen, which could make one solar system. we have seen around (11?) planets and moons, that could be one solar system only.. So we cannot speculate that there is more than just these that have been shown due to "everything will be hand crafted".. thats what what i can understand from what you stated.. Which that couldn't make sense, why would we be forced to think there is such a limited amount of stars in speculation and believing, due to not seeing it exist yet? How does a team of developers handcraft as many stars as you think are accessible? Simple answer, they don't.

It makes perfect sense. I have no idea what you're on about.

It's well established that everything will be handcrafted. This rules out that.

we do not know the scale of how many solar systems they have made, could be one of many many things they haven't talked about in the game yet.. they emphasize the sheer size of how large KSP will be, and yet keep on showing out of the "background" there is specifically ones that are brighter compared to the background space. we already know they have made programs to make world design easier, and they talk as if they have made tons of brand new planets, While watching the video's, they also directly say this at 2:38 in the video, while showing you tons of stars twinkling in the sky while a mothership is flying pass, there is no way they would say that, and then proceed to show gameplay talking about you see a pixel, but its a star and showing tons of brightly lit stars.. they in my mind are way to bright to be just the "background space" and are hinting that the game is going to be way larger than just 2-3-4 solar systems... thats what i personally believe and we will have to see when the game comes out, heck i would say lets talk about it once again when the game is released o7. You're reading into it too deep. They won't use procedural generation to make entire planets - that would be extremely boring and against KSP's style - and they especially won't make generated planets just to overwrite later.

It's more logical to just not implement stuff until it exists.

I don't know. I just know that the feasibility of Alcubierre drives is vastly overestimated sometimes.

Why? Alcubierre drives are as good as magic at the moment, relying on a made-up resource with "negative mass".

Then what's the problem with not using parachutes?

This, just wind make parachute landings of large parts impossible How so? Engineer around the problem. For instance, if you're landing on the bell of your engine, then don't -- use landing legs instead.

This here is the birth of a strawman argument.