Extemporary

I only tend to use self-restrictions in career mode. That's where my serious missions happen. Sandbox is for just what the name implies, playing around like in a sandbox. I test things there. See how many parachutes it takes to land on Duna, that sort of thing. Even in career though, I only have a few restrictions: -Every manned mission will make a return trip. No-one gets left behind. -Kerbals that are killed stay dead. I usually go into the save file and turn off respawning. I do make use of the revert function, but only if I determined before the flight began that it was to be considered a "simulation" and not to actually try for the real mission's objective. This is pretty much entirely for planes, when I'll try a few "simulated" circuits, zoom-climbs, and general envelope-pushing to get an idea of the aircraft's capabilities before I do actual missions. Most rockets don't get to revert. -Kerbals have consistent roles. If Mac Kerman was a scientist on the first Duna landing, he doesn't get shunted off to be a truck driver at the backwater Minmus base, nor does he become a high-performance spaceplane pilot. He stays a scientist. -Keep launch vehicles based around previous designs. Don't build a launcher around the payload. My current main career has used the same basic rocket design since Day 2, with modifications as new tech becomes available. -No asparagus feeding any engine larger than 1m. I imagine the flow rates are too high on any 2m engine for the fuel lines. -Not really a restriction, but all flights are recorded with name, objective, crew, and outcome. I don't regulate debris that much. My only real restriction on that is not to leave it in LKO. I don't get overly concerned if it ends up orbiting way out above synchronous, or in solar orbit or something. Also, is this thread really that different from this one?

I have vague memories of this Star Wars game. I THINK it was Rebel Assault, but I remember so little I can't be certain. I was very young at the time, and I never really figured out how to play. The first games I have any significant and detailed memory of are Rollercoaster Tycoon and Microsoft Flight Simulator 98.

As I pointed out in the screenshot thread itself, it went from two new pages (at least) per day, to going more than 24 hours at a time without a single post. Activity in that thread has absolutely plummeted. I don't think it's getting people to go to Fan Works, I think it's getting people to STOP going to that thread. General may not technically be the proper place, but I think that it's far better than Fan Works, where the thread is deserted.

To me, watching the explosions themselves aren't what cause that fear and chilling feeling. From those I feel more awe at the sheer power than fear of their use. But it's when I think about the things other than the bomb itself, things like how close they came to being used, that makes me nervous. Things like the fact that there were moments the leaders of the Cold War had the red button in front of them, codes in hand, a finger movement away from launch. Things like the US launch code, a number that can wipe out humanity, being 00000000 and common knowledge to the silo crews for decades. That's when nuclear weapons frighten me. I also recommend that anyone who hasn't seen this video should watch it. Pretty scary too.

Is it just me, or has activity in this thread plummeted since it was moved? Normally I'd get home and see at least two pages, but since the move from General it's gotten so slow that there isn't a single new post in the past 24 hours. To stay on topic, I'll add this picture of a rover mission to Minmus. The brakes weren't enough to keep it stationary on the slopes, and I didn't want to drive it all the way to a flat area, so I parked it like this for a few months while I did other things.

I've been doing a career mode Alternis Kerbol save. It's an incredibly photogenic mod. Double transit of Laythe and Minmus, crossing the face of Jool Looking home after landing on Pol We're going to be leaving some stuff behind though. Fortunately, they aren't mission critical items. Besides, burning the fuel wouldn't have given that much more dV than just tipping it to gain speed. You don't even have to leave the Space Centre screen to get beautiful shots.

I did, and none of them were there.

Where are the screenshots saved? The counter is functioning, and the game slows for a brief moment when I hit z, so it seems to be taking the screenshot. But I can't figure out where it puts it. I looked in the Gamedata folder for BOSS and in the default screenshots folder, but neither had any of them.

So the Kerbal X rocket was the first to reach any significant height, and the first manned? I assume it was a slightly different version to that with which we are all familiar.

I remember in my grade 9 science class, the teacher did a demonstration with various gas discharge tubes and diffraction gratings that allowed us to see the different spectra. A fairly typical demonstration, which I think most people have seen at some point. A couple years later, another chemistry class was covering related material, and the demonstration wouldn't have been at all out of place, especially since most of that class hadn't seen it before. Except this time, we had to settle for YouTube videos of it because the school board won't let us get exposed to the radiation. I think the most ironic part is that the classroom was lit entirely with fluorescent lights, which is the same phenomenon.

There's something a bit more satisfying about using a disc over a flash drive. And if it's a bit cheaper, all the better. I don't consider it too important to me though, and I'm content with either form of physical storage. However: I absolutely DETEST the move towards cloud storage. Not just because of the potential DRM (which will be bypassed somehow), not just because of subscriptions (which also will be bypassed), but because NOT EVERYONE HAS A GIGABIT CONNECTION. I get charged $130/month for half a megabyte per second peak download speeds, and it's down about 2-3 times a week for an hour or so at a time. This makes it the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable connection available. Most games on my Steam account have never been played because I haven't the opportunity to download 10 GB monstrosities. I have never been able to stream anything live above 480p quality. A lot of people in the world have far worse connections than me. How the hell are we supposed to function in a world that keeps everything online? For me, it is still far faster to drive twenty minutes to the store, buy a movie, and drive home than it would be to download it. Even if DRM is bypassed, and subscriptions averted through piracy or similar means, these products will still be inaccessible to me. The entertainment industry is worried about losing profit from a more expensive storage format? Maybe they should look into the profit they're losing from potential customers who WANT to spend money on the products, and have the money to spend, but can't because of the storage format.

I'm in a bit of an odd situation, because I've used metric all my life in nearly every application, except one. I'm a pilot in North America, so I have to use feet, nautical miles, inches of mercury, inch-pounds, etc. The thing is, I can be in the air and estimate the distance to something in nautical miles, but I really have no idea how far that would be in any other situation. Within aviation I understand it all fine, but I can't intuitively connect it to anything outside that particular field. On the topic of the actual discussion, though, as one might guess I am partial to metric. It causes me physical pain when I have to calculate centre of gravity and torque using 'inch-pounds' in order to load x 'gallons' of fuel.

I'm rather fond of this... somewhat different cover of Final Countdown. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feW2vTUJffI How does one embed YouTube videos?

I remember the first and only time I ever went to Moho. I hadn't seen anything about it yet, and I wanted to explore without knowing what I was going to find. My engines overheated so fast I didn't even notice until it was too late for the crew to survive. Even now, without the atmosphere, I've never gone back. The distance, the inclination, the blasting heat, the oppressive proximity of the sun... it's malevolent.

I once made the KSS Hindenkerb. Its successors were the KSS What Could Go Wrong? and the KSS Inevitable Failure.

Given that "daring" is an actual word, that it is here not spelled correctly, and that not everything has to be a reference, I doubt it.

I'm still getting the vessel naming glitch with v0.6.1.5 and the build engineer isn't showing. Do we also have to download the unofficial patches posted for 0.6.1.4? Edit: Disregard, I tried removing Engineer and it's still happening. It must be from something else.

I'm rather fond of Doodzor and Doodhat.

I suppose you might be able to call that ridiculous.

Something is severely wrong with EVA pipe attachment. I've tried multiple times now both on Kerbin and in orbit, and every time it glitches terribly. On Kerbin, the ships both explode and the Kerbal gets launched several kilometres up. In orbit, one ship got sent to Kraken Hell, and the other (accompanied by poor Jerdous) was expelled from orbit at 27 km/s. Another orbital test, one ship (luckily, the unmanned one) was utterly annihilated. Mission report registered connection failures on every part, though none destroyed, and not a single piece can be found in map view. Fortunately, the 12 Kerbals, including the one on EVA, survived, and Jerdous made it back in one piece. His ship is still trapped in orbit though, and it seems I won't be using this mod to get them home. EDIT: I tried one last time to save that crew. It worked. I didn't do anything differently, as far as I could tell.

You mean like this guy I posted a while back?

An old one I found. Not sure just how old, but it has the old tower. I have no clue what I was trying to do, but it sure didn't get done this time.

I still have the remnant of Jeb's arrival for training.

I banished two Kerbals to the sun. Milski and Lenmal were assigned to an important rover, which was to be used in the assembly of a large multi-segment base. Before even the first components of the base were assembled, they drove the vehicle into a crater. After much struggle, it was determined that the crater walls were too steep for the rover to climb, and that it was trapped. A new rover would have to be sent. The original was destroyed, and the crew retrieved. They were brought back to Kerbin for punishment a career re-evaluation. They were promptly assigned to long term postings on the Botany Bay, a high-proximity solar research vessel. Failure is not tolerated.

Polish Notation Mun Rocket? Don't be silly. Everyone knows Polan cannot into space.