Casellina X

I sent 2 rescue missions for Bill. The first one was destined for failure at my ability level. I didn't think I would have had enough dV to land and return (although after finishing the second mission, maybe I would have). The only good thing that came out of the first mission was some extra science points banked to unlock another node on the tree. Did I need it... no, but it was gonna happen. I didn't actually expect success so the initial rocket design, launch and such I didn't capture. But I was able to get close enough to Bill to be comfortable. Now, as you can see it wasn't the closest rendezvous in the world, but I figured I can walk it. But even better, why walk when you can use your EVA Jetpack? I was able to close 5km in short order. Unfortunately when I got to Jeb and the return craft, the game had decided to push it over. Should have left SAS on. I tried an ill fated takeoff but I couldn't orient myself with the controls and that ended in failure. Had to reload an autosave. Round 2 (3 actually - don't impact the ground at 200 m/s, it doesn't end well), with SAS, and we're all set to go. Although the game seems to have forgotten my custom flag. Loaded, saved, ready to get the heck outta here. Notice the excessive dV remaining. I need insurance on my missions. Oriented for the circularization burn, and soon transfer burn. I was finally confident at this point. Hurtling back towards a 30km PE. I got to see some more reentry effects with a larger craft. I also decided to burn off that excess fuel because why not. As long as the parachutes pop, the past hour or two will have been worthwhile. Back on Kerbafirma. Hopefully the next mission to the Mun won't be such a hassle.

Anyone else dealing with TWR readouts in the VAB not matching the TWR when out in the field? I just put together my rescue mission and once again wound up with sub 1.0 TWR when I was just about on the surface when the VAB told me something grossly incorrect to the order of 9.x? Even my first stage, the VAB had a TWR of 1.2ish but on launch I was around 0.9

I decided to jump head first into the Mun mission. I tried for a wide lander when normally I go for a regular ol' tube with an engine. Overkill quite honestly, but I couldn't quite get the stages worked out to get an orbit with no headache. This design works, it just doesn't instill confidence once you're a couple stages in. In all its overkill glory. This is after the 3rd revert due to fussing with decouplers being in the wrong stage. I surprised myself getting to a 70km+ AP and just had to hope I could circularize. I managed to circularize and plot a maneuver to the Mun. Easy stuff from here... or so I thought. As you may have noticed, some pieces are no longer attached. I think this was a combination of overeagerness to land in this particular Mare and either a bad TWR readout or improper planning. At any rate, I started my deceleration burn too late I guess. As I approached the Munar surface I had 170ish m/s of velocity to cancel out. Needless to say, that didn't quite happen. Somehow Bob, or Bill, and the bulk of the craft survived the impact. I can't understand why, as this should have been the newest feature on the Mun. But I'll take the victory, complete the mission, and with the newly banked science build something more easily landable. I really should get in the habit of using quick saves because this cavalier mission execution is going to end in tears by the time I'm getting out to Duna.

Been intermittent in the new year. I've only done small missions - suborbital hops, satellite launches, simple planes. I've been trying to approach things with a "story" in mind, attack things in a different way to how I've done in the past. I'm comfortable enough in the Kerbin SOI, so I'm just reinforcing some skills for when the missions take me beyond that. I think this was my second launch of Exploration mode, admiring the sunset. This must have been the third (some of these shots stretch back to early January, haven't had the oomph to post them). Pleased to see reentry effects implemented. This was 0.2.0 so heating was a little extreme at the time. Good on the team for adjusting that. After unlocking the node on the Tech Tree I decided to put together my first plane in a while. Fairly stable flier and I put it together with science collection in mind. Several missions later, I launched an advanced (time-wise, definitely not tech-wise) probe just to orbit. Thanks to the KSP Academy: Rocketry 101 video/stream, I've started reconfiguring my rockets to launch at a ~1.2-1.3 TWR. Previously I'd aim for a minimum of 1.6 - normally a bit higher. Things just feel... so right now. I still have a lot of work to do on my gravity turns, but the TWR change has been a step in the right direction. I'm also trying to incorporate payload fairings more often in my designs. 6 months ago this would have launched sans-fairing. Here's my "advanced" satellite. It probably has enough dV left to land and reorbit. Back to aviation, I took a trip out to the Island. I don't appreciate that I had to download a mod in order to use a custom flag, and I really hope that functionality is incorporated into the standard game before long. I took a second flight to the east and played in the clouds for a while. Notice the slight redesign to include a ladder which doesn't work very well at all. Not long enough to get back into the damn thing from the ground, so I have to retract the gear to grab on. But then the ability to keep climbing ends at the top of the ladder, so the hand/footholds that lead to the cockpit aren't reachable. I have to use a combination of letting go and continue climbing and keep trying to regrab to get them. I think I was looking for the desert site but by the time I reached the edge of the desert I realized... I've never launched from there (in KSP 1) so I don't actually know where it's supposed to be. So I planted a flag to commemorate the exercise in futility. Following another redesign to add parachutes because landing is a task, I went out to the island in the middle of Kerbin crater. I think I expected maybe a discoverable or something new to "science", but I didn't see anything after a cursory look. So I popped the chutes and landed. I was on a time crunch. Next up should be landing on the Mun, and I'll aim for a different type of lander than I normally post. Maybe I'll incorporate some docking in the mission.

This is the sort of thing that would have been terrific to know during my early KSP days. Filled a lot of gaps and assumptions I've been working with. If the team has the bandwidth, I think some of this should be incorporated as more "advanced knowledge" tutorials. The current set is easy to digest but doesn't come with the physics lesson and leaves you (me) a little wanting. Can't wait for the next.

I would lobby for the animations that don't require props to be added in as idle animations for the Kerbals.

This one is unsettling

I combined a few of the crew pods and modules for a trip to Minmus. It was a poorly planned and though out mission in response to the forum giveaway. Part of me wanted to visit the Kerbin Ice Caps but I didn't have the patience to do a plane. Maybe I can do a simple hopper rocket later on. Other than a lack of struts, which I rectified after this failed launch, it wasn't the worst design to come out of my VAB. I did have to fuss with the gravity turn a bit. The rocket was both responsive and sluggish. No RCS, only reaction wheels and gimballing. But well on our way to orbit. This was either the last bit of the circularization burn or maybe the burn towards Minmus. As you can see, the extra strutting I added to keep the damn thing from wobbling. Prior to circularization. All of that beautifully flat space to land... Well I said screw that, I'm aiming for a crater. Not only a crater, but a crater near the pole (I saw one that looked like it may be hiding a secret. I cut loose the transfer stage as it became very apparent that I couldn't screw around too much due to lack of EC. But screw around I did. By this point I had plotted a course to the north pole somewhat near the crater I picked out. You see my craft, wanting for EC, doing just what I could to be in a position for a decent landing. On a better trajectory we start probably the 2nd descent into this crater. Did you know it's dark in the dark? Well I didn't. Spoiler alert: it's dark! I included no extra batteries, solar panels, nor any lights. So this was shaping up to be a complete and utter failure. It took a few panic burns and out of control spins to get out of this situation. Didn't capture any pictures because I wasn't even sure I could get back to the ground without exploding. I did have 1 or 2 touchdowns prior to this but the pitch black environment combined with just not knowing what sort of incline I was on just wouldn't let me do it. But joy of joys we made it down safely. I took <SOME_KERBAL> Kerman out for a brief jump. All 18 who made the trip with their accompanying flags. For the life of me I can't figure out how to orient them correctly. A quality of life feature would be to allow for rotation after planting. And this is probably my last mission of the year.

They slap together a poorly thought out rocket and head for the slopes on the North Pole of Minmus. Then they realize they should have picked a flatter area to touch down. Finally they gather round for the last picture they'll take before For Science! hits the airwaves.

I think I see what happened here. You undocked and then, just because of proximity, the crafts redocked and maybe the game didn't fully recognize. If you want to retry this mission, you can probably mitigate this by setting both of those docking ports to 0% Acquire Force before undocking. Then remember to readjust it on the station after you've got a bit of separation.

Couple more things to point out: There's no sorting capability in the Tracking Station and there seems to be little rhyme or reason to how the list is populated. I don't think Kerbals should be referred to as Vessels - or at least outwardly so, and the should probably have their own icon. A space helmet or Kerbal head silhouette. Maybe a good QOL feature would be recoloring of icons and/or orbit lines. Also maybe make the gradient more pronounced to indicate directionality. Another useful piece of information might be the atmosphere height. By this point we all know to make it above 70km at Kerbin, but what is it for Duna? Eve? For CBs with no atmosphere, replace it with the minimum height to be able to maintain orbit. That can be really helpful for planning. Maybe for consistency, move the favorite star to where the asterisk is so that it doesn't move on mouseover. And it seems like you should be able to set the favorite from mouseover, but you can't. There should be default zoom levels when setting focus to different CBs. Being zoomed into something like Eeloo, then switching to Jool and being clipped inside is a little jarring, then another switch to Duna and having to break out your magnifying glass… a little too much adjustment needed by the user. This button doesn't work (for Kerbol), but it does in the Information Panel on the right. Inclination, AP, PE, those sorts of things should be in the panel as well. The circumference of Kerbol can't be 22 ly, surely that's the SOI circumference? I zoomed out just to be sure and it's a long way before that appears, so that must be a mistake. I'm curious what this will look like when another system is available. Another QOL suggestion is to have the count of each respective grouping. Another note about the Training Center, if a user sets CC for one video, it should apply globally for the rest. Fine grained control when zooming in the map view would be handy. The step is sometimes too large when trying to zoom into AP/PE to set a maneuver node. Icon scaling seems to go crazy depending on what you're focused on. In this picture Kerbin has the focus and as you can see, the craft Icon is unnecessarily large. To call out window hierarchy again. Paige says to open the parts manager and then obscures it. Should launch clamps be auto-recovered?

To start with an initial opinion - the UI that was shown in the pre EA footage and captures looked like a more positive direction to go. It felt sleek, modern, and like a major step up for both the Kerbals and players. The Aziz essentially captured a lot of my own sentiment. I feel a very easy way to address many of the concerns players will have would be to swap back to the older UI elements if possible. It's really a double edged sword because I've seen incremental progress on the current theme and have been pleased with some of the changes, and I'd hate for that work to go to waste. So a feature proposal - user selectable theming. Certainly a hefty undertaking, but I think the effort may lend towards longevity of the title as the wants of the community will undoubtedly change over time, and UI mod makers will have the ability to step in and easily contribute. We could retain the pixel theme, bring back the "sleek" theme, and a lot of hard work wouldn't necessarily have to go to waste. As visuals are mostly subjective, a well-defined system put out by Intercept could do wonders. I think I'm picture heavy so they're all in spoilers. The colon alignment of Game Time is not the same as with Game Mode/Last Played. The double hash (##) under the back button doesn't seem to make visual sense. The font used in the credits page content is clean and easy to read versus the pixel-style header font, and indeed many of the similar fonts used elsewhere in the game. RGB or HEX value inputs would greatly aid usability. Also when you click "Reset Agency Colors", it resets the colors in the left panel (omitted from the picture) but does not reset them in this panel. I think the reset should affect the color picker, and then the user should have to finally click Set Agency Colors to confirm. You know what, an eye dropper tool to pick colors from the set flag would be handy as well, but this is minor in the grand scheme. Currently going from Easy to Normal only adjusts docking tolerance. Maybe this is an oversight but it seems like Easy should probably toggle Infinite EC, disable probes requiring signal, and enable unbreakable joints. Note I say this without having switched those toggles myself to see how the game behaves. If the rest of the UI theme does change, don't let the video player be forgotten. When I see the numbering on the left, it makes me think maybe the overall design was supposed to represent a terminal or something? If that's the case then moving from the pixel font as a main idea to maybe a more modern looking monospace font would be a good move. There's actually a Google Font called Space Mono… I have a feeling it's being used in the game, but I wouldn't know for certain. 2 things to note here. First is Paige covers the settings screen, I think the settings should have priority. Second is the visual design language changes on this options page versus the initial game setup. If it's buttons in one place, it should probably be the same in others, and same thing for toggles. I'm going to make it a point not to harp on the pixel-style font, but I do want to call to attention readability. I don't know how badly the forum is going to butcher image sizing, but these were all taken at 1440p for what it's worth. I think you should add a skip button, either next to continue or an X in the corner so that IF a person wants to, they can skip the tutorial dialog. I understand it's part of the first user experience, but an people might want a quicker way out. There is no toggle to hide stock craft. The toggle DOES exist when trying to launch craft directly from the KSC. Adding one will help consistency. A question I have is what's the point of the small gray rectangle at the top right of each thumbnail? Just something to keep on the radar. Additionally there is no indication on what sort is currently selected - the default sort doesn't have any rhyme or reason, which is fine, however when you start clicking the toggles they don't show a marker for ASC/DESC. And actually when I closed and reentered the menu, the UI remembered I clicked the Mass sort button, but it reverted to the default sort. Clicking the Mass button again yielded no change, so I had to click the Name button to get the Mass button to decide to work again. Also double check the mouse over behavior when a craft is selected, it doesn't seem like it's working quite right. I'm noticing that if a description doesn't fit within the card bounds, there's no way to see what the rest of it is. Also a Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click to select multiple might be handy. Another callout on the double hash in front of Statistics. The cushion at the top of the Mass label isn't consistent with the rest. Max Thrust at 1 atm is missing a space between Thrust and 1. And do we need a Min thrust entry on the right? Missing space between the hash and the part manufacturer (which I didn't notice existed until today. Spacing issue? And the bar prompt lends back into my thoughts that the general theme is a terminal, and doubles my thought on finding a good monospace font to use. This has been touched on by other users, but the overlapping is a killer. If overlapping is intended and desired, then the windows need to be able to switch Z priorities. Naturally anything stationary should render on top. But if I click the engineer's report, it should send the parts manager to z - 1, and it should render on top. I'll also that that I think maybe we need a right click menu similar to KSP 1. Here and in flight, the Parts Manager can be unwieldy. Another situation where I hate for good work to go to waste, but having both… may not be desirable. I want to call out that this actually exists, for those of us who overlook it. Also that the dV calculation seems way off for a trip to the Mun and back. Even with how inefficient I am at missions, 10k dV can't be right for a round trip mission. Also the transparent blur ignores the UI element behind it so it effectively erases it and renders what's in the VAB. A callout for this and the Parts Manager, but man having to expand all of that stuff feels tedious. I don't know if there's clean solution to this. And a reoccuring thing I've experienced in KSP2 is the state of UI elements not being right. They might think they're in a mouseover state when it first opens, and it only fixes after they've been moused over. Note the "B" on the back button for Lights. Something to fix. In VAB vs on launchpad. Mismatch on the dV calculation means guesswork by the user. Also on this view, should right clicking on a part icon (parachute, engine, etc.) pull up the Parts Manager for that part? As in an easy shortcut? Also I think there should be a visual countdown from 10 when the user has that enabled. I do have to call for that prerelease Nav Ball design to return. I can make due with this, but the visual of the other one was preferable. BUT, a good touch is that when in orbit the colors shift - that makes it very easy to quickly reference if you're on course to make it out of atmosphere. That is something I feel strongly about keeping. In terms of prioritization, I think the Resource Manager should be swapped with the Flight Report. I don't know how often people open the Flight Report (never for me), but doing fuel transfers and stuff are a common deal. Also would it be smart to roll the Kerbal Manager into the Resource Manager? Bonus: EVA bug, trying to leave while in flight on the way up. Should have let go due to the forces, I'm assuming. But maybe the forces messed up the local translation? More of a nitpick, but I don't think chute settings should be hidden behind the toggle. I think a Recover Vessel option should appear on planets that you've got a KSC present when you're in a Landed state on a planet after having been In Flight. This is a stubborn hold over from KSP 1 making it fairly easy. The first time player may not immediately think to pull up the Escape Menu. And thinking back to the Flight Report, if it is retained then adding a recover button inside of it (given the flight state changes) could be a good move. I also say this after forgetting the behavior of the Recover Vessel button in the escape menu. But all things to keep in mind. Alignment issues. The tutorial descriptions are not easy to read in this font, at this size, even after putting my glasses back on. Also another sticking point is there's no easy button to leave, you have to pull up the Escape Menu. The KSC icon half submerged in the surface needs some fixing. And while I didn't capture it here I'd like some way for a little more precision when selecting a point along the arc for a maneuver node. Even if it's just making that ability possible while the game is paused, as it currently doesn't work. So onto the maneuver node. I really, REALLY miss being able to use the mouse scroll wheel to increase or decrease the dV in the moused over direction. I also really miss the AP/PE in the bottom left readout (I think that's where it was) showing your expected AP/PE when they currently selected maneuver was executed. It makes it very difficult (for me) to quickly plan things and it creates a headache trying to position the Map View in a way that I can do what I need to do. In general, both in Flight and Map View, we're sorely missing on orbital information - I say this as a 99% stock player in nearly every game, I don't want to have to turn to mods for that sort of thing. This something that definitely needed to be carried over from KSP 1.

One thing I would like to see, and it would be cool if it was confirmed, is the expansion of tutorials with this update. For example: I know how to do a gravity turn, but I don't know how to do one efficiently. I know how to rendezvous, but I don't know how to do it without major guess work during maneuver planning. I know how to get to Duna, but I don't know anything about transfer windows and how to figure that out for myself. I know what a gravity assist is in concept, but not how to execute one. And while I know there are YouTubers that cover these concepts, I think those are crucial to gameplay and empowering the player to explore beyond the Mun and Minmus, and thus should be clear and present in the game.

I would guess because of difficulty. You can slap together a rocket, much like Tom did, and it'll work with no effort while being satisfying. Harder to put together a plane and do the same - think of the no experience player. I think it's conceptually more complex since it's not just lighting a fire in a tube and watching it go. I see Tom decided to come straight at me at 30:12.

Proved the concept from the other day's post. Changed the decoupler on the payload plate for a docking port, and that seemed to solve my disappearing craft problem. I let the burn continue until 2 or 3Mm while still suborbital, separated the payload, then circularized it. Switched back to the lifter and l mostly landed without issue. Of course I was out in the wilderness on a slope so it wasn't quite as clean. Had a touchdown with a panic burn and wound up losing the engine on second touchdown. But, recoverable. After the lifter was on the ground, we pushed out to the Mun for a dV inefficient landing. Witness another issue with antenna deployment and I think it's fairing related. They must think that they're still under the fairing even after it's been jettisoned. But after switching back to the craft and landing I was able to deploy them.

Right on time for me to be away from my computer for 3 weeks. Guess I'll have my eye on the forums when the time comes.

I set out to make a MD, LG, and XL lifter, but plans sorta... changed. I'm sure you see where things went. To make a long story short, I decided to see if I could make a controllable, recoverable booster. I never used grid fins before so I slapped those on. A few failed landings later I added the AIRBREAKS. I Tried the LG legs but they kept coming off. As you can see here: I promise the only things damaged on impact were the control surfaces, engine, and remote control. The start of our first successful launch. Launch! Booster separation. My payload is an empty, lone SM crew module. I don't know how successful this lifter will be with a real payload, but it should be able to push it to 70km, I boost the payload out to 150 or 200 - enough time to screw up the booster landing. At any rate, shortly after separation the damn thing flipped. I decided to stick with it though. Luckily I got it back towards prograde and on a suborbital trajectory. Crew module shot into space with some separatrons. Fear not, it's empty. I think. I let out a maniacal laugh directly into the phone, and therefore my girlfriend's ear, as it thrust away from me. It's the little things in life. At this point I had burned on a trajectory back towards KSC. It wasn't pretty, but I knew I had a ton of dV in hand after my initial set of failures and learning about the power of grid fins and AIRBREAKS. I found myself nicely set up for a good approach. No panic burns, no overcorrections, just pro piloting: And witness my greatness. I emitted a series of unintelligible grunts as the booster settled nicely on the ground. While I know this will become that much harder when I've put a real payload on it that needs to make it into orbit, this is one of the more conceptually difficult missions I've tackled, but in practice it was rather straightforward. I don't see myself being dV efficient to where I'm down to <50m/s or something at touch down, but I continue to prove to myself that I've got the skill to tackle things more complex than a Mun landing. So I leave my trophy in far view of the VAB. I might even stick this on the fridge.

... ok so I wanted a station as well. Guess I didn't have one on my 1.5 save. I think this is my first (serious) attempt with a multi-engine launch on the main stage. It worked surprisingly well with enough dV to get me close enough to orbital. A pleasant surprise. 1000Nm fairing separation. I wanted it to peel back, seems like a toss up whether or not I can get it to actually happen. Surface deployment complete. Circularization at ~200km, which I would eventually raise to a near perfect 300km orbit shortly thereafter. My typical Kerbin + Mun + Craft shot. Plus a shot of the desert that made me go, "man, that's cool." By this point I had cut loose the engine (pro tip: set docking strength on both ports to 0% before undocking) and set it on near vertical trajectory back to Kerbin. I switched back to the station hab and witnessed the Kraken in action. The eagle-eyed viewer will notice the payload plate jutting out of the crew module. This would prove to be the tool of the Kraken, preventing the craft from straightening out as expected. Eventually things played nice, however the part which should have left with the engine would stay put. It doesn't classify as debris - probably because it was strutted in place for stability, so I can't get rid of it easily. But fortunately it doesn't seem to be having a big effect anymore. Final station sans engines with payload plate hidden out of sight. Now to just get something else up there attached to it, maybe a fuel canister or two, and then forget about it. It's a race to see which comes first - that mission or For Science! releasing.

Checked on the state of a few missions... When I changed to Jeb and Val I was unable to control them as if the game recognized them as vessels, but not in EVA status.

This has evolved into the type of discussion that has me mentally check out from work and start playing KSP2 during meetings.

Warping to a point - normally around AP or PE - and to the maneuver node in these situations. The methods are probably the same however I wonder if the issue is either in the slowdown phase, or if being in map view under warp is a contributing factor. I know that during some slowdowns it will trigger 3 minutes out, maybe even 2 or 3 hours out rather than 40 seconds - which seems the standard for smaller warp to maneuver situations. So then I'm forced to warp again, and it'll gradually step into the 30 or 40 second mark. So maybe the successive warps are causing knock on problems. If it's tied to the map view, maybe it's calculations being thrown off during the final translation of the craft. I don't know if I've seen a misalignment with eyes on the actual craft.

Now that I'm attempting more extra-Kerbin missions, I'm encountering the Kraken more and more, and it's largely tied to parts becoming misaligned after time warps. Previously I kept running up against remote probes not having control past the Kerbin SOI. So I decided, as my grandfather used to say, that "I'll fix your little red wagon," and I put a high gain antenna satellite in polar orbit around Kerbin. Unfortunately when I did this, orbit lines were not appearing, so it required some eyeballing and falling back on base knowledge. I struggled to get the deployable 130Gm dish to actually deploy - might be a bug where it doesn't think it can deploy after the fairing has been jettisoned. With that in place I decided to send the same design towards the inner system - the aim was maybe Kerbol or Moho, but I think I'm woefully lacking in dV for that. Hindsight and all. I'm not sure what I'm doing differently (maybe the fins? better fairing design?) but this has been one of the more stable rockets I've put together. No wild flips when attempting the gravity turn. Troubled fairing jettison. Solar panels deployed and headed into Kerbol SOI. So as I started maneuver planning to get closer to Kerbol, I encounter the Kraken. I burn and notice the Navball going wild. At first I thought it could be an RCS/reaction wheel issue, but then I zoomed in and saw this. Engine offset making a proper burn impossible. So this became another deep space relay probe. Back on Kerbin we relaunched our tried and tested design in the daytime. This time the fairing deployed perfectly, although I could have sworn I set up the 4x clamshell... Another shot of our burn out into Kerbol SOI. Actually, this might have been an attempt to get closer again. At any rate, things were looking pretty good, although I was badly off plane with Moho so trying to eyeball an encounter was really kicking my ass. I sort of resigned myself to not being able to make it happen, so I just wanted to get a more circular orbit, and one just about as close as I could get it. I set up my node and see wild Navball behavior again... ... and as you can see, the Kraken really got its tentacles on this one! Frustrating but validation that I'm relatively capable. I already know that my attempts to get to the inner system aren't quite right, but I'm not far off.

No pictures today. Another mission born from boring meetings. Quick satellite launch at 30Mm (I think) - somewhere between the Mun and Minmus. Originally I wanted to get a probe sent down to whatever that innermost planet is, however as soon as it left SOI I got the No Kerbnet Connection message. So hopefully whatever i just launched will be good enough to provide some coverage. If not then we might wind up with a few stranded Kerbals.

The science collection is really incidental for me. I don't particularly care about the devices, click-to-collect, or anything like that. What's more important to me is the mission system. In KSP the Science/Career modes provided the structure I needed to push on to other celestial bodies. Sure, reaching orbit with relative consistency was a big achievement and it felt pretty awesome learning orbital mechanics. However since the tutorials kind of stopped at landing on the Mun, I had very little reason... or imagination, I suppose, to go to Minmus or try and launch a space station. The missions telling me to put a satellite in a specific orbit or reach another body's SOI actually gave me something to work towards. In KSP2 I make attempts to do things here and there, but a Sandbox is only as big as your imagination, and my imagination disappeared years ago. So I appreciate the system basically saying, "hey doofus, you try making it to Eve yet? Well maybe you should!"

You can change that manually by clicking on the ALT readout, it'll toggle from SEA to GROUND and back. Similar with the VEL readout, you can toggle SURFACE, TARGET, and ORBIT. VEL auto changes as you get to orbit. ALT seems to change whenever it wants to - default should be GROUND but on my prior rage quit it was set to SEA and I didn't touch it. As for why it reads 7m, it's probably taking the measurement from your root or control module. You have a MED probe control on it at the top I believe? That's likely the culprit. A quick test may be to select the crew module and control from there, and the readout might change.