NovaSilisko

You know, by god, I'm going to find the assembly manual for the rover sooner or later, and build it.

I had that too! But it's been distributed amongst the rest of my pieces, and all I have left on hand is the baseplate for the CSM: I also have the MER pictured on the back of the box, but young-me was too dumb to build it and so it too is scattered.

I regret voicing my opinions on the matter, didn't want to start a big argument.

Yep. In the beginning, there was no name for Kerbin. It was just "the planet", or "kearth". I... uh, even used that term once (although I did not inhale), to my eternal regret. I may have actually gone back and wiped the post where I used it.

This thread has generally caused my regrets over adding the ion engine to resurface. Should've never done it unless there was a way for it to thrust on rails...

Finished both going postal and hitchhiker's guide. Now what? I've received Mission of Gravity as well.

Well, there's a middle ground to be occupied between "realistic" and "ridiculous". Enough thrust that a small probe can perform orbital maneuvers in a reasonable timespan, but not enough for it to land on anything (except maybe gilly, which used to be the limit of what was possible with ion engines). Making it as large and heavy as it is right now was a bit of a mistake, in hindsight. Look at the size of Dawn's ion engines, for instance:

The state of ion engines in general brings me great frustration. The thrust is far, far too high. They flat-out should not work in an atmosphere of any kind. They're supposed to be for very small spacecraft, orbit-to-orbit only. Not landers. Never landers.

I'd give that battery a fresh charge ASAP.

Oh yes. From one of the later books, for example: "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move."

Copy of hitchhikers arrived already:

Kubrick thought it would make the audience think it had wings and was thus designed to fly through an atmosphere. Not a lot of faith in his audience, there...

Good god, are they still using the same horrible engine? It really looks like it, just with higher resolution and cleaner textures (which admittedly is nice, I seriously hate the super grungey look of skyrim).

Forgot to bring up the fact I've ordered six more books: Hal Clement - Mission of Gravity Stephen Baxter - Voyage Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (yes, it took me this long to own it) Lee Correy - Shuttle Down James Joyce - Ulysses (this one is gonna be a whopper) Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men In A Boat

That did happen, once. Just not on that launch, that was the Zvezda ISS module.

Potentially relevant:

I forgot this even existed until yesterday butdamn I loved this game. What this video doesn't show is how whatever you do, everything will proceed differently. It's just a matter of trial and error, but actually going through the process is rewarding because the sequence of events plays out differently each time.

This is just confusing with these double negatives. I have haven't been to space?

Well, Going Postal it is. It's won in a landslide after an unprecedented turnout of five voters.

Yeah, open and free is the direction it's likely to go in. Immersion shouldn't impede gameplay without very good reasons.

So we're at 2 votes for Going Postal and 1 for Excession so far.

So, help me to decide what to read next. I am deciding between the following (with vote counts afterward, including those on twitter) Robert Forward: -Rocheworld (0) -Starquake (I ingested Dragon's Egg in its entirety yesterday) (0) Terry Pratchett: -Going Postal (4) -Pyramids (0) Iain M Banks: -Excession (1)

I have updated the glorious book accumulation image:

Maybe someday I should write "A Brief History of Kerbal Physics" or something...

No no, the positive Gravioli* particle is the one that repels. Negative pulls things inward. However, positive Gravioli particles are considered borderline psuedoscience, and the "negative" in the name of the well-studied particle is a leftover from an earlier time before experiments effectively ruled out the existence of the positive. It is not, however, as psuedoscientific as the annoyingly-commonly-believed "Toaster Procreation Field" theory of gravitation, which, however, cannot be discussed in polite company. *The Gravioli particle (and, by extension, gravitation, previously known as "that force wot pulls you down") is named after the famed physicist Gravioli Kerman whose groundbreaking experiments and studies into the nature of gravity were strongly offset by his often jarring beliefs, such as his rather outspoken opinion that the early experiments into rocket flight should be shut down as "there's nothing really up there anyway and you all should shut up and stop trying", which eventually lead to his death three years later after an angry mob tore down his self-constructed Leaning Tower of Gravioli without realizing he was inside it.