CaptRobau

Bullcrap. KSP has made great strides in stability and performance, while still adding new stuff like larger parts and asteroids. It was a few months ago, but the devs said they still hadn't had to rewrite anything Unity-wise to completely fit their needs. Maybe that's changed in the meantime, but at least at that time Unity out of the box was still allowing them to do what they wanted. That means the engine works great for them.

TextureReplacer has reflective EVA suits.

Space stations are a lot of fun to construct in KSP, but sadly they serve little real purpose. While real stations like Mir or the ISS have been invaluable research platforms, all science in KSP can easily be done using normal spacecraft or unmanned probes. Other real-life uses for space stations also don’t translate to KSP, simply because there’s never a reason for a manned spacecraft to be in the same orbit for an extended period of time. What Do Space Stations Do? In real-life space stations are very valuable. So valuable in fact, that they were one of two options in the decision about NASA’s post-Apollo future (the other being a manne Mars mission). They are valuable because they allow us to gather data over an extended period of time, something which is not possible with a normal spacecraft. This can be scientific data or data about long-term performance of both man and machine in the dangerous environment of space. Both require an extensive infrastructure to provide enough power, life support and living space. KSP does not do any of this very well or at all. What Would KSP Need? Two things are necessary to make space stations the valuable research platforms with large crews that they are in real-life: science-over-time and an incentive to have large crews. Science-Over-Time Squad hasn’t been too welcoming of the idea of science-over-time (SOT). It’s been described as too easy. I agree with that, but only SOT when landed. The challenge in surface science lies in directing your spacecraft to its ideal location. Once you’ve landed, there is no more challenge. This is different with space science. In space you can be in a safe, stable orbit or on a flyby course or even an impact course. At the moment, due to instantaneous space science, flyby or impact courses are ideal. They require less maneuvers and less Delta-v, which all means it requires far less skill. An orbit might help you with the couple of experiments that offer biome-specific science in orbit, but that kind of science is so boring and tedious to gather that it is often skipped. An orbital science lab also has some use, but this is also quite limited due to the setup of the science system. If you HAD to get in a stable orbit before you could do certain types of science, then that would add more variety. SOT is an ideal way to achieve this kind of science. The time requirement would require a stable orbit and it could introduce the need for a decent power infrastructure (at the moment you can get away with very few solar panels, simply because there are few parts that draw power over an extended period of time). SOT would allow you to easily get science by timewarping. But since there is first the challenge of building a space station with the necessary science and power parts, as a whole orbital SOT requires skill. Crew Incentive A real space station needs to be manned though and by a decent-size crew too. In stock KSP, most manned missions can be done, and are more easily done, with a single crew member. How to prevent that from happening to space stations as well? One could require a minimal amount of Kerbals per lab àla the MPL-LG but that would put an upper limit on the Kerbals you would need. You could just move your Kerbals from one science experiment to the next. A more ideal solution would be to add a bonus to science based on the amount of crew members on the craft that the science part is attached to. It would raise the maximum value that could be extracted from the science experiment in that area (ex. Low orbit around the Mun). To prevent 100-man stations gaming the systems, there would be diminishing returns. Let’s say an experiment has a normal maximum value of 10. A 1-man crew or an unmanned probe would not change this value, but a 2-man crew would increase it to 15. A 3-man crew would make it 17.5, a 4-man crew would get 18,75 and so on. What are your views on this suggestion or on KSP space stations in general? Feel free to comment away.

How does KMP handle this?

Ducts requiring electrical power wouldn't add much, because there are alternators providing ElectricalCharge in every engine that you'd use for almost any situation with a fuel duct (aircraft and onion/asparagus launch stages).

The new probes look nice. Maybe add Scansat compatibility to the Munar Orbiter though. I'd love to see a Surveyor lander to accompany the Lunar Orbiter-analogue. Frizzank only has one or two more parts on the docket before he stops expanding FASA and the Surveyor isn't one of them.

I really like your approach Northstar. Coupling resource gathering to science gathering would make both more interesting and meaningful. If you wan't to go to Jool to read the science blurbs, at least you'll be learning that you can find Xenon there for harvesting later.

Modders have done a lot of cool things with resources, but one of the issues that I have with the system has to do with compatibility. If you want to add a resource in a mod that is compatible with other mods, it has to use the same 'name=' for the resource. Often this is not a real problem, but sometimes you just want it to have a different name (Kerosene instead of the stock Liquid Fuel for example). Adding something like 'title=' would allow modders to set different names for our resources while still maintaining mod compatibility.

Asparagus staging is a famous KSP staple due to its incredible efficiency (about 5.5 times more efficient than normal staging setups). In career mode the vast difference in efficiency with regular sequential (Saturn V) or parallel staging (Soyuz) has so far not been much of an issue. Since there were no budgets, you could build whatever you wanted. A massive sequential rocket using the 3.75m NASA parts or a smaller more efficient asparagus rocket that both could lift that the same amount of payload were just as effective. But with the introduction of budgets the 3.75m parts will no doubt be quite expensive. If the balance between these types of rockets is not right, the asparagus design will automatically be the only efficient choice. Should there be a balance and if so, how would it be achieved? I only see three options. Either move the fuel duct up a lot in the tech tree (it only requires 160 science to get too), which would make asparagus staging something OP but only after you've launched quite a lot of rockets. One could also make fuel ducts very expensive and leave the part where it is now. This makes asparagus staging something that's quickly available and allows you to put a lot of fuel/mass into space but not immensely cost-effective. Then there's the combination of the two, i.e. late in the tech tree and not very cheap.

The 3.75m parts NASA pack parts work fine as the lower stages of a stock Saturn. The only use for 5m parts that I could see would be to launch a manned mission to Duna without any orbital assembly or a nuclear thermal rocket. Maybe that's something people need, but such a launcher is not high up on my list of priorities.

Which will probably change with the introduction of contracts. The devs have said on multiple occasions that they intend to have science, money and reputation be convertable to one another, as to prevent any type of playstyle from being completely necessary. So in the future you might be able to for example skip harvesting science in Kerbin orbit, by instead completing a contract that has you build a jet that can go to Mach 3 or something. You convert the money you get from the contract to science and use it to unlock another tech node. The issue people have with science is not necessarily with it's current state, but rather its future state. If it stays the way it is right now, it'd be such a waste because you make it so much more.

This all started with me wanting to know how long mankind has had a continuous probe presence in/around the planet Mars. After I looked that up I decided to do it for the rest as well. I've limited myself to probes that were active, so no derelicts (because that would make it continuous after the first orbiter). Sun On December 16, 1965 the US launched Pioneer 6 into a heliocentric orbit. The long life of the Pioneer solar probe bridged the gap to more recent solar observatories. At the moment there are about half a dozen probes in an orbit around the Sun (and a few probes en route to planets). Mercury Since MESSENGER's orbital insertion around Mercury on March 18, 2011 we've had something around Mercury continuously. Namely MESSENGER. We haven't sent much to Mercury . Venus On April 11, 2006 the Venus Express has been in orbit around Venus. Earth (unmanned) Since Sputnik 2 was launched on November 3, 1957 we've had at least one operational probe in Earth orbit. The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test nearly broke the chain, but enough satellites survived to bridge the gap where (commercial) communications satellites began being sent up. Earth (manned) ISS Expedition 1 went up on November 2, 2000 and we've had a person up there ever since. If not for the gap between Mir and ISS this date would lie somewhere in the late 80s. Moon We've sent a lot of probes to the Moon, but there were a few gaps meaning that we've only had a continuous presence since June 23, 2009 with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Mars The Mars Global Surveyor inserted itself into Mars orbit on November 9, 1997 and has passed the baton to orbiters and rovers that are still operational. Saturn Since July 1, 2004 Cassini has been sending us data on our favorite ringed planet.

The smallest rectangular wings are just about the size of this planes main wings, which for some things is pretty big. Something smaller, i.e. the size of the tailboom at the back of that plane is something what I'd like to see. The wings are designed for spaceplanes I know, but because they look so good I also use them for a lot of normal aircraft.

Mods have only quite recently shown that clouds can integrated in a graphically not too intensive way, so I wouldn't blame Squad for not adding them yet. Besides, the devs still have a few other systems that modders can't easily fix/add like science and contracts that should have priority. Completely agree. With rockets you can learn lessons from real-life designs, but the current aerodynamic system doesn't allow the same with aircraft. I feel that Squad has a better system on their todo list, but it just isn't top priority compared to systems like contracts and career which offer much farther reaching improvements for all players. Agree as well. I think the simplest they can make is simply equate life support to living space. Want to go to Duna and not die? Give your Kerbals one or two crew cabins of living space besides the Mk1-2 pod they lived and they'll be fine forever. To really make life support work though, they need to give incentive to bring more than one Kerbal on your journeys. Pancake rockets are still possible with an aerodynamics system àla FAR. Indestructible struts, causing unrealistic structural integrity is what makes them possible instead of a lack of decent aerodynamic system.

Resource mining wasn't a 0.23 feature. It was a 0.19 feature, that was put in the fridge and only talked about at the time of 0.23. So I understand the confusion. As far as I know the system that was didn't work out was just a more complex version Kethane (i.e. ISRU). Personally I don't really miss it, mostly because it's not necessary. You can get easily get everywhere in the current system using existing tech. There first needs to be an expanded solar system with more faraway planets/moons. Eeloo is about 6 AU (Kerbin-relative) from Kerbol. The real Pluto is 39 AU (Earth-relative) away from the Sun. When KSP's solar system is on that scale ISRU becomes a necessity. With the current solar system, I'd rather have a better science system (that gives me more incentive than some stupid, quickly repeating blurb) so that there's more a reason to go out beyond Kerbin's SOI.

I've been using this mod a lot since all those new wing parts were added. The stock wings are so limited and ugly. I have a few part suggestions though. Do with them what you will: Air brakes - Air brakes are some very important control surfaces for a lot of real and planned airplane/spaceplane designs. Stock lacks them and other mod ones (like B9) don't fit the stock style. Ideally there'd be an inline one (example) and a radial one (example, example). Half-width Elevon 1 - You can't fit an elevon on a Wing Strake, as they are too wide. A half-width version of the Elevon 1 would fix that and make Wing Strakes more useful. Smaller Wing Connectors - Smaller versions of the various wing connector parts would work great as non-movable canards, tail booms and other small wing types. Better Tailplanes/Foreplanes/Winglets - The various moving and non-moving tails/canards in stock look awful and are not designed to fit together.

Minecraft is the goto sandbox video game to compare things to for a casual audience. It's like calling a FPS game Doom in the 90s. It was simply the comparison they had to make, for people to understand it. About the community, I feel very little reason to worry. First, KSP is never going to be as big as Minecraft, meaning a statistically smaller chance of a lot of assholes popping up. Second, this game attracts a certain type of people which I think are less likely to let this community devolve into something bad. We have the nicest community I've ever come across. There's nothing that KSP can add that will make it as broadly appealing as Minecraft and thus I think it'll keep the type of audience we have now.

That's really cool!

You need KAS installed. Afterwards you can just stick them to the side and KAS will allow your EVAing Kerbal to grab them and deploy them on the ground.

Noticed a few issues with the Saturn .craft files. First off, the IV-B stage had two Auxiliary Propulsion Systems. You've given it three in the Saturn V file, which makes it unbalanced RCS wise. The Saturn 1B file has no APS at all. Also the stage separation thing you added was not added to the S-1B at all and only between the 1st-2nd stage of the Saturn V. It also needs to be between the 2nd-3rd stage decoupler (as its description even mentions).

Does FAR impact heavily on machines then? My rig is several years old but I notice no difference in FPS when I have FAR installed.

Glad it finally went through officially.

The reason why that thing can reach space in KSP and can't in real-life is not the aerodynamics, but rather the struts connecting everything to each other. Unlike real materials, those things won't break or flex. IRL this thing would collapse under its won weight, before aerodynamic flight would even be a consideration. As for me, I wouldn't mind a better model. As DaMichel's example shows, you can still have weird rocket designs and fun blowing things up while at the same time you can have an aerodynamic model that is intuitive and lets you try out real aircraft designs and see why they fly like they do. Real aerodynamics aren't any more difficult than the stock version. Just look at some of the paper plane designs they can produce and you'll realize they understand why some things fly and others don't.

What do these two terms mean? I haven't followed this thread recently, so it all sounds like technobabble to me.

The new F1 sound is just gorgeous. Did you sample it from video or something?