KSK

I thought that too but I think it's just a bit repetitious. @0111narwhalz - the opening paragraph might flow a bit better if you took out a couple of 'the sled's? The rest of the chapter was great!

You beat me to it by gum!

A wheel of cheese, some spare towels (gotta know where your towels are) and that one mismatched space sock that nobody can ever find. Like @sojourner and @tater said - it's basically a cargo container.

1.2 not going well then?

Trade it in for a '69 model LEM handcrafted from the original blueprints. Get yo'self a stripped down, tuned up, space racin', Moon landin', flying machine. Absolutely no pimping required.

That seems like a decent trade off. No pilot, no maneuver nodes. I'm OK with things as they are.

Heard the tune. Danced the dance...

Awwww - poor Kerbologists. Complimentary tickets to the Kerball final should cheer them right up.

Sounds like this would make a great mod for those that like the extra realism but I'm struggling to see how it really affects gameplay. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're dealing with antennas with a particular 'range' (however inaccurate that term is) or antennas with a particular bitrate (which might be technically more accurate), the practical upshot is much the same. Want to send a probe further out? Better equip it with a better antenna. And 'antenna range' for all its flaws, at least has the virtue of being easy to visualize. In fact, for probe control, you could think of 'antenna range' as 'maximum range at which practical probe control is possible with that antenna'. The whole notion of probe control as currently depicted in-game isn't realistic anyway (interplanetary distances not being amenable to real-time control), so the added realism of antenna bitrate over antenna 'range' is largely moot anyway, in my opinion. Science transmission - you might have a point here and if game time was important for anything else at all then a better science transmission mechanic might be fun. As it stands, your proposal doesn't seem to add much other than the possibility of timewarping your way through a data transmission if you choose to use a low power antenna? And for uncrewed vessels, given that a high power antenna would be necessary for 'probe control' anyway, then why can't we just transmit the science using that antenna? Summary. Fun if you like added realism or really can't stand the term 'antenna range' but otherwise given the lack of realism in so many other gameplay mechanics, this seems to be realism for realism's sake with no particular benefit to the rest of the game. In my opinion only of course.

That would actually be a really interesting question. What sort of structural shapes would be optimal when you don't have to contend with gravity? Anyone any good at finite element analysis?

Yep - surface tension can do some funny things in zero-g. I'm not surprised that an irrigation system designed to rely on it would be much more powerful than expected.

Depending on the asteroid composition and size (a 'rubble pile' asteroid probably wouldn't be much good), the 'roid itself could be the outer hull of your ship. Dig a hole at one end for a nuclear reactor, dig out more holes at the other end for living space, spray some polymer sealant over the inside for added airtightness if needed, hang some thrusters off it somewhere and presto - one luxury rock-et ship.

Interesting. And that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that @Clockwork was looking for! Simple experiment, fundamental result, easy to write a two or three line summary that could go into a KSP science report.

Sounds like an interesting mod. KSP science - now with actual game-relevant science! The Wikipedia article looks like a useful start (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_in_space) although it's not particularly detailed. NASA also has various articles on plant experiments carried out on the ISS but from what I can see these tend to be public awareness pieces without too much hard detail. Like @kunok I'd like to do some research on this. In the meantime, some possible research topics: Zero-g hydroponics. More of an engineering problem (if we assume that kerbals have already developed hydroponic technology for growing plants on Kerbin) but what's the best way of ensuring adequate contact between plant roots and the hydroponic medium in zero-g? How do we contain, clean and recycle that medium? Germination. Does it work in free-fall? Does the lack of gravitational cues affect early plant development (shoot goes up, roots go down)? Germination 2. Once we know that plants will germinate in free-fall, we need to find ones that will germinate reliably and develop into suitably vigorous plants. Morphology. What does a space-grown plant look like in terms of distribution of shoots and leaves. Do you get long spindly plants or nearly-spherical bushes. How does that affect their ability to photosynthesize and grow? Crops? Do staple kerbal food crops grow in free-fall. Are space greenhouses a realistic prospect? Nutritional content? How does this compare between Kerbin grown and space grown crops. Do space grown crops accumulate excess nutrients (vitamin A would be an example for Earth plants) that could actually be toxic to kerbonauts. Environmental factors. Kunok's ethylene example is a good one, although as a minor nitpick, I would expect that normal air scrubbers aboard a spacecraft would take out the ethylene quite handily. The point still stands though - are there any problems we have to account for simply because we're growing plants in a very constrained, closed environment?

Thanks @superstrijder15 Alrighty then - Kerm healing. Healing, or as the more cynical kerbal scientist might term it 'repair', has always been a vital part of the Kerm-kerbal symbiosis. The Kerm extends one or more subsurface tendrils or vines (commonly known as healing vines) which can burrow through kerbal skin and tissue in much the same way that its leaf hairs can extend through the kerbal skull to effect a neural interface. Biochemically, the two processes are not dissimilar. Where appropriate and necessary, the vines may also enter through natural bodily orifices. The most striking example of this was in the case of the first recorded an-Kerm, Jonton Kermol, whose Kerm effectively became a life-support system, able to remove his wastes and feed him enterally. Once in place, the healing vines primary function is to disinfect wound sites and then accelerate tissue repair and wound healing. From an evolutionary biology perspective, this makes sense; kerbals were originally seed carriers and de-facto soldiers for the Kerm and the ability to repair those carriers and press them back into service would have offered an important advantage. The associated benefit to the kerbals was probably largely incidental. Early kerbal medicine (as on Earth) relied largely on identifying and cultivating beneficial plants, herbs and other natural products. As kerbal science developed, it became clear that the extensive battery of compounds exuded by the Kerm for pest control could have medical implications, particularly for treating bacterial and fungal diseases. By this time of course, the modern system of Kerm, kermol and kerman had been long established and with it, the ability of kerbal Keepers to communicate with their Kerm. Just as Kerm could be persuaded to help with kerbal agriculture, so too could they learn to treat an increased range of kerbal maladies. Typically, Kerm tend to be a measure of last resort for treating bacterial infections, since successful treatment requires extensive and invasive use of the healing vines. However, Kerm healing has some significant limitations, most notably in treating degenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases and proliferative diseases such as cancer. Kerm mediated tissue repair relies on very tight control over cellular proliferation, differentiation and migration - in effect these processes are carefully accelerated in order to rebuild and regrow various tissues. Unfortunately, the cell signaling pathways for all three processes are precisely those which are inactivated or aberrantly regulated in, for example, cancer. Tumours therefore present a welter of conflicting and confusing biochemical cues which the Kerm is simply unable to deal with. At best, it is unable to treat the tumour, at worst, it actually accelerates that tumour's growth or ability to metastasize.

Heh. I've had this particular chunk of worldbuilding in my head for a while, so it's not holding anything else up. Currently in a spot of creative procrastination regarding actual chapter writing - so the epilogue is going well but the next chronological chapter is only about halfway done. I'm a bit stuck finding a suitable POV to work through a couple of plot points - I could literally just infodump them in a paragraph or two but that doesn't make particularly good reading. Writing about war is also rather gloomy - the next chapter is all a bit Mark Knopfler which isn't helping. "These mist covered mountains. Are a home now for me. But my home is the lowlands - and always will be. Some day you'll return to. Your valleys and your farms. And you'll no longer burn to be brothers in arms." Anyhow - better get to work. More on Kerm healing to come at lunch.

Me too - not an aspect of kerbal society that I'd thought about before now As for what neonates are called, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a leaf out of your book and call them kerblings. And yes, neonatal care is a definite medical speciality. Kermol mothers are (understandably) extremely careful to avoid injuries to, or falling on their pouches (and the pouches themselves are fairly resilient and shock absorbing) but accidents do happen. Sadly, the Kerm aren't a lot of help for the very smallest kerblings - healing vines are simply too clumsy at that scale and are likely to cause more damage than they mend. They start being useful about the time a kerbling is transitioning to a kerblet but even then it can be touch and go for very young kerblets. I have another wall o' text on Kerm healing (and its limits) if you're interested? Jake's rather melancholy opening to 'Beyond the Next Frontier', prompted me to put some notes together.

Absolutely none whatsoever. Correction - almost none whatsoever. For the stock game, the gravitational model used is a simplified Newtonian model, that is a force between two (and only two) bodies which obeys an inverse square law. It makes no difference at all whether we assume that force is due to an emergent phenomenon of some kind, spooky action at a distance, or magical strands of invisible unicorn hair which bind the Kerbal universe together. Most mods will use that simplified model too, although I know of one that implements n-body physics and I suppose if you were crazy keen, you could mod in gravity based on general relativity, although in practice it would amount to tiny tiny corrections to Newtonian gravity at the speeds normally attainable in KSP. Likewise, I suppose you could mod in Verlinde gravity if you really wanted to. No idea how it would affect interstellar mods. Depends whether those mods actually attempt to take relativistic effects into account. If we're trying to 'explain' the kerbal universe (for example the existence of super-dense planets), then we're into the realm of fiction anyway. As it stands, the kerbal universe simply wouldn't work, so again, it makes little difference how gravity is supposed to work in that universe.

Agree with the sentiment but I also note that my paying customers level up from a trip in the same way that my 'trained' kerbonauts do... #GreenSpamInACan.

Assuming that solid hydrogen is metastable, wouldn't any practical applications depend on how metastable it is? That superconducting hydrogen cable isn't going to be much use if a hefty sneeze is enough to trigger sublimation back to hydrogen gas.

Sorry about that. Maybe its a Mac thing.

Yes - a bit of a happy accident but Kerm makes a very good four letter word (literally of course but figuratively as well). It's got the right hard syllables (like certain human four letter words) that you can inflect in so many ways to imply anything from jublilation to mild vexation to 'if somebody doesn't get out of my face right now, there's going to be trouble.' And @Ten Key as always is spot on. Having a conveniently forum friendly cuss word has been very helpful for writing dialogue.

Heh. The kerbaldebate over evolution was different that's for sure. My kerbals are largely non religious. That's a personal choice - I'm not a religious man myself and so don't really have much of a feel for it, a place where I could stand and write about a kerbal faith with any sort of conviction or authority. On the other hand, I don't have any particular beef against religion and, for example, am completely cool with @JakeGrey's Kerweh (although I might have objected to Kod - the very cheapest and laziest overuse of K-words in my opinion) in The Next Frontier. Not something I'd choose to write in myself but spaceflight had an extremely deep, spiritual effect on several human astronauts, so I see no reason why that couldn't happen to my kerbonauts too, especially when they really start venturing out into deep space. There's nothing quite like a close up look at the infinite to make you wonder if there really are more things in the universe than are dreamed of by your philosophy. In-universe, I think that lack of religion also makes a certain sort of sense. I've written about this elsewhere (possibly on this thread?) but for obvious reasons, my prehistoric kerbals never really had much truck with the notion of nature spirits and the like. They knew exactly what caused bountiful crops and fertile tribes - and best of all they learned that they could ask really nicely and reliably get both on demand. Hence the concept of invoking unseen powers to explain natural phenomena (and with that, an important factor driving religious tendencies) never really gained any traction. Put another way, in a very real sense, kerbals have always walked amongst their gods. They didn't need to believe in them any more than they needed to believe in the sky or the grass under their feet. This may also explain the majority of kerbal oaths - where a human would swear on a god or a heaven, kerbals will reliably swear on the Kerm. To cut a long story short, when my kerbals first started seriously thinking about their origins, they weren't especially perturbed by the concept that they had evolved from another species. Once the idea had been floated and the evidence started to accumulate, it just made sense. However, the notion that they had evolved from the actual Kerm themselves was a very popular one. In his or her heart of hearts, it's a thought that the average kerbal finds deeply comforting - although the recent revelations about their history have shaken that somewhat. Regardless, the popular notion that kerbals evolved from the Kerm made it harder than it might otherwise have been for competing theories to get a fair hearing. And on a completely different note, I got about a chapter and a half written last week. The bad news is that one of those was the very last chapter so it won't be seeing the light of day for a while. I suppose the good news is that there is a last chapter.

I've found the buttons (usually on the Main menu) to be buggy in 1.21. Try closing the whole game window then cancelling when KSP asks whether you're sure. That kicks the in-game buttons back to life for me.

Need to cook a steak in a hurry? Toasters make convenient one-shot steak grills.