KSK

Good point. Val has them though....

I think that ship's sailed. Or rather Jerdous is already possessed but is still fighting it. I suspect it all began with his little desert excursion...

Well, if you do punch another brick in the wall... Is the other doctor (no the other other one) a Dr Floyd Kerman by any chance? OK, this is horribly self-indulgentl but I don't care. I smiled. Then I laughed. Two more excellent chapters - I particularly liked the initial quick checkup!

Caution - sweeping generalisations ahead. Because people starving on Earth has less to do with agriculture than it does economics. Half the people on Earth are starving, the other half are worried about obesity and diabetes. I think something's wrong with that picture somewhere. I can't link to it from work but go ahead and do a search for Debtris. Watch the video. We spend ludicrous amounts of money on some equally ludicrous things, including finding ever more expensive and unnecessary (from many different angles) ways of killing each other and fixing the global economy from a meltdown caused by the greedy, short-sighted, 'this time our infinite money making scheme really will work - honest' point-one-percenters. In that context we shouldn't even have to justify space flight. Enough people think it's cool and exciting, so lets just get on with it. Sadly that argument doesn't seem to wash.

Pretty much. Started a career game, launched a couple of rockets, decided to build a wee plane to go do a couple of Kerbin observation contracts. Cobbled together a plane out of the appalling mishmash of parts that the first Flight tech tree node gives you - Tier 1 cockpit and fuselage, with an air intake thats functionally useless with those parts, and a Tier 0 engine and undercarriage. Seriously? Whatever I did, the wretched thing just turned donuts on the runway until it wobbled out of control and exploded. Considered starting a sandbox game, remembered that there's naff all to do at any destination once you get there and decided that I couldn't be bothered. Did not finish the session with 'wow that was a fun session of puzzle solving - maybe I'll solve it tomorrow' feeling, so much as a 'welp that's two hours of my life that I'll never get back' resignation. I've got enough stress and irritation in my life at the moment. I do not need more of the same from my 'entertainment'.

Well I think that's a personal best. Tried playing a little KSP tonight and after a couple of hours I'm afraid my overwhelming reaction was 'I waited a year for this?' I got me an uglier, buggier, even-less-logical game, with a UI that frankly makes my eyes hurt and parts that don't work. The performance may well be better but that's a moot point if I can't care about playing for long enough for that to become a factor. Likewise I could wait for the mods to catch up and try and wrestle the game into something vaguely fun to play but you know what - I've got better things I could do with my time. Like finishing up First Flight - because writing about KSP is way more fun than going through the stress and irritation of playing it. Bleh.

This. I may conceivably play an Ironman save using nothing but rockets. For any game involving planes - forget it. Life's too short and new kerbals are too expensive.

Which doesn't sound any better. Please edit the configuration file because the in-game settings panel is borked. Whoopee. And save me from this 'real computer users expect to use the config file' line of mulch. For the record, I'm perfectly capable of doing so, but I think it reflects extremely badly on an allegedly release quality version of a piece of software. Anyhow, problem fixed - as per my earlier post - so lets move on.

I had a similar problem. Game started in lowest resolution - which meant that half the graphics sliders were missing due to being off-screen, including the slider to change resolution. Well played, Squad - well played. Fortunately, changing the resolution from the Launcher fixed that. Have you tried switching off the anti-aliasing? That worked for me. Makes the game look that bit uglier but better than having no game at all.

Just a quick follow up to this. Full screen mode didn't make any difference either way - the problem seems to be with the anti-aliasing. I can max out the other graphics settings but the game just hangs with any level of anti-aliasing switched on. A bit annoying but I guess that jaggies aren't the end of the world. Thanks again for the suggested fix.

You're welcome - and if you're going to butter me up like that... OK, first specific point is in this paragraph: "The snacks were successful in their purpose, as they managed to lure Jeb into the pod, Bill, who was in charge of assembling the spacecraft, quickly ran over and sealed the hatch shut, which Jeb did not seem to care about or even notice, as he was happily eating the snacks, while Jeb was distracted eating the snacks the capsule was quickly carried out to the Launchpad, at this point Jeb finished eating the snacks and began trying to figure out how to escape the capsule, but before he could open the door the gunpowder was ignited and the capsule was sent flying up into the air." You could get away with cutting out a couple of surplus snacks there. They make for tubby kerbals (not good for getting through command pod hatches ) and they break up the flow of the paragraph. Plus some of the sentences run on a little. How about this? "The snacks were successful in their purpose, as they managed to lure Jeb into the pod. Bill, who was in charge of assembling the spacecraft, quickly ran over and sealed the hatch shut, which Jeb did not seem to care about or even notice, as he was happily eating the snacks. Whilst Jeb was distracted, eating the snacks the capsule was quickly carried out to the Launchpad, at this which point Jeb finished eating the snacks and began trying to figure out how to escape the capsule, but before he could open the capsule door the gunpowder was ignited and the capsule was sent flying up into the air." I've tweaked the punctuation a bit to make the sentences shorter and cut out some of those snacks. I think the paragraph reads a little easier now - your mileage may vary. Which brings me on to a second point - passivity. This is one that I have to guard against a lot in my own writing - I find it very easy to slip into but it does make for overly long-winded prose. Have a look at those last ten words: "and the capsule was sent flying up into the air." The big clue is the word 'was'. Why tell your readers that something was happening or that something did happen when you can just narrate what actually happened. Like so: "Whilst Jeb was distracted, the capsule was quickly carried out to the Launchpad, at which point Jeb finished eating and began trying to figure out how to escape. But before he could open the capsule door the gunpowder was ignited and sending the capsule was sent flying up into the air!" Or: "Whilst Jeb was distracted, the capsule was quickly carried out to the Launchpad, at which point Jeb finished eating and began trying to figure out how to escape. But before he could open the capsule door, Joe ignited the gunpowder was ignited and sending the capsule was sent flying up into the air!" One last point - long sentences. Sometimes they're fine but make them too long and your readers end up out of breath! For example: "While happily devouring a mountain of snacks the crew realized that they were supposed to be running a space program, and quickly looted the nearest town for spare garbage cans, after narrowly escaping the authorities they arrived back at their space center, they then duct-taped two garbage cans together to make an even bigger booster, filled it with gunpowder, once again lured Jeb inside it, and set it on the pad." Aaaaanddd, breathe! Again, personal preference but I think this reads a little easier: "While happily devouring a mountain of snacks the crew realized that they were supposed to be running a space program, and quickly looted the nearest town for spare garbage cans. After narrowly escaping the authorities they arrived back at their space center, duct-taped two garbage cans together to make an even bigger booster, and filled it with gunpowder. Once again they lured Jeb inside and set it on the pad. They also duct-taped an additional garbage can filled with snacks onto the craft, to study what happens to snacks when subjected to the force of acceleration of a rocket. This would give them essential knowledge for keeping orbiting spacecraft in orbit supplied with snacks once they reached space, and also for transporting Mint Ice Cream from Minmus." Apologies for the additional impromptu copy-editing! However the phrase 'once they reached space' was kinda redundant given that we were already talking about orbiting spacecraft. I suppose we could be ultra-pedantic and argue that a spacecraft can orbit at any height above the ground - but orbiting in a near vacuum is a lot easier. Also adding the 'from Minmus' at the end puts the Mint Ice Cream into context. Actual last point - and I mean it this time. Your story - your rules! I've just given you my opinion which is absolutely not the last word on the subject. If you feel that your version read just fine or have your own ideas on how to change things - fantastic! If you were thinking, "well thanks all the same, KSK but that really wasn't what that part of the story was getting at so I'll just ignore that comment" - that's great!! Finding your own style is what its all about. Whew - that went on a bit longer than I expected. Hope it helped a little. Most of all - have fun - and I look forward to reading Part 2 of Kerbol eXploration as and when you have the time to write it!

Hi Dolphin, Always good to see more writers on the forum - welcome to the thread! First of all - congratulations! There's a huge difference between 'gee, I'd like to write some of this down some day' and actually getting around to putting words to page. That's the biggest step taken - the rest is just practice. I liked your report. It was lighthearted, very kerbal, and fun to read. I have a couple of specific comments on the text - can post them if you really want but to be honest, I imagine your style will evolve quite a bit anyway as you keep writing, so there's probably not a lot of point getting too hung up on technicalities at this stage. On a personal note, I find the jump from descriptive prose to film script style dialogue a little jarring but that might just be me. My stuff is entirely picture free anyway, so some of the other folks on this thread will probably give you better tips on what works well with a screenshot heavy report.

Changing a config file to get a game to even run - are we stuck in the 90s here? I'm getting bad emm386 flashbacks. On a less snippy note, thanks for the quick reply and I'll try the fix tonight. I did notice a setting in the graphics options for enabling full screen mode - will that work too, or do I need to edit the config file manually?

Nothing to discuss - game won't start. Not a very impressive experience so far: Launch game - default resolution is low enough to obscure the UI control for changing resolution. Start game anyway - hang. Force quit, restart, set resolution at Launcher, start game - hang. On OSX at least this isn't at all supercharged. More like wheel spinning. Time to go root through the support forum.

Thanks! Welcome to the thread - glad you found us and hope you enjoy the rest of the story. The next chapter is chugging along. Probably won't be quite finished by the weekend but it should be getting close to it.

Yeah. I had to look up carbynes: "In organic chemistry, a carbyne is a general term for any compound whose molecular structure includes an electrically neutral carbon atom with three non-bonded electrons, connected to another atom by a single bond." So - take a polyethylene molecule and strip off all the hydrogen atoms. That's going to react with pretty much anything nearby, so no, it won't be stable outside of the nanotube sheath. I'm also not sure why carbyne would be stronger than an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWP, for example Dyneem or Spectra). In both cases the mechanical properties arise from having a single chain of carbon atoms, the difference being that UHMWP is effectively that chain sheathed in hydrogen atoms, whereas carbyne is that chain sheathed in a separate molecule. Lovely chemistry, usual premature guff about the 'real world' applications of that chemistry. Edit. Incidentally UHMWPs are strong enough to build a lunar space elevator.

It's a promising result for sure but as Nibb31 says, too early stage to draw any conclusions. The blastocyst is basically a hollow ball of cells surrounding a fluid filled cavity with a larger clump of cells attached to the inner surface. The ball will eventually develop into the placenta, the clump will develop into the amniotic sac and the embryo inside. So says Wikipedia at any rate. Now, the blastocyst itself develops from a smaller, solid ball of cells, so clearly the cells have had to move around to produce a hollow ball from a solid ball. I'm not a cell biologist, so I don't know how that movement occurs but I'd be very surprised if it could be significantly affected by gravity simply because cells are so small that any force responsible for moving them around will be massively stronger than any gravitational force acting on the cells. Later on in development, I can imagine that mechanical forces between developing tissues will become increasingly important and those kind of forces may be affected by zero-g.

No worries. OK, according to Project Rho, a solid core NTR operates at 2750K or 2476 degrees Celsius. The equivalent Wikipedia article suggests up to 3000K. Either way, that's plenty hot enough to boil beryllium and we can probably assume it's also plenty hot enough to decompose beryllium hydride to beryllium and hydrogen. So the question once again becomes one of materials. What will beryllium vapour do to the inside of your engine? The answer is - I'm not sure and couldn't find much on the internet. Beryllium alloys are prized for their strength, light weight and thermal properties, so beryllium infiltration into the engine walls might actually improve them. On the other hand, if that causes a phase change (the new beryllium alloy having a different crystal structure to the underlying metal), then that would probably be bad and lead to spallation and erosion of the engine surfaces. On the other hand, beryllium itself might not make a bad engine material. Beryllium has also been selected as the blanket (plasma facing) material for ITER. So perhaps an actively cooled beryllium lining for your NTR would be the way forward? The main problem with using beryllium compounds as propellant is that global production of the stuff is only a few hundred tonnes per annum and it's useful in so many applications that using it for rocketry seems unlikely.

I'm bowing out. There's a couple too many hypotheticals in here for me, and I lack the physics to discuss them in any sort of meaningful manner. Have fun with the debate.

It's not a bad idea at all - but a story mode has been suggested quite a few times already. The trick would be to have enough of a story to be worth having one at all, whilst leaving it sufficiently open-ended that the player doesn't feel like they're being railroaded through it.

Agreed. I think (although I'm not sure) that most of the game mechanics are already in place. It really would be just a matter of dressing them up with some suitable flavour text to provide a narrative to that sequence of contracts. In turn, that narrative provides a reason for your fictional space program to undertake those contracts other than 'grind random puzzles for loot'. It's a small difference perhaps - after all it wouldn't make any difference at all to gameplay. But I think it would make a substantially more immersive Career game.

@Kerbart I like it! That introduction would be a good place to refer back to previous contracts too, or at least you could write the text making it vague enough that it looks like it ties back to a previous contract. For example: Introduction: After a recent stock-clearing sale at Flood Dynamics, company managers were unsure what to do with their left-over parts. After taking a straw poll in the company canteen, they decided to launch a science mission to [PLANET/MOON], Naturally, this is where you come in. Mission brief: Flood Dynamics have graciously offered to sponsor a science mission to investigate [PLANET/MOON] and have asked you to send a satellite there, gather some research data and transmit the data back to Kerbin. The satellite should include a Thermometer and Mystery Goo. Your example (maybe with its tenses tweaked a little ) would then be the follow up contract to move that satellite into a different orbit. Not the greatest example perhaps, but it would link the two contracts into a mini-story, making them a bit more engaging.

Respectfully, I disagree. It's attention to that kind of detail that turns a good game into a great one. For better or for worse, Career mode is built around the contracts system, so anything that improves the 'look and feel' of the contracts is only going to enhance Career mode as a whole. Procedurally generated doesn't have to be a synonym for rubbish. At the very least, if they can't make sense, make them funny. And if they can't be funny, make them varied. The current briefings are neither funny (although admittedly this is subjective), nor varied.

That's pretty - thanks for the link! I have to admit to chuckling at the 'launches from KSC' stat. Took me a second to parse that one correctly.

Sounds about right. At the moment, spaceflight is still pretty much a zero-sum game, so new company growth is going to be at the expense of existing players. But $1.8 billion? Why you can barely buy half a data mining opportunity - sorry 'smartphone app' for that much.