KSK

"This is Billy-Bob Kerman at KNN reporting confirmation from Mission Control. The lander hatch is open, the ladder - my apologies, the personal mobility enhancer - is deployed. Here he comes now! Jebediah Kerman is coming into view, letting go of the lad.. and stepping onto the Mun! And now we're just waiting for those first historic words from the Munar surface..." "Achievement unlocked - Mun Landing!" "Achievement unlocked - Munwalker!" "Achievement unlocked - Saluting the flag!" Urghhh. No thanks. More seriously - what Sal_vager said. Also, the Challenges sub-forum provides an unofficial Achievement list of sorts, if you're looking for new stuff to do.

I was experiencing a lot of crashing myself under OS X (fortunately fixed by turning down the texture quality), so until recently I would have agreed. Not being able to play with full graphics settings is unfortunate but is a long way from being a gamebreaker for me. I would actually flip that statement on its head and argue that the seeming lack of outrage so far (and I've personally never known a gaming community of any stripe that was shy about complaining about bugs and crashes), suggests that the game is stable enough for most players. It's not exactly representative, but taking the Steam reviews for example, I'm seeing 21,265 positive reviews to 385 negative ones. From a quick skim of a couple of pages of negative reviews, there are quite a few complaints about bugs, together with a mix of others including a number of variations on the theme of 'this game is too hard' or '1.0 is less fun than 0.9'. It's also difficult to tell whether 'bugs' on a Steam review are serious game-crashing bugs, minor annoyances, or intended features that aren't working as the reviewer expected. So even out of those 385 negative reviews, it's unclear how many are due to game instability. So, OP has my sympathy and I hope whatever is causing the crashes gets fixed soon, but I don't think Squad were jumping the gun on 1.0.

Fair enough. I can claim a reasonably technical background but in chemistry rather than physics. So my understanding of advanced physics is largely qualitative but yes, I get why KSP has impossible physics without appealing to "different universe, different rules." It's just not a direction I went in personally - I was more 'I'm going to ignore the stupidly high densities of kerbal universe matter' and didn't bother concocting any sort of headcanon to explain it or try and put it into a consistent framework. In fact my own fanfiction scales the Kerbol system back up to Solar system system sizes, partly to avoid having to rationalise any weird physics and partly so I could look up some plausible numbers where required rather than calculating them myself from scratch. But I appreciate where you're coming from after that post - thanks for the very civilised response. I guess it's a little like my objection to single resource ISRU that lets you make rocket fuel from ore/karbonite/kethane/name-your-magic-resource. I can see why Squad chose to simplify ISRU for gameplay purposes but the chemist in me still thinks it would be pretty straightforward to implement a real chemistry version without making things overly complicated. Of course, the chemist in me is also conveniently ignoring the discrepancy involved in running real world chemistry on KSP physics.

@Geschosskopf. As far as I recall, KSP is scaled down for convenience and gameplay reasons, so that getting to places doesn't take as long. After that, gravity, atmospheres and other systems are scaled more or less arbitrarily so that they work at least sort of how you'd expect them to from real life. And yes, I'm aware that there are a whole bunch of points where different players will disagree on how close to real life they are. With that in mind, expecting a fully self-consistent Kerbal universe seems optimistic at best and appealing to that self consistency as the basis of an argument seems futile at best. Back to the original post, first of all kudos to the Space Hippie for posting it, given his (?) previous posts on the topic and secondly - I generally agree with him. IMO, Career mode is still fairly simplistic as management/strategy games go but 1.0 has been a huge step forward and is much more fun to play now.

OK, in reverse order. Opinion - I like the new system. It didn't take long at all to get used to and my designs were pretty much all transferrable to the new aero. Maybe that's just because my previous designs were boring. Neither am I noticing a lot of difference in how I use the engines. The Terrier still makes a decent upper stage booster for 1.25m diameter payloads and a serviceable on-orbit engine for getting larger craft (based on 2.5m parts) to the Mun and landing on it. When I start building heavier things like chunks of space stations, I expect the Poodle will be a useful replacement. Nuclear powered craft I haven't played with yet. Tips: Not really a tip but hopefully some encouragement. This will get to Munar orbit and back. Beyond that - what Eric S said. Watch out for Mach effects and throttle back a bit if necessary, 25km is a more reasonable height to be pointing at 45 degrees (rather than the the old 10-15km) and if you're using SRBs, it might be worth tweaking them for reduced thrust, since they can give you too much thrust to weight for light craft. Good luck!

Not sure if this helps but it looks like the 80m/s figure is only for the capture burn into Eve orbit and is the absolute minimum required for capture. Note the apses for that elliptical orbit - 107km by 85,000 km! To get into a 107km circular orbit requires another 1300 m/s of delta-V which would be more like the amount you're seeing. For interplanetary missions in general, I find Alexmoon's calculator to be invaluable, since it gives you the transfer windows in days, rather than asking you to muck about with phase angles. It's been a while, but for going interplanetary, I normally aim to get an encounter of any sort when setting up my initial transfer burn and then - as you say - doing a mid-course correction. Exact timing isn't critical if I remember rightly and sometimes I found it useful to actually do a slightly larger correction burn later in the journey rather than fiddle around trying to do .1 m/s adjustments. A very useful trick (if you're not already using it) is to use Focus View on your destination when setting up your course correction. Makes it much easier to fine tune the approach when you can see your orbit relative to your target.

Youtubers had no impact on my decision to buy KSP and, with two notable exceptions, very little influence on how I play and how I learned to play. First exception was Pebblegarden's excellent tutorial series - they got me to the Mun back when I was playing the demo. Second exception was (go on - have a guess.. ) Scott Manley - I watched his series on aerodynamics when I was trying to figure out why I could never land my planes. There are a couple of specific videos that I still love - and anything by Nassault (and more recently, Nassault and collaborators) is well worth watching. But I only got into them after I'd already bought the full game. What prompted me to buy KSP was this piece in PC Gamer. After that it was the free demo more than anything and then having a native Mac version right from the outset. The demo made it a no brainer to at least try this interesting looking mini-game that I read about in PC Gamer and having the Mac version was a fantastic example of 'make your product easy to buy and customers will buy it.' I probably would have bought the PC version and played it in Bootcamp but I surely do (and did) appreciate the native version!

Ehh - that cuts both ways. If you've played KSP for months and years you've also had plenty of time to fixate on the bits of the game that you don't like. Outside reviewers are (presumably) coming to the game fresh and see the whole thing rather than a grab-bag of personal pet peeves and soapbox issues. As for 'taking it all in stride without complaint' - I'm not sure which parts of the forum you've been posting on. The complaints are generally constructive but they are very definitely there. As for the memory leaks - I can't speak for Windows users but I refer you to this ongoing thread for OS X.

Hi Meve12, Thanks for reading and dropping by to comment, although at this stage, I'm afraid the only real answer I can give is... possibly. Cheers.

The weight isn't ideal but for ease of use, I'd much rather use a Mk2 can than fiddle around with pairs of Mk1 cans or a Mk1 can and a seat. I don't tend to use either very much though to be honest, so take my opinion with that in mind. Stock is forgiving enough that if I'm sending a single kerbal to the Mun/Minmus, I'll be using a capsule and combining the lander and return vehicle into one. That would probably be the case even I was doing a more elaborate mission with multiple biome hops. By the time I want to send multiple kerbals anywhere, I can build a big enough rocket to brute force the problem anyway. If I was playing a realism overhaul mod or a harder career mode where cost was more of a consideration then I might use the cans more. In stock though, they're usually a roleplaying choice for me.

I wasn't really worried, I just didn't want to enforce anything on other players and require them to put a base on other planet before sending tourists there. It makes sense to you and me and its certainly the way I'd prefer to play, but other players might not want to. Using the 'flag' contract seemed like a good compromise to prevent the tourist contracts from popping up as soon as you've sent a probe somewhere, whilst letting players deal with those tourists as they see fit. I still think we have a different opinion of tourists but let's leave that there. For what it's worth, I like tater's ideas for strategies and the National/Commercial/Tourism sliders. Building on that a little, I think it would be fun to have a computer-controlled rival space agency to play against and to let the contracts you see at least partially reflect the agenda of that rival. For example, if the NPC agency is running a predominantly Tourist strategy, they might put out contracts to have their tourist infrastructure built for them, to resupply that infrastructure, or conceivably to rescue their poor tourists from a mission gone wrong. That would be quite an extension to the game though so it's probably more wishful thinking than anything else at this stage. Edit: Just thought of another reason why I personally wouldn't want to see a base as a prerequisite for tourist contracts - the cruise ship model! Build a large vessel in LKO fitted out with plenty of cabin space (at a minimum, one Hitchhiker per two kerbals), cupola modules etc. Give it a small lander for trips to the surface, maybe a second ISRU equipped lander for refueling. This is a luxury vessel - essentially a flying space station all by itself, so no need for infrastructure at the destination planet. It's also not going to be cheap and almost certainly won't be paid for by a single tourism contract. That's OK though - with ISRU it's effectively got unlimited fuel, so the cost can be amortised over several trips. You know - I think I'm gonna build me one of these!

Ahh - gotcha. Yes that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

Seems a bit much for Kerbin orbit tourism. I can imagine Blue Origin eventually offering tourists relatively short trips of a few hours in space and then home. No need to send those tourists to the nearest Bigelow habitat. Likewise, Apollo 8 style trips around the Moon. They might want to provide slightly more sophisticated sanitation facilities than Apollo had but I can imagine people being willing to spend a week in a capsule to see the Moon up close.

I take your point but I don't see the tourism contracts as a cheap bus tour so much as having a space program for all kerbalkind (well more of it at any rate) than the lucky few picked to be kerbonauts. Speaking personally, that's the approach I'd take. Actually, it's the main reason I've never actually sent a crewed mission beyond Kerbin and it's muns. I've sent probes to Duna but I've never quite had the time to do a 'proper' Duna expedition, with a decent sized ship and infrastructure to support the kerbonauts (even if that's largely imaginary support rather than explicitly modding in life support) whilst they wait for their transfer window back to Kerbin. Sending one kerbal in a Mk1 capsule to Duna, never seemed quite right to me. So yep - I see where you're coming from (and it's a direction that I like) but I'd also be wary of making the game quite that prescriptive. How about only having the tourist missions appearing only once you've completed the relevant 'plant a flag here' contract? Infrastructure not required but the tourists only get to go to a place once it's been proved that kerbonauts can get there.

Bluntly - I wrote my headcanon a long time before kerbal specialisations were added and don't care to change Bill and Bob's roles and characters around now. In-game (according to the wiki at least), stupidity appears to equate to reaction to danger rather than intellectual ability, so I see no contradiction in having Bill as a 'stupid' scientist.

Interesting points. I'm maybe misunderstanding the analogy but that looks pretty close to what we've actually got. Satellite to Duna = fighting the mook and learning the fundamentals. Dramatic boss showdown = landing the tourist. RPG games would normally give you more of a progression between the two points but like I've said, I don't think its necessarily a bad thing that KSP just lets you get on with it without explicitly putting those intermediate steps in. You make a very good point about reputation. If they're not already, then I think it would be sensible to tie tourist contracts into reputation. As you said, kerbals aren't that stupid. Whether tourism should make the trip to Duna economic is also a good question. Personally, I wouldn't be worried about funding the whole mission from the one contract - I'd just treat the tourism contract as one of many revenue generators that made the mission possible. Doing something incredible vs doing something logical. In real life and in-game, one can kill the other In real life, the need for a logical (and economic) case for space exploration is why we haven't done incredible crewed missions beyond LEO (and don't get me wrong, stuff like the ISS is incredible) and a handful of trips to the Moon. In game terms, there's no particular logic in going to Duna since you can 'finish' the game just by going to the Mun or Minmus enough times. So there's no rational reason to go to Duna other than 'because it's there'. With regards to space tourism - I don't see any particular problem in being asked to put a tourist on Duna. Whether that request makes sense will depend on the individual player. After all - I could *ask* NASA to put me on the next flight to the ISS. The chances of them granting my request are microscopically slim to zero though.

First of all, I respect OP's opinion and it's a pity that the game has lost it's fun for him(?). With that said, I think 'harsh constraints' is a bit of an exaggeration. The new atmospheric model has certainly made things different. At the very least, the old 'climb to 10K, pitch over 45 degrees, fly to apoapsis' routine no longer works. Fins are more useful now too. But the new model hasn't stopped Whackjob from putting his insane creations into space. On a less grandiose scale, folks have launched X-Wings into space, along with spaceplanes covering a whole range of designs from 'looks like Skylon' to 'yeah - putting a slightly larger wing on that rocket doesn't really make it a plane mate. ' Likewise for re-entry. Yes, heating makes a difference and yes you need to be a little more careful about re-entry trajectories now. The old 'lower periapsis to the ground and hit atmosphere at any old angle' doesn't work very well. But finding a new trajectory that works isn't hard. I've also seen a thread where one player managed to bring an entire space station back from orbit (less a few parts), so it doesn't look like we're constrained to 'realistic' reentry vehicles either. Spaceplanes constrained to RAPIERS? Not according to the various spaceplane threads. LV-N overheating unrealistic? I haven't got as far as unlocking them yet but it doesn't seem too far fetched for a nuclear reactor to get hot. Some dedicated radiator parts to assist with cooling might be nice but I gather that Regex has found a decent enough workaround already? Great Biome Scavenger Hunt? OK, that's fair - science comes from different missions now and tastes will vary on whether that's a good thing. In my opinion, nerfing the science rewards from contracts has improved career mode a lot. I'm finding that needing to go out into space for science has provided a much needed focus for my space program, to the extent that it's become an exploration program again, backed up by a smaller commercial program to raise funds. In 0.9 it felt like I could do any old thing to get science and as a result my space program felt more like a random collection of contracts. With regard to biome hopping - yeah there's going to be some of that, although so far I've managed to unlock all but one of the 90 point techs and a couple of the 160 point techs, whilst only landing on the Mun once. I've been fairly thorough about getting science from orbit around the Mun and Minmus but it hasn't felt particularly grindy.

Yep - it makes about as much sense as getting a contract for a Mun landing after completing your first kerballed sub-orbital flight. Oh, wait a minute.... It's a stretch goal, an overarching mission that you've been asked to complete - call it what you will. You've shown you can get to Duna, now somebody is challenging you to do more. In my opinion that's the best type of contract as it gives you a long term goal that you can build your space program around. I don't know how long you've got to complete the contract but I'd be surprised if you *had* to launch your tourist on the very next Duna transfer window. Given how generous the time limits for contracts normally are, I'm guessing you've got plenty of time to develop all the technology you need, send scouting missions to Duna, probably even send some infrastructure to Duna if you like. A lot of that will be funded by other contracts of course - the money you get for getting your tourist there won't nearly cover the total costs of your Duna program. But that's OK too - it gives some context to those lesser contracts as they all feed in to your big program. Just my opinion of course but I don't see why a contract has to be tailored to the next incremental step. And if it looks like too much of a stretch or it's taking a player's space program in a direction they don't want to go - why they can always decline the contract. Oh, and tourists. Well kerbals are just crazy for space. Ever since the first orbital missions, well-heeled thrillseekers have been looking for rides into space. It won't stop with Duna either - I fully expect that some lunatic tourist will want a ride to Eeloo one day.

That's the nice thing about a fiction sub-forum - you can write characters to suit yourself. My headcanon versions of Bill and Bob have Bob has the easy going engineer and Bill as the slightly reserved scientist who's fond of some of the good things in life. So this eulogy was exactly the right way around for me. And yes - I do need to remind myself to put Bob - and not Bill - on board in-game if I want a scientist on the crew.

Depends on what you're launching, what other parts you have available, ease of flight and simplicity of staging. Cost is a factor for sure but it's not the only one. To take a recent example from my career game. I wanted to get three kerbals to the Mun and land at least two of them on the surface. Ideally I'd put them there with as much scientific equipment as I have to hand (thermometer, Goo and Science Jr).There are several ways of doing that as you'll know but in the end I opted for a lander based on the Mk1-2 pod, with a crasher stage to handle everything from trans-munar injection to powered descent minus the last 100m/s or so of delta-V needed to land. To get all that into LKO, I have Skippers and BACCs. Not sure about the larger SRBs and they would probably be oversized for the rest of the rocket in any case. I ended up using an all-liquid design, based on a Skipper core with two shorter Skipper based side boosters. No propellant cross-feed, although that might have helped me trim some weight. I was finding that the problem with SRB based designs was that a single Skipper didn't have an efficient thrust to weight ratio once the initial kick from the SRBs was gone. Also, I was finding it difficult to fit enough fins around the core stage - gimballing from a single Skipper didn't give me enough control. Total cost - around 54,000 funds if I remember rightly. Not cheap but not a disastrous price per head to the Mun either and easily affordable given the payouts from any sort of Munar or Minmus contract. For comparison, my previous 3-kerbal design (basically the same ship minus the landing legs and crasher stage) was only capable of orbiting the Mun or Minmus (and not doing much in orbit without running perilously close to empty) and set me back about 30,000 funds. That earlier design was based on a Skipper core and four BACCs. TL: DR. SRBs are great but they're not the answer to everything.

Sounds like one heck of a rescue mission - and that's one heck of a piece of writing to go with it. Very nice first post indeed.

I don't really attach any lore to the resources. In-game they're sufficiently generalised that my rationalisations start to get kinda contrived and I gloss over the finer details (or indeed many details at all ) of propellant combinations in my KSP fiction. I've done some reading up on engines so hopefully my fictional versions of KSP engines make some kind of sense, rather than just being technobabble but fuels - not so much. Which is a bit odd coming from a chemist.

Here you go: It's *very* quick and dirty (not to mention a ridiculous weight for the payload it's protecting) but I'm sure it's possible to build a more elegant version using the same principles and smaller heatshield/fairing parts.

You can certainly overheat in space. As Chris_2 said, convection or conduction don't work for cooling to vacuum. Losing heat by radiation will work eventually but as Sal-vager said, that kind of depends on not being in sunlight. Or you could use a sublimator which evaporates water or other coolant (ammonia?) to cool the spacecraft. EVA suits are designed to keep astronauts cool as much as keeping them warm. The Apollo spacecraft used a Passive Thermal Control roll (aka barbecue mode) to ensure that temperatures were even across the spacecraft systems: From the Apollo 15 Flight Journal: Incidentally, Apollo 13 needed to make more than the expected number of mid-course correction burns to stay within the re-entry corridor on the way home. If I recall correctly, the problem was eventually traced to the thrust caused by the LM sublimators. A trickle of steam over sufficient distance was enough to knock a spacecraft off course. TL: DR - Lots of stuff that I'm *really* glad I don't need to worry about in KSP.

Anyway - as you've probably guessed, we now need your help. Sorry - not intended to be a dig at Rakaydos' comment but the way it was written would fit right in with some KSP contract or other.