KSK

Being pedantic, you wouldn't use radiocarbon dating over geological timescales, because it's half life is too short. Other radiometric dating techniques such as uranium-lead or potassium-argon dating are used though. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start. It discusses some of the points which need to be taken into account for accurate dating, although I think the underlying assumption is that half lives are indeed constant. Various results have been reported suggesting that radioactive decay might vary seasonally - with heavy emphasis on the might, but as far as I know nobody has proved it one way or the other. And in any case, seasonal variations could probably be accounted for in your radiometric date. Short answer - no we can't absolutely positively guarantee that decay rates don't change, but the vast bulk of the available evidence suggests they are constant.

That was my take on it too. The outgassing gives it the blue colour - from a distance at least. Rather like this.

Find a part of Mars that you don't need and drop a couple of dirty snowball comets on it. The logistical practicalities of that, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

There was a lot of in-fighting in the Soviet programme. Different designers at different bureaus each having their own ideas on the best way forward and each (to a greater or lesser extent) vying for approval from the political leadership. Said leadership being rather volatile (to put it kindly), with unrealistic expectations and more inclined to regard failure as deliberate sabotage rather than an inevitable part of testing a complex experimental technology. So, yeah - what Nibb31 said. Source: http://www.amazon.com/The-Soviet-Space-Race-Apollo/dp/0813026288, an excellent, if somewhat dry book, which I highly recommend. - - - Updated - - - Exactly. Witness the response to the last SpaceX launch. Main mission accomplished, secondary test goals (landing the booster) darn nearly accomplished, with failure anticipated from the outset (because, you know - it was a test.) And yet, all the stories in the media were about the failure to land the booster. The Space Review had an interesting article on it (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2676/1), TL: DR - people don't get testing, the media least of all.

I'm honestly not trying to be snarky, but what about Science mode? Doesn't that do much the same thing that you're looking for? OK, you don't get *any* building upgrades that way, but if you want to cut out the Tier 1 to Tier 2 upgrades anyway, you've already got rid of much of the gameplay involved in building upgrades. As far as I can see, the buildings go a bit like this: Tier 1. LKO reasonably straightforward, anything beyond that is a challenge. Tier 2. Most things are now possible including interplanetary. Tier 3. Go nuts.

Probably. For added fun, any wet body parts would explode first, or at least burn rapidly and painfully. I'm thinking eyeballs and mucous membranes - which conveniently includes most parts of your body that you really care about.

Why thank you! I'll definitely be giving your design a go too - SSTO rockets are not something I've played with and I'm kinda intrigued.

Nice twist on the junkyard origin theme. Looking forward to finding out who 'he' is, and whether this is a case of the sun shining brightest on a new start, or the sun shining brightest - right before you're completely stuffed. I suspect the former, but this story could go either way!

I like the news room.

That's what I do if possible and it seems to work OK. It's not much help if you need to get out and push though.

It didn't seem that complicated but maybe I've been playing too long! I will say that mine is quite forgiving to actually pilot, even if you need to pilot it reasonably well to get to orbit. The lowish thrust on the Poodle means that the second stage burn is quite long which gives you time to react if you're still getting used to orbiting stuff. Plus mine gives you a dinky little spaceship to fly about once you get to orbit, rather than a hulking great Jumbo-64. Either way, that's two, low part count ships for the OP to try out! Edit - pic.

Provided your R&D facility is at level 2 or higher (or you're playing Sandbox or Science modes), you can transfer data to the pod and get it to the surface that way. No need to make your science lab detachable.

Cool. Pictures to follow tonight, but this is pretty easy to describe. I wouldn't really call it advanced either - more like 'bare minimum to orbit', but it does work and it's quite a nice demonstration that you don't always need a monster rocket. The design breaks down into four sections, each linked by a Rockomax brand decoupler. Section 1: Crew compartment. Take a Mk1-2 capsule (the same one that you're using in your design). Put a Mk16-XL parachute on top. Done! Section 2: Service module. Start with a Rockomax X200-8 fuel tank (shortest tank having the same diameter as the base of your capsule). Connect it to your capsule with a decoupler. Put an LV909 engine on the bottom. Add a solar panel to each side - I used the SP-L 1-6 but more on this later. Section 3: 2nd stage. Connect a Rockomax X200-16 fuel tank to the bottom of your Service Module with another decoupler. Stick a Rockomax Poodle engine on the bottom. Section 4: 1st stage. Using (you guessed it!) another decoupler, attach a Rockomax X200-32 tank to the bottom of your second stage. Stick another X32 tank under it, and a Rockomax Mainsail engine under that. This is basically the same as the first stage of your design. Stick four AV-R8 steerable winglets around the bottom of the rocket. Add launch clamps to taste. Design notes This is a very basic orbital craft. It will put three kerbals into low Kerbin orbit, with enough fuel leftfor some orbital maneuvers, including that all important de-orbit burn to get your Kerbals home. Warranty void if you attempt to take the craft out of Kerbin orbit. The design is basically a long tube. It keeps everything in-line and almost entirely symmetrical. As you've already found, this keeps the craft balanced and makes it a whole lot easier to fly. The fuel budget is fairly tight, so it may need some practice to get to orbit, but it will get there. I'll have a think about a more forgiving design. Engine choice. The Mainsail has bags of thrust but isn't terribly efficient. That makes it a decent choice for a main engine, since you need plenty of thrust to get the fully fueled rocket off the launch pad. In contrast, the Poodle is efficient but has relatively poor thrust. It's a good second stage engine for both reasons - the second stage engine is pushing a much lighter rocket so doesn't need enormous amounts of thrust, and a high efficiency second stage minimises the amount of fuel that the first stage needs to lift. Finally, the LV909 is a deliberately small engine since it's only going to be used to finish your climb to orbit, and for orbital maneuvering. Again, high efficiency good, high thrust not required. Note: The Poodle is not generally regarded as the best choice stats-wise, but it makes for a much simpler design (as it's sized to fit with the other Rockomax parts), and I personally find that it gives a nice flight profile. Possible modifications. If you want a more general workhorse craft for orbital operations, you could try the following steps: 1. Strip out the decoupler between your capsule and Service Module. This is primarily included for aesthetics, so that you can deorbit your crew behind a heat shield. However, unless you're using realism mods, there is no atmospheric heating to take into account, so deorbiting the capsule and service module together is fine. 2. Swap out the relatively heavy solar panels for lighter ones. 3. Replace the XL parachute with a docking port, 4. Add a pair of radially mounted parachutes to the capsule. 5. You could also try stripping off the winglets for another small weight saving. The Mainsail gimbals should be enough for steering. Pilot checklist Important - this design does not include an SAS module, so a pilot will be required. Press T to engage SAS. Press Z to throttle up to max. Check your staging sequence (bottom left of screen). All set? Good - KSC, we are Go for launch! Press Space... Fly straight up to 9-10,000 metres. Pitch over 45 degrees, heading due East, or as close as you can manage. Your first stage should flame out shortly afterwards. You should be flying at around 800 m/s. Drop the first stage and fire up the Poodle. The rest of the flight to orbit is much easier to do from the Map screen. Slowly pitch over to 90 degrees, keeping an eye on your apoapsis. As a rule of thumb, I tend to keep at 45 degrees until my apoapsis hits 30 km, then start the final pitch over. By the time my apoapsis is at 60-65 km, my capsule nose will be pointing along the horizon. Wait till your apoapsis hits 100km (roughly - anything above 70km is fine!) and shut down your engines. Coast up to apoapsis. Restart your engines just before you get there and keep burning until your periapsis gets above 70 km. Your second stage will run out of fuel mid-burn, so just drop it and finish with your service module engine.

Grats! You always remember your first orbit. Without wishing to tell you how to play though, you can make it to orbit with much simpler rockets that you might find easier to fly whilst you're getting the hang of things. Happy to post a couple of suggestions here if you like, but I don't want to spoiler you!

Just a quick comment. If you're comfortable getting to Minmus, I highly recommend starting there instead, since you'll need far less fuel for your lander to get down to the surface and back up to your lab. Plus you'll get more science points from exploring Minmus. Design-wise, I don't have much to add to the rest of this thread. The one time I did this, my space station consisted of a mobile lab with a docking port on one end, a Hitchhiker module (because role-playing), and a fuel tank + engine to get the whole thing out to Minmus. A fairly simple in-line design that sits nicely on top of a booster. These days you might need to include a probe core, or somewhere to put a pilot, to give you SAS control. I sent the space station up on one launcher, got it to Minmus and then sent the lander over separately. I didn't bother retrieving the lab at the end.

Hi, I'm running on a Mac as well. Vanilla install, no mods, so all the key bindings should be on default. I'll have a poke around tonight and see if I can help. In the meantime it sounds like we're using the same keyboard, but what mouse are you using?

I don't tend to use any of them for rockets (which probably means I'm not building big enough rockets ), but Offset is golden for planes.

This. That's cool. It makes a nice blank canvas for players to project their own imaginings on.

Got paid to launch a very simple satellite into a Kerbin polar orbit. The hardware was unremarkable but I was very happy with the flight planning. Nailed the launch window, popped the satellite into a nice circular parking orbit, standard Hohmann transfer up to the requested orbit. Job done. There's some slack built into the mission requirements of course, but hitting a close enough orbit first time with no corrections (particularly plane corrections) required felt good.

You're welcome, and yeah I know that feeling. Nearly as bad as looking at a partially scribbled on bit of paper and wondering where the geep to go next.

Favourite tweet from the whole event: Forget grid fins - Musk has got his Jebediah flag jammed all the way over. Edit. Hey c'mon mods. I agree that we don't want the forum littered with bad language, but I think that editing out 'naughty bottom' was a little over-sensitive.

Following on from AndrewBCrisp's post, having multiple populations in different habitats gives you a fairly easy route into all sorts of politics, ideological mismatches and inter-faction conflicts of greater or lesser destructiveness. All useful plot-fodder and good for possible reasons why the ship broke apart in the first place.

Is the planet rotating? It looks like you're displaying things from the 'wrong' frame of reference, so that rather than displaying a fixed orbit with a rotating planet, you're displaying a fixed planet with a rotating orbit. Both are valid but the first one might be more intuitive to use!

I don't quite agree with some of Nibb31's examples. Star Trek was originally aired in 1966 (just a shade under 50 years ago), and the classic flip-top communicator is a pretty fair imagining of a cell phone. Likewise, 20,000 leagues under the sea was published in 1870. Obviously it wasn't going to describe a nuclear powered submarine, but the basic idea of a very long range submarine is definitely there. But that's just nit-picking really. I completely agree that 1000 year futurology predictions are meaningless. Also, for any sort of concerted move into space, we're going to need a) a good reason to go and sufficient maturity as a species that space looks like a good option compared to the alternatives. For example - continued population growth and overcrowding might provide an incentive, but the more likely outcome is population control via war and famine. I'm not optimistic on point . If you want some optimistic science fiction though, here are my thoughts for the next hundred years. Launching Big stuff (read infrastructure creating infrastructure) is launched by SpaceX style reusable or partially reusable boosters. Crew and supplies are launched by Skylon or one of its descendants. First lunar space elevator is being constructed. Infrastructure Cis-lunar space is comparatively busy. Most space infrastructure is based on captured asteroids (capture, mine out, re-purpose), and is focused on mining/refining, tourism, supply depots and (slowly) off-world manufacturing. I'll go out on a limb and say power generation too. There is a moon base. Telescopes and other instruments have been set up on the moon, but they are largely autonomous and not permanent crewed installations. Looking further afield Elon Musk's vision of voyages to Mars is slowly taking shape. The asteroid belt is being mapped in detail by robotic probes. No human presence, or plans for human presence beyond Mars.

Nice launch pics! Going to be interesting to see how the race shapes up if UCKK are beating them to the transfer.