KSK

I like the 'clearing it's orbit' definition personally, for the same reason that you pointed out regarding Saturn's moons. Formally, I think that only applies to planets though?

Kerbal Construction Time really makes Career mode more fun for me. Having research and building happen in the background whilst I'm flying missions makes my space program feel much more cohesive, and it gets around the mid-game dip between unlocking most of the science tree and waiting for the first interplanetary transfer windows to open. After that, I add a few roleplaying restrictions - like providing living space on anything longer than a Mun flight, putting comsats up, and returning to Kerbin in capsules. I should probably try out DRE and RemoteTech at some point. Hard mode is a step too far at the moment though. I see the attraction, but with limited play time, its a bit too unforgiving.

Yup - I'm very curious to see what the official take is on kerbal culture!

There's quite a lot of material to condense into a single post, so (if you'll excuse the plug), its probably easiest to follow the First Flight link in my signature. It's definitely fan fiction, but if you skip over the spaceflight chapters, there's stuff in there about kerbal government, history, societal organisation, snacks, sports, hobbies, and architecture. Edit: Not to mention family life and why all in-game kerbals have the same surname. Quote from the thread: If you don't have time or inclination to read the whole thing, Echoes of Time, is probably the key chapter. It's all on my forum blog too, if you want to read it without added comments.

Likewise - looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Six lines isn't a great deal to go on, but they're an interesting six lines, and new writing is always a good thing! So yes - please do make a story out of it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of 'K' names, so crashing somewhere other than Kiberia would be good. That's just me though - at the end of the day it's your story, so name things as you see fit.

It's only a work-around rather than a fix, but I make sure to have my capsule oriented normal to my direction of flight (as if I was changing orbital plane). Doesn't stop my kerbal being flung off into space, but I find that once I activate the EVA pack, I'm automatically in a parallel plane with the capsule hatch. Which makes it a *lot* easier to fly over, grab onto the ladder and climb back in.

I like this map. Simple, room to add your own touches and largely free of K-syndrome

Side effect of a blood based on copper containing oxygen transporters. Protection from sunlight (admittedly green may not be optimal for this). Evolved for sexual attraction (maybe the greenest kerbal is seen as the most attractive ). Also, Kerbin has trees too, so the kerbals could eat fruit or nuts.

Bacon is a herb...

That's an interesting idea too, and one that I thought about writing about. My gut feeling - not backed up by any numbers - is that kerbal photosynthesis would only really work as a last ditch emergency option, to keep the kerbal alive in hibernation. Good for passengers on long distance spaceflights, but not as good for the crew. The reason being that I don't think there's enough surface area on a kerbal body to produce enough glucose (or whatever nutrient they need - glukose? ) to keep them in a more active state by photosynthesis alone. It would definitely explain their green colour though.

It makes perfect sense. Smaller kerblets would get around the problem too, and in some ways I guess marsupialism is just that idea taken to extremes. Why thank you! I don't know if you got as far as 'Echoes of Time', but that's the key chapter that draws all my ideas on kerbal society together. It does include a lot of spoilers though Heh - it worked for the Bugs (looking at your signature here ) so why not!

Opening caveats duly noted, but.... it's back!!

How to put this delicately. Childbirth is only borderline feasible in humans, so I personally don't see it working too well with kerbal sized heads. In my headcanon, kerbals are bigendered and marsupial. So yes, you do get female kerbals, and they're pouched, slightly larger overall and slightly broader across the torso to accomodate the pouch. No breasts because they don't nurse externally. Hadn't really thought about their heads much, but hair length is more a signal of age and current fashion, than gender. But that's just me. You can make up many other scenarios. As far as names go, I'm with the Admiral. Apart from the 'obviously' male names, most kerbal names are pretty neutral. I've written male and female characters into my fanfic, all with names taken in-game, borrowed from screenshots or produced using an online kerbal name generator.

Quantity and quality. Congrats on the (double) milestone Sal!

Does the Inkredible Kulk sport a mighty collection of tattoos? Also what colour does a kerbal hulk turn?

Incidentally, if anyone is looking for a good vegetable cookbook, try searching (on your search engine or online store of choice) for 'Veg everyday' by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I'm not posting a link - not sure what forum etiquette is on these matters, and this is probably enough of a plug as it is. But I can say that I've tried far more of the recipes from this book than I have from many others, and with a couple of exceptions they've been great. Even the exceptions were 'meh - doesn't taste like much more than the sum of its parts' than 'OMG - blurgggh'.

You still need to ship an awful lot of material just to cover the costs of your launch. Using the Falcon 9 as an example, apparently the 2011 quoted price was $54 million per launch. So you need to extract, refine, and send back 54 kg of the stuff just to break even on the cost of a fairly modest launch vehicle. There could well be profit to be made, but the capital investment and timescales involved in realising that profit would, I think, scare most investors off right now. Which isn't to say it's never going to happen, but I don't think it's going to be first on the list of successful commercial ventures in space. My bet? Water and (more speculatively) rock - doesn't really matter what kind. Asteroids are a feasible source of both, and both can be used to bootstrap more complex orbital infrastructure. Water can be used for drinking, washing, growing stuff, propellant and shielding. Rock can be used for shielding and building. A hollowed out asteroid isn't quite as elegant as the ISS but it'll make decent enough living quarters, with nice thick walls for insulation and shielding. Water is heavy enough that launching it from Earth is a necessary nuisance, and I don't think any sane person would launch rock from Earth.

Or curried. Or cooked in a stew with lentils and plenty of herbs. Or stir-fried. Tons of stuff you can do with veg, very little of it involves boiling and using 'em as a side dish.

Mr Shifty put it better than I could have. A sad day indeed.

Ahh, I see. That still seems like a false economy though. I don't have any numbers to back this up but I imagine you'd use quite a bit more propellant to harvest your debris (to use as propellant) than you would need to simply boost the satellite directly. Not to mention that you'll need to expend additional propellant to rendezvous the satellite with the mass driver. It's a cool idea but I'm still not seeing any advantages over a combination of conventional satellite launchers and a separate debris capture-and-deorbit system of some kind.

I'm likely missing something here, but if you're ferrying all the debris to a single place (the mass driver), why not just glom it all together at that point (or put the small stuff in a tin can), and use the last of the propellant in your ion tug to de-orbit the whole lot in one go? Other than coolness - and it is definitely cool - I'm not seeing a great advantage to using the mass driver.

Looking forward to it! As I said, I liked the last 'test' render very much, so the real thing should be good.

Just wanted to join the 'this mod is awesome' chorus! I've been a fairly diehard stock player until now, so I'm very glad indeed that somebody posted a link to this thread in another topic I was reading. So yeah - KCT - the first mod I've installed since before Career Mode was introduced. I've actually played a couple of career mode games using a (much simplified) pen and paper version of KCT, so I'm stoked to have a mod that does a much more detailed version for me, adds in Space Centre upgrades, and throws in some quality-of-life improvements like Warp to Event! Thank you!

Let's give a big hand to Captain Negative here! Who also happens to be flat out wrong.