KSK

Probably not what you had in mind, but the exploration mechanics coming in beta 2 are all about research and very pure research at that. Finding and mapping previously unknown systems, seeking out new life and new civilisations - all that good stuff. Elite has never been about crafting and base building though. Personally, I would be all over it in single player - the best bits from the X series combined with proper solar systems and flight model - yeah count me in for some of that. I'm less convinced about it in multiplayer for the same reasons that I've never really been tempted to try Eve.

Another vote for Intersolar Commonwealth here - because Ozzie! Also space travel by train and some truly ott weaponry - what's not to like. I'm also rather fond of the worldbuilding for the Wheel of Time and The Name of the Wind. I like the rational magic in both worlds.

On the bright side, the patent only covers water landings - or rather, landing on structures in the water. As soon as SpaceX move on to landing on land, the patent becomes irrelevant for them. SpaceX shouldn't have much difficulty challenging the patent though, assuming you can challenge on grounds of insufficiency (I'm not too familiar with US patent law). A patent is supposed to tell you how to go away and replicate the protected invention yourself, with due allowance for the fact that it's written for a suitably skilled person, and so doesn't necessarily need to include every last detail. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I think the Blue Origin patent falls well short of that requirement. It doesn't appear to be much more than a wish list, strung together with some blindingly obvious features (you could land your space launch vehicle using it's gimballed booster engines - tell-me-it-aint-so), with a couple of extremely high level flowcharts, that tell you naff all about how you'd actually accomplish any of the invention. Frankly, as somebody who is generally pro-patent, and has worked in IP for his whole professional life, this patent offends me.

Nah - the .26 Hype Train will be waiting. It's just one more forum meme now - kinda like 'moar boosters.' And at least the hype-train tends to be confined to a couple of threads, so can be ignored fairly easily.

Didn't enjoy having them at the time, but I'm glad I went through the whole braces thing. My teeth were crowded anyway, plus I had two extra milk teeth in my upper jaw (wonder if I'm part shark. ), so my adult front teeth were seriously crooked and overlapped, once they grew in. Getting the extra teeth removed wasn't at all fun (full on operation, complete with general anesthetic) and getting two other teeth pulled wasn't exactly a bag of chuckles either. Then the braces after all that. Pretty sure the end result is cleaner, healthier teeth though. Straighter is a nice bonus.

Heh - RIC beat me to it.

"It's Kerbin… just Kerbin. Only not quite and all of it at once. And the sky - it's full of more stars than you can believe. Greens and blues and brilliant white clouds and then black and stars." "You're not making any sense, Jeb." "No, no I don't think I am." - KIS flight transcripts: Kerbal 1.

I respectfully disagree. Capital letters begin sentences. Hence I read gpisic's sentence a bit like this: I Fail. To. See. Why. People. Get. So Annoyed. By Capitals, It's Not. Like It Makes. Things. Difficult. To Read. Or Something. Which is vaguely amusing if you're taking the mickey out of William Shatner, but otherwise makes the writing very jerky and annoying to read. Yes, I know gpsic exaggerated things for effect.

I vs me = subject vs object. (I think) Jeb and I went to Minmus. The capsule exploded, throwing Jeb and me into the unforgiving vacuum of space. It's more of a pet peeve than a grammatical annoyance, but using the word 'literally' just to add emphasis, bugs me.

No promises and it depends how much I get written tonight, but end of this week is starting to look likely. That's Sunday rather than Friday though.

Ahh - the best laid schemes o' kerbals an' capsules gang aft agley. Grats on the 9,000 views, and thank you for the random kerbal name generator - I've been looking for one of those for ages. No longer will I need to start up random games and go on gonzo recruitment drives in the Astronaut Complex for name inspiration!

Go for it! I'd be happy to see this tale come out of hibernation.

My poor joy - it is slain... But to answer your question - because it's fun to come up with background to the game. I figure some of the wildlife on Kerbin will resemble kerbals, in much the same way that primates on earth sort of resemble humans. Some critters that I've come up with: Spierkan treebeasts (OK, kerbal naturalists aren't the most imaginative.) Basically a large, darker green, furry kerbal with longer arms and a smaller head. These shy creatures live in the deeper jungles of Spierka and tend to avoid contact with kerbals. Terran equivalent - the orang-utan. Luffas. Distant evolutionary cousin to the kerbals. Somewhere in their history, a homeobox mutation gave them a doubled pelvis (two normal pelvises fused together) complete with two pairs of legs. They're rather ungainly creatures but their extra legs make them well suited to wading around the rougher coastal waters of Kerbin. They have basically kerbal shaped heads, only smaller and with much longer necks. Terran equivalent - none. Kaya. Native to the colder regions of Kerbin and much prized by the kerbals for their luxuriant belly fur, which provides warmth and shelter for their calves. Terran equivalent - the yak. Gronnek. Small, swift and vicious burrow dwelling predators of northern Kerbin. When trained, they make excellent hunting animals, but even in this day and age it takes a brave kerbal to do the training. Traditionally captured by placing a large canvas bag over one entrance to their burrow, and setting off some sort of commotion at the other entrance. This does tend to make the gronnek even less amiable than usual, hence the kerbal expression 'letting the gronnek out of the bag' has a (rough) Terran analogue involving fans and faecal matter. Terran equivalent - the wolverine.

Not dead, but yes, it's been slow going for a while. Blame it on a combination of tough weeks at work, real life getting in the way, and finally getting the new computer that a) made KSP faster and prettier and made a detour into the Elite: Dangerous beta possible. Both of those were quite distracting. The next chapter is about 40% done. I've also got some leave to burn before Christmas, so I see a couple of writing weeks in my near future which should help move things along. Cheers, KSK.

Oh - not again... Hmm, a Rocky Horror / KSP crossover musical. I'm not sure whether that would be the most awesome thing evah, or just deeply, deeply disturbing...

Beeline for probe techs first, then play a 'Better than Starting Manned' style game. Entirely possible by picking up science points from contracts and nearby Kerbin biomes.

It's got to get less melancholy right? A story that starts with nuclear annihilation can only really go up. I'd like to see where this goes - please do post up more as you write it.

Bah - 'The Dawg' was proof that anything can fly with enough boosters attached. Now get out there and get The Beast off the ground!

Yay - new chapter! And with a nice bit of lore at the end too. Hopefully Fred can find a slot as a Mission Specialist somewhere down the line, even if he's medically unfit for piloting.

Awww - cute Kraken! *cough* ♪♪ Send him to Eeloo, with no coffee.♫♪ ♪♪ Send him to Eeloo, with no coffee.♫♪ ♪♪ Send him to Eeloo, with no coffee.♫♪ ♫♫ In high Kerbol orbit! ♪♪

Cheers! It also helps if you RTFM, or in this case, the onscreen instructions *facepalm*. Blue lines - jump distance within range for a fully laden ship. Grey lines - you can make the jump but will need to adjust your cargo tonnage accordingly. Man, it's like figuring out the navball in KSP. Once you know what your instruments are actually telling you, the game gets a whole lot easier.

How does that work? Because that would indeed be useful!

It's not immediately obvious (or it wasn't to me anyway ) but you can show trade routes for on the galactic map. No guarantee of profits of course, but helpful for figuring out which planet types need which goods.

Another thumbs up for the T-Flight here. Bought mine to play Elite: Dangerous and so far it works like a dream. Good to hear that it works with KSP too - I'll have to give that a try sometime. Cheers.

Ahh, what the heck. Have one from Jeb too. “My friends - yesterday we made history together." “When you work on something for so long, it's easy for it to become routine. Just something you do - no big deal. But take a step back for a moment and consider just what we did yesterday. "We built a machine capable of flying so high and so fast that it flew clear around the planet and might never have come back down!†“But it did come back down - because we designed it that way. Together we reached out across the void. We touched the machine. And we brought it home.†“We brought it back down through fire hot enough to vaporise steel. We brought it back down so carefully and so precisely that after a voyage of over one hundred thousand kilometres, we could take a short boat trip, pluck it neatly out of the sea and put it here on this table before you!†“But that was yesterday.†“Today is a new day and today we take the next great step! Today we embark upon the dream of countless kerbals before us. Today we finally set out to do that which we founded the Kerbin Interplanetary Society for!†“Generations of kerbals to come will look back at us and see that this was when it happened. This was when we realised that we could do it. This was the day we took the decision to put a kerbal into space and bring him - or her - safely back to Kerbin!†“Make no mistake, my friends - this will not be easy. It will require all the skills and all the technologies we have built so far. We have rocket engines - but now we'll need bigger ones. We have capsules - but now we'll need better ones.†“But most of all, we're going to need volunteers. Someone to pilot the ships. Someone to forge a new path and set Kerbalkind on the road to the stars! And I believe that each and every one of you standing here today should be given the chance to be one of those volunteers if they so choose.†“To be a pilot for Project Moho.â€Â