KSK

Well the chapter name didn't lie. *blinks* Jeb, you lucky, lucky sonofagun.

What - you mean the Great Tranquil Sea? And yes - that is a blatant riff on the Sea of Tranquility - why do you ask? There were quite a few threads on this kind of thing a few years back. Try a forum search for the Kerbin Geographic and Science Society or KGSS. Personally I don't see the harm in a few more canon names - it would add a bit of depth to the stock game. Writing alternative universe (AU) stories is a pretty established thing in fanfiction anyway, so I don't see that having canon names would interfere much with player based storylines.

Not a problem. Borrow Mr Steven's net, bolt it to the top of a Falcon Heavy and just catch that sucker on its way down. Bonus diplomacy points for handing it back to the Chinese. #ItWorkedInKerbalSpaceProgram

Ahh, in that case, my apologies for my rather abrupt post in your last thread. I stand by my opinion (and fully agree with Snark's closing comment) but I could have put it more kindly. Sorry. And - wow. Assuming its a legit source, I did not know this. Sadly, a story of its time in many ways and one hopes that attitudes have shifted in the meantime, but the short answer to your question is 'yes - apparently there has been at least one LGBT astronaut.'

Can't believe I'm dignifying this question with an answer but no, it would not concern me in the slightest. Edit. Sorry - to answer the first question - yes. Yes they can.

It's a wee bit snarky but how about Evolved Non-Expendable Launch Vehicles? And if all else fails, just call them Bob. Bob is a good name for almost anything.

Next Generation Launch Vehicles? Megalaunchers? Whatever Bezos, Musk etc. Decide To Call Them? Personally, I not much in favour of option 3. WBMEDTCT is a lousy acronym.

Ahhh - that's a good way to end the night. Catching up on two* of my favourite KSP stories. Thanks! *Making a Dollar or Two, natch, plus Life at the Top.

I can't tell a lie - this made me laugh. It didn't make up for Phil's news though. : "The setting sun bathed the city in a stunning orange glow that made the hard and unforgiving walls look soft and kind. Probably why so many crashes happened on the first few laps." Another great chapter. I do have one minor comment on readability if you want it, or to take it to private messages?

I've probably mentioned this before but I follow a writing blog called 'Writing about Writing'. I like it - the author is pretty opinionated but I find that a lot of what he writes resonates with me. Anyhow, one of his recent posts is on fan-fiction and I thought some folks would be interested in reading it. A word of caution - this chap is most certainly not forum-friendly. As mentioned, he's opinionated and his language has a tendency to be robust. You have been duly warned. On the other hand, I have to admit that I enjoyed this paragraph (lightly edited for forum sensibilities). So there you have it. We're all pure artists on this thread.

Eeep. Looks like the mulch has hit the turbopumps. And, if I recall correctly, turbopumps don't do well after ingesting a heap of mulch...

I'm not going to post it all again but - what Pthigrivi said. Trial-and-error within the Kerbin system is fine. The Map screen does a wonderful job of presenting everything you need to get to the Mun or Minmus in a visually intuitive, exploreable format. Flight plans are relatively straightforward and flight times are short. Going interplanetary in a stock game feels like a big hurdle to clear - your planning tools become less effective and at the same time the missions become longer and more complex. End result - for many players a potentially huge chunk of the game gets locked away behind an artificially high difficulty barrier. Also, I think that shackling the game to a trial-and-error approach makes it a lot harder to expand in future and much harder to balance now. Pthigirivi style games - which I have to confess is how I like to try and play and how I imagined a game about running a space program would work - become an exercise in frustration without a bit more in the way of planning tools. Going forward, you're limited in what new gameplay mechanics you can introduce and reasonably expect players to deal with on a trial-and-error basis. Even simple Contracts become a lot harder to balance since you need to account for players needing multiple attempts to complete a Contract. But how many attempts is it sensible to allow for? Or do you just assume people are going to Revert their way out of any problems? To use HarvesteRs example, having a delta-V readout won't affect my ability to enjoy building a rocket powered surfboard (or, in my case, a hideously uncontrollable VTOL craft ) and, as a bonus, it will also make my Jool-5 attempt much more fun. And yes - any delta-V readout is better than none. It might not be able to cope with my 24 stage, asparagused monstrosity of a launch vehicle but provided it can handle my four-NERVS-and-a-boat-load-of-fuel interplanetary stage, then we're good. Edit. For consistency with posts on other threads, this should really have been written in the past tense, as I'm not currently playing any version of KSP for reasons. Just in case anyone decided to dig around in my posting history and get picky with me.

Well, according to the article, they're testing the harpoons (of different sizes depending what they're intended to snag) against aluminium/composite panels which are apparently representative of satellite construction materials. So yeah, sounds like it. The harpoons are powered by compressed air, cut through the test panels with ease and are intended to be used from about 25m. They also have deployable barbs to stop them punching right through their target. So it sounds as though they have thought about this (amazingly enough). In particular punching a hole into their target but not out of it, so containing any debris inside. I appreciate that's just an example but wrangling a satellite using a relatively large, fragile and unwieldy component such as a solar panel doesn't sound like a great idea, especially if the satellite is tumbling. Also - a personal request. Ion drives are quiet, gentle devices. ION drives sound so shouty, don't you think? Especially as ion isn't an acronym.

I love this idea. "Out-gassing satellite at 3km and closing, Flight." "Arrrr - there she blows! Avast there ye scurvy hunk 'o space junk!" White vests and tricorn hats become the new mandatory dress code for all flight controllers overseeing Operation Poke-it-with-a-Pointy-Thing.

I'm thinking the important words there are 'and manned missions later on'. Not that unmanned missions to Mars aren't impressive in their own right but they're not quite as attention-grabbing as a manned mission would be. To answer the question - nope I don't have any more information on this!

It's definitely an interesting setup. Hard to say much more than that after one chapter but I'm intrigued, so that's probably a good start. Your protagonist came across (to me, and possibly deliberately) as a fairly unlikeable fellow, so I'm curious to see where that goes too! One small suggestion - depending how long it is, it might be an idea to spin the story out into its own thread.

I think there was a comment in response to the original tweet that suggested the telemetry fix should be straightforward as an appropriate protocol was available off-the-shelf. Although I have absolutely no idea how reliable that source is. As for the strut - that makes sense to me. There may well have been a defect in the strut (as per SpaceX's claim) but that wouldn't have been a problem in itself, if SpaceX had gone with the recommended (possibly slightly overkill but yeah - tens of millions of dollars at stake) 4:1 safety factor. So both sides are correct - from a certain point of view (</obiwan>) As usual, it's never just one thing that gets you. Or, as @DerekL1963 pointed out - everything can look fine, right up to the point when it isn't.

Agreed, @Green Baron but it's also water under the bridge now. Spaceflight is very good at exposing organisational weaknesses and is littered with incidents caused by intelligent people (this is rocket science after all )having a bad day. That bad day might be caused (for example) by inadequate regard for a manufacturer's recommendations, placing a little too much faith in your Russian sourced engines, messing up a 64 bit to 16 bit data conversion, installing sensors upside down, not fully appreciating the fire hazards involved with 100% oxygen atmospheres or mixing up imperial and metric units. Unfortunately, rockets don't much care about the human factor - they just go boom anyway. Speaking as a SpaceX fan, it's obviously disappointing when they do make mistakes (which CRS-7 clearly was) but, on the other hand, there's no reason why they should be immune from mistakes either. They have good people but so do Orbital, ESA, Roscosmos and NASA. No doubt Blue Origin, Rocketlab and the rest will have their share of bad days in future. Virgin Galactic have already had their share. Not an excuse - just an observation.

RIP Professor Hawking. There's no good time to go - but even so, I think he would have settled for this back in 1963.

According to NasaSpaceflight.com, the changes were made in time for the Jason-3 mission. Except possibly for the telemetry, although they speculate that that has probably been addressed too, given that SpaceX has now received Category 2 certification from NASA. Edit: The article is worth reading and paints a rather less scathing picture of SpaceX than the response to that tweet. Yes they screwed up, but their post-flight investigation was quick, seemed to be robust (in that NASA independently came to the same conclusions) and, as mentioned above, the key findings in the NASA report were addressed promptly and with little to no fanfare that I remember.

Good post @Starman4308 - thanks. If I could offer a slight correction to your first point, that depends on the license and what you've said only applies to non-exclusive licenses. An exclusive license for any purpose in all territories (for example) would prevent you from entering into another license agreement with another party. Also, about the moustache twirling ( ) in Part 4 - as I understand it, that also applies to Missions created through the Mission Builder, and is a bit more worrying for those, since the EULA is attempting to have you explicitly waive your right of attribution. Not sure whether that would stand up in court but it's rather more moustache-twirling than the terms for fanfic etc. which simply give TT the option to ignore attribution if they wish.

This. Setting aside most of the legal technicalities (apart from one specific one - more on that in a minute), the problem I have with this whole mess is the attitude that's gone with it. We've heard nothing from Take Two since they bought the rights to KSP and then suddenly they're marching in with size 10 Lawyer Boots. New EULA. New terms and conditions that we have to agree to before getting access to the forum, or the wiki. Opt-in dialogue boxes confirming that you want to send information back to Squad, disappearing. These may indeed be standard terms and procedures - but standard to a big name AAA title. They don't sit as well with a game like KSP which owes a lot to player created content of various kinds. Think of the mods that have either been incorporated directly into KSP or inspired Squad to incorporate their own version of them. Think of the number of modders that have worked for Squad at one time or another. It's kind of fallen by the wayside recently but think about The Daily Kerbal and it's showcasing of various videos, fan-art and other player generated content. So, whilst I can't speak for anyone else, I didn't like Take Two's 'we own everything' style of EULA. Whether they intend to enforce, or can enforce, most of it is largely irrelevant. It's the fact they thought it was a good idea in the first place that grates. It smacks of disregard for and disrespect of, the KSP community. On to that specific point I mentioned. I have a long-running fan-fiction thread on these forums, so I was naturally curious to see what the new forum T&C's say about such things. Turns out that they say this: No obligation to make any payment. Meh - OK. Opinion can reasonably differ on that and it wasn't something I was seriously expecting anyway. No obligation to credit me for my work - that I don't like at all. No reservation of rights - lemme get back to you on that. I'm not especially happy about this but not having an obligation to do something isn't quite the same as saying that you're not going to do it. On the other hand, it is typical of the whole bad attitude thing I mentioned above. I don't see why TT need to include this or what it gains them. And again, whether or not they intend to enforce it is irrelevant - it's the fact they thought it was a good idea. Moving on to the EULA Umm. Let me get this straight. We're talking about any content created through the software. Doesn't matter where you host it - if it was created through the software it falls under this EULA. For example, any Missions created through the new expansion (which is pretty much the signature feature of the expansion) are caught. Also - this is an explicit waiver of rights. It's not a case of Take Two choosing whether or not to enforce this - it just happens. So - if you create a Mission, under this EULA you waive your rights to be acknowledged as the creator of that Mission. You also waive the right to object to derogatory treatment of it, or to object to anyone doing anything with it that would reflect badly on your own reputation. And, in a final rotten touch, that waiver survives termination of the Agreement. Well that fills me with warm fuzzies. To be clear, 'moral rights' are completely separate to so-called economic rights conferred by copyright law. Pick up any book you choose and take a look at the copyright page. Chances are excellent that you'll see a line to the effect of: "NamedPerson asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work." NamedPerson may not hold the copyright to her own work. She may not legally own her work (probably not if she has a publishing contract) and she may not earn much money from it. However, she sure as heck retains her right to be identified as author. Personally, I think that's a big deal and I'm seriously unhappy about Take Two's attempt to have you sign those rights away. That's why I've got my pitchfork out.

So let's see here. We've got a jet plane with some problems that need ironing out. We also got some fine tunes courtesy of a (soon to be) popular beat combo. Well I do declare that this fine story is about....*sunglasses*... Jets, bugs and rock-and-roll. Yeaaaaahhh.

1. Depends how much they care about that section of their customer base. Given that they have a section of the company devoted to small indie games (it's the section handling KSP, I forget the name, sorry), then early access, community heavy games look like something they're planning to get into. So why not write a more appropriate EULA to cover those kinds of games? 2. Possibly. In which case, they could just as well have you agree to them collecting those data items on a per event basis. Want to take part in our 'take a photo of your Jeb plushie in weird locations' competiton and have a chance of winning this prize? Well, we're going to need to collect photographs and geolocation data from you. Sure, it's a little more work for them but it's also much better customer service since it's a lot more transparent and, to use the example I just gave, blindingly obvious why they need those particular data. If they want to take the easy way out and use standard terms - particularly ones where its not really clear that they apply to KSP (see OP), then that's up to them but they shouldn't then be surprised by threads like this. 3. Possibly - so tell us. If nothing else, that third party company might not have a particularly good reputation. 4. Great. But as I said, in this case, I have no personal history of transactions with Take Two, so no particular reason to trust them. Or indeed not trust them - I might be doing them a great disservice. But, I'll take your 'innocent until proven guilty' and raise you a 'caveat emptor'. And that right there, is the problem with all EULAs. They're not negotiated, they're not intended for the customers that are being asked to sign and the parties to the contract are of nowhere equal standing. What you say is true but it's also the case that every single customer, or even a really small fraction thereof can't afford to get a lawyer to scrutinise each and every EULA they sign up to. So most of them don't and just click through blindly. Which isn't a great plan because I'm willing to bet that those customers really can't afford to be sued by the company either. That's why we have (at least in the UK and I presume the US) various forms of consumer protection legislation and its why I stated that I didn't know how much of this EULA would actually stand up in court. And you're right that a video game EULA is a very different to say, a tenancy agreement, in terms of financial value and necessity. If I need to sign that agreement to keep a roof over my head - and I'm going to be throwing a lot of rent money at my landlord anyway, then I may well spend a couple of hundred quid on a lawyer to soothe any worries I may have. Similarly, because folks generally don't have a lot of choice about tenancy agreements, they tend to be fairly heavily regulated and (again in the UK) you'll have access to other sources of reputable information about them that you can consult without needing to go to a lawyer. A video game EULA - I don't need to sign that agreement at all. I may want to (shiny new game!) but it's certainly not a necessity. And I'm unlikely to spend £200 on lawyer fees before committing to a £40 purchase. So I either trust the company to play reasonable, even if their EULA is anything but - or I decide I can't trust them, or that I don't like their behaviour, and I don't bother buying their product. Now the company may decide that it's not worth their while to earn my trust by giving me a less one-sided EULA to sign, or at least providing a bit of transparency to go with it. Fine - that's their business decision, I respect it (even if I don't like it) and it is possible that I'm blowing this out of proportion. But if Take Two (in this case) decide it's not worth their while to engage with me, it makes it a very easy decision for me not to engage with them. Edit: For reference, understanding industry requirements and perspectives, especially when it comes to IP is a big part of my day job. So I do have some perspective on this. But that works both ways - there are some terms in that EULA that I just don't see any reasonable need for at all.

Can't speak for the Brainlord but I don't accept it. To that end, I have deleted KSP from my hard drive (as required by the EULA) and have no intention of reinstalling it or purchasing the expansion. If the EULA changes, I may reconsider but until then I'm done. Unfortunately, I had to to agree to the new privacy policy and forum T&Cs, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here. The only reason I am here is so that I can finish up a long-running project and not have to move it elsewhere, thereby inconveniencing the good people that have been kind enough to support me - some of them for many years. Otherwise, I'd have been asking around for contact details (so that I could continue to support a number of other threads without being able to post on them directly), shortly before blowing this pop stand for good. As it is, once that project is done, I doubt I'll be hanging around here much or posting any new content.