N_Molson

That's a simple matter of AoA (Angle of Attack). In surface mode, the yellow marker shows the direction of the airflow, while the eyeball shows you where the rocket is heading. The key is to keep that angle very low during the critical stage of the ascent (10,000 to 20,000 meters depending of the rocket design). Keeping the nose within the yellow cue should work. That's much, much more realistic, indeed !

Alas, she is amongst the growing list of the now 12 Kerbals that gave their life since I started a v1.0 career. Underestimated the parachutes more realistic model, deployed too low, slammed into the ground. RIP. But (some) lessons were learned and she gave her life for the good of Kerbal Science.

Absolutely not a clone, as said above. This game focuses on real management, personnel micro-management, hardware R&D etc... With quite a huge selection of historical US and Soviet hardware. If you played and liked BARIS (Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, 1993), you're going to love it. There's an official forum there : http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=226 It does, and yes skilled Mission Controllers are what ultimately make the difference. It will be released the 31st of October, on Steam too I think.

When returning from the Moon, no. The Earth "slingshot" effect can send the spacecraft on an escape trajectory. Or in an orbit so elliptic it will take months for it to come back. Also don't forget that KSP physics model don't take gravity perturbations into account. Sun/Moon/Earth interactions can send the spacecraft in an elliptic orbit around Earth that never crosses atmosphere again. You forget something that isn't (AFAIK) implemented in KSP : conical (Apollo) or headlight-shaped (Soyuz) capsules produce lift, like any shuttles or aircrafts. They are designed to produce lift when re-entering, and while they are designed to fly at their best at very high ultra-sonic speeds, they completely stall only slightly above Mach 1 (at trans-sonic speeds). When the capsule is tilted in the right direction (thanks to RCS thrusters), it acts as a wing : air pressure is higher on the heatshield, and lower above the top. From Wikipedia : So, when the capsule "skips" the atmosphere, lift is produced, and not only drag. Of course nothing can produce more lift than drag (else we wouldn't need engines !), but the effect is significant enough to greatly bend the trajectory of the spacecraft. This, combined with the slingshot effect, can be a one-way ticket when re-entering from lunar velocities (roughly 10,500 m/s vs "only" 7,500 m/s for a LEO return). And to escape Earth SOI, you don't need to go much faster than 11,000 m/s. A spherical capsule (like Vostok) produces no lift at all, and only drag, typically getting 8-9g on re-entry. There is also a safety mode on the Soyuz that, if the other controls fail, make the capsule automatically spin on itself at a fast rate, which nullifies lift. This is called a "ballistic reentry", and the spacecraft decelerates exactly like a spherical capsule in that case. Soyuz TMA-11 re-entered that way, and was nearly 500 kilometers off-target, because of the lack of lift.

This is definitively a problem, which kills pretty much the concept of a separated lander. Apollo astronauts would have been a little sorry if they had not been able to transfer the lunar samples from the LM to the CSM... And since the soil samples are by much the most valuable science artefacts, there is no way to skip them. Now, of course, you can add parachutes to the lander and push it back into Kerbin's atmosphere since there is no re-entry check yet, but I feel like it's cheating...

Also don't forget that almost all the experiments lose most of their value if they are not recovered. Goo canisters, in particular, suffer a nasty -80% penalty if you simply transmit them. So be sure to bring them back on Kerbin. If you want to do this in a more or less realistic fashion, you will need to achieve a powered descent, else they would burn.

I agree that duration should be taken into account as a positive factor for data value. Orbiting a Kerbal for 30 days should allow to collect more data than during a suborbital flight of 10 minutes. That's the purpose of space labs like Skylab, Mir or the ISS.

Anyway, the Carrer Mode is really in its beginnings. It's clearly not complete enough to jugde if it is good or bad. I'd say that what I see now is fun and has a lot of promising potential, but that's all. If you don't like the tech tree order, you can always rearrange it your way.

The only thing I have to reproach to this update is that it comes with a small pack of annoying bugs, but I'm certain they will be patched soon. Also it was a long time since .21, and Squad certainly had to release something, even if not perfectly polished. Gathering Science is a fun new goal. It pushes you to move forward and set ambitious objectives. Concerning people that say "it's too easy", here are a few points to consider : - Try without MechJeb or other mods that basically fly for you. - Currently you can re-enter Kerbin with Goo canisters and experiments, but one day heating management will come, and retrieving the experiments will require a powered descent. Which means a much heavier and costly launch assembly. You will have to do with communications, and those apply huge penalties to the number of Science Points you gather. - There is no money or parts availability limit right now. I doubt you will start with enough Kerbucks to build a monster stack that can reach Duna. - Some things that make life a bit too easy are probably going to be fixed. Like directly transmitting data from the Farside of the Mun without using relay communication satellites (how does those radio waves get through the Mun ?!). - The unlimited supply of Kerbonauts is not going to last forever. And I guess they will have to rest between missions, which will require a team if you want to launch missions continuously. Now you can do anything with Jeb only, but even that heroic guy has the right to sleep from time to time, not even speaking of vacations. Also, here again, they are kindly working for free now (and a few snacks), but this isn't going to last... So yeah, really, work in progress, and the fact I already like what I see now makes me very optimistic for the future.

I agree that the 3.75 meters parts of KW rocketry really add something to the game. It is an elegant solution to build "Saturn-V" heavy lifters class. Other than esthetical, the huge pro is that using that kind of configuration drastically reduces the number of parts in the rocket. And then the game engine and your graphic card handles it more easily. Now why space agencies don't use such launchers everyday ? Because they are insanely expensive, require heavy infrastructures and then are reserved to manned interplanetary exploration (or mining if you want) missions (which is a point of a space program). It could be the same in KSP. Those parts would be the very costly, and then you would use them only when necessary, like when you want to send a complex (ker)manned mission to Duna or Jool's moons, with rovers, surface lander, orbital module, etc... Also, think that more realistic aerodynamics, if implemented, will probably give a serious blow to those "asparagus" designs. There's a reason if you don't see that in real life. Now, 5 meters, I don't know, not sure there is a need for it right now.

I'd try to recruit Kerbals with high courage and high stupidity, too ! Also, you can send in Jeb, Bill & Bob, those are "special", they are always eager (and overjoyed when stuff blows around).

Career mode of course, progress tracking screen, statistics about the Kerbonauts (time spent in space, in EVA and on which body, background stuff like a small biography, etc...), maybe a beginning of the budget management... Apart from that, re-entry thermodynamics. I want to know when my entry angle was good enough and when it wasn't.

I'd say that the SOI lag thing is directly related to the procedural craters. Not sure if it can be completely fixed. - Other than that, when you assign a Kerbal to a vehicle in the VAB/SPH, it is not "saved", and if your next action is anything else that clicking "Launch", Jebediah (if alive) will ninja the designated Kerbal and sneak in the first available pod. - I notice "white spots" on the terrain and in the distance, especially on Kerbin, like if there were little holes between terrain meshes. - Else the batteries of spacecraft that are not under focus never charge or discharge. They stay in the same state you left them. - Any part that is not under focus can go through atmospheres without being slowed down. - When you put an engine over a docking port in the VAB/SPH, the engine fairing will not jettison when you decouple the docking port from the engine (for "transposition and docking" Apollo-like manoeuvers). Sometimes it can hinder the manoeuver and be quite annoying. However, saving/reloading the game make the fairing diseappear. - Still some "terrain shaking", which has been reported before, when landed on the Mun, and probably on other places too. - In an "eclipse" scenario (very common in the Kerbin-Mun system), the planet that hides Kerbol cast no shadows and doesn't block lighting. However, the solar panels stop working as they should. And some very minor stuff I don't remember about right now...

In real spaceflight, you can't retract solar panels, so I never do. Never had problem, it just takes to approach the station at a reasonable speed and let a kilometer of separation when planning the rendez-vous. Not a matter of stupidity, just how things are.

I'm not sure I'm completely getting it, but one of the best way to kill horizontal velocity is to keep your ship pointed to the retrograde marker (the circle with a cross on the ADI ball). On Minmus you need to apply a very tiny amount of thrust, else you'll also kill all your vertical velocity. Else just fly the lander like an helicopter. Pitch down : accelerate ; pitch up : decelerate ; pitch left/right : lateral translation. And adjust the throttle constantly.

You can also accept that the number of parts is one of KSP limitations. Which brings up to another subject : some parts could probably be "grouped" (like a "all-in-one" board with the 4 science instruments), multi-chamber engines (like 2x or 4x LTV-45, etc...), or bigger structural parts (4x4 or 8x8 plates). Would be a way to reduce by a lot the part count, which is the problem, because the physic engine has to compute the relations between the parts. IMHO, it is a more elegant solution that recoding everything in 64 bits to allow using raw CPU strength.

I just don't like SSTOs. ^^

This is theorically possible if you match exactly the orbit of your target. It means an Rinc of 0° and the exact same orbital elements (Apa, PeA, Period...). In the real world it is impossible, because the Earth is not a perfect sphere and has not a perfect mass distribution. Even worse, the Moon has a noticeable tidal effect. In KSP, timewarp and precision limits will probably make it very difficult.

Remember that we don't have clouds yet. A Venus-type planet like Eve should look much better with a nice thick global cover of clouds, with if possible infernal storms and acid rains into it . And yes, the temperature should be enough to burn a standard parachute in a few seconds. But the worst is about cooling : radiators are inefficient and even draw more heat in such a hot environnment. It's quite a though problem that makes should make a Kermanned landing very unlikely. Maybe robotic rovers with very expensive components able to operate and exploit some resources in such hot environnements could be an option. It would also be interesting to have extremely valuable resources there (like exotic minerals vomitted by fiery volcanoes), to reward the effort of getting there.

I find they are very useful to save RCS fuel. It allows to set exactly the RCS the way you want it.

For me, slowdowns begins above 150 parts, and excessing 250 parts make the game quite unplayable. My computer is rather "old" by todays standards : AMD Athlon 64, Win7, Geforce GT240, 4MB RAM DDR3... Nothing very fancy. I must say I'm already happy to see how well my config handles 3D terrain with parts physics and collision detection. And humble rocket designs can get you anywhere with those number of parts. Sometimes orbital assembly is required, that's all.

That's really a nasty failure, a blocked hatch is not fun. As said above, the biggest problem is that your crew cabin is a pretty frail one, else I would roll it until the parachute blows. I like the idea of burning the parachute part, that could work. My only fear is that the gravity is low on the Mun, so the operation might prove difficult (how to keep the vehicles aligned ?). Which leads to the "grapple" solution, in my opinion your best chance of success. Good luck, and always check if there is an atmosphere or not, and how thick/thin it is ! @ MBobrik : I love your test stand, that's real Kerbal science !

Testing the MEV (Minmus Exploration Vehicle) in KLO, to the great delight of the Kerbonauts.

Hehe TARDIS ?

Prices are falling, sell all stocks ^^