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The only drawback I see with a Saturn mission is, could NASA get enough funding to do a 'double probe?' One that would deploy TWO landers to different moons? If all they can get is a oneshot, stick with Europa. That's been the eyebrow-raiser that replaced Mars in recent years. And after they found bacteria growing in the Fukishima reactor, I'm really not concerned about any type of radiation hindering life development. It could even be a help.

In the slight possibility that I win, I won't be posting the times, because I've always had to make it a necessity to keep my gaming and IRL lives separate, but... I bit the lure.

As far as the current mission, I'm not sure, but with a modified ship, load up some extra reaction wheels? Remember, once you grab an asteroid, you're wielding way more mass than your rocket even had at liftoff. Controlling it is going to be a Kitch.

Are you saying that NASA's upcoming hardware ISN'T capable of carrying heavier payloads?

Well, to me anyway, I see the concept of balance as MOSTLY being about the following: 1. Relationship between resources/cost and capability (this system hasn't been implemented yet) 2. The game theory "arms race." Which in KSP means, you go a certain distance, get some science, and that enables you to go a little bit further. As far as sandbox balancing goes, as long as the new parts aren't ushering in what is essentially a stock version of the interstellar mod, I think it'll be OK.

I'd feel more comfortable if I saw a stable orbit. That trajectory looks questionable.

Why would sandbox need to be 'balanced?' The whole point of sandbox is to play without strict limitations.

All the mods on my system still work as they did before the patch (except Mechjeb, though I haven't bothered looking for an update yet). The only thing I've noticed with performance is the game seems to crash a bit more. It's that darned 32bit OS I'm still using, running out of RAM, methinks.

Either that or write a letter to the president of a certain seasonal delivery system and ask him for a lift. Of course, that won't work so well in April. Do you want to land there, or are you just looking for a polar orbit? Landing in the arctic is easy enough. Landing at precisely Lat 0, not so easy.

I don't normally post confusing topics, but when I do, I post confusing topics on the KSP forums.

Optimized, for less wasted space, and... because mock-CGA images just look cooler.

Even just nerfing their atmospheric performance would be SOMETHING. If they're only here so we can move asteroids, then they shouldn't be getting used for liftoff at all. Cutting fuel efficiency would be another thing, making them useful for near-Kerbin maneuvers (where all the asteroids are), instead of accidentally flying into interstellar space.

Only the original series and the animated film. The closer it gets to the 'Bay' era, the less I enjoy it.

If he ends up not being Kerbal, that might make a nice target for our war efforts. And... food is my main export right now as well, since it seems unlikely I'll be able to produce anything else for quite some time. Perhaps I'm wrong, unless I'm REALLY playing this wrong, but would I be correct in assuming that each infrastructure level generally takes longer to reach than the previous one? I can try to boost commerce all I want, but the cost of building infrastructure seems to increase right along with it. I'll be selling food on the open market at roughly 100 units per day at whatever price I can get for it. Unless someone in the alliance needs it badly, in which case I'll sell it at a nice discount.

How many asteroids do you know of that have lava flowing on their surface?

...as long as they're transmitting to a remote location, so the cop can't just grab the camera and smash the storage device inside?

I think they're required by law to have them. Give it time. It'll be a requirement in the West for everyone to wear Google Glass with record mode active 24/7.

I just prefer the readout that I get from Mechjeb. I like seeing the periapsis and apoapsis without having to switch to orbital. I like being able to see my horizontal and vertical movement separately while landing. I like not crashing into mountains while my altimeter still reads 3000.

It was also totally NOT an asteroid.

I have to wonder what kind of reaction that would have gotten in Russia at the height of the cold war.

Whoa, is it actually easier to get realistic rockets designs into orbit with FAR than without?

I kinda figured that the size of the system was something of a computer limitation. The few times I tried to create a planet (of a realistic size) in different 3D modelling programs, I started encountering render glitches before I even reached 1% the diameter of Earth.

For me it's Eeloo. A long burn is needed to match inclination, then for the transfer, and then to decel. A lot of people seem to give this title to Jool and I really don't know why. It's so massive that getting caught by it is relatively easy. As for the Mun, just go to Minmus first. The ease of escaping it more than makes up for the longer transfer burn required to get there. I've heard that people have actually EMU'ed their way beck to Kerbin from it.

No problem, that was mild compared to a lot of irate comments I've had in the past. I have a bit of a jaded outlook on 'complex' gaming too though, perhaps in the wrong direction. I was playing Star Wars Galaxies when it first launched, when it had much more of a sim-feel to it. And then I saw a lot of its complexities stripped away in an attempt to gain customers by giving it more of a wide appeal. Though I guess I should probably take the fact that those changes only hurt the subscription numbers, as a sign that there IS a market for such games. For whatever reason though, the folks who make the decisions, want everything to be fast and furious (no pun intended). Niche marketing is a very rare thing. But I admit, it seems to have been able to thrive a little bit more in the video game industry than it has in film/television - KSP being a prime example.