vger

I just drive it in docking mode with the reaction wheel enabled. The only time I drive in stage mode is if I need to 'fly' or turn on a dime.

Personally I would love it if crash tolerance also somehow factored into the ability to withstand atmospheric turbulence, possibly even G-forces. It would require far more diversity in rocket design for specific destinations. A lot would argue though that this would make the game too difficult.

Put legs under it to soften the blow and you'll probably be fine. If you can stand to give it just enough fuel and thrust to slow the descent to under (I think 6m/s is its crash tolerance?) you could do that too. With the parachute doing most of the deceleration work, you won't need much at all if you time it right.

If you can get used to the cold, do it. The BEST time to stargaze/photograph is in the heart of winter when there's a minimal amount of 'heat shimmer' and haze to obscure your view of the sky. If your gloves aren't good enough, if you can afford them, get some electric ones. You wouldn't be getting them wet for any reason so it shouldn't be a problem. Also, most telescopes have addons/mounts now for the very purpose of using cellphones as cameras.

Oh, sweet. Never saw that before. Guess it probably would've stuck out more if I could warp from the tracking station (which totally needs to become a thing). Well... there's roughly 424 Kerbal days in a single year, which would be about 60 weeks if we treated each 6 hour rotation as a day. Not ridiculously far off from Earth.

I doubt it's anything the brain can't adjust itself to. Though you'd need some time to readjust when leaving the centrifuge. You can get a similar phenomenon from running on a treadmill. Technically you're not even going anywhere. There's no actual acceleration for your body to experience. And yet after stepping off of it, you'll experience the illusion of moving forward. It's the after-effects of your mind compensating for the bizarre environment of the moving treadmill. There are perhaps better examples of this though. One is in our own eyes. We actually see everything upside down. We're born this way, but our brains learn to adapt and artificially invert the image for us. Experiments have been done wearing glasses that invert the image an additional time. After a certain amount of time, the brain would again adapt and flip the image for the wearer. Then removing the glasses would require another waiting period for the brain to adjust. The mind is HIGHLY adaptive. I don't think it's a question of "could we handle it?." The bigger question is how much time is needed to adjust between the two extremes.

That sounds more in line with what I've been thinking. The amount of available water is anyone's guess, but an all-purpose system for extracting it from any world is highly unlikely. I think we stand a better chance at one world becoming a veritable 'gold mine' than getting it in smaller amounts from everywhere. A lot of factors would go into choosing a mining planet. Distance, environment, gravity, ease of extraction, etc. In keeping with the pseudo-realism of KSP, any official resource gathering project would probably have to reflect this.

Can you name a resource that we could find in abundance on any body in the solar system that (even if the cost of tech was no issue) could power anything we send up? There are elements that can be found in great abundance in the universe, BUT, what would have to be done in order to extract it from different worlds would probably be radically different. We're not just going to find gas pockets anyplace we go. In many cases, the elements are going to be bound with molecules, and in some cases, separating it is going to be much harder than others. I just have trouble envisioning, even in the distant future, a mineable resource that we'll be able to take from nearly any rock we land on, and use it to go further.

Well, yeah, but that's more of a weakness in the design of the mod. Take a look at scansat. You can map a planet in that at maximum warp and can even switch vehicles while it's going on. I'm pretty sure you can even have more than one planet being mapped at the same time. Kethane requires the ONE scanner to be the active vessel at all times, AND requires the warp speed to be kept low.

A "mission builder" app sounds like a marvelous idea. I would like to still see it be more dynamic than having to get a generic soil sample from a specific place though. We need things that really make the approach to exploring different worlds vastly different, to keep the challenge fresh and make it exciting to ask "just what is out there that we haven't found yet?" and then go to find out. How about a planet with actual seasons, where something special can only be found at the proper time? Or a world with secrets at the bottom of its ocean (yeah, we'd need submersibles). Perhaps an atmosphere that doesn't work and play well with a certain type of rocket, meaning that those parts can't be used there? Planets with caverns that go deep underground? Things like this probably couldn't be done through a mission building program that was meant for general public use.

The other problem with Kethane though is that it's ridiculously illogical to be both a valuable resource, AND be found on any world. I would like to see discoveries in the game that are less static than the same readings from the same devices all the time though.

Is there a link where this was discussed in-depth? Curious to read it. I fail to see how "mining" is any more or less grindy than "science." Both are resource-gathering, technically. That aside, I somewhat agree that contracts may bring in mining options. KSP is the taxi/trucking service that gets hired by corporations who want to do cool stuff. What gets done with that stuff is up to the corporations. If somebody wants the Mun drilled, they'll pay for it.

Well, in some ways that's true. We definitely have a lot more problems getting improvements into society than we used to. Just imagine what the world would be like today if the patent system had existed at the dawn of human industry when a process for making fire was developed. Or simple machines. Owch.

For me, physical health is a crucial aspect of life-support. I don't just mean being able to breathe for instance, but also the health of the lungs that are doing the breathing. Just having gravity present when you're not doing ANYTHING, gives your body more exercise than it would have in the absence of gravity. This helps keep everything in the body running smoothly. From that standpoint, gravity already improves life support. As for whether or not the devices that generate life support would fare better with gravity? I don't see why really. With the example of toilets, a pump system will be needed whether there is gravity or not, so the toilet stands just as much of a chance at breaking. But it would indeed be more comfortable.

Yeah, that's why I was trying to figure out what its purpose would be. Unless it affects the vessel in some mechanical way, it's just a very simple superficial effect that would take almost no time to implement. I think this would fall under the general category of weather effects in this case. Not that it's literally meteorological, but a bit of spice just like dust storms, auroras, lightning, etc. Whether or not it's something that needs to have actual cometary debris trails to dictate when a larger volume of meteors happens is anyone's guess. I'm thinking no though since there's no "Kerbal calendar" to track the passage of time with, beyond a clock that starts at liftoff.

*double-checks to make sure this isn't "Yahoo comments" under a political article* hmm... surprisingly, it's not.

I've given this a lot of thought lately. I've noticed that as time has gone on and I've gained more technology, my rockets have more and more become 'all-purpose.' The challenges of visiting more distant worlds become simple and the only remaining choices I need to make are atmosphere vs. vacuum. Anything else I seem to be able to handle whether or not I have previous intel on the body in question. Furthermore, many will argue that if it weren't for the need to bring back surface samples, both manned landings and rovers would be completely meaningless. Based on this, it seems that 90% of the challenges presented in KSP is "getting there and getting back." But the challenge of BEING THERE is severely lacking and is often very mundane. So what I thought is, "What if each world had a finite amount of science to provide, but a specific mystery or problem needed to be unlocked in order to harness its true scientific potential? To me, this would make KSP much more "game-like" without taking away too much from its sandbox nature. The R&D lab could even be expanded to aid you in solving these problems. Here is one example that came to mind for a possible scenario. (Note: I'm not suggesting monoliths be used for enhanced gameplay functions, but it was the first thing that popped into my head). 1. You make your first attempt to land a probe on a distant world. The landing proceeds fine momentarily but there is an anomalous reading on one or more instruments. In the lower atmosphere, all contact with the probe is lost. 2. A visit to the science archives reveals that the problem seem to point to interference emanating from somewhere on the planet. Dr. Wernher Von Kerman suggests that some kind of radio signal may be responsible for the interference. Pinpointing its source would be a good idea. 3. R&D develops a specific device suited to the task. If you were to place three probes with this device into orbit, you could triangulate the source of the signal. 4. After triangulation is completed, a manned mission must be launched to land at the determined source (since the signal botches automated probes). Landing landing near the source, a brief time of scouring the surface via rovers of 'jump' landers would pinpoint an anomaly. 5. Clicking on it and performing research, would yield the 'serious' amount of science you could gain from that planet. You also might find a way to disable the signal so that probes could have unfettered access. Again, this is just an example, and not necessarily one that would need to be used. It's just there to give an idea of the immense scope of scenarios that could be created for all the worlds in the star system. Each world could actually present completely unique challenges not only for getting there, but what to do once you get there. We could, for instance, have to establish a long-term base on a planet to take long-term readings from a planet's different seasons. Or keep a probe in orbit, scanning the surface for thermal changes in an attempt to pin-point the location of a volcano before it erupts (thereby enabling us to collect a lava sample). It might be exaggerated, but it feels more in line with the diversity of methods that NASA/JPL/etc uses to tackle certain problems. Clearly, landing on Europa would be much different from landing on Mars, and some of the research we would do there would be quite different. It would even be possible to use this concept to provide some kind of end-game event, that can only happen after each world's mystery is solved (such as the discovery of a massive rogue planet far beyond Eeloo's orbit).

Voidryder, your story deserves to go into some classic future collection of texts, something comparable to Aesop's Fables.

The rover I settled on for Minmus was essentially a jump-rover. The only reason it had wheels was so I didn't have to waste fuel to touchdown. Gravity is so light there that using wheels for acceleration is scarcely feasible. I even had an incident where I had to invert and thrust down because I had accidentally reached escape trajectory, just by rolling up a mountain.

Micrometeorites hardly requires any kind of physics engine in order to implement. At the MOST, you'd just have to designate areas of space with heavier concentrations, and when a vessel is in those areas, make a collision roll every so often. If the roll is high enough, emit sparks on the hull, and deal damage if necessary (but I wouldn't do such a thing). But for the effects of meteors entering the atmosphere, I'm not sure I see the point. Would it work on the scale of the Kerbal solar system? Earth hits meteors so fast, if you blink, they're already gone. So what would this accomplish for gameplay? It's not like you're going to wrangle a meteor once it's in the atmosphere. Anything else that asteroids do need not be any different from how ships interact with a planet. It hits the atmosphere, makes a lot of smoke and fire, and explodes on impact.

This is pretty cool. Actually what I would love to do, is have this setup like a vast sculpture near a museum. A properly-scaled model of the solar system that you can walk around in.

I've said this in other threads about this topic now. The way science relates to R&D is simply an oversimplification. Will bringing back moon rocks get you better rockets? No. But will it open opportunities for such a thing? Absolutely. Science gets more people interested in space, which means more people will enter fields of study to further space travel. Furthermore, anything you do that would get your space program on the news, will help generate public interest, leading to more funding. The end result? Better tech.

That's what I want next after asteroids. Comets. If only it's possible to get them to actually look pretty with the engine. The gas had better ignite when they get close to the sun.

I already have meteors in KSP. My rockets.

Random simple question... anyone know if copies of KSP can be found in the gift centers at Kennedy?