vger

Just be sure to tell them how long that will actually take, so their imaginations don't run away with them. Nothing will demotivate a classroom full of elementary school kids faster than telling them that the world will end before graduation. - - My half hour class? It would be combined with statistical information about the current state of our planet, its resources, population, etc. Without spreading space, humanity in all likelihood has no future (or at least one that isn't utterly nightmarish), and our interest in it has been going WAY in the wrong direction.

Good job, but... you've still got a long way to go.

As cool as SE is, if KSP WAS going to switch engines, I'd rather it be Infinity.

Maybe something has changed, but I feel that NASA has always been the poster child for the 'spirit of space exploration.' If you're talking about companies like SpaceX, I don't know. Something about that feels somehow more... profiteering? Not saying it's a bad company or anything, but the further away you get from NASA, the further away you get from "What can we learn from it?" and closer to, "How much can we earn from it?" That would make KSP an entirely different kind of game. But, I might just be completely misinterpreting your suggestion.

Yep, I heard this too in the Twitch talk last night. For those who think the Ion engines are too boring... the devs agree.

Given the landscape of society these days though, I think the odds of discoveries having any beneficial impact on everyday life is considerably less. Any major breakthrough means that someone out there who has a lot of power, risks to lose a boatload of money as a result of the discovery. And that someone will do anything they can to make sure that it never gets anywhere.

To me, this mission also ties in with the Rosetta comet mission, as well as the plan to wrangle an asteroid and bring it into Earth orbit. I'm pretty sure the devs said on Twitch last night that if you bring an asteroid into Kerbin orbit, you'd get a science bonus while studying it. This asteroid update is NOT just about preventing a Michael Bay scenario.

Everytime something gets hyped up like this now all i can think of is the Segway unveiling. After expecting transportation revolutions somewhere between anti-gravity and teleportation, we got a new scooter.

Anyone else not able to get mapset as a usable part in career mode? It keeps telling me the part requires an entry purchase in R&D, which I've done three times, and there are three duplicates of it shown in that part of the tech tree now. But I still can't build with it. This is the only modded part that I've had this issue with.

I do tend to think it's too easy, but then, I don't use the Mechjeb autopilot. I just have it for the additional info. Frankly, I doubt I could keep from crashing a lander without it. KSP's 'surface speed' indicator combines horizontal and vertical velocity making it somewhat difficult to know where you should be thrusting. And if you want to know for sure whether you're going up or down, you have to bounce your eyes to the top of the screen. And then there's the KSP altimeter using only sea level as a guide, which is a VERY dangerous thing to go by. I also like knowing my apoapsis and periapsis, without having to switch to orbital mode all the darned time. And yeah, Mechjeb autopilot is quite realistic.

Gratz! Just did my first orbital rendezvous a couple of days ago. I've been to the Mun, Minmus, Eve, Duna, and the Sun, but this basic event over Kerbal gave me a greater sense of accomplishment than all of that. Talk about threading the needle.

Yep, that's what I do with it. More or less, it's the centerpiece of outposts to me. I send them ahead of manned missions. Though I've successfully put one on a jump-rover, which I sent unmanned. A manned landing later claimed it and used it to comb the biomes. The thing ran pretty well, all things considered.

I'd love to see self-sufficient space stations, even if life support becomes a thing. But it might be too far outside the dev plan. I seem to remember them saying that interstellar travel will NOT happen, because it would require conceptual methods of space travel, which is a place they don't want to go. KSP is meant to be realistic, more or less. So a space station that can survive without resupplying might be delving too far into the realm of sci-fi. But gosh, a space station with biodomes attached to it would look so flipping cool.

Every custom asset needs its very own texture files and can't share them with other assets? You've got to be kidding me. Yes, change this.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of it. If only ONE thing gets implemented for life support, it should be snacks.

At that speed, I wonder what kind of G's you'd be doing in orbit? I think it'd only be slightly more agonizing than the initial acceleration. As for possible transfer times, I'll just leave this here. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4181.pdf

You just made me realize what the LV-1 engine truly is. An anvil. I believe though that there is nothing that will torture a Kerbal more than denying snack access.

I just noticed that the Telus LV Bay, the Telus, and the Pegasus 1 mobility enhancers all have the exact same mass, drag, max crash tol, and max temperature. This is somewhat problematic because even in situations where using a non-retractable ladder piece is more logical (and I don't just mean RP-wise) you're wasting extra mass by using it. It takes about six Pegasus pieces to get the range of a single Telus LV Bay, which means you'd spend 6x the mass to get the same amount of ladder length.

I took it as meaning there's a thin asteroid belt and you'll just happen upon them during transfers.

Thought I read somewhere that we'd have to "discover" them. Except for the 'global killer' I'm assuming.

Greatest number of disasters interspersed with a very satisfactory achievement. After one death involving a rover, and then a lunar rescue mission resulting in everyone dying due to a solid landing instead of a water one (or so I THOUGHT)... I got buzzed in Kerbin orbit by one of my very old ships which as it turned out, had Jeb in it for some 2400 days. He got stuck up there on my very first orbit success, and as a total novice, had no clue how to get him down. Well I finally got the guts to actually try a rendezvous. After studying the directions ten times and then a half hour of touch & go, I actually caught up with him, and he EVA'd to the other ship... ...and then the hitchhiker storage container exploded on impact with the water. Turns out it has a pretty crappy crash tolerance. Unfortunately I didn't learn that from the last incident because it was an unintentional ground hit. BUT... the orbital rendezvous was a big moment for me. Knowing just how hard that is, it felt even cooler than the first time I landed on the Mun.

You don't do that with spent rockets. You do that with payloads you've sent up a piece at a time and then docking them together.

That's the easy part for me. Getting them somewhere is easy. Getting them back? Ehh.... *calls PR lawyer*

I had a turned over rover on the moon and tried to fix it by running into it at an angle using the EMU. All I accomplished was blowing up both the rover and the Kerbal. The other two on the Mun are awaiting a rescue mission after I discovered the liftoff engines had sustained damage upon landing. It's the Kerbal way.

Gosh, I just realized what a cool potential factor there could've been here. A mockup NASA press conference about an incoming asteroid as a briefing (teaser) for the in-game mission - from REAL NASA guys.