John Nowak

I'm inclined to agree -- this sort of technology was available to consumer goods around twenty years ago. I'll vote for 1) as well. The whole question of transmitting vs. return needs to be rethought, I think.

This sounds like an interesting mod and I'll be trying it out. I have done something similar manually -- I start a stopwatch while I'm working on a spacecraft, and set the launch time to (12 h * build time +12h) if the rocket is unmanned, doubling that if it's manned. It's unrealistically fast, but better than zero. Also, that rule encourages me to modify existing saved designs instead of whipping something together from scratch. A more realistic algorithm would give schedules in months or years, but that might not be fun at all.

This sounds like an excellent and well-thought out proposal. I'd suggest that crews could also transfer through adapters, though. Also note that it's quite possible to put a hatch in an ablative heat shield. This was tested successfully in an unmanned Gemini flight; a test example is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Something bare bones such as "once an orbit, if periaps is less than 70km reduce apoaps by 10%; if apoaps and periaps are both below 70 km delete" would be nice.

Ditto on the Kerbal Alarm Clock love. It's easily the single most important mod, in my opinion.

I think it has a lot of potential. Winchell Chung posted some NASA graphs giving the volume needed per person for long-term comfort and health; 20 m^3 were needed for "optimal long term" missions of 6 months+ duration. Given that Kerbals are about half as big, the volume for them would be around 3 m^3. The Hitchhiker is a cylinder about 2.5m in diameter and 2.5m tall; if we say that, oh, half that is usable crew volume one Hitchhiker should provide enough space for two Kerbals for a long mission. Similar estimates could be made for the other capsules. Unfortunately, at present Kerbals don't have a bunch of role-playing characteristics they use to carry out tasks, so it's hard to see how to penalize the player for exceeding those limits, although I'd vote for "tied up with duct tape" and effectively KIA until returned.

I like the challenge of return missions -- it gives insight to history. There was the time that I launched a ship under remote control, and Jeb snuck aboard at the last minute. Since the ship had no parachutes, this prompted a THRILLING SPACE RESCUE with Adam kerman as David Jansen in Marooned!

Yes. My abort procedure is to use the Abort button in action groups to 1) shut down all engines 2) decouple the appropriate decoupler 3) fire the engines I use to de-orbit the capsule.

Neat! Can I ask for a link?

I'd also like to add a vote for the Science Station concept -- a lab that slowly generates science over time, occasionally broadcasting it home. May I suggest an infrared telescope that consumes coolant over time, and needs the occasional replenishment?

Try the Attachment Pack. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/attachment-pack/

I think this is the way to go. Also needed is a Health stat, so Kerbals can be injured without being killed.

Sounds good to me! My only concern is that a sample taken from anywhere should have _some_ scientific value, but higher value targets are defined places. This would seem to encourage rovers and such without requiring it. It's a recapitulation of Apollo. The first missions were to validate the system, subsequent missions started going for specific targets with defined value. By Apollo 15, they were going to canyons. Consider possibly salting the maps so that places that look interesting have higher value when reached. Craters at the poles, the Anomalies, and probably canyons.

Moonbase, definitely. Going to Mars for a visit makes it too easy to cancel the follow-on missions; building a base makes it harder to abandon.

True enough, although it remains a real-world and Kerbal problem. The initial placement of the satellites is key, and Kepler's Third is a big help in that. Take a vehicle with three satellites, circularize your orbit at the altitude you want, adjust your orbit so your new period is an appropriate fraction of the existing one, and you're set. I wanted to put three satellites evenly placed 200km above the moon. My carrier dropped its periaps to 155, wait four orbits, and then circularize and deploy. The largest error was about 1/5 of a degree.

Satellites in formation will tend to drift out of formation. This is a real world problem and is the reason why satellites are often abandoned once they run out of maneuvering fuel.

Many thanks for this mod: it adds a lot of challenge and fun to the game. I'm presently trying a no-probecore game, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I did have a few suggestions, though. 1) While the Compatibility Pack fixes this, it would be nice to have a probe core sized "Remote Control" module. 2) The Range rules seem to assume there is no such thing as a more powerful transmitter -- suggest that the ranges of the two antennas be added instead of using the smaller of the two. The ranges of existing systems might then be cut in two to preserve the gameplay. 3) I have experienced an intermittent bug where spacecraft without any remote control units get their SAS locked wither on or off. Returning to the tracking station and re-opening the spacecraft seems to fix this. However, I don't know for sure if this is a bug in RemoteTech, or if it is a bug in the core game which Remote Tech module prevent... 4) I have a spacecraft without a command pod but with command seats, a Remote Command module, and a dish antenna. After a kerbal boards the command seat, the dish does not open and cannot be used to target another vehicle. However, returning to the tracking station and reloading fixes this. Perhaps Remote Tech doesn't realize the ship is now under control? Again, thanks!

Given how low the interest in space is, I'm not convinced that publicity is a waste of astronauts' time. And this is far from the first such project: http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19980134000

That's very interesting! I'm a bit of a purist myself, but I think "automatically execute maneuver node" is a very reasonable bit of automation. It sounds like a nice way to handle it. Now that I think of it, I recall one shooter style game that did have "gun skill" for each character: your crosshairs shook, and lower skill characters made it jump more. So potentially low-skilled characters can affect gameplay of non-abstracted events by making the task harder to execute.

I'm guessing captured comet; Squad hasn't animated the outgassing yet. Which should be spectacular.

It's probably just an outreach program to schools -- send a toy to space and then tour it. I'm guessing it'll have some sort of programmed speech about its flight later.

That could be very interesting. I'd love to see more RPG elements to the game, with individualized Kerbal models and such. I'd really like to be in a position where I have to decide between using my EVA specialist or giving someone else more experience in EVA. The thing is that role-playing games tend to use attributes or stats for abstracted actions. In a tabletop game, you have "gun skills" because the player isn't actually aiming the weapon; in video game shooters you don't because the player really is aiming -- instead, avatars progress by unlocking new capabilities. So a general "Fix Things" skill can be abstracted, and a "Science" skill used to operate equipment (and more importantly, perhaps, find significant samples on EVA) would be easy to add to the game. I'm not sure about "Pilot" skill, though. How would that be used in game? Maybe to get a dock once the player's touched docking ports?

Does it? I think the humorous aspects of the game seem to focus on the kerbals themselves -- apart from the descriptions of the parts, they tend to look and work pretty much the same as "real world" systems. For example, I haven't seen a big slowly-spinning wind-up key on a power source for rovers, for example. Still, I'm sure it'll look neat. Of course, there is that reel-to-reel look rocked by one of the Flight Engineer parts... and yeah, bellows would be amusing.

That might be a better way of handling it, especially if it's possible to tweak the values of the samples returned based on the terrain. I've it claimed that the most interesting geology targets are also the places where it's most difficult to land, which is an argument for rovers. I just wonder, though -- does that mean there would be places between the deposits where the science value is effectively zero? I'm not a scientist at all, but it seems to me there's always the chance of stumbling across a wildcard just about anywhere. You're digging in a dry riverbed that's been so heavily worked you can see the footprints of other archaeologists, and bang, you hit Lucy. Yeah, that does sound like a good way of handling it...

Why would a sample from Mars have more scientific value than one from the Moon? Right now, it's only because we have lunar samples.