Kimberly

What mod is the large circle (centrifuge?) from?

You rebel, you.

I don't think there is anything useful to modern society that can be more easily retrieved by launching a craft into space, sending it to an asteroid or planet and having it mine, and then deorbiting. I don't think that's likely to be possible with any advance in efficiency in the foreseeable future, either. However, considering how ridiculously expensive it is to launch things into Earth orbit, what with that pesky atmosphere and high gravity, it might become profitable to mine asteroids or other planets for resources used in space-based construction. If there was a reliable source of fuel, then it would probably be more profitable to refuel interplanetary craft in orbit with space-mined fuel, than it would be to launch all that fuel up with them. I think the core problem facing spaceflight isn't a lack of commercial viability. We need to get it through people's thick skulls that scientific advance is something to aspire to, something worth spending money on. Governmental funding is clearly the answer for scientific spaceflight, and the money is there, we just don't spend it the right way. NASA's 2012 budget was only 0.48% of the federal budget, even though research indicates every dollar spent on NASA will pay for itself by stimulating the economy. There are suggestions for changing the funding model (we can imagine a market-based system, where companies bid for contracts to reach scientific milestones), but there's not enough money going around in an absolute sense.

I think you're trying to play the game as something it's not, LordPrometheus, namely an explosion simulator. So don't be surprised if there's not much technical support for your playstyle! But the game would benefit from a bit more detail in that regard, e.g. it would be nice if trussed and whatnot could be bent instead of exploding.

I don't think unlimited fuel would be good for a beginner, anyhow. It allows you to ignore the very basics of how rockets work, and therefore inhibits learning. It's better to be faced with this core issue right away, so that you can y'know, actually learn how to play the game. Perhaps there are more complex challenges (e.g. life support) that could be suppressed based on difficulty, but at this stage the game doesn't have anything that I think could be stripped.

You definitely want a sub-polar orbit. An exact polar orbit passes over the poles over and over and over...not very efficient at all.

A monk asked: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" The master replied: "Mu!" That is, the question is meaningless. We need more context. What's in the expansion pack? How big is it? When is it being released? Rational consumers use this information to make their choices. I wouldn't buy an expansion pack now, because Kerbal Space Program is clearly unfinished and such content would no doubt fit in the core game. But I might buy one in the future, after KSP is well-developed. But not if it added only cosmetic changes, it would have to add either a significant extra peripheral value, or make important changes to the core game.

The new RemoteTech version will include programmable commands, so you can program an entire deorbit and landing sequence while the craft is in contact, and then watch it be executed. You can't manually correct, of course, without suffering the time delay.

As stated quite frequently in this thread, that's intended. It's just silliness, I don't even know if the start screen corresponds with real deposits on Kerbin. I do wonder how long it will be until Majir snaps and just removes the feature.

It's not a free return if you're already in a proper orbit around the Mun. So no, there isn't. But you can apply the same principle to get back to Kerbin, sure. You just have to burn at the right spot in your orbit.

The principle is pretty much the same as setting up a network around Kerbin. Because Ike is in a geosynchronous orbit, however, you can land one satellite on Ike that will always remain pointed at Duna, and cover most of its orbit plus about half the surface. One more satellite on the other side of Duna, at the same altitude, should pretty much cover the surface except for the poles. Use three polar satellites to cover those and also keep the two satellites opposite Duna in touch with each other. That's a pretty solid network with just five satellites.

It's somewhat worrying that has to be clarified nowadays! Anyway, thanks for the explanation, it sounds like a lovely system.

On other hand, my experience in Europe has taught me that people there aren't exactly experts on World War II either. They mostly learn about the heroics of their local partisan force, or whatever war crime happened to occur in their country, and don't know much about the war in general. I think this is a pretty international phenomenon. I think the Why We Fight series actually provides a great narrative of World War II. It's biased, but the bias is clearly recognizable, and it gives plenty of attention to the war in Europe before US involvement, the Battle of Britain, China, Russia, etc. Many modern documentaries tend to be more subtle with what they leave out or are biased towards, making it harder to filter out, with the strange result that a government propaganda series ends up a better source.

You mean the IntelliStrut?

1) Sun-synchronous orbits aren't possible because the planets have no axial tilt and are perfect spheres. You can make an orbit with the same length as the solar day (6 hours and 50 seconds), but the solar time you pass over a spot will change because of Kerbin's orbit around the sun. In the real world, the bulge around the equator and axial tilt are used to "correct" orbits so they stay sun-synchronous. 2) I think you need to burn radially or anti-radially...not sure though. 3) Molniya orbits are not useful in KSP because there is no Soviet Russia to pass over. If you want continuous coverage of the polar regions, you might as well put three satellites into a perfectly polar orbit, instead of using two satellites per pole in a highly eccentric orbit. If you want coverage of the sub-polar regions, than an equatorial orbit will do just fine. 4) It takes experience to do this well by eye, but really, it's a matter of dragging the maneuver nodes around until you get something you like. With practice you'll need to spend less time fidgeting with them. Keep in mind that even if a slingshot isn't perfect, you can do a burn near a planet to correct the way it is slingshotting you, which might still mean you profit in delta-V. Use a second maneuver node to predict what this burn should be like. 5) Use maneuver nodes to plan a burn when you are about 1/4th of an orbit (90 degrees) away from the Moon. Fidget with the node so you don't crash into the moon, but instead do a pass closeby with a nice little loop before being flung back to Kerbin.

In my experience, it's often the Canadians that underestimate their role in the American Revolution. They enjoying playing it as an "us vs. them", much like the War of 1812, underestimating the amount of Canadians that fought on the US side and the very real possibility of the colony having joined us.

According to the wiki, escape velocity for Ike is 534.48 m/s. If you accelerate an object to this speed in an instant, its apoapsis should lie just outside the sphere of influence of Ike. The object will slow down as it gets closer to Duna, barely moving at all near apoapsis...until it exits Ike's sphere of influence, and accelerates as it falls towards Duna. After running the numbers, though, I've found two issues. The first problem is that objects in KSP tend to be quite heavy. Say we have something that weights 0.5 tons--pretty light. If we say you can apply a force for one second, that means you'll need to apply 267 kN worth of force to accelerate the object to escape velocity. Even getting a 5 kg battery to Duna requires 2672 N, as it turns out, though that's something human weight lifters can easily achieve. The second issue is that Ike's orbit is actually a bit eccentric and inclined, so Duna's position in the sky at a given spot changes by a few degrees as it orbits. This doesn't sound like a lot, but can make hundreds of kilometers' difference. So there would be an exact launch window for precision punting!

There's also the fact that, with large projects, some ideas have to work within the confines of designs not made with that idea in mind. Take the lunar rover: the idea proved troublesome during testing and they scrapped it. Some intrepid General Motors designers wanted to change NASA's mind, but by then the lunar landing module had already been designed. So there simply was very little space for the rover; not to mention the fact that its weight had not been accounted for, so every bit of weight added to the lander meant that the lunar module would have less time to find a safe landing spot before it ran out of fuel. (Recall that Apollo 11 landed with just seconds to spare.) They ended up building a car that weighed only 210 kg and could fold up to be only 30 cubic feet. Nevertheless, it could carry two astronauts, equipment, and could be used to bring back samples. In short, the real engineers work with lots more limitations than you have in KSP, and yet they come amazing solutions to every problem.

Never mind punting it into orbit, punt it with escape velocity! Because Ike is geostationary, if you take position at the spot on Ike where Duna is at its Zenith, you can draw a bull's eye on Duna and try to score points!

I don't like the idea of vertical sleep stations. It would be plain weird on a planet's surface! But the windows for horizontal bunks are weird (and I predicted as much, so I voted against it). I say we have equally spaced horizontally-oriented windows, but have horizontal bunks as well.

They need to be part of the same craft. An easy way to do this is to use Kerbal Attachment System, which allows you to basically just run a wire from ship to ship (default length 50 meters, but it's moddable) which makes them count as docked.

If you select the root part, you can drag the whole craft upwards or downwards. It'll clip into the ground if need be, so vertical space shouldn't be an issue. I can't imagine what kind of monstrosity you're building that is taller than the VAB, though!

That's basically it. We developed a simple model that covered our observations, but then we discovered things that didn't fit into our neat little model...so we made a complex model that accounted for these new observations, as well. Science marches on! But why apply the complex model to situations where the simple model works quite adequately? Even the Moon landings were done largely using patched conics instead of n-body physics.

We are missing goals and objectives. That's part of the reason the tech tree is being implemented--it gives us stuff to work towards! Your post seems pretty contradictory to me. You say we should delay career mode, i.e. goals and objectives, until we have goals and objectives... Maybe you have a very different idea of what "career mode" means than I do.

Well, in a perfect simulation, all of the orbits would decay eventually. Exosphere and solar pressure and gravitational anomalies and whatnot...So he's got the right idea, really. He just doesn't know it yet. I don't know if it counts as a "historical screw-up", but I was rather offended by text accompanying a display on Ellis Island. It said, in no uncertain terms, that the United States instigated the Mexican-American War to force Mexico to cede territory. That's hugely biased against the US; it ignores the existing tension between the US and Mexico and the many diplomatic incidents actually caused by Mexico. It plays into the ultra-cynical image of the United States a lot of people have today, and I think it's very inappropriate for a museum to encourage that--least of all on Ellis Island!