Kerbart

Actually, it was Blaise Pascal; “Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” But it's such a great quote that I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Twain had come up with it by himself.

I'm going to start with saying that concise communication is a skill that needs nurture and developed. I'm sure there's a lot of good stuff in this thread, but good lord, the amount of text one needs to read for it... I couldn't bring myself to read it all, so I probably missed half the points by skimming too much. Yes, curse marketeers and their fluffy talk, but do ignore “communication is a science, too!” at your own peril! From what I gather, the main aims and concerns are: Improve career Avoid career being grindy, while at the same time prevent time warp to be the magic bullet that allows generating funds/science by spamming the warp button Provide a bit more of a program instead of fulfilling random missions I'm more than happy to burn at the stake if I got things wrong. With that said, how about the concept of: Contracts have a reasonable deadline. We want three mun landings within the next 100 days, for instance Missing the deadline will result in a penalty. Either financial, rep, or both The contract will make regular payments over the contract period, with a lump sum when the goal(s) is (are) reached. You can combine a lot of what is mentioned above into this. Obviously you'll get paid more when your reputation is higher. You can fast forward to collect on that "build a base on duna" mission, but miss the deadline and you'll go bankrupt. Example Contract One: Land at the Mun Within the next 90 days, make at least five Mun landings. Each landing should be in a different biome, and should consist of planting a flag, performing at least four science experiments and returning a surface sample to Kerbin. Payment up front: 100,000 funds Decaday* payment: 44,400 funds Penalties: 50,000 funds and 10 rep points per missing biome at the end of the 90 period; 30,000 funds per missing biome after 100 days; 20,000 funds per mission biome after 110 days which will cancel the project If all five biomes have been completed satisfactory before the 90 days the remainin payments will be paid lump sum A decaday is a 10 (Kerbin) day period. Not sure if the Kerbals would call it a week, or a month, or something completely different. Note that it's not planting five flags, doing 20 experiments and return 5 samples. you'll need a flag, 4 experiments and a sample all from the same biome, and do that for five different biomes. Example Contract Two: Save Kerbals stranded in Low Kerbin Orbit On a regular basis, Kerbals get stranded in low Kerbin orbit for a variety of reasons. You are requested to perform rescue missions for the unfortunate Kerbins that do get stranded in orbit. The contract will run for 100 days, or 10 rescued Kerbals, whichever comes first Payment up front: 20,000 funds Decaday payment: 10,000 funds Bonus: 30,000 funds and 5 rep points per saved Kerbal, and the opportunity to offer the rescued Kerbal a job Penalty: Any Kerbal not saved within 5 days will run out of life support. There will be a penalty of 25 rep points for each failed rescue After saving the rescue you can opt to make a job offer by typing in a payment amount; it is not disclosed what the minimum is. If the offer is accepted, the amount is deducted and the Kerbal joins your workforce. The minimum payment will hinge on the reputation of your agency, but also on the experience of the Kerbal rescued (you could rescue a 4-star scientist, for instance) and the "market value" (the going rate at the astronaut center), although it will of course be a lot lower than the existing market value (our rescued Kerbal is grateful for being saved, after all—Mortimer shows up with a "sign here" contract when they're still in shock after being rescued and safe and well back on Kerbin) You could use this system for existing science contract as well, by incorporating sub contracts. I could accept a contract for 25 temperature measurements on Minmus, "to be decided where," and then pick up the subcontracts as they're being offered. Do I ignore/decline early contracts, hoping I combine it with later manned missions? I will risk running out of time, of course. The point is that contract do offer steady income, while it is unatractive at the same time to fast forward and cash in on those monthly payments; there are goals to be met, eventually.

While I know a thing or two about coding I don't know a lot about C# and wouldn't dare to suggest my services there. However, if you want I can take a stab at the manual, if that needs to be updated or rewritten.

It might have to do with the fact that this is functionality already offered by KER. KER doesn't need any parts, but in Career mode you'll need them until you've upgraded your Tracking Center. That behavior can be overruled through the KER Settings dialog.

Or a great medieval way to test witchcraft. If you survive drinking venom, you're obviously a witch and you'll be burned at the stake. If you don't survive drinking venom.. you're not a witch!

Wise words. I hope Squad reads this and realizes that they have an obligation towards the modding community to provide some kind of platform where you can host mods. Something that is professionally ran, so its existence doesn't rely on attaboys from the community (and immune to hate mail). Something that is well funded, so that it doesn't drown in bandwidth cost. It doesn't have to be particularly liked; it's there to host mods, after all, not to invite everybody in a big circle and sing kumbaya. If only, if only, Squad would step up to the plate and do something like that... [/sarcasm]

It would also be extremely Kerbal. So now I'm waiting for a mod that has combined LF/LO tank (with some attractive benefits of cours) that offer an increasing chance of Kaboom as time passes...

But once they're powered off you can no longer control your satellite when the power comes back on (at least in the harder setting you cannot remotely control an antenna if there is no remote connection). So to make that scenario more playable (anytime you hit the nighttime side of a satellite longer than your batteries provide for you lose control) you'd also need to be able to define an emergency mode on the craft where the antennas tagged as emergency will then go back online. (“And what if I tagged all my antennas as emergency so I run out of power again?” “Well, don't do that!!”)

Although technically speaking, if you're riding that rocket, and anything would go wrong, you wouldn't notice either, as your brain is atomized before you even realize it. Well, this part of the discussion is about the concept of mixing liquid Methane and O2 in a single tank, as, theoretically, they wouldn't react until the temperature goes up. This is the "theoretical" kind as in "theoretically, you can drink snake venom and it will exit your digestive system without harm, by nature of being a venom, and not a poison"—best left as a theory.

They might be able to produce fuel tanks like that in 2200, I don't think they'll find someone who is insane enough to sign off on it. Putting something in one tank that is going to make the MOAB look like a firecracker, but if everything works to plan it'll be just fine? Part of engineering is building in a safety margin to provide for mishaps. My suspicion is that the safety margin here is why don't we just not do that, ok?

No, if drag is making it unstable, it means COM and COP are not where you claim they are. You keep saying that the COM is behind the COP (which is not the center of lift) yet we don't know where the center of pressure is. It's hard to determine if this is a bug, or that there are design issues at play; all we have to go by is a picture (without any indicators) of a topsy-turvy design with a lot of surface area at the top and a lot of heavy parts at the bottom, making me willing to bet you dollars to donuts that this is a vehicle where a low placed COM (heavy SRB's at the bottom, lots of surface at the top) simply wants to follow it's natural tendency -- COM ahead of COP.

So, what's the earth-shattering news?

If that were the case than explain adiabatic decompression to me? Rapid expansion results in a temperature drop (this is how refrigerators work). If adiabatic compression were a friction process where does the drop in temperature come from? Anti-friction?

Are you sure about that? Because a lot of people I trust about this subject tell me it's actually due to adiabatic compression. Friction has very little to do with it. It's the same effect that heats up your bicycle pump, and the same effect (in reverse) that sunk the Thresher. Friction has very little to do with it.

It's working great! No more direction chasing, and the option to turn RT on/off per save is greatly appreciated! It seems though that (I'm on 1.1.2/64 bit) than when you leave the Flight Computer window open and then switch to another vessel through the map, the FC window is no longer responsive. I have to close it, and then open it again with the FC button to make it responsive again. Is this a known bug or something new?

We can fret over the design, to me a bigger issue would be what tech would go along with the Barn tier? We're talking about sounding rockets and mach 1 experimental airplanes here, I just don't see career mode the way it is right now properly starting with a barn. I'd love to see a barn. But it should come with a career mode that starts with oversized rocket-club rockets, bumpers, and other unmanned stuff.

One cannot wonder how many of those 800 are True Believers, and how many just subscribed out of utter fascination.

Pardon me for not being a mindreader. You didn't mention in the original post that you didn't have a claw, so I was forced to assume you didn't think of that solution. ("I don't have a claw yet, so I can't use that as a means to transfer the Kerbal out of the vessel either") At any rate, as @John JACK mentioned, this is more a problem with the USI mod that isn't providing a hatch on a crewed module. It would be nice to have a rescue mechanism as @tater suggested though.

Because your problem can be solved in-game with stock parts. "Dock" with the claw and transfer them out that way. I, on the other hand, have to resort to editing the save file to mark those parts as "debris." That's a great idea. Maybe the game can even just drain all fuel (LF, OX, MP, Xe) but keep the electricity for life support (where applicable)?

Even worse! OCD-me likes to designate the crafts Kerbals are saved from as "Debris". Now, the rescued Kerbal can rename his vessel before leaving, so no problem (you can probably see where this is going). Of course, if they're in a Mk 1 Cabin or a Hitch Hiker, you can't. So you do if from the Tracking Center. Except that, for reasons unknown to me, the renaming functionality has been removed from the tracking center!

Awesome! Little steps, Rome wasn't built in one day either (nor was KSP...)! Thank you so much for all the work you're doing!

Fantastic! Without having even downloaded the update, but based on the screenshot... Is there a way to phase the lights, so I can have animated lights on my ships? i should post a screenshot -- putting the lights on the corners of hatches makes rescueing Kerbals—for sinister reasons something that predominantly seems to take place on the night side— so much easier as they can see where to go to!

When the air hits straight on, those blunt surfaces to not generate any lift. So they're not counted towards the center of lift. Once air starts hitting those surfaces off-axis, there will be a sideways aerodynamic component. If anything as a reaction to redirecting the air sideways, but I'm sure there's aerodynamically more to it. But that's moot: the most important thing is that there's a significant sideways f0rce coming from those blunt tops once your angle of attack is no longer 0. To make things worse, those blunt tops are about as far away as you can get from the center of mass; so it will generate a lot of torque. Easily more than the fins (that would counteract said torque) that are extremely close to the COM (and thus cannot generate a lot of torque) There's a lot of weight at the bottom; them rocket engines are heavy! Furthermore, tanks empty top to bottom (even SRB's, unrealistic as that is), moving the COM down as you get higher. That makes three factors: Angle of attack tends to increases as you get deeper into the pitch maneuver, resulting in greater aerodynamic forces Velocity increases, resulting in greater aerodynamic forces COM moves down, increasing torque from aerodynamic forces where you don't want it (the top) and decreasing torque where you do want it (the bottom) As a result, the torque that will flip your rocket increases more and more into the flight, to a point where SAS and gimbal can no longer correct for it. At that point a Flight-induced Local Inversion Procedure (FLIP) takes place. Solutions: Nose cones are your friend. Not even to reduce drag, but also to keep your design aerodynamically stable The basic fin and T1 winglet don't do a lot; don't expect miracles. If you don't have access to the AV-R8 winglet then there's only so much your designs will allow for Move your COM upward. Easier said than done, but that's really what it comes down to.

That makes sense. Otherwise US companies that want to skirt minimum wages would simply set up a foreign straw man company, make everyone work directly for that company and pay out lower wages.

If it doesn't hurt, I'd pack large radiators anyway. That prevents teeth gnashing if this turns out to be a problem that is then “fixed” in 1.1.3, leaving you with overheating drilling rigs all over the Kerbal system. Of course, I'm biased—I’ve always played with a “just because the game allows it doesn’t mean I should build designs that exploit it” attitude that has served me very well over the various upgrades.