Kerbart

Decoupler: Rocket-in-two breaker

Kudos for originality! And for reminding us that KSP is a game, not a simulation!

The real problem is that you can only have a limited number of contracts open. The obvious course to follow would be to get a contract to get something in orbit of Eeloo. Once you're out there in far, far away country, changing inclination shouldn't be that costly.

I will be much happier on June 28 when it's Tau day. Had I been aware of Tau in high school, trigonometry would not have been such a disaster.

You could do a circular orbit and then look at it from an angle. Does that help?

Can't you switch GPU's on the fly? My laptop was able to do that. Or is that a special case?

Is that a joke or are they serious?

Best KSP news in a long while! This makes me really happy!!

Although bugs seemed semi-acceptable when the game was in beta, the proven mantra "fix bugs first, then add features" never seemed to have been part of the development strategy. I always thought the number of features added should be an asymptotic curve nearing 100% as you get closer to Gold. Instead it seems to be an exponential curve with KSP. Every version comes with an ever expanding number of features. I stepped in around .20 I think, looking at the wiki the features ever since were: .21: more parts, interface improvements .22: science, career mode, biomes .23: tweakables, and tweaks to science .23.5: asteroids, new parts .24: new parts, contracts, budgets, interface improvements .25: new parts, explosions, career mode enhancements, navball enhancements, destructable buildings .90: upgradeable building, crew experience, enhanced career mode, fine print, overhauled mk3 parts, biomes on every planet, editor overhaul 1.0: revamped atmospheric modeling, re-entry heat, procedural fairings, rebalanced parts, update to engineering It seems to me the amount of “large features†seems to increase with every release instead of decrease. Personally I'd think that atmospheric modelling alone would be worth the 0.91 release, engineering and other gameplay features a 0.92 release, then rebalancing the parts in 0.93 through 0.95 (because rebalancing is hard and you'll need feedback from the community and a couple of tries to get it perfect) and then and only then I'd start to think about release candidates to squash the last bugs before issueing version 1.0 I almost get the feeling that Squad feels they're running out of time and are trying to rush the product out.

Another loophole is doing two space station contracts with one craft -- first launch a space station for kerbin orbit, then move it to mun/minmus orbit. Since the first contract paid for the craft, the second one becomes extremely profitable.

I have a hard time understanding how "probeCoreOcto2, hitchikerstoragecontainer, grapplingdevice and roverwheelxl3" to name but a few listed by the OP could be described more gender neutral?

So... a Sip and a Kilosip are the same thing??

That should go together with the advice that if you fly a multi-engine plane it should be able to fly with one engine down. Otherwise you're just multiplying the chance of engine trouble.

“We need a 2° inclination change. Jeb, can you take care of that?â€Â

You can watch a youtube video without trying to change the camera viewpoint by dragging the right mouse button.

Scott Manley is like the Alaska of KSP Youtube videos. Alaska, you might ask? Well, yes. When you're asking about geographical information about the US, (highest mountain, furthest north, east, west, etc) "Alaska" is your best bet. Same with Manley regarding KSP youtube videos.

I think there are some logistical issues to fix with a rotating portion (ring/hammerhead/whatevah) on a space station. Air seal. Probably the toughest. Of course a labyrinth seal will get you there for a good part but inevitable you'll have leaks. Rubber sleeves or something like that? With the constant rubbing they will need fairly regular replacement, likely requiring the whole assembly to be stopped (and probably sealed off from the rest of the station). Air and other tubes. Probably the real challenge. Electrical connections. I'm sure that one is the easiest to solve but I have no experience with it. The obvious conclusion would be to either have your entire station spinning as in 2001, with the ships entering the airlock through the central axis. The other solution is to implement the centrifuge the way it was done on the Discovery (again, 2001) where the entire spinning construction in enclosed within the ship (or station). The third is to have in independent non-spinning section on the station (connected through ball-bearings) that is entirely in vacuum thus not requiring difficult technical solutions. I'm pretty sure transfering crew from the docked ships to the atmospheric part of the station is possible without space suits although that would probably require a quite elaborate contraption.

I don't understand this thread. I always include the LES and has saved many Kerbals on various occasions. I wonder how you're using it; the LES has more than enough power to pull a Mk1-2 clear from its rocket and get it at a sufficient height. Jettisoning it is usually part of ditching the first stage; again, no problem here. I have a suspision that those who claim it's entirely useless don't use it the right way: In emergency, fire the LES through the abort command group (by default bound to the backspace key but I'm not going to assume you've kept it like that) Obviously, you don't want to fire just the LES in an abort event. It makes sense to fire the decoupler under the capsule as well; don't expect the LES to pull a 500 ton rocket into the atmosphere to parachute-deployment height! I also throw in "turn off all engines" for good measure although events that warrant an abort usually mean you've lost control over your rocket in the first place. Of course it's perfectly possible to design some kind of integrated capsule/space craft design that cannot be carried by the humble LES. But ask yourself: would you step in such a vehicle for launch? Especially with the Kerbal design mindset? I design my manned spacecraft specifically for being able to survive launch mishaps. Yes, that can be a considerable design limitation. But not an unreasonable one.

There's a remote procedure call add-in that communicates through a tcp/ip connection; theoretically you can hook up anything "on the outside" provided you write an interface for it. There hasn't been a lot of work on it lately, sadly. The standard interface is in Python which works fine for me but I'm sure if you want to sink your teeth into it you can write an ecmascript/javascript interface for it. At the very least you could use it to see how something like this *could* work and reverse engineer a new version. Include a Python interface when you do, please.

Was there time to get bored? I can imagine that a million measurements had to be taken, ensuring their trajectory continues to be what it was planned to be, monitoring life support, etc. Without considerable automation a lot had to be left to manual work, I'd guess.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the longest time Squad maintained that they couldn't get the 64 bit version to work. Then someone came along who hacked a 64 bit version together, basically saying "see? I can get a 64 bit version together, why don't you?" A little while after that Squad released the 64 bit version together with disclaimers like Caveat Emptor and Here be Krakens and emphasizing that a lot of the instability was due to parts (Unity) outside their control. But hey, community, you wanted it, so here is it. Have fun. If there's little sympathy within Squad regarding the 64 bit version then I cannot blame them for that. We told you it wouldn't work. You wanted it anyway. Here it is. And it doesn't work. Happy now?. I'd rather see them work on real issues like better aerodynamics, improved landing legs and female Kerbals, than on trying to fix the unity engine that isn't theirs to fix.

We've been manufacturing objects in space for tens of thousands of years. Earth moves around "in space," hence, by extension, anything manufactured on the surface of the earth has been manufactured in space. Now, manufacturing in orbit is a different story.

I don't think it does, although it's slowly getting there. But what does "association football" ("soccer") have to do with this?

Don't exclude the option of "hybrid" procedural fairings; cylindrical fairings of a set diameter (in the usual sizes) that can have variable length. And maybe an oversized 4.0m set of fairings that can fit on top of a 3.75m fuselage.

On a forum that works a lot with large numbers, mentioning {sup} and {sub} for superscript and subscript (use square brackets, obviously) would have been useful. No more 5.4E12 or 5400000000000 but simply 5.4×1012 instead! Oh, and you can get the multiply sign by holding down the alt key and typing "0215" on the numeric keypad.