Kerbart

If you don't have the technology to remote control vehicles, then no, it's not easier. Suppose you need to bring a package to the fedex office. Wouldn't it be easier to have a self-guided small electric cart do that? It can be a lot smaller and lighter than your car, since it only needs to carry a package, and not you. And yet, you're driving your car there. Personally. Exactly the same thing. All you need to do is make the assumption that the Kerbals have no remote control tech. Yes, unmanned is lighter and smaller. But that's rather pointless if you can't steer it into orbit and you can't let it do experiments.

There are certain expectations people culturally have--either based on personal experience, on from what they say on tv and in movie theaters. Engines making large roaring sounds is one of them; Monty Python (as friggin' awesome it would be! Did you consider writing the devs about that?) not, sadly. As much as KSP is simulation, simulation as a game is equally as much about immersion, "being there." For the average individual immersion will benefit from sounds. We need more sounds! I'd love to hear swoosh when debris flies around my head after an explosion, even in space. Now, if you would have the option to turn off "sounds in vacuum" that would be fine by me. But to remove enjoyment of the game for the majority of the player for the sake of "more realism" is a bad idea in my book. More realism does not always enhance gameplay.

Especially if they don't simply disappear but turn into smouldering ruins.

Not to mentionâ€â€strictly hypothetical of courseâ€â€a complete blowup of your 750t vehicle at launch, spraying 200+ parts everywhere.

That would solve to x = 2m52s (172s)

First post.

Last time I checked my brains were still in my head, not inside a planetary core. So I doubt that's the case.

Ships piloted by little green men, planets seemingly made out of neutronium, the ability to warp time as if you were Dr. Who, ion engines that are about 1000× as powerful as in real life, re-entering the atmosphere pointy end down and not burning up, all that is acceptable. BUT HEARING SOUNDS IN A VACUUM THAT'S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE!! HOW DARE THEY!! Turn off your speakers.

The Kraken. Over time you'll learn to respect it.

Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time that I actually take the time to reorder the staging stack. Then I hit space and -POP- go the parachutes...

Nownownownownow. To call that a monstrous abomination is a bit heavy handed, isn't it? One other thing to think off: even when you manage to get COM and COT aligned (and preferably in the middle of the craft) there's a good chance that once you start the gravity turn the torque is so large that the rocket simply can't control it. Controlling a rocket is very much alike to balancing a broomstick on your finger, with thrust vectoring (and winglets -- maybe you should add a dozen or two) being the same as moving your hand around. If you've ever done this balancing trick then you know that you'll need to keep the stick fairly upward; once it's past a certain point you will not get it upright. I wouldn't be surprised if this monster launch vehicle displays similar behavior. Some well meant advice: if you're just starting, work your way up to larger vehicles. To me, this looks like going from couch potato to running the New York marathon. Why not start with something slightly less ambitious?

Turn off your speakers.

So, any news on what's in .23? When will it be released?

Timewise it wouldn't have to take place after Portal 2, especially if they're using a different character.

There's no reason why retrograde is a problem when you're docking with a station. As long as the station has a retrograde orbit too. Otherwise the time frame to line up the docking ports is indeed very short.

Watch “Armageddon†and tell me about the physics/realism in that movie. Now imagine you're a graphic designer; for them Comic Sans is pretty much the equivalent to that. In general, CS is misusedâ€â€I don't think it's a particular big issue in this case, although I would not have picked CSâ€â€in many many ways. It's an ugly, unprofessional font. So yes, people do get upset over that.

I remember vaguely that hackers were buying xboxes because it gave them high performance hardware for a fraction of the market price. I guess that was the xbox 2 as it was in a time where MS needed to aggressively gain market share. Then there's the simplified architecture. Software can run without having to worry about running three different browser and excel and powerpoint and adobe photoshop in the background. Not to mention the printer queue, the backup software, malware for five botnets battling each other over bandwidth, etc. When you can ditch most of that overhead. I remember that there was some kind of tool for MS Flightsim that would shut down all but essential windows services and get you a few (much needed) fps more. Finally there's the software itself. From what I gather, much of the limitationsâ€â€size and performance wiseâ€â€are related to Unity. That is not meant as a stab to Unity; given the background of KSP there were likely not that many options and Unity has gotten the game where it is right now, which is pretty far and pretty awesome. BUT... I doubt GTA V or Medal of Honor use unity; games that rely on speed usually rely on highly tuned high performance engines. All in all, if KSP were rewritten for a console I doubt it would be a slouch.

Google is your friend. That's how I fixed my overheating problem.

Given the scope of the game that might go too far. However, as your program is failing it might get harder to get good recruits. When you tie that to the ability of the Kerbals to perform the experiments (a stupid Kerbal is more likely to screw up the experiment, something that might be offset by experience) then it might take longer to collect the amount of science you need to unlock a new level--or shorten the time when you're doing a good job because you can put smarter Kerbals on the job.

The off-center COM was used to allow a stable position without the axis of the capsule aligning with the axis of flight; hence generating lift. We don't have that issue in KSP as we have our magical SAS wheels to take care of that problem; it's perfectly possible to have the capsule in a lift-generating angle during re-entry, thus implementing skipping if the aerodynamics model in KSP would support itâ€â€that's the real reason you can't do the skipping maneuver in KSP.

Watch a handful of movies and answer the following questions: How many times do you see the main character go to the bathroom How many times do you see the main character brush his teeth How many times do you see the main character prepare breakfast, eat it, clean up and do the dishes? And the list goes on... Reality is most of the time boring. KSP is a game. It's not meant to simulate reality in a painstaking way. Of course you can start with unmanned probes. But why stop there with mimicking reality? Let's start with flight. And with that I don't mean jet engines, I mean unmotorized flight. And maybe balloons. Let people earn their wings, that is more realistic! Forcing people to grind through probes is intuitive; I'm glad the devs had the flexibility in mind to go for interesting gameplay instead of mindlessly copying reality.

Trees are a reliable way of storing complex structures. They allow for quick and precise determination what part goes where, what parts come off when undocking, and what parts stop working when one of them fails (during launch) without requiring extensive computing. I'm sure the devs are aware that the tree topology is not the most realistic representation of a complex ship, and of the limitations that it brings, but apparently they judged that the benefits outweigh the limitations.

More likely legal requirements, that they couldn't put the video out for public (free) viewing within a year of the jump, allowing Baumgartner to monetize his feat as speaker, showing the video, etc. I'm not for sure about this, but especially when this is indeed exactly a year, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Meaning you never leave Kerbin and shoot the whole thing in the studio?

Challenge! “We choose to go to the mün in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard†â€â€John Fitzgerald Kerman