Kerbart

A good way to answer a question is: "what if you did" Let's imagine that the Unity Physics Engine does allow structures taller than 2.5km. And let's imagine that, somehow, you can put a 70km structure (as that is what seems to define "space" in Kerbin) on the launching pad. As Shoveycat observed, you'd be in space, but not in orbit, as your tangential velocity would be inadequate for that. BUT... you would have some velocity, as Kerbin rotates around its axis in 6h. At 670km from the center (600 km for the Kerbin surface, 70km for the height of your "rocket") that would be a circumference of 670×2×À=4210km, divided by 6 is 700km/h or 194m/s. As your tower is moved out of the VAB and onto the launching pad, the top will have to accelerate from 0 to 194m/s in a matter of seconds -- It's hard to imagine that it's going to survive that.

The flavor texts look like fun, and doing scientific experiments on the various planets gives some purpose. It seems silly that you have to unlock the entire tree to retain "sandbox freedom" while enjoying the flavor texts of the experiments. Especially since about every other version seems to be breaking the saves and is forcing you to start from scratch. Not a big deal the first time but when .23 "OMG we broke your save file LOLZ - da devs" comes along it is surely going to # off a lot of people who will have to go through the entire tech tree again.

Would you rather see all text in backward Spanish?

My prediction is that within 30m of .22 going live, somebody will post a youtube video of an exploit of the new legs (surely involving struts and boosters) that will allow you to put Jeb in Kerbol orbit straight from the launching pad by doing something bizar with the new landing gear.

They're Kerbals, not humans. Making things that go boom seems to be their specialty, so making rockets work before the complex electronics needed to let a rocket fly on it's own is not their style. That'd be an explanation. The tech tree is there to enhance gameplay. Not to create an accurate depiction of the space race.

Build a ship with crew quarters on its side so the door is on top. Now build a funnel out of plates around the door. This way you can scoop him up, and as you (gently! gently!) accelerate he'll be forced down the funnel onto the door. From there he can grab the door.

Get your priorities right! You can always go on a honeymoon, but .22 only comes out once!

The problem is that an issue like this occurs. A committee is formed, the root cause is analyzed and the problem is “fixed.†If you don’t see what’s fundamentally wrong with what’s described above you’re part of the problem... NASA addresses issues. What they’re not addressing is their culture. Until that changes things like these will continue to happen.

Don't let that stop you! How hard can that be! Harder than rocket science? You might want to consider one or two easier projects just as a warmup to get a hang of programming.

Well from warping Photons to a Galaxy class starship should be a small step.

I doubt that the fuel is really blocked but that doesn't make MJ a dummy. I am thoughâ€â€I didn't realize MJ could give that information in the VAB! But I digress... First of all I see docking ports. I've never seen fuel automatically being carried through docking ports, so there's that. Then there's the complex design with engines up top; there is a good chance that MJ simply is not able to guess your intentions, especially since the staging tree (again, those docking ports!) doesn't give it any clues where you want to utilize that fuel. But that doesn't make mechjeb particularly “dumb,†I don’t think anybody expects clairvoyancy to be built into MJ. Of course you can always calculate delta-V the way your grandparents did: with pen & paper and a (preferably HP RPN-style) calculator.

I'm pretty sure they knew the importance of picking the right engine. And I'm pretty sure that, given the scenario KSP started out from, Unity seemed like a decent choice, or maybe even the best choice. Then there's a million constraints: cost, familiarity, etc. I doubt it was ignorance that drove Squad to Unity. And I'm not sure Unity is not a powerful engine. I'm not familiar with the other engines, but maybe Unity offered some options (physics modeling the way KSP needs it) that others didn't, or not in a sufficient way?

You don't need a mod for that. The spacebar will take care of that issue.

No mods... well, a purist. How about going for that extra step of keeping the came clean--stop using time acceleration; that's another form of cheating after all. Within a week (well, half a year, to be honest) you'll be the King Of Slingshots. "Eeloo? Yeah, 20 days of gametime. Initial slingshot around Mün to gain some speed, then a 1500m periapsis over Minmus to get some serious delta-V for an escape trajectory. It would have taken longer of it weren't for that convenient Duna line-up, that shaved off another week of waiting"

It's used in game, to convert regular conics into patched conics.

A deterministic physics model is like being pregnant: there's not such thing as “just doing it a little bit.†Once you decide to switch over to an incremental model (with all the joys of compounding errors) then you have left the rails and you're in calculation hell. There's a lot of other discussions on similar subjects: they all look great on paper. And they look significantly less appealing in code.

ALTERNATE VERSION HISTORY OF KSP .7 Initial release .8 Instead of stackable fuel tanks, main street of Kan Kiego was opened. .8.1 Downtown area of Kan Kiego has been developed. It was that or symmetry mode .8.2 Foundations of Kerbal Linguistics ("Kinguistics") laid. .8.3 Krammar (Kerbal Grammar). Who needs the symmetry button when you can't even stack your fuel? .8.4 Fixed a traffic light bug in the Kan Kiego financial district .8.5 You'll be delighted to know that we worked on serious issues like Kan Kiegan suburbs, and not frivolities like controlling the camera through the keyboard .9 The center of Kerbopolis is now in play! We also stabilized buildings with "struts," one day we might use them for rockets, too. But not yet, we still need to figure out how to stack fuel tanks. .10 Worked on a list of Kerbal verbs (etc, etc) Personally, I can live with the current order of priorities that the devs seem to have.

That's like the docking computer in Elite. Once you can afford it you no longer need it. Although saving time is nice.

KSP is a game and it's intention is provide fun, not to provide a mindnumbing boring simulation. Of course there can be a challenge in retrieving Kerbals, but it is safe to assume that if you can put them into orbit you will have the ability to retrieve Kerbals from the ocean. Keep in mind: The stock capsules are without any shadow of doubt based on Mercury and Apollo capsules, which means that splash-down landings are preferred over lithocaptures. And yet there's no naval facilities in the game. The easiest way to get more realism in the game? Stop hitting the warp buttons and play real time. Once you've completed that return mission to Duna I'm more than happy to discuss the virtues of "playing it as real as possible" with you. I even use the retrieval option to clean up debris. There. I said it. But guess what? If debris has a <70km Kerbin orbit, it's going to degrade. But do I want to baby every piece of debris back to the surface? Nobody ain't got time for that! So just like hitting the accelerator, I have no qualms to remove debris that should be coming down in the first place. For anything with a periapsis above 70km I'll send in my debris scoop, but that's a different story.

I looked at the rocket equation five times now. For the life of me I cannot find a single reference to "volume," only to "mass," and 1kg of H2 is not lighter or heavier than 1kg of parafine or kerosine. So how it's an advantage for fuel that it takes up a large volume to carry a certain amount of mass of it is beyond me. It is true that H2 has higher specific energy than oil based fuels, and as long as that doesn't get offset by the extra weight required to carry all that volume there will be an advantage. Hence the use of it in upper stages. Keep in mind that my response was to: Which suggested that H2 was great because you'd get less weight for a specific volume, which suggests an important omission in understanding the very nature of kinetic (rocket) engines.

Keep in mind that all those dV calculations are nice but they assume optimal maneuvering. You might want to add a safety factor into the fuel you're carrying along.

Launching and attaching the docking unit for my fueling station. My brilliant design for a docking unit lacked only one thing: docking ports.

Wow, the way you say it makes it sound like an advantage. In the end it all comes down to the rocket equation, and unless you can accelerate your propellant to extreme speeds (read: Tintin and the secret of the ion engine) what really matters for your fuel is mass, not volume. In that sense LH is a liability; you'll need extreme large tanks (using a precious amount of material and thus weight) to hold fuel with a certain amount of mass (compared to, say, kerosene). There are some advantages to luiquid hydrogen (otherwise it wouldn't be used), but “it doesn’t weigh a lot†isn’t one of them.

Sounds like the right guy for the job. After all, one of the main characters dies in the movie--a script written with Nassault in mind, I'd say

Yes. So eventually you'll have to use an RCS system so you can stop the gyros. But assuming that over time those external forces cancel each other (partly) out, gyros offer a way of stabilizing the ship without burning through RCS propellant in record time.