Kerbart

Don't forget fast forward.

That is the job title. Someone who operates a locomotive is called the “engineer” of the train. The locomotive is also called the engine. Just like someone who operates a farm is a farm-er, someone who operates the engine is an engine-er. The term goes back to the 19th century, long before we associated it with a bachelors degree or higher. Language works that way. On the subject, don’t go railing against NASA’s astronauts! It’s a similar thing.

It's just the laws of nature at work. You can't make it happen, no matter how hard you try. But accidental... that's where Nature goes like "hold my beer and watch this"

Then again, 128-bit math will give you 35 decimals, which, at a 1mm resolution gives you about one million billion light years (maybe half of that if you need signed integers). My pocket calculator uses them, so how hard can it be? Nice sleuthing but you have to admit that this obviously could point to one other planet (albeit not in the Kerbol System)

The “arm” doesn’t need to be an arm but could be a wire made from carbon fire. You’ll need something to spin it up initially but once it’s going it’ll do the job. The counterweight could be massive but mounted very close to the axis. When it’s released it’s linear velocity will be relatively low, which means catching it should be not be as hard as imagined. Relatively. Maybe if it’s water it just splashes around? If you can maintain the vacuum it might have boiled off most of the mass before hitting the wall. I still wonder how the spin chamber reacts to all that air rushing in when you launch. Heat shouldn’t be that much of an issue at 1 km/s — we launch artillery shells with such velocity all the time after all. It’s an insane idea. It will never work. Clearly these people don’t know anything about rockets or spaceflight. Then again, we’ve heard that before, too.

Software development is incredibly expensive. For an A+ style game you will probably need a dozen developers, at, say $75k/yr each (on average and that is on the stingy side). Throw in rent, hardware, software licenses and you’re looking at $2M-3M for two years, and if you need another year you’ll need another million to prevent losing your entire investment. So, what are the options? Kickstarter is an option, although No Man’s Sky has probably soured that route. And then there’s Early Access. Of course now you have to bring an unfinished product to the market, for a lower price. Not only are you selling your first 100,000 copies or so at a heavily discounted rate (easily losing $1M-$2M in the process), you’re now also facing a lock-in of certain design decisions made early on. Multiplayer? Oh well that really doesn’t jive with feature X introduced in 0.7, six months ago. Either tick off your paying fans or forego that feature... I think that if you have a publisher who can upfront the development cost they’d rather go without EA. They don’t need the money and it saves development challenges and loss of income.

Not electricity... just the companies that deliver it to you. I hope you're not using a laptop. The batteries of those are full of materials gained through unethical behavior that makes T2 look like a bunch of boy scouts. If you're using a desktop surely you're not using processor from an unethical giant like AMD. I don't even have to mention Intel, right...? It's pretty impossible to prevent using products from unethical companies, but I must admit that you have more of a choice with KSP2/T2 than with choosing to avoid computers altogether. Yes. This was pretty much the reasoning I saw on Slashdot, where most of the audience didn't have the emotional bonding to ST that "the KSP community" seems to have. Trending was "If you only have one client, they already own you" You've hired a contractor to build a house for you. You're paying good money, and you give them two years to build it. Three months before the hand-over, you've already cancelled the lease of your current rental, the contractor says: "we're going to need more time. And more money. Because we want to make it bigger and better." "I don't need bigger and better. Can't you just deliver what i ordered, and on a date we agreed on?" "No! Take it or leave it - I will only continue when you pay me more, and when you let me build what I want to build!" -- from reading the Bloomberg article, that's what it looks like to me. Would you be the bad guy for saying "you know what, I'll finish it myself. Thank you for your services?"

I’m not privy to the contract but projects like these usually have milestones with dates on them. It’s not inconceivable that medio December multiple milestones were missed and some tough discussions had taken place on where the project actually was, where it was going to end up and when. Given the size of T2 it’s safe to assume the contract is ironclad and has clauses for cases like these.what we might learn in due time—or not—is wether the rug got yanked from underneath Star Theory or that T2 tried to salvage the project.

I had a professor in Discrete Mechanics whose lectures were an absolute disaster. Questions to explain something because we didn’t understand were dismissed with “that’s because you’re stupid.” After each lecture he was mobbed with students asking for extra work, or books we could study, mostly just waved away. Nearly half a year later we read an interview with him in the university newspaper, where he complains about the apathy of modern students. “I did an experiment earlier this year and taught bad classes on purpose. Every werk was worse than before. You’d think they’d say something about it, come to me after class, but no... not a word” In some ways it was good. Coming fresh from high school I got a giant dose of cynicism that wouldhave taken me a decade of life experience to gather otherwise. Of course it was also a huge factor in me dropping out of university but that didn’t affect me that much, looking back.

I think we’re starting to agree that at this point very little is still known aside from the Bloomberg article. Most of us have learned through life that the press is hardly as objective as it claims it is. A freelance journalist — or a fresh hire, it’s hard to tell — likely wants to make a big splash and “vendor misses important deadline, gets bought out by customer” isn’t nearly as exciting a headline. Perhaps this really is a bloodthirsty as the article describes, but him being the only one who investigated the case, we don’t know. The incentive is there and all I know about modern journalism is “does it sell?” So, is T2 a company of boyscouts only doing the right thing? Certainly not. But is the only alternate view to that “T2 is evil and they’re jumping on the first opportunity to pump the game full of micropayments and lootboxes and they destroyed Star Theory to do so?” I have a problem with that as well.

You're hitting the nail on the head but not in the way you think you are. Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions and therein lies the problem.We don't know. All we have is one article written by an investigative journalist who landed a (freelance?) job at the well-respected Bloomberg site. Despite what we've been told in school, the press is not as unbiased and neutral as we like to think it is. If it printed it must be true, right? Developer Studio underperforms severly; publishing company tries to salvage project by buying out key staff doesn't half half as nice a ring as Big Bad Corporation Drives Brave Indie Studio Into Bankruptcy With Cut-Throat Action. And while I can't find any proof of the former, to be honest there's very little proof of the latter as well. We see the result of what happened, not why it happened. And what I read in the article makes me pause. The unprecedented action of contacting staff through LinkedIn? Contacting people through LinkedIn for a job offer? Who does that?! (sarcasm). It's pretty much why Linked In exists. From the article we learn there was a conflict between T2 and SD From the article we learn that T2 reacted, ehm... extreme. I doubt it was about what colors the doors to the bathroom should be. T2 hires key developers - whatever the source of the conflict was, it was obviously not over how the game should look like or work What I see is that something serious went on, but that T2 wants to publish the game in the spirit of how it was originally intended. Call me optimistic, naive - but why else hire the same people. As to the reason for said events? Evil money hungry corporation? (Why buy KSP in the first place?) Something else? we simply don't know.

Well, what a great first post! It's good to know that you're following what goes on on the forum, Nate - it's something "we" (arrogantly calling itself "the community," ignoring the thousands of players not on the forum) care about a lot and often think the forum is ignored by developers - prove us wrong! Also, I think I speak for most of us when I say that we prefer many small updates -- even if there's not a lot to tell -- over fancy big stories with videos and many screenshots. Because those small updates mean that the game we love and care about is getting closer to its release.

"NASA REVEALS: EIGHT REASONS JEFF BEZOS DOESN'T WANT YOU TO BUY KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM 2!" "Number five will BLOW YOUR MIND!!"

Could be. But here's the thing: my wife's brother has a small child that goes to kindergarten, and one of the kids in his classroom is the niece of the brother-in-law of Nate Simpson's landscaper. And you know what I heard from him? Make sure to water your lawn often when it's dry

As chairman Mao once said, "negotiating is done best with the barrel of a gun" The article made it to Slashdot and most of the comments were pretty savage — in the direction of Star Theory, that is: - "It's just business" - "If you only have one client you're already vertically integrated" - "This is news?" The way I see it, it can be explained both ways: Take Two saw an opportunity to save money and acted on it. We all know how we call this - the second word is move. Take Two didn't like the way Star Theory was handling things, decides to buy them out and take control. Obviously not willing to pay top dollar for a vendor who failed to deliver. I wouldn't exclude one or the other, and maybe we'll find out in due time what went on. I wouldn't be too quick assuming one or the other; while "evil Take Two, bean counter, suits" is indeed a pretty good argument for the first scenario, "we had zero updates lately" is a pretty compelling case for the second. Well maybe not that compelling but of equal strength.

Then again the measuring stick is pretty low -- after a short burst at the beginning we didn't get anything. I still think that's indicative that something was going on (or not going on...) that initiated this move.

I seriously doubt that. As far as T2 publishing the community seemed to be mainly split along to factions: T2 = Evil suits & bean counters. They only bought the game so they can destroy it! Expect micropayments for each launch and part upgrades, and a reduction of physics to a "wing commander" level because otherwise it's "too hard" A company that actually develops professional games for a living is now in control, this should open the way to a bigger, better game as they have the resources to develop a lot from the ground up. Obviously there are other views but I dare stating that 90% of the forum falls in either one of those, and those camps have such different views that neither side will switch that easy. Yes, it was a dirty move. But the article seems fairly single-sided (probably because it's hard to get any quotes from T2/PD - people want to keep their jobs), and desperate times call for desperate measures. Keep in mind that the switch from Star Theory to Private Division was the first thing we heard about KSP2 in a long, long time. Don't tell me that development at Star Theory was doing just fine and developing KSP2 at great speed - we should have seen a lot more videos and screenshots. I'm still optimistic about what KSP will be and what it won't be (micropayments, etc) - simply because in the end T2 is a (rational) business. They've bought a game with a certain culture and you don't do that if you don't intend to stick with it. If they want a glorified Wing Commander, or Civilization In Space, they would have developed that from the ground up, and not buy Squad's game out.

I agree; there's usually two sides to a story. By no means makes that less of a **** move and motivations were probably less than pure, but at the same time decisions are hardly ever made just for the sake of being evil. My suspicion is that deadlines were missed and a conversation along these lines was held: "Why don't you put more people on it?" (nvm the fact that throwing in more bodies rarely speeds up a software development project) "We don't have that many people" "Well you have x on the project but y in your company" "Yes, but we need to develop other problems as well; we can't have KSP as our only project" "No! We tell you... put more people on it" *stamps feet* "Don't tell us how to run OUR business - we're working on delivering what we promised" "ORLY?" Management is always about control and you'd not be manager for long if things go bad, you're not in control and you're fine with that. If things were going just fine nothing would have changed. Remember; T2 invested a ton of money in KSP and has no reason to jeopardize that investment by a major disruption and that's just what happened. What we don't know is the reason. Timelines? Artistic vision (unlikely given they hired Nate Simpson)? Micropayments? Even if things truly went south and in reality T2 bailed out KSP by doing this, hanging out the dirty laundry would reflect bad on them so they won't do that. Truth is, we don't really know what happened. It makes T2 look bad but without knowing the underlying issue it's really hard to judge.

More fuel realism? No thank you. Kerosene freezing up because your kerosone tanks are sandwiched in between liquid O2 tanks, highly corrosive hypergols eating away your tanks when staying too long on the platform, Jeb killing everyone onboard including himself because he returned from an EVA covered in Hydrazine? It sounds like fun until yet another Duna mission gets ruined by a corroded tank. More fuel challenges? Absolutely! Even a simple distinction between Hydrazine, Kerosene, H2 and O2 (and Xenon gas of course) would add some interesting considerations to building spacecraft and stations. It would also revive the tech tree as better-but-harder-to-tame fuel combinations become available later in the game.

An acronym is an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word, not as a series of letters. “Nah-Sah” versus “Pee Dee Eff.” I yet have to here someone pronounce PDF as “pah-duff.”

Ooooh, where to stop? Hahaha. Here's a few that are related to online-forums: Writing words that are not an acronym or abbreviation in ALL CAPS. ("I prefer saving my camera images in RAW format") While on the subject, calling each abbreviation an acronym. It doesn't trigger me anymore, just annoys me. NASA is an acronym. PDF is not. Unnecessary use of some form of mathematical representation when not necessary, ie. writing 6.67×10-11 as 6.67*10^-11 or Isp as ISP. This forum supports the proper formatting, is it really that hard to use it?

I like both. The meatball has a very classy retro look, and looks great on a flag. But I'm a child from the 1970s and the worm is what I grew up with and what's always been NASA for me. From a design perspective, the worm checks all the boxes - elegant, one color, distinctive, and recognizable from a distance. Of course, "checking all the boxes" can lead to logos that look like they've been designed by a committee, but I think that in this case it's an excellent one.

I think they increased the Isp over time. It also used to be tank-bottom ugly, and always looked like it was something that was just slapped on. In the current design it integrates much better, although I’m aware opinions vary. It also has a wide gimbal range givens lots of maneuverability. There certainly are applications for this engine.

Now you're opening a can of worms! Maritime law is opaque, baroque, and probably a few other words with the letter Q in it. There are reasons for that though: Maritime law works better when harmonized - eg. it's the same or comparable from country to country (especially origin/destination) Because of (1), maritime law tends to change very slowly. You changing a law doesn't mean a lot if your overseas trade partner doesn't change it either. Think an "act of congress" is hard? How about an "act of two congresses?" Many rules, regulations and customs have therefore been on the books for decades, even centuries. Therefore, a lot of maritime legal procedures date from a time before radio, telephone, mail or even banks existed A lot of that can be applied to commercial space flight. Law is only meaningful when it is enforced—and a solid chunk of that is if it can be enforced. Suppose H2O is used as a propellant and the UN comes up with laws, or taxation, to regulate mining the rings of Saturn. If you have a controlled market with known entry points (heavy metals, a limited number of space ports on Earth) you have a shot a regulating it, but how to stop ship-to-ship transfers in deep space? We've gotten so used to real-time communications that we cannot imagine a world where we go back to telegram deliveries and physical proof (in Ocean shipping, until very recently, the Bill of Lading was the actual document showing ownership of the cargo) but that might be the very thing to reoccur in space commerce. As for piracy; there are two reasons navies exist. International politics is one, piracy is the other. If there is a belter culture in the future, e.g. people able to live in space indefinitely with dozens, if not hundreds of asteroids filling in a role of "ports in space" then it is unimaginable that piracy does not exist. And all the ideas we have about 17th/18th century piracy will apply, I suspect.

They look like H-beams with hinges at the end and resistance pads attached to them. The pads are normally square but can be tweaked to be round.