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I think we have all lost since the "space race" "ceased". As common enemies, the USA and the former USSR kept their space programs going in an "competitive" manner. Its probably why humans were able to land on the moon in the first place. Forgetting all the danger of "mutually assured destruction", if we still had a space race (to that same degree), we'd probably already have moon bases and a Mars base (from at least one Earth nation), and perhaps other solar system programs as well.

Blender (or any 3D tool) makes the model. Of course textures are done in any image app. BUT ... Unity prepares the model to behave as an in-game object; in this case for KSP.

cy-one, check the forum stickies. Under modding, you'll encounter this one on using Unity and the KSP Part Tools: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25040

I'm not into consoles or "living room" gaming. I prefer keyboard and mouse (and sometimes joystick) games using my machine (went from Mac to Windows and back to Mac and OpenGL). Otherwise I'd be using Linux (both are based on Unix). I use Steam for most of my games. A Steam OS might be interesting and useful, but right now its vapor. When its out, then we can find out if it has the "right stuff".

Recoilless weapons. That said, its still not a good idea to shoot up a station that could be used for your own objectives.

Well, the spacesuits needed to be space camo: black with stars painted on them. OK, space suited soldiers wielding gunpowder weapons really seems absurd. Hit the wrong thing and the mission might be compromised.

Are you importing the .blend file into Unity? Using the KSP Part Tools within Unity, are you exporting the model as a .mu file?

Tools remind me of Cube 2 (Sauerbraten).

Besides KSP? Uh, Torchlight II for Mac. OK, Destiny for PC & Mac. Alright then, the new Marathon, assuming Bungie is successful with Destiny.

HL2 was good. Until there is a an HL3, replay Portal and Portal 2 over and over ...

Reminds me a little of UT. Might be a fun game.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/39812-Landing-and-Takeoff-Delta-V-vs-TWR-and-specific-impulse Another place of info.

Welcome bl00per! Don't worry, lots of us (at least me) have a lot more to learn.

Welcome, benzman! Glad to have you with us.

Welcome, Cephas (Stone) :-). I too was a teen while Neil's first walk was on TV and I was standing at the door looking up at the Moon at the time.

Welcome, MilkToast! Hope you have a lot of fun here as well as in-game.

If you've played it, you'll notice some graphics enhancements. If you've never played it, its a good look at the first level. This level has water, but later you encounter lava, etc. Check it out! Now free to play: http://marathon.sourceforge.net/games/marathon2.php

Yep. 7. Hehe. If you are gonna do any Myth play on a modern machine (Windows, Mac, Linux), you need to check out this site for what you need: http://projectmagma.net/what/ Yes indeed, the Myths are some of the funnest games I've played. And its easy to imagine the Kerbals and the dwarves changing places between KSP and the Myths. Besides, the dwarves just love explosives.

There is actually a You Tube tutorial about modeling and UV unwrapping for KSP ... in this sub forum. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24742-Planing-on-a-new-Blender-Tutorial For changing from Blender units to meters, look at the image in Alskari's post just above this one. See the blue buttons to the right? By default the "None" button will be highlighted in blue. Just click on the Metric button. In any case, None and Metric have about the same effect on the dimensions; I just set to Metric out of habit.

Another thing you may do after selecting the islands you wish to color is to (in Gimp) go to Select>Grow. The default is one pixel and that should get you a single rectangle selection which goes slightly out of the islands (which is a good thing).

First of all, I recommend that you use 1024 resolution textures (including UV island maps exported from your 3D editor (like Blender). Always use a solid color background layer (I usually use black) in your image editor (like Gimp). Sometimes the UV unwraps will produce a line with a jag in it instead of a straight line in one or more islands. Not sure why this is but its a pain and you may need to rotate your model a little and try unwrapping again. (I'm too lazy to do that but its something I've been tempted to do, even though my models are perfectly aligned with respect to grids and degrees.) Also try zooming in on your layers and fixing pixels which look wrong (jaggy or otherwise out of place). Come to think of it, you might want to work in higher resolutions and then sample down to 1024. I've not tried that. Instead of applying bumps in Unity (which I have done), I've also been applying bump filters in Gimp and then just using a non bump KSP shader in Unity. I haven't experimented between choosing normal or not, but you could try both and compare. Unity does seem to like blowing imperfections right out of proportion.

Definitely you want turbos over basic jets. Turbos optimally function at higher altitudes while basics will whine down as they climb. You could still use wings as control surfaces, and when the ship isn't completely vertical the fins provide a little lift too. For space you want an engine which vectors, since control surfaces are useless there. You missed an engine candidate; 2 or 3 Radial 55s. 3 of those are between the performance of the Skipper and the Poodle.

Ion driven rover probe (compact design and low mass) with a range of about 16 km. Good only for taking photos (F1) or movies, but still a nice predecessor to science or manned mobile rovers:

There are actually more things in common (Mjolnir technology for example), but these guys have their top 7. Wanna play Bungie's classic Marathon series for free? Get the games here, with Bungie's blessing: http://marathon.sourceforge.net Available in 3 flavors: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Something which seems true is that just as there are random elements in real life, KSP to some degree imitates life. Take your same plane and let it fly without piloting (no manual, no auto, no SAS) and you should see differences in craft behavior from flight to flight. I think the above posters are right, plus I think you have random elements as well.