peadar1987

By satellite do you mean the thing at the space centre? That's more like a tracking station or observatory, but I kind of get your point, it would be more of a challenge if you didn't know anything about other planets and moons. Like, if you could work out the position of Jool with your basic telescope, but not its size, or atmosphere. You could invest science points in your observatory, so you could see it a bit better, and maybe work out a maximum and minimum size for it's SOI to aim at. Or you could just go full Jeb and fire a probe in its general direction with gravity sensors and cameras attached, and hope for the best.

I've seen Mount Kraken suggested for the highest point, and thoroughly approve

Sending a rescue mission to pick up my stranded Kerbonaut from the Mun in a one-person capsule. "Hi Bill! Rescue? Oh no, I've no room to rescue you. Well, bye!"

All the monopropellant in the lander, all the fuel in the command module. That was a tricky rendezvous in Munar orbit.

Okay, so it's not a record, but I'm pretty proud of it: Huginn V (no mechjeb, no dev console, all stock parts, some minor intake spamming!): Franklin Kerman looking distinctly unhappy throughout!

Give your Kerbals a radiation dose meter that increments when you're in a high radiation area. It should increment more slowly inside more expensive and heavier shielded capsules, or if you have a moon or planet between you and the source of radiation. If it goes too high, the Kerbal dies.

AFAIK, the plane landing gears are massless because of the way the placeholder mechanic handles drag. I'd expect that to be fixed once the aerodynamics are.

One of my favourite autocorrects ever. Now all I can think about is a horrible, slimy Saturn V dripping gloop onto the launch pad!

I think the plan is to have radiation in-game (being emitted by the Sun and Jool and suchlike), so perhaps that will have an effect on Kerbals. It could probably be handled the same way resources are, so as well as jetpack fuel, each of your Kerbals have a meter called "radiation dose", which starts at 0%, and rises when they're in an area of high radiation (which could be mapped out by sending a probe first). The rate of increase would be higher when they were on EVA, and lower if they were in a special (heavier, more expensive) command module for visiting the Jool system, or spending a long time in orbit. I'd also like to see "life support" features, which I think might be planned, this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/26935 already does it, so I doubt it would be too hard for the devs to implement it themselves. Same principle, spacecraft use up oxygen and produce CO2 depending on the number of Kerbals in them. You can increase the oxygen supply and add CO2 scrubbers, but if the oxygen hits 0 or the CO2 hits lethal levels, then the craft can't support Kerbals any more. I assume the same could be done to take into account food and water, and it would be awesome!

The mission controller mod does this, you recover some of the cost of your spent stages if they fall below a certain height, and have a certain number of parachutes per unit mass (I forget what the exact figures are, but you get a little message telling you the stage has been recovered, and how much money it returns. A lower stage with a couple of Mainsails on it gets you quite a lot of cashback!)

Dobo: "Relax, rookie, it's just the rocket flexing. These old girls do that. It's what happens when you stick a monster of a first stage on a relic from the Gungnir program." Lanbin: "But it seems rather a lot. In training, we never..." Dobo: "You're not in training now, no egghead in mission control is going to hit you with some contrived "unplanned failure", just sit back and let SAS take care of the rocket. Preparing for first stage separation. The ride will get a lot smoother once we jettison that extra mass." **KLUNK** Dobo: "First stage separation conf..." **CRASH** **Alarms suddenly erupt from every corner of the cockpit** Lanbin: "What the kerb was that?! I thought you said the ride would get smoother after separation!" Dobo (struggling with the control stick): "I did. Mission Control, this is Maní 17, we have lost pitch control. Please advise..." **Maní 17 veers further and further off course as the two Kerbals in the cockpit desperately hunt for the source of the problem** Lanbin: "Control surfaces all responding to input, RCS online, Monopropellant delivery system operational, all fuel tanks sealed... Oh my..." Dobo (Eyes bulging with the effort of holding the control stick): "What is it?" Lanbin: "We've lost a kerbing engine!" Dobo: "Come on, get it started again, the handle is just on your left" Lanbin: "No skipper, we have literally lost an engine. Engine 4 is gone" Dobo (Hand moving towards the abort handle): "Okay kid, remember that smooth ride I promised you. This isn't it." Lanbin: "No, wait, I think we can save the mission..." ...To be continued...

Ah sorry, I had a scan through the Already Suggested and What Not to Suggest threads and didn't see anything about it. If the devs are against it, they're against it. Maybe something that might eventually come up in a mod.

Perhaps there should be an option for reliability and random failures of certain components in career mode. It would make things a little more interesting if you had to plan for things like perhaps your third stage booster failing to ignite, solar panels failing to deploy, or a fuel tank springing a leak, and would lead to more "Apollo 13" style improvisation and rescue missions. You could increase the reliability of your spacecraft by using more reliable (but more expensive) components, and also by investing in the tech tree. And if it would really annoy you to have a 2 year mission scuppered because the ascent engine on your lander has failed, you could have the option of turning it off. What do people think?

I like this idea, even if you get to put a "dummy" body in an imaginary orbit, so you can plan your manoeuvres and work out how much delta-v you'll need without having to actually put a physical rocket up there first, sort of like the orbital map screen, only instead of having to launch a body, you just stick in initial orbital parameters, and work from there. It would be especially cool if instead of the 3d render, it was rendered like a whiteboard, with the trajectories and planets drawn in pen.

I must have trapped at least 10 Kerbals in space without fuel or monopropellant trying for my first rendezvous. It's so fiddly, but incredibly satisfying when you get it!

I had my save glitch on my, deleting several of my spacecraft. Most notably the command module of Maní 20 which was orbiting Minmus at the time, ready to rendezvous with the lander after surface activities were completed. Guess Dobo and Ronoly aren't coming home any time soon!

All wearing little Kerbal sunglasses

This would be great. I think it would be good if as well, when you recover the spacecraft you got the chance to write a little note about the mission, and save it as completed, which would add it to your Kerbal's history as well as to a general mission log. So as well as your "hours spent in space", "maximum speed achieved", "maximum height", "highest G force pulled" etc. for your Kerbals, you'd also have little bits of information like "flew on Kerbolo 1". You could then click on the Kerbolo 1 (or whatever you decided to call that mission) to pull up statistics for that mission, and look at the other Kerbals who were involved. Basically, moar stats. Moar stats for everything!

After the resounding success of the Mani 16 Mun landing, the pressure was on to produce something even bigger, grander, and more impressive to keep the attention of the public. Bill and Bob Kerman on the Mun President Kixon's request was that a permanent base be set up on the Mun. KSP scientists and engineers slaved for literally minutes designing a habitat and modifying the heavy-lift Mjolnir rocket to carry it to Munar orbit. The landing site was chosen as the rim of a crater near the Munar north pole, a "peak of eternal light", to provide a constant supply of power to the solar panels. The rocket was fuelled, rolled out to the launch pad, and two brave Kerbonauts strode out to take their seats in the command module. They were: Dobo Kerman: Second space flight, and was the command module pilot on the successful Mani 16 mission. Married with 14 children. Has a particular dislike for avocados. Lanbin Kerman: First space flight. Prone to an itchy nose when wearing a space helmet The countdown from mission control was creeping closer to zero. Five... Engage throttle... Four... Engine power steady... Three... SAS Engaged... Two... Throttles set to take-off power... One... Release Clamps... Zero... ... ... ... Dobo Kerman: "Kerbal Mission Control, this is Maní 17. We have cleared the tower. All systems nominal. Starting countdown for first stage separation." Lanbin Kerman: "Hold on, what was that noise..." More on how this story develops over the coming days...

This is what happens when I try to land in the dark.