Mistake Not…

The Guardian's attributing the phrase to fans of Kerbal Space Program - so we should take the credit, regardless of any previous documented usage!

I've got four KSP installations on this 'ere MacBook Pro laptop - the reason they're on the laptop rather than my (decently powerful) gaming PC is because KSP is fantastic for playing during commutes on the bus. Or on trains. Or on holiday. Or while on a plane. (I crash-landed my first Moho lander 'cause I was busy demonstrating the game to the flight attendant. Oops.)

Alex Moon's Launch Window Planner is fantastically useful for figuring out interplanetary missions. Some of the numbers will be a bit impenetrable - the date and required delta-V are perhaps the most useful. Wiggle around a manoeuvre node until you get an encounter - the Precise Node mod mentioned above is very useful too. Oh, and Kerbal Alarm Clock. Have your long duration missions still running while you get busy on shorter ones, with reminders popping up when they need attention...

Don't joke - there was a real spacecraft which did pretty much that!

To compare, DEFCON, a game about nuclear war and the anonymous, brutal annihilation of millions of people, has an ESRB rating of 'TEEN with Mild Violence' and a PEGI rating of '7+'. It's pretty disturbing to play, with the excellent audio design. Near-subsonic rumbles as a warhead explodes, the faint sound of people sobbing in the background of your bunker as the world is slowly turned to glass, the fatality counts mounting as cities are scorched in nuclear fire... I think KSP has nothing to worry about!

From a while ago - my high-altitude Eve atmospheric explorer. Dip into the upper atmosphere, then boost back up into orbit. As you can see, it worked flawlessly.

Pssst... If you manually edit the savegame to place stuff where you need it, we won't tell anyone!

I've been having great fun combining the part testing contracts with the larger-scale ones from the Fine Print mod. I've also scaled costs up by a factor of four - which has the nice effect where I need to combine (appropriate) testing contracts with others to help pay for everything, otherwise I can't afford much of anything. I'm sending a rover to the Mün? Let's see if I can get paid for lugging any prototype parts along with me... It's a nice puzzle seeing which testing contracts will fit in with the other missions I have going on. Right now, I have a resupply craft heading to my (Fine Print suggested) Minmus orbital station - laden with new scientific instrumentation and ... a ridiculously huge Kerbodyne KR-2L Advanced Engine. I'm getting paid handsomely for the latter, which is pretty much the only reason the mission can go there at all...

Seriously impressive parts pack - looks both like stock KSP and super-fancy. Nice work! (I have a brand-new spaceplane en route to my lagmonster space station right now, with a temporary IVA hacked in from this...) Future parts ideas: Fuselage to 2.5m adapter, for making hideously ugly things with. Cargo plane nose-door style hatch, for placing ahead of an inline cockpit thingy - ideal for putting scientific instrumentation inside. (A two-sided hatch resembling resembling that on a high-speed train might be an alternative?) Hollow fuselage sections, for putting behind nose door? Cargo bays might work as-is. I imagine having a long rocket-probe stored inside, exiting via the nose... Pointy-bits of various lengths, for noses, tails etc. Anyway, fantastic work! (This is actually the first parts pack that's persuaded me enough to install it...)

Can I just mention that I love all the ship names? Keep going!

Completely ignoring the relative merits of different gameplay systems, something with as large an impact on the game's overall technical design as multiplayer should be implemented as soon as possible. Building new gameplay mechanics (such as resource collection) on top of an existing, working singleplayer / multiplayer framework would be way easier than shoehorning multiplayer systems into yet larger amounts of gameplay code designed from a singleplayer-only perspective. So, while personally I'm not interested in multiplayer, it makes perfect sense for Squad to work on it sooner rather than later.

Some :

Landed a tiny unmanned rover on Eve - which also gave me my first ever close-up view of Eve while approaching the planet. My precise-aiming carrier rocket dipped my trajectory into the atmosphere then jettisoned, plunging me into a toasty-hot high-G re-entry - the heat-shield detached still high in the atmosphere while I started up various science instrumentation, then as I descended further I opened the parachute, opened the solar panels and drifted slowly down to the surface, not far from a large lake. A gentle landing on the surface of Eve - the parachute module detached itself with some Sepatrons and everything was ready! Disengage brakes, drive forwards a little - - only for the soupy atmosphere to tear the solar panels right off. Disaster! ... Well, it would have been if I hadn't stuck a handy RTG on the back of the rover. It takes ages to transmit data, but it works - and shall continue working for decades to come. Now, to drive to that lake!

Low-thrust burns at each periapsis building up into a departure trajectory, taking advantage of our friend the Oberth effect. Simple but surprisingly informative PDF here. (Pretty much the same technique I recently used in getting a giant lag-monster to Moho!)