cfds

The problem is that KSP also claims to be "educational". As that it should at least pay token attention to the fact that a rocket engine is more than a metal cone at the bottom of a rocket stack. Not to mention that the parts of a rocket engine that are not the metal cone are the actual hard part of rocket engineering. (Rocket science itself is comparably easy again)

I am still not sure why KSP handles vessels as pile of parts connected by (more or less) flexible joints. The only use case I an imagine is "It's the most simple way so implement part failure due to overstressing".

To me the question sounds a lot like "What is easier to chew? Granite or bronze?" When we reach the point that colonizing one of them becomes feasible, the difference between colonizing asteroids or Mars becomes negligible...

The main problem is that the 909 in this draft has a way to small nozzle for a 80kN vacuum engine.

The problem is that the SRBs are to weak. The SSME where pretty much second stage sustainer engines that were just started together with the SRBs, they did provide roughly a sixth of the total thrust at liftoff. In KSP, the three Vectors would provide two thirds...

Regarding sensible nozzles: I fear this ship sailed with the "release". If SQUAD where to play around with the bell sizes now, everyone(*) would complain about breaking saves. * not actually everyone

Unfortunately the "work in progress" part becomes rather doubtful when people said: "the current textures look like crap, I hope they get reworked before release" and SQUAD decided to drop the tier zero buildings instead of "finishing the progress. To me that sounds more like the textures where actually the final ones and the "work in progress" excuse was exactly that.

You mean it looks like the same people that build the VAB did also build the ground stations? Fine with me.

As long as there is any structure left, the heat death is not reached. So the better question is: "Given an every expanding universe, could humans postpone the heat death indefinitely?".

Weird. I would have taken SpaceX for an "Apple exclusively" kind of company...

The problem is that "polishing" seems to mean for the KSP development "make sweeping changes to the feature, do not do another test phase after that and hope to fix it in the second hotfix"...

I guess I will grab a ticket for the Patience Ferry and wait for 1.2.4 and my favourite mods.

I think it's funny that no one answered the OP's question yet. If Microsoft and Sony would take the game out of the shops they would admit that they were selling a broken game. And then they would have to give refunds to people who demand them.

It is also one of the examples where SQUAD has things hard coded that have no business being hard coded. The vessel categories should be just config nodes with entries for icon, name and sort order.. Kerbal classes are a similar case.

At the moment the career mode has two good features - you do not start with all parts available - you do not have infinite money Everything else about it is pretty much garbage. Flying to the Mun to learn all about ladders is just ridiculous, that you do it on day one just after lunch even more so. We need pacing: construction of rockets needs to take time (I cannot imagine a game without KCT), as does research. And I agree with Veeltch, research should be done with time and money. Returning samples from the Mun should not be required to invent a ladder but it can have indirect effects: more reputation and such more money, more people to want to become astronauts, more people who want to become scientists or engineers (resulting in cheaper research/construction or higher caps).

On the earth's orbit, the photon pressure of the sun light is already stronger than the solar wind. And if you are above LEO, the atmosphere will not be a problem either. Micrometeorites will transfer not a whole lot of momentum but they will perforate the sail...

Well, we have magic reaction wheels and magic ISRU converters and fuel cells, so why not a magic engine as well?

Another point for going the non-console way: When a new KSP version is released, you only have to wait a few weeks until you get the hotfix that makes the game finally work (I do not want to know how long you would have to wait fro the third hotfix on the console).

That would actually be great. I do not like the current implementation of ISRU (magic ore athet can turn into everything without mass loss, magic refinery that creates free energy), but the framework is easily modable by just changing configs. But I fear that this example will remain the exception...

Matter dropping into a black hole follows a geodesic trajectory and should thus not change its energy at all.

I would prefer that stacked tanks of the same diameter and fuel type get combined to one physical part in flight: two stacked Oscar Bs in the editor behave as one tank with the length of two Oscar Bs and the capacity of two Oscar Bs in flight.

I believe his point is: "Now they know that there products contains a game breaking bug but they still continue shipping it". And knowingly selling faulty products is (at least in German law) grounds to void the whole contract. Regarding QA: it looks like the went their "traditional" route of "check that everything a reviewer would do [fly a rocket to the Mun in sandbox mode at absolute maximum] works correctly, for the rest there are hotfixes" and did forget that there are no (easy) hotfixes for consoles.

Come on, even the Kerbulans have standards...

This sounds strange. You have bought something, it turned out to be faulty. In any civilized country you have the right to demand to either get a working product (in a specified amount of time, usually something like six weeks) or a refund. Does your country have something like a consumers' protection agency?

Isn't the only floating node in PF on the interstage adapter? The fairing element itself has to be placed on one of the nodes at the sides of the fairing base.