S4qFBxkFFg

I think data/experiment storage is changing significantly in the next version anyway - we wait and hope, as always.

There are quite a few parts I'd expect to be "grabbable" in the game apart from ladders and handrails - struts and modular girder segments at least, maybe fuel lines (although that might not be the best idea...), as well as other kerbals.

I did wonder why two parts of different sizes have the same effects... Ideally, I'd expect reaction wheel parts for each fuselage size, with the larger ones having proportionally more torque.

The Hurricane it perfectly stable and flies very well btw. It reaches Mach 7 and only needs 40m/s to go into a stable orbit. Holy Mother of Kerbol. This is one of the better arguments I've seen for improving the game's aerodynamics.

I take your point, but would make a distinction between "other people" and "other children". Learning how to interact with a bunch of kids does not necessarily equip someone to live in the real world. I'm not necessarily arguing in favour of home-schooling, just that conventional schools are not normal environments - for example, behaviours that would get a person dismissed from a job without notice are seen as expected and almost acceptable in schools. There may not be an ideal way to educate children, but if I was in charge I'd probably try to integrate it far more with the rest of the world. There should be a place for basic education in the home environment as well. Further one, maybe it would also be valuable to get lessons out of schools and into real-world situations? Imagine being taught arithmetic by accountancy and engineering firms, physical education by professional athletes, languages by professional writers. Would it be so crazy to say that all adults and businesses have a responsibility to teach their skills to children?

I was actually referring to pre-agrarian here, but what I should have also said, was that while our lifestyles have changed, has humanity itself changed that much? If humans spent tens of thousands of years adapted to a life (in an evolutionary sense) without any sort of urbanisation, is a few thousand years enough time for adaptation to current lifestyles? Of course, we can live worthwhile lives in the modern world, and there are enormous advantages to it; but there are probably also many problems that our distant ancestors never had to contend with. My main point is that our brains (especially the developing ones of children) may still be optimised for maintaining relationships with a smaller number of people of varying ages, and not with a large number of (immature) people. It may be presumptuous, but I suspect our mental health could be improved by trying to match our communities more closely with those of ancient humans (while still taking advantage of all the benefits a modern world offers). I should point out, that conventional schools are only one aspect of modern life you can look at in this way; similar observations could be made about large corporations, or the military.

This is something I've been thinking about recently; in connection with the beginnings of human society. I'm coming around to the view that there is a significant flaw with typical schools. To digress slightly, for most of the time humanity has been in existence (we're talking before the various agricultural revolutions), people probably lived in small groups, consisting of a few extended families, with low population density. The entire concept of children having a large, similarly aged peer group would have been utterly unknown. Why does this matter? Children are underdeveloped humans, they have poor impulse control, are easily influenced, and can be exceptionally cruel. It's the responsibility of society to counteract this, and enable them to mature properly, but placing them in an environment where their peers are mainly other children of the same age will just reinforce the worse characteristics. I suspect things are actually better in small communities where children would have to mix and interact with people of all ages -- which is a better preparation for life in general. Unfortunately, I can't see many solutions to this, many people would have to use conventional schools for their children (even if not forbidden otherwise) to be able to hold down a job. Perhaps it would be better to have a greatly expanded apprenticeship system, making employers contribute directly to the education system? Thoughts?

Getting KSP has inspired me to learn more about orbital mechanics, so I was thinking of buying an actual textbook on the subject. The problem is, they are quite expensive; second-hand is OK though, but I'd still make to make sure I'd be buying something that covers the subject in detail, and is ideally accessible. (I have a couple of engineering degrees, but would struggle to remember quite a lot of what I did...) So, if anyone has suggestions for books they have actually read and used, I would be grateful.

Maybe try installing another OS before you give up on it? (I'm assuming if it's Dell's own drivers, it's Windows you're using.)

How about this? If we assume the radio altimeter is like the IVA version, and only active at 3000m or below, we can replace some text to make it work - as the altimeter is 7 digit (6 numbers, plus unit), why not replace the first three digits with "RAD", in big red (maybe flashing) letters and use the remaining four digits for height? Unfortunately, kerbonauts may take it as an assessment of their piloting skills.

No, but what I'm thinking of is arguably even more drastic - the object that would have been deleted still gets removed, but with its physics state saved. The idea is that once the processing load reaches some defined lower level (or maybe fps is above a certain level?), the object's physics are restarted. Note that this would just be the calculations - nothing is actually re-inserted into the game until its landing position and state are known. I realise that this could lead to some decidedly odd behaviour but how much, and exactly what, I'm not sure. edit: I didn't actually address your point - yes, it would have to check to see whether the trajectories for all the debris/booster objects intersected or not, apart from the (possibly mistaken) assumption that once outside the 2.5km limit, nothing's going to hit the player-controlled ship. Honest question - is this really necessary? Ideally, I'd like everything to be done as soon as I hit m, but I think we could fudge this by making up an explanation that the tracking station prioritises crewed ships and doesn't even try to locate spent boosters etc. until it's sure the mission is in a safe orbit or whatever. Perhaps in the interim period, a message could appear saying "locating boosters...", or something similar.

Good work! You may want to add another communication node (exactly like the one you've already added), but put it on the other side - this means it should be symmetrical, so that if you end up putting an engine on the lower node it's easier to thrust in line with the centre of mass.

(I am not a nuclear scientist.) meve12 has it right, nuclear reactors do consume the nuclear fuel (but in the basic type, not at any rate even close to what a fossil fuel would be consumed) while in RTGs the fuel just decays, and the heat is used to generate electricity - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect for the details. It's probably possible to design a reactor which outputs electricity even when not producing thrust - I'm not sure how much weight that would save over just using a nuclear engine and an RTG.

Another idea that might deserve airing: I understand why there's a cut-off distance beyond where physics simulation stops, it could lead to excessive load on CPU/GPU, but, there may be a way round it -- is there anything that says the simulation of a dropped booster has to take place there and then? What I'm proposing is that it stops getting simulated when moving out of the bubble but has its state saved. Then, whenever the resource load becomes less (e.g. when the player goes to the Space Centre), the game simulates it in the background and goes back on rails once the object is re-inserted back in wherever it would have landed. I realise this could throw up all sorts of problems if you turned the rocket around and started flying back towards the spent boosters - what appears, where does it appear, when does it appear? Is this crazy? Is there some horrendous problem I haven't even thought of?

I honestly thought that this was something Squad had already planned - looking at various parts, it's difficult not to assume that there are already hatches in the art, even if they don't do anything. Consider: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/f/fb/Z-4K.png http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/8/86/Rockomax_Hubmax_Multi-Point_Connector_big.png http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/5/5e/Hitchhiker_interior_dev.png Taking the last image (Hitchhiker) as an example, I always thought the circles you can see at the top and bottom of the compartment were hatches that would allow kerbals to pass through into the next compartment. The small triangle is what I took to be a window, probably so the kerbal who's about to open the hatch can check that there's actually more spacecraft on the other side. As for considering a part to be passable or not, some of them are (to my view, at least) already implied to be: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/9/9a/Probehuge.png ...I've always thought the black circle in the middle is just a hole. Some are explicitly empty "inside", like the decouplers. The docking ports are interesting because they appear to have both internal/external hatches drawn: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/4/4e/Clamp-o-tron-sr-correct-usage.png Anyway, it would be great if sumghai's "simple" option could be implemented into the game quickly, although we'd probably all like the option of going 1st-person IVA through our space stations. edit: this

Very good idea - I'd probably want to make it quite tech-expensive (would require atomic clocks in space) but it's an obvious goal for any space agency.

This needs to happen - less concerned with the details, but actual observation, and the concept of mapping, is sorely missed (by me, at least) in the game.

How about: Impactors - crash something into a celestial body, and observe the impact - this could require observation with different instruments to get the full science value, perhaps collecting a surface sample from the resulting crater could yield more useful data. I'd also like to see more emphasis on basic photography - that's what fills the science pages of newspapers and captures the imagination of the public - and it probably applies to kerbals too. (this might just provide a PR bonus, if it's ever implemented in the game) There could be multiple telescopes/cameras/imagers - e.g. for infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet etc. Also, radio sensors, x-ray telescopes. A point about scooping atmosphere - this is partially covered by the sensor nose cone, I thought? Also - to get more ideas look up real-life space missions, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Mission_science

Possibly not quite what you were meaning, but I think a science log of some sort is going to be in the next release, so it will probably be part of the R&D component of the game. I hope they include biome mapping at the same time...

For the 3-kerbal capsule, I have 6 sepratrons attached to it, and the abort command does all of the following: fire sepratrons shutdown all liquid fuelled rockets activate all decouplers It's seen plenty of use, with no fatalities, on one occasion having the capsule land on the roof of the "mystery" KSC building. For aircraft, I give them escape capsules by having the cockpit attached to one section of structural fuselage which is connected by a decoupler to the rest of the aircraft. The "extra" bit of fuselage is where a few solar panels, science instruments, and a comms antenna go; it's also got two medium landing legs at the back. As the cockpit has a nosewheel, this is enough for the capsule to have a soft landing using two radial chutes mounted just behind the canopy.

Like most everyone else, I want enhanced IVA - make the internal hatches work so there's no need to make an EVA to move kerbals between two connected parts. also... Animate the construction process - make those kerbals running around in the VAB and hangar do something useful! Also, have the rocket being moved to the launch pad in-game - with the inevitable result if the cofg moves too far when it goes up the ramp. A more detailed comms system - communication won't work if there isn't a line-of-sight from the antenna to the KSC tracking station. This would mean relay stations - either orbiting or landed. More recovery options, and there should be some sort of cost to pressing the recover button, depending on the location. My idea is that KSC would start off with a few recovery vehicles (no need for the player to actually design them) like a helicopter to pick up crew and a tug boat to recover spent stages from the sea. There would be options to buy more recovery vehicles, like heavy-lift helicopters, or larger ships that can be pre-positioned at chosen splashdown points. If a recovery is out of range of all KSC vehicles, then the cost would be larger (think of this being equivalent to hiring another company to do it) and would depend on the location - recovery from up a mountain or from an ice cap being slower and much more expensive than from grassland. Of course, we should see any KSC vehicles doing their stuff in the game - without the player having to control them though.

I wholeheartedly support this idea (with the caveat that it should still be possible to pause the game and look around). It might be helpful to look at the issue and consider the immersiveness of the game, as opposed to the realism. The reason I bought KSP is that it is immersive, even in a decidedly incomplete stage, I can imagine myself in the (entirely undeserved) role of KASA Director; it gets to the point where I start making up fanfiction (only in my head, for now) about what happens in the game. In any fictional piece of art - film, book, game, etc. a level of suspension of disbelief is required to be immersed in the story, rather than having attention drawn to the medium. In some cases, this is easier than others. For example, I have no problem with the idea that when Kerbol and its system formed, there were bits of a neutron star floating around in that particular part of space, giving the celestial bodies an exceptionally high mass for their size. However, I have a big problem with things that force me to think "that doesn't make sense, why would this happen"? Some things, like low fps, or slow transitions / loading screens are obviously bad from everyone's point of view, but in other cases (like time passing in the game), it's less universal. The best example (for me), is when I click the launch button on a new rocket, and it immediately appears on the pad - it jerks me out of the story, replacing it with the realisation that it's just lines of code running through a CPU. What I want to see (and accept that this will be a while, if ever) are crews of Kerbals moving around the VAB, actually constructing the rocket, before it moves slowly along the tracks to the pad. That's too difficult to do right now, but at least putting in some sort of duration for the events to happen seems like a good idea which could be expanded if the devs decide it's worth while. I fully accept that some people would hate this, and I wouldn't want to force it on them, but for me (and probably others) instantaneous construction and teleportation to the pad just throws me out of the KSP "story", the immersion in this fictional world is damaged, if not destroyed. So in summary, this is a "Yes!" to the idea, but perhaps only in a career "hard mode".

I think we're meant to assume that at that stage in the game, the engineers do know about the Mainsail, but it's still very much a lab-only item. i.e. still blowing up on the test stands whenever they fire it up, but in every Kerbonaut's mind as something that'll be great for the space program once it finally works.

After my first successful docking, I made a de-orbit burn, decoupled the two craft, then jettisoned the final stages, trying for a re-entry in (loose) formation. Hit atmosphere, everything is going fine, decide to switch to the other capsule to check how it's doing. Oh. Only one Kerbal will be coming back from space today.

There seems to be a suitable compromise to be found here - we could still have "automatic" recovery, by just pressing the button in the tracking station interface, but build in a delay and a monetary cost. The time taken (and expense, for when that's relevant in the future) would depend on the size of the object recovered, and its location - a splashed-down booster a few km off the KSC coast might take a couple of hours and a moderate cost (representing a tug boat going out to tow it back). Or, recovering a heavy capsule plus its Kerbals from one of Kerbin's poles, or mountain tops might take several days and lots of cash (representing heavy-lift helicopters, mountaineering expeditions, and/or long range transport aircraft flights). Perhaps further down the line, this could be fleshed out - you could see the tug boats leaving a dock in the Space Centre view, for example; or have pre-positioned recovery boats to get things back quicker. I'm not suggesting the player should have to build the vehicles involved, you could maybe have stock boats, which are more like moving buildings from a developer's perspective, with tow lines for dragging large floating parts and cranes for lifting valuable smaller parts (i.e. capsules and their contents).