adsii1970

Ha, now you have some data that proves your point. Good to know you're seeing it, too. I often advise my students that college may not be the best route for them, especially if they hated high school. There's nothing wrong with trade school. I have even sat down with a few of them to explore their interests and determine how to match them with vocations. Not every career needs a college degree (and student loan debt). When your car breaks down, you do not call someone with an M.A. in English to fix it; you call the A.S.E. certified mechanic to fix it. And you pay more per hour than that M.A. in English makes in an hour! (The same goes for your air conditioning or plumbing, too).

Folks, many mixed feelings accompany any update of KSP2, just as there was with any update to the original Kerbal Space Program. Regardless of anyone's personal feelings, making personal attacks is not tolerated on this forum. In fact, we have two forum guidelines this action may fall under: Forum guideline 2.2d: Insults and threats, stalking, bullying or any other behavior construed to be of a potentially rude, slanderous, accusatory, combative or otherwise harassing nature to/of another person; Forum guideline 2.2n: Flamebaiting, trolling or any other messages made for the purpose of stirring up and otherwise getting a rise from users; So, please discuss your feelings, whether of great joy or dread, but do not take it upon yourself to make personal attacks about anyone whose opinion you may disagree with. Further personal attacks on this thread may require more severe moderator action.

Wow, that's miserable. I'm sorry to hear that.

This is the story of my life...

Interesting thought. We often live as if we are promised tomorrow. We aren't promised the next ten minutes. -------- This morning, while grading final project papers for one of my first-year university classes, I realized how unprepared many American students are for university education. In this class of 27 students, I have four international students, five private school students, and two home-schooled students. The rest are all products of the American public education system. Here's something I've noticed: Number of students who did not submit a final project paper: 4 (15%) Number of international students who did not submit a project paper: 0 (0%) Number of private school students (American) who did not submit a paper: 0 (0%) Number of home-schooled students (American) who did not submit a paper: 0 (0%) Number of American public education students who did not submit a paper: 4 (100%) Number of students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 7 (26%). Number of international students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 0 (0%) Number of private school students (American) who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 1 (14%) Number of home-schooled students (American) who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 0 (0%) Number of American public education students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 6 (86%) Number of students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 13 (48%) Number of international students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 2 (15%) Number of private school students (American) who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 1 (8%) Number of home-schooled students (American) who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 1 (8% ) Number of American public education students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 9 (69%) Many would say, "But adsii1970, of course, you have more American public school students in your classes than the other categories; it's supposed to be that way!" However, the problem is that this class has 27 students, and 13 of these students are considered to have a nontraditional academic background (meaning they did not attend a public American school). The numbers are telling. If I take the same statistics above and break them down into the broader categories, American public school students versus non-public school students, this is what we get: Number of students who did not submit a final project paper: 4 (15%) Number of non-American public school students who did not submit a paper: 0 (0%) Number of American public education students who did not submit a paper: 4 (100%) This means out of the general education students, 29% (4 out of 14) decided not to do the final project. Number of students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 7 (26%). Number of non-American public school students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 1 (14%) This means that out of the non-American public education students, 8% (1 out of 13) attempted to use AI for part of their final project paper. Number of American public education students who have attempted to use AI to complete their research papers: 6 (86%) This means that of the American public education students, 43% (6 out of 14) attempted to use AI for part of their final project paper. Number of students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 13 (48%) Number of non-American public school students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 4 (31%) This means that out of the non-American public education students, 31% (4 out of 13) had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors. Number of American public education students who had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors: 9 (69%) This means that of the American public education students, 64% (9 out of 14) had four or more critical errors using standard English grammar, misspelled words, or citation errors. We are supposed to keep statistics over two years before we report trends, so this is the second semester I've kept these numbers, and the data is nearly identical. I talked to a fellow professor about this last semester; she has been tracking the same data for the past year. We have agreed to work together and submit a joint report to the administration. We have noticed that first-year American public school students struggle in many areas of university life - basic academics, time management, interpersonal skills, the ability to handle diverse opinions or views contrary to their own, or even facts that challenge their perceptions of the world around them. First-year international students (who come from outside the United States) perform better in all those areas than their American counterparts. Nontraditional students (those 24 and older) also perform significantly better but are filtered into the broad categories, even though we both admitted we should probably have excluded them from our data as their study habits and personalities are atypical of traditional first-year American public school students entering the university. As a teenager's parent, I've begun to tell her to press her teachers to teach "beyond the test." And I have challenged her to learn beyond the school. These statistics scare me as a parent, a grandparent, and a university educator.

(Electromagnet - to help get the metals out of the intestines )

I’m a university/community college professor and I’ve introduced my students to KSP “unofficially” since I discovered the game in my Steam queue in 2012.(1) (1) Unofficially, because my courses are in world civilization, U.S. history, and American foreign policy, not anything STEM-related!

@TwoCalories - You reset your thread's prefix when you edit your tags. That's why it disappears.

Oh, goodness, aren't Ðere enough rules about Ðe English language already? I before e, except after c, or when it says... I think that English should adopt a German letter shortcut. Instead of writing "ss," any words having the "ss" must now use ß. An example of Ðis would be: I have an aßortment of forks in my drawer. I need to attend an aßembly at school today.

I try hard not to let that happen. I've started tracking nominations in a spreadsheet. However, duplicate nominations for a thread that has already earned a TOTM are considered for TOTY. This. Just because a thread is nominated multiple times does not mean it should be shooed in for automatic consideration.

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the Threads of the Month November 2023 Edition THE LAST OF THE LATE EDITIONS November, on the community campus, is the month when the faculty are required to submit recommendations for dropping the course, in danger of failing notices, and what the software calls "Kudos!" (a digital pat on the head for having a "B" or better grade). I was thinking last week about what that would look like in KSP, and I felt that KSP2's post-flight analysis almost has it right! However, academic warnings to drop the course are far worse than the "oops" screen. There's no revert to the beginning of the term, so I am not sure how they would include "It is in your best interests to withdraw from this course now as you cannot achieve a passing grade by the end of the term..." into the game. You didn't come here to listen to me pontificate about the struggles of being a university professor, teaching graduate or undergraduate courses, failure reports, or my tales of Kerbal torture and exploits in KSP or KSP2! You came here to read which threads made it to the honor of Threads of the Month! So, let's get to it... I've rearranged the categories to be in alphabetical order. Hopefully, this will be the last change in layouts for a while. I hate to change things, but this year, we have split some categories and removed a category, making rearranging things necessary. With November steadily marching on, it's not too late to start looking around the forum to nominate threads you feel are worthy of being contenders for December's threads of the month! Instructions on using the TOTM images: If your thread has been selected as a TOTM, you can copy the image's link above, go to the area of the forum where you want to place it, and then paste the link. Press the <CONTROL> button when the image appears and right-click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and allow you to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want. Eventually, I will add these images to the thread I've created as a repository. For those out there who like the nerdy parts of the TOTM: To continue what I started in May 2021, I have kept some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying or interest in the Kerbal Space Program was declining. There were 323 new forum accounts (an increase of 24, or up 9.86% from October). Out of the new forum members who joined last month, there were 24 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 7.43% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is an increase from October; 3.40% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you're interested in seeing the new members of our forum, click here! Now, without further delay, I present to you the threads of the month for November: Cinematic-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features a video or other form of cinematic of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video recorded gameplay. Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are posted in a single thread. We have a lot of great content creators, but because they've been posting their mission reports as videos in a single thread, most of their work goes unnoticed by the general forum audience. Hopefully, this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM) will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads containing cinematic posts will also be featured in this category. Yes, folks, that's right. An overhauled image just for the cinematic posts! There are a lot of great content creators who deserve this recognition since we were made aware of the thread Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) by @HatBat. There's another thread by @Halban, Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) that serves as another repository for cinematic threads. Although both threads have received TOTMs previously, it was felt that it wasn't enough for those who have shared your great creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month. For this month's CPOTM, we'd like to recognize the work of @Little 908 in their cinematic, "Photonic Station: A RO Orbital Construction Cinematic," found here: Sometimes, the forum software will get glitchy, and an exact post may be a little hard to find, especially when it is buried in a long thread. In case this happens, here's @Little 908's cinematic presentation: If you encounter other cinematics you feel are worthy of being recognized as this category's post of the month; please nominate them! You can use the exact instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread. Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features a thread (or threads) that, while not directly Kerbal Space Program related, may be creative, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game. One of the things I enjoy about bringing the threads of the month is testing the nominated mods for both KSP1 and KSP2 and reading the nominations for the mission reports. This month, we have an outstanding nomination written by @Ultimate Steve featuring Kerbal Space Program 2 as the story's backdrop. In this thread, you will find a great story about poor, stranded Bob Kerman, who was sent on a one-way mission. With only the first installment done, I don't want to spoil it, so you'll have to read it yourself! So, if you're interested in seeing some great screenshots of what KSP2 looks like, what great storytelling can be, or how someone else imagines their Kerbiverse, why not try this fan-fic? Forum Member Created Challenges and Missions: This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let's face it: we all have our go-to design basics and our go-to vehicles we like to use. Sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals. No thread was nominated for this category. Game Support/Game Mod of the Month: This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that add quality-of-life gameplay improvements to the Kerbal Space Program. One of the things most die-hard Kerbal Space Program players enjoy is the game's flexibility and ease of modding. With a single mod or a few more, you can create a new gaming experience and add as much customization, new challenges, and new features to this game as you want. One of the things most of us look for is new destinations to send our brave and daring Kerbalnauts - but sometimes, just having a fresh look at the already overly familiar can spark new interests. And this is precisely what this mod by @Mrpasta44 does for us. This is a work in progress with frequent updates, but the work is stunning. So, if you want to overhaul the stock planets or bring them up to the quality of some of the other planet packs you may already have, try this planet pack. There are some dependencies, so please read the OP. If you are like me and have bases built on the surfaces of the stock planets, you might want to back up your saves before installing this mod. Anyhow, visit this thread and give @Mrpasta44 some encouragement for the hard work and energy put into this mod. General community threads of the month: This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories. Once in a while, there will be an older thread nominated where we all go, "Wow, sure, why not?!" this month, we have just such a thread. Started by @DAL59, this thread has become a favorite of many forum members, including many of the moderation team. If you need to vent about something that's happened or see what others are complaining about, this is the thread for you. Just remember, the forum guidelines apply to this thread. So, feel free to share whatever you need to get off your mind. General space flight and space science threads of the month: This category features a thread that adds to our forum community's STEM knowledge (science, space flight, and related fields) and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories. Rarely is there a thread that's nominated that deserves special consideration. Not only because the nomination is that good but also because it points out the possibility that other threads probably fall within a similarly previously unconsidered category. In this thread, grown out of a discussion of previous threads, @Skylon restarted the SpaceX thread (this thread's start date is from 2017). But @Skylon was not the only one we wish to extend a hearty "thank you" to @tater, @YNM, and the many others who have participated in this great community thread - and the older thread that had to have moderator intervention. If you are interested in reading the comments from your fellow forum members or wish to participate in the discussion, then please visit this thread. Honorable mentions: All nominations were used for this month. Sometimes, choosing which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories is challenging. We get many good nominations each month but limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mention for this month is: The honorable mention for this month may not have made the Thread of The Month, but if you think it might be worth another opportunity, please renominate it! Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members @AlamoVampire, @Hotel26, @RevanX_LSR, the moderation team members, and the staff who nominated this month's contenders. Thank you so much for helping us identify noteworthy threads and bringing their awareness to our forum community. We'd appreciate your continued help in the future. Odds and ends: TO NOMINATE A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month's thread of the month, use the "Report a comment" feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the thread. Please put in the text field of the port post "Nomination for the thread of the month," and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES INTO THE DECISION WHEN CONSIDERING THE TOTM: Wonder no more! This helpful guide is to help you understand what we use to help determine what makes a thread a really good thread and one that becomes a thread of the month/cinematic post of the month. It's everything you did or didn't want to know and includes helpful tips. And the last word for this month's post: I'd like to thank a few people who trust me enough to continue supporting and allowing me to contribute to the forum. I want to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde, for bringing me on as a moderator, a decision I'm sure he has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I'd also like to thank @PD_Dakota, our community manager, and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for tolerating me and allowing me to continue to serve our Kerbal Space Program forum community through the monthly Threads of the Month post. In case you missed last month's threads of the month, you can click here.

I teach at a university and a community college (An American two-year college). I'm also a dad and a grandpa. My youngest child still in the home is a young teen, the same age as my oldest grandchild. So, I am familiar with your struggle - from a parent, grandparent, and educator's viewpoint. I'm going to offer you an old fart's recommendation. Take advantage of after-school and extracurricular programs related to programs that interest you. My oldest granddaughter plays classical piano, is in the intermediate band program (she plays the oboe), and enjoys drama. So, the middle school she belongs to offers an extracurricular drama program - which she belongs to it. In addition to the intermediate band she's a member of, she is also very active in a local classical piano group that performs in a nearby city with a local junior orchestra. She's only the third alternate, but she still loves it. She also enjoys the friendships she's made with the kids her age who share the same interests. My child, who still lives in the home, is also in the intermediate band (she plays the French Horn) and belongs to the school's comic club. She enjoys drawing her version of Japanese anime and has a group of characters that reminds me of a cross between the characters of FNAF and some of the Roblox characters she's created or has downloaded mods for (Nah, I'm not too fond of Roblox). She also enjoys the friendships she's made with kids she's made who share similar interests as hers. This is good advice. And in this case, extracurricular activities can be just one means to break out of your bubble. Or, if you have a public library that offers "leisure learning" activities for all ages that interest you, attend some of those. I often introduce students at the university and the community college to classes taught at some of our regional libraries (I live in a rural tri-state area of the central U.S.). Ours has offered everything from photography classes, genealogical research, plastic model detailing, cooking classes, and even history lectures on topics of interest ( ), ranging in price from free to $15.00 per class. Things like this, if they are available in your area, can increase the circle of people you are exposed to who share your interests. One of the keys to friendships is having common ground. And while having friends on the forum is nice, nothing can replace having a hang-out buddy where you are. On the community college campus, I usually have between three and seven students who hang out during my office hours at any time. These are people between 18 to 26 years old, and they all share the same thing as you. They have a hard time relating to others in their peer group, or they have a hard time making friends in real life. It's a shame that in our day of digital communications, we are the most disconnected people on the planet. @AtomicTech is right. Please don't make the mistake that many of my students think friendship is based on. A good friend does not have to have 100% interests in common with you. That's not even possible (ranch dressing on pizza is gross); instead, find people with whom you have 50% interests in common, build friendships around the similarities, and look beyond the differences. This could be a very good thing. It's good if you bought the good candy for the doorbell goblins. It could be a very bad thing if you bought the cheap candy. Very bad thing, indeed.

I am here. Mostly. Just three hours late. But is @ColdJ still here?

THE Kerbalsaurus 10/10

They decided to do away with the abort CERV, believing there would never be such a catastrophic failure of the STS. Sadly, that was not an engineering decision but one directly related to the budgetary constraints by Congress. If that system did exist, perhaps the crews of both Challenger and Columbia might have survived.

Yes, it would have been. I've done considerable research on what NASA's "architects" for the STS system wanted to do, not considering the budgetary restraints imposed by Congress. The STS was only the first "stage" to a more permanent presence in space (excuse the pun). Von Braun dreamed that it would be used to construct a mid-orbital platform, a space station, and then ferry crews and supplies to that station. Of course, Apollo was the first stage of that program because it showed humankind could go to the Moon. Skylab, which made use of Apollo 18 and 19 "spare parts," showed humankind could do extended missions in Earth orbit. Now, the ISS has shown us even more. There can be extended missions in orbit, supporting Von Braun's visions and theories of the possibilities of what a much larger space station could do for our efforts at space exploration. Now, back to Von Braun's original view, the orbiting station... From that station, continued missions to the Moon would be launched, then return to the station with Lunar samples rather than returning to the Earth's surface. Eventually, the Moon would be colonized, using that space station as the starting point. In Von Braun's mind, and the minds of his contemporaries at NASA, the Moon would then become the "launchpad" for the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars.

Google can do that fairly quickly: https://medium.com/@chrissteven743/the-simcity-effect-how-simcity-has-influenced-city-planning-and-engineering-for-me-ae1ee1b7adaa That's one blog of a person influenced by SimCity ( there are nearly ten pages of results using Bing as the search engine). But within the same search results, just as we have seen KSP being used to teach spaceflight and physics in high school and university science classes, city simulator games are also being used for a parallel purpose. https://www.pcgamer.com/how-cities-skylines-is-being-used-to-build-a-real-life-city-district/ https://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/making-a-game-of-city-planning-students-explore-civil-engineering People make career choices for several reasons, including being influenced by things they love to do - such as gaming. There are a lot of stories on this forum of those who have gone into aerospace engineering or have become pilots or other related fields because of KSP. Here are a few stories not on the forum and are relatively easy to find:

No, I did not. KSP1 is just like other games I listed in my first post here: Yes, there's a bit of a cult following of the original KSP, and there always will be. For many, it is the go-to game whenever you have a few minutes hours to kill. It still is for me - and my favorite version is not 1.12, but 1.3.0; when modded, it was the perfect game and still keeps my interest. Sure, I have 1.12 on my PC with all the DLCs and fully modded, but there was something about 1.3.0 that I could not let go of. And it is my love of that version of the game that keeps me playing and active in the community. It is also why so many others are still active on this forum, the love of the game, and the community that has formed around it. Yes, just as there are folks who are cultish about their favorite comic book character, movie, or what-have-you, gamers can be cultish about their favorite game, and no matter how good KSP2 is, it will have great difficulty in topping the success of the original KSP. In fact, I'll make a prediction - people will be playing the original KSP long after we begin seeing hints at KSP3.

It depends on how you measure it. Interest in games comes and goes. Let me explain - KSP still has a cult following, much the way Silent Hunter 5, SimCity 4, and Civilization IV have their cult following. There will always be those who keep the game alive long after official studio support for the game has ended or even after the original game's publisher, Maxis (SimCity 4), has ceased operations. It's the nature of the gaming industry. This is good news because KSP still has a lot of life left in it based on the lifespan of the legacy games. Being a Gen Xer, I will also say that the interest is moving away from traditional gaming forum traffic and towards more "instant" social media platforms. We see this in the increased traffic on Discord, Twitchy, and other similar social media platforms where this can be facilitated. Gaming studios, where this new social media outreach is embraced and includes frequent YouTube videos and excellent communication between the community managers and the gaming community, are getting it right. Unfortunately, there are a lot of gaming communities stuck in the last two decades in their outreach and marketing strategies. KSP remains my go-to game when I get a chance to play.

There once was a bucket full of eels that ate several paragraphs of Moby Dick, changing the story and allowing them to write new chapters, so that Eels in Buckets replaced the Moby Dick character. A Kitten named Ishmael narrates while purring loudly and running all over town, looking for a fishing rod, but only finds a broom that is missing all its straw, its handle, but

Pointing out that @ColdJ has a neuralyzer is cheating.

"Today, we have made contact with an alien..."

9/10 - almost everywhere.

N3 (-1)