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Hello everybody. My name is Dr. K Kerbal. I only started this account today and I am really enthusiastic about KSP. I am really good at making close versions to NASA's real craft such as the Saturn V rocket, the SLS, space shuttle and much more. I realy enjoy people liking me and love giving out information and solving troubleshooting. I really like reviewing mods and cant wait to get a few subscribers to my account!

A typical US warhead is ~60cm in diameter. Assuming a lofted trajectory, its passing through the 100km orbit twice, and at a high angle, so punching through a sheet of debris. With a cross sectional area of 0.28m2, that cloud needs to be incredibly dense to ensure a hit in 1 pass, only slightly less dense to insure a hit with 2 passes. Seems like a complete non-starter to me. You'd need a constellation such that they can uniformly deny tiny objects passage, and at incredibly short notice. If you wait until launch, they need to cover the entire orbit over launch areas uniformly in under 2 minutes. Launch, launch detected, double checked, warning sent to decision maker (that should be plural for all this stuff, IMNSHO, 1 person is a Bad Idea™), decision has to be made, tick, tock, tick tock... trigger pulled. Even very optimistically, the devices need to disperse stuff to insure a RV gets clobbered (randomly) in what, a minute? The second pass obviously gives more time, but I'd almost write off the first pass. I attended a talk about SDI at the physics dept in the 80s, can't remember who gave it, it was someone pretty high up (might have been Teller, I did see him give a talk, can't remember if that was the one). One point that came up was that countermeasures are cheaper than the SDI measure. So for directed energy weapons, spin the rocket so the beam must dwell longer. For KKVs, dummy warheads, etc. Even if such a system knocked out X%, you only need to ensure that a certain % get through. Launch more, more MIRVs, etc. Course the debris cloud idea avoids the target acquisition problem, which is a plus. A friend of mine (programmer) worked on SDI as well. He couldn't talk about his specific work, but he told me that it was all BS. He said something like, "You could give me satellites with (Star Trek) Phasers on them, and it wouldn't matter. The communications lag, seeing targets, deciding which to attack, then sharing with neighboring sats so they don't all shoot the same target is enough of an issue that many get hit multiple times, many get through since the weapon that should have killed them fired on the one already doomed, instead."

unfortunatelly i dont think i can talk about the Hows to do it here, come to the KSP2MS discord server! we're more then open to help you there! https://discord.gg/ksp-2-modding-society-1078696971088433153 but about the parts JSON configuration, that is not yet as simple as modifying a file, you'd need to repack the files in unity, We on the KSP2MS are developing a ModuleManager a like for KSP2 tho!

It was Ghostii, on the Discord in late April. yes it does! Nate is actually a huge fan of HOTAS, so it is something we talk about occasionally. I think it be after 1.0 though so that the majority of the issues are ironed out

I found the quote that @Turbo Ben was referencing on the Discord, from 24 April in the ksp2_general channel: yes it does! Nate is actually a huge fan of HOTAS, so it is something we talk about occasionally. I think it be after 1.0 though so that the majority of the issues are ironed out AFAIK while there have been other statements that full controller support is on the roadmap, this is the only one that has tied it to a specific point.

Let's talk about your other point about the KSP1 documentation being lacking. I happen to agree with you there and see both the existing KSP1 docs and what we've got going for KSP2 as a necessary but not sufficient thing. Can you elaborate on what you'd really like to see in addition to the existing KSP1 documentation? I'm asking because our KSP2 docs are themselves highly extensible via articles and your feedback here would be valuable in helping us move the ball forward! What kinds of articles do you think we should add to a site like that so we can better meet the needs of the modding community?

In the video you linked we see Nate Simpson talking about modding (and representing Star Theory, not yet IG). I played it multiple times and listened carefully, but did not hear where he promised documentation specifically. Scott Manley says things like "make it easy, not have to decompile, un obfuscate large parts of the code", and Nate is clearly nodding his head emphatically through that part. Nate answered by saying "That's one of the nice things about knowing exactly what you're gonna make when you start making it, so we can really make some core architectural decisions to make sure that it's highly moddable, highly stable, highly expandable, ... we wanna see a platform that has a life... I mean the original game's continued to evolve over nearly a decade..." That said, I've yet to hear anything from IG other than that they want to support modding. I'd be quite surprised if they don't deliver some sort of documentation at some point, but what I see and hear in this video is a clear articulation of support in general, not a specific promise of documentation. For that matter, I'd say based on what I've seen that they have, in fact, delivered much of what they said they want to do in this video. We do have a highly moddable game with a core architecture that reflects their design choices to make it so. In the three patches (4 counting the hot fix) that have come out so far there have been only very minimal impact to mods - though a good portion of the credit for that belongs to people like @munix and @cheese3660 wisely making design decisions at our end to ensure there's minimal impact. Let's talk about the other point you made where you seemed to be implying that we're practicing some form of piracy and may in fact be in violation of this forum's rules. Did you visit the site we linked? If so, did you happen to notice the long and detailed article I wrote there meticulously describing the process we followed? If not, then I'd like to encourage you to please read it. https://schlosrat.github.io/articles/HowMade.html The site we've got is made without decompiling the game's code. The information presented is the same as what you'd get from Visual Studio if you dropped an untouched copy of the Assembly-CSharp.dll in as a dependency and then wrote your own code to use it. All we've got is the publically available API interface that the code itself presents. There's not a single line of source code from the game. You might want to give that a gander before suggesting that piracy is a foot, my friend.

No, those two sentences are the exact ones they have to use when asked about stuff they can't talk about, by a myriad of reasons. In fact, those are the phrases they should've used when the community mentions "1000 parts" or when they were asked in the interview. Did you listen to the podcast? Since you ask about context, we can move a minute back, starting from around 1:12:00 and end after the full quote. Nate and Paul are (were, since Paul got fired) a team, and it seems to me you're assuming they went in blind and got assaulted with questions and were incapable of saying no to this one question in particular, or for Nate to be incapable of stopping Paul. Well, not only do I not believe any of that, but they're also a team representing the same company and product, so what one ways, unless the other interjects and denies, goes. Interviewer: You kinda touched on this earlier. Have any features from mods inspired features in KSP2? Answer (Nate): Yes, the easiest answer is visual fidelity, it needs to feel epic, and there've been a number of visual mods for KSP that have raised the bar regarding what's possible. [...] Eve and Scatterer [...] at least show what the minimum should be and we want to exceed that drastically. We talked about parts mods as well, and when you're making a game that has a bunch of interstellar class engines, Nertea has set the bar very high. We need to be about as realistic and detailed. Is there anything else that pops into your head Paul? Paul at 1:13:35: We're working with some graphics engineers not only to make our game more beautiful but again performant, we've got some numbers in this week for what our expectations are on machines and holy **** it looks great and performs great. [...] Interviewer: That's awesome, specially when you have these massive arrays of rigidbody parts. If you have a 1000 parts craft in KSP1 your computer is not gonna be having a good time, no matter what computer it is. Paul again: That's one of the big boulders we're breaking apart on the engineering team, making sure that framerate performance does not suffer, I mean look, the scale of KSP2 is so much larger than KSP1, with so many more orbital bodies and potentially so many more ships and colonies doing autonomous background systems there's so much more to maintain, there's so many more systems that are just living in simulation, so we've gotta make sure the thing you're seeing on screen is behaving in a physically accurate and interesting and educational manner that makes sense and is still fun gameplay, but then all these things in the background are still doing what they're doing, is something is in some geosynchronous orbit and you back to it a year later it has be in the right place considering where it is in time, no matter how many times you're timewarping, no matter how many other colonies you have, how many other ships you have or are being built. So making sure all of that feels consistent while the thing that you're doing right now: to have fun or explore or build or launch or blow up in some spectacular fashion is also also there and awesome and feels tactile and realistic, like that is the number one challenge for the engineering team right now. I mean if you just change my example to say whatever else, yeah, sure. That's not what happened, and you have the quote up there to read, and years of evidence of them promising a finished, performant product all over. Sony is not half as demanding as you make it sound though, even for first party titles (Bloodborne comes to mind), heck, even the KSP1 port on the PS4 was painful. Yes, but they've decided to not say anything happened, so since we're working with their textual words to discount "1000 part ships" promises and others, we can't quote them saying something happened, we can only quote them saying KSP2 will come out performant, or if you ignore the last year, a full product and performant.

The amount of "we can't talk about that" and "no comments", and the average (low) quality and seemingly improvised nature of most of Nate interviews makes me think otherwise. Here they're talking on a podcast that was new at the time, not CNN. Implies it's Nate talking. Implies it's only one person saying all of this, and that person being Nate. Conveniently you've also cut out all the discussion about the background simulation. That's misleading at best. There's a whole argument to be had about the gaming community making up Devs promises and then getting angry at things they've imagined while they over-hyped themselves to oblivion. A big part of it is that anyone trying to deflate hype and debunk fake lies is seen as an enemy twice at first then they don't blindly believe at everything the hype machine says, pointing out that nobody ever talked about something, or confirmed anything. And then after the game released when they say that the thing they where hyped about was never even mentioned by any actual dev. Then someone makes a list of lies on Reddit, or Crowbcat makes a video, both of which will be 90% wrong, but still saying it automatically puts you in a "you're the enemy" position. I'm still not saying that it's the case here, I'm more than open to receive a definitive piece of evidence, a recording or post from Nate saying "100000+ parts", but weirdly enough while everyone seems to agree that that was promised, the only examples are 2 interviews in which the devs clearly evade the question and are very careful at not committing to anything. Interviewer: "Mr. Dev, will your car have 5 doors?" Mr. Dev: "Well, doors, uh? It's a thing we're working on... You see, you can't have a car without doors, and we're working on this new type of hinges that will optimize the door utilization, allowing us to have a number doors on our car." The community: "You've heard that? They said the car will have 10 doors! And that hinges must be needed to flap the doors and fly, so fully autonomous flight capabilities too" The car releases, it has 3 doors, the community is mad because it can't fly.

I ban you right back to your starting point from my last ban, only now there are 500,000 times the mosquitos and 1 sentient gator that wants to talk to you about your cars extended warranty and an exciting time share opportunity. But wait theres more! He has an opportunity for you in his mlm! 011507082023

Talk about colony parts and other star systems has me excited. It means they aren't going "We all work on Stage One, then we all work on Stage Two". I know we've been told that already, but finding out about progress on the Roadmap gives me hope that the delays are in bugfixing the 'Foundation', so that the rest of the Roadmap will be faster.

If you talk about this: He mentions how some of the change that we'll see is disabling some graphics for low settings to allow even more people playing the game (alongside other optimization for everyone). We can already see some examples of these changes in the previous patches: No ETA on other optimization though (beside the occasional ones each patch), especially the new terrain system. I hope we'll get some news on this (I think it will take several months but I would like to know if their implementation is getting good results).

July 20th, 2029 For 7 years now, the Artemis Program has been going strong. Artemis Base Camp has been set up, the Lunar Gateway has grown considerably, and several more countries have joined the Artemis Program. Including China! This why today, on the 60th anniversary of the Moon Landing, NASA announced something ground breaking- the first mission to Mars. The media is unable to talk about anything else. The technology is proven, international relations are good, and the support is strong. It's time for humanity to make the next giant leap. Artemis 13 on the launchpad, a few weeks from launch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- People have done recreations of humans on Mars in the 1980s, people have done recreations of the Constellation program. But I'm doing an idea of what could be. Provided the Artemis Program goes well with 2 launches per year, and the U.S. and China get over their pointless quarrels, this is a future that can be! Expect the first post either tomorrow or a couple days from now, I need to smooth out a couple bumps with the SLS. Inspired by these threads: One Giant Leap | An Alternate History of Space Exploration by @track The Hyperion Program: Kerbalkind's Return to Space - It's Back (Again)! by @Autochrome Kānāwai: Ares to Mars by @Jay The Amazing Toaster The Integrated Program Plan | A reconstruction of NASA's follow up to the Apollo program from 1969 by @Beccab

FYI because someone complained about PSAs, but I hope they just don't hate TLAs If you accidentally activate your parachutes, before they semi deploy you can right click on them and select disarm... at which point the menu option changes to deploy again. A very useful change if I do say so myself....

@adsii1970, I want to add that I think your tireless effort in curating the TOTM is also a worthy and great contribution to our community. I may have come across as overly harsh in my post above, and so I want to publicly apologize for that. One of the best things about KSP (1 or 2) has always been the community and how we work to help each other. Your work helps others to spot and find interesting, helpful, and fun threads - and as such your work here deserves to be celebrated! I just hope you might reconsider your position on the use of mods. It really does make me sad to see someone with a platform saying they're not going to use or even talk about KSP2 mods. If you would like a hand installing any to try them out I would be delighted to personally spend my time helping you.

The clarification you made it's nice and a bit reassuring, but It would be nice if the KSP2 dev team would stop shooting themselves on the foot every week. You're like 2 years behind schedule, the game is a demo at best, and someone decided it was a good idea to talk about having DRM on a Kerbal Game? I don't want to be rude, but the mere suggestion of it, on this timeline, suggest some of the dev team is spending too much time on Eelo and too little time on Earth.

I didn't talk about most people's position, what most people want can be found in the outcome of the poll when concerning wobbly rockets.

Hey Untoldwind, I think it would be easier to discuss and help improve this mod if we have a discord server where we can discuss changes, bugs, and showcase what we made. Here is the link: https://discord.gg/wMpSergFKc Join if you want to showcase your projects/talk about the mod. Hopefully Untoldwind joins so we can more efficiently give suggestions and report bugs.

Yeah, it should be noted that Eve-ascent is probably the hardest challenge in the game. There are so many phases that you need to think about, and you kind of have to do it in reverse order and it's easy to end up in a situation where what you've designed just won't work and you need to start again. So let's talk about the phases in reverse order -- The ascent: You will need a vessel with roughly 8k delta v to go from the surface of Eve at sea level to orbit around Eve. It needs to be as aerodynamic as possible, and needs to have as little payload as possible - including doing the stuff that you always forget to do like removing monopropellent from the capsule. Save every gram you can! You want a separate craft to rendezvous with the orbital craft, either to pick up the crew, or dock with it to take it back to Kerbin if you want. Don't try and design it to get all the way back to Kerbin from the surface of Eve -- you'll be adding a lot of additional complexity to an already mammoth task. If you have MechJeb installed, use its delta v calculator in the VAB, set the body to Eve and pay attention to the SLT number - this is the surface-level-thrust and takes into account the atmosphere. It should be above one for every stage within your rocket (except possibly the final orbital-insertion burn). Because of Eve's gravity and soup-like atmosphere, you'll need big powerful engines that work well in atmospheres - the Vector, the aerospike, and if you've gone really big, the Mammoth. You also want it as aerodynamic and as slippery as a fish whilst in the atmosphere as the drag from that atmosphere will huuuurt your chances. My typical ascent profile tends to be straight up for the first 35k of atmosphere and *then* do the gravity turn. And seriously, think about aerodynamics when designing. I had a rocket that could make it from sea level with ~1k delta v to spare, I added some stabilising standard fins to it because the gravity turn was a bit hairy to pilot and just the addition of those fins made it such that the rocket would then not even get close to orbital velocity. With Kerbin, you can brute-force stuff, use reaction wheels, not worry about aerodynamics all that much, but with Eve you very much have to care, We also want to talk here about staging, which you will have to do in some way to get to 8k delta v. I have often designed my Eve ascender where ejected stages just end up crashing into the rocket, and no amount of separatrons fixed it. You should carefully consider the aerodynamic forces that will be at play when you eject stages -- is the atmosphere going to push on it on one side after ejection, and cause a rotation that smashes it into the active stages? Stuff that can help: Tail fins are the best stock aerodynamic surface in the game. Use them for aerodynamic stability, not just on your Eve ascenders but on every rocket that goes in an atmosphere. Try to make the rocket relatively tall and thin. It's kind of cheaty but a closed air-intake is the most aerodynamic thing you can put in an airstream. When doing the gravity turn be *gradual* - it's easy to cause flip-out, ruining your chances of reaching orbit. Make sure to eject every gram of weight off your ascent stage before ascending - don't take the landing legs or the deflated parachutes with you. If you want more than a one-man ascender, consider using the aircraft cabins as they're the lightest crew-to-cabin ratio you can get. Don't be afraid to throttle back when in the lower atmosphere - in the dense soup below about 20k, trying to go above about 250ms means that almost all of your thrust is going to be effectively used by aerodynamic drag and not accelerating your rocket. The ground: So you managed to land! Congrats! You thought about how the Kerbal was going to get from the capsule high up on the rocket to the ground to plant a flag and get back didn't you? Before moving from the ground-phase to the ascent phase, you should be able to eject everything that is unnecessary for the ascent phase - parachutes, ladders, science gear, ISRU, ore tanks, etc. If it's not needed for the ascent get rid of it before you start ascending. With the kerbal-to-the-ground problem, there's two basic ways - either have a capsule low-down near the ground, where you can then 'transfer' crew from the bottom capsule to the one that they'll be sitting in when they launch (disadvantage - you lose science experiments), or have a Acme corporation ladder-style arrangement from the top capsule to the ground that can be ejected before take-off. Stock landing gear suuucks on Eve. You can easily end up with situations where it vibrates, explodes, judders or simply doesn't hold it steady, and blows up in bad ways if you shift focus to another vessel and back again. This just generally means extra testing, careful placement, lots of strutting and possibly fiddling with some damper / spring settings in advanced tweakables, For particularly large landers it can sometimes be worth trying just landing everything on girders rather than landing gear, as they're pretty sturdy and don't suffer from the same issues as stock landing gear (they suffer from DIFFERENT issues!). The other issue will be slow movement - you can perhaps use ground tether to fix this which should work most of the time but may also occasionally cause some of your landing gear to explode either immediately or when shifting focus from to another vessel and back. When a vehicle is moving, even very slowly, a Kerbal on a ladder will not have the option to 'climb out', which gives rise to certain scenarios where a kerbal can get out, reach the ground to plant the flag, and then not be able to return to the capsule, so if possible, have your ladder array such that a Kerbal can go round something circular, let go and simply be standing on something rather than always requiring 'climb out' to be available. The descent: From a low orbit of Eve, you will be hitting the atmosphere at approximately 3km/s. For an interplanetary intercept, you'll be hitting at least 4 km/s and also won't have much choice on *where* you land. Both are dangerous and extremely likely to make things blow up on atmospheric entry without heatshields. However, just sticking a big heatshield on the bottom is unlikely to work, because to make it aerodynamic in the ascent phase, the rocket is now tall and thin, meaning that the centre of mass of the rocket is a long way from the heatshield. Which means as soon as you start hitting the soupy atmosphere, the craft will then spin round to face the titanic heat of atmospheric entry and blow up. The way to fix this is to add extra heatshields at the top of your rocket, at an angle, like the following image. What this will do is make it a little like a very draggy dart - the heatshields acting as the flights on a dart to keep it firmly planted in the direction of travel, and all the fragile explodey-bits safe from the air-stream. Continually rotating the craft during atmospheric entry can also help as it allows different bits to heat up at different times, possibly preventing an explosion. Naturally, if you go with the configuration in the image, your entire rocket *must* fit above a 10 metre heatshield, which may involve redesigning the ascent or ground stages. If you find you need the upper heatshields, you will also need the ability to eject them as soon as you reach a low enough speed (500ms ish). After ejecting the upper heatshields, you then need to inflate the parachutes, which I only tend to do once I'm below 10k in altitude - it's easy to end up with a situation where you eject the top heatshields, inflate the parachutes and then because you no longer have the draggy things at the top have Eve's gravity accelerate you to the point where the parachutes go poof. Which isn't great. Then, after the parachutes have fully deployed, you should be able to eject the bottom heatshield without crashing into it (adding weight / separatrons can help here - if it's too light, i.e. just the heatshield it's easy to crash into it and have your precious engines destroyed). Don't forget to deploy your landing gear after this and hope you don't land on a steep slope ! Off Kerbin / to Eve: Given the amount of effort involved in designing the Eve-portion of the craft, I'd recommend just brute-forcing it however you can to get it there. You have mammoths available on Kerbin and can refuel vessels in orbit - do it and don't care about the cost! I also try to get the vehicle in a relatively low orbit around Eve before attempting descent/ascent, as this will mean I can more easily pick a landing spot and I'll be hitting the atmosphere at the lowest speed. Testing If you're not adverse to it, design and test it in Sandbox mode, use debug F12 cheat menu to put it in orbit of Eve for testing, and only copy the craft over to your "real" game when you're happy. If you want to test in sandbox mode at Kerbin, there's a few bits of "simulation" that you can try which will get close to the conditions you'll experience at Eve: By putting the craft in a highly elliptical orbit and then adjusting the periapsis to hit the surface, the craft will hit Kerbin's atmosphere at roughly the same speed as you enter Eve's at from low orbit. The ascent phase you design should be able to lift off from Kerbin, get to orbit, de-orbit, get close to the ground (you won't have landing gear to actually land) and then make it back into orbit a second time. You should also test whether the kerbal can successfully get out of the capsule, to the ground, and back up to the capsule and safely eject all of the parachutes/landing gear/etc.

I don’t think this matters, insofar as deciding what is relevant to discussion and what isn’t. Starship is intended to land humans on Mars in the 2030s. I myself believe the relationship between *the country SpaceX is located in* and *the country in the process of building a modular space station called Tiangong* are so grave that before talking about Starship on Mars we need to “talk” about the possibility of Boca Chica going up in a 5 megaton mushroom cloud, but I don’t bring that up because it doesn’t contribute to the discussion. Just as discussing the possibility of nuclear war doesn’t add to the discussion of Starship, I don’t think detailed analysis of Russian economics is relevant to the ROSS. As far as what contributes and what doesn’t, I think it goes like this- Is the issue “small” enough that it can easily be solved and make a change in spaceflight AND directly relates to spaceflight and not some other issue? Then it contributes. An example of this is how people have mentioned the retirement of Senator Shelby from Alabama as a possibly stepping stone towards the retirement of SLS. That’s a thing that is now happening and might make a contribution to spaceflight. Those comments have been made before, and slide despite technically being politics. Is the issue gargantuan? Then it does not contribute to the discussion. Why bring up geopolitics or economics when even professional analysts themselves have no idea how to solve these problems? To share these issues with no plausible solution available is either a complaint (if there is no intent to attract replies) or blatant off topic (if the intent is to initiate a political or economic discussion). If there was no “no politics” rule here, I can’t help but think the actual space discussion would pale in comparison to the political and economic arguments that would spring up in this thread. It needs to be kept mild for a reason. I think that is partially because of a lack of interest in Russian spaceflight rather than the program supposedly being tied to economics. If it had the level of following and available information we do with SpaceX, we would have discussions about Russian spaceflight with the depth and passion we get with SpaceX and Rocketlab. That’s on the poor organization of the program too though obviously. But anyways, if you can’t discuss it without getting into politics you just don’t discuss it. That’s why the ISRO thread is nearly silent instead of being a discussion about the economics of India and why they can’t do more in space. And why the JAXA thread is sparse instead of a discussion about population decline and economic stagnation and how that affects spaceflight. That is practically what most of the threads in this section of the forum are; sharing tweets with news and then offering a little comment on them. Occasionally offering technical analysis spanning 3-4 posts. If there is no news, you just don’t talk about it. We don’t discuss SpaceX’s labor policies or the commercial viability of Starship. Those types of discussions usually start out in a “negative” post not unlike the ones you usually make in response to news about ROSS, devolve into personal comments and politics, and then get ruled OT following a thread lock. Now I would like to make something clear. I am not saying your opinions aren’t valid or “negative thoughts should be kept to one’s self”. I am just saying they don’t belong on the forum, or at least ones beyond “mild” small remarks don’t belong here. It seems like a double standard, and it arguably is (insofar “as politics are not allowed”, comments about the way Congress funds SLS should be removed and ruled OT as well, along with “pork” comments, just as discussion about whathaveyou in the CNSA and Russian threads are, yet they slide), but that’s how things roll here.

The problem in this case is, well, the elephant in the room. Or the Mûmakil, as DDE put it, because the ordinary allegory doesn't quite suffice. The US and EU might have issues with their economics and domestic policies, but Russia has issues. It is difficult to go into details or provide any sort of context without sounding overly negative or coming off as unpleasant, because there's just so many aspects that create worry for the space program. And without details or context, what sort of discussion is there to be had? I think “The Russian economy isn’t doing too well, they may not be able to afford their new space station” is putting it very mildly. I dare even call it a euphemism. The aforementioned issues have broader and deeper implications than calling into question the space station project. I wouldn't consider it an exaggeration that the Russian space program itself is in danger for multiple reasons, half of which aren't even related to the, er, "events of 2022". It is kinda difficult to have any sort of discussion of the Russian space program without acknowleding that it is threatened by all sorts of concurrent perils at the moment. I would consider it relevant to (if not entirely overshadowing) pretty much any sub-topic worthy of discussion. But if discussion is only permitted if the issues aren't mentioned, or swaddled in multiple layers of euphemisms, it loses all purpose. How can one meaningfully talk about the Russian space program without acknowledging any of the numerous complicating circumstances under which it is presently operating? Things are, or at least seem, bad at the moment. They've seemed bad for a long time, but now it's really time to bring out the italics. Following the rule of caution, I haven't responded to several posts that responded to mine. I definitely think there are fallacies in them, but I keep them to myself because it's pretty much impossible to formulate a counter-argument without stepping over the red line. Sure, it keeps the thread clean, but I really think it stifles the discussion. So what is left to talk about? Laconic reports on the various launches along the lines of "A Soyuz launched today", with a strict "never discuss matters outside the frame of the picture/video" policy? Pretending that all is fine and dandy with a "no negative news" rule? Saying nothing? Because if the inconveniences are to be ignored or never talked about, there's precious little else to discuss regarding the Russian space program at the moment. Never mind that forcing silence about political issues can be a political statement in itself. In that case, you might as well lock the entire thread instead.

Every once in a while you'll get a contract asking you to build a space station in a solar orbit. These pay ridiculous amounts of money, more than something like visiting frickin Duna. And this wouldn't have been a problem if a solar orbit wasn't one of the easiest things in the game. Cluster a bunch of SRBs, build whatever silly station they want, launch it straight up, escape Kerbin's SoI and you're done. Then delete it because you hate yourself and you hate this silly mechanic but you didn't want to grind meaningful contracts that barely pay anything just so you could unlock the next level of science labs. Ugh.

@Dakota, I wasn't the poster who called it 'PR fluff', but it definitely came off a little too stage managed. My suggestions for the next would be to 1) have someone other than an Intercept Games employee moderating and asking the questions, and 2) do the talk while the subject of the session is playing the current build of the game live. Here's an interview Scott Manley did years ago with the developers of KSP1 - Talking With The Developers Of Kerbal Space Program At GDC 2014 - YouTube It's certainly not perfect - you can see the Squad Community Manager hovering awkwardly in the background recording the session, and the devs are a bit guarded at times talking about upcoming features in the game (ion engine thrust and acceleration under timewarp it appears were still being discussed). But by having an independent journalist or fan asking the questions does give it a better feel of authenticity. With 1), obviously I get why you would instinctively want to keep control of the process as much as possible. But remember - the person doing the AMA can always answer "no comment" or "I'm not sure about the answer to that" if a question comes up that might be outside of their remit. And 2), the part about seeing the developers playing the game live, we really haven't seen enough of this throughout KSP2's development history - we've instead been seeing a bit too much of screengrabs, still images, pre-rendered trailers, storyboards etc. Even the art director here loading up some of her creations in the VAB would have been much nicer to see.

It's taken a lot longer than I expected, but Chapter 19 is here at last! Chapter 19 - The road to recovery Tina woke up screaming, thrashing against the bedsheets that had tangled around her. Martin quickly moved over and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides until the panic subsided and she stopped fighting; a technique he and Jeanette had developed after numerous bruises and scratches from Tina’s flailing limbs. It had been nine days since their airborne escape from Estovus and they were all exhausted: the nightmare recurred every time Tina fell asleep, leaving her badly sleep-deprived and terrified of falling asleep as well; any time she did fall asleep, she invariably woke again within an hour screaming and thrashing, always with the same dream- floating over Jool, the appearance of the odd little moon Bop and the unspeakable terror that seemed to live on its surface- and at first requiring a change of bedding until they made the difficult decision to have her wear what amounted to an adult nappy to avoid ruining the sheets several times a day, a decision that merely added to Tina’s misery. Martin and Jeanette were also beyond tired as both Tina and Sasha kept waking them at all hours of the day and night, wrecking their sleep patterns and leaving them short-tempered and irritable as a result; throw in Jeanette’s broken ankle, Martin’s bad back and jet lag all round and the whole family were close to breaking point. “I’m sorry,” Tina whispered, but Martin shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Tina. You have nothing to be sorry for.” He helped her out of the bed and over to the bathroom then waited outside while she cleaned herself up in the shower, emerging about ten minutes later wearing a scratchy hospital dressing gown, matching scratchy hospital slippers and a plastic shower cap to cover the bandages that still covered her eyes. “Better?” He asked. “A bit,” she replied after a long delay, the words coming out only with a lot of effort. Four days ago, Tina had completely lost the ability to speak. She could still think of the words to say but somewhere between her brain and her mouth they got lost, leaving her distraught for the twenty hours it had lasted; she had recovered slightly since then, but progress was slow and she struggled to say more than a couple of small words at one time. This difficulty had only added to Martin and Jeanette’s worries, yet another thing they wanted desperately to help her with but about which they could do nothing but watch. “Hungry?” Tina nodded and held her fingers up close together; then her stomach let out a loud rumble and the gap widened considerably. “How about we get you dressed, then we can get some food, hmm?” He waited outside the room while she got dressed and then they headed in the general direction of the hospital canteen, moving slowly as much because of Martin’s bad back as for Tina’s lack of balance; another symptom that was improving, but slowly. They passed a small staff room where it sounded like Sasha was the star of the show. She spotted her sister and shouted “EEEAAA!”, arms out expectantly towards her, but Tina hesitated- they’d had barely any contact with each other since before the crash and on previous occasions Sasha had acted as though she was afraid of her. A bit of fatherly encouragement and Tina approached; Sasha leaned forwards, planted a big wet kiss on Tina’s cheek- and promptly lost interest in favour of one of the nurses who had bright blue hair, which of course she managed to grab a fistful of and found it very amusing as everyone tried to make her let go. Tina’s stomach rumbled again, even louder than before. “How about we get you some lunch?” Martin said to Tina. He looked at the clock on the wall and added: “If you can still call it lunch at eight, that is.” They made their way down to the cafeteria on the ground floor and discovered that lunch was finished- but dinner was just starting. “So, your options are: 1) lasagne, 2) leek and cheese quiche, 3) mushroom pie or 4) fish and chips.” Tina held up a single finger. “Good choice. Two lasagnes coming right up. Drink?” “Water.” They shuffled slowly along the line of food counters, collecting two plates of almost hot lasagne, two slices of slightly stale garlic bread, two empty plastic cups to fill up at the water cooler in a corner of the room, two sets of cutlery and a handful of paper napkins, then found a table to sit at. Tina ate slowly despite her stomach’s protests, more because she didn’t trust herself to not vomit it all back onto the plate than to enjoy the flavours of undercooked rubbery cheese, overcooked crunchy pasta sheets and bread that someone might have glanced at while holding a clove of garlic. When Tina was done chasing the last few fragments of food around her plate, they stood and left the cafeteria, heading back to her room. Tina yawned in the lift, which set Martin off, which somehow turned into a “who can yawn in the most ridiculously exaggerated way” contest that Tina won hands down. Jeanette and Sasha were waiting outside the room and the parents swapped daughters and helped their respective charges into their pyjamas, something which neither offspring was particularly happy about. Martin and Sasha came back into the room once Tina was in bed. To everyone’s surprise, Sasha immediately leaned forwards, arms outstretched, shouting “EEAA!” again and again insistently until Martin handed her over to Tina. Sasha cuddled in between Tina’s body and right arm, with her head resting on Tina’s shoulder; Tina wrapped her arm around her, and she responded by grabbing her big sister’s thumb with her fingers. Within seconds both were fast asleep, and both slept soundly until the morning. When Tina woke up, she felt different. Part of it was because she’d slept through the night without a single reoccurrence of the nightmare, but that didn’t explain everything. Maybe Sasha had something to do with it? She was still there, lying on one side of the bed and still asleep (for now…), but how- Oh. “Well, look who’s finally awake.” Jeanette said. “Did you have a nice little nine-hour nap?” Nine hours?! “Typical teenager, lying in bed until lunchtime.” Tina stuck her tongue out at her. “Feeling any better?” “Much.” “Good- here’s hoping there are many more nights like it to come.” Sasha woke up, blinking groggily. “And sleepyhead number two is awake too.” Mum moved to lift Sasha, then stopped. “You appear to be leaking.” Tina sighed. “Again.” “I completely forgot about that. We should probably tell the doctors about that so they don’t get very confused; as long as you’re OK with that?” Tina nodded. “Good. I’ve put some clothes in the bathroom for you, once you’re dressed we can head down for some food.” A quick shower and a change of clothes later Tina was ready to go for breakfast- or more likely brunch- but before they could head to the hospital cafeteria there was a knock at the door, which Mum opened to reveal a harried-looking doctor. “Sorry for the intrusion,” he said, his voice betraying his stress. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m in a real hurry so I’m going to get straight to the point. Dr Frolie told me you have symp-lac, is that true?” “Sorry, who are you?” Mum replied. “Dr Geofdos, from the NICU. I’m only asking because you might be able to save my patients’ lives. Our entire supply of infant formula milk just got recalled because it may have been contaminated; we’re trying to get hold of some alternative supplies but there was already a shortage before this and now it’s proving nearly impossible to find any via the proper channels. If you have any formula milk to spare, we’ll gladly take it, but what we really need is the real thing. There’s a pilot program due to start next munth, but the hospital board has given us permission to start it early and skip most of the red tape around recruiting extra people. If Frolie was right, you’d be a perfect candidate-” “I’ll do it.” “Are you sure?” Mum asked and Tina nodded. “I, can…” The words weren’t coming, but then she realised they didn’t have to. “I can.” “Sick and tired of being sick and tired?” She gave Tina’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Go for it. I’ll probably come over there later myself.” “Great!” Geofdos sounded relieved. “I’ll grab a wheelchair and we can get going- time is of the essence.” Less than a minute later he was back, then he proceeded to wheel Tina through the hospital at what felt like blistering speed. She lost her sense of direction after the first turn, was convinced she went up in one lift, over a bridge of some sort (judging by the sounds of rain battering the windows and an ambulance that seemed to go directly under her) and then down again in a second lift immediately afterwards, and then they arrived in a place that was full of noise- children, medical equipment, irritatingly cheerful songs that could only be from TV shows aimed at children. Further down the corridor the sounds changed from young children to babies and toddlers. “I think I’ll try you with one of our special patients. She’s small but very loud when she wants to be, and right now she’s right at the top of the priority list.” They entered a room that smelt of babies and antiseptic, a rather unsettling combination. This room was much quieter, a lot less of the typical baby sounds and a lot more noises from medical equipment and machinery. “This little one is incredibly lucky to be alive: her parents were in a horrendous car crash last week and her mother died shortly after we delivered her- but it was rather too soon for her. We still haven’t given her a name yet, so you can do that if you want- but there’s really no pressure,” he must have seen her worried frown at the thought of having so much responsibility. They stopped beside what felt like a warm plastic box. “Now, don’t take it personally if she starts screaming the moment you touch her, she does that to everyone.” He guided her hands through a narrow opening in the side of the incubator to something incredibly small that started a thin, feeble wailing as soon as she touched it. Surely that can’t be a baby, it’s far too small! But no, that was her: only just bigger than Tina’s hand and barely two hundred grams even including the little knitted hat keeping her head warm, this baby was absolutely tiny. She scooped her up carefully into her hands, moving very cautiously in case she somehow damaged this frail little thing, and all the while the baby kept up her feeble mewling. “You’re allowed to breathe,” Geofdos said. “I’ll let Nurse Mauwig here help you get her in position and then we’ll see how she reacts.” Just like with Sasha, Tina was irrationally surprised by how warm the little baby was against her skin. For a few moments she was unsure what to do, but then instinct kicked in and the baby responded, her cries silenced almost immediately. Geofdos and Mauwig exchanged incredulous looks. “Wow.” Geofdos sounded genuinely impressed. “She always cries when anyone touches her. I’ll give it a minute to see if she stays settled, then I’ll need to move you to another room.” Tina felt herself relaxing as the seconds ticked by. “I think she’s happy now. I’ll move these two out to the waiting room, you can go and look for more volunteers,” said Mauwig. “I’ll come back later to check on you, alright?” Geofdos said and Tina nodded. “If you need any help in the meantime, just shout- there are plenty of people around here to give you a hand.” Mauwig wheeled Tina out of the antiseptic-smelling room, down a corridor and into a room with a TV playing in the corner, where she left them. There were other people in the room, but Tina quickly tuned their conversations out along with the noise of the TV; her awareness shrank down to the tiny life cradled in her arms and she lost track of her surroundings until she heard the name Valentina and tried to focus on her surroundings again. Someone was channel-hopping, watching each channel for a few seconds before clicking over to the next. “-promising a full investigation into the cause of the contamination, which police sources say is being treated as malicious-” click “-carries the momentum through the Hyperbolica and towards the line, what’s the time? It’s a one fifteen flat and that’s pole position!-” click “Can Thompberry’s dastardly plan be stopped!? Will our heroes make it in time!? Find out next time, on *thunderclap* THE SAGAAAA OF EMIKOOOOO STATION!ion!ion!” click “-into the final furlong, Admiral Fluffy still has the lead but That’s The Last Time I Eat Picked Eggs is gaining and Who Invited This Guy puts on a burst of speed and it’s a three-way race at this point can Admiral Fluffy hold on-” click “Wait, go back!” A child’s voice interrupted the channel surfing. click “-photo finish because that was too close to call-” click “-as we begin IntAir Flight 2319’s Countdown to Catastrophe-” click “Nevergonna Give! You! Uuuuup! Nevergonna-” click(!) “-and Governor-Elect Harvey have both appealed for calm after another night of violent protests across Estovus-” click “-faster in the first sector, faster in the second- OH! Big crash ahead and it’s Arcazon who’s gone into the barriers!” “No, no! Put Emiko Station on!” The child piped up again. “I want Peppy the Plane!” Another child said. “Emiko!” “Peppy!” “EMIKO!!!” “PEPPY!!!” “Enough shouting, you’ll scare the babies.” Someone else (their parent maybe?) interrupted the shouting match. “She started it!” “Did not!” “Did too!” “Nuh-UH!” “Uh-HUH!!” “NUH-UH!!!” I’ve seen a political debate a lot like this, Tina thought to herself. “Look at that- it’s six o’clock! You know what that means…” “Lunch time!” The children chorused, their argument of moments earlier forgotten already. “What’ll we have then? We could have… soup?” “Soup time!” “We could have… sandwiches?” “Sammiches time!” “We could have… broccoli?” Tina heard a door close, cutting off the exaggerated vomiting sounds and leaving her with just the TV and the sound of a dozen adverts- an eclectic mix of hearing aids, over-50s life insurance, a commemorative coin for some historic battle or other, two sets of sports trading cards, a multi-platform MMORPG game and a very shouty used car salesman with an annoyingly catchy jingle. She could hum the jingle perfectly well, but words still eluded her. Weird. The baby started whimpering and for a moment Tina was lost- did that mean she was finished, or needed winded, or something else? Her left arm was going dead just because of the way she was holding her so it would probably be a good idea to move her, but at the same time she didn’t want to disturb her and make her start crying, which would probably make them take her away, which made her feel strangely protective of this little baby she’d only just met five minutes ago. It was an odd experience, but not unpleasant- far from it. “How are you getting on?” Doctor Geofdos asked from behind her as he entered the room. “Good. Um…” “Need a hand?” He must have sensed her discomfort. “Trying to figure out the logistics but not quite sure where to start?” Tina nodded, relieved. Geofdos came over and talked her through how to move the baby from one arm to the other. “Have you given her a name? Don’t worry if you haven’t, you really don’t have to-“ “Emiko.” Where did that come from? “Emiko? Sounds familiar, but I can’t quite remember why. Alright then.” Tina tried to say something, anything, to take back that terrible suggestion, but her words just wouldn’t travel from her brain to her mouth. “I’ll leave you and Emiko in peace, just holler if you need anything.” Great. Now you’ve gone and ruined this poor baby’s life by naming her after a TV show you haven’t even seen. Nice work. Time passed, people came and went, the TV kept up its incessant background noise- and that stupid jingle kept coming back, burning itself into her brain. Stupid shouty car man and his stupid catchy jingle. A smell began wafting up from the baby’s direction, but just when she started to worry about that particular issue someone else in the room noticed and waved a nurse over, who whisked ‘Emiko’ away and returned her a few minutes later, clean, un-smelly and screaming her outrage at being so rudely separated from her new best friend. She soon calmed down again and even fell asleep right there in Tina’s arms. Someone had turned the TV off and the room was quiet… She woke up with a start, causing Emiko to start whimpering until she shushed her back to sleep. Someone had propped a cushion behind her head; thanks, whoever you are. “EEEAAA!” Sasha shouted the moment she saw her. “How are you doing?” Mum asked moments later, sitting down beside her. “Emiko.” Stop saying that before it sticks! ‘Emiko’ made a noise and Sasha reacted in almost comical surprise, looking around to see where it had come from. “I talked to Doctor Geofdos outside, apparently you’re some sort of baby whisperer. Can we see her?” “Sure.” She thought for a moment. “How…?” “I’ll get her.” Mum understood exactly what she meant. She came over and expertly scooped the little baby out of Tina’s arms. “Well, look at you! Aren’t you just the cutest little thing? Too bright? Maybe that’s why you were happy in there with Tina, hmm? Shh, there now, that’s better.” Sasha clambered onto Tina, her greater size and weight coming as a shock. Mum sat down beside her again and Sasha was immediately transfixed by the sight of the tiny baby in her arms. She reached over and- “Ah ah, no!” Mum warned her and she retreated. “We don’t want you getting sick, now do we Emiko?” “…ee-oh?” Sasha repeated the unfamiliar word. “Yes, her name is E-mi-ko.” “Ee-oh!” Tina sighed. Looks like that name has stuck. Stupid TV. And stupid brain for not letting her talk properly. She stayed with ‘Emiko’ almost until midnight, until she almost fell asleep in the chair whilst sitting beside her little incubator and had to leave to go to bed. Despite some trepidation from Tina- and her parents- the nightmares stayed away again and she woke the next morning feeling more refreshed than at any time since her impromptu trip to space. Every day she went back, and every day she became more and more convinced that little Emiko recognised her, cooing happily when she came each morning and crying bitterly if she ever left. She liked to curl up with her head resting on the top of Tina’s sternum, under her T-shirt where it was dark, warm and she could feel Tina’s heartbeat, and would usually fall asleep there. There was always someone on hand to help out with all those baby-related tasks that are so much easier when you can see what you’re doing, but they were always patient and helped Tina do much of the work herself, something that helped her own mood almost as much as it helped keep Emiko calm. After five days Geofdos was thrilled by little Emiko’s improvement: she was gaining weight, her breathing was much stronger and she could now tolerate being picked up for short periods without crying, though she still greatly preferred Tina’s company. Tina’s condition also improved as her speech gradually returned and her sleep pattern returned to normal, untroubled by nightmares. On the sixth day Dr Suzon, an ophthalmic surgeon, arrived to perform the first of several surgical operations to restore Tina’s sight. She explained the procedure’s objectives and the potential risks, but despite her reassurances Tina barely slept that night as her mind tried to think of all the worst-case scenarios and then combine them in new and awful ways. It was rather anticlimactic in the end, over within an hour with no problems or complications and the reassuring news that her right eye had sustained less damage than initially thought and was healing faster than predicted. One more operation in a few days’ time and she would probably be able to see again, though it would take a while longer to be able to read. Still groggy from the anaesthetic, she spent most of the day asleep, waking at just after 7 o’clock and immediately feeling irrationally guilty for abandoning little Emiko for that long. Worse still, she wasn’t allowed in to see her to prevent any residual anaesthetic still in her system from potentially harming Emiko. She was over there first thing the next morning though; well, second thing after breakfast, but that goes without saying. About half an hour later, Dad arrived with someone else behind him. “You have a visitor.” “Who is it?” Tina asked. “It’s Nat,” said Nat. “Na-ta-li-a.” Tina was frustrated by how long it took her to say that simple word. “They told me you’re having some trouble talking.” Tina nodded. “Words are… they get lost. It’s…” Come on, mouth, get it together! “Getting better. Slowly.” “That’s good to hear. How about your eyes?” “This one…” She pointed at her right eye and made a so-so gesture with her hand. “It should work soon. The other,” she gave a thumbs down. “They want to give me a, a…” “A camera they took right out of a smartphone and made into a bionic eye,” Dad joked to fill the silence. “I keep telling her they won’t include the flash, but she won’t listen.” “Don’t be ridiculous, Martin.” Nat replied. “They’ll give her one with a built-in heads-up display, thermal imaging, gyroscopic stabilisers…” “Eye roll.” Said Tina. “Did you just say ‘eye roll’?” Nat asked. “Well, I can’t do it, so I say it instead.” “And she says it a lot.” Added Dad. “Along with ‘sidelong look’, ‘confused blinking’ and her most popular one, ‘blank stare’.” “How’s Val?” Tina asked. “She’s hanging in there. They keep tweaking her life support to see how she responds, so she has good days and bad days, but they’re happy with her progress so far.” “But how is she?” Nat sighed. “They’re pretty sure her spinal cord is severed in at least two places, possibly three. She’s missing her right kidney, her left spleen, just under half her liver and they’re also worried about internal bruising, hypoxic brain injuries…” She sighed again. “But she’ll get through it. I know she will- she’s too stubborn to let this beat her.” “How about you?” Martin asked. “Oh, tired, stressed and still hoping that this is all a cheese-fuelled nightmare that I’ll wake up from at any moment. They keep telling me that stress is bad for the baby, but I just tell them that almost getting murdered is a whole lot worse and I’ve got plenty of things to be stressed about. My doctor said I should try a massage; I lasted about two minutes before I nearly broke the poor girl’s fingers and that slightly spoiled the mood.” “Hey, Nat. How are you?” Jeanette said as she came into the room, nudging Sasha along with one of her crutches to keep her moving. Nat ducked down to say hello, but Sasha completely blanked her and crawled over to Tina’s leg where she sat tugging insistently on her trouser leg saying “EE-OH!” repeatedly. “OK, OK, she’s here.” Tina said as she brought Emiko out into the light. Emiko wasn’t happy about it, but for once she didn’t start crying. “So this is the little friend Martin was telling me about,” said Nat. “Aren’t you a cutie? Can I...?” “She’ll cry,” Tina warned her. “She cries for everyone else but me.” She handed her over to Nat and within a few seconds Emiko’s lower lip started trembling. “Shh, it’s OK, it’s only me.” Nat tried to comfort her. “You are just the sweetest little thing, aren’t- oof, right in the pancreas. And watch those elbows, will you?” “I know the feeling,” said Jeanette. “The last two munths with Sasha, it felt like she was trying to punch her way out, plus she got hiccups every night just when I was about to go to sleep.” Nat’s phone rang, which was enough to set Emiko crying; Nat handed her back to Tina and rummaged in her bag to find the phone. “Hello?” Martin and Jeanette watched as Nat’s face changed from worry to something more like exasperation. “Another one? Tell them what we told the others and send them on their way.” She hung up and sighed. “What’s that about?” Martin asked. “You haven’t heard? Apparently that ‘Me-nome’ company had a massive database failure that meant a lot of people’s results got sent to the wrong people. I’ve had six- seven, now- people turn up claiming to be Val’s long-lost relative.” The look that passed between Martin and Jeanette spoke volumes. “Did I miss something?” Nat asked. “You look like you need a coffee,” Martin said. “My treat.” “Actually, I…” Nat started to object, then realised what he meant. “I’d love a coffee, thanks.” “Jeanie, you coming?” “Only if tea’s on the menu.” Jeanette replied, scooping Sasha off the floor and carrying her squirming and protesting out of the room. Tina hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation and didn’t realise they were leaving until after they were gone. Emiko had stopped crying and possibly fallen asleep, but there was no way for her to tell without waking her up again. A man entered the room with two children (Tina assumed they were his), one of them sobbing quietly. They sat down in the same row of chairs that Tina was sitting on, but the other child quickly got bored and started wandering around the room. “Don’t touch it,” the man said. “But it hurts,” the crying child replied. “I know it hurts, but if you keep poking it, it’ll just hurt for longer.” “But it hurts now…” “Will chocolate make it hurt less?” “Uh-huh…” Tina couldn’t help smiling at that. The crinkling chocolate wrapper immediately attracted the other child’s attention and they trotted over. “No, Dillon, this is for your sister.” “But I’m sick too!” Dillon protested, letting out a very fake cough that fooled nobody. “Lizzy, can Dillon have one of your chocolate buttons?” “Hmm…” “Pleeeeeeeease?” “OK.” “What do you say?” “Thank you, Lizzy.” “Good lad- I said one, Dillon!” “They were stuck together, it’s not my fault!” “Ah, the old ‘they were stuck together’ chestnut, like I haven’t heard that one before.” Tina heard footsteps running from one side of the room to the other, then returning and stopping in front of her. “Hello.” “Hi?” Tina couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or not. “What happened to your face?” “Dillon!” “What? You always say, ‘If you don’t understand something, ask’, so I asked.” Tina laughed and the father let out a sigh that was more amusement than annoyance. “Oh, you’re your father’s son, all right. Sorry about that.” Tina was about to reply when a doctor came into the room and said, “OK, Lizzy, it’s time for your X-ray.” Lizzy started crying again, Dillon asked “What’s an X-ray? Can I have one too?” and then they were gone and Tina was alone with Emiko once more. A while later, Mum, Dad and Nat came back. “If you’re feeling up to it, Darryl wants to come and see you tomorrow,” said Mum. “Who?” “Darryl.” “Who?” “Darryl.” “Just repeating the same name to me won’t magically make me know who it is.” Tina snapped. She sat for a moment surprised at what she had just said, then burst into tears, a strange experience with one eye half-missing and both eyes covered with bandages. Mum and Dad sat down on either side of her, Mum scooping little Emiko into her arms so she could lean into Dad and sob into his shoulder. “Tell your old Dad what’s wrong, hmm?” Said Dad. “I’m broken,” she choked out. “Broken?” “I can’t see, I can’t speak, I can’t stand without feeling like I’m about to fall over, I couldn’t even sleep for weeks, I can’t think straight half the time, I just…” Dad tried to reassure her. “Val is alive because of you. Nat is alive because of you. Emiko is alive because of you.” “She’s named after a TV show because I couldn’t talk properly!” “You’re looking at this all wrong, Tina,” said Nat. “You got launched into space with zero warning, performed an impossible EVA rescue with no training and no real plan, flew an unstable prototype shuttle through a hard re-entry, pulled more negative Gs than anyone in history with re-entry plasma blasting through the windows right into your face, landed that shuttle in the ocean, nearly drowned trying to drag Val out as the shuttle sank, shrugged off brain haemorrhages like they were nothing, woke up from an induced coma, got shot in the face… did I forget anything?” “There was that fighter plane that tried to shoot us down,” said Martin. “That was more me than her, but fine. After all of that, you’re still here, you’re still living and breathing, walking and talking- and yes, you’re not doing all of those things as well as you used to, but considering you should have died about twenty times over I’d say you’re doing fantastic.” “Easy for you to say,” Tina replied, but it was clear Nat’s words had had an effect. “The entire world knows what you did up there, Tina. You’re a hero in the eyes of billions of people.” “A bit of an exaggeration,” said Mum. “No, really. All the newspapers and TV stations are arguing about pretty much everything except for the fact that Tina is absolutely and unquestionably the bravest person on the entire planet, bar none.” “I was literally scared- uh, witless, the moment that airlock door opened and I barely avoided projectile vomiting across the helmet visor the whole time. Sound ‘brave’ to you?” “The first time I flew on a Dynawing, I tossed my guts up in the van driving out to the pad and they had to turn back to get new pressure suits for the entire crew. Actually, that was the first time I ever flew with Val, she was commanding that mission. She probably has all kinds of stories to tell about the early days when she did the first EVA by anyone, ever…” She took a rather shaky breath. “Sorry, it just sneaks up on me sometimes. My point is, bravery isn’t not being afraid, it’s overcoming that fear. So maybe you were scared witless and maybe you only just kept your breakfast from spattering across the inside of your helmet, but you still did the most ridiculously dangerous and difficult EVA in the history of spaceflight and brought Val back with you. “All I ever wanted was to go to space, to be like Val; but now that I’ve actually been up there… I don’t know that I could ever do that again. Or that they’d even let me, because let’s face it, I’ll probably never pass the medical tests with a missing eye and a leaky brain. If that’s gone, then what?” “Are you kidding me?” Dad replied. “Johnbro and Desdas practically hired you on the spot on the flight back from Darude, never mind all the other companies that would be climbing over each other to give you a job.” Nat joined in. “If that nuclear engine on the Firebird was anything to go by, they could turn that into a plane that could fly continuously for munths at a time- just imagine what that could do if you dropped one into the atmosphere of Eve, or Jool, or Huygen. Or use the original engine you designed to fly around on Laythe with an ISRU system to make the methane.” “Or adapt the technology to something right here on Kerbin,” added Mum. “Hydroelectric turbines, more efficient jet engines on planes, propulsion systems for ships- is she sleeping?” “I think she is,” replied Martin, looking down at the head resting on his shoulder. “Pass me that cushion and we’ll leave her in peace. *** This again. Jool below her, Bop before her, but this time Sasha was strapped to the front of her in the baby carrier thingy. The moon closed in, the monster on its surface reared up- And oh so gently reached out a tentacle the size of a skyscraper to just in front of Sasha, who oh so gently grasped it with both hands and planted a little kiss on the tentacle’s tip. When she woke up, both the dream and all memories of the nightmares before it were gone as if they’d never happened.

It's "ask me anything", not "I will answer everything". Answering to them all even with "not my area of expertise" or "can't talk about it" when there's hundreds of questions asked and the available time is just over an hour, would make it pretty much impossible. And boring. Yes, the questions are picked because they have to be when time is limited and the answers are expected to have any substance. Asking every single dev from every department why rockets are wobbly (for example) will lead to disap.. I mean, "disappointment". People have roles. And will answer according to their roles. And honestly, as a person who's more on the artsy side, rather than engineering, I very much enjoyed the AMA with all the chosen questions. As for live posted questions, scrolling through twitch chat spam ain't interesting. Especially when there are people crying about why their questions weren't picked like if that was the worst thing that ever happened in their lives.