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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.

Hah, I brought this up when we were trying to figure out the title for this one. "Hotfix Summer" is just a joke related to the phrase "hotgirl summer," and does not imply that additional hotfixes are coming past the second one mentioned above. Development will continue even without the weekly "upnates," so the hope is that the next one of these you see from Nate will have lots of new and exciting things to talk about.

Well, I care, they definitely nailed the planet looks from space. Also, this might be an opinion, but I find the "height map" much more interesting in ksp2 than it was in ksp1 (just blob to make a mountain). However, I'm just a bit disappointed with how the ground texture looks, that's why I asked a question about this (and it was answered). I agree, but to be fair, here they talk about how they "want" different plasmas on different bodies. Nate talked about reentry with different colors in the first AMA, very different from the simple ksp1 vfx.

First off, announcing the changes on the hotfix but not including the "you're now forced to use the launcher" change... Very naughty behavior. As for the answers... Regarding planet design: They insist the guided gamemode will be about exploration, yet refuse to talk about the important aspect of it. No one cares how the planets look on the map and scaledspace, the problem has always been landing on them to find yet another empty, unimaginative, boring wasteland. This answer did no favors to that, as they only talked about and showed scaledSpace planet design. Regarding graphical improvements: It was a bit of a red flag to hear they've known about the shiny grass for (I quote, which was omitted on the transcript) "Years", when it is such a simple problem to fix. They must really be waiting for HDRP so that their work to fix that (as insignificant as changing specularity values might be) isn't overwritten by work on the new pipeline. As for CBT, yall still need to show more regarding whatever it is, since what most people know for CBT doesn't look like much of a fit to solve the current problems. Regarding icon/stamp customization: A great idea, infinitely better than the mesh flags of KSP1. Regarding re-entry heating: Shame that this was a problem slated for "shortly after launch" yet we're barely talking about what "we want to do", this should be a done and closed issue by now. It is probably the most glaring gameplay mechanic currently missing from the game, and it is so basic... Regarding UI: The only thing that seems inherited from those inspirations shown is the eye friendly color scheme from IDEs. The practicality, compactness, and design rules of making something for people to use first, and pretty later, has been completely lost. The current UI is overly big, has tons of wasted space, and most of the used space is just "used" to convey useless information. I believe there's much more work to be done than just a maneuver panel. Regarding parachutes: I'm firmly on the camp that the upcoming EVA chutes and the ones currently in game need to be rescaled.

So we were on a bit of a tangent in the LS thread last week and began talking about the broader sections of the game that don't feel fully ironed out yet. There were some, Regex and Klgraham included who felt career mode was disjointed and grindy enough to prevent them from using it. While I disagreed with their broader assessment, I do have to agree that at the moment the fun process of building rockets and gaining rewards and earning new parts is missing something. I've played a good deal in stock career and found that at least for the amount of time I can reasonably set aside for KSP (probably 6-8h/wk) I generally have to set reward settings rather generously to progress without feeling like Im bogging down. While there are many aspects of the game that are obviously incomplete, experience and building tiers for instance, I've grown to feel the most established but lagging component to the game is the Science system. Squad made a nice pass on the Tech tree, which was great and helped, but I think didn't address the fundamental issue. I don't personally have a problem with the general concept of experiments producing points which then can be spent on a tech tree. It's simple enough to understand and broad enough to accommodate most play-styles. One problem, I think, is that the actual act of planning and conducting experiments isn't actually very exciting. Another deeper problem is that for many players the Tech Tree is the objective of the game, so once its complete the reward structure ends and they feel like the game is over. There are a few reasons for this, which I thought we could consider as we offer ideas on how to improve the system. 1) KSP is a rather unique game, wherein not only craft but play-styles are near infinite. This means that any science system has to be flexible enough to let people play the way they want to play and still set clear rules and incentives for progression. Additionally players start careers with varying levels of experience, so any successful science system needs to not only serve as a tool for introducing new parts and concepts to first time players, but remain fun and challenging for veterans. 2) KSP isn't a game with a "win" condition. Its a creative building game with costs and incentives, much like Simcity. This means that the scaling of the tech-tree and the meaning of science points once its complete is more difficult to gauge than in most games. When stretched thin the game becomes a grind, and when condensed things become too easy and players max out quickly and no longer know what to do. Strategies were implemented in part to deal with this, allowing players to exchange mountains of excess science for funds for instance, but once a player has a maxed out tech tree and a million bazzillion funds they are essentially playing sandbox. That seems an odd end-game reward. 3) And this is important, KSP is at its heart an indie game that bats way above its weight. Its incredible what they've achieved, but Squad is a small company and development time is desperately precious. What I think would is most helpful is sussing out the precise issues causing problems and finding succinct corrections that would address them. I laud people's ambitious ideas, but let's try to think realistically about what changes really could be made to improve the system and the game. I have my own ideas, but I'm interested to hear what others think.

A good point that I've sort of had in the back of my mind as well while making my posts - I like to mention performance and stability as separate issues when I talk about the state of the game. Here's how I personally view these, and my attempt to add a definition for accuracy. Performance - Does the game feel smooth to play? This includes framerate, framerate stuttering, scene load time and UI responsiveness. (I'm looking at you parts manager) Stability - Does the game function over time without failure, in the full range of situations the player can put it in? Lack of stability includes things like VAB construction bugs, flight bugs leading to sudden loss of vehicle through no fault of the player, wheels hitching on flat terrain for no reason, vehicle falling through terrain, improper physics behaviour, save file size explosions etc. Accuracy - Is the game simulation accurate enough with respect to the real world? This includes things like the game's part-based physics system using spring joints (wobbly rockets), part impact resistance, heating, aerodynamics model, wheel function, trajectories and terrain. The current trajectory bug that makes interplanetary transfers difficult is a great example of a lack of accuracy, as well as the orbital decay bug. Accuracy is where we see the effects of the game's foundation most of all. And like you said, I hoped that the foundations underlying accuracy would have been the ones improved in a new game built from the ground up. The most notable improvement here is the ability to use engines under timewarp, but other foundations were not significantly improved on compared to KSP1 such as spring-based joints and drag cubes. For example, the part-based physics system is the foundation of KSP's vehicle behaviour, and is primarily responsible for performance quickly getting worse when building vehicles with higher part count and many flight bugs as well as phantom forces (aka, the kraken) also originate here. There have been calls on the forum to get rid of the wobbliness or at least rein it in, as well as enabling scaling to high part count vehicles. Both of these come down to this foundational system.

You answered the question yourself. They will not do it just because a random crazy dude sent them an email. The employee receiving it will just delete the email and forget about - Kraken knows how many of the emails I received at day job nowadays are SPAM and go the same way. But now it's not only a random crazy dude, it's some serious bunch of people, some of them influential community members. Additionally, we got a nice brainstorming where the pros and cons of the proposal were discussed, getting a grasp on how to better sell our fish. Sending an email to someone there (as long as we find one that would at least read it) is the final logical step, but never the first. About making plenty of money, assuming this is really happening - how much money more do you think they would make once the worst and more annoying bugs are properly fixed, cleaning up the code base and making at least feasible to repurpose it on new products (tablets, mobiles, whatever - there're wristwatches nowadays more powerful that the desktops that used to run the first versions of this game!)? In essence: we are a bunch of skilled workmanship willing to do some Pro Bono work with our free time in order to get this game tight now. Some people can do it in the shadows, outside this Community and for their own benefit. Some other people prefers to do it in the clear, inside the Community and giving back to it what this Community had given to us in the past. In the end, this is really the only choice to be made: who they want running the Modding Scene? People relying on shady practices or people in compliance with their own EULA? And that's the problem: we don't want another game, we want this one fixed. There're already open source initiatives around, but none of them will remotely open our savegames so we can keep playing them. And this is what really matters in the end for the users. And that's the confusion: we are not pledging a way to create a new KSP, we are pledging legal access to the KSP's source code so we can fix bugs and do a better job on modding it without relying on shady practices in violation of the EULA and Forum Publishing Guidelines and Rules (no to mention some few draconian legislations around the World), and nothing beyound that. Don't you see a problem here? A Community publicly relying on shady, EULA infringement practices in an officially sanctioned Forum? it took me some time to understand "C&D", the result that appeared the most on Google was "Construction & Demolition" But then I found "Creative & Development" and I finally understood. Nope, you are not getting it. The problem on long discussions like this one is that people usually don't have the time neither the patience to read trough all of it and we ended up in a misunderstanding. We do not want to clone KSP. We want legal access (even if limited) to the Source Code (and only to it) so we can do better our job on fixing bugs plaguing users and improving our Add'Ons. We don't want rights over the Creative Assets (meshes, lore, characters, textures, config files, missions, etc), we are not intending to recompile and redistribute the thing. You see, the Source itself is already available on the wild for people that knows how to use certain tools trough shady practices that this Forum consider piracy (believe on me about this one) and so I can't really talk about. But there're people around here (apparently the majority of us) that are not willing to engage on such shady practices, and so the only real way to do a better job on this Scene would be by having legal access to the Source Code, even than a very limited way - we don't need the right to change and redistribute the code, because we are not pledging the right to do derivatives. What we want is the right to legally read the Source Code without risking our SASes by violating the EULA (as well some few draconian legislations as mine) - not to mention this Forum's Publishing Guidelines. The Genie is already out of the Bottle, the Source is already being read by people that don't mind such details. Our pledge is to give us the same right, under EULA and Forum Rules compliance, so we can do a better job without disrespecting such EULA and Forum rules. Additionally, about Development… It's my understanding that game companies relies on outsourcing all the time. Why outsourcing the source code to Open Source workmanship would be bad? Apple did that in the past (Darwin), to say the least…

Why not just ask T2 directly? They won't just do it because a bunch of people signed a petition. Literally send an email to (publicly and legally available) anyone at T2 if you guys believe this is doable. All this talk about a turning point and doing the right thing seems rather pointless. This is a community of maybe 5000-10000 people spread across the globe. Maybe 50% of those people will actually get on board. It won't just explode and become a social movement so I imagine asking is really your only option. I think the real solution is not to bark up this tree and waste the energy because I agree with most: they just wont release the source code for a barely 10 year old game still making plenty of money. The best possible solution (IMO) is to start an OpenKSP project (like OpenTTD, google it, highly successful). I am not a lawyer but I believe if you recreate the game with your own code they would have to issue a cease and desist to stop you. They only typically do that if it eats into the bottom line (this is a corporation, lets not forget). This is also easily possible but I imagine in the time it takes to recreate KSP with original (not crappy) code, KSP1 would hopefully be at a point where OpenKSP isn't a bottom line issue. Also issuing C&D's is typically not good for publicity especially in the PC game sphere and would probably tarnish the game's reputation.

Granted: I have heard among this clan, You are called the forgotten man (Is that what they're saying, well did you evah!) (What a swell party this is) And have you heard the story of, A boy, a girl, unrequited love (Sounds like pure soap opera, tune in tomorrow) I May cry (What a swell party this is) (What frills, what frocks) What broads! (What furs, what rocks!) They're bootiful. (Why I've never seen such gaity) Neither have I. (Its all just too, too risque really) This french champagne (domestic) (So good for the brain) that's what I was going to Say. (You know you're a brilliant fellow?) Why thank You (Pick up jack. Please don't eat that glass my friend) (Have you heard, about dear Blanche?) (Got run down by an avalanche) No! (Oh don't worry, she's a game girl you know, got Up and finished 4th) The kids got guts. (Having a nice time? Grab a Line!) Have you heard that Mimsie Starr (what now) She got pinched in the Astor bar (Sloshed again, eh?) She was stoned. Well, did you evah? (Never!) What a swell party this is! Hey, check out that act! (That's a lovely dress. You think I can talk her out of it?) It's great, (aah it's great) So grand! (so grand) It's wonderland! La da da da... (We sing), oh we sing (So rare) so rare (Like old camembert) (Like baba au rhum!) Don't dig that kind of crooning chum! Have you heard? It's in the stars Next July we collide with Mars. Well, did you evah? What a swell party, a swell party A swelligant, elegant party this is! (I drink to your health) Naw, lets drink to your wealth Your my bon ami Hey, that's french A liberty fraternity Have you heard? It's in the stars Next July we collide with Mars. Well, did you evah? What a swell party, swell party Swelligant, elegant party this is! I wish for quality.

Chapter 4 : Kerbin surface activities, Deep space telescopes & Eve foldable glider Baobab study: After all those years, I finally made it, my first helicopter using breaking ground parts (yeah I know, it took me some time ) It's ugly as a kraken face, if anyone has ever seen one, but hey, it flies ! Our kerbals will takes this to do some test takeoffs/landings/hover flight, and fly to the nearby biome in search for weird giant trees... We'll do a more streamlined and nice looking version in the future for sure ! This is just to measure safety, and maneuverability ! Acrobatics : Then, I designed a little and maneuvrable plane for Jeb : Space telescopes : I then deployed 2 space telescopes, one for taking very high definition pictures of Kerbol's bodies, and the other to track for potential DSP (Deep Space Pebbles) endangering Kerbin... Eve glider & further exploration of Moho I designed this unmanned Eve glider, for the next Eve window. It will be attached inside a 1.25m fairing, with a heatshield, itself attached to an orbiter.Upon entering Eve SOI, the reentry module will detach from the orbiter, and perform a direct Eve entry from its hyperbolic trajectory. Once passed the heat and fire things, the glider will detach and unfold its wings. It can also do incremental deploy, to control wing span and thus lift/drag. Sweet goal would be to aim at a spot with a lot of biomes, and glide as long as possible ! I tested this on Eve and could achieve a landing at 7 m/s, so no landing gear needed ^^ And water or land are both fine : ) For comms, it uses a standard C 16-S, and will talk to the orbiter which has the bigger relay antenna. It's in 0.625m size (using tweakscale), weights ~500 kg, and can even fly without any SAS/very little imputs ! Here's also some video of me testing this Kerbin : Aaaand finally, I designed a new heavy orbiter for Moho, that would do all the high resolutions scans of its surface, and also carry a small lander : It features deployable panels, both for the scanning instruments and the lander, to protect them during their deep space journey In the meantime, I did the first crew rotation on Starlab-1. I can confirm our Kerbonauts didn't turn into green gelly, which is fantastic ! I also started working on a very low tech SSTO reusable spaceplane, to improve funds efficieny (since we're not the richest space program right now....). Next coming soon ! Cheers

Hello! - I finally got around to draw myself an avatar and update my profile somewhat... Still need a banner.. but I'll get there. I thought It was time to introduce myself so I wasn't just one of those blank spooky avatars. The Quick Facts: I'm 32 years old, as of now. Father to two: a 5 year old daughter and 2 year old son and I just ended a 10 year career in the Danish Army to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a "Graphic Storyteller" - Fancy way of saying comics artist. Hard Sci-fi lover, Outdoor person and Artist. The Long Version: I have been roaming the forum since March where I finally got out of my KSP closet with the launch of KSP2 doing this: Before that I've been low key following a few KSP content creators on YT... and I tried KSP myself back a few years ago, but found it a bit overwhelming and didn't know how to get going. In KSP2 having less tools and goals at my disposal actually ment it was easier for me to pick an direction, which became space stations xD - I guess its a bit like that if the buffet is really big... you just dont know where to start. How I got intrigued by KSP is probably a good question to answer. I've always been bit of a Hard Sci-Fi lover. I am also currently educating myself as a Graphic Storyteller - and have been brewing on a Epic Sci-Fi Multi volume graphic novels series for a while. I want to write it with realistic space.. So no FTL travel, no "Dog fights in space" or gravity generators... Something like The Martian, or Interstellar - but with the scope and conflict like Star Wars (I guess something like the Expanse..? but I wouldn't know... Its one of the many shows on my "To Watch List" I started when i became a father) Any way... That meant I looked into the nuances of space travel... and it turned out it was a "gateway" drug into a NASA/ESA and Space X fascination. One thing KSP also got going for it is you can play it only paying half attention.. and my children find the goofy Kerbals very funny. My daughter right now is also very much into space. And KSP is an easy way to rub that itch. Besides my family and loving wife I guess my military career has been very formative for me. I've served for 10 years, 1/3 in reconnaissance, 1/3 as infantry in a "cav" unit and 1/3 as crew on an Armored Personel Carrier. I wont bore you with the details. Other than that I love hiking, kayaking and other outdoor activities (unfortunately becoming a father has left little time for stuff like that) I guess that's enough for an introduction now - But I am not shy to talk about anything, so if you wanna know more you need only to ask!

Where Do We Go Now? "Thank you for joining us with a CBS Special Report this evening. We bring you news from the Caucasus region of Southern Europe, the Armenian SSR, a member state of the Soviet Union, has declared its independence, officially forming the Republic of Armenia. There are unconfirmed reports of combat between the Soviet military and local militia, but this is denied by the Soviet government. This comes as protests in the Ukraine have ramped up and have spread to other member states. General Secretary Gorbachev has objected but has stated that he will not interfere with the will of the Armenian people. While he begins to push internal economic and political reforms within the Soviet state, citing them as necessary for the nation's survival." On the 16th of April, 1988, the Republic of Armenia is formed. The Soviet Union is facing a crisis, internal turmoil, and economic stagnation have driven Armenia to independence, and it seems as though Ukraine will follow suit eventually. Gorbachev is beginning a series of reforms to preserve the state, which may lead to a completely new Soviet Union in the coming years. But politics shmolotics, we're here for some space exploration. On that front, there is still a lot going on in the rest of 1988. For NASA, their plans have had a wrench thrown in them, as the Shuttle is now grounded at least until next year after the Enterprise incident. That mission has revealed some long-standing issues that NASA has otherwise ignored or tolerated. A Congressional hearing on February 10th has much of this come to the surface. Nobody is taking this lightly, it was a miracle that Challenger was supposed to launch 3 days later and was ready to fly. Had it not been, the crew would've had no chance of rescue. This is the first time NASA's faith in the Space Shuttle has been shaken. The Congressional hearing brings a heap of information against the Shuttle, with one particular bit being how long it has been since the Operations & Safety Manuals were updated, with the last minor revision in 1985, and the last new edition in 1982. Even that edition still contains much from the original 1977 manual, for Saturn-Shuttle. John Young has done his best to keep everyone in line, but he has found himself fighting a losing battle since around the end of '84. Those below him have run wild and although he has managed to keep the agency functioning well, a lot has slipped through the cracks. But this is a chance to right the ship and get it heading on the right path as it heads into a new decade. Seizing that chance, the Space Shuttle Future Committee is established, to determine the path forward for NASA's Space Shuttle. Different teams from both NASA and Rockwell are allowed to present their plans. But one stands out amongst the sea of pro and anti-Shuttle plans. A plan that will keep the Shuttle going, better than ever, and pave the way for a future successor down the line. This plan was originally outlined back in the January 1984 Space Shuttle Technical Report, from Dryden and Ames, but it has been presented to the committee now as a solution to the uncertain future of NASA's winged icon. It is called the Shuttle Improvement Program, or SIP. Although some of its ideas are a bit outlandish and unnecessary, it has many good solutions to the common problems the Shuttle faces. Mostly to do with the high cost of processing and maintaining it. But it also has many suggestions to improve operational safety and procedures. The committee eventually agrees to a revised version, with some removals and additions. The core components of it are changes to the TPS tiles for easier maintenance and access to the hardware behind them, and a new propellant for the OMS and RCS systems. That propellant is a mixture of Ethanol and HTP, affectionately named E-HTP. This change also means new APUs to finally rid the Shuttle of toxic hypergolic propellants. With all of these changes, Shuttle processing should become much cheaper and easier, as well as quicker. With the SIP team estimating 30-day turnarounds being possible. On top of the SIP program, NASA decided to extend the grounding of the Shuttle program until the autumn of 1989. This is to allow for a massive amount of maintenance and upgrade work to the Shuttles, which have fallen behind on upkeep due to the demanding flight rate. With only 4 Shuttles now in the fleet, and only 3 at the Cape, they need to stay in top-tier condition. They will all, besides Columbia, receive their first major round of upgrades during this extended fleet grounding. All of this means that Orpheus 4 has been delayed a whole year. But no worries, it gives more time to prepare all of the necessary hardware on the bright side. As well as giving NASA more time to review their operational safety and change things up. In June, a major step for the Magellan program is completed. The expansion of the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana is completed. A new "second campus" of sorts that will be dedicated to LTV and Magellan MTV construction. Speaking of the Magellan MTV, its design has been finalized, and it has been publicly announced as the "Multi-Mission Exploration Transfer Vehicle" or MMETV. It is a single-core design, and it will use 7 of the same NTR motors used on the LTV Mk2. Optimized for carrying 50t to Mars and back, two will be used on a normal Magellan mission. NASA is committed to launching Magellan 1 in 1992, and it is to be foreseen if that target holds. Now let's talk a little about the aftermath of the Enterprise incident. In the weeks following, Enterprise was slowly recovered from the dry lakebed of Edwards Air Force Base, with major pieces being flown back in the Super Guppy. The recovery was made difficult due to a puncture in the OMS pods that had hydrazine leaking everywhere, but that was cleaned up, and the rest of the propellant drained, as it miraculously didn't explode. Nevertheless, after returning to the Cape, the components were laid out in one of the Shuttle maintenance hangars at the Cape for inspection and assessment. About 70% of Enterprise was able to be recovered, so NASA has not ruled out the potential for a reconstructed display at some point. But for now, Enterprise will be contributing to studying the Shuttle's structure under the conditions it faced, to help with SIP. On top of Enterprise, Spacelab was also damaged beyond repair, but both NASA and ESA have been talking about a brand new "Spacelab 2" of sorts for use between Skylab's de-orbit and the beginning of the successor station. That idea has been accelerated with the destruction of Spacelab. It will be similar to its predecessor, but with a flat top, to finally get rid of an emergency procedure issue the original always had. If the astronauts had to go out on EVA and manually close the payload bay doors, they would be stuck in there throughout re-entry with the original Spacelab, as they could not get back to the airlock. This will be fixed with Spacelab 2. With NASA sorting itself out for the rest of the year, the spotlight goes onto the Soviets, and wait... Japan?? That's right, Japan makes a thrilling announcement in September, that they are beginning work on their first domestic launch vehicle, moving away from licensed versions of Thor-Delta. Not much else is revealed, other than that they're starting work on it and they hope to have it ready around 1993. So not too thrilling, but certainly interesting. Otherwise, the spotlight is on the Soviets, as they take flight with Buran for the second time, with crew. That's right, with Igor Volk and Aleksandr Ivanchenko at the helm of the Soviet's shiny new Space Shuttle, they take flight on a 2-day solo mission, with a scientific payload in the back, to demonstrate manned operations. This mission takes flight on November 10th, 1988, the same day Orpheus 4 was planned to land on the Moon. Buran lands under a clear night sky at Baikonur 2 days later, with this mission again making headlines around the world. The Soviet Space Shuttle may have just arrived on the scene, but its making a name for itself even ahead of the Soviet propaganda surrounding it. With a second one now under construction, to be named Sarma, it looks as if the Soviets are committing to this fancy new spaceplane. The year wraps up with the 1988 Presidential elections, to replace Ronald Reagan, as his 2 terms are up. It comes down to his VP, George H.W. Bush, against the Democrat nominee Michael Dukakis. Bush wins in a landslide. As Reagan's VP, he championed both the Orpheus and Magellan programs since their inception and has stated throughout his campaigns his intention to continue the pro-space exploration policies of Reagan, and even expand on them. Another good administration for NASA, to be foreseen about the country. Рейс 3 в Полюс

It's been 4 months since release of early access and there is still one dominant question in the community unanswered and that is what went wrong. There are multiple interviews where the developers talk about how their focus is on rebuilding the game from the ground up to have it be performant and as buggyless as possible yet years after those interviews happened the game is the complete opposite. Note I am not saying that it's not getting better because so far the updates have been great but I and I think that the whole community would love to hear what went wrong with the development. Is it just a really hard thing to develop, was there a restart at some point, did coronavirus really affect development that much, just what happened? And another thing is the developers stated multiple times that they've played with future roadmap features and had a lot of fun and most of us wonder how that is possible since the game is still barely playable without those features?

I usually play without sound actually - Because I will not play very "active" - A lot of the time I will just be having the game running on "idle" while I talk with the kids, do other things etc. waiting between maneuvers. Also there was a point were I was listening to my own playlists while playing... and I just didn't turn it on again since x) I would advice this yes

Most of you are familiar with Chris, AKA Nertea on our forum. Here is some insight from him about part creation: Hello! My name is Chris Adderley, a designer on the KSP2 team. If you’ve been around the community for a while, you may recognize my alias of Nertea from a few mods for KSP1 I have made. Almost a year ago I moved over to game design for KSP2 and I’m here to talk to you about my key area of responsibility and joy… PARTS. Parts are great, and while KSP2 is made up of Kerbals and a bunch of physics/engineering driven systems, one of the main ways the player interacts with the game is with the library of parts that you assemble into a vessel and then fly off into the sunset or ground. For those new to KSP, this is a part: It does get a little weirder. In case you’re curious, this asteroid is also a part: Games are strange. With KSP 2 on the horizon, it might seem odd to talk about developing new parts from square one. However, KSP is such a complex set of interacting systems that through iteration and testing, the team often finds areas where the game could benefit from a new part (or two, or three). In addition, we have a long roadmap of features we want to add to the game, so looking towards the future consistently results in new parts showing up for the team to design and create. Seems like a good opportunity to go over the why, where, when, what, and who of KSP2 parts. Why Parts? Let’s back up a bit. Why build a new part? Ultimately, a part needs to serve KSP2’s four design pillars, which I’ll recap here with a few notes about how parts play into them: Building cool and unique rockets: well, you’ll be doing that with cool parts that you can assemble in unique ways. Exploring new planets: this typically requires a vessel, made of parts. You may have heard that KSP2 will have new and interesting planets that might require interesting part-related challenges. Realistic space flight: as we develop them, we must make sure the parts we provide have a strong grounding in science and engineering. Defining and achieving unique goals: parts should enable the definition and creation of unique missions and activities for players. If a part doesn’t align with these needs, we are probably not excited about building it. You’ll notice that parts that have extremely narrow roles or very specific designs don’t fit into this very well, but perhaps a reality-grounded part that is very cool-looking, which enables new ways of exploring planets, with a myriad of possible unique uses might be the holy grail of parts. Where Parts? There are a few different places a new part could come from. Often playtesting might reveal the need for a part. This often comes from existing part families – we may find that it helps player construction if they have access to a larger, 3.75m battery. Parts that come out of this kind of need are quite common – though we already have over 600 parts in mind for KSP2, there’s always a few bare-looking part families that can use some love. Even so, new-sized parts of existing part families are not the coolest and so might not hit all four design pillars, so while we may want to do them at some point, we will prioritize other parts over them. A missing part might also come from capability. A new, electricity-consuming part that doesn’t have useful ways for a player to power it may identify a gap in capability. Depending on whether there are other ways for a player to solve the design problem, that might identify a critical place for a new part or is something to look at down the road as a quality-of-life feature. In other cases, a feature or gameplay system may require new parts to be fully realized. As a very simple example, if we want to include a new fuel type in the game, many parts are required to support it. We’ll need engines and fuel tanks at the minimum and maybe resource mining and conversion equipment. This isn’t something to be done lightly, and when bringing a new system to life in the game, we have to carefully weigh the needs of the system versus any parts (or changes to existing parts) it calls for. The final place I’ll discuss for part sources is something we like to call cosplay. If you’re a pure power gamer, your ideal vessel might include nothing but functional parts relevant to your mission. As an aside, rocket engineers are somewhat power gamers – no space or mass is wasted on a spacecraft. Cosplay parts don’t significantly add to the core play experience of KSP but can greatly expand what players can build – consider all the inventive fan creations that have come from the humble M-1x1 Structural Panel. For KSP2, we want our players to be able to build vessels at least as cool as what the community has come up with in KSP1, and expand the range to huge interstellar ships and extensive colonies on many celestial bodies. This lends itself to a need for more cosplay parts. When Parts? Once the design team has decided that a part is needed, the part is added to the backlog of work we have scoped for the game. Our Production team has the ultimate say about when we will commit resources to actually designing and building the part, so cooperation is key! One of the important things to identify at this stage is whether we need the Engineering team to develop new technology to make this part work. That could be a new Part Module , new functionality for an existing Part Module, or even specific user experience (UX) work that we want to do to ensure the part, once it is in-game, delivers the gameplay experience we want for it. When Production is confident that the team can deliver anything the part needs, it gets scheduled for building. What Parts? Once we finally get down to the Part Build section, we’ve got to design it in a visual sense. For KSP2, this involves building what we call a whitebox or greybox, a 3D model that doesn’t have a ton of detail or any surfacing (it’s uh, white or grey) which is the responsibility of yours truly. Before the whitebox really gets started, we ask some fundamental design questions that will determine some core aspects of a part, such as: What size should it be? How will it connect to other parts? Should we stack it? Attach it on the surface? What part family does it belong to? What subfamily does it belong to? What technological level does it belong to? Does the part have any real-life analogues that will define its shape? If not, what technologies can we use to refer to this? Sometimes it is easy to answer these questions. A basic methalox fuel tank is probably a cylinder that can stack and surface attach to parts. Its size, part family/subfamily and tech level usually depend on the fuel type it contains, and how much we want stored inside of it. There’s also a lot of real-world reference. At other times, the answer is less obvious. We can explore some of these questions with sketches and mockups. If we really want to test how a part will behave, we can even add a blocked-out version of the part to the game to see how it feels in context to other parts. I’m going to demonstrate this exploration by looking at a small plasma rocket engine from start to finish. This is a high tech (medium tech for KSP2) part, which follows attachment rules shared with other engines. It will draw from a mix of plasma engine proposals. This leads up to a fairly basic shape to start off with; a cylinder on top and an expanding nozzle below. Plasma engines have very basic nozzles without most of the turbomachinery of chemical rocket engines, so we’ll try to keep the engine from becoming a mess of pipes. The basic shape with attach nodes in context (1) lets the parts designer feel out how this part will attach to other parts as well. We can drop in some of the parts we expect players to use (2/3) with it to see how they fit into things. This gives us what I like to call the conceptual design – the very rough look of the part, and a gut feeling that we can build it up to look really cool. I’ve usually done some research at this point to develop the initial part concept, but here’s where the deep dive starts. Depending on the part, there could be a lot of material out there. Generally, the closer to reality a part is, the easier it is to find reference material. That can be a problem with some of KSP2’s part roster, because to our knowledge nobody has built nuclear pulse engines and orbital colonies yet! However, there are a wealth of concept studies, physics treatises and hypothetical engineering trades that have been done to propose things we might build in the future, so we can usually muddle along. With this part, we are representing an electrodeless plasma thruster. There are a number of promising designs out there, including the electrodeless Lorentz force thruster, helicon plasma thruster, Faraday thruster, the pulsed inductive thruster and the well-known variable specific impulse magnetic rocket (VASIMR). We don’t always want to stick to exactly one thruster technology, particularly when most of these engines are basically lab models at this point. Staying away from one specific tech lets us be a little more flexible in terms of how we assign in-game statistics, and lets the artists draw from a wider set of possible concept models to create beautiful art. Once I have a pretty good idea of the tech that’ll be used, and have done some research, I’ll do a bunch of basic silhouette conceptual studies to define the final part shape: Starting from the high-level concept (1), I felt that this was too basic, and the profile wasn’t particularly unique from other engines. It also had poor commonality with the nearest equivalent, the Dawn engine which returns from KSP1. Going for a more cylindrical shape (2) seemed the most interesting. We’ll place capacitors and power conditioning equipment in that area (3) to call back to the distinct two-section design of the Dawn. Based on the research we did earlier, the magnetic nozzle will need some power transmission and support struts, so adding some vertical connections will help with that (4). This will be the approximate silhouette of the model for detailing. I’ll work with our art and creative team to ensure that we are all on the same page and are happy with the result of the part. Depending on the part’s complexity, it could be time for another detail pass, with me going back to the reference material for more… reference. The goal here is to get to a detail level that represents the engineering reality of the part and provides a good base for the part art team to go in and make it look great. As we can see, I build up the area around the power conditioning, going back and forth on how many boxes I want (1/2). Then, building out the magnetic nozzle and finalizing the overall shape (3). Lastly, another layer of detail completes the whitebox (4). Now I’m pretty happy with it! At the end of this phase, we have a concept model to hand off to the art team. This model comes with a set of rough annotations to tell artists where they may want to add (or remove) detail, as well as describe the functioning of the part. Because we want to stay realistic, this whitebox should come with a ton of reference for materials, mechanical diagrams, and the like. Who Parts? I’ve mentioned a lot of teams in this process, from Design, through Engineering, Art and QA, so to me, the answer to the question of ‘who parts?’ is pretty clear – it’s everyone!

THAT specific log. There're some more to compare with. https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/KSP-Recall/issues/67 Do you want me to fill this thread with tons and tons of logs so your laziness can be satisfied? In a way or another, here: [WRN 17:47:49.979] [ScrapYard] Part mk1pod.v2:FFF7ABE0 has persistentId=4043188831 and it's being changed to 1590504603. The ClassID is 49675735 and the CraftId (cid) is 4294504548. [WRN 17:47:49.997] [ScrapYard] Part mk1pod.v2:FFF7ABE0 has persistentId=1808313221 and it's being changed to 1590504603. The ClassID is 49675735 and the CraftId (cid) is 4294504548. [WRN 17:48:41.567] [ScrapYard] Part mk1pod.v2:FFF7A77E has persistentId=33424378 and it's being changed to 1590504603. The ClassID is 49675735 and the CraftId (cid) is 4294504548. [WRN 17:48:41.580] [ScrapYard] Part mk1pod.v2:FFF7A77E has persistentId=151739214 and it's being changed to 1590504603. The ClassID is 49675735 and the CraftId (cid) is 4294504548. FOUR times the persistentID was changed, and no LogSpam was triggered, on the same log. Interesting, from my point of view it looks like you are cherry picking the pieces of logs I post, and completely ignoring that I posted the logs where the LogSpam happened, between a lot of logs where it didn't (and told about). Should I post them all here? Isn't easier to just check the logs I posted on the issue tracking, looking for a flaw on my Test Sessions, instead of wasting everybody times making assumptions with little to no evidence to support it? If my test sessions are flawed (it happens), pinpoint the source of the flaw. Talk is cheap, show me the code. Besides, as I had said and you conveniently ignored: There's no doubt that SYD is going to be changed. But without understanding why, you will just move the problem to another place and then someone will have to diagnose this problem again. Until I'm convinced that changing the persistentId is really the source of the problem with reproducible evidences, I will keep advocating for looking the problem somewhere else in the SYD's code (or not). AND AGAIN, I'M NOT ADVOCATING TO WORK AROUND IT SOMEWHERE ELSE, I want to understand what's happening and why.. And I was candidly ignoring a detail about this problem: exactly what happens when the LogSpam is triggered? What the real side effects to the game? Memory Leaks? Performance Issues? Savegame corruption? Until this moment, I was focusing on the symptom, because I agree we should be aware about what is happening and why. But if I create a Log filter on SYD and just omit the LogSpam from being written on the KSP.log (what would be a <piiiiii> move, to make it clear, and I do not condone it), exactly what would be the consequences? Because, you see, this may be another case of false alarm, in the same sense that damned ADDON BINDER ERROR that happens when you merely probe if an Assembly is loaded or not.

Firstly he'll likely not answer you. This is how things probably went down. T2 PD and IG knew the state of the game. T2 gives them all a paper on which is stated what they are allowed to tell us before and after launch. This is to ensure to not scare people of that the game is in an unfinished unplayable state. This is basic business. You as a customer has to look through all that marketing talk (The game is almost done.... only final touches left.... we have all so much fun with the game.....etc) and come to your own conclusions. My conclusion is .. i think there are passionate people behind the project, but thats not enough .... I lost all my faith in IG that they are able to accomplish what they had planned. I think everything that happened so far and let to this point that KSP2 has failed and this has a lot of reasons. Sure MAYBE we will get a final product sometime in 3-5 years, but this wasnt planned and it wont be anything we were promised over the last 3 years. Its sad. And everything i read here are excuses.

the fact that you constantly talk so much about QA and that is a process that hinders development and going further faster, you guys missed a whole lot of bugs introduced with this update. 10 minutes 10 bugs ... i just wanted to test the frame rate improvements, but i didnt get to it, cause it was too frustrating building a simple rocket. thanks for nothing

I doubt that any staff member of IG, Take Two or Private Devision will talk about their internal company politics and managment wisdom (or the obvious lack of it). At least if they want to keep their job and get another one in the industry in the future. Concerning the steam sale: I guess the publisher want to make some money. Since most people don't want to pay the normal price for the game in it's current state (I wouldn't either even if my old potato would be able to handle it) they propaby said "Hell, let's try to see how many people will buy this for that price so we have at least a little bit revenue out of this mess". I don't expect an official confirmation or denial for obvious reasons.

Yeah, I hear ya.. But's what's the point of all the talk if nothing really comes of it? What's that saying?... "Actions speak louder than words". The end result of all this "Moo with no Milk", just sets unrealistic expectations and when patch 15 comes out and doesn't address anything substantial/creates more issues, then people just get mad and the devs lose credibility. Just shut up and do the work.. Stop talking about it. We have to wait anyways, better to wait without being reminded how much everyone regrets being a part of the current KSP2 experience.. This is a joke.

Right... People should Stop listening to what the Devs are saying and just look at the results of their actions. 1) Pre Alpha EA release with many foundational problems to the most basic functionality of the software. 2) Two patches that marginally fixed some performance issues, but for the most part created even more foundational bugs. 3) Development (Coding) cadence slowed down to roughly half the rate. 4) Third patch came out and performance increased, with more added game breaking bugs. Either T2/IG want to turn this around but they can't because they don't have the skill, knowledge or the resources to do it.. Or, they don't care at this point, have decided to ride it out for as long as minimal revenue comes in, while at the same time cutting costs and laying off staff. The only reason they continue to communicate to the community, release poorly written patches and promise, is because the blind faith will support the limited revenue stream up to a certain point. The social media posts, forum posts, blogs, vlogs etc.. don't cost anything and can be done with a minimal staff. But the re-writing of broken code, the adding of content and the improvement of the product costs money and talented coders aren't cheap, especially the ones that are hired to sift through foreign code to fix a bunch of stuff they didn't write. I gave KSP2 the benefit of the doubt during the first few months, but I'm not blind and it's completely obvious that either they are, 1) Simply trying hard without the necessary resources, or, 2) Just pretending, so they can barely salvage a dying revenue stream. Rant #2 over.. Ps... I would have way more respect for the efforts of T2/IG if they just went completely silent and put their heads down and fixed this mess, to surface a year later with version 1.0 fully tested and vetted for release. The talk and BS is absolutely the fuel to my fire.

No lawyer that ever lived could talk their way around those laws.

I'm a youth who loves space. Looking for anybody preferably in my age range, but I don't care. Don't care if you're male, female , both or even if you're a cow! Talk with me about space! I just don't have many friends as interested in space as I am. My dream is to have a privately owned company that goes into space mining asteroids, sending probes to planets, and hosting space tourism . Contact me by email first and if I'm sure you're not a total creep we can message other ways of communication! [email protected] or reply to this thread if you are interested in chatting about space!

Can't talk about artificial gravity and not mention thrust gravity. KSP2 lets us have proper torch ships with persistent thrust and can be left alone to burn in background. Those need to be considered too. I'm quite sure that time will be quite short between that gameplay loop coming in and someone modding in an Epstein drive or the like.