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also this is extremely flat understanding of what there work flow is like, this is ofc different in some fashion or way Just hope for mike to be back on board soon i know his situation, it should hopefully cause fewer headaches with the community communication, there is to much work for 1 person, and a little to much for 2 people, you need 3 or 4... i have something of an understanding of what's needed for this community: Mike and Dakota is two, which is the bare minimum from what it seems. 3rd should be for more communication to users and platforms that are harder to reach or not as active as discord, doesn't mean this person cannot use discord, just more active, like on the forums for example. 4th should be for more creation of leaks, photos, videos, mini-part/action posts to give perhaps the name, and the flavor text and its size, location leaks, and proper far away to JUST somewhat see what the leak is showing.. The fourth person should be in a lot of contact of the early access parts/features/ giving this user/person the time needed to make the leaks proper such as i stated before. Photo of part/craft/location of the building, either doing a "slow" build adding more and more parts, or start off with a chunk of new parts, and do for parts: Photo of parts or craft/building(s), or adding new part as if you are build a craft (be in space looking cool and fancy) or if a building just add it to the colony (spruce it up once in a while building a new colony to change location). Video of it in motion (if possible to see if its on, spinning, engine plumes, or even just lights turning on). Kerbal for scale (if wanted). If not in a build, see it near other craft/parts as if it was a functional part Mini post of the part, engine, and building, telling us its function, giving us the name, size and flavor text of it (can be kept secret some parts to create hype). Repeat process adding a new part to the craft/location if this way was used.. Even if we got 20 new parts and we got ALL this done besides step 6 (due to it being a repeat statement) each week, we would have 20 weeks of leaks.. 5 months or so of consistent once-a-day leaks of the game... either showing, a video, photo, kerbal for scale (if wanted), the function of the part, building, giving us a random leak of the name, function, size, or flavor text, it wouldn't be bad due to once a week a new part is shown, or added to a larger build. The issue is that the fourth person got a lot of work to be done and is pretty much needs to be consistently working on leaks and wouldn't really have time to be a real CM, just doing the leaks. Hence, its not on the other real CM's plate, even though they are a real CM's just they have a large focus of creating leaks for the community, This person still can talk to the community just like any other CM but his job isn't juggling everything , having a solid one person doing leaks that has a good decent mental plan makes it go along way. @Dakota This is my brain storming idea, the issue is the amount of CM's overall, there isn't a real solid answer to fix everything, but the amount people isn't enough just simply due to amount of users across all platforms. and the last one doesn't need alot of large requirements to create the job, only real passion of the game, a clear mental focus of what and how the leaks need to be created/published, an understanding of communication to users.. etc and not like a full on real CM example:

Well, there seems to be a lot of dev info on Discord that did not make it onto the forums. Not that I've been asking about CommNet for months without getting any answers. Such is life for second hand forum citizens.. you're either on Discord all day or you don't get to talk to the devs. I can only thank providence that Dakota is still engaging with us here. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:17 AM i hear there are some questions about commnet and im here to answer them if they're here Spork Witch — Yesterday at 2:18 AM yeah! I was asking about whether occlusion and vehicle links were implemented at this time. I was told occlusion / LoS is not, but that if there's a commsat in range, you'll bounce off that back to kerbin. Further, is there a distinction between transmit-only and relays? I notice we have all the old commsats, wasn't sure if they ALL function as relays now, or if there's still the same split of RA=relay, others are Tx only. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:23 AM Generally All antennas are relays by default, they can bounce signal back (we didn't like this distinction) Line of sight is not a thing, there is only distance as a concern Connectivity between vessels is a simple matter of ensuring that they both have antennas that have ranges that qre equal or greater to the distance between them. So if 2 satellites are 100 km apart, they both most have antennas of rating 100 km or higher to connect Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:26 AM Commnet and occlusion was extremely forgiving by default settings in KSP1 and we didnt feel there was a significant difference between soft occlusion and no occlusion for EA launch. Lots of the depth people would want requires a set of supporting visual and planning tools that are a fair bit of work to design and build Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:32 AM I think there's a thing I wrote in a devblog of everyone playing KSP with different goals in mind - everyone has a thing they prefer, whether it is building vessels, making comm networks, etc. We can always take player feedback into account in driving plans and make changes at that point. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:33 AM dev hat off, I hate commnet and always turned it off in KSP1 Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:34 AM I mean that goes back to need - a question we always need to answer is that, given all the ways people play the game, should you 'need' to do any particular thing? That could significantly impact what someone else wants to do. It's a fine line Spork Witch — Yesterday at 2:37 AM which is why it was always a toggle, but KSP is also about education. Learning about line of sight communications, and the need to set up satellites in particular orbits is a REAL WORLD learning thing, and also an orbital mechanics one, a core focus of KSP. The easiest way to properly position satellites is to launch them all at once, using resonant orbits. Without this constraint, from occlusion, you remove the one thing in the game that would actually direct someone to learn about these things. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:39 AM Yep, understood Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:35 AM I think I could say with some confidence that increasing commnet complexity has to come with more viz and planning tools Nate Simpson — Yesterday at 2:39 AM A lot of us like all the detailed line of sight/relay features in Commnet and it's definitely a thing we want to revisit, but as always we're having to balance multiple priorities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That being said, here are all the current antennas in the game, for comparison purposes:

You talk about the roadmap as a progression tree for players: "resources show up after we crack interstellar travel". It is not, it is a list of development steps. We won't crack interstellar travel, the devs will. And yes, interstellar is easier to implement than resources, because it consists basically in placing new stars somewhere and new planets around them. The difficulty is more in the design variations than in the game mechanics. In game development it makes sense to first implement a simplified version of the final product you want and then after to refine the game loop. When colonies will be here, we will build them because we will want to. The game is in early access, so the colonies are implemented in order for the players to test the new game mechanics brought with it: new parts, orbital construction, maybe ground-anchoring... Sure it would be nice to have other motivations to build colonies, but it is not the main goal of the update. Besides this point, I agree that KSP2 is (and wants to be) simpler than KSP1, which can be disappointing for seasoned players who seek a challenging experience. Sure the first early versions of KSP1 without maneuver tools were challenging! But the additions of tools in the game to simplify the user experience didn't make it less fun. Maybe you thought of the current state of KSP2 as a wannabe improved version of KSP1 final state. With this perspective, the simplified science gathering game loop can be disappointing. However, I think KSP2 game loop as planned by the devs will be different from KSP1 (launch, collect science, transmit/recover, spend points in the tech tree). They talked about it but I don't remember where. I think it will be a bit closer to an automation game: resource gathering improvement, supply lines improvement, and science gathering will be used to unlock parts but will be less significant than in KSP1. Some people will like it, some people won't, but for now we have to keep in mind the game loop is not complete, hence the lack of motivation for rocket launches

Greetings, forum-goers! I’m Ness, the Art Director here at Intercept, and I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled UpNate to bring you a special broadcast. Let’s talk about KSP2’s User Interface, the most meta of all game art disciplines! UI must surface moment-to-moment information and actions to players in either text or clever visual shorthand. When making a simulation game like KSP, an even greater burden of information is placed on the UI, since we need to supply players with a mountain of information and choices without overwhelming either the player or their screen’s real estate. It’s a fascinating and sometimes frustrating balance to strike and I am consistently impressed by our UI/UX team’s ability to analyze abstract, un-implemented features and translate them into visuals. Jordan and Colton from our UI/UX team at Intercept work tirelessly to make rocket science digestible and slick-looking! Before we dive into future plans for KSP2’s UI, I’d like to first take a quick look at KSP1’s. Its UI went through several distinct stages over the course of KSP1’s history, the most radical changes happening early in development. One thing that I love about videogame UI is that on top of all the information it must convey, it’s visual styling can suggest subtle narrative and worldbuilding—something that KSP1 has absolutely utilized and that we will continue to evolve in KSP2. Some very early unreleased examples of KSP1 0.2’s UI can be found on HarvesteR’s dev blog. We can see a mix of fonts, both handwritten and geometric sans serif, as well as a barebones parts catalogue. The mix of fonts here is the most interesting detail to me; the handwritten altitude and speed readouts suggests a theme of "DIY" that applied to both the Kerbals in the game and the developers making the game. A later iteration of the UI around KSP1 0.3 introduces the familiar grey that stuck around for the rest of development, as well as a precariously-stacked flight heads up display. This cobbled-together “junkyard” readout was an evolution of the Kerbal narrative of a DIY space program using salvaged parts. By the time KSP1 0.7.3’s public release rolled around, the staging stack had moved to the left side of the screen, we had a flight cluster, and Kerbal live-feed portraits all carefully spaced around the edges and wrapped in that grey pseudo-metal that we saw back in 0.3. Gone was the junkyard aesthetic, and the skeuomorphic gauges were carefully lined up. Ty to @Whirligig Girl for the image above And finally, a shot of KSP1’s UI as of 1.0 We’re all familiar with the symbiotic effect that mods had on KSP1, and I believe that by keeping the UI simple and grey, it allowed modders with limited artistic ability to easily match the look of the canonical UI and maintain a level of visual consistency which ultimately cuts down on cognitive load and increases immersion. This is absolutely something we on the art team are aware of in KSP2, and when it comes time to roll out additional modding tools the UI team will also share our internal style guide for modders interested in mimicking KSP2’s UI. Now onto what I think most of you all are here for; what’s in store for the future of KSP2’s UI now that For Science! is out the door. In the weeks since release, we’ve enjoyed following along as new and returning KSP2 players have checked out the missions, discovered points of interest, and put all of our flight systems through their paces. As thrilling and satisfying as it’s been to see all of the impressive feats you’ve achieved since the For Science! update, we’re also been watching and documenting your reactions to the user experience and the user interface in particular. We’re excited to see that many elements of our UI have facilitated a smoother first-time user experience, but with your help we’ve also identified several areas of confusion that we are actively tracking. These improvements include: Fonts can be hard to read for a variety of reasons (size, scaling, color, contrast, etc.) The maneuver gizmo can be difficult to interact with, and precision maneuvers are especially difficult Trajectory tag markers can be difficult to differentiate or identify Trajectory tag stems can get tangled with one another in ways that cause significant visual confusion SOI transit "bullseye" indicators are too bright, too big, and too prominent relative to other map elements (this is a personal bugbear of mine) Rearranging the staging stack order when selecting the bottom-most stage is difficult The Part Manager presents several usability issues including but not limited to; observing many parts at once, using the Resource Manager as a separate app to specifically track fuel on a per-part basis feels awkward, associating a viewed part in the manager with the actual part on the ship We are not adequately communicating that "Revert to VAB" causes a loss of recent progress, and there are situations when reversion should not be accessible at all It is not obviously clear, especially to new players, when a vehicle is recoverable The audio-only countdown on launch presents both accessibility and legibility problems When in any time warp state other than 1x, the UI does not adequately communicate the state change. The tendency to interpret an under-warp failed control input as a bug has caught out quite a few members of our own team, and is likely responsible for quite a few bug reports Visual styling for some UI elements is not completely unified It would be very handy to be able to see mission requirements in the VAB while constructing a vehicle KSP2’s Early Access is delivering exactly the kind of active feedback loop we were hoping to see, and we’ve now got a nice collection of feedback items to help guide our work priorities. We’re excited to continue improving on the UI. In the meantime, we’ve been working away on a few UI improvements of our own! In the upcoming v0.2.1.0 update you’ll not only see us begin to work through the 2024 bug list, but you’ll also see the following changes: We’ve adjusted the iconography and visuals of intersect nodes to make them easier to interpret (and hopefully easier to learn). We’ve also adjusted the colors of the planned trajectory line to further differentiate from your current trajectory, and shifted the colors on intercept nodes to make it more clear what relation your craft has to celestial bodies. Time and space are weird, but through these and future trajectory improvements we’re working on, we hope to make parsing orbital mechanics more approachable! Aaaaaalso as a sneak peek for something that’s coming beyond the v0.2.1.0 update, Jordan has been diligently combing through and adjusting KSP2’s UI in a giant unification pass in order to align some of our disparate visuals. The shot below represents the first wave of style unification on the highest traffic areas of the game: I’m looking forward to sharing more UI improvements with you all in the future! --- Finally, we’ve got an exciting announcement! We’re working on a new promotional video for KSP2, and we want YOU to share your favorite creations with us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rocket, a plane, a rover, a boat, a giant mechanical turkey, or whatever your heart desires—if you love it and you’re proud of it we want to see it! If we end up using your submission in the video, you’ll be credited and have eternal bragging rights If you’d like to submit, send an image of your creation along with a craft file (.json) to [email protected]. Please also include your preferred name so we can credit you! (can be real name or username). A bit of fine print here: by submitting your creation, you’re agreeing to let us use the craft file in any and all future marketing materials. Thanks! We’ll release more details as the trailer project moves forward. We’re excited to take your vehicles out for a spin! Ness

All companies selling a product talk about future plans and future products that may not be realized yet. You have noticed what site you are posting this on I presume. Ironic. Seems strangely obsessive to call it "Elon vaporware" as if this kind of public announcement never happened before he came along. Why not call it "Star Theory vaporware"? We could go through all the only-on-paper rocket plans from the big space industry players over the last half century also I suppose, but we have a siblings forum devoted to that so I won't. As for the pointing, no one has tried to maneuver such a large craft at those temperatures with could gas thrusters before that I'm aware of. The volume of gas emitted was likely unprecedented. They likely froze over. I bet they fix the problem and make public announcements about the next design at the same time as easily as a kid chews gum and rides a bike at the same time. The stated goals of the test flight were met. Anything else would have been gravy. A suborbital trajectory was a precaution taken specifically for a situation like that which occurred with the thrusters; there was no danger of it remaining in orbit as a hazard. They have rockets lined up like kids at a roller coaster. I don't see any problem. It's working.

I'm hoping for interstellar to offer some new worlds with new navigational, piloting, and design challenges. Eve used to be the final boss of KSP, with Eve, Tylo, and Moho perfectly representing the design, piloting, and navigation triad, but after enough times going there and back it kinda doesn't feel that challenging any more. I forget what it was called, but I'm looking forwards to that new super Tylo they have teased, and that binary system. I am a little bit worried that all the sci-fi technology they are going to add may remove a lot of what would have been a challenge, but inevitably I'll fall back into going for the low mass records and it won't be mass optimal to use any of the super heavy advanced engines. The grand tour record in KSP 1 is under 8 tons at this point, and there's been talk of pushing it low enough that we might not even need the Rapier any more. Speaking of which, when KSP 2 gets stable and polished enough for the low mass leaderboards to take off, the meta is going to be interesting. The ion engine was nerfed a LOT in KSP 2, you can't really use it to land on most of the small bodies like you could in KSP 1. Without a high tech lightweight replacement, we're going to see a lot of ultralight liquid fuel craft with opportunities for per body customization (although without EVA construction, this is docking port constrained), which should hopefully lead to a more interesting design than "Use the same ion lander for everything except Duna, Laythe, Tylo, and Eve."

Bolded for emphasis. Consider for a moment that the average KSP1 player never leaves Kerbin's SOI. I read somewhere once that a whopping 70%+ of players have never gone any farther than Minmus, and another 10% or so have only ever sent probes into Kerbol orbit. Those numbers could be wrong, and I could be remembering them incorrectly. But that's 80% of the KSP1 player base (assuming the numbers are right) who have never had a probe, lander, rover, etc., land on a celestial body outside of Kerbin's SOI. Also consider for a moment that there are some KSP1 players who have landed on Duna, or Dres, or Moho...but who have never landed a Kerbal on Eve. Or who have sent probes to Jool, but have never landed on any of its moons. Or who have never even been to Jool. Or Eeloo, due to its distance and inclination. Even with being able to spam science points in KSP1, and being able to unlock the entire tech tree without ever leaving Kerbin's SOI, some experienced KSP1 players have never been to the outer planets (or landed on one of the inner ones). I can accurately state this, because I'm one of them. In KSP1, I have never landed a Kerbal on Eve, I've never even attempted to launch a landed probe from Eve, and I had never been to Jool (although I have been to Eeloo). So you want to talk about a challenge to experienced KSP1 players? For starters, you can't just spam science points in Kerbin's SOI any more, so now you have to go farther than Minmus if you want to unlock the entire tech tree (or even just get better parts). Sure, there's some local missions you can get some science points out of. But you are never going to even sniff Tier IV until you've gone interplanetary and back. And for those KSP1 players who never left the local SOI, that's going to be a challenge. Take myself, for instance. I mentioned above how I've never even been to Jool in KSP1. In KSP2, I've not only been to Jool, but I've gotten a probe in orbit AND I've landed on and returned from Pol. Things I've never done in KSP1. And I can tell you that it was certainly a challenge. I guess that an answer to your question lies in what someone really thinks a challenge is. Are experienced players going to have an easier time of things in KSP2 than new players? You bet your booties. And that's because they already understand builds, launch windows, gravity turns, transfers, and all the good things that come from having played the previous game. They already get the physics part of it, which is a pretty decent learning curve. But that doesn't mean that there aren't challenges for experienced players. It just depends on what they did in KSP1, and what they expect out of KSP2.

Operating the flaperons in the hypersonic regime is completely untested. There was some early talk of putting a subscale demonstrator on Falcon 9 just to make sure the flaps operate properly...who knows how that will go. Looks like we have a good SES-2? Wait, no, that was just a cold-gas flip.

T - 4:30 minutes! It's awesome to hear them talk about Starship production lines. It also sounds like they'll make flight 4 prep more quickly after this launch.

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the Threads of the Month March 2024 Edition March is finally here - well, at least we are already in the middle of March! Before I get too far into this TOTM, I want to take a little bit of your time to discuss a growing trend in the United States and Canada - the growing suicide rate. It is not just young people or old people - it is among all age groups. I work at a local community college and am one of the trained mental health first aid caregivers. I am also a combat veteran and am a trained veteran's crisis mental health first aid responder (22 U.S. veterans commit suicide each day). Before our spring break last week (our spring break began on March 4th), I had the opportunity to assist a student in crisis. He is okay, got the professional care needed, and is now in professional outpatient counseling. This is a small victory in the battle for life. I've seen too much death in my life. Yesterday, I lost a thirty-year Army buddy to suicide. I say this to encourage and empower. If you live in the United States or Canada and feel as if life is getting the best of you, call 9-8-8, and you will be connected with local or regional people (free of charge) who can assist you. Reach out; you're not alone. Some people care enough to volunteer their time and efforts to help you through whatever crisis you're in. Find a friend or family member, a teacher, a professor, someone - and talk. Whatever it is, there are people who want to help you. You do matter. And you matter to this forum community. Now, without further blathering by this bald old man, let's get into the threads selected by you, the community members, as noteworthy for March! Instructions on using the TOTM images: If your thread has been selected as a TOTM, you can copy the image's link above, go to the area of the forum where you want to place it, and then paste the link. Press the <CONTROL> button when the image appears and right-click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and allow you to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want. Eventually, I will add these images to the thread I've created as a repository. For those out there who like the nerdy parts of the TOTM: To continue what I started in May 2021, I have kept some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying, or interest in the Kerbal Space Program was declining. 326 new forum accounts were created in February (an increase of 47, or up 16.84% from January). Out of the new forum members who joined last month, there were 20 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 6.13% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is a decrease from January; 12.18% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you're interested in meeting the new members of our forum, click here! Now, without further delay, I present to you the threads of the month for March: Cinematic-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features a video or other cinematic form of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video-recorded gameplay. Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are posted in a single thread. We have a lot of great content creators, but because they've been posting their mission reports as videos in a single thread, most of their work goes unnoticed by the general forum audience. Hopefully, this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM) will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads containing cinematic posts will also be featured in this category. Many great content creators deserve this recognition since we were aware of the thread by @Halban: Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) that serves as a repository for cinematic threads. The thread received the TOTM previously, but it was felt that it wasn't enough for those who shared your fabulous creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month. This month, we had a few nominees in this category. It's not often that we have two nominations featuring the work of one content creator, but this month, we do. So, it came down to choosing the most unique concept by @kurgut. And this cinematic is sure to please. In the cinematic "Journey to the center of a black hole | KSP RSS | Interstellar," @kurgut pushes the hardware of their PC and the limits of the game to produce a high-quality work of visual art. You can find the link here: Sometimes, the forum software will get glitchy, and an exact post may be a little hard to find, especially when it is buried in a long thread. In case this happens, here's @kurgut's cinematic presentation, "Journey to the center of a black hole | KSP RSS | Interstellar": If you encounter other cinematics you feel are worthy of being recognized as this category's post of the month; please nominate them! You can use the exact instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread. Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features threads (or threads) that, while not directly related to the Kerbal Space Program, may be creative, fan fiction, or other presentations related to the game. One of the fantastic things about the TOTM's history is the threads you think would have been nominated earlier in the forum's history. Surprisingly, this thread is one of the earliest and most popular fan-fics, but as far as I can tell from the history of the TOTM we keep, it has never been nominated before. So, thanks to you, the long-time readers of the thread and forum community, this oversight has been corrected. The thread, "Kerbfleet: A Jook Odyssey" by @Mister Dilsby (formerly known as Kuzzter), has been revived, and new chapters are being added now with their return to the forum! Here's where you'll find this thread: So, if you're interested in seeing a mission report done in the style of a graphic novel, this is the thread for you. Forum Member Created Challenges and Missions: This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let's face it: we all have our go-to design basics and our go-to vehicles we like to use. Sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals. There was no submission for this category this month. Game Support/Game Mod of the Month: This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that improve the Kerbal Space Program's quality-of-life gameplay. When I first began playing KSP1, one of my favorite mods was Final Frontier. That mod gave me a way to have the brave Kermen who still crew my various crafts have meaning and stories behind them. I am sure many of you were hoping that someone would develop something similar for KSP2 - well, those hopes have become a reality! @leonardfactory has done just that! From the ground up, and with all new artwork, they have created one of the mods many of us have been waiting for. @leonardfactory introduces the mod in the OP: You can find the mod here: As always, we want to thank our family of mod contributors who continue to develop new and exciting mods that support our KSP2 community! General community threads of the month: This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories. This month, we have a nomination that's neither a mod nor a mission report. It's more of a "show and tell" by @Tony Swallow. In the thread, "Setting wings to a Precise angle by using an Inclinometer," without any mods, the thread is introduced: In this thread, you can see how construction tools can be made using stock parts to aid you in the construction of your craft: General space flight and space science threads of the month: This category features a thread that adds to our forum community's STEM knowledge (science, space flight, and related fields) and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories. Honorable Mentions: Sometimes, choosing which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories is challenging. We get many good nominations each month but limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mentions for this month are: How Chuck Yeager broke the Sound Barrier - The Complete Mission - KSP RSS/RO by @kurgut Maritime Rescue and Salvage by @Mostly Harmless The honorable mention for this month may not have made the Thread of The Month, but if you think it might be worth another opportunity, please renominate it! Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members @AlamoVampire, @Royalswissarmyknife, @woeller, @Zhetaan, the moderation team members, and the staff who nominated this month's contenders. Thank you so much for helping us identify noteworthy threads and bringing their awareness to our forum community. We'd appreciate your continued help in the future. Odds and ends: TO NOMINATE A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month's thread of the month, use the "Report a comment" feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the thread. Please put in the text field of the port post "Nomination for the thread of the month," and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES INTO THE DECISION WHEN CONSIDERING THE TOTM: Wonder no more! This helpful guide is to help you understand what we use to help determine what makes a thread a really good thread and one that becomes a thread of the month/cinematic post of the month. It's everything you did or didn't want to know and includes helpful tips. And the last word for this month's post: I'd like to thank a few people who trust me enough to continue supporting and allowing me to contribute to the forum. I want to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde, for bringing me on as a moderator. It was a decision I'm sure he has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I'd also like to thank @PD_Dakota, our community manager, and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for tolerating me and allowing me to continue to serve our Kerbal Space Program forum community through the monthly Threads of the Month post. In case you missed last month's threads of the month, you can click here.

This then we talk about reuse who makes sense. Far more for boostback, you want to drop second stage fast so you don't have to spend loads of fuel boosting back to pad. For Saturn 5 it made sense to make the first stage tanks larger even if TWR at launch was low as kerosene and aluminum was cheaper. Later you got cheaper solid fuel engines. In part funded by having to replace the solid fueled nuclear missiles rockets. Now falcon 9 stretches the road transportable rocket to the edge I say.

It's a much better take than the Netflix documentary. I like how they review past aviation incidents when talking about possibilities. Although they do talk about a couple conspiracy theories, it only last for a minute or so, and it isn't presented as a "subtle truth" in the same way the Netflix one did. Compared to this, the Netflix one really looks like it was created to peddle conspiracies.

Well, what the heck... all this talk about the 2017 eclipse made me go and book a trip for my family and I to go see totality again. Fingers crossed that the weather cooperates.

What happen if the anti proton hit an heavier atom, It was some talk of using antimatter to generate fission who generated more energy. Then mostly in charged particles, Storage is solved for tiny amounts, not amounts who take out more than the launchpad. Even at an worst case scenario rockets explodes over many seconds. Antimatter does not it detonates.

There was another Starship debate over on a Discord server today, as seems to happen every couple days like clockwork, and I came away from it with somewhat of a new perspective on the Starship program. Many of the criticisms of Starship ultimately come down to the idea that it is too ambitious, that SpaceX has bitten off more than they can chew here. Well, that and taking off the cuff remarks by Elon (for example 1m per flight, 1000 passengers in p2p) as gospel and using them to show why the program is obviously stupid and the whole thing is a scam. But the first one is more interesting and what I thought about a lot today. Ignore HLS for a second, I'll talk about that later. I think a lot of people would have liked to see SpaceX originally take (or pivot to) a more conservative approach to a next generation launch vehicle as a stepping stone to a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle rather than skipping straight to something with Starship levels of ambition. Like, for example, a fully reusable but not rapidly reusable vehicle, or a very large partially reusable vehicle. But why? The obvious answer is that it allows them to create something that blows Falcon out of the water for considerably less effort than Starship would take. ...But why? They have the market completely cornered. Nobody can compete with Falcon, even discounting Starlink. Everyone except possibly Blue Origin and Relativity is stuck trying to create a rocket marginally competitive with what Falcon 9 was a few years ago. Serious competition is at least 10 years away. SpaceX doesn't need to do a thing to completely dominate the space industry for the foreseeable future. They can sit on their hands, maybe make Falcon block 6 if Relativity is looking threatening enough in a few years time. Basically do what ULA did. What could they do with a Falconlike SHLV that they could not do with Falcon? Large stations if anyone was interested, maybe small scale medium-high cost Moon missions, being the de facto Artemis launch vehicle. But not much that is commercially viable. Not many people are going to pay 120 million for 100 tons to orbit. There would be a market, but as we are seeing with Falcon Heavy, not a huge market. SpaceX does not want to launch a handful people to the Moon for tens of billions of dollars. They don't want to sit on their hands and accumulate wealth. They do not want to keep making minor improvements to Falcon 9 forever. Whether or not you agree with this goal, SpaceX wants to create a self sustaining city on Mars, or at least, create some of the prerequisite technologies required for that to happen. It is not a financial goal. It is an emotional goal. SpaceX is fundamentally an emotionally motivated company, and while finances can't be ignored, they are a means to an end. If money was the primary goal, Elon would have created sensible businesses with the PayPal money. instead, SpaceX was created out of spite for the Russians and frustration with the state of the industry. Since then, they have plastered windows on things with no business having windows on them (Cargo Dragon, I4 dome, doubling down on Starship having a huge window), dragged the space industry, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, with many of the major advancements financed on their own dime, made Dragon 2, their spacesuits, the crew access arm, the launch tower, and much more look stylish and cool (depends on taste), arguably at the expense of a small amount of functionality, and strapped a meme payload to what was at the time the most capable operational rocket in the world. I rewatched the IAC 2016 talk today, and while almost all of the details have changed, the core architecture has remained the same. That talk laid it out clear, this core architecture was designed with Mars in mind. In order to create a self sustaining city on Mars under reasonable economic conditions, a rapidly and fully reusable vehicle must be mass produced, and it must use propellants practical to produce on Mars, and orbital refilling must be utilized. While an incremental approach to developing such a system does have some merits, if there is a proper time to dive in headfirst into the onslaught of engineering challenges associated with such a ridiculously lofty goal, it is while they are a decade ahead of everyone else. In order to succeed, everything known about rocket building needs to be challenged. Anything short of a high performance mass producible rapidly and fully reusable rocket is not an acceptable stopping point, and SpaceX has made that clear with how often they threw out things that weren't working. They tested every assumption about rocket development made to date, knowing full well most of them would be reinforced, but a few would give way to unexplored potential. They threw out carbon fiber after investing a ton of money into the hardware to produce 9 and 12 meter tanks. They threw out the Florida starship site (for now at least). They made a water tower fly, and then threw out the next six prototypes for not being good enough. They built or partially built 26 starships and 3 boosters before getting something that might get to orbit, each of which had major changes from the previous, and then threw B4/S20 out practically on the eve of flight. They tried a new launch pad, and when that didn't work, they threw it out and tried something else. They tried a new form of staging, and when that didn't work, they threw it out and tried hot staging. They tried hydrolox Raptor, and it didn't work, they threw it out. Large scale ITS Raptor, thrown out. Raptor 1, 1.5, etcetera, thrown out. Raptor 2, on its way out because Raptor 3. There's even been talk of a different engine altogether. They have produced hundreds of Raptors by now and they haven't even gotten to orbit, that's more than the total production of most other rocket engines. ITS re entry configuration, thrown out. Two strakes, thrown out. Tripod with two flaps and a rudder, thrown out. Body flaps, modified numerous times. Initial tiles, thrown out. Bare metal, thrown out. Transpiration cooling, thrown out. Back to tiles because that might actually be the best option, several iterations, throwing them out until they are good enough. Can't land on the launch mount? Can't crane a ship from a landing pad to the launch pad fast enough to colonize Mars? Throw it out, try landing directly in the crane. They are pushing the envelope in all directions trying to find anything that will get them closer to their goal and they can and will throw out any design, no matter how firmly entrenched, if it falls short of their goals. They have created the largest satellite constellation ever (okay, if you're gonna be that guy, project West Ford was indeed way bigger) just to finance the rate at which they throw stuff away. Even that satellite constellation is designed to be thrown away and replaced every five years. This whole time, also pioneering the early stages of mass production necessary to make the city on Mars a reality. But this city can't be built alone. A rocket such as what Starship aims to be is a prerequisite for a Mars colony, but not sufficient on its own. So every so often, SpaceX will put Starship out there to get people thinking about what such a revolutionary rocket could do in fields it isn't even optimized for. A Moon base, gigantic space stations, crewed missions to the moons of Jupiter, probes ejected from Earth at insane speeds with refueled expendable upper stages, and even point to point. Some of these are more realistic than others. If enough people start thinking about what this could do, some of them will start trying to make it a reality, and some of them might just end up producing Mars hardware in a few decades time. Then, SpaceX decided to go "Hey, NASA, Starship can also be used as a Moon lander!" And in a move that was unexpected to most external observers, and may have even been unexpected internally, NASA, strapped for cash and with the only other status quo choices being "expensive consortium led by a company with no orbital experience" and "oopsie daisy, negative mass moment", saw a chance for an incredibly radical future, and went "Okay. You have four years. Show us what you can do." Of course, this is where it all went a little sideways. You can fiddle around with your revolutionary side project all you want when your only limiting factor is how long it takes other space companies to catch up with you. There are no customers to complain when it takes twice as long as planned, or keeps blowing up over and over and over again. While HLS has been great for emphasizing Starship's legitimacy and getting even more people thinking about it, now SpaceX can't just keep throwing stuff out ad nauseum, it actually has to deliver results in a reasonable timeframe. Granted, some of this is the government's fault, selecting a lander in 2021 and expecting a landing in 2024 was never a realistic goal no matter who is doing the design. But now, a program with the single constraint of "Get lots of stuff to Mars, toss away everything that can't do that" has to be made to support the most important human spaceflight mission in decades in relatively short order. It must be safe and with a relatively frozen design, and the tankers must be produced and rapidly launched with not much more tweaking. I don't know yet whether the added cash and legitimacy is outbalanced by the conflicting requirements. These conflicting requirements seem to be where a lot of the conflict is coming from. Since HLS, Starship is both a vehicle that needs to be chaotic in the near term in order to be revolutionary in the long term, and stable in the near term in order to get us back to the Moon. I don't know if they will make it to Mars, much less build a city, but if anyone can do it in the next hundred years, it is probably going to be them, and they are not going to stop trying to reach that goal until they go bankrupt or the CEO dies and doesn't get replaced with a like minded person. That was a lot more than I intended to write. TLDR: SpaceX is emotionally/ideologically motivated. Their ultimate goal is to colonize Mars. If their goal is to make money and remain competitive, they already have that, no reason for something Starship level. Something in between Falcon and Starship also does not make sense if their goal is merely to remain competitive. Starship makes sense viewed through the Mars lens, its other applications are byproducts. I suspect long term an optimized Lunar architecture will look a lot different. SpaceX will not design themselves into something that cannot be evolved into a rocket capable of creating a city on Mars. This means a lot of throwing out stuff that doesn't work, pushing boundaries, and lots of failures. Starship won the HLS contract, which is not a contract you want to have rapid iteration, boundary pushing, and frequent failures on. The two conflicting aspirations for what Starship is supposed to be are causing some amount of conflict and debate. In the time it took me to write that, the news that the ship firing today was a single engine maneuvering burn test arrived. This is completely unrelated to the above wall of text, but given how small LEO maneuvers will be (I'd guess this is simulating a de-orbit burn), that static fire might have actually been full mission duration.

Honestly it depends on the Source. I know in every source I have and have written it is nm or nM not nmi But I also know "public friendly" sources that do nMile or N-Mile, IE places where they talk about Statute miles as miles instead of Statute Miles and please never abbreviate Statute miles as smile

I just see general issues over and over They are treating the Beta/Early Access as the real game, so behind the curtain, is for an "element of surprise".. There is simply zero ways for us users to help find bugs in updates that are not out yet. With only two CM's one on leave and the other is poor dakota, there is simply not enough CM's to keep the community satisfied. For example, we hear about the holy grail of the slack channels, and yet dakota cannot show nor talk about anything that is really in there.. I mean is it really hard to do that, give us no information unless it's really needed and show us untextured models, or UI WIP, or something of the sorts? I really don't know who is the big wig on that but it's getting kinda silly hearing about crafts they have built, cool stuff the team has been working on and everything in between that they have had to make multiple Slack(tm) channels just to keep it in check. saying that some of the team even adds music and other things to it and what not and then just not show any of it?? Just to get like a 1st anniversary of the game a single photo/leak of colonies, and to see, read or hear that the team wishes that we could see it spin around or if it was in motion cause it looks so cool, like the first year? What does that mean, the textures only got worked on and its movement is not functional yet? I'm questioning if it is hard to post a photo and then during the same time, create a video of the vehicle in motion in case the parts show physical movement, and if you want to get extra spicy put a kerbal near the part/craft. Example: Teaser 1 Teaser 2 Teaser 3, 4 Also making a funny joke that some of the videos recorded are like 1080p30fps/60fps and like 2500kbps. I just made 3 or 4 leaks out of a single craft and guess what, that will be 4 weeks' worth of leaks instead of a single photo and groaning of "where leak", you know how long it took for even editing placing craft down and video editing well if i wasn't doing other things all this would have taken an 30 minutes at most, and 30% of it was trying to make a poor first leak photo instead of the crisp 4k. but man.

i don't need to re-read what i saw happen, i was there when the "show went down" (insert circus music). just hearing suggestions and talk about it on discord is nothing really official on post on it.. Discord talk at the end of the day from even the gods of intercept games for ksp 2 is as much value as me saying I'm a developer due to giving feedback that "might help" due to playing like 1,000 hours. my input doesn't really matter its more so the entire community, I'm like a broken record with mods that i would like to see as vanilla but i can see why it isn't in base game, things like K2D2, Flightplan, Alarmclock, Trim Control, Kerbal Headlights.. l know that alarm clock has been screamed top of the lungs, and now its even a mod. The community shows what the game is missing, and it doesn't hurt to talk to modders and ask to put mods into base game.. like alarm clock. and kerbal headlights.. etc.

We had a lot riding on the For Science! update that we released two weeks ago — it’s been a long first year of Early Access, filled with the arduous and mostly unglamorous pursuit of bugs, stability improvements, and performance gains. This update, the first of our major Roadmap Updates, had to achieve some big new goals for KSP2: it had to round out the core game loop with re-entry heating and buoyancy; it had to introduce a whole new progression system via the R&D Center and Mission Control; it had to introduce Science collection, Science parts, and dozens of new points of interest; and of course it needed to continue to deliver quality of life improvements (banishing wobbly rockets) and performance improvements. Also: there are boat docks now! In a nutshell, the addition of Exploration Mode transformed KSP2 from a sandbox experience into a proper long-form game. Working on something with so many moving parts, there’s always a little trepidation when we release a new build to the public - especially when there are so many new systems in play. We do our best to test every possible scenario, but there’s always a chance that something terrifying will rear its head once we’ve got thousands of people playing the game. It was with this fear lurking in the backs of our heads that we sat together in our own mission control room and waited for confirmation that For Science! had been released into the world. We nervously watched the first review videos appear on YouTube, and were relieved to discover that veteran players like Carnasa and Matt Lowne were excited about what they found in the new update. We cycled between the livestreams of Everyday Astronaut, EJ_SA, and Giantwaffle, discovering to our delight that all three were not only having fun, but were having trouble putting the game down! By the time we did our own livestream that evening, it was clear that we’d succeeded in creating a more stable and realistic universe, and that we’d given players some compelling goals to pursue within that universe. Our stream ran over an hour longer than planned because we, too, had a bit of trouble putting it down. That’s a story we’re hearing a lot - you sit down to play this game for an hour, and before you know it the sun’s coming up. Over the last couple of weeks, a clear picture has emerged - there are still some bugs, as well as some big opportunities to improve the player experience - but for the most part, those rough edges have not gotten in the way of some very ambitious exploratory missions. I’ll talk more about those bugs in a bit, but first I’d like to highlight some of this update’s biggest wins: The music. Yes, you all love Howard Mostrom. We’re going to need a bigger inbox for all his fan mail. The tutorials and first-time user experience have paved the way for a new group of first-time Kerbal players, and we’re not only seeing lots of you get to space, we’re also seeing a lot more players doing interplanetary missions. In many ways, the original justification for KSP2’s existence was to find a way to welcome more new players to Kerbal, and we’re very excited to see that this work has begun to bear fruit. We knew that bringing rocket science to the masses wasn’t going to be easy, and there’s still a lot more work to do in this area... but we’re making progress! Folks are enjoying the missions! We’re excited to continue adding new missions to the game via upcoming updates, and we’d love to hear your suggestions for compelling new exploration goals. In general, we’re beginning to see the flourishing of player creativity that we knew would take place once the most critical performance and usability issues had been ironed out. It’s been a pleasure to visit r/kerbalspaceprogram and our #bestof Discord channel and just bask in the awesomeness. People are making magnificent things, and it feels so nice to see all that imagination unleashed. Look at this stuff! Courtesy of Aravir Courtesy of Flypig07UA Courtesy of Dr. Seno Courtesy of BioticKeen Of course, one key benefit to our game being in Early Access is that we get detailed bug reports and feedback from a wide variety of players, and boy, did we get a big helping after releasing this update. Check out the spike we saw on our K.E.R.B. bug submissions at the end of December: There are some annoying bugs and usability issues in the mix - some are new, some have been around for a while but have risen in prominence now that other more consequential problems have been addressed. Areas of frustration include font scale and legibility, the maneuver node interface, thermal system tuning (including the propensity of some parts to explode even when they’re shielded and the insufficiency of fairings to protect their contents), as well as a few weird one-off stability issues (most of which can be corrected by reloading or restarting). We are triaging and trying to reproduce issues related to things like parachutes failing to deploy, trajectories vanishing from the map view, and Delta-V accuracy (which given the dependency of maneuver plans on accurate Delta-V projection, can result in being blocked from planning a maneuver). We’ve also noted some user experience gaps, most notably the game’s failure to properly communicate to new players that "Revert to VAB" is different from "Return to VAB" - an oversight that has led some newcomers to lose their progress after completing a mission. I’ll also take this moment to offer a new protip that I learned today after complaining to Chris Adderley about my spaceplane wings being destroyed on re-entry: while the heavier wings are more heat-resistant, the volume of every wing (and especially the wing’s thickness) affects its thermal mass. A thicker wing will be more resistant to destruction via heat! I’ll be trying out the "fat wings" approach tonight after work. Procedural wings sure are cool. Anyway, back to bugs. If you’re one of the people who have come up against a truly blocking or fun-destroying issue, please do take the time to share that information with us via the bug report subforum. We’re seeing much less of this after the For Science! update, but it’s still something we want to investigate aggressively when it’s encountered. We’re already hard at work on the v0.2.1.0 incremental update to address as many of these issues as we can, and we’ll update you here as soon as we know the exact timing and contents of that update. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to share your bug reports and feedback - your detailed reporting continues to play a huge role in helping us to improve the game. Another exciting new development: modders have started to produce some extremely cool augmentations for KSP2, including Orbital Survey, an alarm clock mod, and there’s even some planet modding underway! Our team is especially happy to see that the extensible tech tree file format created with future moddability in mind has paved the way for things like the new Tech Tree Manager mod. The Orbital Survey mod The 2.5x Kerbolar System mod The next major Roadmap Update, which will bring colonies to the game, is now also in progress. In the meantime, the current plan is to sneak a few additional missions into the next incremental update, just to keep things fresh. Now that there are interesting things to do in the game, we’re very excited about all the ways that we can continue adding new layers to that experience in the coming year while knocking out the bugs that remain. 2024 is going to be a very exciting year for KSP2, both for the players and for us developers! Nate

I'd definitely prefer more spread resources also. Actually, one of the things I find most interesting in real life are stellar distributions. I'd love to see heavy metals be the most common in the inner system, slowly replaced by silicates through the middle and then water ice further out. I definitely agree the basic resources will be available everywhere. Based on how they talk about setting up a base, I think every body will have some kind of base building material. Stuff like water, fissiles, carbons, I for sure agree will be available almost everywhere in varying richness. I would like to see some stuff locked behind a large developed colony too. But, I also expect those resources I mentioned weren't brought up in game for nothing. I also think as far as game design, they're trying to encourage visiting every possible place. I still expect some of the advanced materials for building the far future engines to be rare. Maybe available on only one or two planets in the Kerbal system.

KSP 1.10.x Mark IV Spaceplane Fuselage [3.1.2] Last Updated August 3rd, 2020 This part pack adds a new lifting-body fuselage system for aircraft heavily inspired by an iconic 60s sci-fi design. It's designed to fit 2.5m parts in a cargo bay easily, and 3.75m parts snugly. The parts are done in a stockalike style and I've attempted to be as close to Porkjet's Mk2 and Mk3 parts as I can. Highlights include: A full fuselage system in the Mark IV standard, from cockpits to cargo bays All the parts are fully configured to work with the Community Tech Tree in its highest aerospace nodes. Full Screenshot Gallery Frequently Asked Questions Q: CKAN Support Questions? A: Talk to CKAN folks, CKAN is not supported. Q: Sometimes I have issues with parts being occluded when they aren't supposed to. A: This is a bit of a headache for me. Please, post solid reproduction steps with pictures to help. Q: Example ships? A: No, I suck at planes, but feel free to post and maybe I'll add them! Q: This pack used to have engines. Where are they? A: They have been moved to Near Future Aeronautics for easier maintenance. Licensing All code and cfgs are distributed under the MIT License All art assets (textures, models, animations) are distributed under an All Rights Reserved License. All bundled mods are distributed under their own licenses. Download Mirrors Primary (SpaceDock) Secondary (CurseForge) Tertiary (GitHub) Issue Tracking and Source Special Thanks A big hand to everyone who helped test these parts while they were in development. If you appreciate this project, please consider contributing to my caffeine addiction! I really appreciate it, and also helps justify this time sink to my wife , which results directly in more models.

I want to stress that this isnt a name and shame thing. This is a cautionary tale about a game company and its less than ethical or consistent behaviors. As some of you know I have been playing a game called Path of Titans, a dinosaur sim/survival game. I was able to log in and play my dinosaurs as recently as 060003042024. I went to log into Path of Titans not 1 hour ago to play and grow my spinosaurus and perhaps finish the growth on my Tyrannosaurus Rex. I want to stress that at this moment as I am about to log in, I have 0 indication of anything wrong. No Email from Alderon Games or anything. I launch my game on my PS5 and hit X. I am suddenly confronted with a log in error: Publisher Ban. It would seem that based on my research (I am not the first this has happened to, where a ban suddenly appears with 0 warning or explanation) I have been banned from Path of Titans. I can however still log into my Alderon account on their website. I have of course submitted a request for an explanation and to formally lodge an appeal should that be needed. I also want to stress that the player base is exceptionally toxic as a whole. They trash talk fellow players calling them garbage, bad and other far far worse things. They abuse players, mock them and do other heinous actions simply because there are 0 rules (I do not mean that as hyperbole either, their official servers have 0 rules, yet when you report players they ((the gms refer to the Terms of Service)) state there are no rules on the official servers) and can essentially get away with murder. I myself have found that there are rules if you know where to look, specifically into their ToS which are a legal contract that is enforceable by law, but, who reads the ToS or EULA? Well, one of their rules specifically bullet point 7 of section 1 subsection b: "attempt to, or harass, abuse, or harm, or advocate or incite harassment, abuse, or harm of another person, group, including Alderon Games’s employees or Alderon Games’s customer service representatives" which is the rule I would cite when reporting players. And thats the thing of it, thats all I have done in that game, aside from be mildly toxic at the start and last night (24 hours ago) supplied a complaint in the global chat about how anemic and weak the TRex is in game compared to its real world counterpart. I myself as far as I am aware have not violated any rules, yet here I stand am banned. All I have done in recent times is report players for harassment (2-3 reports at most on this subject), reported 1 player for a possible actual crime when they potentially violated a real US law, for their privacy I will not cite which law or what was said, but, suffice it to say, i may now that this has happened follow up with actual federal law enforcement, and then my most recent report was against a player who made claims that their actions did real world harm to another player. Again, I have received 0 email as to what I did or why I was seemingly banned. SO, why do I write this? I want to caution any who read this to avoid Alderon Games. They are not ethical or consistent in rules implementation or enforcement. To the mods, I am totally unsure if this violates any rules to make this cautionary tale, if I did/am violating something uh... I guess snip and edit as needed or perhaps replace with a cute picture of a cat? But, I really do not want our community to trip into the trap I fell into as I feel gaming should be fun and reasonably risk free. 010903052024

Hello again Jantee! Apologies, but I am a bit unsure if this post was meant for another topic? It seems a bit off topic in relation to this - note that I am all for small talk.. Just confused me a bit x) Any way I did not know the Spirit of the Eagle ship. It looks quite awesome, reminds me of some of the Ron Cobb's early designs for Nostromo in Aliens. Looks like an cool build and yeah it looks like it will do best as a low gravity no atmosphere ship. Problem with VTOL is the weight of the extra engines imo. But yeah... that vehicle does not look like it would be able to make it off planet earth x) Though getting it to a AP of 136k - you should be able to get to LKO? Where you could refuel it. I wonder if an alien style dropship would have the Δv enough to get to orbit.. in my experience the rapier engines cant carry a lot. But I guess it could be worth exploring. I wish I could answer your question. I am flattered you think I have the answer. As of now I've only had tro probes leave Kerbin SOI - and they were both Duna Missions with the propper antennas to reach Kerbin. One of them was a failed attempt to get a CommNet constellation setup around Duna. I did not have enough Δv to hit my orbit to circularize my smaller satelites.. and crashed the vehicle into Duna insted. I have decided to put my Duna mission on hold until OJT has given me an Okay to do a mission report with my Duna Mastery Challenge progress. So unfortunatly I cannot give you a certain answer.. I can only say that it is my understanding that Bigger antennas relay to smaller antennas. And that planets dont obscure signals. So i would say that a big craft with signal stength to reach Kerbin can send a pro down the Mo-Hole

Came here to say this (linky no worky ) in reference to: Largely I'd agree, but there ARE people entrenched within the bureaucracies who are, maybe even their superiors are, but everyone's had a bit too much "we've-been-here-before" over the decades about what's surely coming just over the next hill that never actually arrives (NASP anyone?). So they're afraid to seriously talk about it, as if even that much attention might make it all vanish like a dim star just in your periphery when you try to really see it, as so many have before. When Starship really and truly is here, the floodgates will open. IIRC an old UA-1205 Titan booster is around 250 tonnes. Expendable Starship can send 300 tonnes to just about anywhere. That's a whole lotta reliable, storable when-I-say-WHOAH-I-MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAN-WHOAH!!! once it gets there. With mass left. Just sayin...

Someone did here's the https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/07/1041420/spacex-starship-rocket-solar-system-exploration/amp/Article, ( and there was a open letter by some people at NASA talking about using starship and that NASA need to start to dream big). Just to give an example: a deep space fully refueled V3 starship can give a 9KM/s DV to a 150 tons payload. And if that payload is a 15 tons probe, and 135 tons fuel with an engine with storable propellant that has 300 seconds of ISP, this gives the 15 tons probe 7 km/s, enough for a direct transfer and propulsive brake to Neptune. With a probe 20 times heavier than voyager. But transfer time with a Hohmann is 30 years to get there. If we could speed up and down 0.5km/s (1km/s total) the travel time get cut to 12 years, and we would probably still talk about a 10 ton probe. And numbers get even more stupid if we start to refuel starship to a tanker that is fully fueled on a highly hell optical orbit, like getting a 500 ton probe to Jupiter orbit, or 200 tons to orbit one of it's moon, all done with only propulsive method.