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This is an entire speculative timeline of KSP2 development based on Investigative Journalism done by ShadowZone, extracted from this video. A thank you goes out to @ShadowZone for doing thorough research on KSP2’s development, while remaining neutral and preserving integrity in the reporting of his finding. Recurring names and important concepts or events are in bold. Abbreviations are noted between brackets in (cursive) next to full names. Problematic events are denoted with !. All markings are applied by me and represent my own personal opinion. A PDF version of this summary is available at the bottom of this page, for easier reading. Pre-production, 2017 – 2018 (Star Theory) Take Two (T2) chooses Uber Entertainment, Later renamed Star Theory (ST), to develop Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2) T2 allocates 2 years and 10 million $ to ST to develop KSP2 This was supposedly seen as doable by the Studio Manager Jeremy Able)and ST Owners Bob Berry & Jonathan Mavor (referred to as ‘ST Management’ from hereon) ST Management’s plan at this time was to do a Revision of KSP1, meaning; take the original code, polish it up to modern standards, add new graphics and content and sell it as new version The creative direction, Nate Simpson, has a broader vision: a Reimagining rather than the Revision planned by ST management This would have included Interstellar and Colonies. Nate was a long-standing fan of KSP at this point Nate Simpson is able to convince T2 to approve his Reimagining ! Despite this, the timeline and budget already allocated by T2 would not be sufficient for the studio to pull of this Reimagining This is regarded as the start of a cascade of problems for KSP2 development At this time, the only engineer on the project is Principal Engineer Chuck Noble, an experienced software engineer with a degree in aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering ! T2 keeps development of KSP2 highly secretive This forces ST team members to do recruiting and hiring in addition to their normal duties, hindering development ST team members are not allowed to tell potential hires what game or even what type of game they will be working on ! Due to budgetary constraints, only a few junior engineers with little to no experience are hired (senior engineers are brought onboard eventually, but much later on) All but one of these engineers had never played KSP1 before ! The junior engineers were considering building KSP2 on Unreal Engine instead of Unity, but were ordered by ST management to stick to the original code and engine (Unity) used by KSP1 As a result of this, some early prototype builds of KSP2 were done on KSP1’s user interface and graphics Early Production, 2018-2019 (Star Theory) Scope Change: Colonies, Interstellar and Multiplayer now considered “must-deliver features” ! Spring 2020 release date is communicated to the development team, and is considered Non-Negotiable This causes stress within development team, which possibly contributed to some wrong and hastily made decisions ! The decision to cram all these features into KSP1’s code, as ordered by ST management, ends up costing the engineers a lot of time People working on the project during this time estimate this resulted in around one year of wasted development time, compared to if they had been allowed to rewrite the code Multiplayer especially turns out to be incompatible with this framework ! Contact with Squad, the developers of KSP1, is prohibited (possibly by Squad upper management) This leads to nobody being available to guide the KSP2 engineers through the KSP1 code they were ordered to work with, forcing them to work in the dark and figure it out themselves The KSP2 engineers at ST would have loved to talk with the engineers at Squad, but they fear for their jobs being terminated by T2 should they do so ! This fear turns out to be warranted: a developer from ST is let go after answering a community question AFTER the game was announced, with T2 claiming it was an “unlawful disclosure” and that “communication to the public was not star Theory's decision, but the Publishers” Ultimately, the two previous points prove insurmountable and the engineers realize a significant Refactor of the code is needed to support Nate’s Reimagining ! This decision does not go down well with ST management, who do not understand the reasons behind it From this point onward, it is assumed new code is being written from scratch T2 continues to give ST pass after pass in Milestone meetings, despite people familiar with these meetings believing they should not have passed ! The most likely reason for this is that ST management had convinced T2 that they were sitting on a potential goldmine, claiming they were working on a ‘cultural successor to Minecraft’ These claims drive T2 to see Kerbals as their version of ‘Minions’ (A.N. The yellow creatures from the ‘despicable me’ movies), even planning a collaboration with a toy manufacturer Nate Simpson tries to appease both T2 and the existing KSP community by aiming to have the game be more accessible to a new audience and expand its player base, while also sticking to the core mechanics of KSP1 ! ST Management meekly goes along with the secrecy ordered by T2; one of the reasons for this being the aim to keep people familiar with KSP1 away from ‘interfering’ in the sequel They explicitly did not want KSP1 Veteran and well-known Youtuber Scott Manley to have any input in development Another reason for staying silent was that Uber Entertainment (now ST) had a bad reputation for previous games ! T2’s reasoning for keeping the project silent so long was apparently driven by a desire to avoid conflict with the community until it was too late At this point, due to the complete lack of outsider input, Creative Director Nate Simpson is basically the only person making gameplay decisions espite developing his first game at the age of 13, Nate is not an engineer; he instead has a bachelors degree in Arts (people working on the game describe him as a ‘very visual person’) ! This in turn caused a lot of focus to be placed on the visuals of the game, sometimes resulting in fundamental design and gameplay decisions to take the back seat Nate sometimes had a tendency to micromanage (something he admitted to in an interview) single elements of the game; one of which was wobbly rockets. Even before the Refactoring of the code, it was discovered the original KSP1 code could support significantly reduced wobble while also maintaining the option for joints to break under high stress ! Nate however was convinced that the difficulty from wobble and breaking joints was necessary for a fun game and made executive decision to keep them in the game Despite these flaws, Nate is considered by everyone spoken to by ShadowZone (SZ), be it someone who worked on the project or other content creators who interacted with him, to be a KSP Superfan with nothing but the community’s best interests at heart in his decision-making. The occasional disagreements between him and the engineers are attributed by the latter to Nate’s inexperience with aerospace, not to any form of malice. ! This inexperience, combined with Nate’s desire to expand the audience of the game to new players, somewhat resulted in the opposite happening; it reduced the capability of the game to serve as a teaching tool for people going into aerospace engineering and spaceflight, and overall reduced the priority of realism during development KSP2 is officially announced to very warm reception, with a release date set for the next year (2020) Content creators like Scott Manley, Matt Lowne and SZ are also brought onboard for the first time Hostile Takeover, 2019-2020 ST finally bring some Senior Engineers onboard. The Refactoring of the code is still only halfway done at this point in time ! By this time is has become clear that the release date of Spring 2020 is not achievable; despite this, ST Management continues to communicate to the team that this deadline and key features like colonies, interstellar and multiplayer are non-negotiable Chuck Noble, the only senior engineer who had been with the project since the start, leaves the team ST Owners Bob Berry & Jonathan Mavor begin negotiations with T2 to sell the studio to them, which are well underway by late 2019 ! Late 2019: Negotiations with Take Two break down and Star Theory loses the project ! ST’s Owners, Bob Berry and Jonathan Mavor, raised their price last-minute betting on T2 being willing to cash them out before finding another studio to work on KSP2, making them multi-millionaires in the process In response, T2 pulled the intellectual property from Star Theory and started a poaching attempt, offering everyone on the team to transition over to continue working on the project ! Partially due to the complete lack of emotional attachment to the KSP franchise on the part of most engineers(they still had not played ksp1 at this point) and partially due to T2’s refusal to budge when senior engineers tried to get better deals and compensation, the poaching attempt mostly failed, with only 4 engineers initially making the transition to the new studio that would become Intercept Games(IG) ! A total of around 20 people ended up making the transition eventually, but most of these were either junior engineers, artists or production people, resulting in a small and inexperienced team once again Star Theory continued to survive for a few more months, but ultimately failed to pitch new projects ideas (supposedly due to Covid cancelling an expo they were planning to attend) to publishers, resulting in their closure not much after. Technical Director Paul Furio is brought aboard the newly created IG with the mission of rebuilding the development team and setting processes in place to allow KSP2 to succeed Bumpy Road To Early Access, 2020-2023 (Intercept Games) ! T2 gives IG the stipulation to keep the old, broken code from Star Theory and work with it instead of starting again from scratch Apparently this was done because T2 management felt uneasy about ‘Refactoring’ the code yet again, so the decision was made to keep the existing code There is some debate as to the ‘broken-ness’ of the Star Theory Code; A person working on the project under Intercept Games said “they had 0% chance of releasing anything with that" about Star Theory code. A person working on the project under Star Theory, on the other hand, said with a little more time it would have worked. This person does however agree that it would have been better for IG to start again from scratch, not because of code quality but because of fresh team and still no contact to KSP1 devs. In general, everyone SZ spoke to agrees that not starting from scratch was the wrong move Not starting from scratch also meant Multiplayer remained one the biggest challenges to making the game feature-complete In an interview with Nate Simpson, it appeared that KSP2 already had working multiplayer when he said “as we've been testing it internally, I have never heard people laugh so hard”. Apparently, this ‘testing’ was actually done using a multiplayer mod in KSP1. It is however worth pointing out that KSP2 did have some form of rudimentary multiplayer by this time, inherited from ST, but it was incredibly buggy, unstable and nowhere near shippable. ! At this point, multiplayer remained a secondary objective while the main focus was still very much on art and visuals. This lack of baking multiplayer into the design remained a problem throughout this stage of development. They did however make progress during this period; later builds allowed multiple players to inhabit the same world and launch rockets together A few months after the game released into early access, the entire multiplayer team was let go. The developers claimed they were still designing the game with the thought that multiplayer would one day be a big part of it in the back of their minds, but it essentially was put on the backburner entirely Despite the old code hindering development and Covid hitting the globe, progress was finally being made and experts like Dr. Michael Dodd, a physics engineer, and Chris Adderly (also known as Nertea), a prominent KSP1 modder were brought onboard the project. ! It would still be until mid 2021 before KSP1 developers could finally join the KSP2 team. The ban on contact remained in place until then. Upon joining the team, apparently their reaction was “you should have asked us a year ago!” (which the KSP2 devs wanted to, but still weren’t allowed to) This ban may be explained by Squad not wanting KSP1 developers to be distracted from the final KSP1 updates This does not however explain why ex-Squad employees who had left years prior, like KSP1’s original creator Felipe Falange (known as HarvesteR), were never contacted ! Problems continue to become apparent as development goes on. Some of these are exacerbated or even caused by producers changing priorities for developers, often forcing them to switch between very different features This was later addressed withing IG when the ‘feature team structure’ (detailed here) was introduced. This structure was something Paul Furio has tried to establish before Early Access, but it was only established after his departure Take Two forces a release deadline of February 2023 by this time, the project is already over its allocated budget It immediately becomes apparent that all key features would not be ready in time for this deadline. It is believed there was a chance Colonies could have made it, but this was foregone a few months later In September 2022 the decision is made to go to Early Access with a stripped down sandbox version of the game ! This causes a massive upheaval of development, as the project was never intended to be released in parts. Product managers started pulling developers from their tasks and assigning them new ones, causing even more problems An example of this is an engineer who was weeks away from finishing a colony builder tool being pulled from the task and assigned to another item that had to be ticked off a project list, as colonies were shelved ! Yet another problem presents itself; software engineers, in high demand at the time, could make $200 to $250K a year at large companies like Microsoft or Amazon, but at IG their maximum yearly pay was kept at $150K due to budgetary constraints. Not only does this result in difficulties with recruiting, it also drives several people, such as Dr. Micheal Dodd, to leave the project The biggest blow comes from the departure of Eric De Feliz, a Graphics Specialist working on shaders. Nobody was present to pick up where he left off, resulting in the game being shipped with seriously unoptimized shaders GPU engineers especially were in high demand around this time, resulting in even worse optimization ! Despite being requisitioned multiple times, the IT team is not able to provide the necessary tools to test performance in time, further contributing to poor optimization and a late release of minimum and recommended specifications to the public Early Access, 2023-2024 (Intercept Games) Take Two and Private Division put their marketing into full gear, encouraging the ‘hype train’ even more An event is held in the Netherlands where content creators get their first chance to play the game. The first problems start to become apparent to the public as the creators give mixed reviews. Meanwhile, tensions are high at IG and PD. Some people are not happy with some of the decisions made, and they are aware the game is not at the level they wanted to deliver. Anxiety about community reception is large. In spite of this, steam sale numbers are put on a big screen in the conference room as they hope to breach 100K sales on day one. KSP2 Officially releases into Early Access. The game receives mixed to negative reviews, and it becomes clear the secrecy pushed by T2 has hurt the relation between developer and community A person working on the project later admits not getting community feedback was one of the biggest mistakes. They go on record to say “We wound up shipping the wrong product and not focusing on the right features” T2’s marketing campaign backfires as people start to realize the flaws of the game they bought for (nearly) full price ($50) and negative reviews start pouring in from angry and disappointed customers Sale numbers fall short of the numbers hoped for, only reaching 80K. This number does not account for the many refunds that happened ! A few weeks after the early access release, Studio Head Jeremy Ables and Technical Director Paul Furio were let go by higher-up management, which deemed them as the most expensive people in the studio. Furio left immediately while Ables stayed on a few more weeks. Michael Cook, previously Brand Manager at PD, took over the job of Studio Manager. It is also around this time the multiplayer developers were let go. Multiplayer was still janky and buggy at this point, but it was functional in some capacity. Despite this, there was a silent understanding that the layoff of the multiplayer team might have meant the feature was now shelved indefinitely. Focus shifts to bug fixing and working towards the first milestone update, later dubbed ‘For Science!’ (FS!) FS! came out in December 2023 to generally positive reviews, 10 months after the game entered early access. This was a significant delay from the internal estimate of 3 months, brought on by the shift in focus after community backlash about the state of the game. It is during this period that Furio’s cross functional feature team structure is finally implemented Studio Closure, 2024 (Intercept Games) In late April 2024, a WARN notice appeared indicating T2’s Seattle office, where Intercept Games is located, is being closed with 70 people (about the size of KSP2’s full dev team) being laid off starting June 28th. The studio went into near-complete radio silence, with the only statement made on @KerbalSpaceP’s X account “We’re still hard at work on KSP2. We’ll talk more when we can.”. This is a developing situation, and the impact of this on the future of the game is still unknown at this time. Conclusion (ShadowZone’s Opinions) KSP2 development has been plagued by a multitude of issues from the very beginning, ranging from diverging vision to corporate takeovers to mundane issues like tools not being ready in time The project was based on the wrong parameters from the start Technical decisions were made by people that had no business making them The developers were not paid accordingly There were a lot of assumptions about gameplay and mechanics that the community might have wanted that were not verified until it was basically too late The lack of open communication and extreme secrecy did severely harm to the trust of the already existing fanbase, especially after the game went into early access Speculative: the total cost of the project so far is assumed to be around 40 to 60 million dollars so far, compared to an estimated revenue from Steam of Only 30 to 40 million Notes (from ShadowZone, LinuxGuruGamer, Matt Lowne and Scott Manley) Nate Simpson should not take the blame; this was a passion project from him, and he genuinely appeared to want to deliver a great fun game for the existing KSP community, but he might have bit off more then he could chew, and made mistakes such as wobble. A big part of why he might not always have been able to deliver what he promised (despite wanting to do so) are technical and business constraints (example: modding API) Opinion from LinuxGuruGamer, Matt Lowne and Scott Manley: KSP2 can not reach completion under Take Two. The best way forward might be to focus on the modding API in the remaining time, but; mods have their limitations and they will not suffice to ‘save the game’ **PDF VERSION** KSP2 Development Timeline.pdf

Does anyone have an estimate of when colonies will come out? Any guesses?

Hi! It's Kerman Von Kerman here, brother of Wehrner Von Kerman (which has disappeared since the ksp2 release (I'm looking at you, P.A.I.G.E.)) I've been lurking here for quite a while, but have never thought about making a post until now. I am about to expose the whole lot of lore that lies behind ksp 1 and especially ksp2. Are you ready? THE FEATURE EPISODES First of all, let's begin with the feature episodes. They contain crucial information about kerbal history and lore. At the end of each episode, we see different parts of a montage where a rocket goes to the Mun (in ksp 1 obviously) and ultimately crashes on a Mun arch. This results in the ksp 1 update 1.12.5 where they "Added something... on the Mun". That something is a partially broken arch which has something that seems like a stargate coming out from the arch itself. Many have theorized it is a stargate. And they were right! When ksp 2 was released, they removed completely the debris, thus making the whole arch visible. I'm not going to speculate on it, if you want to know more jut go check one of the many threads present out there that speculate on it. (pls read them so u can understand what comes next) The only important thing to know is that the Kerbolar system is depicted on the Mun arch and that it is indeed a stargate. THE ARECIBO (or karecibo) MESSAGE Now, at the end of some feature episodes, there was a part called "something more?" in which not only did we see the montage of the aforementioned lander, but we also heard some weird noises, that can be converted into a kerbal version of the arecibo message. Here we see a solar system chart, a ship, the kraken destroying the ship, some kind of dots, and then another solar system with the kerbals (right) being greeted by squid-like aliens (left). OR AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT YOU THOUGHT!! Here is the actual explanation of the message, my dear konspirators! 1. We see the chart of the Kerbolar system (the bigger dot being jool) and a line coming from the third planet: KERBIN 2. A rocket, coming from Kerbin. 3. THE ALMIGHTY KRAKEN, DESTROYER OF WORLDS, PRINCE OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT The Kraken 4. Now, this is where things get tricky. People thought it was either the ship exploding and being destroyed by the kraken, or the ship doing a staging and continuing his interstellar travel. The actual explanation (i'll explain more in depth later) is that the ship is travelling through a stargate (just like the one on the moon) guarded by the kraken. 5. No one guessed this one. The dots are in fact there to measure the distance travelled. For example, the Kerbolar system is twelve dots long. The distance between the stargate and the other system is of 21 dots, or 1,75 times the diameter of Kerbol, which is quite a lot. 6. The ship arrives at the other system (binary system? Debdeb?) and the kerbals are greeted by kraken-human hybrid creatures. THE EVIDENCE But do I have proof? Or am I a speculator just like the others? I HAVE PROOF. Here it comes Ksp 2 players have found some strange structures spawning randomly instead of their ships due to bugs of some kind. Modders immediately checked the game files and found lots of interesting stuff (check out #ksp2-modding in the intercept games discord if you want to know more, there's lots of good stuff. I myself am now making a ksp 2 animation using colony parts taken from the game files (also the crucible engine is gorgeous btw)). They found: ALIEN STATUES: But they have also found the kraken. Nope. It's not a joke of some kind. There's literally a colossal statue of the kraken in the game files. but... That's not the only thing out there. See, in the game files there are TWO kraken statues. One of them has been fused with the Mun's stargate. This proves everything. (also yes that little white dot on the ramp in the first image is a kerbal for scale. This proves that there is some kind of alien tech in game. Stargates? Probably. A bit disappointing for me, as having a way to teleport from one system to another seems a bit too overpowered. However, this has not yet been implemented in game and I trust the devs know what to do. Also the ksp lore says: "Bop is a small moon in the vicinity of Jool. In Kerbal mythology, Bop is believed to be the home of the Kraken, a mischievous creature said to play with the ships of hapless explorers, by spinning them out of control until torn asunder, then casting them into oblivion." So i searched Bop, but could not find the aforementioned megastructure/stargate/kraken thing. However, my ships suck and it's probable that if it's there, i missed it. If you don't know what to do in ksp2, why not go and take a look? I'd be very grateful. FINAL NOTES Do you have thoughts? I'd be glad to hear them. Other ideas for even more speculation? Please tell! More images of these structures? PLEASE SEND I BEG YOU!!! (i'll add them to the post obviously) Thanks for reading, -KERMAN FON KERMAN - Leader of the Kerbin Konspiration Society

Context NovaSilisko (iirc) originally came up with an idea for a *storyline* of sorts which never made it into KSP1, it's here in this pastebin https://pastebin.com/3vvjushy (Pastebin copy/pasted below) There's a few traces of it in KSP1, it's how we have the SSTV signal on duna Here's the interesting part - How does this relate to KSP2? Let's start simple From the pastebin, we know that some form of precursor civilisation would have existed before the Kerbals that we know and love We also know that they're *Significantly* more advanced then kerbals, knowing how to go interstellar (with more advanced systems then kerbals... they teleported their entire planet, lmao) So far the most well known artefact that's in KSP2 and KSP1 is the mun arch (Extended details in spoiler) There's also the Minmus monument - This one's rather interesting, more about it later I'm not sure about what else is in KSP2 avaliable right now, but there's been glitches leading people to discover more then they're supposed to (Below) There's also more models of anomalies in the game files, @Kerman Von Kerman's thread documents them very well (do read, its very good ) Linking ksp1 with ksp2 (speculation) From here on is pure speculation! With what little we know about anomalies in ksp2, I personally feel like ksp1s planned storyline is going to be in or at least play a part in ksp2 - The stargate seems indicative of a highly advanced civilisation (and there's anomalies all over the kerbol system). The anomalies also depict the "Precursors" and in some files a space cuthulu? kraken? is also depicted Perhaps you can do something at anomalous sites leading you to more anomalies, eventually leading you to the hidden planet or activating the stargate I'm not sure how exactly the Karicebo message at the end of the ksp2 videos ties into all of this, but other people on this forum have speculated on it. What can be sure is that the second kerbal depicted in it shows the precursors though, the same ones on the monuments. Or they're just there for fun (doesn't seem like it though, LOREEEEEEEE) I don't know enough yet to make a conclusion lmao, I really don't know what to write here Further Reading Thanks for listening to my manical ranting

Hi there and happy new year! I have long been wanting something like Orbital and in general offworld construction in KSP and think it is an amazing feature for KSP. Now my question is, do we know anything about an orbital VAB editor (screenshots?) and the building process in general? Like what parts and resources we will need and if there is a building animation or something like that? KSP2 Early Access is less than two months away yay!

I recently went back and looked at KSP 2's feature show case Episode 5: Interstellar Travel. And I noticed something at around 1:20: "-And you see, like in the real world, closet star is about four lightyears away." Now, Nate doesn't outright call the 'closet star' Debdeb, but seeing as Debdeb is the first interplanetary system, it would make sense to make it the next one over and the closet. If Debdeb is 4 LYs away, then that means we're going to be spending a LOT of time in empty space. Yes, we'll have time warp, but we don't know how fast time warp will be in KSP 2 yet. I doubt they'll make time warp fast enough to get us 4 LYs in a few seconds, even with the Daedalus which would theoretically take us to 7% to 12% the speed of light. Now one could make the argument: "Well, it's kerbal, so the distances will be shortened. 1/10 the size remember?" To which I say, no. Again, I quote, "-And you see, like in the real world, closet star is about four lightyears away." Like in the real world. That to me tells me that, no, the distances aren't cut down. We have a full 4 lightyear journey to look forward to with Debdeb. Which brings me to my next speculation: The "To be revealed" solar system will be beyond 10 lightyears from Kerbol, possibly 10 lightyears beyond Debdeb making it 14+ LYs from Kerbol. These are just my thoughts and opinions. I would like to hear from the community about these speculations and whether you feel I hit the hammer on the head or if I'm off center. I would also like you know 3 things: 1) Will you go to Debdeb when it's added or wait for the "To be revealed" system to be added? 2) If waiting, why? 3) If waiting, will you shoot for TBR first, skipping Debdeb entirely? Why?

It was already noted that the closest star in KSP 2 is 4 light-years away, and not say, 0.4 light years. And that has me wondering, does that imply that other star systems will be more realistically scaled? It would certainly be interesting, and it lines up with another thing we know about KSP 2, that being places further away are more difficult to navigate. Having increasingly realistic scales as you get further away from Kerbol would indeed contribute to that difficulty curve. It also seems like a great lore opportunity, like maybe some kind of stellar effect has lead to a region of space having denser matter than usual.

Biofuels good idea or something stupid/unnecessary? When we develop medium-sized colonies would it be possible to produce biofuel? Of course I know needed water, fertilizer (in plants), sunlight, carbon dioxide and other things. We could grow algae, microorganisms or plants for that. We may be able to use the waste (if added) that kerbals would produce. We can extract from alien ecosystems (if added)

In ksp2 we will have colonies in space and on land this is confirmed. I created this topic to speculate and discuss more "exotic" colonies that are those that are not terrestrial and space colonies. Floating Colonies: they are huge "airships" that can be built and/or taken to planets with dense atmosphere (such as Venus), or on gaseous planets (such as Jool) Floating colonies in water: Colonies made for aquatic planets or planets with large parts of water. Submerged colonies: Colonies that were totally or partially submerged, by staying in the water the radiation is totally or partially barred. As solar panels would be a difficulty for this colony, we could use Oceanic Thermal Conversion and /or sea currents power plants to generate energy (but of course if we had an advanced climate and weather system), we could also use nuclear energy. Buried colonies: they could be built in lava tubes, for example, it is built below ground, so radiation is partially or totally barred, as well as in submerged colonies. Sugested by @Vinhero100 : Colonies on asteroids and comets: colonies that could be built on large asteroids like Ceres (in ksp Dres) or smaller bodies like Ida or some comets. Well the biggest problems are the gravity that wanted to be generated artificially and the radiation. Discuss! Something to be added/changed/tidy, comment on the comments.

I would imagine that at some point in the evolution of life on Kerbin, there was an extremely dense barked species of tree. It would have resembled an evergreen or palm of some type that would periodically lose all it's fronds or branch-like needle clusters becoming at times no more than an upright spike. Native to hotter climates, this tree would've drawn up large amounts of water in spring, to use during the summer, and also create nutrition internally, because the tree's inner chemistry mixed it's sap with the water and ground minerals to produce a nutrient broth. Interestingly.....in the right combination of soil conditions, liquid concentration, tensile strength of the individual tree's bark and the volatile properties of the trees own natural sap....a stray lightning strike would produce a rather spectacular natural missile, and a forest fire result in a fusillade to rival the most ambitious Terran fireworks displays. Combine this with the Kerbals' love of fiery explosions...(their eye structure suggests a nocturnal creature in their ancestry, contributing to a tendency towards heliotropism) ...their natural durability....(tendency to survive falls, crashes, explosions, which probably also explains their natural optimism)...and one could easily imagine early Kerbalkind adulthood rituals involving riding these natural rockets into the sky. (Maybe 'Kerman' is not actually a family name, but a title given to any Kerbals who have launched themselves in this manner....or by more modern methods...and lived to tell about it.) It's been theorized that man invented the wheel by watching trees fall over and rolling downhill. With trees doing far more exciting things on Kerbin....is it any wonder the wheel came much later? And with much more glorious ways to reach high places....wouldn't the ladder also be a late development? -Crystal Mace, BS (Durned right it's BS..) PhD (You know this one, right...?) in my paper delivered before Committee preceding my sudden (and completely unjustified) dismissal.

space elevators! Do you think they make sense or not and why?

This is a topic to discuss things about weather in KSP2. For example, we know there will be clouds but will there be rain, thunderstorms, wind, Hurricanes, etc. Any questions or things you want to mention about weather can go here. Reminder: as always, please be respectful to other members, refrain from badmouthing other people, and spread kindness. That's all.

So I was re-watching the KSP2 launch trailer and noticed several things. 1. This moon. (Merbal) Featured in a shot of Ovin is a moon. This has been out for a while and I'm sure someone has noticed this and I was wondering, has anyone figured out this moon's name? 2. Possible surface of Puf or This was confirmed in a follow up, behind the scenes trailer to be the surface of Merbal. As this shiny spacecraft lands, you see a strange landscape. While it does say "Not actual gameplay" at the beginning, I can't help but notice some similarities between Puf and this landscape. Could this be a sneak peek at Puf? Of course it could be a look at the UMO. The spacecraft looks very similar to the one shown before and it would make sense with the rest of the video. Also if you look at the corner, you notice a strange glow/atmosphere. Could this moon/Puf have an atmosphere? Or is this like Spectra and just a glow. Of course this could just be video effects to make it look cool. 3. Possible look at the landscape of Merbal While this again could just be the video, touched up for the release and not how the actual surface will look, it does seem to be a look at the Merbal's surface. You can tell that it has liquid water, and icebergs, and perhaps the terrain will actually be as cool as in the video. Any ideas, comments, or thoughts? Please leave them below. And if @Nate Simpson wants to give any hints, they would be welcome!

The polls are pretty self-explanatory. Just say what you think will happen as we approach the release date and on a scale of 1-10, how good the finished game will be. Comment why below. I said that it would be released on time and be great. I think the devs will do a good job and will not disappoint us. I said the rating would be a 8. It would be difficult to not have a few bugs.

From the video above we can make out a few things about the new KSC. -The first and foremost thing is that the KSC is now separated into islands in a marsh/pond like area. -Second, it has not 1, but 2 very larger runways, I would argue these are longer and possibly wider than KSC OG Runway. -Third, next to those runways are helipads, or if you're a propulsive landing fanatic, they could double as landing pads for boosters. I only catch a glimpse of 4 pads, but I assume there are five or more due to the placement and how equal distant they look along the runway. -Fourth, there are 4 launch pads, possibly 5 or more, all ranging in size and shape. At least one pad has a launch tower, but it can be argued they all do, ranging in size and shape. --The launch towers are on crawlers. Whether these crawlers are able to move or be controlled is unknown at this time. -Fifth, buildings, launch pads and runways do not have a destruction feature built into the game as of yet, but as they have said they want to put everything KSP 1 had and more in, I don't doubt that at release destructible entities will exist. -Sixth, the communication array at the KSC seems to be altered from three dishes to one massive dish. -Seventh, the rockets on the launch pad have chill or cooling effects. You can make out mist falling off the rockets, a sign of real world cryofueled rockets. This effect also lasts for a few seconds after launch, and possibly further. -Eighth, launch pads have or can be outfitted with engine igniters. This might be a sign that engines are more realistic and have starter fuel. This also might be a sign that fuel tanks might need to be settled before engine ignition can begin. Watch out for your upper stages if this is the case. -Ninth, the launch pad the rocket is sitting on may be a part. Modular launch pads my be stock in KSP2. "It didn't explode though." It may have a higher tolerance or may not have damage programed into it. It may be an immortal part as of this footage, but may change at launch or just before launch. -Tenth, The launch tower may be a part, modular launch towers may be stock. "It didn't explode though." See ninth point. -Eleventh, The crawler the launch tower is on may be a part, crawlers might finally be in game. "It didn't explode though." See ninth point. These are the things I noticed in the pre-alpha footage. If I missed anything, please do say so.

In the developer story trailer starting at 3:04 you can see several sticky notes attached to a monitor, one of which is labeled "Celestial Bodies - Atmospheres". Some veteran bodies are obviously listed (Duna, Eve, Jool, Laythe) as well as what appears to be Pol, for some reason. New confirmed bodies from KSP 2 are visible (Glumo, Murble, Ovin), as well as several others I cannot make out. I've yet to identify the two bodies on the bottom and the one at the top left. Note that some confirmed planets (Rask, Rusk and Char) are not listed - presumably because they don't seem to feature atmospheres. Interestingly enough, Ovin is listed - as it was previously described as a gas giant whose atmosphere was stripped away.

The ISS mission has to end some day. What would you do with the modules?

(Tell me if there is already one of these threads) Here you can speculate how the kerbolar planets came to be how they are and where they are. Any alien intervention/ presence during the formation can be considered... To start off, maybe Eeloo used to be one of Jool's moons, but got ejected out by another Jool moon such as Tylo or Laythe... Questions for you: (Easter eggs in spoiler) Was/ is there life on Laythe? How did it get there? Why did it die out? Where does life on Kerbin come from?

From what I can tell, the consensus is that Laythe should, by all accounts, not be feasible. Yet it exists, and continues to exist. It somehow has an oxygenated atmosphere that hasn't escaped or reacted away, has enough energy flux at the surface to stay relatively warm, and has exactly the right conditions for liquid water on its surface. This leads to the only explanation I can think of: Laythe is artificial. The nearly global ocean is simply a cover, a layer of insulation for a megastructure that lies beneath the surface. It is heated from within by some arcane power source, and houses...well, something awesome i suppose. I mean, you don't hide anything that isn't awesome in a planetoid. Perhaps Laythe is the original home of the Kerbals, who have been transplanted to Kerbin for reasons unknown? The possibilites are endless!