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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 findings. 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 Despite 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 ! (this claim is disputed) 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, was 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.”. Take Two Interactive later released a statement saying they were “streamlining the pipeline” and implementing “cost-saving measures across the company”. Despite statements from Take Two’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, saying Intercept Games would not be shuttered, all employees were laid off on June 28th 2024. What followed was a period of radio silence, broken only by two emails from Alan Lewis in July, Take Two’s Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, which stated the following: “We are currently working on a plan for the future of Kerbal Space Program 2, which will continue its development; however, we have nothing further to say publicly at this time.” In a later email in October, the modding community was given permission to use existing game files in mods in an email from T2s Legal Department. On November 6th 2024, media reported Private Division and all of its live and unreleased titles, including KSP and KSP2, were sold to an undisclosed buyer. Take Two also officially admitted Intercept Games had been closed for the first time. On January 7th 2025, news broke on the new owner of Private Division and the KSP franchise. Private division and its assets were bought by Haveli Investments, a Private Equity Firm located in Austin, Texas. Some of the 25 people who were still employed by Private Divison were let go, and the remainder were absorbed into a new, as of yet un-named Publisher made up of ex-employees from Annapurna Interacative (the publisher of 'Outer Wilds' and 'Stray'). Harvester reached out to Haveli to inquire about their plans for the KSP franchise. This is still 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

"For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation, and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered, by the end of the next century, and the next millennium?" Chapter 1: An Accident, a Tragedy, a Triumph. It seems NASA is ready to start this evenings press briefing, here is a statement from Associate Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, James Webb It is with deep sorrow that I address you here this afternoon. As many of you know, at 9:55 this morning the Gemini VI-A spacecraft suffered an anomaly, and the space program experienced a national tragedy with the loss of the Gemini VI-A spacecraft and her crew. Two dedicated, well trained and experienced pilots were on board that spacecraft, and sadly neither survived. Approximately eight seconds into its flight, a dramatic loss of thrust was observed in the Titan booster-rocket. Following protocol, command pilot Walter Schirra pulled the ejection ring in an attempt to get himself, and his fellow crewmate Thomas Strafford safely out of the capsule. It is with a heavy heart that I say the protocol failed them both. We here at NASA have failed them both. All data reported indicates the startup sequence was performed normally and without error, and we are still looking at the potential causes of failure in the booster’s first stage. However, if this were the only problem, the astronauts would still be with us today; Something prevented their parachutes from deploying fully upon ejection, leading them to impact the ground roughly a mile from the launchpad. Recovery teams were sent immediately to begin the recovery of the astronauts, however without a parachute, a fall from that altitude is nearly certain to be a fatal one. I’m aware of the media broadcasting footage of the ejection, and I appreciate them cutting the cameras shortly after. We are not here to speculate, neither to the cause of the booster failure, nor the parachute failure. It will take all the data we have, extensive testing and investigation to draw any conclusion, and to provide a sense of closure to the families, and to the nation. A formal board looking into today's accident will be established this evening, and all subsequent reports as to the cause and our agency's findings will be published by this review board. Data collection has begun, as has the analysis of the conditions of the launch pad, ground support systems, and even the notes made by members of our pad staff and launch teams here at the cape. We will get to the bottom of this incident, so that nothing like it can ever happen again. We thank you for your patience, and we ask that you give the families the space and time needed for them to grieve. As Webb promised, the investigation into the causes of the Gemini 6A failure did begin that evening, however to the public it was known simply as The December 12th Committee. Their findings would shape NASA safety culture, launch schedules, and nearly all subsequent programs for decades to come. The weight of the entire space program, and by extension the space race, was resting on their shoulders. Changes to the Gemini would be somewhat hard to see, but that didn’t make them any less important; The improved safety offered was considered by many to be well worth the wait caused by retrofitting the remaining five Gemini spacecraft. While not the largest change, easily the most impactful was that of the nitrogen purge. Prior to liftoff, when the cabin’s pressure was at its highest, the capsule would be filled with a mixture of gaseous oxygen and nitrogen to prevent another violent fire. This atmospheric mixture would bleed out of the capsule as it ascended, being replaced with pure oxygen, albeit at a much lower and safer pressure. This yielded an equally safe, and well proven environment of pure oxygen held at a low pressure. Another hard to spot change would be the Astronaut Tethering Points (ATP) added to the base of the Gemini’s Docking Adapter. These points were mere metal hoops, meant to allow the astronaut to attach his carabiner to while wearing one of the two life support packs included in the Gemini Program. This would, if functional, allow the astronauts to separate themselves from the nose of the craft by up to 75 feet (23 meters) achieving unmatched distances and flexibility during EVA. Lastly, the capsules would see a complete overhaul in their launch abort capabilities, with their ejection seats traded for a more traditional couch-style seat. NASA would instead opt for a more traditional, thus proven system, the launch abort tower. The tower weighed more than the seats, however due to staging off of the spacecraft 15 seconds after second-stage ignition, this actually resulted in a trivial, yet measurable payload increase. However, the trading of the bulky launch abort seats did have further benefits. First and foremost was astronaut comfort, as the astronauts had substantially more legroom without the ejection mechanism. This legroom could, and would be utilized in upcoming flights to stow tools, house sample containers, and carry additional life support as needed. The final change would come to the Titan-II. The rocket would receive a small payload containment ring which the Gemini spacecraft would sit atop. This 10 inch tall ring would allow for small payloads to be mounted alongside the Gemini, for use in orbit. Umbilical cables connecting spacecraft to rocket would be routed through this ring, with stringers lining the insides. Ultimately, this modification would see minimal use, however it would be the first demonstration of a concept that had been around as long as man had dreamed of spaceflight. It would demonstrate the prospect of man riding alongside cargo into space. This capsule, with all of her substantial safety improvements was dubbed Gemini Block IB, and was given a new coat of paint, distinguishing her from her sisters. The changes resulting from the December 12th Committee would ripple outwards into other programs. Of these, the most impacted was NASA’s upcoming Project Apollo. North American had suggested a nitrox cabin environment in their original bid, but was shot down by NASA management who claimed “It wasn’t a problem, and it hadn’t caused issues on Mercury” words which would later come back to bite them, hard. Rather begrudgingly, NASA agreed to allow the redesign of the Apollo CSM and LM to allow for a mixed gas environment and a reduction in flammable materials, in both the spacecraft and the suits. The agency accepted that this meant yet another delay to Project Apollo, and that it likely meant the first manned flight couldn’t happen any sooner than the third quarter of 1967. Many at NASA’s manned spaceflight center objected to this decision; However ultimately it was considered less of a risk to schedules to wait for a redesign, than to push forward with a flawed one. And with that, Apollo Block IIA and III were born, and the Gemini program was on track for a return-to-flight in June of ‘66. The Committee had closed its final meeting, after 5 long months.

From Ground to Sky From: SixAndAHalfMen & UCTech Series Ended

A timeline of my canoniverse, up to 2,000 years before the present day. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS WE KERBALS HAVE COME TO KNOW IT: est. 8,900,000,000 cycles B.T: The universe is created. It takes another 500 million cycles (est.) to develop any sort of planets/galaxies, and Kerbal scientists are determined to find out why the hell it waited so long. Maybe it wanted a nap. est. 8,400,000,000 cycles B.T: First galaxies are formed, with boring proto-stars and planets. est. 5,200,000,000 cycles B.T: Supposed birthdate of the Kerm- the greatest deity of the Kerbpalooza. est. 3,700,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbol forms in a secluded corner of the Meelky Wahy Galaxy. est. 3,150,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin is formed, one of six (sorry, Dres- seven!) planets orbiting Kerbol. est. 2,800,000,000 cycles B.T: A mysterious object only known as K-1627 (yep, the scientists love naming cool stuff after photocopiers- sigh) passes through the Kerbol system at a distance of 8,000 light-years. A space sucker of the worst kind, this sent a flurry of huge projectiles at the still-forming planets. What a meanie! est. 2,675,000,000 cycles B.T: A huge asteroid some 1,500 km across impacts Kerbin, sending it into a spin and blasting bits that would soon become the Mun into space. est. 2,200,000,000 cycles B.T: The first microbes begin to flourish in Duna's cold oceans. Laythe would soon be habitable a mere 40 million years later. est. 2,000,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin gains oceans, and early bacteria. est. 1,850,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin's atmosphere stabilizes, prompting a comfy surface temperature of 67 degrees Kanticular. (Author's note: this is oddly the same as degrees Celsius- huh?) A fragment of obsidio matter hits Tylo, blasting Bop and Pol into existence. est. 1,800,000,000 cycles B.T: Ike wanders into the party from way out in interstellar space, settles into a nice orbit around Duna. Eeloo isn't so lucky after encountering Joold being shot to the edge of the Kerbol system. est. 1,450,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin cools to a cushy 41 degrees Kanticular, prompting the first multicellular life to evolve. Ike is hit by and asteroid and moves to its current orbit of Duna over the next 100 million years. est. 1,300,000,000 cycles B.T: Duna begins to lose it's hospitable climate thanks to Ike siphoning off it's atmosphere- too close for comfort mayhaps? est. 1,000,000,000 cycles B.T: Laythe begins to develop bacterial life in its oceans. Duna is now at its present state. est. 920,000,000 cycles B.T: A 70 km across asteroid hits Eve, the biggest fragment enters orbit and becomes Gilly. est. 800,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin more or less enters its current climate- the Mun is hit by several tiny, metallic objects-possibly alien in nature. First aquatic life evolves in Kerbin's oceans- among them the far descendants of the Kerbals. est: 550,000,000 cycles B.T: Minmus is captured by Kerbin's gravity well and begins to orbit it. A strange sort of race called SQUAD lands on prehistoric Kerbin and leaves weird monoliths dotted across the Kerbol system. est: 475,000,000 cycles B.T: Believed departure time of the SQUAD. est. 380,000,000 cycles B.T: First land-walker animals on Kerbin. The ancestors of Kerbals gain basic intelligence- about one-thousandth of a modern Kerbal's brainpower. Only a million or so Kerbals are alive. est. 275,000,000 cycles B.T: Millions of land-walkers roam Kerbin. The prehistoric Kerbal ancestors declare it a fad. est. 110,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbin goes through the Kuraconian Volcanism period. Kerbin's temperatures drop to 9 degrees Kanticular, slowly warming back up to 23 degrees over the next 700,000 years. Land-walkers all die off- Kerbals survive. est. 109,300,000 cycles B.T: Kerbals come out from their new underwater heatvent shelters, greatly more intelligent. est. 80,000,000 cycles B.T: The First Great Civilization is built underwater, in huge cities glittering with beauty and purpose. Kerbal population reaches 10 million. est. 45,500,000 cycles B.T: The First Great Civilization-ender event takes place over the next few million years. Modern Kerbal scientists believe that resource over-consumption and gradual climate change were the causes. est. 37,000,000 cycles B.T: First Kerbals step foot on land. They die. est. 36,900,000 cycles B.T: Ud Kerman manages to Not Die on land. His friends follow him, and they didn't die either! He becomes the long-forgotten hero of the Second Great Civilization. est. 32,500,000 cycles B.T: Most of the Kerbal race moves to land, bar a few outsiders, who remain in the ocean ruins. est. 18,000,000 cycles B.T: The Second Great Civilization is established. It took the land Kerbals roughly 14 million cycles to develop the Second Great Civilization- markedly better than the 30 million cycles it took for Kerbals to build the First Great Civilization. Large explosions occur in Kerbin's oceans- might explain why the ocean ruins and the ocean-dweller Kerbals were never found. est. 9,000,000 cycles B.T: The first little skirmishes occur on Kerbin- a grim foreshadowing of what is to come. est. 8,000,000 cycles B.T: Kerbals discover 'star-splitting' the first experiment ends with the city razed to the ground and high radiation levels in the air for the next 2,000,000 cycles. est. 7,200,000 cycles B.T: The first 'star-stone' weapons are created, so named because they 'look' like big stones, but when activated 'bring a star to the surface of Kerbin for a second.' est. 6,820,000 cycles B.T: Kerbal population reaches 50 million. est. 6,600,000 cycles B.T: The Second Great Civilization vanishes almost overnight- only a few hundred thousand Kerbals remain. Radiation levels ensure that modern civilization does not recover for another 2 million cycles. The disaster is still being investigated... est. 4,500,000 cycles B.T: The Kerbals are now their trademark hue of green, thanks to radiation. est. 3,000,000 cycles B.T: The Third Great Civilization rises after just one and a half million cycles. Kerbal population reaches 100 million. est. 2,600,000 cycles B.T: The Kerbal population reaches 500 million- the Third Great Civilization locks away the star-stone weapons and flourishes. est. 2,300,000 cycles B.T: The Kerbal population reaches a billion. est. 2,100,000 cycles B.T: The space program of the Third Great Civilization is believed to have been founded in this cycle- explaining the strange Munar satellite found by MunSurveyor One, and the conical ancient lander found by the Duna Insight rover. est. 1,150,000 cycles B.T: The Kerbal population reaches 5 billion, the modern-day Kerm religion is founded. est. 30,000 cycles B.T: Thetus, a 120 km wide comet, is knocked out of the Nova Kirbani system and hurtles towards Kerbol. est. 250 cycles B.T: The hubris retained by the Second Great Civilization returns somewhat: Thetus is found and the Kerbals are confident that they can blow it to bits. est. 5 cycles B.T: The mission to divert Thetus fails. A wave of fear grips The Third Great Civilization and mass suicide is common. The Kerm religion dwindles to just a few thousand followers. Shortly before, the highest Kerbal population ever is reached: 8.7 billion. THETUS IMPACT: 33,407 cycles before present Thetus's impact occurs into the sea, 600 kilometers off the coast of the modern-day Aquan Empire. Waves 3 kilometers high swamp coastal areas, while a wave of molten crust incinerates up to 300 miles inland, radiating from in every direction. Ejecta from the impact enters the atmosphere and causes a global night lasting hundreds of years. The Kerbal population dwindles from around 6 billion at time of impact, to 150,000 after 500 years. Civilization has never- and will probably never reach the glory of before the impact. The Kerm religion kept survivors determined, word spread and was passed down generations to ensure that the mistakes caused by previous civilizations would never be repeated. To this day, the Kerm religion is the most followed religion on Kerbin, with over 170 million believers out of a population of nearly 260 million. 500 cycles A.T: Civilization begins to recover. 11,000 cycles A.T: The Fourth Great Civilization is established. 16,000 cycles A.T: The Santi impact occurs, in a thankfully unpopulated area of Kerbin (in what is now the Third Great Desert). Santi's affliction, a plague brought from space by the Santi impactor, spreads by air across Kerbin. Over half the population is infected, and 20% die. 22,000 cycles A.T: Jool's Big Green spot is found. 28,600 cycles A.T: One of the 'star-stone' hider vaults is opened. Over the next thousand cycles, various Kerbal nation-states engineer their own versions of the weapons. 30,000 cycles A.T: The first 'star-power' plant is opened, proving that the reverse-engineered star-stone techology can be used for good as well as bad. 30,800 cycles A.T: The Star-stone Skirmishes occur this year, and kill an estimated 5 million kerbals between them. 31,143 cycles A.T: The Great Shifting occurs, killing another 20 million kerbals, raising the sea level 4 meters and causing huge earthquakes. 32,000 cycles A.T: Civilization recovers, this guide ends. If you need a newer timeline, why not check out the soon to be published 'Modern Kerbal History Handbook'?

Kerboin's Spur A KSP Fan Project Table of Contents Introduction Nations of Kerbin, as of the launch of the Füthor 1 The Füthor 1 More coming soon... Introduction It was merely nine years after the devastating Great War when kerbalkind finally began to explore beyond their homeworld of Kerbin. But - as with most of the explorations that occurred through our history - the launch of the Füthor 1 orbital satellite was not one done simply for curiousity's sake. It was an exploration to prove superiority and dominance. You see, the construction and launch of the Füthor was orchestrated by the Jerram Reich, a totalitarian dictatorship locked in a state of cold war with the two other superpowers of Kerbin at the time. It was the third attempt by the Reich to put a satellite in orbit, which would somehow prove itself "better" than both the United Communes of Somvard and the Federal States of Murcrar. But for being carried out by an extremely oppressive polity, the launch of the Füthor 1 was to become one of the most important events in all of kerbalkind's history. It would usher in the very first Space Race of countless Space Races. It would also upset quite a lot of other nations... - - - I don't really like this intro all that much - but hopefully, the rest of it will be better.

Okay I thought I posted about this before but I guess the kraken got it, so here it goes, apologies to KAC for stealing the screenshots from it's manual. What I propose is a new UI element called the timeline, a multi function tracking center and map view utility that combines functions of KAC, warp control, mission updates, and yes even multiplayer warp control. Now i'm not an expert UI guru, so i'm sure this whole idea could be made much cleaner with context sensitive displays and such, but essentially it should be handled like a video/audio editor track that you can 'scrub' and change the scale of on the fly to suit your needs. Okay the First image shows a fairly low time scale, You have time markers, you have the zero line (but you can scrub left or right to view different sections if you want) A mouseover (see Kerbal X) an icon will show it's time or more details. The actual timeline should have pretty basic icons to keep it from getting too cluttered. You can compare the icons on the timeline to the ones in the KAC window. On the far right you see an arrow, this could signify user created maneuver nodes or alarms that are off screen in the future. In this case the SOI and transfer window alarms. Maybe in the real UI you'd just mouse over the arrow and it would show the details in a text popup. One of my ideas for multiplayer timewarp would be to integrate it into the timeline, in addition to hotkeys (which could be treated like the game 'defcon' where the game runs at the fastest speed of the slowest player), you'd be able to que up warps (similar to KAC or mechjeb warp helper). In this example, the player (blue bar) qued up a warp 20 minutes from now to some point in the future, but the 2nd player (purple bar) wants to warp sooner (looks like around 12m30s) but the green bar represents the agreed upon overlap, so thats when it will warp. So maybe the purple player can go get a sandwich. ;P This Shows a longer timescale, Since the alarm clock is so close to zero at this time scale, there should be some advanced info on it, maybe it blinks red with a timer indicator under it, since at a 3 hour gradation you'd never be able to tell when a 3 minute timer would pop just by looking. Again mouseover shows more time detail. In this example our Transfer window is still way out, so it's got the right hand arrow indicating it's off the scale. In this example you qued up a warp 8 days from now till around 18 days, and since player 2 wants to warp to the foreseeable future (Boy are they mad at you!) You're entire warp is approved since it overlaps, note we won't necessarily track warp in the T minus part of the scale since it's pretty pointless, but I guess you could. Final picture shows the last idea. And this is we could have context buttons (see transfer window icon lower left) That would show non user-created info on the timeline. In this example we're dealing with year scale timelines, so our SOI transfer and alarm clock are Red flashing since they're happening sooner than the lowest gradient, and since the alarm is happening sooner, it's time is displayed, and once it pops, the SOI transfer time will show instead, possibly the alarm would blink since it's happening within 15 minutes, and the SOI would be less dire because it's still 1 day out. So this example shows something you could do with mission info (Launch, staging, part heating, destruction, failure, landing, eva) with the proper context button. But in this case we'll use Transfer window (but you could do SOI, whatever) So say you click the transfer window button, now it'll show a dot for each Transfer window upcoming from your current location, maybe a pop up key will show a different color for each body. But in this case we'll use muted green dot for every planet with an upcoming Transfer. In our example we clicked Duna, note that Eeloo is below it (the muted green dot under the bright green dot) because they're nearly the same time window. Since we selected Duna, in addition to showing it's nearest transfer, it now projects out the next 4 transfer windows (represented by bright dots that fade from green, to yellow, to red) So you can visualize the time scale of the Kerbin Duna transfer in context of your other markers, alarms, etc. In this example I further demonstrated the Warp overlap Mechanism, both players have layed out warp ques, but only the agreed upon areas are going to warp. I suppose the player could hit the warp hotkey when they are within player twos warp que and it'll just automatically add say 5 minutes of warp or whatever till they run out. If there is going to be 'surprise' warp, there should be some 10 second warning in which the other player can change their mind, so you can change your mind. Anyway So this is the Summary: Timeline, different time scales and positions selectable by player. KAC functionality built into it, place alarms by clicking on timeline, select context buttons to show all SOI, Transfer windows, closest approach, AP, PE, etc. Place an alarm just by clicking icon. Mission Timeline also shown on this with context button. Icons to represent evens, so Launch Icon, Stage Icon, Landing Icon, Recovery? Park failure icons. Mouse overs show details, Possibly multiplayer support with a muted or different color to optionally show the other players launches, disasters, etc. Also if there is life support, this would be a HUGE factor also, big indicators to show estimated life support range, warnings for specific flights. Easier Time warp, just click and drag on the timeline, it'll warp during that time segment. Maybe time warp hot keys just add an automatic time segment to the timeline, the longer the segment, the faster the warp Show upcoming Transfer windows, SOI changes, AP, PE, etc based on context menus. Anyway i'm done, what do you think?