Remove that laptop from the Tier 1 astronaut complex.

[Whirligig Girl]

Surely Kerbals do not have laptops in their era! Kerbal style in career mode is more of 1960s through 1980s, so why is there a laptop? I just hope it's actually supposed to be a suitcase, because a laptop really conflicts with KSP's style as a whole imo. Maybe a laptop in the tier 3 astronaut complex might make sense if it's meant to be in the late 1990s tech era. It just kinda hurts me to see a modern computer in the pseudo-retro-style of KSP. I always thought of the game as taking place in a Kerbal space race era, the 1960s era, then by Tier 2 it's around 1980s tech. Especially when you remember that the SAS/ASAS in older versions was a super-simple computer that occupied a huge cylindrical container. A huge computer that does one thing. And if you look at the Remote Guidance Unit and it's exposed circuitry, it just rings of the late 70s.

If you even look at the visual style of the astronaut complex's furniture itself the laptop looks out of place. Okay, there is some consolation here, after a bit of research, the Osborne 1 computer was released in 1981, and was the first portable laptop computer. But it doesn't come close to resembling the laptop in the astronaut complex.

Edited December 15, 2014 by GregroxMun

[Northstar1989]

Honestly, the "Era" KSP takes place in is more your opinion than anything else. It would make just as much sense for KSP to be taking place in a modern developing nation that doesn't (yet) have an advanced space program as for it to be taking place in the 1960's-1980's. And, of course, it's about little green aliens, not humans- so there are no exact parallels.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of any attempt to re-create the Apollo Era in KSP. I don't want to REPEAT history- I want to make it. I think KSP needs to look more to the cutting (bleeding) edge of modern rocketry and even to technologies that are *just around the corner* (like Microwave Beamed Power- PM me if you want to learn more, but it really is a technology that is only 10-20 years away, with a subscale demonstration planned by a NASA lab in 2018), rather than to the so-called "glorious past."

It's human nature to romanticize the past, but honestly, I don't want to play it. Even Apollo wasn't all that popular in its era, with only just over half the US population supporting the program before the first Moon landing (and even less afterwards- when most people foolishly thought we had "won" the Space Race). I want to plan a Mars (Duna) mission, or a glorious mission to Jool/Jupiter, using some of the new technologies that make this possible, not putz around the Moon and low orbit for 30+ years... And I want to do it realistically/believably enough that I feel like I'm really envisioning/planning/executing missions that would be possible in real life.

I *LOVED* it when Squad added the RAPIER engine (a reasonable analog of the real-life LH2/LOX SABRE engine, and I think there was even a more similar Kero/LOX "RAPIER" engine planned as well in real life...) I went bananas when they announced they will eventually include some form of ISRU (although it remains to be seen how realistic/believable/fun their system will be- personally I think it's easiest to create a fun system working off real ISRU systems, as it leaves you free to figure out other things than the chemistry- which is already known...) And I will be ecstatic if they follow through with their hints that they will finally start reforming the aerodynamics system to make it more realistic (they have, at least, indicated the current system will be going out the window). I *DON'T* want to see KSP become any more technologically primitive or unrealistic. The laptop is just one indication of a futuristic lean, which I like, in my opinion.

Regards,

Northstar

[Whirligig Girl]

Yes I think new and even future technologies should be represented in-game, but only at the end of the tech tree.