KSP Weekly: Expedition 1

Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of the docking of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-31 to the International Space Station (ISS), marking the official start of ISS Expedition 1, the very first long-duration stay on the habitable artificial satellite. The crew was composed of Commander William Shepherd, a veteran NASA astronaut, and two RSA flight engineers: Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei K. Kirkalev, both of them had previous long-duration space-flights on Mir, with the latter having spent over a full year in space. The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days and during their mission, they activated various systems on board the station, unpacked equipment that had been delivered, and hosted three visiting Space Shuttle crews and two unmanned Russian Progress resupply vehicles.



At the time the ISS configuration consisted of only three modules: The Functional Cargo Block, Zarya - the first launched module of the station; the Unity connecting module, which with its six berthing locations would facilitate connection to other modules; and the Zvezda Service Module, which provides all of the station’s life support systems.

In their first weeks on board, the Expedition 1 crew members activated critical life support systems and computer control, as well as unpacked supplies left behind for them by previous supply missions. At this time the station did not have enough electricity to heat all three pressurized modules, so Unity was left unused and unheated.

The three visiting Space Shuttles brought equipment, supplies, and key components of the space station. The first of these, STS-97, docked in early December 2000, and brought the first pair of large U.S. photovoltaic arrays, which increased the station’s power capabilities fivefold. The second visiting shuttle mission was STS-98, which was docked in mid-February 2001, delivered the US$1.4 billion research module Destiny, which increased the mass of the station beyond that of Mir for the first time. And Mid-March 2001 saw the final shuttle visit of the expedition, STS-102, whose main purpose was to exchange the Expedition 1 crew with the next three-person long-duration crew, Expedition 2. On March 18, when the Discovery space shuttle undocked from the ISS, the first ISS expedition ended officially.

As of now, the ISS has been continuously occupied since the arrival of Expedition 1, which makes it the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit, having surpassed the previous record of 9 years and 357 days held by Mir. And it has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations. The station’s retirement is expected to happen somewhere between 2024 and 2028, and it’s planned to be replaced by the Deep Space Gateway project. But anniversaries aside, this week was a full KSP development news, too, so let’s begin!

[Development news start here]

We know a lot of you have been asking for updates on the release timing of the Making History Expansion and the updated console version of KSP, and we want to thank you all for your patience! We are getting close to being able to announce the release dates for each of these, and we want to update everyone on that timing.

The updated console version of KSP will be available by the end of January 2018, on both PS4 and Xbox One. One of our major objectives for KSP was to re-release a high-quality version of the game on consoles that lives up to the expectations that our players – and we – have for KSP. We took the decision to build these new versions from the ground up, which has taken more time than we had hoped, but we’ve been working alongside our friends at Blitworks and we’re excited to be getting closer to releasing these console updates.

The Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion will also be released early next year. We will announce the exact date as we get closer, but the team is working on many exciting updates for the expansion, which you can read more about below and in recent KSP Weekly updates.

Again, we know that many of you have been waiting for news on these updates, and we want to thank you for your patience. And now for more development updates!

Let’s begin with a short briefing on the development of the upcoming KSP Update 1.4. Currently our main efforts on this project consist of upgrading to Unity 2017.1, which involves a careful assessment of changes that could affect the project, such as modifications in data format which may require re-baking. Similarly, we need to identify any changes to the meaning or behavior of any existing functions, parameters or component values, as well as deprecations of any function or feature that could affect the game. It is important for us to identify any possible issue and find solutions before they arise. This update will not only include this upgrade and the benefits it entails, but also some additional goodies that we’ll be revealing soon.

Moving on to the development news of Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion, this week we received the early version of the soundtrack that will be used in the Mission Builder. We can’t show it to you, yet, but what we can tell you is that we wanted something within the lines of the music that the VAB/SPH has: smooth and uplifting jazz, which doesn’t distract from the building aspect and gives a cool atmosphere - the new track definitely does that, but simultaneously differs enough to give the Expansion its own musical identity.

Additionally, this week the team worked on the implementation of graphic banners, or ‘hero images’, into the Mission dialogs. The idea is that Mission Creators will be able to set custom banners for their missions, whether it is a hero image to accompany the mission briefing, or for the ‘Success’ and ‘Failure’ dialogs. We’ll include a few preloaded banners of course, but we want players to be able to customize theirs in a similar manner to how flags can be added in the main game by adding the files to a specific folder.

The developers also worked on the implementation of warnings when there are inconsistencies between facility level limits and any vessel restrictions a Mission Creator may have defined - i.e. it’s weight, number of parts and dimensions.

Moreover, the team is also working on the tutorials that will be included in the Expansion, so that you can start making the most of the new tools once you get your hands on Making History.

On the artistic side of development, the team has been working on the textures of our analogue to a J2 Engine. We will show them off soon enough, but for the moment we wanted you to check out the Soviet-inspired textures for the new 1.875 Tanks. These tanks will include 2 additional textures, aside from this one, which you’ll be able to switch at will, so you can give your vessels the right look.

Finally, we remind you that you still have another week to participate in our latest KSP Challenge - The KSPooky Haiku Challenge. We have been receiving an impressive amount of really cool haikus, including some written in Japanese, which has certainly given some authenticity to the challenge. We have been compiling each and every one of them, and having lots of fun doing so. If you haven’t shared yours, don’t think twice and send us your literary compositions!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!