No one

How are you going to find the debris? If most of it is paint flecks and screws and stuff, won't that be really hard to see?

Solar panels grant unlimited use data transmitters from orbit grant unlimited money/rep, which can be converted into science.

Asparagus doesn't scale well, sure, but creating the first lifter is easier. Let's say I want to get something into orbit: I make a lifter which doesn't make it. If I'm using normal staging, I then have to make another stage which is bigger than the current stage by exactly the right amount. Too much and it's hard to build the next stage, too little and that stage doesn't add much. If I'm using Asparagus, I can just add another stage which is the exact same as the last one. Though actually since Career Mode was implemented I've generally been using SRBs for the first stage, and then asparagus (if necessary).

Yes, because it's easy. If you need more delta-v on an asparagus-staged thing you just add another stage. If you need more on a regularly staged you need to make the next stage bigger enough that it's much bigger except then to add another stage after that you need even more bigger and then the entire thing dies.

1) Delta-V is only a problem in that the more you want the longer you have to burn. Waiting for a burn to complete is easy and doesn't affect which planet is the "easiest" to return from. 2) Airless bodies are harder to land on but easier to return from. Once you've got there, there's practically no difference between landing+returning from Dres vs landing+returning from the Mun. Also, Dres has significantly less surface gravity. You need a rocket to return from Duna, but you can return from Dres with just an ion thruster. 3) That's strange. Dres always seems to be at a window when I want to go there.

I don't understand quantum physics/general relativity/your magicalness which allows FTL stuff, but I'm pretty sure that the answer is a massive explosion.

If you want to go one-way, definitely Eve. If you want to land and return, definitely Dres. As soon as you get the Atomic Rocket, Delta-V ceases to be a problem so they're both easy to reach. Dres has less surface gravity and no atmosphere, it's basically just like landing on the Mun, except it's a bit harder to get to. You can take off and return all the way to Kerbin with nothing but an Ion Thruster.

Yay aerodynamics. Refueling sounds cool. I'm sorta disappointed at the lack of an overhaul to the science system, but really better aerodynamics was the main thing I wanted out of KSP.

Clearly, KSP is just a large project by the marketing side of Squad. NASA/Some other space agency hired Squad to get people into science/math/engineering/SPAAAAACEE, and thus they created KSP. They'll only make another game if they get another thing which a game would be a good way of marketing.

Because it's there. Mars is close to us and isn't Hell, what more reason do you need to explore it?

Better Aerodynamics, Better Aerodynamics, and Better Aerodynamics. Really that's all I feel that KSP is missing. Also an overhaul of the science system to make it less of a clickfest, but Aerodynamics takes precedence. And also another planet or two would be nice, but that doesn't really matter at all.

I generally use ion engines in getting Kerbals home. It's just so convenient, they weigh very little and they can get you from the surface of another world (other than moho, tylo, eve, and duna) back to Kerbin in a single stage.

From the perspective of the company mining the asteroid, it would be far more costly to create something which would go help someone than something which wouldn't, and it would also be totally pointless. If you were being mugged and you saw a car parked nearby, would you expect the car to come to your aid? Of course not. So why would you expect the asteroid-miner to help you? Currently we cannot make a thinking machine at all. I am saying that we would be able to make an automoton to do that before we could make a non-automoton. Anything we build will be an automoton. A thinking machine would just be an automoton so complex it transcends being an automoton. But it would still be built out of more basic programs, more automoton-like parts.

But one could say that Mars and Mercury are 1 order of magnitude away from Venus and Earth, and also 1 order of magnitude away from Pluto and Eris. Why are we drawing the line at Mars and Mercury?

But this thread is talking about whether or not forcing a sentient program to work is slavery. My point is that anything a sentient program can do an automoton could do cheaper, and thus there would be no enslavement of sentient programs because there would be no sentient programs working. In the cases of robofriend and robo-artist, you can't force a sentient thing to be a friend, and you can't force a sentient thing to be an artist of the kind which would require sentience, so there's still no issue.

Very well then, replace all instances of "a soul" with "sentience". It makes no difference. What is the advantage of a thinking sentient AI over an automaton which merely executes the morality of a human? We know that the latter will more closely follow accepted ethics than the former, the latter is cheaper, and the latter is easier to control. What advantage does the former possess?

@All the people who say "Pluto is still a planet to me" What about Ceres? We don't know the mass of the entire Kuiper belt, some estimates put it at more than Mercury, some estimates put it at less. Mercury is about 20 times the mass of Eris, and about 1/20 times the mass of Earth. When you look at it based on mass, Mercury seems a rather arbitrary place to draw the line.

@The people saying "because we can": But then those AIs wouldn't be doing jobs, and this discussion is about AIs doing jobs against their will. @Velocity Why does one need a soul to create a moral decision? If we can quantify the soul, surely we can quantify morals. But what jobs actually truly require human intelligence? If we can program something with a soul, surely we can program something with only an individual piece of a "soul" rather than the entire thing. Sentience is inefficiency. It means that part of your brain is doing something else. Everything unachievable by computers at the moment which would be achievable by an AI would probably be achievable by a lesser program, in fact, it would probably be achieved before an AI, as a building block to an AI.

Why are we giving them souls? I mean, that just sounds inefficient. An AI would: Take a lot of computing power Be very expensive to create. Be expensive to run (Electricity costs are high when you're dealing with the kind of power they would need) Be devoting a lot of its processing power to things not its job. A stupider program would: Take a lot less computing power Be cheaper Use less electricity to run Be devoting maximum attention towards its job. As an evil greedy profit-focused corporation, which option would I take?

He's probably been laughing maniacally ever since he heard the words "destructible buildings". Hopefully he will stop laughing and start making a video soon enough.

Am I the only one who sees a downside to this? Science will be even more of a tedious clickfest than it already is.

FTFY. I personally had never heard of Ceres until I started playing KSP. Actually I vaguely remember seeing it while randomly reading wikipedia, but to me it was "some sort of icy asteroidish thingy I think I forget". And I'm not sure if I remembered it by name or if I only know that that thing I read about was Ceres because I now know what Ceres is. Most people I know don't play KSP and have never heard of Ceres. When it comes to space, most people have heard of the planets, the sun, the moon, pluto, and then that's it.

Jupiter is 5750.1 times the mass of Mercury. Mercury and Jupiter are both planets. What were you saying about the difference between Mercury and Eris mattering?

But this isn't science, it's language.

We had this argument a very long time ago when the asteroid belt was discovered and decided that Pluto was not a planet. I don't see why we needed to have it again when we actually discovered that Pluto wasn't a planet. Personally, I think the definition is too permissive. We need to find a way to exclude Mercury. And possibly Mars. Venus and Earth are cool, they can stay. And then let's put the gas giants in their own category. And then we end up with 2 planets. Umm.... We should do the following: Extend the definition of "planet" to include what are currently dwarf planets. Subdivide "planet" into the following: Dwarf Planets* (Ceres, etc.) Lame Planets** (Mercury, Mars), Earthlike Planets (Earth, Venus), Gas Giants* (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) *May need subdivisions **Ok so maybe we could give them a different name. But I like "Lame Planets", I mean, they are pretty lame. And then we need to take a look at the word "Moon". What the heck are Ganymede and Euporie doing in the same category?