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Panel

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Everything posted by Panel

  1. I think that the biggest difficulty for me is just after beginning career. That point where all the easy science and contracts are taken care of, but you still need the money and science to explore further. Out of the dozen or so career mode saves I've started, I've only made it past this 3 times. I haven't yet done it in 1.1 An idea I've heard around that would be great in this case would be modifying strategies into contracts. I rarely, if ever, use strategies; but if they would instead give a goal and funds to work towards it, I would use the administration building a lot more. The other problem I have is how few parts are available until early mid-game, around the nodes worth 90 science. Before that, you don't even have solar panels or probe cores with SAS. At the same time, you are getting 2.5 meter parts. The tech tree needs to have a major overhaul.
  2. Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. Waiter, there's hydrazine in my soup!
  3. I really isn't necessary. That thin of an atmosphere would be so incredibly neligible, that it would be easier not having it.
  4. I would be okay with this if they added EVA parachutes. A lot of times, if my capsule loses its parachutes, I'll just jump the kerbals.
  5. I'm surprised no one mentioned cuttlefish. They are very intelligent, and can use their skin to flash patterns for communication and camouflage. They can also see the polarization of light through W shaped pupils.
  6. The keywords there are "and Oxygen." I honestly don't think it is very likely, but life on Venus was certainly possible based on our current understanding. Remember, there had been life on earth for over a billion years before the great oxygenation event.
  7. You ordered a "large," sir. Waiter, theirs a tiny man screaming about cruelty to liquids in my soup!
  8. Like I previously said, light simply is absorbed too quickly by the mirror. The very best mirrors can only reflect a photon a few hundred times; in a structure as small as a cell, this would decay nearly instantly.
  9. The cells could absorb light, but even the best mirrors cannot keep light "captured" for more than a few milliseconds, and even then it's just photons.
  10. How would the light stay captured? A fresnel lense only focuses light. The light would not be "captured" by the cells, but I could see them having fresnel lense to focuse their own bioluminescence.
  11. You can almost here the screams of the damned from here.
  12. Well, it's probably just a subscription notice for Reader's Digest! Waiter, there seems to be a hawk in my soup.
  13. Sea life is definitely interesting on such a planet. While summer on the land is hellish, with temperatures reaching above 60 degrees Celsius, the sea comes alive. Temperatures soar, but the heat exchange from ocean currents keeps the sea a relatively gentle temperature. The single celled photosynthesizers, often called Tunuks, are at the bottom of the food chain, and form huge colonies in the ocean. During the winter, they are frozen in the huge layers of ice that cover the oceans, and remain in a state of suspension until thawing in spring. Tunuks reproduce asexually. One form of multicellular marine life on Tehn is a group of filter feeders called Ishops. They are flexible, skinny creatures with a long gut and a fuzzy filter near the mouthparts. On an ishop, these look a bit like big, bushy mustaches. The largest species grows up to 3 meters long, but most are only about 1.5 m. Ishops are bioluminescent, and can communicate with patterns of light in a similar manner to Earth cuttlefish. Ishops lay eggs during the fall that stay dormant until spring. They then hatch during the summer, and feed on Tunuks. After saturating their "mustache," it is retracted and the organisms swallowed. A group of "fish" also exist. Convergent with Earth fish, these creatures often have a sort of armor on their back, to protect from predators. Very diverse, they fill all the niches left over from the ishops. Most fish migrate during the winter to warmer waters, and the few that remain behind have a similar life cycle as the Ishops. During the winter, a lot water is frozen at one pole. This leaves large swaths of ocean which recede in the summer and winter. These regions are called Seasonal Oceans. Seasonal Oceans are inhabited by a group of animals with a hard, water containing, outer shell. They look superficially similar to giant pill bugs, and burrow into the ground during the summer and winter. Called clickers, due the sound they make when they are dug up, these animals have a hybrid respiratory system. While submerged, they can extend long, feathery gills. While underground, these gills are retracted, and they use a rudimentary lung to breathe through long, narrow tubes. Clickers are one of the few complex Tehnian animals that live longer than a year. They will lay their eggs underground, just before beginning hibernation. The eggs hatch one season later, resulting in two batches of young. One hatches during the spring, and the other during the fall. Clickers reach sexual maturity after 2 years, and have been known to live up to 12. After this, I might do a post on the life that becomes active during the winter on land. [EDIT] I just read a paper on the climates of planets with axial tilt. It turns out that oceans would remain relatively temperate year round. I'll have to create a different set of life for the seas of Tehn.
  14. Here's an idea: Gleise 6893 is a small K0 star (number chosen because it's not actually in the catalogue) with a planet called Tehn orbiting in about the middle of the habitable zone. What makes Tehn interesting is that it has an axial tilt of 89 degrees! The surface is covered in oceans that rise and fall with the seasons. Since almost all land is in the arctic circles of this planet, most life has a seasonal life cycle. Most plants have a reproductive cycle that is dormant during the extreme months. They grow and store energy in tubers during the fall. The tubers have several antifreeze proteins in them, preventing them from dying. When spring rolls around, the tubers sprout and the plants begin a frenzy of growth and reproduction. Rather than using pollen and ova, these plants have gender-neutral gametes, which combine with each other freely. Flowering is used to attract "pollinators" which preform a similar job as Earth pollinators. Summer brings a dry heat that lasts for a quarter orbit, and the seeds these plants produce lie dormant underground, waiting to begin the cycle anew. There are many forms of animal on Tehn, but the most numerous are the Zyters. Zyters are a large group of flying animal with radial symmetry. They fly by pulsing their wings up and down in a motion that looks similar to a jellyfish in slow motion. Their wings are much faster, and go at up to 15 beats per second. They are similar in size and ecology to Earth insects, acting as pollinators, scavengers, and herbivores, eating the variety of plants during the spring and fall. A zyter is active in it's adult form only once a year, and are classified by whether that time is in the fall or the spring. Fall zyters lay their "eggs" inside the tubers produced by plants, and die during the winter. The "eggs" are actually single cells, which feed off the starches and stay warm inside of the tubers throughout the winter. When spring comes along, the "eggs" burrow out of the tubers, and grow into a water-sealed pupa. These wait out the summer and hatch into adults during the fall. Spring zyters, on the other hand, have cold resistant pupae, and live parasitically in seeds during the summer. There may be more to come, but I will need another stroke of inspiration.
  15. Looking a bit closer, I can see you're right. The fuel to oxidizer ratio is 11/9 rather than 9/11. It's a pretty quick fix, I just changed the oxidizer amount to 151.25.
  16. I've noticed a bit of problem while using this. I understand that it is a work in progress, so this is to be expected, but this seems a bit big. I'm playing a well modded career mode, and when I try to launch this, the Oxidizer drains much faster than it should, leaving at least a third of the liquid fuel. My list of mods is: - Chatterer - Community Resource Pack - Kerbal Attachment System - Kerbal Construction Time - Kerbal Engineer - Kerballoons - Kerbal Inventory System - KRASH - Final Frontiers - Procedural Parts - Strategia - Trajectories - Kerbal Alarm Clock - Sounding Rockets and this.
  17. Hey I'm making a part pack with a few 1.875 meter parts, including fuel tanks. However, I can't find anything on how much fuel to add for the volume. Is there a specific set of rules for this, or should I just go with what I feel is balanced? Same with mass. I'm sure there must be some rules for this.
  18. I agree that career needs to be overhauled. One of the ways I can think of to help with the starting crewed or uncrewed is have multiple start nodes on the tech tree. You could choose the one that has the parts you want and unlock the rest later. I don't think that the way science is received needs to be changed, though. It encourages you move on to bigger goals with the incentive to unlock new parts. With those new parts, you can go more places, and so on.
  19. Could the CSM from Apollo Soyuz test project have been used to boost Skylab's orbit? The inclinations were only off by about 1.7 degrees, and Apollo was meant to brake into lunar orbit.
  20. I know I could build one, but I don't really like the aesthetics of a few sepatrons and cubic octagonal struts.
  21. I like to use LES's to save my kerbals in case of disaster, but there none in the stock game for Mk1 pods. I know that some people don't like to use Launch Escape Systems, but there's one for the Mk 1-2 already. Thoughts?
  22. Does this still work in 1.1? I'll be away from my computer for a few days, so I can't test it myself. [EDIT:] It seems to have the same issues as in 1.0.5, namely the sinking. I've been trying to work on some fixes, but I don't have any experience. Help would be appreciated!
  23. It depends on the size, propellants, the altitude/speed you want it to reach. You'll need more details to calculate.
  24. The Boeing proposal used a crasher stage, using a modified Delta Cryogenic Second Stage. However, the architecture would require a space station at L1 or L2.
  25. The Boeing proposal would work, but it requires a station at L1 or L2. Would NASA realistically manage to get that funded? Also, the SLS 3rd stage in the proposal is the same as the Block 1 stage, right?
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