starcaptain

I'm quite confident smart fellows will use this as an excuse to build a much better one somewhere. I will also sidestep the politics of Puerto Rico.

gottem ...wait For a second I thought you were talking about girlfriends. I would think that a smaller reactor uses less material to build and thus costs less. But then again I'm not even an armchair layperson when it comes to fusion power. I'm like a know-nothing schlub when it comes to fusion power.

There's a company in Canada called General Fusion which is developing a very practical-sounding Magnetic Targeted Fusion design. The fusion reaction is driven by literally pounding a pressure vessel with synchronized high-powered pistons. Heat is extracted by surrounding the reaction in a bubble of liquid lead-lithium (orange, in the diagram). The liquid is suspended against the walls by using a round cage-like agitator (not shown) which stirs the liquid and keeps it rotating at speed. The liquid metal is also vented out of the pressure vessel and used as the heat-transfer medium for extracting energy. Because it's lead, it's great at absorbing neutron radiation. Because it's pumped liquid, it's easy to replace and refresh. They market themselves to investments and research as "the fastest and most practical method" for commercial fusion power. They're currently in the process of designing a demonstration plant. Though not unlike most of its competitors, it's a pretty large reactor. In the picture here, you can see how big these pistons are.

There's a hypothetical type of stellar body called a Thorne-Zytkow Object (TZO) which is a red giant or supergiant that collided with a neutron star, and thus has a neutron star at its core. Over time, a TZO is expected to decay into either a lone neutron star of some kind, or a black hole, as the neutron star inside eats the larger star. At the interface between the neutron star and the larger star's core, unusual and difficult-to-describe nuclear processes may occur. There are about 6 objects known that are candidates to be TZOs. A TZO is similar to but not the same as a Quasi-star; a supermassive star with a black hole at its core. The immense rate of mass consumption by the black hole on the inside generates radiation and heat sufficient to push back out against the force of gravity and maintain the general appearance of a star, even though it has no nuclear fusion processes going on. Quasi-stars are distinct because of their unusual immense size and brightness: they may outclass the largest known hypergiant stars by a factor of 2 or more. There are no known candidates of what may be Quasi-stars. It is most likely that they existed in the Earlier universe, as they would exist alongside metal-poor Population-III stars.

In an interesting and possibly ironic comparison, software made to run in space is one of the most rigorously bug-prevented realms of all development whatsoever. The Operating System for the Space Shuttle is emblematic of this: designed to run extremely fast, extremely efficient, and run without errors as close to 'never' as possible, and be able to check itself for cosmic ray corruption in real time, three layers deep. It only had ~500000 lines of code[1], and fewer than 30 errors in its entire history. Kerbal Space Program of any versions or sequels , as a video game, is likely going to be as buggy in the end as any other. It's a program about flying in space.

-9(+) but we're using Base11 now.

General Robert E. Lee: "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." --Gods and Generals (2003) ___________ General Lucian Truscott: "I do this job because I was trained to do it... you do it because you love it!" General George S. Patton: "Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. I love it. God help me, I love it so." --Patton (1970)

One thing I kind of have a hard time turning over in my brain is how construction could work. I imagine that making a model that behaves the same as deployable science parts is not hard, when it comes to the whole "take from canister, put in pocket, place on ground" thing. And I already speculated on the nature of how the mod would interpolate the placement of a bunch of deployed 'structural towers' and treat them as nodes for drawing the rails. Would it be too much to ask of players to make them construct in such a manner, where a Kerbal must place them on foot? Drive 200 meters. Exit construction rover Do you have structural towers? If no, go back to your base and get more Place a structural tower Get in construction rover Repeat Until you've covered all the ground from one base to another? The gameplay purpose of the mod would/should argue that such a tedious and specialized mission would be worth it. When it comes to the actual appearance of the monorail rolling stock (locomotive, cars, containers, etc) I would think they behave rather differently from the rest of the game's vehicular parts and would not be customizable unless you replaced their model assets within the mod folder.

Terminal velocity near the surface on Venus is only 11-12m/s (~40kph, ~25mph). This is about equivalent to falling 16 meters on Earth (50 ft), which is survivable but very likely to cause injury. You could probably decrease your speed significantly by something as simple as opening the sides of a jacket, or holding onto a free-flapping tarp. External temperatures make survivability a problem. Terminal velocity near the surface of Titan is only 9.6m/s (~34kph, ~21mph). This is about the fastest a person can sprint on Earth over level terrain. This fall is also about equivalent to falling 5 meters on Earth (16 ft), which can be survived without injury relatively easily, even unaided. A person wearing a wingsuit and flapping their arms would be able to sustain level flight, because the gravity is so low and pressure is so high. External temperatures are colder than liquid nitrogen, so you'll probably want to bring a jacket or something. (Hey: being too cold is a lot easier to fix than being too hot.)

Let's see you write Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

It was wireless distribution but also indirect and globally wasteful. His idea of wireless power was to pump the ionosphere full of high (i.e. mindbogglingly dangerous) levels of voltage, which then anyone could just tap down using a receiver. It is almost certain that this scheme would have been very inefficient, increased the amount of lightning in weather, and would have implications for spacecraft operations.

In the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Adolf Hitler has a secret base on the surface of Venus. Not only are there routine missions to and from this base, but it is possible to navigate on the surface using a fabric spacesuit that has zippers. [snip]

The small rockets used to push the vehicle forward during staging, to ensure the fuel in the next stage gathers near the bottom, are called Ullage Motors. Ullage is a term that comes from winemaking; it is the name for the air bubble volume in a barrel or bottle that is not filled with wine. Ullage motors ensure the ullage is away from the fuel intake pipes. Most players game the system when it comes to this function: since KSP does not simulate fuel volume physics inside parts, ullage is not necessary. However, sometimes motors are required to ensure jettisoned stages are clear of the rest of the vehicle. So rockets positioned like ullage motors typically push the spent stage away, instead of the next stage forwards.

A rogue planet would be a very interesting challenge indeed. It probably has lots of useful science or resources that are harder to access other places, but its gravity well makes it hard to reach (like landing a jet on the top of a baseball), and once you get there, there's effectively no light. The moons of such a world would be very very interesting. However I think if black holes are not implemented, the next best things should be: Neutron stars, white dwarfs, or...

He who laughs last...

This has already been asked before in interviews and said to be not the case with KSP2. Each celestial body will be created with specific attention paid into making them like unique puzzles to solve, with their own interrelated environmental challenges. So each world is more like a level, with its own gameplay design. Think for example about the navigational challenges of the Eve system vs. the Jool system. Achieving this sorts of distinctiveness is quite intentional, and procedural generation of these sorts of natural features is impractically difficult. That said, the surface level features and details themselves (such as rocks, trees and minutia of the texture) are almost certainly going to be procedurally generated. The levels' planetary-level map and biomes, will not.

I had a mad idea last night. If this isn't fiesable for the game, I sure hope it will be for a mod: Monorails. Inspired by Lego Space sets, perhaps surface-based trade routes between different colonies on the same world could be strengthened by building a monorail. Gameplay-wise Monorails would be faster, deliver more resources and cost less to operate than regular surface trade route missions, but require a major investment of time to build at the outset. I've included pictures to show what I mean. Here is a representative colony on some planet/moon, with the vehicle assembly building and some other attached modules. The red building is a buildable module that serves as a kerbal passenger station and freight loading depot. As far as trade routes are concerned, this building is what's functioning in the player's economy. Everything else is just cosmetic decoration for their surface base(s). At the station, the player can easily adjust the frequency of train departures and arrivals to match their economic needs or whatever. Or perhaps just put a dial that says "send a passenger train every 15 minutes". Forgive the crudity of these models, it's all simple illustration. Yellow indicates track, which is procedural generated (see below). Red towers are the support columns for the track, and these are the things which cost the aforementioned time to build. They're plopped on the surface like Deployable experiments. Once deployed, they cannot be moved or affected by outside forces and behave like invincible structures. Between the center-points of the deployed tower structures, a virtual curve is interpolated. A straight line is virtually drawn which points to the previous tower (cyan). This straight line drives the control points of some kind of spline (blue). This spline then is offset for Left and Right track paths (black). The track is then procedurally generated along the virtual path (orange, shown above). This also becomes the governing path of where the train vehicle goes, which is then animated when a train is sent to or from a station. No, I'm not trying to imagine KSP2 as a game that competes with Surviving Mars or Per Aspera or Cities Skylines. It just occurred to me and I thought I'd share. Again, if nothing else, it's a novel idea for a mod.

Try making a rice pilaf. Pilaf is basically making rice vanilla, but with soup stock instead of water. For added goodness, fry up some veggies first, integrate well with the broth, then take an appropriate amount of the veggie/broth mix to use for the liquid to make the rice. Or meat too if you're into it. Here's a recipe from Canadian Living Magazine: 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 cup chopped carrots 1/2 onion chopped 1 clove garlic minced 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin optional 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 cup long grain rice (such as basmati) 2 cups low-sodium chicken stock 1 cup frozen peas 1 cup thinly sliced broccoli floret 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley In large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat; cook carrots, onion, garlic, cumin and pepper until onion is softened, about 3 minutes. Add rice; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Stir in stock and bring to boil; reduce heat, cover and simmer until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed, 12 to 15 minutes. (If using brown rice, leave heat on low and simmer for 40-60 minutes). Add peas, broccoli and parsley; toss with fork. Cover; let stand for 5 minutes. Makes 4 servings. Optional options: carrots, celery (cook at the same time as onions); spinach (cook around the same time as the broccoli, until wilted).

Let's speculate! Let's imagine each planetary system, or moon system is its own puzzle, akin to a level in of itself. KSP1 has 16 celestial bodies (5 planets, 2 dwarfs, 9 moons, excluding the star Kerbol). If they wanted to have ~100 planets and moons to explore, then there may be 10 visitable stellar objects. There are 52 visible stars within 4 parsecs (13.05 lightyears) of Sol. Assume that the maximum velocity of a given spacecraft is 0.990c, and that timewarp still has the same scale delimiters as KSP1: 100 000x is maximum timewarp, giving a Kerbin year at 92 sec/year. At this sort of scale, it would take about 20 minutes running at maximum timewarp and maximum theoretical speed (ignoring acceleration phases) to travel from the center of this imagined world, to the most extreme edge. It would take 40 minutes to go from extreme edge to opposite extreme edge. Even if the game is scaled down in terms of distance or number of stars, 500 places to visit sounds like a lot and 'only 50' seems like very few. Although we have no evidence to do so, I think it is reasonable to assume the game will be within these sorts of bounds. Map from Atomic Rockets, retrieved 2020-11-14

Well a polynomial forecast is better than a linear one. Also, I wanted to put citations and graphically represent the current layout of predicted release dates in one place.

Predicted release date, according to the numbers. Polynomial trendline: y = -0.5909x² + 2389.55x - 2413583.81 The polynomial trendline predicts somewhere in mid-2022 if the actual range of "in the year 2022" is assumed to be within the first three months of 2022. Points: 1 [1] "Spring 2020"; stated 2019-08-19 2 [2] "Fiscal Year 2021" (1 April 2020 - 31 March 2021); stated 2019-11-07 3 [3] "Fall 2021"; stated 2020-05-20 4 [4] "In 2022"; stated 2020-11-05 References: [1] Kerbal Space Program 2 Announced, Savage, https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-2-announced/ , Retrieved 2020-11-13 [2] Kerbal Space Program 2 is delayed, Chalk, https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-2-is-delayed/ , Retrieved 2020-11-13 [3] Kerbal Space Program 2 has been delayed to fall 2021, Lee, https://www.polygon.com/2020/5/20/21265482/kerbal-space-program-2-delayed-2021 , Retrieved 2020-11-13 [4] Kerbal Space Program 2 to be released in 2022 [Discussion Thread], UomoCapra, https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/197935, Retrieved 2020-11-13

Race to the mun, then tank duels on the moon obviously. Gotta show Wargaming who's boss. I mean look at this joke:

Let's look at a specific example. This is one of the screenies of a base on a Mun-like object. Centered in the scene is what appears to be the heart of any colony mission, a self-contained, vacuum-proof, iron-enriched, allegedly portable Exospheric Vehicle Assembly Building. (EVAB?) This building may be invariant apart from color scheme, from level to level. Attached to it at each of its four sides are "stuff", which each look like they're coming from preset attachment nodes, not unlike the Multi-Point Connector hub. Out one side are solar panels. They're such simple constructions that I wonder if they're click-and-drag and procedural generated. Out another side are a handful of modules that I bet are part of the first tech epoch, being roughly analogous to our current level of technology in the real world: with metal tanks and balloonified habitation modules. Or maybe the white things are rigid tanks covered with insulation. Or giant marshmallows. Anything is possible. Everything is suspended above the ground by little stilts. These stilts are just some sufficient length downwards so that you can't see their bottoms after they intersect the surface. I get Pthigrivi's issue: the little supporting stilts should have a few different variants (and perhaps the exterior of some modules and the EVAB too) depending on surface gravity (and/or external pressure). I personally am wondering to what degree we can fiddle with things like rotation or alignment of modules: is everything going to be hard limited to nodes and 90º points of contact, or will we have complete rotation and translation offset tools like in the vehicle editor, where people can build enormously sophisticated facilties that fit inside a single tiny box because of abusing part intersections. Or perhaps we'll have something in-between that's more free than 90º hard points, but less than full 6-axis freedom. I wonder also if space station colony editors function the same as base editors.

Well you've probably disagreed with one another or said something that rubbed the other the wrong way. What I'm talking about is ensuring those kinds of things are addressed: ignoring relation problems or pretending they don't exist are not solutions.

Does this count?