pyrosheep

How do plans for increasing the number of satellites in orbit get account for space debris/Kessler effect? Or is this problem just overblown?

To put this into context, the Apollo program cost around 150 billion in 2016 dollars.

There is Intelligent life in the universe, however it doesn't spread, because if you have the technology required for successful Interstellar migration, you probably also have the technology required to create virtual universes that are much more fun to live in.

It depends what you mean by dodging. If you mean movie style dodging where the missile rocket motor is burning, the fighter does a sharp jink and the missile flies right by (and sometimes turns back to attack the fighter again -Shudders-), then you are right, that doesn't happen these days, a missile with energy is way more manoeuvrable than a fighter Aircraft (generally 4 times more manoeuvrable) and against missiles 00s onward countermeasures like chaff and flares generally do squat. However missiles are still limited by drag and deltaV (and gravity to a lesser extent). A missile's maximum range is generally given for a specific specific situation where the attacking and defending aircraft are flying head on at each other at high speed and high altitude. In this scenario the missile and the defending fighter are going towards each other so the distance the defending fighter travels in the time it takes for the missile to get there adds to the missiles range; if that fighter simply turns sideways or around, after the missile is fired, it will remove that added range and the missile will fall short. This is why missiles have NEZ (no escape zones), a range where even if the fighter turns around completely, going 'cold', the missile will still reach it. There are other ways to reduce the effectiveness of missiles as well: while they can turn hard when they have energy, they use up energy very fast when turning. Because of their limited deltaV a missile can only do so much turning before it runs out of energy completely and essentially becomes a lawn dart; fighters can use this by forcing the missile to make many maneuvers on it's way to the target and use up it's energy, so that if it gets there, the missile has low energy and the fighter can dodge it with an appropriate maneuver. Missiles have lead guidance, so if the fighter turns one way and then the other (called cranking), soon after the missile is launched, it forces the missile to predicatively aim ahead of the fighter back and forth causing it to lose allot of energy, as well as reducing the closure rate of the defending fighter to the missile. Missiles also have more drag at lower altitudes so it can sometimes be a good idea for the fighter pilot to dive to reduce the missile's range (at high mach drag matters more than gravity for the missile's energy), this also works well with Notching, a technique for confusing radars that rely on Doppler shift to disern targets from ground clutter (basically, when a something is moving towards or away from you relative to the ground, the radar return is doppler shifted relative to the ground, however, if that thing moves at the same speed relative to the ground the doppler shift becomes the same as the ground and it can disappear into the ground clutter - so if pilots fly with the enemy radar direction normal to their velocity vector with the ground behind them, they can break a lock-), i'm not sure how well this works with modern AESA radars though. Jamming and stealth generally don't do much for losing missiles, the whole point of them is to prevent getting detected/prevent a launch solution in the first place.

That was a nail biter. Looking forwards to BAD-T 3 :).

Fun fights to watch . i think i have some issues with ground avoidance though , it would be awesome if that could be improved somehow.

If anyone wants to see my craft they are welcome to now that the compition is well under way. https://www.dropbox.com/s/6oqgkrgc0tminmj/F-1%20Cobra%20A.craft?dl=0

That was my point though, population growth is slowing down, hopefully technology can catch up and allow us to repay the environmental deficit. We are still finding ways to make farming more efficient and huge amounts of people today rely on farming methods that aren't efficient even by 1950s standards. I don't think that Population/Resource limitations aren't a big challenge, they are the biggest challenge. I just don't think it's an insurmountable barrier to human progress, let alone the end of humanity.

Mine and Pds 314 have one as well

There were some control surfaces that responded automatically to different flight conditions. Leading edge slats like on the Bf 109 Or La-5 These would deploy depending on the dynamic pressure (making control characteristics better at low speeds).

Yeah, I found out I could use the control surface AOA slider to make my flaps deploy in turns, giving stupendous lift and pretty mind boggling turn rates. I recommend trying it if you want to squeeze a better instantaneous turn out of your design. I would probably also put more ammo into my design; I'm quite paranoid that it will run out.

we can't change things now right?

I personally don't think so. Human population growth rate (as a percentage) has been falling since the 60s, developing nations are where you find rapid population growth, this is because improved access to healthcare, better sanitation and better nutrition allow more infants grow up and have children of their own; however once a nation develops further, growth rate falls, this is because adults (particularly women) have other things to pursue than raising a family, like higher education or a career and because they are better educated and understand that a large family isn't as useful in an Urban setting compared to a rural setting (easier access to contraceptives/family planning help as well obviously, but that's not strictly linked to development any more). Europe and North America (as well as parts of asia) show that once you reach a certain level of development, growth rate goes very low or negative, Asia in general as well as Central and South America are clearly not too far away from this area of low growth; Africa will be the area of high population growth this century since African countries are further behind in terms of development and therefore will have to go through the period of very high population growth ( a few already have; ie: Kenya, Nigeria, South africa, Zimbabwe ect.) Here are the forecasts for population until 2050. As you can see the trend is for population growth to slow down quite a bit; if we extrapolate, it looks as if world population will plateau at some point towards the end of the century, somewhere around 10 or 11 billion. This means that High population will be a big challenge this century, but then after that it should mostly stop being a problem.

yes, it's just addressing that not having coal, although definitely not ideal, shouldn't stop you from being able to make steam engines.

You can basically use anything that burns hot enough to boil water to run a steam engine, people mostly used coal because it has better energy density than wood. In places were wood was much cheaper than coal, wood was used instead of coal. This steam engine used wood as you can tell from it's spark arresting funnel.