Kerbart

I vaguely remember seeing on youtube that creating artificial gravity this way only works with vehicles, but not with Kerbals for some reason. But I might be wrong.

In the past, Squad had stated that once 1.0 was released the game was finished and development would halt. Now, obviously, they've backed away from that claim, but I think there's still a lingering feeling that not too many updates will appear once 1.0 hits the shelves. So you'd rather want 1.0 to be as good as can be, and not a half-baked product still in development. And with so many new features to be added it is going to be a half-baked product. Second, in a world where many early access games disappointed or never came to full development, KSP is a shining example of "early access done right" and is getting a good amount of attention in the gaming world. Going 1.0 is the moment where major gaming sites (and magazines. do they still exist?) will review the game. You can only do that once. Most of us rather see KSP get a glorious A++ review than a "B-, it has potential but many features need work and are badly implemented" review. A better review means more sales, and more room for further development. Third, there's a whole bunch of features that's going to be in the 1.0 release that were not in the beta version. Well, you have a point there, that's what a beta is for, to test out those new features. Well, not really. That's what an Alpha version is for. In Beta you're supposed to stop adding features and focus on plugging bugs. And Squad's not even doing that. It's like taking a road trip from Chicago to New York. Most of the trip has gone amazing. But passing the New Jersey state line (always a bad omen) your driver whips out a bottle of Grey Goose and starts drinking heavily while driving. "Hey, if we crash right now we've come a long way, I'm still happy with where we are!" True, but seeing bad behavior at this point is still a reason for concern. Especially with the finish line in sight.

When you're working yourself to the bone to get the "gold 1.0" release out you're going to focus on what is essential, everything else will be left out. The real problem here is rushing the 1.0 version. Fairings should have been a .91 release. Fixing the bugs we're going to find with the fairings a .92 release. Adding features that we, the community, consider "lacking" a .93 release. And THEN and ONLY THEN when fairings are solidly in play, the .95 release would be having the long awaited atmospheric model, and you'd need another two or three releases to tweak it and to have the fairings interact with it nicely. In parallel, and along the same path, you'd be introducing heat shields. First cosmetic, but get the 'procedural heat shields' right and once that's in play introduce re-entry heat (and consequences) in .95 Same for the buildings, deep space fueling, career overhaul, etc. You would want to have a handful of version so by the time 1.0 comes out the game is "perfect" I really, really think that 99% of the people on this forum would have no problems at all with a 1.0 version whose "modest" features are that all the bugs have been squashed, as that would have been an epic achievement. And THEN Squad can focus on adding features like Infernal Robotics, KAS, Life Support and other cool stuff to new releases updates. Where I now think we're going to see a pretty long procession from 1.0 to 1.13 of bug fixes.

I think the OP was clearly mentioning that their capsule remained intact. I agree, sheer luck -- or just not trying hard enough!

At the same time, and I'll admit this may be a cynical or cold-hearted approach, if this means one crash per x-flights replacing five crashes per x-flights due to pilot error, you'd still be ahead of the game. If human pilots were behaving perfectly we wouldn't be having this discussion either. As much as we think technology advances by revolution, and in the grand scheme of things it does, the actual process is always, always evolutionary. My prediction is that you will see certain airports that will become certified for robotic flight, and there will be very stringent rules for that, not just for the airports but also for the airplanes and the robots involved (mechjeb need not apply). But there's advantages for both as you can probably squeeze more slots in a day. Over time you'll see more airports and more airplanes using robotic flight, and large airports like Atlanta, LAX, JFK, etc will probably become robot-only airports. And 100 years from now we'll be wondering why there was such a resistance against it, just like we laugh now over the concerns of the early steam trains that would go so fast that passengers would pass out because of the lack of air at those speeds.

Well, they're trying to implement a boatload of new features, that should have gone into versions .91, .92, .93, .94, .95 and .96 in a gold release version that really should just be focusing on removing that last few bugs (the ones that weren't squashed in said versions .91, .92, .93, .94 ,.95 and .96)

I take offense to that statement. 0.91. At best.

That's way too complicated. Just put a little pinwheel on the top of your roof and let it generate all the electricity you need! Too small, you say? Aaah, now we're getting to the core of the problem with your solution! Related, you're just going to replace one problem with another. Imagine we do have unlimited access to clean energy. What are we going to do with the residual heat all these sources are going to produce for us?

KSP? Getting rid of explosions is "fixing" it? You, sir, are sick in the head!

It would be easy to dismiss Oculus rift based on existing technology. But then again, look at how "Doom" was in 1995 on DX2 and where we are now with Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. I would not be surprised that there will be a time, and probably sooner than we'd think, that virtual reality goggles can provide the visual effect of sitting in a real cockpitâ€â€if not life-like, than at least to a level that is acceptable enough for immersion. The question then becomes if what those goggles are lacking compared to a "hydraulic cockpit" (vibrations, acceleration, pushed to the left or right when turning without proper banking, etc) can be compensated by what the goggles can offer that the simulated cockpit cannot. I'm not a pilot so I have no clue what would be relevant, but let's for argument sake say "Santa Claus sticking to your windshield" (which maybe a hydraulic simulator can show pretty convincingly as well, but let's assume it cannot), and how relevant would that be for the simulation? I can see that hydraulic simulators can offer things like real smoke (smelling like burnt kerosene) filling the cockpit, etc, but I can also see how many of those things can be done with really good VR goggles (not the oculus rift at this point, clearly). On the flipside, one set of goggles can simulate *any* cockpit, from a customer point of view that is very attractive. Would it be a threat for the company you work at? At this point I think the bigger threat is the question if we have pilots in the future in the first place, and not robots steering the aircraft. In similar fashion the bigger threat those VR goggles might offer is not that it could replace the hydraulic cockpit, but that it negates the need for flying for many. Business travel makes up a large portion of the airline industry, and I can have a quality meeting with my colleagues without spending $2,000 for flying & hotels and spending two uncomfortable days in airports and aircrafts then the airlines would have to cut down a good portion of their business, shrinking the market for simulating cockpits as well.

It's hard to give a polite response when the question is very opiniated and condescending. Steam's convenient if you have many things on steam. I can replicate games among multiple PC's without have to worry about licensing issues, entering activation codes, etc. And I do have perfect control over my KSP -- since what I play is not the Steam version but a copy that lives somewhere else on my hard disk. I just don't have to download the latest version as I get it automatically, without having to do anything for it. That's what computers are for. Do things for you.

I'm not sure what the picture that I'm looking at is supposed to mean but if those lines are proportional to the velocity of the planets you have a bigger problem than figuring out what value G should be. The velocities should be decreasing with the distance to the sun, not increasing.

You mean a modern PC? The ones that rival a 1980s Cray supercomputer in calculating power? Yeah, it's hard to believe they can do the calculations, that Newton did with pen and paper, fast enough...

Without the intention of derailing the thread but your life will be a lot easier if you store velocities and positions through a vector class that takes care of all the drudgery of adding vectors together and multiplying them with scalars. First of all you won't have all the .x .y clutter and second of all it will make it easier when you decide to switch from two to three dimensions. I would not be shocked if the language of your choice has such class somewhere in a standard library for starters.

Antimatter, just like in Larry Niven's story flatlander.

What I remember from Elite is that you had to make hundreds of flights to make any money. Of course there was plenty of action within those flights but that's with a highly simplified "battlestar galactica" flight model. It will be a challenge to come up with an economic model that requires fewer flights (to prevent the game from getting grindy) without opening up the opportunity to "use loopholes" and rake in millions in ways that weren't intended, or by running one particular kind of mission. I can see the potential though. The Space Station Contract Pack is taking things in the direction I'd like to see, giving you the ability to make serious money without grinding too much and at the same time keep the challenges fun.

In space is not the issue. The public has an issue with the process of getting it into space, aka "launch" This may seem haggling over semantics but it's not. If you can launch the dry reactor in a normal way, and send up the fuel in an extra secure launch (likely with the director of NASA and the CEO of the nuclear contractor on board, to make sure they don't say they take safety seriously, but they actualy do) you could deal with that. After that, not too many* people will be worried if the reactor has a meltdown halfway between mars and earth (until at least they find out that without the injection burn around mars the vessel *will* eventually meet up with earth again, I assume) * Excluding the obvious one like crew, family of crew, nasa directors, etc.

These handy little devices allow you to make any calculation you want.

In fairness the OP mentioned boot time and nothing else. That's where the ram disk will fly. Of course you will have to copy content TO the ramdrive but modern ramdrive drivers can take care of those little details.

When you watch "Das Boot" (and many other submarine war movies I guess) you'll see that for emergency dives most crew had to collect at the front of the ship to help it dive. More related to the topic, I know that the Concorde pumped full between the various tanks as a way to trim the airplaine. Moving passengers around to counter actions by the pilot -- I doubt that's going to work in a jetliner. Passengers weigh not that much. And even if you succeed, you can't control roll that way, so the pilot would simply bank into a 90° turn and crash the plane that way.

I doubt that, with the same specifications, it would be commercially viable, which is what "a company" suggests to be a crucial condition for such a venture.

I dare say that the volatility of helium is likely a lot less that you're suggesting here.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this. How could math be wrong? Can you give an example of something (that we know is right, but for arguments sake let's assume it's not) that is wrong? Would you mean something elemental like 3 + 4 = 7? Or something a bit more advanced like f(x) = 2x3 + 5x2 -3x + 5; f'(x) = 6x2 + 10x - 3? Or do you mean something like the Poincaré conjecture? (Which, being a conjecture, is something mathematicians do not have proof for, but assume it's true) Math is the only science where "hard proof" is really, really, really hard proof. Not as in "beyond reasonable doubt" but as in "without doubt". So I have a hard time imagining it would be wrong.

But there is on the land side. In many cases the customer can choose between Rail Combined or Truck Only, with the latter being the faster option. And I can assure you that rarely ever that option is executed where there exists a choice between rail/truck and truck only. Time critically is like being pregnant: either it's time critical, or it's not. There is no little ground, as there is not "little bit pregnant." And if it's not time critical it will be shipped with the cheapest mode the market has to offer. There are the occasional shipments that need a little bit of rushing (to make a vessel cutoff, or to make it to the store before christmas, etc) without the need for extremely expensive (and high speed) jet transport but those are far and in between. That's the market the aeroships would operate in. If I extrapolate how many times truck only is chosen on rail/truck corridors, I'd say that is an extremely small market and highly seasonal as well.

Disclosure: I work for a shipping company. Obviously, I'm biassed. With that out of the way, if there were a "most efficient" way of shipping, the market would have decided to use that mode. The fact that "the market" doesn't, is an indication that there really isn't. For cost per ton it's hard to beat deep ocean vessels. But indeed, you're limited to the ports you can use. In fact, the most efficient (=largest) vessels cannot enter ports in the US because the water isn't deep enough, and even if it is, the gantry cranes aren't large enough to handle modern 15000+ TEU vessels. Which brings me to a second point: size. If you're not familiar with them it's hard to appreciate the actual size of large container ships. Theoretically it will take three of our largest ships, only three, to provide everyone in the USA with a pair of sneakers. Boxed. Vessels unload in the US and Europe on a daily basis. It's an illusion those transportation needs can be served by airships. Suppose you could but 500 containers on such an airship, and that is a ridiculous optimistic assumption. To compete with a moderate sized post-panamax vessel, of say, 8000 TEU (a very common size and up to the late nineties the largest container ships in the world, but now considered "medium") you'd have to make 16 flights per day. Assuming it takes 5 days to fly from China to the US, you'd need 160 of them for a sustained daily service (trust me, i can do math. They need to fly back, too). Of course things get more complicated because you wouldn't fly them to a single large airport, you'd have delivery to every city. The sky would be covered with all these airships. People would complain! As mentioned before, each transport mode has its strengths and weaknesses. Trucks can deliver anywhere, but trucking is freakishly expensive. Trains are a lot cheaper, but slower, and don't go everywhere. So where cost is the primary concern, you'll see ship-train-truck. And as mentioned before, the intermodal container makes that possible and has changed the world in more ways than we're usually aware of (thank you, Malcolm McLean). Sometimes speed is important. Flowers, fresh seafood, parcels... That's where airplanes come in. If speed, at any cost, is important, the jet reigns supreme. That leaves the zeppelin based solutions in an odd spot. They are too slow for perishable goods. They offer a speed advantage over intermodal transport. But the price elasticity for non-time critical freight is not very proportional; I can assure you that nobody is willing to pay twice as much for twice the speed. Maybe 10% at best. They will claim they are, but when push comes to shove the cheapest price will get the freight. Which means you'll get maybe $2000 for airlifting that container from Shanghai to Kalamazoo, Michigan (remember city-to-city without intermodal is the selling point of these airvessels). With maybe ten containers on board. That's $20,000 revenue. While you're flying for ten days (5 to Shanghai, and 5 back -- you cannot base a service on one-way traffic). So you're operating cost better be less than $2,000 per day or you go bankrupt. What does $2,000 get you? Well, you will need at least a 4-head crew. Two pilots to fly the ship (the FAA is amazingly uncool with letting one pilot fly by himself) and since you're flying 5 days non-stop they'll need to rest. Let's assume you can pay them $25 per hour and you only pay them for the shifts they work (I'd love to see the union negotiations. Remember you need a lot of these ships so yes, the pilots are going to be unionized. More bad news...) -- that's 25 × 4 × 12 = $1,200 per day on labor. That leaves you with $800 per day for running cost. Now let's say that maintenance & repair will cost you a friendly $50 on a daily average. If you've ever seen the price of aeronautical equipment you'll know that is really lowballing it, but let's assume. And another $50 per day on average for things like landing rights, permits, training, ground crew, offices, sales, etc. Good luck with that, but let's amuse our selves. That leaves you with $700 per day available for depreciation, or around $250,000 per year. And lets say that you write off your airlifter after 20 years. Which, with all this based on pretty much non-stop service, sounds pretty reasonable to me, but let's be even more optimistic and assume it still has 50% of the new value at that point (who wants to fly a rig that has probably literally been flown into the ground. That means that 50% of the new value was $5,000,000. I don't think that it is likely that an airlifter with a ten-container capacity (let's put the payload at a maximum of 200 tons) will be sold new for only $10,000,000. I'm sure there's a niche market for it but I simply don't see how it could compete with current modes of transportation. DISCLAIMER: there's a lot of assumptions in these numbers, but I don't think that they are THAT far off -- if anything I think I'm erring on the optimistic side.