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After my new friends and I checked out the Memphis Belle II at the Air Force Museum two weekends ago, I suggested that we stop by the WWII Gallery to admire the original namesake. The museum was only a few minutes away from closing, so we had to move fast; if we could, we would have ran the whole way. And now, ladies and gentlemen, here comes a war hero straight out of Memphis. The most iconic heavy bomber of WWII, get your tailguns ready for the B-17 Flying Fortress. Historic photograph from the later years of the Second Imperial Wars. Here we see one of many B-17s on its way to destroy a Heinkelian industrial complex. Before we continue with the demonstration flight, here are some more details on what the B-17 was used for. Man, that was long. Anyway, on to the test cruise. The B-17 Flying Fortress on display in the SPH. I began with modifying the 2.5-m Cockpit to have a longer, wider nose. To mimic the gunner/bombardier window, I added another small fairing and made them orange since they were the closest to in-game window colors. Although the main control module is a Mk1-3 Command Pod encased inside the cockpit piece (along with a RC-001S Remote Guidance Unit, which was added later), I added a Mk2 Lander Can in rover mode on the top for decoration. During the test cruise, after I tried getting a cockpit shot (even with MJ autopilot on), the plane lost control and started nosediving. To correct this, I set the control point to Forward. The plane shouldn’t take the lander can as the master control module, but it shouldn’t be a big deal if it does. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a 2.5-m cargo bay long enough to serve as a bomb bay. The stock service bay wouldn’t suffice since both ends opened up. So, I took the elevator bay from my C-54 Skymaster replica, removed the elevator itself, copied the bay itself, and put it in the middle of the fuselage. On @swjr-swis‘s advice, I raised the wings’ angle of incidence by 5 degrees. This helped me out a lot when it came to the plane’s range. For this large plane’s engines, I kept the motor size and output at 100% BUT I set the main throttle torque limit to 1%. The cargo bay has a lot of parachutes, repair kits, and lights. More than enough to evacuate the plane’s crew in a worst-case scenario and, if possible, get the plane fixed while setting up camp. Not that such an event happened often. This plane has (mock) turrets set up at: the nose the top, right behind the Mk2 Lander Can hatch the belly, right behind the wings both sides of the fuselage, near the back the tip of the tail Picture of the B-17F known as the Memphis Belle on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, OH. This particular plane, which was on loan from the Air Force to the city of Memphis, TN, was relocated to the Museum in 2005. Years of restoration later, it was put on public display in May 2018. Photograph taken by me 4/9/2022. Below are the operating instructions for the B-17 replica. I jotted them down after I tried a consistent procedure on how to get to a good cruising altitude since my last few tests were all over the place. If you want the best cruise experience, PAY ATTENTION. Cockpit shot from the lander can during the test cruise. At first, just one second viewing out the window and the MJ aircraft autopilot would mess up and cause the plane to point downward and lose altitude. It took a while to get it back to cruise, which cost quite a bit of fuel - and, by extension, kilometers of range. I then turned off the autopilot for a few seconds to get this shot. I still lost a bit of altitude, albeit not nearly as much as I would have if it was on. After that cruise, I set the control point of the lander can to Forward. Photo of the Baikerbanur Bombshell, which had recently been restored to airworthiness, flying over some mountains. Another beautiful color shot of the B-17 flying. The skies over Kerbin yesterday were peaceful and quiet during this test cruise, but it would not last. At least in my mind, I was over Germany in 1945 with enemies from all directions shooting at me. It had been over half a year since Joe, our squadron's in-flight mechanic, died over the beaches of Normandy. Tom, Frank, and I had to be extra careful as we pushed further into Europe since we didn't have him to repair our planes anymore. We had already liberated Paris and foiled the German counteroffensive at the Ardennes, but we knew better than to get overconfident. With him around, we could be on fire and one stray bullet away from going down and he'd fix us up good as new in seconds. That's how good he was. This particular mission was a surprise for us. We were used to escorting bombers in our own fighters, and now all three of us were crammed in one bomber. Along with dozens of other B-17s, our task was to bomb German factories and supply lines along the Ruhr Valley. I don't know why our squadron wasn't assigned to the fighter escort since we had already proven ourselves more than capable of that many times, but I'm guessing that the higher-ups needed as many available airmen as possible to man the bombers and we got selected to fill that quota. Another surprise was the inconsistency on who was piloting our bomber. More specifically, Tom took the stick while between factories while I was in charge when we were bombing them. At least Frank was consistent and stayed at (one of) the turrets the entire time. While Tom was flying, German fighters were surrounding us from all sides. I had to switch turrets depending on who was chewing up our plane that second. I remember getting more kills from the belly and tail turrets than I did the top one, and I barely got anyone at the nose. Occasionally, Frank would complain that I stole his kill. I didn't really care at all, since our job was to keep the bomber safe long enough to blow up Germany's factories; tracking which gunner got how many kills did not matter. While I was flying, the B-17 had lousy maneuverability and such a low speed - and it didn't help that we were getting shot at by AA guns and artillery. Fortunately: their aim was so bad they make Imperial stormtroopers from Star Wars look like crack shots. each of the three industrial complexes we destroyed had their buildings arranged in such a way that we didn't have to do any tight turns to bomb our important targets. the B-17 was designed to take a lot of punishment. Of course, that was only if Frank and I did our jobs when the German fighters attacked. Over and over again, Tom told me, "Stay the course - it's the only chance we have of making it back." I understood he meant that we need to focus on the red targets or else we would have to turn around and go again - hence draining fuel (which was probably leaking thanks to enemy rounds in our fuel tank) and reducing our chances of returning to base. However, with the dozens of so other bombers with us, I'm sure anything we missed would have been leveled anyway. When we eventually reached Berlin, our bombers were dropping like flies and it was up to Tom, Frank, and I to save their tails - as usual. I swear, where did the Allies get their gunners? If we were manning one of those B-17s like we did in our last mission, we could have shot down most, if not all of, the German props sent after us. I wouldn't get my hopes up on fighting off the jets, though. Now that the childhood Blazing Angels story is over, back to the flak-free test cruise. The B-17 had barely made it over Kerbin’s north pole when had 30 fuel units left. That was when the pilot shut off the engines and began its slow final descent. It managed to glide almost 40 kilometers before touching down smoothly. This is quite a beautiful picture, actually. If I were more artistically inclined, I might actually make a painting out of this. The KSP replica's cruise performance stats, provided the ascent procedure was followed beforehand, were as follows: Altitude: 7.5 km (~24.6k ft; Class Alpha airspace) Velocity: 140 m/s (~313 mph) Will increase gradually over time, but then start to drop near the end. For now, this is a good start - and eventual finish. Blade Deployment Angle: 40 degrees Recommended Throttle: Ascent to altitude: 2/3 (66%) Cruise: 30% Expected Range: 1,000 km This plane glided for almost 40 km afterwards before touchdown in the latest test flight. A historic photograph of a B-17 stuck in the snow. This one was damaged in combat from a Heinkelian fighter’s bullets puncturing the fuel tanks. While that fighter was soon forced to break off the attack, the bomber however was unable to return to base after its bombing run. So, the pilot performed a smooth landing over Marxan territory and the crew set up camp during a snowstorm. They were eventually found by Marxan soldiers and, after a longer than usual waiting period, repatriated to Allied forces. Kerbal lore stories and Blazing Angels flashbacks in one post. This sure took forever to write. Anyway, thank you all for taking the time to read those. I'm sure they were quite interesting. If you have any such stories involving B-17s, either in videogames or IRL, I'd be glad to read about them. Replicas Remaining: 200 REST IN PEACE, JOE

My workplace has a habit of auctioning off old computers once every 3 years for dirt cheap, and my manager is willing to give me a system with an Intel i3 (6th gen), 1 TB HDD, 16GB Ram along with associated peripherals for like 2 dollars A new 1050 Ti will prolly set me back by 200 - 250 dollars.. I have a laptop with an Intel i5 (6th gen) and 8 GB ram. For the purpose of playing KSP, will my new acquisition be an upgrade or not?

Yep. The 5% reduction in workforce is costing them between 160 and 200 million. Part of that is 25 to 35 million in employee severance and related emplee costs. Nothing is free. Two sides to every story.

So, I'm currently working on a planet pack for KSP but on both terrestrial bodies I've added so far the ground is transparent when I'm within below ScaledSpace and PQS "fadeStart". The problem has been for two months now and I've tried multiple things that haven't worked. So if possible, I'd like your help regarding this situation. Here's some screenshots of the ground: And here are the config files: @Kopernicus:FOR[OPKNS] { Body { name = Verlod Debug { exportMesh = true update = true } cacheFile = OPKNS/Cache/Verlod.bin Template { name = Kerbin removeAllPQSMods = true removeOcean = true } Properties { displayName = #LOC_OPKNS_dspn_0002 description = #LOC_OPKNS_celDesc_0002 radius = 4137531 geeASL = 0.71 mass = 1.792E+24 rotates = True rotationPeriod = 66420 tidallyLocked = False isHomeWorld = True } Orbit { referenceBody = Sun color = 0.25, 0.4, 0.5, 1 inclination = 3.789227183 eccentricity = 0.022409 semiMajorAxis = 189989295803 longitudeOfAscendingNode = 47.3 argumentOfPeriapsis = 0.87 meanAnomalyAtEpoch = 0 epoch = 0 } Atmosphere { enabled = True oxygen = True altitude = 72000 adiabaticIndex = 1.40 atmosphereMolarMass = 0.02897 temperatureSeaLevel = 281 staticPressureASL = 1.10444E+02 temperatureCurve { key = 0 273 0.00000E+00 -5.35664E-03 key = 3547 254 -5.35664E-03 -7.41457E-03 key = 6649 231 -7.41457E-03 -6.03693E-03 key = 9465 214 -6.03693E-03 -2.26244E-03 key = 12117 208 -2.26244E-03 3.82409E-04 key = 14732 209 3.82409E-04 1.87829E-03 key = 17394 214 1.87829E-03 2.18579E-03 key = 20139 220 2.18579E-03 2.46566E-03 key = 22978 227 2.46566E-03 2.71370E-03 key = 25926 235 2.71370E-03 3.25415E-03 key = 28999 245 3.25415E-03 3.73367E-03 key = 32213 257 3.73367E-03 2.98418E-03 key = 35564 267 2.98418E-03 0.00000E+00 key = 38967 267 0.00000E+00 -3.61882E-03 key = 42283 255 -3.61882E-03 -3.47771E-03 key = 45446 244 -3.47771E-03 -3.31345E-03 key = 48464 234 -3.31345E-03 -3.46380E-03 key = 51351 224 -3.46380E-03 -3.24558E-03 key = 54124 215 -3.24558E-03 -2.61292E-03 key = 56803 208 -2.61292E-03 -2.30858E-03 key = 59402 202 -2.30858E-03 -2.37436E-03 key = 61929 196 -2.37436E-03 -2.02429E-03 key = 64399 191 -2.02429E-03 -1.23609E-03 key = 66826 188 -1.23609E-03 -4.15800E-04 key = 69231 187 -4.15800E-04 0.00000E+00 key = 72000 187 0.00000E+00 0.00000E+00 } temperatureSunMultCurve { key = 0 1.000 0.00000E+00 -9.27544E-05 key = 3547 0.671 -9.27544E-05 -1.33785E-04 key = 6649 0.256 -1.33785E-04 -1.30327E-04 key = 9465 -0.111 -1.30327E-04 -6.97587E-05 key = 12117 -0.296 -6.97587E-05 1.30019E-05 key = 14732 -0.262 1.30019E-05 4.54545E-05 key = 17394 -0.141 4.54545E-05 6.01093E-05 key = 20139 0.024 6.01093E-05 6.02325E-05 key = 22978 0.195 6.02325E-05 4.68114E-05 key = 25926 0.333 4.68114E-05 2.14774E-05 key = 28999 0.399 2.14774E-05 -9.95644E-06 key = 32213 0.367 -9.95644E-06 -3.07371E-05 key = 35564 0.264 -3.07371E-05 -4.17279E-05 key = 38967 0.122 -4.17279E-05 -4.40290E-05 key = 42283 -0.024 -4.40290E-05 -3.73064E-05 key = 45446 -0.142 -3.73064E-05 -1.88867E-05 key = 48464 -0.199 -1.88867E-05 3.11742E-06 key = 51351 -0.190 3.11742E-06 1.26217E-05 key = 54124 -0.155 1.26217E-05 1.97835E-05 key = 56803 -0.102 1.97835E-05 2.42401E-05 key = 59402 -0.039 2.42401E-05 2.69094E-05 key = 61929 0.029 2.69094E-05 2.59109E-05 key = 64399 0.093 2.59109E-05 2.26617E-05 key = 66826 0.148 2.26617E-05 1.58004E-05 key = 69231 0.186 1.58004E-05 5.05598E-06 key = 72000 0.200 5.05598E-06 0.00000E+00 } temperatureLatitudeBiasCurve { key = 0 8.48 0 0 key = 38 0 -0.4298 -0.4298 key = 90 -31.52 -0.6981 0 } temperatureLatitudeSunMultCurve { key = 0 17 0 0 key = 38 14.46 -0.1289 -0.1289 key = 90 5 -0.2094 0 } temperatureAxialSunBiasCurve { key = 0 8.47 0 -0.2035 key = 36 0 -0.2515 -0.2515 key = 126 -14.41 0 0 key = 216 0 0.2515 0.2515 key = 306 14.41 0 0 key = 360 8.47 -0.2035 0 } temperatureAxialSunMultCurve { key = 0 0 0 0 key = 38 0.5 0.02 0.02 key = 90 1 0 0 } temperatureEccentricityBiasCurve { key = 0 0 0 0 } pressureCurve { key = 0 1.10444E+02 0.00000E+00 -1.79290E-02 key = 3547 6.21074E+01 -1.09323E-02 -1.09323E-02 key = 6649 3.49255E+01 -6.84346E-03 -6.84346E-03 key = 9465 1.96401E+01 -4.19919E-03 -4.19919E-03 key = 12117 1.10444E+01 -2.44019E-03 -2.44019E-03 key = 14732 6.21074E+00 -1.36545E-03 -1.36545E-03 key = 17394 3.49255E+00 -7.45607E-04 -7.45607E-04 key = 20139 1.96401E+00 -4.06181E-04 -4.06181E-04 key = 22978 1.10444E+00 -2.20493E-04 -2.20493E-04 key = 25926 6.21074E-01 -1.19244E-04 -1.19244E-04 key = 28999 3.49255E-01 -6.42447E-05 -6.42447E-05 key = 32213 1.96401E-01 -3.44630E-05 -3.44630E-05 key = 35564 1.10444E-01 -1.87155E-05 -1.87155E-05 key = 38967 6.21074E-02 -1.05693E-05 -1.05693E-05 key = 42283 3.49255E-02 -6.23607E-06 -6.23607E-06 key = 45446 1.96401E-02 -3.67891E-06 -3.67891E-06 key = 48464 1.10444E-02 -2.16678E-06 -2.16678E-06 key = 51351 6.21074E-03 -1.27203E-06 -1.27203E-06 key = 54124 3.49255E-03 -7.42697E-07 -7.42697E-07 key = 56803 1.96401E-03 -4.31357E-07 -4.31357E-07 key = 59402 1.10444E-03 -2.49896E-07 -2.49896E-07 key = 61929 6.21074E-04 -1.44222E-07 -1.44222E-07 key = 64399 3.49255E-04 -8.28002E-08 -8.28002E-08 key = 66826 1.96401E-04 -4.72197E-08 -4.72197E-08 key = 69231 1.10444E-04 -2.67112E-08 -2.67112E-08 key = 72000 0.00000E+00 0.00000E+00 0.00000E+00 } AtmosphereFromGround { DEBUG_alwaysUpdateAll = False doScale = False waveLength = 1,0.584615588,0.396153271,1 samples = 2 innerRadiusMult = 0.9563388 outerRadiusMult = 1.045001 transformScale = 1.095,1.095,1.095 } } ScaledVersion { type = Atmospheric fadeStart = 35000 fadeEnd = 80000 Material { texture = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/Verlod00.dds normals = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/VerlodNormal.dds color = 1,1,1,1 specColor = 0.75,0.75,0.75,1 shininess = 0.17 rimPower = 1.5 rimBlend = 0.75 Gradient { 0.0 = 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1 0.2 = 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, 1 0.6 = 0,0,0,0 0.4 = 0,0,0,0 } } } PQS { minLevel = 2 maxLevel = 8 minDetailDistance = 6 maxQuadLengthsPerFrame = 0.03 fadeStart = 80000 fadeEnd = 250000 deactivateAltitude = 265000 materialType = AtmosphericTriplanarZoomRotation allowFootprints = True Material { saturation = 1 contrast = 1.35 tintColor = 1,1,1,0 groundTexStart = 0 groundTexEnd = 20000 steepTexStart = 0 steepTexEnd = 20000 steepTex = BUILTIN/terrain_rock00 steepBumpMap = BUILTIN/Cliff (Layered Rock)_NRM steepNearTiling = 25000 steepTiling = 25 deepTex = BUILTIN/eveLowSand_diffuse deepBumpMap = BUILTIN/eveSand_nrm deepNearTiling = 50000 deepMultiFactor = 50 deepBumpNearTiling = 50000 deepBumpFarTiling = 50 lowTex = BUILTIN/eveLowSand_diffuse lowBumpMap = BUILTIN/eveSand_nrm lowNearTiling = 50000 lowMultiFactor = 50 lowBumpNearTiling = 50000 lowBumpFarTiling = 50 midTex = BUILTIN/gillyHighTerrain midBumpMap = BUILTIN/eveSand_nrm midNearTiling = 50000 midMultiFactor = 50 midBumpNearTiling = 50000 midBumpFarTiling = 50 highTex = BUILTIN/gillyHighTerrain highBumpMap = BUILTIN/eveSand_nrm highNearTiling = 50000 highMultiFactor = 50 highBumpNearTiling = 50000 highBumpFarTiling = 50 lowStart = -1 lowEnd = -1 highStart = 1 highEnd = 1 globalDensity = 1 planetOpacity = 255 } Mods { VertexHeightMap { map = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/VerlodHeight.dds offset = 0 deformity = 7281 scaleDeformityByRadius = False order = 10 enabled = True } VertexSimplexHeightAbsolute { seed = 132562 deformity = 75 octaves = 8 persistence = 0.5 frequency = 24 enabled = true order = 20 } VertexSimplexHeight { seed = 342988 deformity = 128 octaves = 8 persistence = 0.5 frequency = 4 enabled = true order = 30 } VertexHeightNoiseVertHeightCurve2 { deformity = 315 ridgedAddFrequency = 32 ridgedAddLacunarity = 2 ridgedAddOctaves = 8 ridgedAddSeed = 438274 ridgedMode = Low ridgedSubFrequency = 32 ridgedSubLacunarity = 2 ridgedSubOctaves = 8 ridgedSubSeed = 749998 simplexFrequency = 24 simplexHeightEnd = 10000 simplexHeightStart = 0 simplexOctaves = 8 simplexPersistence = 0.5 simplexSeed = 80070 order = 40 enabled = True simplexCurve { key = 0 0 0 0 key = 0.6311918 0.4490898 1.432598 1.432598 key = 1 1 0 0 } } VertexColorMap { map = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/VerlodColor.dds order = 50 enabled = True } City { debugOrientated = False frameDelta = 1 randomizeOnSphere = False reorientToSphere = True reorientFinalAngle = -15 reorientInitialUp = 0,1,0 Position { latitude = -7 longitude = 23.1082296 } repositionRadiusOffset = 42.7000007629395 repositionToSphere = True repositionToSphereSurface = False repositionToSphereSurfaceAddHeight = False commnetStation = True isKSC = True order = 100 enabled = True name = KSC LOD { Value { visibleRange = 50000 scale = 0,0,0 delete = False } } } LandControl { altitudeBlend = 0 altitudeFrequency = 1 altitudeOctaves = 1 altitudePersistance = 1 altitudeSeed = 1 createColors = true createScatter = True latitudeBlend = 0 latitudeFrequency = 1 latitudeOctaves = 1 latitudePersistance = 1 latitudeSeed = 1 longitudeBlend = 0 longitudeFrequency = 1 longitudeOctaves = 1 longitudePersistance = 1 longitudeSeed = 1 useHeightMap = False vHeightMax = 10000 order = 999999 enabled = True altitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } latitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } longitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } LandClasses { Value { alterApparentHeight = 0 alterRealHeight = 0 color = 0,0,0,0 coverageBlend = 0 coverageFrequency = 1 coverageOctaves = 1 coveragePersistance = 1 coverageSeed = 1 name = VerlodBase latDelta = 1 latitudeDouble = False lonDelta = 1 minimumRealHeight = 0 noiseBlend = 0 noiseColor = 0,0,0,0 noiseFrequency = 1 noiseOctaves = 1 noisePersistance = 1 noiseSeed = 1 delete = False altitudeRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } coverageSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } latitudeDoubleRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } latitudeRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } longitudeRange { endEnd = 2 endStart = 2 startEnd = -1 startStart = -1 } noiseSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } scatters { } } } scatters { } } } } SpaceCenter { latitude = -7 longitude = -53.1082296 decalLatitude = -7 decalLongitude = 23.1082296 lodvisibleRangeMultiplier = 1 reorientInitialUp = 0,1,0 reorientFinalAngle = -20 reorientToSphere = True radius = 16000 repositionRadiusOffset = 42.7000007629395 repositionToSphere = True repositionToSphereSurface = True repositionToSphereSurfaceAddHeight = False heightMapDefomity = 180 absoluteOffset = 70 absolute = true } } useOnDemand = true } @Kopernicus:FOR[OPKNS] { Body { name = Viopra Debug { exportMesh = true update = true } cacheFile = OPKNS/Cache/Viopra.bin Template { name = Gilly removeAllPQSMods = true } Properties { displayName = #LOC_OPKNS_dspn_0004 description = #LOC_OPKNS_celDesc_0004 timewarpAltitudeLimits = 0 338 675 1350 2700 5400 10800 21600 radius = 16539 mass = 1.4669241E+17 tidallyLocked = True sphereOfInfluence = 86605 } Orbit { referenceBody = Reatu color = #7a6f6f inclination = 0.035 eccentricity = 0.0000003818493 semiMajorAxis = 391000000 longitudeOfAscendingNode = 69.291 argumentOfPeriapsis = 0 meanAnomalyAtEpochD = 17.9382 epoch = 0 } ScaledVersion { fadeStart = 5000 fadeEnd = 15000 OnDemand { texture = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/ViopraColor.dds normals = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/ViopraNormal.dds } } PQS { fadeStart = 15000 fadeEnd = 27250 deactivateAltitude = 27500 minLevel = 2 maxLevel = 8 minDetailDistance = 6 maxQuadLengthsPerFrame = 0.03 materialType = AtmosphericExtra allowFootprints = True Material { factor = 8 factorBlendWidth = 0.05 factorRotation = 75 saturation = 1 contrast = 1 tintColor = 1,1,1,0 specularColor = 0.188235298,0.188235298,0.188235298,1 albedoBrightness = 1 steepPower = 1.5 steepTexStart = 30000 steepTexEnd = 60000 steepTex = BUILTIN/MunCliff [Diffuse] steepTexScale = 1,1 steepTexOffset = 0,0 steepBumpMap = BUILTIN/MunCliff [Normal] steepBumpMapScale = 1,1 steepBumpMapOffset = 0,0 steepNearTiling = 500 steepTiling = 350 lowTexScale = 1,1 lowTexOffset = 0,0 lowTiling = 1 midTex = BUILTIN/MunFloor [Diffuse] midTexScale = 1,1 midTexOffset = 0,0 midTiling = 150000 midBumpMap = BUILTIN/MunFloor [Normal] midBumpMapScale = 1,1 midBumpMapOffset = 0,0 midBumpTiling = 150000 highTexScale = 1,1 highTexOffset = 0,0 highTiling = 1.5 lowStart = -1 lowEnd = -1 highStart = 1 highEnd = 1 globalDensity = 1 fogColorRampScale = 1,1 fogColorRampOffset = 0,0 planetOpacity = 1 } Mods { VertexHeightMap { map = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/ViopraHeight.dds offset = 0 deformity = 1712 scaleDeformityByRadius = False order = 10 enabled = True } VertexHeightNoise { deformity = 16 frequency = 4.5 octaves = 12 persistence = 0.5 seed = 7901832 noiseType = RidgedMultifractal mode = Low lacunarity = 2.5 order = 20 enabled = True } VertexColorMap { map = OPKNS/Textures/PluginData/ViopraColor.dds order = 30 enabled = True } LandControl { altitudeBlend = 0 altitudeFrequency = 1 altitudeOctaves = 1 altitudePersistance = 1 altitudeSeed = 1 createColors = False createScatter = True latitudeBlend = 0 latitudeFrequency = 1 latitudeOctaves = 1 latitudePersistance = 1 latitudeSeed = 1 longitudeBlend = 0 longitudeFrequency = 1 longitudeOctaves = 1 longitudePersistance = 1 longitudeSeed = 1 useHeightMap = False vHeightMax = 10000 order = 999999 enabled = True altitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } latitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } longitudeSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } LandClasses { Value { alterApparentHeight = 0 alterRealHeight = 0 color = 0,0,0,0 coverageBlend = 0 coverageFrequency = 1 coverageOctaves = 1 coveragePersistance = 1 coverageSeed = 1 name = Base latDelta = 1 latitudeDouble = False lonDelta = 1 minimumRealHeight = 0 noiseBlend = 0 noiseColor = 0,0,0,0 noiseFrequency = 1 noiseOctaves = 1 noisePersistance = 1 noiseSeed = 1 delete = False altitudeRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } coverageSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } latitudeDoubleRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } latitudeRange { endEnd = 1 endStart = 1 startEnd = 0 startStart = 0 } longitudeRange { endEnd = 2 endStart = 2 startEnd = -1 startStart = -1 } noiseSimplex { frequency = 1 octaves = 1 persistence = 1 } } } } } } } useOnDemand = true }

We're three folks away from getting 200 supporters

MKS refining and manufacturing will work in the background but there are conditions. "Stuff" is updated when the facility comes back into physics range. If you've been away for a few minutes you'll get one update of that few minutes worth of extraction/refinement/manufacture/fabrication. If you've been away for one or more days of game time (1 Kerbal day = 6 hours), "stuff" will be updated for the days you were missing, one day at a time, then for the remaining time after that hour (the daily update is the important part, I'm not sure if the remainder comes first or last). Thus if you want to have an autonomous system you need enough storage to hold one day's worth of every output. If you want to extract metallic ore and refine it to metals you need enough electricity generation and storage, enough heat dissipation, and enough metallic ore storage to keep the extractor running for a day (six hours), then you need enough electricity and metallic ore production/storage and metals storage to last for a day. And then you need to take into account the presence of any engineers, mechanics, technicians, miners, geologists, etc as applies to your equipment. Your base might have enough storage and energy to sustain production with no crew, but then you add an engineer and suddenly production increases by 500% and now you run out of energy, overheat your radiators, blow up your reactor, etc. So for every extractor, make sure you have energy in batteries, a power supply that can deliver the sustained energy that the extractor needs, enough product storage, and make sure that this budget allows for ~200% of capacity. There are autonomous options for each extractor which are not affected by crew, they are excellent for small mining drones. I typically put a couple of the autonomous extractors and a few thousand units of storage on a "Duna" Logistics Hub (with a small nuclear reactor, radiators, Terrier engines, propellant tanks, probe core, etc) and drop those where they're useful and ignore them for the rest of the game. Make sure to turn on "Planetary Warehouse" on the storage and production from that autonomous mining drone will go into planetary inventory. Here's an example autonomous facility, you can swap out the MEU-100-A Pulse Drills for regular MEU-100 Pulse Drills and this facility with crank out more stuff than you'll know what to do with. Essential parts here are MKS "Duna" Power Distribution Unit, MKS "Ranger" Thermal Control System, MKS "Duna" Logistics Center, 4 x MEU-100-A Pulse Drill, plenty of supplementary battery, 2 x 2.5m Kontainer Tank - Flat (2.5m), with a few other parts to make it visually appealing and useful for Kerbals. You can use a much smaller reactor and only 1 extractor, but I figure if something's worth doing it's worth overdoing. Then here's a version of that with larger extractors set up as a lander with copious part clipping:

but it was done before with KSP1 so.... I think here, the problem was: Underestimating the game Overestimating your capabilities as a PM Not delivering in time because of the latter two Mismanegement Literally the bigger the dev team is, less good games they create overall. Similar to Bethesda's Starfield, the team there was over 500 people, while on Fallout 4 over 200, Skyrim a bit over 100. Also with bigger games, finnacial risk is way higher. And as for KSP2, i said a long time ago it is done, because no one want's to buy it because of overhyped and underwhelming launch of EA. So financial calculation is logical for a game studio. Why to invest even more money and sallaries if: No one will buy your game Player base is 10% of KSP1 Bad reviews on Steam They did it to themselves.

we can assume when they came back from break (around late feburary) they started working hard on colonies. Yes there is foundational work for colonies but we are still 2 months + from even getting close to next update as what we understand from leeks/news of next milestone.. Different people have different jobs blackrack working on clouds is a good thing cause i doubt he has much to do as of right now, and he already has extensive knowledge about making "better clouds", weather, storms etc (i just hope he can cook more make them better than the mod) if we just realistically say that they started in March for colonys they have only worked on it 2~ months so we still have (sadly) 8 months more to go before we hit colony length of work.. but I'm glad to see stuff that the community talked about like clouds not really hitting like what "alpha" showed, and having an experienced person on clouds working on clouds.. i doubt that he wont code it so weather is easier to implement either. then PQS stuff can as a possibility give us more performance depending on how it actually works, its all slow work to next major update.. Remember, Rumor of 200-300 parts is in colonys this isn't a small update compared to Science, we are getting a lot more parts compared to science (9 parts), we have to be getting more missions due to freya, more tech tree lines, a lot more work than just science. I'm hoping that they are trying find ways to make colonies run more performant due to the amount of colony parts that we can use, and even a modest 100~+ part build starts to slow the game into the 30~fps .

Albert and the Martians “Breaking news from the CNN Election Headquarters. It is currently 10:14 PM and we can finally call it: Al Gore has WON the Presidency; he has reached 270 electoral votes with a victory in Illinois at 100% of the vote in. He is now the first Democratic candidate to be elected to the Presidency since Jimmy Carter in 1976, ending the Reagan-Bush streak of Republican control of the White House.” On Tuesday, November 5th, 1996, Al Gore won the Presidency over Republican candidate Bob Dole. He won the country's vote by campaigning on a staunch platform of addressing social and economic issues, alongside pushing forward science and technology. Gore’s victory though, despite it being the first blue victory since 1976, was not the talk of the country for very long. As four astronauts were preparing to go further than any human had ever gone. They were going to Mars. Robert Cabana, Eileen Collins, Greg Harbaugh, and Linda Godwin are awoken at 5:00 AM on December 2nd to prepare for their launch at 10:00 AM. Space Shuttle Atlantis sits at LC-39A, having been undergoing fueling for the past 3 hours in preparation for launch. Atlantis will launch the crew alongside the two pilots of the Shuttle (John Casper and Llyod Hammond) into orbit, and then perform a rendezvous and docking with the MMETV that sits in orbit now. But this was just one part of a 7-launch marathon to get everything for the first human mission to Mars into space and on its way to the red planet. It began on November 23rd, with the launch of the first half of the MMETV aboard a Jupiter 524-A at 4:26 AM. Following that, the second half was launched on November 28th at 1:17 PM. The two halves then met in orbit and docked together, forming the complete, fully fueled MMETV. Then, on December 1st, the day before the crew's launch, the “MSVs” (Mars Surface Vehicles, the Ascent and Descent Vehicles respectively) were launched together on a Jupiter 544-A, the heaviest variant of the SDLS rockets. The two are launched docked together, with Jupiter’s second stage propelling them to Mars, and then with the Descent Vehicle performing orbital insertion, as it only has to descend to the surface and has greater propellant margins. They will deploy their solar panels and radiators and operate on low power mode until they reach Mars in August of next year, just before the MMETV. That brings us to the morning of December 2nd. At 7:30 AM, the crew reach the launchpad and head up the elevator to board the Shuttle. This will be the last 2 and a half hours they are on Earth until they return in three years. The crew are strapped in by 8:00 AM and ready for launch. Final preparations occur over the next two hours until the crew access arm retracts and the last few minutes of the countdown begin. Upon reaching orbit, Atlantis makes a first OMS maneuver to set up a rendezvous with the MMETV. The catch-up takes about 8 hours, with Atlantis then moving in to dock with the forward port of the MMETV. These docking ports are the first functional flight variants of the IHDS docking port that will be used on Space Station Harmony, and there is no better mission to test them than on Magellan 2. After a successful docking, the crew all work together to move supplies from Spacelab II into the MMETV hab. About half of the supplies and equipment are being brought up on the Shuttle, while the rest will be in the dedicated supply module that is to be launched aboard a Titan IV in a couple of days. Skylab played an essential role in determining the mass and volume of food and water needed for an entire 3-year round trip to Mars; the 200-day missions total supply amount based on crew diets was extrapolated out and adjusted for the additional exercise and work that the Magellan astronauts will be undertaking. With all of the supplies offloaded from the Shuttle, a video conference is held with NASA Administrator Ken Mattingly and outgoing President George H.W. Bush. Although Reagan initiated the Magellan program, HW has seen it through its development and first two missions and has fought hard every fiscal year for the program to get the funding it requires. He has only a few words at this press conference, but he uses them to express his gratitude towards NASA, his appreciation of the Magellan program, and his hope that it will be part of his lasting legacy as President. Pleasantries out of the way, the Shuttle crew return to Atlantis and begin undocking and departure from the MMETV. Atlantis lands the next morning at the KSC and is shuffled back into the OPF for maintenance over Christmas and the New Year. The MMETV crew wait 2 more days in orbit, getting accustomed to their home for the next 9 months. Then, on December 4th, Titan IV rips off the launchpad at SLC-41 carrying the Supply Module. 12 hours after launch, the Supply Module reaches the MMETV and docks on the forward IDHS port. 24 hours pass as the crew continues to get comfortable inside the Habitat, and then, the next night, preparations begin for the most important operation to this point. Trans-Martian Injection. This maneuver has been calculated by computers the size of a room multiple times over the past couple of years. It is the most efficient trajectory to Mars available in the 1996 transfer window and will give the MMETV the most fuel for orbital insertion and return to Earth. At 8:49 PM on December 5th, the seven nuclear thermal rocket motors of the MMETV start up and begin the 16-minute burn to send 4 astronauts on a mission to Mars. 16 tense minutes pass, controllers sit idle in their chairs, watching in utter silence as the velocity graph steadily follows the pre-determined outline on the main screen of the Mission Control room. ABC, CBS, and CNN have cameras in the room as the event is broadcast live on television to millions of Americans. The astronauts sit with their suits on in the forward flight chairs as the slow 960 seconds pass. But eventually, the motors shut off, and Houston erupts in cheers and applause. A nominal trajectory is confirmed, and Bob Cabana, Eileen Collins, Linda Godwin, and Greg Harbaugh are on their way to Mars. Three days later, they become the first humans to leave Earth's sphere of influence and the first humans to enter interplanetary space. Over these three days, the final two chapters of Magellan 2’s departure from Earth are completed. On December 6th, the Magellan Habitat is launched aboard a Jupiter rocket on a faster but less efficient trajectory. Following this, on December 8th, as the MMETV leaves the Earth-Moon system, the EERM rover, adapted for operations on Mars, is launched aboard another Jupiter rocket on a similar fast but less efficient trajectory to Mars. The habitat and rover will be the first spacecrafts to perform aerobraking at Mars to minimize the propellant needed for orbit insertion. With Magellan 2 now on its way to Mars, 1997 begins with the ball drop in Times Square. A few weeks into the year, on January 20th, Al Gore takes the Oath of Office to become the 42nd President of the United States. As humans make their way to another planet for the first time, and a new face in government takes leadership of the country, America looks towards the new century with optimism. A New Era Has Begun.

I'm using version the latest 2.1.1.15 from ckan. I will say that I'm playing a heavily modified game of ~200 mods or so. I did notice the comments around issue #38, but couldn't fully understand what that issue was. I'm only going to mention a couple settings in my steps, but it has been reverting all settings I try to change. Launch KSP 1.12.5 (through steam) Load my sandbox savegame Opened the DOE's Settings Dialog (from stock app launcher button, space center scene) Set Use Blizzy's Toolbar to ON and Use KSP Launcher to OFF Pressed Apply Return to main menu Load my sandbox savegame again (to confirm changes were applied; DOE settings icon is in blizzy's toolbar) Quit KSP (through main menu) Launch KSP 1.12.5 (through steam) Load my sandbox savegame The DOE settings icon has reverted to being in the stock app launcher again. Here is my log from after quitting ksp. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ocrovicrkrsi3p8a8ya4v/KSP.log?rlkey=k7d7527lna48tdfula7uj3s65&dl=0 EDIT: not sure if this is relevant or not, but I'm also having trouble with default settings changes for the mod Auto Actions not persisting...

Y6 D185-232 - Draco Return and Nuclear Reprocessing Module Well, here we are almost halfway through year 6, and things are moving along nicely. We're just about finished with this year's crew rotation, and Draco has arrived at the edge of Kerbin's SOI. Our first Duna mission has gone splendidly, but it is readily apparent from the crew communications that after more than two years in space they are ready to get home. Unfortunately, they aren't there yet. Their current flight path takes them on a close flyby of the Mun, and then they will burn into an elliptical orbit around Kerbin. Then they'll plot a course to rendezvous back with Minmus Station. The crew will leave Draco there and ferry back to Kerbin Station aboard a transport, and then be carried back to Kerbin via spaceplane. So, they still have a way to go before they're feeling grass between their toes again. A couple of days later Draco passes by The Mun, which slightly alters its course. The good news is that Orbital Dynamics calculated this encounter into Draco's trajectory all the way back at their mid-course correction last year, so they're all set, no burn necessary. OD wanted to use this encounter to capture Draco with a gravity assist, but we decided against that. We're not hurting for fuel at this point, Draco is still at almost 35% fuel load, if you can believe it. So we thought that a controlled burn for capture was a much more reliable choice. A couple hours later and Draco is approaching periapsis. All systems are go, the crew is strapped in on the command deck, and they are ready to burn. Over on the night side of Kerbin, Draco burns to capture into Kerbin orbit. Welcome back, Draco! So now Draco is in a highly elliptical orbit around Kerbin. However, OD has just come back with some bad news. They're in a really bad orbit for getting to Minmus. Essentially they're going to have to cruise out to apoapsis, then fall back for a day before they even get to their burn. Then their transfer orbit to Minmus will take fourteen more days after that. Sorry, folks. While we're waiting for Draco to arrive at Minmus Station, let's get them a ride. The orbital transport Capricorn is dispatched from Kerbin Station and burns for Minmus, unkerballed. It will arrive there well before Draco. ---------- About a week later now, and Draco has arrived at its burn for Minmus. And then, the next day, Capricorn arrives at Minmus Station. So now we just have to wait for Draco to whip around Kerbin again and make its way to Minmus. Stay strong, folks. You can do another two weeks in a spin hab on your heads. ---------- So now it is day 213 and Draco has finally arrived at Minmus. She coasts in and burns into a 200-kilometer orbit. A couple of hours and a couple of burns later, she arrives at Minmus Station. Chief Engineer Kirkpatrick shuts Draco's reactor down, and then Captain Kreuger takes the conn and guides her in to dock. Finally, after over two years, the crew of the first Duna mission get to see other faces and talk to other people! But they do have some work to do. They finish securing Draco and rigging the ship to take power from Minmus Station, ensuring that the reactor will be safe. Then they begin transferring their personal gear and the incredibly-valuable Duna samples to the orbital transport Orion (yes, we rotate the orbital transports, so Capricorn will be staying here while Orion carries the crew home). Once these duties are completed, the crews share a celebratory dinner together. Then the Duna crew boards Orion, closes the hatches, and undocks from the station. Then they wave a final farewell to Draco, and burn for Kerbin. While the crew is on their week-long trip back to Kerbin, we can discuss our next major project. Draco's reactor is currently just above 50% of its reactor core life remaining. It could conceivably make another trip to Duna with its current nuclear fuel load, but that would be unwise, since the reactor is its sole source of electrical and propulsive power. While we could just fly a new propulsion module to Minmus, this would get very expensive, very fast. However, we have a solution: The nuclear fuel reprocessing module! This module is a marvel of engineering. It has been a collaborative project between CKAI, Kerbal Atomics, and Kerman Systems Group robotics division for almost two years. The idea is that nuclear propulsion modules can be removed from their respective crafts and docked to the reprocessing module hub. Then the four waldo arms are used by operators to remotely remove the modular fuel elements in the propulsion module reactors. Obviously we require the use of these waldos to remove and insert the fuel elements from the reactors. It's not like uranium is some kind of liquid that you can pump around in tanks or something. LOL. These expended fuel elements are fed into the reprocessor, which then deconstructs them into their component materials. The reprocessor recovers unused enriched uranium and recycles the recovered materials into new nuclear fuel elements, which can then be reinserted into the propulsion reactors. Any high-level waste is accumulated for later disposal. This module is incredibly complex, and breathtakingly expensive. So I am only going to say this once. If any of you screw around and break this thing, THERE WILL BE NO FOOSBALL FOR A MONTH. Do I make myself clear? In any case, before we can send the reprocessing module up to Minmus Station, we need to do some prep work. We will need to increase the crew compliment on Minmus Station from six to twelve to handle the increased work load. And we will need to increase the amount of power and cooling available on the station to support the module itself. Thankfully we already have quite a bit of living space on Minmus Station, but we will need to increase the amount of spin habitat space. For the power and cooling, we will be sending up a new truss with additional solar panels, batteries, and radiators. Robby is doing the heavy lifting for us today, and after an uneventful climb to orbit, we find it rendezvousing with Kerbin Station. Once they're docked, the crew of Kerbin Station gets to work. They guide Orbital Tug 4 over to pick up the spin hab module, and then bring it down to dock with the new expansion truss. Then, once the station comes around to the departure point, they undock Orbital Tug 6 and Mission Control instructs it to burn for Minmus. Then they undock Robby and it flies back to Kerbin. Now we're going to wait a week or so for Orion to come back with the Duna crew. ---------- So, here we are a week later. Orion is a couple of hours out from Kerbin. Tug 4 is about a day out from Minmus. So we're going to launch the additional crew for Minmus Station, and then the Duna crew can ride that spaceplane down. Save us a trip. ArToo is making this run with The Pod in her bay. While they're making their way around to Kerbin Station, Orion burns in to its parking orbit around Kerbin. And then, a couple of hours later, they arrive at Kerbin Station. The crews all exchange more greetings and congratulations. Then they set about moving gear once again, transferring all of the Duna samples into the Pod for the trip down to Kerbin. Then Kerbin Station reaches the departure point for Minmus and Orion departs once again. And then Kerbin Station reaches the departure point for the spaceplace. They close the hatches and undock ArToo. Then the Duna crew finally burns for home. ArToo cruises through reentry. And then sails in to a dramatic nighttime landing at KSC. Finally, after almost three years in space, the crew of the first Duna mission have made it home! Ticker-tape parades and Kongressional addresses next week. Tonight they get a hot meal and a real bed. Congratulations to all of them! The next day, we're prepping the reprocessing module for launch. Gort is doing the honors this time, and it launches the next evening. Am I the only one who gets nervous seeing millions of funds worth of hardware hurtling through the air at Mach 4? Nobody else? Really? Just thought I'd ask. Anyway, while Gort is going through its maneuvers to reach Kerbin Station, Tug 6 arrives at Minmus. It's got half a day before it arrives at the station yet. Meanwhile, Gort arrives at Kerbin Station and docks. The crew gets busy deploying the reprocessing module and docking Tug 5 to it. While Kerbin Station is coming around to its departure point, Tug 6 arrives at Minmus Station. The crew guides it in to dock the expansion truss. Then once that is in place, then bring the tug around and dock the new spin hab outboard of the old one, mounting them in a counter-rotating pair. Then, once the tug is out of the way, the crew deploys the radiators, solar panels, and spin hab. Then they start getting all of the new systems tested and settled before the new crew shows up. Minmus Station is starting to rival Kerbin Station in size and function. Back at Kerbin Station, the crew undocks Tug 5 and Mission Control orders it to burn for Minmus. As Tug 5 brings the reprocessing module out to Minmus, Orion arrives at Minmus with the new crew. A couple of hours later, they arrive at the station. They've got a week or so to get settled until their job shows up. ---------- Eight days later, Tug 5 arrives at Minmus. After the usual maneuvers, it arrives at Minmus Station, and the crew brings it in to dock. Once the tug is clear and the hatches are opened, the new crew gets inside and starts familiarizing themselves. Their first task is to limber the waldos and set them in their resting positions. So far, so good. Next we'll see how they do with a real refueling....

Mission Update: - No Kerbalnaut Left Behind - Foreword: The mission is at an end. I think, collectively between this mission and the establishment of K.G.01 and 02 - that I have squish everything I can from Kerbin SOI - It is time to break out into the Kerbol Solar System in earnest. It was quite nice change of pace to build and fly Search And Rescue planes to pick up lost kerbals - experiment with how much Δv is needed to fly the distance. It took a few iterations to get the planes right - but the 3rd generation hit the mark I think. Mission Tasks: A. Develop a SAR seaplane - Success B. SAR mission for the crew of the crash landed SSTO Spaceplane - Success C. SAR mission for the crew of crash landed MLKO - Failure. D. Develop SAR land plane - Success E. SAR mission for the crew of the crash landed SAR sea plane. - Success Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: Section A: SAR plane V1 take off from the boat launch. I have read that quite a lot of people found it challenging to make a seaplane. Once my SSTO splash landed a few KM off the coast of KSC I thought it was an ideal time to give it a go. I must say that it was a bit finicky to get the plane buoyant enough to float - the SAS strong enough to keep the nose from diving down and the engines air intake big enough to feed the engines. All in all the plane went through 3 design stages: Make a plane that could take off from the water, and fly straight. Give it wheels to be able to take off from a runway + extend the range. Update vehicle from Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified on Section C - range extension, as well as giving it a docking port for refuel capabilities. Model 1. The first step was making the plane buoyant enough. To my annoyance I quickly found out that the nose cones does not give any buoyancy what so ever. Only the the fuel tanks gives buoyancy. The prototype 1 were using the MK2 nose cone for the front and the back, angled slightly up. I had to add a empty MK2 JFT-400 on either side of the nose cone to make it buoyant enough. See spoiler for reference: The plane was now buoyant. It was time to find the right engine. I started by powering the plane by 2x J404 engines - the lift to weight ratio would have been fine for wheeled flight of a runway - but I quickly found out that you need a good lift to weight ratio to get out of the water. I replaced the engines with 2x J33. They needed bigger air intakes, so I added 2x Mk1 Diverterless Supersonic Intake + the circular intake and a XM-G50 Radial Air Intake - giving them more than enough air (otherwise I found that one engine would be starved of air before reaching speeds were the air intakes would suck in enough air for both engines to work) This gave me speed enough - but a new problem arose. The fact that the engines were placed higher than the center of mass, meant that they would work as a leaver, pushing the nose down. I added RCWs until the SAS had the strength to keep the nose up and clear of the water. But the plane kept getting heavier and longer. which meant that it was harder to lift off. to reduce length I replaced the front Nose Cone + the empty front MK2 JFT-400 for a single empty RF-AD-800. - lastly I angled the wings 4° to help the engines push the plane up and out of the water. The Result was this: The plane would now leave the water - but as soon as it was airborn the tilt of the wing would force the plane down - to counter this downward motion I deployed the two center control surface on the wings by 15° and deploy the tail control surfaces at -2°. See figure in spoiler. The plane now flies straight (to the point were you can auto pilot it) and I completed the first test flight - picking up the stranded Kerbals on the SSTO without issues. Its stall speed is was around 30-40 m/s - which is also the speed you need to land on the water with to not blow up. I added 2 aero breaks to help slow down for the water landings. Model 2: After a successful mission I had to get it to fly much longer to reach the desert. I figured an easy way to get more range would be to fill the empty tanks with fuel and give it wheels. Taking off from the runway and flying would mean that by the time It had to be boyant again, the tanks would be empty. After a test - I found that I needed more fuel so I added 2 drop tanks. That gave it a total Δv count of 57.500 Δv. See spoiler to see the addition of wheels and tanks. I was hoping that would be enough for the mission to the desert and back - alas I was short by ~100km. This mission proved that the plane would benefit from having just slightly more Δv - but also a way to refuel. Which lead to the final model: Model 3: By extending the pontoons with NCS 200 fuel tanks + some other minor tweaks(I found out I had flown without Methane in the two Mk1 Diverterless Supersonic Intake) , I increased the Δv count to 66.000 enough to theoretically fly 1500+km 140 m/s in ~4000 m altitude. When configured for water flying - the Δv counter is at 29.100 - and its take off speed is ~49 m/s. Section B: The SAR plane arrives at the floundered SSTO. After the plane had been developed it was a pretty simple to go pick up the lost kerbals. See spoiler section for detailed rundown: et voila - The Kerbals of the crash-landed SSTO was safely back on the beach of KSC. Section C: A map view at the time of dropping the drop tanks - gives quite the impression of the distance that needed to be covered. ~15.013km in total The next mission would turn out to be a lot more demanding. - The distance that had to be travled back and forth were quite long. several hours long. Unfortunately the vehicle was to heavy to be able to fly on 3x time warp (I could not get it to fly straight, but once the flight had been lightened on the way home, it was possible) - So I actually spend a saturday afternoon flying from KSC to the Pod in the desert. fortunately the plane was so stable that I could run it at 70% power and have it fly between 3000m and 4000m altitude. I just had to adjust every once and a while - because of the curvature of Kerbin. It gave a lot opportunity to admire the volumetric clouds, lighting etc. around Kerbin. After 526 km of flight it was time to drop the tanks and see how much the mass savings would improve the Δv counter: After the drop the Δv counter went from 37,538 to 40,368 - saving 170 Δv. I was starting to worry about the success of the mission. The plane had gone a little shy of a 3rd of total distance, tour - retour, and spend (if my math serves me right) spend around 33% of its total Δv. Which in theory should mean that I would be fine - however theory and real life seldom lines up - any deviation from an optimal outcome would mean the flight got short of target. And spoiler alert.. The plane would end up about 101 km short from the runway at KSC on its 1412km journey. Any way after a long journey the plane arrived at the stranded MLKO pod to the cheering of the crew that had spend a day or two in the desert. Pilot Shepke Kerman gives a safety instruction before boarding the flight. Landing the sea plane proved to be a delicate matter - the 4° angle of the wing means it can be quite difficult to perfectly line up the wheels to the surface - you see leveled flight means that the fuselage is angled 4° down. And with the snug placement of the wheels, you need to land on quite horizontal to the surfaces, to not blow up a pontoon or lose a wheel. After a few attempts and reloads I figured the approach and optimal speed. (around 30-40 m/s like on water and close to perfectly leveled to the ground) It made me think that maybe in the future the plane would not be so suited for land operations(not all terrain is as gentle as the desert). But being able to take off from a runway fully loaded to land on water once fuel had depleted the floats - still merited the wheels. Now began the tour home. - Where the tour west to the desert had meant a slow passing of the day - the tour back would result in catching up with the dark quite quick. The SAR Seaplane reaching night time - short before flying over the western shore of the continent KSC is located on. It was here I was starting to debate with myself weather I should press on for KSC or attempt a night landing. I decided to press on until the vehicle had 500 Δv left - as I knew that I might be in need for a powered landing, so fully depleting it would not be advisable.. Fortunately I had anticipated needing lights for landings at nights - so the plane was equipped for night landings. That being said.. not being able to judge if it was a suitable place to land, before a few meters off ground.. still made it a spicey experience. A crashlanding was completed, only destroying some of the landing gear in the process: For a detailed walkthrough of this mission leg - see spoiler section bellow: Section D: Version 1 of the SAR land plane on Runway 1 KSC. Making a land plane was not difficult compared to the Seaplane - I could remove the 4° angle of the wing, and subsequently the ÷2° of the control surfaces on the tail - meaning it was a lot easier to balance the plane. That being said - the SAS really wants to rock the plane up and down when flying.. to the point were the plane crashes. I found that if I limit the range of motion of the control surfaces from its maximum of 20° to 10° the plane will fly stable. How ever to land at low speeds the surface needs at least 15° to keep the nose up. Another thing that were important to me were that the Land and Sea version of the SAR plane could refuel each other. It meant that both planes sported the same front, and subsequently the same cockpit (but it's fine, it gives them synergy). I decided to give the plane a probe core - since the Sea plane was full, and I did not want to fly twice. I figured I could fly it without crew and be fine. Stats: Δv and take off speed no drop tanks: 58.450 Δv - 67 m/s Δv and take off speed drop tanks: 75805 Δv - 84 m/s Section D: The last crew of The Minmus Expedition finally safely back at KSC. after 26 min of flight, and 202 km covered the crew was safely back at KSC - the final Kerbalnauts of The Minmus Expedition was home after 55 days away from the safe confines of KSC. See spoiler section for detailed walkthrough of this mission leg: MISSION_ACCOMPLISHED Thank you all for indulging me in my adventure. I can safely say that I am looking forward to do my Duna Mission ark - were a lot of the scope will be launching very small vehicles and probes. I got my fare share of big elaborate vehicles on this mission. See you soon!

To occupy less place after killing them comfortably, and to need less efforts to cover with ground. How could three men be buried in one tomb? Did they die at once? Then why this burial composition is so strange. Usually people don't bury with hand put on another one's crotch like he's petting or protecting the neighbor. They either align or cross the arms. And the bones don't look lying straight. No gifts are seen. This also makes the sacrifice version less probable. The interworld travellers usually have a bribe for the underworld spirits. It was just a glamour cinematographic version of the native uniform, and I can see nothing caricature in them. For me, it's vice versa, the movie screenshots depict normal warriors of their tribes. They should look frightening for the other tribes, and a gentle nature is not welcomed when a normal practice is to hunt each other, or drill the prisoners' head (traditional for Chukcha and Inuit, based on the XVIII-XIX war reports), or scalping the heads (normal for the Northern Amerindians, despite of the modern nonsense that the Europeans had brought this practice; nowhere in the Europe they do it, just because a settled nation doesn't need to carry the souvenirs and have them lightweight, entire heads on the fence are good enough). Burning and piercing is a normal part of a tribal initiation, this also leaves a print, and illustrates the softness. IIrc, the Indians were successfully using force and violence against other tribes, while of course a missionaire can just give advices. "Righteousness" = "following the right rules, established for greater good". AI can't be programmed, it can be taught on examples. That process can be programmed. Exactly what Savonarola was doing. Everything excessively spent is a sin and should be prohibited. Including the Botticelli's paintings. "Decision" means "punishment for those who doesn't follow it", otherwise it's a "wish". For the punishment, the Wendat should have an intertribal mechanism to force any tribe to follow the decision. Otherwise is just an anarchy. If they had such mechanism, it doesn't look that their society was so much kind and soft, because the punishment is for the whole tribe, including innocents. Good people don't do so. 2000 km2 0.1 human/km2 = 200 hunters-gatherers 1..2 human/km2 = 2000...4000 steppe herders 10..100 human/km2 = 20..200 k peasants All local Siberian peoples (except ~1 mln Yakuts, who are medieval invaders), are 200 k in total, and that's more than was in early XX. Somebody had published a rather optimistic view on the tribal demography. There is no so much food in the forest, that's why the people turn it into plowland. The very place of 35x56 km2 is either for several villages of peasants, or for 2..3 tribes of hunters-gatherers. They are antagonists, they need the opposite. HG need forest, not field; P need field, not forest. At the same time once the agriculture appears, the peasant population exceeds the hunter-gatherer population by orders of magnitude, and inevitable conflicts force the HG either to leave the place, or to be assimilated. So, I'm afraid, it's a fantasy. Alive, but hidden. Also it's cheaper to pay for several guards than for a hundred of workers they guard. Just such practice competes with mass forced labour used by much stronger corporations, lol, so it's marginal or used in places which nobody cares about. Say, the mining in Africa. Of course, technically the children are willingly do it. But in fact, how could they reject? Labour camps and prisons of XX in all developed countries were also a labour force, cheaper than hired ones. For unqualified mass labour, like channel digging, stone crashing, or wood cutting. Btw, V-2 were manufactured by the slaves (prisoners), so even told rocketry.

I understand your point. Read the post left by Presto 200. If they allow me, I‘ll add this to the post. Do you like this idea? I think it checks your boxes. What do you think?

NASA is now opening up the Mars Sample Return mission to the commercial space approach. The usual NASA government financed approach is estimated to cost ~$10 Billion. But following the commercial space approach it probably could be done at literally 1/100th that at ~$100 million including launch cost. I had estimated it as less than ~$200 million using the Falcon Heavy as launcher: Low cost commercial Mars Sample Return.
 http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/07/low-cost-commercial-mars-sample-return.html This could get ~750 kg back from Mars with the Falcon Heavy as the launcher. However, it probably could in fact be launched on the Falcon 9. The Falcon 9 can launch about a quarter of the mass of the Falcon Heavy to Mars, for all the in-space stages, so estimate the sample size returned from Mars of ca. 180kg. At a $40 million launch cost of the reused F9, then all together with all the in-space stages, the mission cost probably could be less than than ~$100 million. Such a low mission cost probably could be paid for by advertising alone. But to encourage participants to take up the task of such a fully privately financed mission, NASA could offer a prize of say $200 to $500 million to whoever could accomplish it, with some smaller incentive prizes to those who accomplish some key required steps. Bob Clark

update, I find the IR config but is only for canadarm 1 . . /////Canadarm 1 elbow joint servo @PART[ht_C1_elbow]:NEEDS[MagicSmokeIndustries] { @description,0 = Powered by Infernal Robotics - Next. This elbow joint can rotate 180 degrees back on itself. @MODEL { @model = htRobotics/Parts/ht_C1_elbowIR } -NODE[TopJoint] {} -NODE[BottomJoint] {} -MODULE[ModuleRoboticServoHinge] {} node_stack_top = -0.0934, 0.1909, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 node_stack_bottom = -0.0934, -0.1909, 0, 0, -1, 0, 1 MODULE { name = ModuleIRServo_v3 servoName = KerboArm1 Elbow axis = 0, 0, 1 pointer = 1, 0, 0 fixedMesh = armElbow_base movingMesh = armElbow_top isRotational = True hasMinMaxPosition = True minPosition = -180 maxPosition = 0 isFreeMoving = False electricChargeRequired = 2.5 isInverted = False isLocked = False canHaveLimits = True hasPositionLimit = False minPositionLimit = -180 maxPositionLimit = 0 factorAcceleration = 2 maxAcceleration = 2 accelerationLimit = 1 factorSpeed = 2 maxSpeed = 2 speedLimit = 1 factorForce = 35 maxForce = 30 forceLimit = 30 zeroNormal = 0 zeroInvert = 0 presetsS = -180.0|-90.0|0.0 availableModeS = Servo|Control //invertSymmetry = False soundFilePath = MagicSmokeIndustries/Sounds/infernalRoboticMotor // Motor loop sound path } } /////Canadarm 1 pitch joint servo @PART[ht_C1_pitch]:NEEDS[MagicSmokeIndustries] { @description,0 = Powered by Infernal Robotics - Next. This servo joint provides low torque rotation along the pitch axis up to 90 degrees in either direction. @MODEL { @model = htRobotics/Parts/ht_C1_pitchJointIR } -NODE[TopJoint] {} -NODE[BottomJoint] {} -MODULE[ModuleRoboticServoHinge] {} node_stack_top = 0, 0.1751, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 node_stack_bottom = 0, -0.1871, 0, 0, -1, 0, 1 MODULE { name = ModuleIRServo_v3 servoName = KerboArm1 Pitch Joint axis = 0, 0, 1 pointer = 1, 0, 0 fixedMesh = armPitchJoint_base movingMesh = armPitchJoint_top isRotational = True hasMinMaxPosition = True minPosition = -90 maxPosition = 90 isFreeMoving = False electricChargeRequired = 2.5 isInverted = False isLocked = False canHaveLimits = True hasPositionLimit = False minPositionLimit = -90 maxPositionLimit = 90 factorAcceleration = 2 maxAcceleration = 2 accelerationLimit = 1 factorSpeed = 2 maxSpeed = 2 speedLimit = 1 factorForce = 35 maxForce = 30 forceLimit = 30 zeroNormal = 0 zeroInvert = 0 presetsS = -90.0|0.0|90.0 availableModeS = Servo|Control //invertSymmetry = False soundFilePath = MagicSmokeIndustries/Sounds/infernalRoboticMotor // Motor loop sound path } } /////Canadarm 1 rotational servo @PART[ht_C1_rotator]:NEEDS[MagicSmokeIndustries] { @description,0 = Powered by Infernal Robotics - Next. This servo allows a full 360 degrees of rotation axially. @MODEL { @model = htRobotics/Parts/ht_C1_rotatorIR } -NODE[TopJoint] {} -NODE[BottomJoint] {} -MODULE[ModuleRoboticRotationServo] {} node_stack_top = 0, 0.0209, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 node_stack_bottom = 0, -0.0209, 0, 0, -1, 0, 1 MODULE { name = ModuleIRServo_v3 servoName = KerboArm1 Rotator axis = 0, 1, 0 pointer = 1, 0, 0 fixedMesh = armRotator_base movingMesh = armRotator_top isRotational = True hasMinMaxPosition = False minPosition = -360 maxPosition = 360 isFreeMoving = False electricChargeRequired = 2.5 isInverted = False isLocked = False canHaveLimits = True hasPositionLimit = False minPositionLimit = -360 maxPositionLimit = 360 factorAcceleration = 2 maxAcceleration = 2 accelerationLimit = 1 factorSpeed = 2 maxSpeed = 2 speedLimit = 1 factorForce = 35 maxForce = 30 forceLimit = 30 zeroNormal = 0 zeroInvert = 0 presetsS = -180.0|0.0|180.0 availableModeS = Servo|Control //invertSymmetry = False soundFilePath = MagicSmokeIndustries/Sounds/infernalRoboticMotor // Motor loop sound path } } this is the config, now the question is is there a way to add the config for only that piece of the kerboarm 2??? this is the CFG of the kerboarm 2 . . PART { name = ht_canadarm2_servo module = Part author = Benjee10 rescaleFactor = 1 TechRequired = advConstruction entryCost = 1200 cost = 100 category = Robotics subcategory = 0 title = KerboArm2 Servo Joint manufacturer = HabTech Consortium description = This servo allows a full 360 degrees of rotation. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,0,1,1,0 mass = 0.06 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 1 crashTolerance = 12 breakingForce = 200 breakingTorque = 200 maxTemp = 2000 // = 5000 bulkheadProfiles = size1 tags = habtech, robot, arm, canadarm2, kerboarm, rotate, hinge, servo, motor, move, MODEL { model = htRobotics/Parts/ht_canadarm2_servo } NODE { name = TopJoint transform = actuatorTopNode size = 1 } NODE { name = BottomJoint transform = actuatorSideNode size = 1 } MODULE { name = ModuleRoboticRotationServo servoTransformName = actuatorMesh baseTransformName = actuatorBody servoAttachNodes = TopJoint traverseVelocityLimits = 0, 10 hardMinMaxLimits = -180, 180 softMinMaxAngles = -180, 180 targetAngle = 0 mainAxis = Y maxMotorOutput = 200 driveSpringMutliplier = 100 driveDampingMutliplier = 20 motorizedMassPerKN = 0.0001 motorizedCostPerDriveUnit = 1 connectedMassScale = 1 efficiency = 0.75 baseResourceConsumptionRate = 0.01 RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 1 } } MODULE { name = ModuleCargoPart packedVolume = 20 } } I really hope that someone can help me

"It's this kind of exageration that makes it understandable why they wouldn't want to engage with the community right now." First and foremost, it will never be understandable and acceptable for a team creating an Early Access game to not want to engage with the community with the reason being "they are being mean to our game waah". If you really want to convince yourself of otherwise, you are more than welcome, but you'll remain in the wrong. Second, it is a fact the game is, indeed, a preview build (Early Access to what's yet to become a fully fledged videogame) that is borderline unplayable if you compare it with any other game that resembles it's experience and gameplay loop (in this case the only fair comparison would be KSP1). Current build of the game lacks most features of KSP1's vanilla gameplay loop, and those already present exist on a half-assed and unstable state. Existing gameplay loop (and this encompasses every aspect of the game you as the player interact with on a normal session: UI, controls, save/load, construction, flying) is unstable and utterly unreliable. Examples of these could be crafts spontaneously exploding upon loading onto the launchpad, or saving a long mission and realizing that loading that state results in your craft disintegrating itself for no reason or having its parts misaligned. Inability to reliably fly long missions due to parts drifting away from their original location on your craft. Rovers and wheeled vehicles are just... no. Delta V readings and maneuver node dV predictions literally don't work properly, which is the spine of this game if you want to do anything beyond LKO. Performance is atrocious on high end machines, so forget about high part counts (high meaning 200 parts and up, which is "normal" part count for any reasonable KSP1 project). I could continue adding game breaking issues that support my claim. Just don't tell me that they could have the right to go radio silent for not liking them and that you'd think it'd be okay. "You hurt your credibility by making claims like this" I think I speak for everyone who paid $50 for KSP2's Early Access when I say that the only credibility that holds any real value when it comes to this game is Intercept Game's. No one here has any reason to exagerate or tell you lies about how the game works when all it takes is playing it by yourself and realizing the rose tinted glasses don't hold themselves longer than the first 10 minutes of playtime until you encounter a game breaking glitch. Which again, it's fine. They exist. It's normal. What isn't normal is people trying to defend something as if their life depended upon it. ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Imagine being one of the biggest Kerbal content creators, having been invited to most events and campaigns about KSP2 and realizing that a simple KSP2 video about landing a craft on the Mun and driving around with the simplest rover ever results in you considering going back to KSP1 and not looking back. Please, watch that YouTube video at the bottom just by skipping through (it's 40 mins after all) while listening to his complains and tell me with a serious face that KSP2 is totally playable as a solid game for 100+ hours again and that all he is doing is exagerating and hurting his credibility. I'm waiting.

Here is the A-25 Condor: the Program's newest improvement on the SSTO concept perfected by the A-19. The A-25, in contrast to the A-19, has a sleek, futuristic look: more like the SR-71 than the Skylon. Seen here is the A-25's predecessor, the A-19 Aquilae. Like the A-19, the A-25's job is mostly to transfer a lot of crew at a time to a station. Although the Aquilae is perfectly competent at its job, I wanted an SSTO with more crew capacity as it's gotten to the point where I need to launch a dozen kerbals at a time to my orbiting motherships. The A-25 has a crew capacity of 12 crew and 2 pilots and can carry some KIS equipment and BG experiments. The A-25 also retains the A-19's innovation of combining rudders and airbrakes (seen above). I originally wanted the A-25 to be able to operate with a higher fuel margin than the Aquilae, but despite having more fuel I ended up with less: while the A-19 had 200-300 m/s in orbit, the A-25 now has 100-150 m/s. However, by disabling the top RAPIER, the A-25's thrust is alligned with the center of mass, unlike the A-19 which required me to constantly pitch up while running the engine at full blast. And the A-25 takes off on its inagural flight! Aboard are Vaysa and Gemdrin Kerman on a mission to the low orbit station Cornerstone. This will allow us to test 4 important skills: takeoff, rendezvous, docking, and re-entry. It's become somewhat of a rite of passage: Merlin, Accipiter, the partial SSTO A-12 and the A-19 have all had their maiden flights to the station. Some of you may notice I'm taking off at an angle: this is because Cornerstone is at a high inclination. After roughly a day in transfer, A-25 Condor finally reaches Cornerstone. Seen here is Flight Engineer Gemdrin configuring the controls for a docking. And a successful docking! Gemdrin and Vasya exchange greetings with the 4th Cornerstone crew of 3 and offload some equipment, particularly some new life support equipment that was originally scheduled to be delivered by A-19 Aquilae. Re-entry is always tricky at an inclination because you can only leave at certain times and one often has to change inclination to meet the KSC. And we have landed! The A-25's first crewed flight is a success, which is certain to inspire the next generation of cargo-carrying SSTOs.

Mechanical power from water is easy and is more than 5000 years old, so that will clearly be a thing very quickly. Mechanical wind power is almost 3000 years old, both less concentrated and less reliable, but still pretty useful and should be back fairly quickly. Turning either of those into electric power mostly requires magnets and wire, so intermittent local power(like a flour-mill that doubles as a battery charger) should be reasonably common, but if it gets set up by someone with limited understanding of electric theory(such as myself) such a charger is likely to damage the batteries with every charge. Fortunately, batteries are more than 200 years old, so if you have copper and zinc, you can turn those into electrical power as well. Unfortunately, oil is of limited use without refineries, and refineries would be a primary target(tanks run poorly without fuel after all), so only chemists would be able to run vehicles until new refineries were produces(I think fractional distillation can provide something functional, but I would expect it to be hard on any engine that uses it) Straight crude could be burned as fuel, but would generally be inferior to coal, as liquids are harder to store and handle than solids. Wood would likely be superior to both where it is available, as it is much less likely to produce hazardous fumes when burned. So long as fuel reserves held out, food production would be in good shape, but would go down dramatically once farmers run out of diesel. Food processing would likely have issue before that however. Fortunately, it looks like almost all of the population is is major cities(86% in cities of 50k+ in 2020 for the US), so a drop in food production is probably not as critical as it would otherwise be. There would probably be at least a decade of 'everyone is a farmer' with the related loss of population to starvation before we stabilized and started growing again. Assuming no one was in a position where they could take advantage of our weakened state to invade.

Yeah. A net loss of ~$200 million in cancelled projects and severance packages. An approximate 5% reduction in the overall workforce. But a reduction in overall operating costs by ~$165 million annually. What really gets me about the article is that they are touting GTA VI as being the next big game, and it's expected to be the top-selling game of the decade. I know that Rockstar and Private Division are two entirely separate subsidiaries of TT...but one has to wonder how much management is shifting overall corporate focus to GTA, and how much that shift is impacting other titles such as KSP. I'm not saying it is, and I'm not saying it will happen. I'm just curious, is all.

And that's another issue with the developers using the up-vote process as a way to determine what bugs should get priority. As an example, docking is a critical component to the game; without it, you (not you personally, but you in a general sense of players) might not be able to go interplanetary, and will certainly not be able to go interstellar. But if nobody sees the bug, and therefore they don't up-vote it, the developers think "Well, this isn't all that bad" and they ignore it in favor of something else that's actually not important at all. Like in your example, the mission to get 35 science for landing 200+ tons on Minmus. That developers are relying on this system instead of using some common sense with bugs is mind-boggling. If they want to use the up-vote system to determine what non-critical bugs the community cares about should get fixed next, then fine. But don't prioritize something small over something integral to the game simply because a lot of people want more science rewards instead of being able to dock.

Is being done for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoporosis#Potentially_modifiable The bedridden patients and low-mobility people suffer from it even at 1 g. P.S. It's a remedy! The Martians should be fat and heavy! The potato diet is excellent for Mars. 0.4 g means 200 kg of normal body mass for a Martian. For Mars!!

Since you don’t have to open steam to actually play KSP2 it’s hard to draw any useful information from this. I have less than 6 hours logged, yet I’ve dumped at least 200+ hours into KSP2

I think this is a flawed way of thinking about the future. It's naive to think the same trends we see now and in the recent past will continue forever. People thought there would be flying battleships based on the development of airships in the early 1900s as a "natural" continuation of the technology, and it never happened. People thought there would be no more capital ships after torpedo boats made them "obsolete," also during the early 1900s. And people thought the adoption of nuclear power in the US in the late 1950s meant that by 1990 there would be a small nuclear reactor in the basement of every home in America. When thinking about this stuff, its important to think about the economy of it. Based on the size of airline fleets and number of total employees, I have seen estimates that it takes about 50-100 employees to maintain a single aircraft. How many employees does it take to maintain a single rocket? How much extremely specialized labor when compared with maintaining aircraft? Where is SpaceX going to get this army of ground staff to support their launch of 1000 Starships during each transfer window? In my state it costs about $300,000 to build a new home right now, minus permits and land costs etc. This is very close to the average US cost of 298,000 in 2023. For lack of alternative ideas, I'm going to assume SpaceX uses the "normal buildings in domes" design they have in the artwork on their website. Musk wants to house 1 million people on Mars. Let's say there are 4 people to a home. So $75 billion to build the habitats. This doesn't include the expensive domes, complete with life support on a scale never seen before. The domes will need to be even bigger because there will need to be room for the other aspects of the city. It won't just need more buildings, but a sewage system, schools, farms, the power source, and so on. So the dome will be enormous. The ISS has about 1000m cubed of pressurized volume and cost $100 billion or so in total. I'm going to be very generous and cut that in half, assuming use of robots will help cut costs, but then I'm going to add $5 billion for those robots. So let's say 1000m cubed of volume on the Mars base will cost $55 billion to build. The city of Portland, which is probably smaller than what the Mars city will be due to lack of farmland, is 233km squared area. I'm going to treat the volume of the dome as if it were a cube, and the extra volume that wouldn't be there on account of shape will go to the farmland. So let's just say to have good circulation and allow birds to live in it, it will need to be a generous 1 km tall (the artwork shows it higher). So, the volume is just 233km cubed. So, it would cost $233 billion dollars to build a pressurized dome for the city. From r/theydidthemath Let's be generous and use the lower estimate. About 250 sq km for 1 million people. Cost of dome + homes (minus maintenance, services, sewage, transporting dirt for farming, etc.): ~$488 billion. The article from Payload Space that estimated SpaceX's revenue I found put operating costs in 2022 at $3 billion. They launched 61 rockets in 2022, rounding that down to 60, we get $50 million to launch one rocket. How many Starships will it take to build the city? Way more than Musk theorizes. An interesting Seattle Times article did the calculations and the weight of a home came in at about 300 tons. So 300 million tons of material need to be moved to Mars for the housing alone. Starship 3 can bring 200 tons to LEO, and with 4-5 refueling flights could bring that to Mars. So 1,500,000 Cargo Starship launches would be required to send the materials, ignoring things like volume restrictions and what have you. Add 4 tanker flights per launch, and that would be 7,500,000 Starship launches. Thus SpaceX's operating costs including the launch of these rockets, in total, would amount to $375 trillion. This doesn't include the 10,000 Starships needed to launch the million colonists, nor the cost of launching the dome, dirt for farmland, robot laborers, and so on. And of course the associated tankers. Nor the actual cost of the materials themselves. These would be internal launches and thus generate no revenue. In contrast, the Earth's GDP in 2022 was about $100 trillion. Starlink had 2.3 million subscribers in 2023, and generated $4.2 billion in revenue. If Starlink somehow rose to 32 million subscribers and beat out Comcast to become the biggest ISP in the US, they'd have, very roughly, $63 billion in revenue each year. This doesn't take into account inflation. SpaceX alone could not pull this off. $375.5 trillion for the Mars city, and that estimate is low balled. And it won't even turn a profit when it is complete. It will just be a regular old city, but costing $50 million to send stuff to and fro on a good day. Contrast with how sending a 20 ft shipping container to Japan costs about $1,200 dollars. A Mars city will, in all likelihood, never turn a profit. And remember those failed predictions about technology in the early 20th century? Let me introduce you to some more bad projections. In the 1920s, people predicted the end of poverty, infinite growth, and even declines in culture because people were becoming so wealthy they wouldn't want to do anything. Then after the crash of '29, people were predicting permanent damage, endless poverty and unemployment, and no hope of recovery ever. So even though Goldman Sachs predicts the global GDP being $227 trillion in 2050, which maybe could put it at $1 quadrillion by year 2300- at which point the US GDP might be about $300-400 trillion (all at a rate of growth of $100 trillion every 25 years), that would still require a company with the ability to invest an amount equivalent to the US GDP in something they will get no return on investment in. All that assumes there is no Second Great Depression, no nuclear war, no AI disruption to the economy, and no disastrous damage from climate change. I really dislike the idea of things being inevitable. If we want something to happen in the future, we have to work for it, we can't assume it will just come to us. No one is really working towards anything right now, and I feel like that's just going to allow another bad cascade of events that will lead to great damage and set humanity back 50 years. Every generation has talked about something being inevitable, then had things turned on their head and started saying the other way around was inevitable. There is great collateral in the process. I wish for once we would recognize the future is unknown and try to shape it by our own will, instead of letting it take the trajectory set by people who are either in retirement homes or dead. Because it isn't a trajectory at all, just feeling our way through the dark with no interest in our existence beyond the present. ------ Okay, now for fun let's see when a company might have the wherewithal to fund its own Mars colony, based on these unchanging linear projections that I simplified. SpaceX's total revenue was about $8 billion according to that same Payload Space estimate. So 3/8 of that was operating costs. Assuming SpaceX's revenue can grow with the economy: maybe SpaceX and Tesla merge into one mega corporation, along with Twitter, maybe it produces the world's best mac and cheese, who knows. I'm going to use that trend as the GDP. So SpaceX's total revenue will be $16 billion in 2050, and $32 billion in 2100. I'm gonna round it up to $10 billion in 2023 so this is easier. So $40 billion in 2100. $64 billion in 2200, $128 billion in 2300. By the year 3000, it will be $400 billion. $800 billion in 4000, but let's bump that to a trillion. So it will be $3 trillion dollars by the year 8000. After that, it would take about 200,000 years for SpaceX's operating costs to reach $300 trillion dollars. The extra 75, also rounded up, to 100, would take another 667 years or so to gain. So SpaceX will have enough money to build a city on Mars starting in 208,667 A.D. By this time, two moons of Uranus will have collided, the Arecibo message will have reached its target, and Pioneer 10 will have passed within about 3 light years of Ross 248, a red dwarf, which circa 60,000 A.D. will have become the closest star to Earth for a brief period of time (10,000 years). Disclaimer: This is half serious attempt to calculate the cost of a Mars colony, half tongue in cheek criticism of statements that say things like "All we need to do is send some software engineers to Mars and the colony will be profitable." I did not check my math. The only really serious thing is my critique of making predictions about the future by assuming current trends will last forever.

“Counterpoint” (from a more recent interview) But I also prefer the 200-300 estimate, @Genekermanisamoneylaundere