Unpopular Opinions Thread

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, catloaf said:

The ksp2 devs should not have kept the Kerbol system as it is. Ksp2 is a new game, and I want a fresh system. I think that the ksp2 devs kept it the same because nostalgic people would have been angered by its removal, but I'm just not a fan of the Kerbol system (unrealistically colored planets and oversized moons are the main reason.) It's especially ugly when compared to planet packs like gpp Beyond home, gep, and opm. They could have kept nostalgics happy and made the system fresh by either adding an equivalent to opm or having an option to start in another star system (perhaps in Puf) or both, the second option however is a real possibility, but only if there is a habitable wide in a system with enough planets to go interstellar.

There's a very good reason to keep the original system, far better than nostalgia. It's a GREAT SYSTEM. It has variety in everything from color to skill level needed, and it has great progression from Kerbin to Mun to Minmus to Duna. The variety is as extensive as it is sparse, not only are there a lot of unique things, there tend to be very few duplicates. And they accomplished all this while maintaining a pretty good resemblance to our own Solar System.

If anything, the similarities between Eeloo, Dres, and Moho are thorns in this that just point out how varied and unique each other world is. And now that Dres has asteroids, it's at least a bit okay because Moho is unique to get to and Eeloo at least crosses another planet's path - not that that affects your travel to it in any particular way.

Considering how other parts of KSP were balanced and thought out (read: not at all), the planetary system in the game is - in my possibly unpopular opinion - a masterpiece.

Any changes to the system then need to be made with all this in mind. Modifying Duna just so it's not Duna anymore would remove the Ike problem, and moving that to another world would need thought on when you want people to encounter that problem.

As far as I know the topography of the worlds is fine to mess with. Every picture I've seen of Minmus seems to have eliminated the perfectly flat Flats, which IMO is a good change. Sure it can have Flats, but they shouldn't be absolutely, perfectly flat.

I like the colors. What can I say

[catloaf]

7 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

There's a very good reason to keep the original system, far better than nostalgia. It's a GREAT SYSTEM. It has variety in everything from color to skill level needed, and it has great progression from Kerbin to Mun to Minmus to Duna. The variety is as extensive as it is sparse, not only are there a lot of unique things, there tend to be very few duplicates. And they accomplished all this while maintaining a pretty good resemblance to our own Solar System.

If anything, the similarities between Eeloo, Dres, and Moho are thorns in this that just point out how varied and unique each other world is. And now that Dres has asteroids, it's at least a bit okay because Moho is unique to get to and Eeloo at least crosses another planet's path - not that that affects your travel to it in any particular way.

Considering how other parts of KSP were balanced and thought out (read: not at all), the planetary system in the game is - in my possibly unpopular opinion - a masterpiece.

Any changes to the system then need to be made with all this in mind. Modifying Duna just so it's not Duna anymore would remove the Ike problem, and moving that to another world would need thought on when you want people to encounter that problem.

As far as I know the topography of the worlds is fine to mess with. Every picture I've seen of Minmus seems to have eliminated the perfectly flat Flats, which IMO is a good change. Sure it can have Flats, but they shouldn't be absolutely, perfectly flat.

I like the colors. What can I say

It's just sad that Saturn and Neptune, the most interesting planets in the solar system (my opinion) and there more interesting moons are not in ksp. I'm ksp1 this was somewhat justified because you could complete the tech tree easily with just Mün, Minmus, Eve and Duna missions, but in ksp2 the tech tree extends far beyond stock, so outer planets are justified. Also, while the stock system is well balanced, after hundreds of thousands of hours all the destinations are a bit samey. And why do all the Kerbolar planets have to be neon colored real life ones, why can't we have exoplanet inspired ones.

Edited August 4, 2020 by catloaf

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

the planetary system in the game is - in my possibly unpopular opinion - a masterpiece.

It's a masterpiece, but green Jool and purple Eve are like a funny joke repeated again and again.

[qzgy]

3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Sure it can have Flats, but they shouldn't be absolutely, perfectly flat.

unpopular opinion building on this - while yes they are (probably) unrealistic, they are super convenient and I quite like a nice big flat plain sometimes.

[Lisias]

There're no planes on Universe - only curves with infinite radius.

Spoiler

Ergo... Yeah, Earth is kinda flat - with a pretty finite radius.

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Lisias
Yeah. Tyops. :P

[kerbiloid]

If the Earth is round (let alone non-flat), how do we know four cardinal directions?
Have you ever seen a circle with angles?

[Bill Phil]

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If the Earth is round (let alone non-flat), how do we know four cardinal directions?
Have you ever seen a circle with angles?

Yup. Spherical trig is not for the faint of heart.

[Lisias]

48 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If the Earth is round (let alone non-flat), how do we know four cardinal directions?
Have you ever seen a circle with angles?

In how many dimensions you are talking about?

Source.

[Shoujo Q]

We should allow pandas to go extinct, as they are an evolutionary practical joke that is extremely bad at almost everything related to survival. Our current efforts at conservation are a waste of time that could be better spent helping other species that have half a chance of survival.

If we really wanted pandas to survive, we should go all-in and genetically engineer them to be better at survival, starting with giving them the ability to eat something a little more nutritious than bamboo.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Shoujo Q

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Shoujo Q said:

giving them the ability to eat something a little more nutritious than bamboo.

We should cross them with koalas. Then both can eat bamboo and eucalypt.

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, Shoujo Q said:

We should allow pandas to go extinct, as they are an evolutionary practical joke that is extremely bad at almost everything related to survival. Our current efforts at conservation are a waste of time that could be better spent helping other species that have half a chance of survival.

If we really wanted pandas to survive, we should go all-in and genetically engineer them to be better at survival, starting with giving them the ability to eat something a little more nutritious than bamboo.

The reason pandas are actually useful to conserve is that they act as an indicator species for the forests they live in - If pandas can survive there, the other, less humorous species which are harder to keep track of individually, like insects, are probably doing pretty well too.

[Orbital_Decay]

Oh, definitely in this community base... 

Well-armed and equipped military forces are not a threat to international stability and peace. They're actually a requirement for peace and stability. Si vis pacem, parabellum. 

[kerbiloid]

Always start planning a lunar base from fortification.

[SOXBLOX]

23 hours ago, Orbital_Decay said:

Oh, definitely in this community base... 

Well-armed and equipped military forces are not a threat to international stability and peace. They're actually a requirement for peace and stability. Si vis pacem, parabellum. 

Ahhh... Vegetatius. Dude had a wonderful name...

But I agree with you!

Edited August 9, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[TheSaint]

On 8/7/2020 at 10:53 PM, Orbital_Decay said:

Oh, definitely in this community base... 

Well-armed and equipped military forces are not a threat to international stability and peace. They're actually a requirement for peace and stability. Si vis pacem, parabellum. 

But, since it is the unpopular opinions thread:

"Standing armies are dangerous to liberty." -Alexander Hamilton

“Always remember that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics—that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.”  -James Madison

[catloaf]

We shouldn't go back to the moon, or Mars, and all crewed spaceflight should be cancelled beyond leo. Robots are becoming so advanced that within 30 years humans will be a liability in a mission, not an asset. Because of this humans are not an asset to science, which is the only objective of current spaceflight beyond Earth's soi. The increased usefulness of robot's in space is being demonstrated in real time. What was the biggest scientific achievement of the Apollo program? Bringing moon rocks home. What is the purpose of Percy? Oh yeah, doing it without humans, but on a destination many times more challenging, for a fraction of the cost. Similarly, what is the most beautiful image you think of when you think of space, probably Cassini or Hubble, both robots. So unless your thinking about colonization and the larger goal of becoming a multiplanet species, humans in space are useless! However, this is why human spaceflight should be put on the backburner, not cancelled. Cancel Artemis, retire iss in the near future. Replace it with a scaled down iss or a starship in orbit long term. Use crew dragon or equivalent to send up crew. Also, when humans do go beyond leo again, it should be civilians and scientists, not astronauts, and they should stay in space for good. When humans to to space they should be settlers, not visitors. And the astronauts should be replace by computers and the people in Earth in charge of them. And these robots will pave the way for a human colony.

Edited August 17, 2020 by catloaf

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, catloaf said:

Robots are becoming so advanced that within 30 years humans will be a liability in a mission, not an asset.

In 30 years perhaps, but right now the best a robot rover can do is crawl along at ~0.14km/h with every move painstaking planned from mission control and round-trip delays all over the place.
Show me an exploration robot that can pick it's own targets, plan it's own route around obstacles, make decisions and react to it's environment in real-time, (without crutches like GPS) and you'll be onto something. Right now computers that can do those things reliably don't exist on earth, let alone in a form that can handle a high rad environment.

For every impressive self-driving car or autonomous drone demonstration, there's a whole infrastructure of predictable environments, cloud-compute and global positioning networks going on in the background. There's none of that in space, and none on another planet. How do you train a conventional AI on an environment nobody has seen in detail before?

 

1 hour ago, catloaf said:

unless your thinking about colonization and the larger goal of becoming a multiplanet species, humans in space are useless!

Becoming a multiplanet species is the larger goal. Science for science's sake is all well and good, but it will only take one wayward asteroid...

We still know precious little about long-term space habitation, and pretty much nothing about surviving outside LEO.
Planting boots is just publicity, but getting people there and back alive is progressing our ability to live and work off-Earth. Sooner or later we'll have to do it anyway, so why not sooner? And why not prove it with well-trained astronauts before you let the lemmings civilians loose?

Edited August 17, 2020 by steve_v

[R-T-B]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:22 PM, catloaf said:

The ksp2 devs should not have kept the Kerbol system as it is. Ksp2 is a new game, and I want a fresh system. I think that the ksp2 devs kept it the same because nostalgic people would have been angered by its removal, but I'm just not a fan of the Kerbol system (unrealistically colored planets and oversized moons are the main reason.) It's especially ugly when compared to planet packs like gpp Beyond home, gep, and opm. They could have kept nostalgics happy and made the system fresh by either adding an equivalent to opm or having an option to start in another star system (perhaps in Puf) or both, the second option however is a real possibility, but only if there is a habitable world in a system with enough planets to go interstellar.

I agree...  to a point.  I think they should simply add the ability to very easily make another system, like Kopernicus but improved.

Oh wait that's a popular opinion....

Edited August 17, 2020 by R-T-B

[qzgy]

2 hours ago, catloaf said:

civilians and scientists, not astronauts,

Wouldn't a) any civilian/scientist in space be also by definition an astronaut once they get into space and b) I personally would like the people who are in a tin can to at least somewhat competent in space (read: trained for spaceflight). not really randos.

I dont think trained astronauts will lose their purpose for a while. And if you actually fund the manned side of things, pushing for longer term habitation on say the moon, your science benefit would also increase I think. (humans given a proper lab, can probably do more than some instruments ona probe, depending ofc on what the end goal is. I'm thinking more on the chemical analysis side of things, and doing stuff further with the material.)

[catloaf]

7 hours ago, qzgy said:

Wouldn't a) any civilian/scientist in space be also by definition an astronaut once they get into space and b) I personally would like the people who are in a tin can to at least somewhat competent in space (read: trained for spaceflight). not really randos.

I dont think trained astronauts will lose their purpose for a while. And if you actually fund the manned side of things, pushing for longer term habitation on say the moon, your science benefit would also increase I think. (humans given a proper lab, can probably do more than some instruments ona probe, depending ofc on what the end goal is. I'm thinking more on the chemical analysis side of things, and doing stuff further with the material.)

The people would need training of course! But the point still stands, at least for mars, there shouldn't be a quick excursion mission. Human presence in another planet should be permanent. And that isn't what Artemis seems to be doing, it's looking like a rehash of the Apollo program, but with a fraction of the budget, and ordered to go to the moon in 2024 by a controversial president who also cuts nasa's budget at the. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Artemis is delayed twice and cancelled. So if nasa can't even repeat what they've done in the 60's, then how will they get an expensive lab in the moon? Ever since 1972 humans beyond leo has been a dream, nothing more. Maybe nasa should stop spending money on it until is possible, which I don't see happening until serious political and economic reform. Also, the whole colonization thing is happening when robots are much more advanced, 2050 at the earliest, when robots are much more advanced. Also, the no astronaut thing was a misstep, your right . But once again, there is no point of risking lives and wasting money just to "do it".

[RealKerbal3x]

The imperial system is an absolute mess of inconsistently defined units designed by people who married their cousins. You know that when you have to convert between units of the same system and look up how many feet there are in a mile you're doing something wrong.

[SOXBLOX]

52 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

The imperial system is an absolute mess of inconsistently defined units designed by people who married their cousins. You know that when you have to convert between units of the same system and look up how many feet there are in a mile you're doing something wrong.

Ummmm... This is a popular opinion, my friend. 

 

7 hours ago, catloaf said:

The people would need training of course! But the point still stands, at least for mars, there shouldn't be a quick excursion mission. Human presence in another planet should be permanent. And that isn't what Artemis seems to be doing, it's looking like a rehash of the Apollo program, but with a fraction of the budget, and ordered to go to the moon in 2024 by a controversial president who also cuts nasa's budget at the. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Artemis is delayed twice and cancelled. So if nasa can't even repeat what they've done in the 60's, then how will they get an expensive lab in the moon? Ever since 1972 humans beyond leo has been a dream, nothing more. Maybe nasa should stop spending money on it until is possible, which I don't see happening until serious political and economic reform. Also, the whole colonization thing is happening when robots are much more advanced, 2050 at the earliest, when robots are much more advanced. Also, the no astronaut thing was a misstep, your right . But once again, there is no point of risking lives and wasting money just to "do it".

Many folks bash NASA and the Artemis program without realizing why it is the way it is. NASA has to weather the changing winds of politics and frequently changing leadership, so saving money and erring on the side of too little ambition are the policies of choice. To save money, old hardware is reused, such as the RS-25 and the VAB, along with the boosters. On-orbit refueling is a game-changing strategy, but it can't be used by NASA because it is too undeveloped. There are many more considerations than simply "NASA is pathetic, and the members of the government who cut their funding are bad, too". 

[RealKerbal3x]

10 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Ummmm... This is a popular opinion, my friend. 

It's still unpopular among the majority of the United States' population, as well as some other countries. 

But yes, I wouldn't say it's an unpopular opinion on this scientifically minded forum

[Space Nerd]

To be honest, when I lived at the USA for 1 year, I have to convert the imperial numbers to metric to get a sense of scale, since I'm so used to using the metric system.

For my unpopular opinion: The SLS program is worth keeping just for the coolness of the rocket.

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

For my unpopular opinion: The SLS program is worth keeping just for the coolness of the rocket.

If SLS was more like Saturn-Shuttle I'd agree. And if they didn't use RS-25s on an expendable stage. And if SLS could even match the mass-to-orbit of Saturn V.