Jacke

Well damn, @rmaine, @Hotel26, you're older than me. But I think I'm next, at August 1960. When this was #1 on the charts:

It hurts now that the likely future for KSP is a large risk of sliding into corporate-owned abandonware. The person I really feel sorry for is @HarvesteR. The Kerbals and Kerbal Space Program was his creation, his child. This is a woulda-coulda-shoulda. It may not have been really possible, but in an ideal world, he should have licenced Kerbals and the title Kerbal Space Program to Squad. With some personal oversight on their use. And right of refusal and full control on any transfer of that licence to another party. So that the author kept control. But in this world, this may not have been possible. Never sell your dreams. Licence them, carefully.

Musk is no "space industry expert"; SpaceX where it's done well is despite Musk. Musk is no saviour either. The less said about Musk the better. But you're very right about Take Two and KSP. Unless they can get a lot of dosh for selling it and they really need that dosh, they will not sell KSP. For at least the fear that someone could do a great job with KSP and make their decision to sell look very bad. And even moreso take gamers money in KSP sales that Take Two wants for themselves. Because the AAA Gaming Corporations WANT ALL THE MONEY.

@RayneCloud, this is a wonderful idea, one of your many wonderful ideas. I'll have to look at RocketWerkz games more closely and follow the company to see what they put out. I think also Dwarf Fortress has a custom game engine and it's an amazing success. That engine was also built over ~20 years as well. As it's been described to me, having a game engine that does what KSP does/should do, go from sub-metre-sized components to interstellar distances is rather challenging in ways that most game engines just don't really tackle as a standard. And it's not easy to add that in either. Games like Elite: Dangerous and similar ones need that. It comes down to either massive addons and modifications of existing engines or building their own. In either case, keeping either massive customizations or a full blown engine patched and under development and improvement is rather challenging. It would actually be really good if such a Large-Scale-Range Space-Game engine was established as a free/open software project. It would need a core group of developers of high skill and dedication to marshal it and keep it going, but if it was there and game studios who wanted to build Space games that need such an engine could use it as a base with then fewer and smaller customizations.

I'm skeptical. I've seen images destroyed by satellite tracks. And it's getting worse. Link below is a Duck-Duck-Go search within the past year that gets plenty of hits, including an article in Nature. And then there's the threat of the Kessler Syndrome. And all the launchers of the massive satellite constellations DO NOT CARE. It will require regulation. Hopefully soon. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=astronomer+concerned+about+starlink&t=ffab&atb=v101-1&df=y&ia=web

Tesla has hand-writing on the wall that is damning: Their first-mover advantage in EVs has evaporated. Their market share is shrinking. And EVs themselves have major issues and the future may be better for Hybrids or other designs. Expect all sorts of rearranging of deck chairs before it's obvious to those not willing to see that the ship is sinking fast.

It's very complex and depends on a lot. It's easier to just use this mod to expand the Heap and experiment and see what happens. In a deeper context, when the Heap and its support code could be changed, with more memory other Heap schemes can be used that have less overhead demand to do the Garbage Collection.

As covered in that video I posted above, AI may be able to produce some product that passes some Output Tests (somewhat okay songs), especially those with low standards. But it will be a lot harder to pass Interaction Tests. As in an AI musician being able to jam with people. Or even between AI musicians. That Interaction is much harder. AI can't handle the complexity of driving a vehicle in a road with other traffic (despite the lies and bafflegab put out by some). Because it needs to Interact in Complex Changing Environments. Which AI is currently very bad at.

I highly suspect that AI will not be able to something as complex as make a working near-simulator (which is what KSP is) until the guts get a lot lot better. As in decades more work. It's as least as complex as musical jamming. Which this video points out very well is likely far away for AI too.

Oh, wow. On Tuesday, I saw "2001: A Space Odyssey". I've loved that film ever since seeing it in 1968 on release. Including this. 'Course, as Stephen J. Gould said, rewinding history and replaying it wouldn't give the same outcome. Which also often applies to imagining the future and then actually seeing it. Pan Am went bankrupt hard in 1991 and the name has only been misused for short times since. My feelings on Tuesday, recalling all that, are now mirrored by my feelings from late Wednesday to now about KSP. Its future is uncertain but likely poor. And that hurts.

Sometimes amazing things happen. Mind you, considering the current changing times, and that politics is involved in people figuring out most things, right now it's a rising tide that has no sign of coming anywhere near its peak. I applaud your efforts in shoring up the dikes that guard us from the more unpleasant currents of the rising waters. What do you know, I talked about mostly negative things in a very general way! I'm on-topic! Huzzah! Why sell the cow when you can sell the milk instead. And keep selling milk. And more milk. Etc.

I think because of this threat: Games Workshop's primary source of revenue: selling individual and vehicle miniatures and models and other products associated with the miniatures and models, either the making, the displaying, or the gaming. 3D printing gives making miniatures and even some models to the masses (though with some quality issues). An increasing number of GW customers either use 3D printing themselves or have a buddy who does 3D printing. Games Workshop's sales crash. More unpleasantness.

A lot of this is in this Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_(data_structure) But I skimmed it and it jumps in deep and will be hard for you to understand. So I'll explain as best I can. A running Program needs computer resources to operate. Sometimes those resources need to be allocated for the full run of the Program, but often they are only need temporarily while doing a particular task. So they are requested and then at some later time returned. Using the clock cycles when processing is handled by various ways to start and stop code. They matter, but aren't the issue here. What's the most usual resource needed and then returned is memory. Most programs in most parts see memory as a near-monolithic whole in chunks. The underlying operating system can do other things, or the program can do explicit access of slower storage (e.g. read or write to files, which for slower file access has had whole books written on its optimization), but it's the general "memory" we're talking about here. The most common way to control temporary allocation and return of memory is the Stack. Call a function or subroutine, it asks for memory on the Stack to do its work, then when finished, it returns or frees what it used on the Stack. It's a Last-Allocated--First-Freed memory reserve. But sometimes extra memory needs can't be handled by a Stack. When various chunks of memory are needed independent of one another and when they are freed is not in the inverse order of when they were allocated. The most common way to then handle it is the Heap. The Heap gets requests for memory and then allocates a Chunk of memory from its pool of available Chunks and passes back to the requesting code. Internally, the Heap has pointers to connect all these Chunks of memory. When a particular Chunk of memory is freed, it's often best to just Flag that Chunk as freed and not clean up the fiddly bits to make that Chunk available, perhaps unify unallocated Chunks of memory together. The big issue is that most Heaps offer different sized Chunks to ideally minimize the over size of memory needed. But making Chunks different sizes complicates the administration of the Heap. At some point with this model of Heap, all those Chunks freed but not ready to be reallocated need to be sorted out, as the pool of available memory for use in new Chunks is running low. What happens now is Garbage Collection, where the memory Chunks of the Heap are sorted out--but in a way that won't break the running of the Program. But the impact of running Garbage Collection can impact the running of the rest of the Program, in that it takes up clock cycles and maybe other resources of the computer. Ideally, Garbage Collection can be run on the Heap in parallel with its regular operation and the rest of the Program. But not always. But Garbage Collection should not make a Program noticeable Stutter. With a Program like KSP where the program is displaying video and audio, having Garbage Collection not cause Stuttering may be very challenging. One way to cut down on this Stuttering is to make the Heap bigger. That way, the times when Garbage Collection is needed may be farther apart. And may not be needed at all except at special times where it won't cause visible Stutter. Also, with a larger Heap, it can be operated in different ways to make it need more memory overall (thus the bigger Heap) but that simplifies its operation and Garbage Collection. I hope this explanation helped!

Likely never, all things current now considered.

We don't know. EDIT: Apparently there will be some continuing support for KSP. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/take-two-confirms-kerbal-space-program-2-is-safe-despite-seattle-layoffs#close-modaln But one thing a lot of game companies are doing is shutting down forums and just using Discords. Which is sad.

KSP 2 was well beyond my ancient hardware's capacity. I hadn't played KSP for a long time, but I planned to get back into it in the next month. Hadn't been following these forums for a while. On the Pressure-Fed Astronaut's Discord (a great YouTube channel and Discord), I just stumbled across a link to the Yahoo Finance article about Take-Two shutting down Intercept Games. Things all seem darker. I have the latest version of KSP. But I need mods to play it. What happens to these forums? The forums that are the hub of getting mods, getting help with mods, discussing mods, even taking on making mods.... Without a connection to make us a Kerbal Space Program community, can we hold onto KSP? EDIT: Apparently there will be some continuing support for KSP. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/take-two-confirms-kerbal-space-program-2-is-safe-despite-seattle-layoffs#close-modaln

Welp, I don't have KSP 2 at the moment (current hardware can't run it and I really can't afford it). But skimming here tells me the KSP 2 gamesave system is confusing some really good KSP players. Whether it's UI or something internal or both, it's not quite right. And it really isn't explained to the player, when its complexity indicates it should be explained. That's not making KSP 2 look good to me. Talk about barely being alpha grade, but KSP 2 has been released (even if Early Access), but a save/restore system is a core game mechanic that shouldn't be in this state at this time.

@Triop, you're alive!

What I think limits what has been done so far is that the lifetime needed for cryogenic propellants (beyond lower amounts for fuel cells that have primarily used boil-off cooling) has just been at most a couple of days to allow for an extended parking LEO prior to the final burn. Beyond that for mission propellants it's almost completely storable hypergols or liquid noble gases for ion drives. Which means it's whole new experience for long term cryo propellant storage. At least it's not LH2. But I expect this will take a fair amount of testing to find what measures will be worth their expense in payload mass. Adding mass on the final stage of a rocket (for cooling gear or lost propellants) is near 1-to-1 in cost of payload mass.

I think it comes down to heating of the craft by the Sun (and possibly the reflected radiation from the lite side of the Earth). The time in the Earth's shadow doesn't radiate much of that heating, so it's a net heating. It's why the ISS has heat radiators. Heating cryogenic propellants will increase the vapour pressure inside until the vessel ruptures. However, by venting some of the boiloff, the specific heat of vapourization goes with the released vapour and helps keep the cryogenic propellants cool and vapour pressure down. There are potentially some design tweaks that could reduce this. But as far as I know, it's something that still needs research to find what is worth the increase in mass.

As long as no one talks about "terraforming" Venus in any time less than 1000's of years (and then there's the problem of preventing it from going all runaway hot spot again). If you could remove all radiation striking Venus and if Venus was a Black Body (ie. a perfect absorber and emitter of radiation), I believe it would take about ~800 years for Venus to cool to Earth's temperature. Things would be massively tough establishing a colony on the surface of Mars. The surface of Venus is a no-go except for uncrewed probes. Well, let's see if someone can establish an equivalent atmosphere floating base on Earth; I suspect they're a lot more complicated that it seems. Especially as if it starts falling it's doomed and everyone has to fly off it pronto. Then there's the whole problem of establishing them from orbit and taking and sending back rockets from orbit. And as you mentioned, it would need to get near everything that isn't available in Venus's atmosphere hauled from Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System. I agree. Even moreso, I don't think Musk should be in charge of anything. The information is out there supporting my position.

I was there for most of space exploration (my earliest space memory is watching the re-entry of Gemini 12) and I have to at least partly agree with you. You take any course on introducing new things to business and they'll talk about those new things, especially new technologies, needing champion(s). There's a reason Robert Heinlein wrote a story about a businessman drumming up support for going to the Moon and called it "The Man Who Sold the Moon". It has to be sold and resold as an idea, as a collection of projects that need support. (Don't even consider Elon Musk. Look at what he did with Twitter. Find the real story about other things he's done. Like this one.) When getting into space was linked to international competition, it was an easier sale. I remember Isaac Asimov writing about the launch of Sputnik 1 and how it galvanised him into writing much more fact articles and books for the new era. However, don't completely worry about this. If it's possible, the impact of another major achievement by China will certainly have some reaction. Like landing on the Moon. Hopefully the reactions will be useful ones.

Wow, so many good posts. Don't have the time to read them all. But the features that I think might be missed if I don't mention them: Realistic launch clamps like the ones used to hold real rockets at the base, not the silly part in KSP1. Proper corner RCS quads like what was used on the Lunar Module, with the 2 horizontal RCS jets at 90°. The original MK1 Cockpit from KSP. It was cool and it hurt to see it dropped from the game.

That (and Afghanistan) failed for the simplest of reasons: regime change is very hard. It's almost certain to fail when you stick in a government everyone knows is corrupt and does next to nothing for most people in the nation. I put it under the term "Winning the Peace", which is orders of magnitude harder than "Winning the War", which is damn hard enough. Indeed. My memory goes back to a hazy rememberance of the re-entry of Gemini 12, so I've followed a lot of it. From what I've read, the problem is it's one thing to need to compete in a Space Race with an opponent. But it's hard to keep the budgets flowing, especially when the opponent cuts its programs and finds other projects. Then there's the whole debacle of the Space Shuttle, which took up way too much of what budget remained, which was too much thought to be a "production space vehicle" when it was really just the next research space vehicle, one which had many flaws.

I think Kerbals would name it the Kracker. (And yes, they would taste it too.)