Technical Ben

And these satellites cannot?

Just like all those cars, boats and aircraft... oh wait!

You do know how experiments work right? Like, the other 2, or 57 sats? Like... they would rather risk exploding another company's satellite, than have to press "retry" on the sat, or another sat? Wow, I hope I don't meet you at a party, who knows how you'd react.

*If not controlled*. They have fuel to boost for their assumed useful lifespan.

They could de-orbit any other sat. Like... ???

So basically, someone accidentally allowed the ESA email to go in the "spam" folder. XD Logistical problem. Not really as big as they made out. A phone call would have probably sorted it.

There is already a name IIRC.

Seems others are reporting it's one of the dead SpaceX sats. So, "dead". I guess SpaceX still have some work to iron out with their designs. Also "chance of collision", so it's for safety, and not necessarily and emergency.

Do they lack the ability? Or legal recourse. I agree it's poor for SpaceX to not move it. But also that I don't know the capabilities of each satellite, or who is at fault (SpaceX for not checking, or ESA for forgetting to tell SpaceX a bird was already there?).

Lots of domes being shown. Nothing stops them from making those as gardens/food production/air recycling. Then you can plop them down, and easily (in game) having self sufficiency. If we get life support, I assume it will be similar to the communication network. Not having it means you cannot do some things easily. But it won't break the game or stop you playing. Having it means you get bonuses. Setting it up is easyish, but it has realistic restrictions (coms has obstruction by planets, limited range). So life support might get time limits on mission length, or colony building/refuel limits until you setup new supplies/recyclers/miners for fuel/resources/life support.

Goosebumps? Even the indestructible Scott Manley said it brought tears to his eyes!

I put this one together a few days ago. But time to transmit some more science. Robotic parts help. Not enough power? No probs. Bonus points for spotting the special little robotic parts and what they do. https://imgur.com/a/fZM01Us

They need to shorten those fingers, or make them mittens again.

It's not soft at that level. IRL it's 1 atom a meter, or less. The change and "soft" layer, would take *longer than the age of the universe" to effect a craft, in game, or in real life. Other effects will slow it down before that. You won't get 0.01 of a tank. You'd get nothing. Zip. Nada... not zero, but you'd get 1mm dv after 100s of years.

Yes. Part. Not "The" atmosphere. See my comment above. Try to look and learn about it. You seem to think that the atmosphere is up there. It's only *part* of it... 1 atom of it part. For the game, and for just about any form of calculation, it's too small to worry about. For NASA? Yeah, they can compute and work with single atoms if they wish. We are not getting single atoms worth of anything in KSP.

Not really. Atoms can get anywhere. Is it affected by the atmosphere? Is there any pressure? Heat/energy exchange? Will is degrade orbits? Yep, but 1 atom at a time... which is very very slow. I'm not sure you realise how small and insignificant a single atom is to a satellites orbit. Or to fuel collection. A ltr of air is... I cannot even type the number of atoms. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.045+moles&assumption="ClashPrefs"+->+"" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(unit) [edit] There, it's 2.4 × 1022 molecules... atoms in 1 liter. At 1 atom a second, if collecting 1 atom of "atmosphere" in lunar orbit range, it would take 55,000 times the age of the *universe* to collect 1 liter of air... Like... It's... Not... "Atmosphere" up that far. XD

Part of. A fleck of skin is part of your body. But your body does not extend to the carpet.

A single atom does not an atmosphere make. That seems to be the confusion.

Do you realise how little air there is? gram per hour?

A unicycle in the air (1 rocket engine only!). It was very smooth too.

[edit] Never mind. I never claimed that there were not problems with the heat etc. But that the energy/mass ratios are correct. If you had containment. KSP also has no life support, timewarp, zero degradation of materials/fuel etc... so having a heat impervious fusion drive, is not beyond the realms of the game. PS, not sure how you got that from the video. 4 or 5 tons fuel per ton of payload sounds rather reasonable for a fuel source meeting "scifi" levels of visual sizes. But you'd need metallic/compressed hydrogen to fit it nicely in most scifi ships. Though most scifi has nowhere for fuel to go. XD In KSP you will need tanks. Magnetic confinement could also be a thing. It's "future", not "magic" tech. "as good as indefinitely", nope, as long as you get from tons of hydrogen having fusion work on it. Like nuclear power, this gives days/hours of use. See current nuclear fuel use rate. Finally, In expanse there are no radiators. In KSP, you need radiators!

They still use hydrogen. It's not a magic drive. Even Expanse AFAIK has reaction mass. They just don't generally mention it, to avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief by making an error (cast/actors could say "1kg of fuel" instead of "1 kilo tons of fuel" for example). On twitter I follow a couple of game devs. Aiming for hard-sci-fi ship design. They designed the craft around a sphere of lithium (or Metallic hydrogen/lithium mix etc). It was only 1/3 of the ships *size*, but accounted for the 90% mass for the TMR of the craft (fusion rocket using laser confinement IIRC). So as long as the Kerbstine drive uses normal fuel (it probably will, it may be multimode, and burn through each fuel quicker etc), then it will be fine. It's just a fusion drive shrunk and made 99% efficient (our cars are like 99% efficient currently, after the poor 25% fuel to oxygen combustion cycle that is ). With fusion drives, you would get limits in efficiency, but for a game, you can dial up to 11. PS, What is it with people? Lol. The Alcubierre drive is pure fantasy, and we don't even know if the physics exists for it. Metallic Hydrogen has possibly been made (in science you tend to need a few more examples to prove no error has been made, so we need a couple more productions of it). It is possibly metastable in some compounds (mixing with lithium or something). So, given 100 years? We might be able to get a fuel tank (still under pressure!) with it in. This gives you good size vs weight vs thrust/reaction mass. It's still super expensive to make. But possibly a few orders of magnitude less than antimatter production and containment. Colony making is also, plain and simply, the gameplay mechanics that allows you to build craft on/orbiting around a planet. That speeds up play/tests/trials/missions as you can, once a colony is kitted out, save on the few years transit time. It leads to more emergent gameplay. IIRC they said you'd have to bring parts across to build craft first, then later industry/kerbals can build the parts for you. So as a stepping stone, we get gradual tech/gameplay progressions. Unless someone is using cheats, no one will be flying to another system at lightspeed in a self building ufo on day one... after a few days or months in game play? Then perhaps you could kit out a giant self sufficient orbital landing craft launcher, that also runs on antimatter pumped He4 fusion torches fed from buzzard collectors. XD

It's a fusion ship. See Scott Manley's video on the Expanse ships. It's the power output you get from a fusion source. The "unknown" is how much a fusion power plant/shielding/injectors/heating/cooling/refueling etc systems weigh and the costs/energy/inefficiencies of them. The "Epstein" drive though, is mathematically sound. So, if an "end tech tree" engine, it would be Kerbals making the "perfect" rocket engine, not the "impossible" rocket engine.

There are no comments on MP yet, like none. So that at least must be like NMS where there is no actual start on it yet (NMS had none for what, 1 or 2 years?). But I concede, the rest of the backbone could be any age... just still looks early IMO. The gameplay screenshots are still very basic. Reminds me of the early days of KSP1, but obviously with better artwork (this does seem much more along than the coding).

Perhaps they are using Kerbal equivalent shoulder launched nuclear devices?