tater

Yeah, their logistical failures (the war was entirely to secure the NEI for oil) were... significant.

Yamamoto was not alone in his worry about the US, it was actually a quite common assumption in the Imperial General HQ. In Combined Fleet Decoded, there is a quote from someone at IGHQ who said that the consensus view was that war with the US held a "90% chance of national death." They rolled the dice on a 10% chance of victory. I'd argue that the Pearl Harbor attack in fact guaranteed they would lose, even had the war declaration arrived the planned moments before the attack. Their only hope was a short war with a negotiated peace, and any surprise attack meant that we'd not ever consider that. Interestingly, we followed the pre-war planning almost to the letter, only changing small details (the rainbow war plans, specifically War Plan Orange). Before the war, in the '30s, a Japanese Naval Attaché talked about war with an American Admiral (it was well known that the 2 sides were presumptive rivals in the PTO), and was told something like (my paraphrase): you might do really well for a few months, but every loss you have is permanent, and we will only get stronger and stronger until we are standing in Tokyo.

Yeah, it was primarily aimed at reigning in totalitarian systems.

Back in the day, private citizens owned warships I was thinking primarily about ownership of planets, frankly, or areas on planets. I don't see it happening, but if some entity established a colony on Mars (or elsewhere) they should own the land they use, and indeed some area around it.

The reasons it gets subsidy for solar and tesla are 100% political.

Spaceflightnow article says that no money is changing hands, NASA only offers technical support.

By "SLS people," I was thinking more about Congress. It starts making SLS/Orion look pretty pointless...'and they won't have that.

Wonder how this announcement is seen by SLS people...

Here's actual news, vs a tweet: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/04/spacex-debut-red-dragon-2018-mars-mission/ So NASA is presumably coughing up actual money. The outer space treaty needs to just be ignored, it's nonsense.

Historical data is that SpaceX can at most take all commercial launches that are available for American companies to get, which is about 12.

I gave up vanilla (except new release testing) a long time ago. The problem with farming funds, etc, is that the game is built that way. I think I will next try some budget mods, instead of the normal career funds paradigm. While I could land on the Mun/Minmus only once, I actually like the Mun a lot, and tend to make bases there (just because). Science is another issue. Even with ETT as my tree, since I use LS, I cannot do a minimalist Duna mission, I need larger stuff (particularly at 6.4X). I suppose I can mess with a vanilla plus LS and see how that goes. LS alone adds real time progression, and would do even better if the tech tree had life support improvements that made unlocking the tree more critical (you'd have to improve capability to go far afield, which takes time).

I'm fine with the transition, but it should be pre-release until it is not critically flawed.

Products respond to demand by customers. At what price point does demand start to increase? It might well, I'm just saying there is no data. This is very interesting. I suppose if they are launching a FH anyway as a test, they might as well use a real payload.

A guy I know had an S, and now has an X (and 3 Ferraris, among other cars). He likes the X a lot. For normal people, a range-extending gasoline generator is the way to go, because we cannot afford to have a warehouse full of cars for different uses. And I don't think of this need as temporary, but for the long foreseeable future. The reason I didn't consider a Tesla was simply range. Most of the time it would be fine, but it cannot be used on any even slightly long trip, ever. If they had charging stations... I'm not stopping every 100-something miles and waiting 45 minutes. If it had a tiny generator, so that I'd never have to worry about being stuck, I'd trade my Rover in on an X (need room for the dog, etc) in a heartbeat, I think. Unless the range can be such that the car can go a full, long day of driving with a guaranteed charge where I decide to stop driving, I think it's a car only useful for regular commutes. The 3 claims a 215 mile range. Raw, without AC/warm temps, etc. The range calculator on the S shows the real problem with the no-gas design. The top speed available is 70 mph. That's cute. Highway speed limit is 75, and traffic move at 80--85. Speed seems to drop range by at least 20 miles per 5 mph increment, so on a warm day (much of the year here in NM would hit fairly warm temps) with the AC on (not even remotely optional 100% of the time between May and September here), the S has a 215 mile range at 70 mph, AC on. on a highway int he real world then, not cloud-cookoo land, the range would drop from 215 to 195 if you drove like a 90 year old woman. At the bare speed of traffic, the range drops to 155-175. Charge stations give you half a charge in 45 minutes. That means stopping every hour for nearly an hour. That trip where we leave in the morning, and arrive at our friends' place in Colorado by lunch? 2+ hours to Wagon Mound, then stop for an hour. Then a little over an hour to Trinidad, then stop for 45 min.+ *(we'd likely have to stop in Raton and top off, because Trinidad is really too far). We'd nor nearly be in Colorado Springs in a real car, but we're barely in CO. Again, it's a stretch to use the last charge to get to Pueblo, but assume we can by being uncomfortable and turning off the AC. Thats another 2 hours travel/charge. Now we can get to Colorado Springs in another 45 minutes, and arrive. We've spent almost 8 hours on a 5.5 hour trip. If we tried to visit friends in Ft. Collins... it's a 2 day trip instead of 1. With the model 3, the range is going to be far worse, it is only good for very local driving. It requires that the household have a second car that is actually useful.

Except there really isn't that much demand for rocket launches.

That river view is pretty. I like naturalistic views, but I also really like dense, urban views.

If they knew unity was literally game-killing, why not first wait for the update, and just use the extra time to wipe out all the other bugs?

You don;t need to. Launch KSP and look at the Activity Monitor. It's 64 bit if you are 64 bit.

^^^ are the same guys building the boosters initially also doing the refurb? That certainly helps the economics of it (given realistic launch rates).

In order to role play career, you need to warp a lot and make time progress, else you cannot think anything except that your space program sprang from the ground, and you started doing all the things inside of year one. I always use life support, and that alone pushes it out to a couple years, typically (I say typically, but I also usually play with larger scales and stock parts, so who knows). That;s still too short. I think that the devs tend to think that career is played by running missions to completion, and hence think time is not as much of a problem, then they never reuse anything (i.e.: a new "science from space around Duna would prompt them to build an entirely new craft, even though they have an orbiter there). So a mission to Duna moves the clock forward a few years, whereas I would launch the craft, then do other stuff during transit (concurrent missions). I virtually never warp more than perhaps a couple weeks to a maneuver node once a craft is close to a corse correction. The number one factor missing in career is time being a thing. Look at the (bad) rescue missions. No time limit that means anything. If some astronaut is stranded around Duna, I want him in a craft that could plausibly survive for X years, and I want that time limit. I might actually do those---build a craft that can go to duna NOW, with a bad window, in a travel time that gets it there in time to save the kerbal.

I'd fire it the same way everything else got to the moon, from earth.

It's ridiculous that less than a month from messing with rockets, you have the parts to make Skylon. The entire career system is absurd.

Now you are being hit by a shower of particles---shrapnel, grapeshot, canister, call it what you like, moving at something like 11 km/s. The total energy is the same as if it was whole, just spread out. A 200 gram chunk at 11 km/s has the energy of an Abrams 120mm tank round. I'm unsure how much energy you'd need to destroy it if it was something like a long rod penetrator (of decent size).

LOL. You do not need to shoot it down, you need to entirely vaporize it. Nothing left but plasma, and at a good distance. Once on its trajectory, it will hit the target. There is no "shooting it down" short of vaporization.

How are they fighting without it being on earth as well? How does it not escalate? If the PRC takes the US base, why wouldn't we just send Ranger 10 to play kissy face with the now PRC base?