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My usual description of 2001 is that it's a "great" SF movie, but it's not a good SF movie. Meaning it is important in many aspects, but not very well done overall. "For Hollywood standards" is an incredibly low bar. In interstellar, the space travel was all absurd, and no more accurate than Star Wars (tiny SSTOs). The general relativity nonsense was driven by a desire to avoid dilation effects... but they were passing through an event horizon, twice, so any other dilation effects aren't even noise. That's aside from wasting time going to a planet that would not possibly be habitable due to radiation (water planet). But love alters spacetime, so it's got that accuracy going for it? The Martian was written as a script I think. It was made to be a movie from the start (good business plan by the writer).

As is frequently the case for me, "what he ^^^ said."

Yeah, I forgot scientists... Engineers and pilots have more use in general for accomplishing missions mechanically. Scientists being scientists doesn't really matter that mush on a base or station after X period of time, though, they will have done everything they can do anyway. How about this: Timer on habitation livability expires, and skill drops by 1. After this, every KM/X (dunno what X should be) the skill drops again. When skill = 0, then they are tourists. I get the idea (I'm all for it!), but I think that habitability should decrease their capability, but not potentially kill them (note that I play with CausesDeath = true) since they cannot do anything once tourists, even EVA to collect supplies from an unmanned lander. Would landing/docking a new habitable part instantly give them crew status for a period? BTW, you said the facilities need not be connected, what range is considered connected for this purpose? Also, what are the ballpark figures for hab space in KMs?

You could make experience affect the effects of exceeding duration. I know the mechanism is making them a "tourist," but perhaps experience might allow some activity, to periods of regular (not tourist) status for a period. If the periods of... lucidity ( ) were unpredictable, then it's clearly nothing to count on for normal operations, but might allow you to check them periodically, and maybe be able to EVA. Seems like it should be a more generalized morale effect, though (I'm assuming the tourist status), and not a complete break down (tourist). Would it be possible to have the effect be to reduce the skill level? Say skill 3 guys becomes skill 2 after the timer expires, and the skill 0 guys become tourists? So you'd not want to plan to do this, as they are less effective, but as long as they had LS, at least they could do something.

If someone is playing with deadly USILS, is the habitation aspect separate? Ie: If I run out of actual LS, my guys die, but if 3 are sent to Eeloo in nothing but a mk1-2 pod, they'll go crazy and on strike long before they run out of the massive stack of LS I included?

The giant one carries 2 cargo containers. That's how many a single train car holds. Freight charges are apparently about $1.98 for 2 containers per mile (3 cents per ton-mile). These clearly have some utility, but I don't see them as being all that common.

Battles (like a siege) taking months is not at all relevant to ship to ship actions, and other modern analogies to what we are talking about, which is air or naval engagements. Months are certainly possible, if you talk in terms of launch of an attack to resolution, heck, in space, possibly years if you posit such attacks have some worth (10 years to get to Pluto, then bang, missile hits and "battle" is over). All possible futures doesn't really help. Honestly, you need a context. Who is fighting, and why? Weapons will be designed with a specific mission/task in mind. A-sat weapons, or A-sat weapons with a kicker stage to put them in some other orbit. Everything launched from earth is known. Are we talking about a future with a Mars colony making its own craft/weapons? What are their goals? To destroy the earth? If not that harsh, what could earth possibly do, send ground troops to invade in a couple years, which would be impossibly vulnerable, since a Mars-launched missile could simply kill it during reentry. Near future is pretty silly to contemplate, frankly, I think it's implausible. - - - Updated - - - This will rapidly become a semantic battle, frankly. Midway, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Savo, or the chase of the Bismarck are typical naval battles in the modern sense. The "Battle of the Atlantic" is just a catch-all for vast numbers of actual battles felt too small to justify naming them, by the same metric the entire system of PTO naval engagements would be one "battle" (which is absurd). So real naval battles are very time-limited.

So we are entirely limited to earth orbit? Are we assuming bases someplace? Where? Every single launch from earth is detected, as is the orbit or transfer. Then all the ships are missiles, basically. Why bother carrying weapons, make them bomb-pumped x-ray laser "cubsats" (writ large). Then they would track it. If they detected it, it's not too faint. Also, apparently someone is around Mars, yet they have nothing closer that earth? What are they fighting about when Mars is not even remotely valuable compared to Earth? There are no battles that will take years, I'm not seeing a plausible scenario where there is any possible compelling reason for this. Seriously, set up a specific alternate history here, all weapons systems exist within a context of history and doctrine. We want Mars to ourselves and blow up Chinese space probes en route? How would this not just become terrestrial war? In any terrestrial conflict, past sat warfare, what possible value is there in fighting over places BEO? If you postulate Martians fighting for independence (as if anyone would waste money fighting this), why would they do anything but threaten to bombard earth, or knock down any incoming crafts? What is gained, and is the whole earth somehow united in the goal of subjugating Mars?

Apparently by people unfamiliar with basic astrophysics or good plots. ObMartian: I'm less pleased about the mountainous terrain, though I understand their rationale(s) for doing so (artistic). I also see that Weir will be attending a screening at George RR Martin's theater in Santa Fe... maybe I'll find out about tickets, it's only 40 minutes from my house.

I've hacked around this (cupola issue) by alt-f12ing and completing the contract since I landed the bloody thing, and wanted it cleared

As in the other thread, you throw a number out for how long it would take to develop X or Y, with no rationale behind that guess (it's not even at the level of "guestimate"). Show your work for this figure. Nationalism can certainly motivate such a project, but such nationalism doesn't exist at that level right now. Apollo was 100% a result of the Cold War. No Cold War, no space race. There is currently no such rivalry. As such, regular politics will dominate any attempt to secure larger budgets for NASA---that's simply not going to happen, and to think otherwise is delusional. I don't think any grown-up from the US in this forum would disagree. LOL. Congress is filled with lawyers, and 20 year old staffers who majored in political "science," or other nonsense. They can't possibly understand the difference between a good plan, and a bad plan, for the most part they aren't even good lawyers. Aside from that, everything Congress does is about politics. Always has been, always will be. It has nothing at all to do with "doing the right thing," or actually fixing a problem that is perceived. It is about keeping their own jobs, and increasing their personal standing/power/chances of reelection. Period. This usually means programs get funded by horse-trading for stuff in their district. My wife has lobbied for her professional association in Congress (she's a surgeon). You don;t even walk in the door without a check, and for her trouble she talked to a 20-something year old with 2 fewer postgraduate degrees than she has, and 3 fewer science degrees than she has. She might as well be talking to a middle school student. 16-25 billion a year (500 B$ divided by 20-30 years) is NASA's current budget (30 years) or more if 20 years. The NY City public school system has a budget of 28 B$ as a reality check. That's not "an insult," it's what things cost in the real world. My own tiny city (500k people) spends 1.3 billion a year on the public schools. As with most spending the primary cost is LABOR.

The mk3 cockpit is lighter than the mk1-2. It carries more crew. It is vastly larger. It is more impact resistant, more heat resistant, carries substantially more mono, has bigger batteries, and more torque. Everything about it is considerably better, but it is 3/4 the mass.

That is the traveller rpg (and associated board games like Mayday, Brilliant Lances, and Battle Rider). Unfortunately, while canon traveller, it's indefensible, though they tried to hand wave it with fields holding the sand, etc. It just would not work. In Niven, many times the comm laser is used as a weapon. You point it at the other ship, and simply add that tiny amount of heat to the target that it is incapable of radiating away.

I even mean dialects, and accents. I have read that rural West Virginia may actually be closer to17th century British english than most other dialects spoken (anywhere).

Another forum post for steam says ~Library/Caches might have savageness in it. I have steam on my PC, not my mac. - - - Updated - - - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Root_directory You looked in /Users/whateveryourusernameis/Library/Application Support/Steam before, right?

Masses seem to have not gotten any sort of balance pass in KSP. Look at the mk3 cockpit vs the mk1-2 capsule, for example. You are spot-on.

You know what the save game name is, right? That or make a new save, and label it something easy to find. Then do a search for it. Did you see KSP in steamapps? Did you poke around in the Library?

"Illegal" in international relations is functionally meaningless. There a number of long-standing historical mechanisms to solve such disagreements. One is called war.

Modern English is all equally derivative. I'd be genuinely interested to know what people in the early British colonies in America actually sounded like. Typed variants in modern use might eventually be recognized by the dictionaries, you never know. Find a youtube video about grammar, usage, and dictionaries by Stephen Pinker, he's talked a few times on the subject in videos, and it is fascinating.

? Did the bbc make it possessive and use an apostrophe? I see "maths" used pretty much constantly by anyone from the UK. English is not French, changes in usage change usage, the language constantly evolves (which is perhaps why it is the new lingua franca.

A quick google asking where Steam puts stuff showed this: ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps Look in there. - - - Updated - - - Note that ~/ is your user folder.

Maths is the common usage outside North America. It's their language, after all, I think they have a reasonable claim on proper usage .

I'm assuming current telescopes, actually, although extended to build/place whatever particular type in space. Again, I think these conversations are meaningless without a very specific universe to talk about. Set a "tech level" with some rough rules about what is possible, then add in whatever laws of physics are violated by the SF aspect (FTL, etc), THEN start talking. The very notion of warships requires a context, as well. What are the geopolitical (cosmopolitical?) goals? Your ships have to go from A to B. Space travel has to be a thing for combat to happen. Just being there makes heat. If it is manned, it's at crew temp inside, which means it is hot. Your weapon drone in orbit around planet X is not an offensive weapon unless it moves to planet Y to attack something. The act of moving it makes it entirely known. If it corrects course... it is also known. "Sir, we saw 10 craft leave Mars yesterday with burns consistent with a transfer to Earth. We should prepare our defenses for possible action in 230 days." No surprises. So you think there might be valuable targets in Pluto's orbit 10 years from now? Because why? If we drop the travel time to a less absurd number, then the transfers might become visible. Wouldn't you just constantly send mines wherever you might suspect a possible threat? Again, the universe and politics need to be established in advance to make sense of any space warfare scenarios. Modern notions of warfare would not predict that navies in the age of sail would work so very hard to take ships as prizes, for example. That was a product of many things, including prevailing culture. The bottom line is that tactically, there is no stealth in any real sense. Planning done 10 years in advance is strategy, not tactics. Once a fight is in progress, nothing is hidden under normal circumstances.

Interstellar was just awful as SF. Not just the terrible attention to science detail, the plot was bad, too. - - - Updated - - - The hab ring in that trailer looks to be rotating around once per minute. It needs to do over 3.5 to get to martian gravity.

Use Spotlight and find it. The folder should be KSP_osx 104 unless steam gives things weird names. Is there a Steam folder? Right click Steam and "show contents" if Steam shows, but is not a directory in the finder.