SorryDave

Thanks Red Iron Crown! I really felt a great accomplishment with this last science mode game. But just so you understand my skills, I also sent a kerbal to the surface of Jool because I forgot to raise my perapsis after changing inclination. I restarted from a quick save and repeated the exact same mistake.

It is complex machinery that would be the most susceptible to damage from space. Redundancy does not require complexity and would be the best defense against space. Any modern day virus is a highly evolved form that took millions of years to evolve on an environment that includes microbes. They often have special means of inserting their unique genetic code into living cells. Self replication is not a requirement for life. I imagine an environment where all the pieces exist for replication, but self replication does not occur. A makes B, B makes C , and C makes A. But only locally is the mixture correct enough to maintain this loop with an input of energy. It is possible, even likely...

As I grew up I built a lot of model rockets. Some on very high Total impulse engines. My fastest was predicted to break the sound barrier with a G rated engine, but this was hard to measure as it just vanished at launch leaving a beautiful smoke trail up into the clouds. This hobby was critical to my later interest in science and math. I learned about the rocket equation and determining the center of pressure with algebra at a very young age because of this. I learned the laws of motion and calculus shortly after to determine distance travelled on a body with changing mass, thrust, and drag force. I have fond memories of the hobby. It was the seed to all my current hobbies and even my Career,

Even simpler and more exotic by our understanding, but nearly as difficult to detect. Most virus could not replicate without a host cell to do all the work, the simplest being just protected strands of RNA. I imagine a.community of these simple objects would replicate only as a community, but would not need to exist in a closed system. They may exist in another type of system where local variations and "blends" of individuals would allow the replication of the entire system. Maybe they would exist on some organic/mineral/carbon substrate with large areas that fail to replicate once resources are consumed, but small patches were replication of the system continues in a cycle. The reactions could occur at a lower rate with long periods of dormancy and stability that is only activated occasionally.

If you are correct than we can only hope that this will help drive some action that has a positive impact on the environment. Maybe a scientifically literate country will take meaningful action. The cure is as simple as the cause, don't burn fossil fuels. Until then, the evidence suggests that this will not be addressed by the same generation that continues to deny the impact of the damage they cause. Twenty years until an ice free Arctic is still on the minority of climatologist studies even with the impacts you mention.

A lot of the search for life in our solar system focuses on the detection of single cell microbes at sources of water. This is partly because they existed early in earths history and have been found in fairly exotic locations on earth, and always require water. I believe that it is possible, even likely, that life originated outside of earth. This is not a rare position anymore in origin theories. However, I believe that if this is true it is something other than single cell microbes that is the dominating life form. Space fairing life may be much simpler. I can imagine an environment where the objects that our now the contents of cells live in ecosystems. This would stretch the definition of life as the systems would "replicate" through a symbiotic relationship not yet observed in nature. Some landed on a rare liquid water surface and developed the ability to enclose their environment with lipids. Over millions of years they developed the ability to survive as replicating single cells in what was previously a toxic environment of water. Until the development of multicellular life, these single celled creatures were the most advanced form of life which permeates our solar system and other stars. What do you guys think,.,

Exactly, and with any luck it will be televised.

Polar ice melting causes global warming. I am an optimistic person and believe that in one billion years CO2 will not be an issue anymore. The earth will adjust and intelligent squids will be speculating on the mysterious demise of the great ape civilization. I believe that the scientific evidence of global warming from rising CO2 is hard to deny, as well as the cause being human activity. We should all be concerned when humans drastically affects the environment at levels not generated since the time when a stone axe was the most advanced technology. On a positive note, I think it will be my kids generation that has to address it as some scientist don't predict enough impact for another 20-100 years. Whew. In the mean time, I am trying to develop a solar powered green house gas generator to help eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel for rising the temperature of the earth.

A possible scenario of an object this size hitting earth, would be from a small brown dwarf passing through the Oort cloud about a LY away. The object would approach at comet or better speeds and we would have little time to react. The good news is that the end of the world would be spectacular as mile high waves made of molten rock traveling the speed of sound would cover a continent.

It is quite possible to extract energy from any nuclear pile and nearly any heat source warmer than the environment. But, It is not economically feasible and the risk to life is high. It would be better to spend the money on solar panels.

Since I posted this Sept 2nd, I have orbited every planet and moon except Eeloo in an attempt to unlock the tech tree in science mode with only space walks and crew reports from space (no landings, no science equipment), During this time I have finally become good at interplanetary travel. The biggest things I learned was that I can use Kerbal Alarm Clock to set up transfer windows and "focus" on a planet to set up my arrival. I also learned that I can fly to the Mun and back without batteries, Duna and Eve without solar panels. It was a lot of fun.

I usually just save my favorite designs and start a new science or career mode. Each time I play a little differently, currently I am playing science mode and trying to unlock as much as possible using just EVAs and crew reports only from space.

I imagine... Kerbin has been a difficult planet for the animal like mobile plants to evolve on. Jool moved closer to its star beginning constant bombardment from asteroids that exist in the space between Kerbin and Duna. This has caused mass extinction events many times the rate of earth. In a rare quite time, the mobile animals evolved intelligence. They built a vault to protect themselves from doom. A collision event flooded the lands and toxic clouds covered the skies, leaving only grass height plants and small chirping animals. The surviving Kerbals left the vault they had hidden in. Before they built any cities, they created the KSC and underground companies to develop space flight. This was done to change the fate of Kerbin and prevent destruction by asteroids. The sentient mobile plants had finally taken steps to control their own fate. But first they needed a good junk yard created from the ruins of a once bigger civilization....

I'm sure there is a mod to fix the apple logos orientation. Have you tried the vehicle with NEAR or FAR?

It is not you mods, I noticed it as well

Yeah, maybe I should have added a wink emote. I am just glad someone did not give me a link to a mod that "fixes" sandbox.

In my limited experience, some of the most realistic tools for modeling space flight (for example STK/Astrogator or LTOOL) are horrible video games. They have terrible tutorials, poor graphics, and no Kerbals. They are not well integrated with any engineering tool that could be used for spaceship design. As far as I can tell, none have any mods for life support or even any kind of re-entry modeling. However, both tools mentioned have been used to calculate low energy transfers (as per Lo and Ross). It would be cool to use lagrangain points for single impulse transfers from Kerbin to Jool with a non-Hoffman 600 m/s burn.

I do not find the text misalignment to be as bad as the total lack of direction in the sandbox game, there is absolutely no in-game "main quest" guiding you to your next goal. It is just too easy for a new player to accidentally do whatever they wanted.

On an early minmus mission I landed a small craft about 6km from the base I was hoping to land near. So my jeb decided to use his eva rockets to fly there. He hit the ground fast and slid on his face "successfully" most of the trip to the base.

If a Kerbal were to misspell dyslexia on Kerbin traveling the speed of light, it would travel the length of the entire observable universe (now infinitely thin) before a spellchecker would underline it.

If keening went the speed of light, the background radiation would melt the planet almost instantly

If Kerbin went the speed of light: in a fraction of a second, the entire universe would end.

I have orbited the inner planets with Kerbals. I also have landed Kerbals on the Mun, Minmus, and Duna. I have not sent any vehicle beyond Duna, but this will soon change.

I like the idea of adding some realistic mods for KSP, here are my ideas: Public dis-interest mod, tax payer concern mod, budget over-run mod, polarized congress mod These should add realistic challenges.

I have not been on the forums much, but it is easy to see that this is a heavily debated mod. Often I see that there are non-MJ players who proudly fly without any aids. The MJ players often state (sometimes very defensively) how there is nothing wrong with using it. I am a little of both types: I use Kerbal Engineer and Kerbal Alarm Clock because who wants to tediously flip back and forth among spreadsheets? I also enjoy launching 1000 rockets into orbit.