Geneborg

So...you'r going to 1.0. You just barely finished the structure of the house, living in it took alot of patience and handywork, you are making large last minute changes like ripping/replacing internal walls, are not done with the paint job, it's not decorated...so you are going to rent it out to complete strangers now. Hm, what reaction are you hoping to get here? I'm confused. The moment you lay off the "ErAc"-Label you are going to be judged way harder then now, you must realize that? I understand your zeal to finally finish it, but leaving the gameplay/balancing/bugfix pass out can't have been the result of a well thought out brainstorming at the office, no?

Yes, i did that a few years ago, works fine, just leave texture work for Blender, i don't know if the latest version of Sketchup got any better at all at texturing but it was really bad a few years ago.

Pacific Rim Alone, waiting to go home, getting sicker every day, then an accident happens...

Hm, didn't the new Engines like Cryengine/Unreal4 open up their licensing model? As far as i know you can pay a small monthly fee (<50$) to start with them and, if you later commercialize it, you will have to pay them a dividend. UE4 FAQ

Years ago when modeling i used: - Sketchup only for modeling (so much faster then blender, so much easier) - Mapping (UV unwrapping) and optimizing in Blender Blender is a really powerful tool, but quite confusing for starters, i never found it easy to model in it, not compared to Sketchup.

Seems legit...not. They will start thinking about what they sell and how much it will cost 2 years after they...well start selling it. Somehow thats not how i learned to do business... Kickstarter is becoming more of a scam every day, so much potential lost. Crowdfunding could be so powerful without all these snake-oil salesmen.

Ok, to give a serious answer to this: There is no PROTOCOL yet, but there are suggestions. There is no world leader either, but there are only 2 possibities: the aliens contact the one they deem worthy themselves, or they give us the chance to bring them before a council of mankind (like UN, but including even isolated nations). The US Military in the 50s has formulated the "seven steps of contact" protocol. Its obviously kinda militaristic, but it depicts how first you assess the thread level, then make "covert contact", then take samples and finally make open contact (interestingly the first UFO contact report 57 reports aliens doing exactly that, too, like the protocol formulated...well well). Seti Institute has a plan also, if they ever recieve a signal they will confirm it and then make it public as fast as possible so to not give one organization advantage over another.

This...was unexpected, AND funny

Well we only had to wait for Apollo 13 to get all excited about space again after Apollo 12 was sooo boring

Have to comment to this because it doesn't reflect reality: 1. they didn't lose it, they had communication and got all the data = not lost. 2. they didn't design for CONCERT/OSIRIS to find the lander in the dark because...ITS NOT NEEDED...let me emphasize this. Nothing is gained by it, absolutely nothing, its just for ppl like you who absolutely want a picture. 3. you don't just dual purpose ANY instrument for fun. every change in requirements changes the payload which effects the whole mission. There are stringent design requirements here. See point 2 why its was not needed anyways, so no, no dual purpose. As long as we can't launch as much payload as we want to space every mission will do a risk/gain analysis of features of the mission and implement only the most important ones. Even if Philae would have MISSED the comet the mission in itself would still have been a success, but we all know that thats not how humans work, right? We focus an failures, not on success, so we transform a 90% success rate (measurements of instruments) in failure because we don't have a picture.

Not far, there is no dedicated GPU in it, only onboard graphics. They don't mention the motherboard, but there should be a slot to upgrade one. The dualcore is a mixed bag. Sure, for KSP or other games that only run single-threaded it will work out, but more and more new games are now requiring 4 cores (not only on the spec-sheet, they will use them for real). So, will it be fine for KSP? Depends...the CPU will do fine, for nicer graphics you will need to add a dedicated card. It really depends on what you plan to play, so maybe you want to mention a few games. EDIT: we would need to know your budget roughly to tell you what GPU. Going value/money Nvidia 970 or AMD 290. Minimum would be AMD 260x, but don't expect wonders from that.

They will build something bigger once they need it. For now they need to go to orbit and maybe to the mun. Mun colonies are like...10-15 years in the future, who knows if they will do most of it with robots anyways, so its not certain they will need a new spacecraft for that. But 15 years is quite some time, could be an evolution like Soyuz (updated at least 9 times)

Laser communication is in experimentals, as far as i know they have done some successful tests form orbit, thats about it. All space communication is slow, and its far from trivial. But thats outside of common knowledge of course, ppl think they have far better stuff then we have on our cellphones...thats not the case, spacetech usually lags 10 years behind, rosetta was launched 10 years ago, meaning the tech is 15-20 years behind from what we have NOW

well they specifically said they wont use the legs yet, and didn't talk about how they would use the flywheel. the scientist on the stage did seem keen on using the drill, though, even if it's risky. we will see, i guess they only have about 24-36 hours left on battery in this orientation and getting a sample, any sample, would indeed be great, but probably won't happen. Who knows if they will risk to damage the craft using the drill/legs/flywheel/harpoons again or if they will decide to let it rest on the surface and hope for a new sun-angle in a few weeks/months.

"sliding down" is a bad analogy i think, there is simply not enough gravity to do that. think of it more like a toy-baloon filled with air that jumps around on the floor, every litte force applied to it will change its position/orientation. they even hope that using the instruments correctly will change the orientation again, that tells us how litte force is needed to make it move. edit: i also feel a bit sad for the team there, everyone is focusing on it not landing correctly, but most of the sience can still be done and we have pictures from the surface of the comet (like what we got from landing on Titan). still pretty good for a first attempt.

Latest news: there was a 3rd landing, it seems to be stable now source

Well, this is obviously a great success, they should get some data now anyways, they did hit the comet after all, even if it doesn't sit as firmely as they had hoped its by no means a failure. I too suppose they will do inital datasets for everything that can be done without pushing against the surface and then maybe try the harpoons again, but they are the experts, if they think the risk is warrented then its their prorogative. We will know soon i guess. EDIT: well the first picture should come in in about 30min, if i understood correctly it will be about the aproach from philaes view.

yey...6,5h to go

I'm starting to get excited now...man if this works...i will be so sad if it doesn't, but i know its really really difficult and they will need alot of luck.

Must have? - SelectRoot -> yes, its simple but crucial for me - KAC (Kerbal Alarm Clock) -> not missing a node anymore, great, not speaking of all the other functionality - Precise Node -> yea, finetuning a node, what a blessing - RCS Build Aid -> so important if you do any docking at all, but more so for large objects - DPAI (Docking Port Alignment Indicator) -> docking UI, maybe not the visually nicest mod, but so helpful - Procedural Fairings -> Rockets look like Rockets finally, and even more important when playing with FAR/NEAR - Deadly Reentry -> well, the name says it all Then there are alot of other mods that are "nice to have", but without the ones mentioned above i don't really want to play anymore.

Even european news outlets made a fuss about this today...that also shows how space flight, its risks, its statistical successes/failures is not present in the mind of the ppl/media. An unmanned rocket blows up and "oh god the sky is falling, didn't we know how to do this and how will ppl on mars get resupplied now....oh wait, we arn't on mars yet? How come...." But hey, nice fireball

open source code if thats it, i won't do a riddle, just clicked for fun

Best ever? No...i mean...no, that wouldn't be fair to other great games i remember, and surely in statistical terms its not up there either. BUT, its one of the few games that i want others to play, talk about, and to share. Its one of these open ended games that, also thanks to the modding community, can be reinvented alot of times, that i come back to after months of not playing it. It wouldn't be half as fun for me if the only option would be STOCK gameplay, an important factor to consider. But the same goes for ElderScrollsGames, Civilization and other moddable games.

Don't overthink this, its not incredible, its done all the time, sientific advisors are standard in scifi movies. The problem is that most "suggestions" from experts get thrown out because "artistic license" is more important to most directors, or the script just NEEDS something to happen...screw physics. Its entertainment after all. Seth Shostak for example did it for the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (he wrote the equation on the board from the scientist, the father of the girl) and explained extensively on his podcast how something like this works, why its frustrating when nobody listens and how he accepted that most of the script is just fiction and everything has to bow to it.

Well, i would like to have a "fuel depot" module. Once activated it calculates funds drain relative to Kerbin distance (or the next refueling point if we get resources on other planets) and for that gets refueled automatically form time to time. Yes, it may be a cheap way to do it but it would simulate refueling contracts from 3rd parties quite well without you having to babysit / micromanage everything.