Gaarst

Oh sorry. I was so focused with sounding smart that I somehow didn't even read your question properly. As Shpaget said, any Renaissance era telescope would be enough to see a similarly advanced large city or changes in the landscape due to deforestation/agriculture. I remember the guys at conference mentioning that the planets appeared as big in their sky as the Moon in ours.

There is a limit to the power of telescopes, and it's called physics. Because of diffraction of light through the telescope aperture, a finite telescope size has a finite resolution limit that can't be overcome regardless of technology: the larger a telescope and the smaller the wavelength, the greater the resolution. And we're already hitting this limit today. This is why radio telescopes are gigantic (and yet still have terrible resolution when compared to optical telescopes) and why we're building ever larger telescopes on the ground. Unless you find a way to beat Quantum Mechanics, you can't overcome this limit using a single telescope, regardless of your technological advancement. Since you simply need a larger telescopes you can either build a larger telescope or put several telescopes together. We're already building pretty much the largest mirrors possible for our telescopes, so the first option isn't really a thing. Interferometers are the easiest choice for better resolution, and we're already doing this. But even then, there is a limit to how big you can make it: an interferometer the size of the Earth (so a few telescopes all over the globe) would have a resolution of 18km at 40ly. We could theoretically resolve a big city on a TRAPPIST-1 planet but not much more, and there's our atmosphere in the way. We can account for the atmosphere by various means in today's telescopes, but for this kind of accuracy new technologies need to be invented. A space interferometer could do better, but this means sending stuff in space. JWST cost a few billions so an interferometer this size isn't for tomorrow, and that's not even starting to talk about technological challenges (I'm not an expert in telescope manufacturing so I don't really know how hard it'd be to build these things, I just know it'd be hard). The best chances to detect life there is not to try and see it directly but to detect signs of it. Radio signals or atmosphere alteration are the easiest to see. And that's what the folks there are planning on to do, by analysing the composition of these exoplanets' atmospheres and search for any anomaly in the abundance of some gasses that could be produced by organic life or even industrialisation. Depending on the impact of life on the planet we could detect it with today's means.

And it's still the name for a donkey for pretty much every English speaking country except the US.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as moderation watches closely. Trolls set aside, there exist some people who believe in conspiracies because they were influenced by some theories stating facts (justified or not) that made them question themselves. Most of the time these people are open-minded and will listen to a rationally built argument, accompanied with scientific statements. I see no evil in there. Unfortunately these are a small part of conspiracists and you're often facing people that firmly believe what they say and that will not listen to any argument disagreeing with them, heating the debate really quickly (because let's face it, no one likes when people are not listening to what they say, scientists or conspiracists alike) and ultimately causing moderator actions (trolls are basically the same except that they have fun doing so). So, as long as moderation watches and calms people down quickly before things heat up, most harm could be avoided. Now, as a personal opinion, while I don't agree nor disagree with this decision, I believe it makes little sense when seeing the other rules of this forum. Conspiracy theories are, by definition, closely tied to politics and ideologies, which we are still not allowed to discuss. I'm not sure what would really change de facto by allowing this, other than trolls being more tempted to start such discussions. Maybe the details of the new policy were not stated in these terms. I'm really feeling like we're missing a part of the story.

TBH it's been a long time since I've been to either of these moons so I don't remember the details. Thanks for the advice, I'll sort that out when making the dV estimations.

Thanks for the advice, adding this to the list right now before I forget!

I'm bored by stock. After playing heavily modded RSS for over 2 years, stock KSP feels incredibly underwhelming: everything looks the same and is easy. Stack two fuels tanks: SSTO. 50t rocket build while doing something else: Moon rocket. And so on. So I decided to do the Ultimate Challenge which is: "plant a flag on every single body of the Kerbal system (except Sun and Jool obviously) in one ship". It seems like a good landmark to say "I've completed the game, I'm never coming back to stock again". I'll report my progress and eventual full mission report in this thread in details (will be very wordy) mainly so that I don't forget what I was doing (if you read it and actually enjoy doing so, then it's even better). First, some rules or guidelines that I will stick to, giving a rough outline of what I'll be doing: Stock. Except KER because I'm not calculating dV for a whole Grand Tour with gravity assists by hand. No cheats. So no infinite fuel, no indestructible parts... because that takes away all the fun. Sandbox mode. So all the parts, infinite funds max level SAS and max level Kerbals. I could grind all these, but that'll save time. Since I need to plant a flag, I'll need a Kerbal. I'll probably take a single engineer to save on mass. Brand new save. This means that I won't have any station, refueler or ships waiting for me at different bodies. Single launch. I don't like orbital assembly because it puts severe restrictions on the design. So I'm bringing everything I need with me. Refueling allowed. It's terribly OP but it makes things doable. Landers are expendable. I'll reuse some but ditch the others. No command seats. Just an RP rule I like to impose myself when I play. I may break it to make my Tylo lander as light as I can, but the Kerbal will have a proper shelter everywhere else. Since I just started the planning phase I don't really have any designs or definitive ideas of what I'll actually do. Though I have quite a few ideas of what the mission will look like. The ship: All inclusive (since I do one launch) which means it must be able to do interplanetary transfers while carrying everything. I'll have a refueler. It'll probably be a "small" (a few dozen tons) refinery that will be able to land on small moons for refueling. I'll have a generic vacuum lander for all bodies except Eve, Tylo, Laythe and maybe Duna (depending on what mass I can save with chutes). This means it will need to have single stage landing and orbit capabilities on many bodies (the limiting one will probably be Moho or Duna since these require the most dV) The atmospheric lander will be in two parts. The lower stage will be used for the first part of Eve ascent and is expandable. The upper stage will be used to finish the Eve ascent and orbit, and will later be reused for Laythe ascent (and maybe Duna). The Tylo lander will be a Tylo lander, not much to say. To save on mass and parts, the Eve and Tylo landers will be empty once landed (reenter empty for Eve and use all fuel for landing on Tylo). The descent modules will therefore contain refueling equipment to fuel the craft once landed; this will remain on the planet. A planetary tug that will be used to move crafts around in a planetary system to avoid having to move the mothership too much. Nuclear propulsion for best efficiency for the mothership, probably regular chemical for the landers. I'll maybe carry a scanning probe to find the best places for mining for ore. Don't forget to put ladders on landers The plan: Take off from Kerbin with all landers empty, and mothership not fully fueled, to reduce takeoff mass as much as possible. First stop Minmus. There I'll refuel the mothership completely. Second stop Gilly. I'll use Gilly's low dV requirements to efficiently refuel the mothership and transfer tug. Eve. I'll leave the mothership orbiting Gilly while I send the lander to Eve empty of fuel, refuel on the surface and come back to Gilly with the tug and upper atmospheric stage. Gilly 2. Since I probably won't be able to refuel at Moho, I leave as much stuff as I can there before leaving for Moho to reduce fuel expenses for the Moho transfer. Moho. Arrive, land with the general lander and leave. Gilly 3. Come back to Gilly, pick up everything we've left before going to Moho, refuel and leave for Duna (maybe using a Kerbin gravity assist, depending on whether or not I'll be bothered waiting for a transfer). Ike. I'll leave the mothership at Ike and refuel it, the tug and Duna lander there. Duna. Bring the tug and lander to Duna, land there and come back. Ike 2. Redock with the mothership and leave for Jool. Bop. Park the ship here and prepare for the Jool landings. Refuel pretty much everything. Tylo. Bring the Tylo lander there, land, refuel, get back to orbit and leave the big (and now obsolete) lander there. Bop 2. Bring my Kerbal back there, refuel the tug, and prepare the Laythe lander. Laythe. Bring the upper atmospheric lander there, land, and take off (I'll probably bring that one down already fueled since it's the upper stage of the Eve lander and I need to make it as light as I can), and leave the atmospheric lander there. Bop 3. Refuel, take the generic lander to Vall. Vall. Land, take off again and bring everything back to Bop. Bop 4. Refuel the generic lander and head to Pol. Pol. Land and return to Bop. Bop 5. Refuel mothership and leave for Eeloo. (At this point I'll have ditched the atmospheric and Tylo landers so I'll be lighter) Eeloo. Land and back to orbit. No refueling there. Dres. Use a Jool gravity assist to get to Dres. Land and take off. Depending on how much dV I need to get back to Kerbin, I may or may not refuel using an asteroid there. Mun. Land on the Mun last. (Probably crash the mothership there for fun since I won't need it anymore and chances are I'll hate that thing by this point). Kerbin. Back home! This plan is not definitive but I probably won't change it that much. Details will change, but this seems a good compromise and reduces the individual needs on the separate crafts as much as possible. Next step is doing maths. I need to work out the specific requirements (dV and TWR mostly) for each separate vessel I'll use to be able to design them efficiently. Then I'll design the crafts. I'll allow myself to HyperEdit them to the bodies to actually test them (especially for Eve and Tylo). After that I will have to build the mothership to support all the individual crafts and be able to perform the interplanetary transfers I need to. And finally I'll do the mission! Suggestions and questions are of course welcome. (If you know a way to make my life easier, please tell me)

I know, I just feel so betrayed by these fallacious new "Magic Boulders" that I have to blame them for everything, even if 3 years happened in between. I still think that some lore would have been a great addition to the game in the earlier stages of development (it might be hard to add now that the game is "released"), I personally really enjoy these kind of details in a game.

This would have been so much better than stupid coloured asteroids had it been fully implemented...

Pffff, Союз can go on Sun.

Nice, I always like to learn things about Soyuz (because Союз greatest rocket in world, better than capitalist American rockets).

I'm probably going to do "land the same Kerbal" on each body from a single launch. But I'll probably use different landers for different bodies., which is why I want to do Eve first, so that I don't have to haul the dedicated lander to Eeloo and back.

IIRC fromsome small figures that were around in Mexico called Kerbals. Harvester (the game's creator) took the name from there.

And I was searching for things to do in the stock game to take a pause from RSS... I'll give it a shot! Sorry if this has already been asked, but are we allowed to visit the bodies not in the order specified? (I'd like to ditch the Eve lander as fast as I can).

(It did, I just edited it really quickly)

No it doesn't

KSP has limited multithreading since 1.1: while several threads are used by the physics processing engine, a single craft is bound to a single thread. This means that you can have one thread running at 100% while the other ones are not used at all by the game. It's the way the game (and Unity itself AFAIK) are coded and I don't think there is any solution to that. Earlier, there was the trick of forcing OpenGL (or DirectX11, not really sure which does what) to transfer some CPU or RAM load to the GPU but I'm not sure if it still works.

The Dawn is literally several thousand times more powerful than real life ion engines. Having months long burn wouldn't be very helpful, an engine draining a thunderstorm per second either, so we have the almighty Dawn.

And we got coloured asteroids instead...

I've been looking at this image for a few minutes now and I'm not entirely sure of what your theory/finding actually is. Would you mind explaining it in a few words?

Nah, seems about right. I remember the Space Shuttle clocking a few GW at liftoff, and turbopump powers being expressed in MW. A large part of the energy goes into the exhaust as heat and kinetic energy but the orders of magnitude seem right. I've always felt that the heat production on stock engines was weak. A real engine is just containing that heat long enough to do its task, but run it longer and your engine melts (the RS-68 were not taken as SLS engines for this reason: ablative cooling + longer burn time + clustering meant that the engine couldn't be used without large modifications).

He did remap the keys, but for some reason the space centre view doesn't account for the remapping. You could bind your keys to GLMZ, it would still respond to WASD. It's the only menu in the game that has this problem though, not sure where it comes from.

I've been playing the game for 5 years on AZERTY, you can survive. The game has been pretty much playable all these years, a few crashes went in the way, but overall I think keyboard layout is the least of my concerns. Anyway, there is localisation planned for the next big update (which will come some day) which will solve all the alternative keyboards problems in the menu. So, the devs got you covered: they planned 2017 and solving the unplayability and unacceptability of QWERTY support only in the space centre menu. As for now, I'm afraid you will have to endure the pain of contortionating your hand to reach the W key in the space center view. Which would be a problem if (a) the issue existed in any other place in the game, (b) you actually needed to navigate in the space centre view (which you don't unless you zoom in which, again, you don't need to). EDIT: my apologies for forgetting to welcome you to the forums!

It could. Adding wings also increases mass and drag, reducing efficiency. For a spaceplane, a takeoff speed of 50m/s is already pretty slow: if you can generate enough lift to take off at this speed you probably already have a lot of wing area weighing you down.

Put my space station on full load for the first time. The 3 main docking ports are now occupied by different modules. UTM-2 (fore docking port, up left) brought its crew about 75 days ago and will leave in 75 days too, UTM-3 (aft docking port, bottom right) just arrived with 3 fresh Kerbals staying on board for a standard 150 days. The 3rd operational docking port (nadir port, visible under the port Cupola) is currently occupied by the ReSec module, an experiment on life support resources recycling that has been there for 1 month and will stay there 11 more. The station has a 4th docking port but it is only to be used in case of emergency. It's located on the safety module (starboard, facing the Cupola) which will serve as a lifeboat in case of a major incident on the station. The port will be used to bring supplies and new modules to bring the crew down to Earth should the main sections be depressurised or inaccessible. Screenshot of the station, currently passing over Indonesia. Other than that, I still have two probes, Aries-Taurus 1 and Aries 2, en route to Saturn and Jupiter's Galilean moons respectively; and I will launch the MOARS (Martian Orbital and Atmospheric Research Satellite) mission pretty soon. I am also currently developing the Запад-К (Zapad-K) module, an alternative to the current CTV spacecraft (UTM-2 and UTM-3 on the screenshot are 7th generation CTVs), which should perform its maiden flight on the Копьё-В (Kopyo-V) launcher and dock with the station for a short month after UTM-3 frees the spot. If everything goes well, Запад will begin to take Kerbals to the station after UTM-5 for the mission ZTM-1.