Bill Phil

Yeah, I'm gonna say feature (though... I probably won't vote... I'm weird I guess). Previously extra launch sites were only with Making History and, in my understanding, these new ones are available without the DLC. It adds interesting things to the game. The discovery aspect of it... you could maybe say that's a gimmick to get people to explore Kerbin more, but I don't think that's really an issue.

Dang, for real? Sweet. Also, are there any other advanced fission engines like NSWR, Mini Mag Orion, liquid core NTRs, and PuFF?

We will be able to finally properly use the ultimate in transportation technology: boats.

Nice. I think I’ll let things settle with the patches but then it’ll be time to finally complete the tech tree and go to every planet.

GLORY! HAMMER! GLORYHAMMER - Gloryhammer (Official Video) | Napalm Records - YouTube

Sustainable population is difficult to really quantify. This is because you can get different numbers depending on your assumptions. Like for example, if you don't assume agriculture you get a significantly lower number than the current population. If you assume sustainable agriculture with current technology, a few billion may be doable unless you run into the heat limit. But you can do some wild things with more advanced technology. Eventually the carrying capacity of the biosphere vs. the carrying capacity of the civilization become two distinct things - the biosphere could support this many of the species, but with some set of technology we can support much more than the biosphere could support. The main limit is the heat limit, which is primarily an energy/power limit. So really you'd need to figure out energy use per capita. For the US that's roughly 10 kW averaged over a year. So if you need a population of 10 billion with 10 kW per person, you need a total average power of 100 TW. More in peak times. But, if you had more energy per capita you could potentially do more interesting things on a per person basis - and in my opinion more energy per capita makes sense if immortality is involved. So I'd go with maybe between 500 million and 5 billion if you go with a total average power of 100 TW, leaning on the lower side. Now 100 TW is significantly lower than the limit, but that's preferable as far as things go.

Ah, no worries. I just never bothered to learn much about it. I could probably figure it out if I tried but I'm kind of set in my ways in how I play KSP. I don't play as often as I want to though, so I usually just end up doing an Apollo style mission to some target planet/moon and back. I do want to do some probe missions as well but I usually end up sending Kerbals. Being at the tip of the rocket makes it easier to design around in my experience.

I don't see the point of this statement. I was saying that your argument about probes being more difficult only applies if the communication mechanic is left on. It's a mechanic that I never figured out, and I have always played without it from the beginning, long before it was even added. I know there's a number of others that do so as well. Still, not everyone plays with the same settings. But I don't see what your response is supposed to mean here. I do think that probes are more awkward to design rockets around though.

Not if you turn off the comm mechanic of the game, like I regularly do.

I'm the opposite. I'm more concerned about the negative effects of the slowing growth rate. I don't think overpopulation is a problem, or rather, it's just one element of the world and is a very solvable issue. Not a problem in and of itself but it can feed other problems due to how the world is organized and the systems in place.

Doing nothing would have led to even more devastation. Just because we could have handled it better does not mean that nothing would be better.

Well, 72, but yeah.

Well that actually could work, if you had a strong enough fan. Not efficient though. Catching spent propellant for a rocket though... not gonna work. You'll get nowhere fast.

It's almost always easier to fix Earth than go interstellar.

I mean, being cheaty is by no means an issue when we already have torchships confirmed.