wumpus

I'd be somewhat alarmed at the idea of a "super dominant" gene managing to override all possible other genes. My understanding is that they do indeed happen, and that pretty much all the other genes have to guard against such "cheater genes". Such things are basically a killer virus to the other genes, so presumably they have seen most of the attempts and there should be a defense out there. But yes, the idea of removing a broken gene (and Huntington's in particular) sounds just too useful.

1. Terminal velocity matters on Eve. And conceivably it could matter on Kerbin, although that is unlikely. 2. I'd assume that drag still matters, although TWR of various stages are more likely driving your flight path.

I'm building one right now (just on the edge of making it into LKO). Basic setup is one smallest 2.5m tank (for stability), full set of instruments (everything so far unlocked), *two* landercans (and a landercan on the orbiting fuel depot). The extra landercans are for storage of science for the next mission which brings a MPL. Part of the science grabbing mission will be to include a polar surve to plant a flag in a eternally sunlit area (for the science lab's solar panels). Hopefully this should pretty well unlock all the science (although I'll presumably do the same thing with a bigger orbital depot for the Mun. Maybe just an orbiting MPL).

Put me down in the "three times a day" camp. But it is still more stable than the "stable" 64-bit Linux 1.0.5 (I'm guessing nvidia drivers were the issue). The bugs that have been getting me: launch clamp disappearing from staging. Yes, I'd see that I was missing bits of rocket, only to discover (on re-launch) that the launch clamp held on to them during launch. The launch clamp simply didn't have a staging option. Re-fire (unstable) on reload. It turns out that during quickload, the rocket would load non-fired and then fire inflight. No idea why, but my rocket couldn't take it. Also not sure if this is standard practice, but I can't remember a rocket that would destroy itself on quickload before.

Maybe the boom & controls might have some cost to replace. To put some perspective on the cost of the antenna + radio equipment, SETI@home built its own copy of the radio equipment and put it on the boom's counterweight. It would then pick up various parts from the sky, although something like the opposite end of the sky of whatever the radio astronomer of the day was looking at. I'm guessing US politics.

If you aren't sending it into space and mass isn't an overwhelming factor, what benefit would this have over a simple [molded?] fresnel lens? UV transmission? UV+transmission plus a limiting factor of area for the device (otherwise I would just use a cheap molded plastic lens). Note that for terrestrial use, this type of thing either requires a tracking system that positions the lens/mirror in the right place/angle for the array, or trades off huge amounts of area used for efficiency (most of the focused light won't hit the array unless there is an active means to focus it). To be honest, I can't see why this isn't a current technology (using a lens, regardless of the 2mm variety or not). I've seen solar panels that don't quite cover an entire roof, and the only reason I can think of why you wouldn't bother focusing the light is that UV transparent lenses are too expensive to bother with.

Thankfully, I've been trading money for reputation. Unfortunately, it turns out I need roughly twice (well 700 compared to 400) the reputation before it will let me crank "leadership initiative" up to 100%.

Actually I am more likely assuming that "unwarranted design limitations" assumed by the "2mm" thickness PR are insurmountable. It certainly appears easier to make a diffraction grating thinner than a solar panel, even if they were basically both made by semiconductor manufacturing techniques. I'm not sure there is any advantage in using lenses (beyond the atmosphere) at Earth distances. I know they can certainly help within the atmosphere (I think tropical sunlight gets twice the power of where I live on a sunny day), but have to wonder about other issues (you can stack more layers into the solar cell, but does it weight more. If you use a lens at that distance how is the heating?). I'm guessing they would help at Mars level, and possibly Jupiter (depends how much the lens will weigh, and how unobtainable plutonium is). While I wouldn't expect the full effect of the "using a magnifying glass with the Sun" (I'd assume one dimensional magnification at best, but somebody could try to recreate Ivanpah) you would still be concentrating heat onto a semiconductor that is lying in a vacuum. Not a recipe for a long-lived solar panel (I've heard that the lifespan of the solar panels of the ISS are one of the biggest limits to how long it can last).

"Once you have the foundry - you want a 12-inch lens? Feel free, you can make a 12-inch lens. There's no limit." If you are using similar means to silicon chips, a "1 inch" lens is somewhat over the limit. I think 400~500mm^2 is a bit closer to how big you can make silicon chips (wafer scale was a "just around the corner tech" that never happened*). If your interest is in focusing light for a solar array, I'm not so sure that you couldn't grind a solar array down to under 2mm. It would also be a lot easier to cool your un-lensed solar array, and you wouldn't need twice the packaging array. Note that while warping an array of these devices (for terrestrial applications) sounds interesting, warping somewhat smaller (but equally thin) mirrors would work just as well. I suspect that it would be used in ever thinner phones and "spy devices". But there are other weirder techs out there replacing lenses as well. * there may be exceptions for the CCDs in telescopes. But expect an astronomical cost such that the "12 inch lens" is a measurable percentage of the cost of the telescope facility.

Considering that SLS is basically a zombie STS (shuttle) program, I'm not aware that it is being heavily pushed by NASA (although I'd expect a ton of support on the bits that actually do the work). According to wiki, DC-X was sent through Dan Quayle, and with a budget of $60M didn't even show up as a decimal place in congressional funding. I'd expect tiny exceptions like that in any budget the size of the DoD. One thing about the DC-X was that it looks like it more closely resembled ICBM launch operations (two guys with keys) and less like NASA (a small army of techs). Maybe the missilemen finally got a program.

Colonize? Have you *seen* the size [and mass] of biosphere2? And that it isn't good enough to support 6-8 (or however many, it wasn't much more) people? We won't *colonize* anywhere off Earth anywhere this century. Not to say we can't have a permanently manned base (something like the South pole), but I wouldn't claim a real colony unless it has a real chance to survive on its own. I'm pretty sure PB666 has a thread with a link to data on biosphere2. Note that I suspect it was designed to copy the Earth's biosphere and not specifically act as human life support, but I expect that any functional life support system will require more mass than we could conceivably bring to Mars with barely-post-20th century gear.

I'd assume that the GS-13/15 who are making all the decisions that can be done without congressional approval all came on board with Apollo and like rockets. Anyone in NACA at 16 would be 74 today, so I expect nobody at NASA even had a mentor who remembered NACA. And of course, the Air Force is still full of generals who flew planes (and ICBM babysitting has lost all punsk it might have had after the cold war ended). I'm not remotely surprised that NASA likes vertical takeoff (and is indifferent to landing) while the DoD (lead by the Air Force) clings to Horizontal landing (and possibly takeoff). And as far as capability matters, that doesn't really seem to be an issue with congressional funding.

While the shuttle had plenty of abort options, my understanding was that they didn't have very good coverage and the ones they had the simulators nearly always ended with total crew death. Probably because it is vastly easier to become an Air Force general by piloting a plane than by being a missile jockey. I wonder if the Navy was still had its turf, would we have Orion [the big boy]? Possibly with an admiral or two with a distinct bias toward capital ships? While the shuttle obviously had to hit the runway, and the LEMs flew to their intended landing areas, is it possible to know how accurate US capsules were? I mean, as long as you come within helicopter range of a ship capable of carrying a helicopter (wiki claims HUS-1 for mercury), you can get the collar on and recover.

The biggest difference I see between using F12 to magic yourself the entire tech tree and arbitrary funds and the sandbox is recovery. In career mode it will let you recover rockets and tell you how much of them you saved. In sandbox it absolutely refuses. If your "own limitations" include going for low costs and substantial recovery, you can't really use sandbox as it is (you probably also want recovery mods as well). NOTE: If you haven't completely given up on career mode, try looking at the administration building (where the strategies are) and look at the "leadership initiative" option (and move the sliders). Moving the game from a "grind out stupid contracts and parts testing" to unlocking the game by "boldly going where no kerbal has gone before" should make career mode actually fun (haven't coughed up for this yet, but it is so far scheduled when I have the science).

I have to say, when I saw the "leadership initiative" I was impressed. The milestones did a lot to fix career, and the leadership initiative allows players to emphasize it even more. I didn't even think about moving the slider, but thanks to Raptor9 it looks like I won't waste the science (and other costs) on anything less than 100% (500 science is what, one [kerballed] Minmus biome? At first I thought I'd just cheat the needed funds in, but it seems doable in game). So far, I have used money to science and money to reputation. The description implies that the lowest the slider goes is an obvious win, what it doesn't tell you that if the money isn't high enough for a single point, you pay the money and get nothing. It looks like I'll have to cancel both with the "leadership initiative" inplace (since I wasn't getting anything with full costs for contracts, it will be worse for half).

It is very hard to beat the autodeleter from 1.0 (and I think that was the last time it expanded). When I tried to build a "stock recoverable" first stage it involved firing retrorocket (flea) and carefully tuning the parachutes to open (I think it was changing the pressure, one of the settings) after the velocity was slow enough to not to burn up the rocket and low enough that it would be deleted as it slowly wafted down. If you really want to recover bits of you rocket I suggest the following mods: http://mods.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/223119-stagerecovery (straightforwardly does what you expected. Put parachutes on rockets and they are recovered) This one is for more fancy (spacex-style) recovery and will take more time. Basically it lets you take control of each stage as it is ditched. But if you want to create fancy air-launched systems or do vertical landing (on rockets), this is a must.

I could have sworn I saw Scott Manley demonstrate a "start with KSC on Duna (for easier) and Eve (for harder)". I think it may have been broken on career mode by giving you all the science the planets expect. I know he was getting errors from an atmospheric pixel shader ("backscatterer"?).

I had two tourists get autodeleted (maybe just one, but it killed the contract). They were in separate capsules that all separated and pulled parachutes together, but the one on top was carrying a sputnik and fell faster. Somehow the tourists were deleted in the process. I suspect it was a bug, I just reverted and adjusted things so they all could land together.

The 2013 aero model was pretty basic. I doubt even redoing all the work that was done in the linked thread would give you useful data. One thing that changed with 1.1 (I don't think it was there in 1.0.5) was that drogue chutes unlock at the same time as side mounted chutes (and they seem to be safer to open at higher speeds), this should allow you to come in at steeper angles than without such devices (you only need to get down to ~700m/s or so). Note that all of this assumes you are coming down from a fairly high orbit. I don't think it is really all that possible to come down from a ~70km orbit and hit a specific area without firing plenty of retro rockets to slow yourself down (and carrying plenty of delta-v) or using mechjeb or similar information.

No room in the hanger. /not serious

The order of unlocking the tech tree is hopefully less important than it sounds. Often, the most important bits are scientific instruments. Two critical items are electronics (probe core with SRS and torque, allows Bob to easily pilot the craft as well as solar panels which are critical in going beyond Kerbin's orbit), nuclear propulsion (moving big craft around in space, especially interplanetary). Just how much science are you milking from each biome? Some notes: You can get an EVA report while flying in orbit over each biome. Note you can't warp while hanging onto the craft, you have to pop in and out when it looks like you are flying over a different biome. Expect to do the same thing with the gravioli detector when you get it. Crew reports and EVA reports (assuming crewed flights) can hit every biome. Themometers, barometers (and maybe some later ones) can be used as often as you need. Mystery goo and materials bay require a scientist to reset it every time (thus making the Probodobdyne OCTO + Bob a good combination) if you want full science everywhere. Learn to do the science dance (it gets tiring, and may cause you to go to sandbox). Get a crew report, EVA report, themometer, barometer, (and if you have a scientist grab the mystery goo and materials bay science and reset). During EVA take the data from the capsule and store it (for some reason you can store one crew report per biome, but until you take it out and store it (from outside the ship) you can only have one. If you landed take a surface sample (unlock R&D building to level one before visiting Minmus and Mun) and also take an EVA report while hanging onto the spacecraft (counts as flying over). Again this has to be stored in the spacecraft before your EVA on the ground as you can only carry one EVA report around. Do the science dance everywhere. The launch pad, the runway (just launch a capsule covered with scientific instruments from the hanger and you will be at the runway). Wherever you land (often water, but try to land on the rest of Kerbin. Warning, mountains are dangerous). In low atmosphere, high atmosphere, low orbit, high orbit for each planet or moon (of course, the two early moons have no atmosphere, but still have low and high orbit). Each moon has a lot of biomes and getting >3000 science is possible on Minmus (and pretty easy if you can leave an orbiting fuel tank and dock with it). I'd avoid overdoing science on Kerbin. It is slow and tedious (note you can physically warp time and use (alt?) to make kerbols run, but it is still slow). Best way to hit all the KSC biomes is to unlock aircraft and build a jet-powered car that is covered with scientific instruments (with Bob at the wheel). This should easily cover the science needed to unlock the aircraft, but you could probably send a probe to another planet in the time it takes to visit all of KSC. Probably the most overpowered way to get science is the mobile processing lab. I'm still a bit hazy on how it works (they nerfed some of the OP parts for 1.1), but it appears that for ideal use it should be orbiting the Mun or Minmus, and preferably landed on Minmus (it will generate science faster if on the eternally lit poles, but that requires serious scouting and extra-mobile labs). Not sure if it makes more sense to do Kerbin (ground, atmosphere, orbital) science in Kerbin orbit, that might be a good start to the MPL, but it might "waste" some possible science.

0.0 found: KSP 0.0 found:

I also noticed the "leadership initiative" option now in the administration building (was that in 1.0?). Adds to your milestones (and subtracts from your contracts). Perfect for those trying to minimize grind. Other notes: I think I missed a few easy science options. Solar panels unlocked. So far I have three Duna missions backed up: Standard "go to Duna" contract. "Go near Duna". "Test part (fairing?) on Duna escape trajectory" (presumably tested, staged and ejected before capture). Note that while a probe hasn't a chance of maintaining battery charge to the Mun (in a Hohmann transfer), you can blow right past it on an escape trajectory and lose power well past the Mun. No idea what it takes to build such a craft with non-90 tech (I used a kicker as a first stage). Have to look what a mobile processing lab takes to drop on Minmus. That's what killed my last career game, but it might be one last full blown science dance (especially since I have to wait for the Duna window).

If I were Squad I would consider something like "Kerbal Air Program", where you would start closer to the Wright brothers and work toward the jet era. My guess is that a lot would depend on learning more about game design (presumably they would have to understand how to make a good career mode before starting such a thing). I think of things like "civilization, civ 2, civ 3" and can't really justify what a "KSP 2" would want. I'm guessing something like "world of tanks" moving into "world of warships". KSP just doesn't lend itself to Madden year+1.

You know you play too much KSP when you instantly hear the "KSP space music" when looking at spacex's orbital diagram.