Finox

I like the idea, but why not have it in a full memorial park with the KSP1 tribute at it's center? Then you could have it add additional monuments for different accomplishments or other things. Also (if you are playing hardcore) you could have a section for memorials to fallen Kerbals... this might need to be a large section.

Having worked in the natural gas industry here on Earth I can say that we have no shortage of it right below our feet. So, no it wouldn't really be useful to ship methane back from Titan. On the other hand it would make sense to ship helium 3 from Saturn to Earth given it's rarity here on Earth, and Titan's hydrocarbons might be useful for that purpose, but that presupposes that we have a fusion reactor with which we can make use of the helium 3. Maybe someday there will be a helium trade between Saturn and Earth, but not a methane trade.

Air-augmented rockets were considered back in the sixties, they went so far as developing a few prototypes and test firing them, but they never got off the test stand and into anything flight ready. As far as I know the reason it wasn't developed further had nothing to do with the technology, the problem was when it was first developed. Air-augmented rockets were first developed in the middle of the Cold War and the Space Race, proven technologies like traditional rocket engines were more useful for military and civilian applications given the time constraints. This happens often with space technologies where something that's promising isn't developed further because it might take too long to make it flight ready.

Does anyone know why they're doing this test? The RS-25 is a pretty well proven design, it propelled the space shuttle into space for 30 years, is this a new version or something along those lines?

I will agree the with the thread author, besides it looks like a good expansion. I think Squad deserves a couple bucks for all the fun they've given me over the years. My only complaint about the whole thing is the lack of fuel hoses in it.

Mine was when I finally figured out what those maneuver-node thingies were good for. After that I sent probes to every body in the solar system...except Gilly, always forget that one.

Oh, whoops, this was just an auditors appraisal, I was thinking they had actually done their IPO at that value.

Hmmm, that is considerably more money then I thought they'd get. You could afford a Falcon Heavy launch and a good bit of engineering work with $400 million. Not that it's enough to get you to Mars necessarily, but being able to afford a launch certainly moves the whole project out of the realm of fantasy.

You might try "Entering Space" by Robert Zubrin. It's a less focused, much broader, and less near-term work then "The Case for Mars", but has a similar style. Essentially it explores various concepts for exploring and settling the cosmos from an engineering perspective. Everything from solar power satellites, and rocket-planes to terraforming around M class stars, and dyson spheres. It's a great work with lots of interesting analysis, some of it disappointing, much of it unexpected, but always optimistic and enlightening. I've read it myself and I highly recommend it. Good idea for a thread by the way.

I hadn't thought about it until I saw this thread, but, I have never been to Gilly. I haven't landed, orbited, or even flown by. I've had enough probes in orbit of Eve I certainly could have, but I just keep forgetting. I mean Gilly is just so... small, its an easy place to forget.

This is the kind of solar system I thought was more Sci-Fi then Sci-fact, looks like they'll have to re-write the proverbial book on solar system formation again.

We do know that Mars has frost and snow, in limited quantities by Earth standards, but the point is that water does cycle through the air and redistribute itself. I doubt water will be much of a problem for a colony, from what we know the planet has enough water to cover itself in 30m of the stuff. Although a large colony wouldn't want to process soil for its water, it would be easier to just drill a well...

Back in the day (18 - 23 or thereabouts), I based most of my core stages around the toroidal aerospike along with some LV-T30's for boosters. All my rockets would be asparagus staged and the aerospike offered the best fuel burn during ascent. After science mode came out I used it less and less, replacing it with the swivel, since 1.0 I haven't used it at all. I suppose it's to be expected, given how OP the aerospike was in the earlier versions compared to today.

Science and more science! I'm still pretty early in my 1.2.2 career and I have a station orbiting Kerbin, Mun and Minmus pumping out over 15 science per day. Otherwise refueling, which is probably the most common, practical reason to build a station.

Cracking bitumen into lighter products is done at an oil refinery, the pipelines are to get it from the field where oil is produced to the refinery where it will be turned into its final product. Usually that's a significant distance, oil fields wax and wane as new oil bearing formations are discovered and technology allows access to new deposits, but refineries are huge billion dollar plus facilities, they can't be easily moved or built. It just makes more sense to move the oil then the refinery. If I may ask; why does bitumen (asphalt in the U.S.) in particular concern you?

This sounds like sarcasm to me, I think this is just Musk just venting about traffic, probably with a touch of subtle humor. I know for a fact that you can't permit and lease that much land in the time frame he mentioned.

I'm not sure I would call what we're seeing a boom, but as the article says the very fact that SpaceX publishes it's price and performance figures changes peoples perception of doing business in space. I think what we're seeing here is all the creative energy that had, until now, been restrained by government monopolies on space access being unleashed for the first time. Where all of it goes is hard to say, but whenever a good, like transportation, becomes cheaper the result is usually that more uses are thought of for that good.

I imagine some Pyongyang bureaucrat deemed a reentry system unnecessary and pushed it off into the next 5 year plan. Ah Communism and its many humorous follies!

I just heard this on the way home from work. The passing of an American Legend, and an era. God Speed John Glenn! I also had the thought that we should name the first ship to Mars after him in tribute, that would be a fitting tribute to a brave man.

Nice! Good to see squad polishing up the game so aggressively.

Yes! I always wondered why it wasn't on Friday, devnotes always seemed like a good end of week thing, at least from the perspective of the reader. Will releases also be on Fridays?

Nice find thanks for sharing, I love those photos of the inside positions of a B-17. I got to walk through one once, but not long enough to appreciate all the little details.

Sounds great, no chance of this update releasing the 10th by chance? I just found out that I have that day off, and 1.2 would be a great way to spend it! I'm joking (mostly)

It's gamey, but you can often just engage timewarp to complete your transmission. It works because transmission speeds are unaffected by timewarp while power generation is, thus allowing you to artificially increase your power generation relative to your usage. I've never been certain if this was a bug or intentional, but I've used it recently and it does work. Tastes abit gamey though

I'd definitely say "Yes" our view of progress is warped, but it depends on your perspective. If you look at how past ages imagined the future you'll find a common theme; they were always wrong. People in the 1950's for instance saw progress in transportation all around them and thus imagined a future of flying cars, supersonic airliners, and rockets flying vacationers to the moon by the year 2000! Clearly they were far off the mark. The point is that our view of progress is always going to be filtered through the context of whats around us, the age we live in defines our viewpoint. So in a broad historical context yes our view is warped, but the thing about progress is that it tends to come from where we least expect. Will technology slowdown? Maybe in computers, but I guarantee something out there is going to surprise you in the next decade or so.