Terwin

I expect that PD will insist that all of the 'low barrier to entry' options are available(and probably default, at least in easy mode), so the only way for the devs to keep to their stated intent(not dumb-down KSP2) is to make them switchable. If you want to claim that T2I will not demand 'widest possible audience' type requirements, then try to convince me that the people responsible for micro-transactions in GTA(and many many other games) are not all about profits. I am hoping for switches for things such as Comnet, Reentry heating, Gravity tolerance, and ship-board life support, as I do not expect that they will be available at all if not optional.

If you have ample AM you can make the boom so small that you can contain it on the vessel itself. The whole reason you need a pusher-plate(ie orion-style) is that you can't make fission bombs small enough to contain on the vessel, and need to use shaped-charge nukes to throw some dense material to bounce off a 'pusher-plate'. Ample MA gives you torch drives(assuming you can handle the waste-heat) which is so far superior to Orion that it is hard to compare them. Using AM for Orion is like using black-powder based bombs with a pusher-plate instead of liquid fuels. Sure you can do it, but it is so wasteful that it makes no sense.

And then PD took them out of StarTheory and put them in a new studio which is directly under their thumb. PD will insist that all of the 'low barrier to entry' options are available(and probably default, at least in easy mode), so the only way for the devs to keep to their stated intent is to make them switchable. If you want to claim that T2I will not demand 'widest possible audience' type requirements, then try to convince me that the people responsible for micro-transactions in GTA(and many many other games) are not all about profits. ... great, now I'm thinking about KSP2 having 'grow your colony faster!' type micro-transactions/DLC.(ST made claims about no micro-transactions, and now they no longer have KSP2...)

Not everyone who might like to play with launching rockets(which does include some <5 yr olds) will understand that re-entry heating can generate plasma, and that plasma can block radio signals. Instead they will just think the game broke and killed their ship, get frustrated, quit playing, demand a refund and rant about how broken it is to all of their friends. Therefore, PD will not want plasma black-outs if it is not switchable. The other ones will similarly reduce/prevent frustration and rage-quits. Not everyone likes or will use tutorials, nor will they be consoled by a pop-up explaining that the loss of their vessel was all their fault. I am not saying it is right, only that if KSP2 does not have any difficulty options, then the only option will be easy mode, as that will make the game accessible to the greatest number of potential players, as more players = more money and more money is the only thing T2I and thus PD really cares about. That is however very unlikely, as KSP1 already has easy/normal/hard/custom difficulties, and I can't imagine KSP2 failing to have customization toggles.

My understanding is that IVAs are some of RoverDudes less favorite things to work on, but he is happy to take pull-requests.

From what I understand, the vast majority of players never install a mod. As such, if there are no configuration options, the most fiscally responsible choice is to select all options so as to target what would be wanted by new/inexperienced players. This would not involve anything that would tend to frustrate inexperienced players such as: * No Plasma black-outs * No Transmission delays * No Realistic gravity or pressure limits * Dead Kerbals will always respawn * Generous science/funds/reputation rewards * No advanced tweakables * at least partial control when out of comms etc Basically, without options, we would all be stuck on easy mode and need to use mods for anything else. PD bought KSP to make money, so anything that raises the bar to entry will be optional(and probably off by default) or dropped altogether. Personally, I would prefer plenty of options so that I can play the way I want with fewer (potentially unstable or slow to update) mods. @Brikoleur what you are advocating for(no difficulty options in the base game) would require that you have lots of mods to play the way you want(which sounds distinctly different from the low-bar-to-entry easy mode).

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Beam-beam_or_beam-target_fusion So it seems like we do have commercialized fusion, even for the sake of energy production, just not directly...

Closest thing I can think of would be the Alcubierre drive.(the one that stretches space behind you and squeezes it in front of you to move your location instead of moving your vessel) Only problem is we need some sort of 'negative mass' to make it work.

Sounds ominous to me... Immunization Vaccines take time, but a 9mm 'vaccine' is very very quick... Don't forget, China instituted the 1-child policy due to excessive population. Wide-spread application of a 9mm vaccine could address both the corona virus and the excess population...

Hair reacts to cold, and in some cases fear(possibly due to reduced heating from constricted blood vessels?). Hair is not individually controllable like these suckers are desired to be(can't use a keyboard if you can't control each one separately). What would be the advantage of a paddle+thumb instead of just 2 opposing digits? Evolution can get to wonky places, so I am sure it is possible, it just does not seem very plausible.

I think the 100' target is a safety-measure due to accuracy issues with the teleportation technology, so less than that and you are playing Russian roulette. That is also why the legs would need to extend after the jump, as you will 'usually' be at about 100', but may occasionally be higher or lower.

If you are > 500 feet long and only ~ 100 feet from the ground, why not just extend some extra-long landing legs with good shock-absorbers to handle the descent? I could see pneumatic feet telescoping out from the bottom of the vessel, then after they smack into the surface of the body(small jolt to craft), they collapse down to a 'landed' length, letting the craft gently come to rest on the (possibly uneven) surface. 100% reusable and with a small mass fraction. Re-pressurize the extension tank and you are ready for your next landing.

I could see Starship making LEO trips like a cruise liner with private cabins and 1-2 week stays. Perhaps a few dozen patrons plus catering/service staff. Should be a lot less expensive than the F9 trips, and more luxurious too.

The optimal conditions for starting your journey would include starting with a minimal dv requirement(a high orbit helps with this, but only if you fully refuel after getting there), and a very high velocity for the burn(max velocity is at Pe, and is higher with a larger the difference between Ap and Pe) Practically speaking however, this is not really needed in KSP. Generally I will fuel-up at Mun, Minmus, or a LKO fuel station and from there try to figure out how to get to my destination with my available dv. Occasionally I have used a kerbin fly-by when starting from the Mun or Minmus, but not often.(more often when traveling between Mun and Minmus, as I rarely bother with windows) LF tanks and nerva work pretty well, boosted with ISRU and a full ore tank for landings and round trips(topped off a Mun and again at Ike/Gilly/whichever small Joolian moon is easiest to catch).

That is MKS functionality, and I believe it works for MKS parts. I strongly doubt that Station Parts Redux have added the custom code needed to allow inflation to work via MKS logistics. For non MKS parts I am fairly certain you will need to actually attach your material kits storage to the base before it can be recognized. I find the Klaw works well for handling unexpected docking needs. (Station Parts Redux may be using an entirely different and possibly incompatible approach to inflating parts, so a custom patch may or may not allow those parts to inflate with MKS logistics)

I installed it in 1.9 without any problems, but I have not yet built any colonies as it is a new game. It is not expected for there to be any compatibility issues between 1.8 and 1.9, so unless/until a problem gets reported I'll assume that the 1.8 version of MKS is good on 1.9

Star Theory will need something simple and robust or else their colonization will be dead in the water. I expect something along the lines of 'Task: set up a water-supply Reward: colony size cap raised from 10 to 50.' where the details are like one of 'Set up a facility able to refine X units of water/day' OR 'Build a facility on this planet with a Drill, water refinery, and pumping station' Possibly with a maximum range from the colony. This requires at-most colony-based missions. No background processing, no programming languages, no dv calculations, no on-going logistics, etc. It also meshes well with the Event based colony growth and 'some form of life-support' which have both already been announced. (This is basically the sort of thing I have been expecting since hearing about the 'some form of' life support and 'event based colony growth.' ) Anything with on-going logistics will also be a non-starter for interstellar flights because the time-warp to get to another star will cause anything with a chance of failure from neglect to fail. If interstellar flight requires an off-kerbin base, then that base will need to be self-sufficient over long time-spans if any interstellar flight is to ever arrive. I would expect orbital stations to have missions like 'designate a ground-base with at least X population and a launch facility to increase population cap from 5 to 10' or 'Enlarge designated ground base to produce X of resource A, Y of Resource B, and Z of resource C to allow assembly of a ship construction dock' Simple, easy to understand, easy to ignore before or after, and most importantly, no gotchas for inexperienced players. Even RoverDude's excellent MKS planetary warehouses functionality is too complex for inclusion in the base game because KSP is not a logistics game, KSP is a game about building and flying rocket-ships and accidentally learning about space as a by-product. Keep the game-focus simple, and put focus-changing modifications in mods and DLC for those that want it.

No one who knows when KSP2 is allowed to say, but KSP 1 versions are being released on a 3 month(?) schedule, so 1.9 should be released about the same time after 1.8 that 1.8 was released after 1.7. I'm glad to hear that W.O.L.F is slated for release for 1.9, as I had not seen test builds for 1.8(and I can't find the shipping computer part in my 1.7 test build)

To me that looks just like a wobble in KSP, except in the real world, rocket parts and connections are not incredibly strong and resilient to shearing forces, so it just blows up instead of continuing to wobble. Personally, if I have a rocket wobble uncontrollably in KSP, I will revert to VAB and add reinforcement to what is clearly a structurally unsound rocket.

Did you look at that Proton rocket video around 1:20? That looks strongly like a wobbly rocket with three main components: booster section, 2nd stage, fairing. Sure it falls apart after only a couple seconds of wobble, but that is because KSP rocket parts are unrealistically strong(if your rocket is visibly wobbling, it should have already undergone RUD).

Good: NASA needs man-rated rockets, as we do not currently have any. SLS is intended to be man-rated(manned on the first all-up launch even) Even if all of the commercial rockets under development go out of business tomorrow, SLS development will continue. Bad: The program seems to be designed primarily for the purpose of bringing money to congressional districts, with space exploration only a secondary concern By the time it flies, it will likely be both more expensive and less functional than other flying rockets(Starship, New Glen)

This would be very nice, but it is not here yet, and might not be possible(but I hope it is). While I expect 80-85% recycling is probably fairly straight-forward(hydroponics or bacteria tank type set-up to recycle air and waste, but still needing some nutrients/vitamins and lots of spare parts), 100% recycling is not feasible(at a minimum you have gasses tunneling through bulk-heads and getting lost to space as well as parts wearing down and losing mass, even if you manage nearly 100% recycling of life-support), so I expect there will always be a need to harvest raw materials for any permanent or semi-permanent habitat(Asteroids are probably much more feasible then planets once we start getting good recycling however). That said, we do currently have the technical capacity to assemble a (low-speed)generation-ship today, it would just need a very large volume of supplies to account for expected losses over time.(it might not be much better than frozen MREs, water filters, and chemical reverse-candles, but it could be done) note: parker sun probe is ~68.8km/s relative to the sun, and is fastest human made craft relative to the sun. At this speed, it would take ~8500 years to get to Alpha Centari(~4.3 ly) A slow generation ship may not be practical, but we can at least be confident that it is possible.(and further developments will only make it more practical)

Even if you have a 100% recyclable system, you will still need energy inputs, and interstellar space in not a great place for sonar panels, so your vessel will have a finite duration unless you have some new sort of inexhaustible energy(ie a perpetual motion machine). If you have a finite duration, then you can have a less than 100% recyclable life-support system, you just need to bring replacements/supplies to replace the losses for the expected duration. (This is true even for a 0% recyclable life support system). You will still probably want access to news and entertainment from your home-base and/or destination, and this will help maintain cultural familiarity, even if not similarity. Also, some vessels will be making round trips(you can't expect the first crews to alpha-centari to just die if there is not an immediately habitable planet for example), so while the cultures may well drift apart, they will also have the opportunity to drift back together(although ships that only need to be viable for 1-2 generations before returning home could probably get away with half a dozen or less crew, and at that point you don't have a lot in the way of your own culture compared to the hundred+ channels of media being streamed to you from earth)

Generation ships are the only means we currently know for certain is possible for base-line humans. Cryo-sleep is a cool idea, but we have no idea if it will ever be possible(and even if it is, if it can be managed on a spaceship). FTL travel is even cooler, but as of yet we don't even have any good ideas on how to attempt it. A large ship with lots of supplies, a small crew, and a plan to procreate for future crew-members is technically feasible right now(but economically prohibitive and ethically questionable; but economics and ethics change much more readily than Physics and Biology). Sure a sustainable closed-ecosystem would cut down on the volume of supplies needed, but that is not a requirement, just a nice-to-have.

As far as I am aware, the only things that have been confirmed are: Events will grow population Colonies will eventually be able to build and launch rockets And while I expect that being able to build and launch rockets will depend on certain events(like building a launch pad), I have not seen any reason to expect that there will be a direct link between colony size and rocket building capability. (it makes sense to me that there might be a minimum population size/production capability to build the launch pad, but nothing specific has been mentioned, as far as I know)