Terwin

Adding insulation on the inside is probably cheaper and can be just as effective, if not more effective if you need it. Structural components are very expensive and require maintenance, but insulation is cheap and only requires care if it gets wet in most cases.

Even assuming that they are not some sort of insect that communicates through pheromones, and they have the capacity to perceive your attempts to communicate as such, why would you depend on the intellectual and computational capacity of a presumably more primitive society to decide and understand your message which presumably has a finite and thus limited body to work on (and no doubt includes ideas for which they do not even have words) As opposed to having as much time and computational capacity as you can cram on your ship to decide the more primitive words and ideas of the culture you intend to contact? Someone very lazy could do as you describe, but it would not make a very good impression, and may only be worked on by crazies if everyone else thinks it is a hoax

This is a reaction less drive, so inverting it seems like it would reverse the direction of thrust. Then again this is a magic drive, so if you want it to, inverting the thrust could cause daisies to sprout from the control console.

I can easily see smart-speaker systems besting humans at a range of tasks. Setting up alarms and calendar reminders would be a fairly low bar, but remember the tropes about people not able to set the clock on their VCR. Other tasks, such as adding an item to a specific list in a proprietary system(such as whatever app Google is currently using to story my shopping list) could even stymie relatively bright people if it has a poor UI. Adding appointments to other peoples calendars could be particularly difficult depending on your security set-up. My wife has a masters and regularly uses our smart-speakers as a calculator.(if I am in the room, I often supply the answer first though)

If time-ports can be blocked by things other than destruction of the pad, it becomes easy to ask questions of the future by just arranging for temporary blocks based on the answer of the question. If only destruction of the timeport will block it, it is still possible, just more expensive

Multi-star civilizations without ftl puts you in a state akin to the British empire, with colonies that took months to communicate back and forth. The colonies and delays are just bigger

Novel and extreme situations help us confirm and extend our understanding of the technologies involved. As a theoretical example: If a new technique is found for extracting useful data from a signal that would previously have been considered too close to the noise floor, then that technique might also be useful for reducing the required broadcast power for wireless networks or tools. Without the incentive of maintaining a connection to an old but still active historic probe in deep space, that technique might never have been found.

I was under the impression that stage 2 pushed hard enough on stage 1 that it experienced rearward acceleration, likely causing the contents of both tanks to slosh forward. Also, I thought that the still burning stage 1 engines were supposed to prevent that, but stage 2 effects on stage 1 were higher than anticipated. Presumably they have a plan for taming rotational slosh as well, but I do not know if that was sufficient either.(still working out the tolerances and all with that being the first launch to get to that part of the flight)

Seems like just increasing the separation thrust of SH to keep it from reversing should be sufficient. Some slosh/waves from the turn should be less of an issue so long as the fuel is always against the rear and intakes.

I thought that the propeller was in the nose for those early planes, making that unavailable for the cockpit Also, at least on top you have the body of the plane for ablative skid armor for landings where the gear is insufficient. (Also makes ditching from a water landing easier)

Perhaps you meant that it is standard procedure for rocket development? To that I would counter that it is only standard procedure for developing an expendable rocket. Falcon 9 was expendable with an eye for reuse, Starship is being designed as a fully reusable rocket, and not many of those have gotten far enough to be able to do a static fire,

As best as I can tell, only a small percentage of rocket launches, especially in the last few decades, have had a full stack, full flight-like duration static fire before launch as you describe. (none of the launches with solid boosters would count for example, and you showed that Falcon 9's don't do that before each launch, etc) If only a small number of actual launches have performed that procedure before the launch, how could it possibly be a standard procedure? That makes sense if you have unlimited funds and very little hardware, but SpaceX is very hardware rich, and is trying to do this on a commercial budged(as opposed to cost-plus). Come to think of it, the type of static-fire you describe seems almost like a 'standard procedure' to squeeze maximum funds out of the government on a cost-plus contract with minimal costs to the provider. Maximizing the opportunities to add delays(and costs) to the project by minimizing the number of problems you uncover with each test(by shutting it down as soon as you find a discrepancy). As opposed to launch testing, which generally covers more scenarios per test, but has a material cost to the rocket company(hardware instead of just (billable) time and fuel). I guess that is the real difference, SpaceX is following a fast, cost-effective approach, as opposed to a 'maximize the cost-plus contract' approach.

WOLF does not store anything about what is in it a depot, only available and provided resources. As such, it is not possible to 'remove' components in-game, and I believe RoverDude explicitly said that he will not be adding that functionality. If you want to 'remove a drill', then just edit your save file. The Wolf section for each biome is relatively easy to find and understand, just adjust the available and provided resources the opposite amount that one drill would modify, and the drill is 'gone'. The simpler drill wasting resources is actually a design choice: save time now or be more productive later.

MKS uses the stock catch-up system, so if you go back to a base it will 'catch-up' in 6 hour blocks until it is current(using the current level of production for things like solar panels or drills) If you never go back to a base, then it will never have a chance to 'catch up'.

Unless and until SpaceX takes money then fails to deliver on a Starship launch due to engine problems(this would be a commercial payload, as HLS only pays after a milestone is reached) Raptor has not failed. Raptor is still in development and under the mantra of 'move fast and break things'. Failures are *EXPECTED* and if they do not fail often enough, then they will take greater risks so that they do. The two (probably) independent failures on IFT2 is likely a *better* outcome for SpaceX than a nominal flight on a rocket with hidden problems, because they learned more and now have a better understanding of how to make the rocket better. The earlier you find a problem, the less expensive it is to fix, and SpaceX just found 2 problems(probably) for the cost of 1 in their second launch attempt. Falcon 1 failed its first 3 attempts (and those were clear failures because they had paying customers onboard), and now the falcon 9 delivers more payload to orbit than all other rockets combined, and the rocket is more likely to be destroyed in transit than during a flight or landing attempt(unless deliberately expended)

It is almost like a miles thick wall of dirt and stone is difficult to observe through.

The yellowstone super-volcano seems like a likely prospect.

I am pretty sure it is the unmanned processing unit in particular that has the un-manned logistics push.

Unfortunately, boiloff is not a solved problem. At the current time, any fuel you take to orbit that is not already allocated to a specific mission with a near-future departure, is basically gone. Hypergolics are shelf-stable, but do not offer a lot in the way of isp. Everything you want to use for interplanetary missions is cryogenic and will be lost if not used quickly. Just putting a container up there is not terribly useful if you do not yet have a plan for it because it just limits future options(need a special connector or fuel type/ratio? too bad your pre-launched container does not support that)

Could you verify the error and then update the wiki with better detail on how it works? That is the benefits of a wiki, when you spot an error you can fix it.

It looks like you are using a logistics module, and that requires a kerbal to function(pilot/quartermaster?). For unmanned bases an unmanned material processing unit should be used to allow pushing to Planetary stores without anyone on the base.(unmanned logistics can only push, so a kerbal is required for any pull from PS) Also, mining and processing only happens when a vessel is loaded(using the same catch-up mechanic as mining in stock), are you visiting your mining base regularly?

By direct descent, I assume you are referring to reducing your pe until it intersects the surface then doing a suicide burn to land. This costs dv for your orbital velocity plus increasing gravity losses as you slow down to land. Stopping in orbit s much the same, you spend dv to cancel your orbital velocity, then you need to pay increasing gravity losses as you slow to a stop. But then you get to pay dv to cancel the acceleration due to gravity between the time you stop your orbit and the time you land. In theory, these can be very similar amounts of dv if you are orbiting just above the surface, but generally speaking paying gravity losses for longer than you need to is bad for your dv budget. As such, 'stopping in orbit' is only viable if gravity losses are trivial, such as when landing on Gilly.

As best as I understand it, it looked like the high-temp high-strength concrete should be strong enough for them to do a test flight before the water deluge system was ready to install. I would guess that it was not as strong as they thought, but considering that S0 was not damaged enough to delay the next launch, and they got useful data from the first launch, I suspect they are reasonably happy with the results of taking that risk. TLDR: Another example of 'move fast and break stuff'

If you have a titanium sphere with a density similar to a dirigible, then I do not see a need for multiple passes, as your entire reentry vessel is effectively a strong, rigid parachute with a fairly high melting point.

If you can seal those titanium foams, then you have a lot of internal vacuum for buoyancy, make the 'bubbles' large enough and the whole thing may not be dense enough to hit the ground until it has had some time to in-gass. Think of large spherical 'clouds' that take an hour to finally land if not collected. Very low density should also help with reduced reentry heating.