ChrisSpace

I'm working on it okay? I'll update the front post soon enough.

I'll find it hard to see a profitable non-reusable SLS alongside reusable SpaceX vehicles. Or any reusable launch vehicles. After seeing what they've done so far with such little time and money, I think the BFR could be operational soon-ish. If not, Falcon Heavy can do heavy lifting as well.

In my opinion it reminds me of this: http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Race_Didn't_End Just combine it with Skylon, Deep Space Industries' and Planetary Resources' asteroid mining, and Musk's Mars plan and we have a completed SF world setting! If they use magic like SpaceX plans to it should be doable in their current timeframe. And by 'magic' I mean 'if absolutely everything goes exactly as planned, which it won't'. But a quick calculation says your 3x multiplier is accurate for a medium-case scenario. YeahNO. By 2040 either SpaceX will have their super heavy launch vehicle which would completely overshadow SLS, or something would have happened to prevent anyone from getting this far.

The problem with the ice giants is that their cloud layers are much colder and there is much less energy there.

Yeah i'm going with your idea. Oh wow how did I not think of this? Are you sure the radiation is bad in Jupiter's cloud layer? In any case, I suppose the gravity would cause problems. But I don't see anything wrong with using Saturn though.

- looks back at previous posts - oh, yeah, you did. Well I should be able to find a way around this. By 'abandon', does that mean Venus wouldn't have any intelligent life? Sort of. Don't worry about that part for now. Perhaps the Tunguska meteor is too small to use. Oh, how about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(152680)_1998_KJ9 ? On December 31 1914 it came pretty close to Earth, and if I move it slightly so it impacts, it would have dozens of Tsar Bomba's worth of impact energy and make a crater 6-10 km wide. That should be enough to wipe out a small country. A slightly bigger option would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(163132)_2002_CU11 which would have an impact/flyby date of August 30 1925. The 10x conversion from KSP to real life is supposed to be based on radius/diameter, not mass.

I suppose i'll let you do that so long as it doesn't mess up anything. I'm fine either way. In this alternate timeline 1979 is like the mid-21st century in OTL. Yeah, thanks. One of my other ideas was to very slightly move the Tunguska meteor's path so instead it would be heading towards a major city in 1908 instead of the middle of nowhere. I based it off minmus (without the ice), scaled up to the equivalent human-world size. I still don't like your idea of Venusians being an ancient spacefaring species, unless they have regressed to the point of having no memory of advanced technology. Are you saying Venus's air is unbreathable? That would be a problem. But wouldn't that be enough to transfer the heat around? I mean, nighttime on Mars is far warmer than on Mercury, for example.

Finally, someone else on my continent!

Oh wow, you've really done a ----load of work here! Sometime soon-ish I will update the front post with some of these ideas. About this, the reason I excluded it before is that the planet has an atmosphere, and I though that would spread the heat around more. I still don't get how a planet can have intelligent life without any other animals. But before you said they were the only animal species, sooo... (Also I'm 50/50 about having Kerbals on Venus) I actually imagined Aurora's diameter to be more like 600km, not 2-3km. I was halfway through writing about their unnessesaryness when I saw this. Clever thinking! (and yes, unnessesaryness is a word) Clever thinking, but by 1979 in this alternate time line redirecting comet-sized objects would be relatively easy. I'm not sure if we need this. Again, is this necessary? Didn't you just say that no probes have landed there yet? -__- That's awfully small for a gas giant lol. Did you mean 14.54 Earth mass? I don't really see the point of these two. Perhaps they should just be merged into Miranda and Titania. Huh, life on pluto. I never even thought of that. ??? Turning Mimas into a DS-like battle station is the one thing keeping me from removing it due to unnessesaryness right now. What is the point of these? I like the idea, but I'm fine either way.

Copyright reasons. What is this thing? -> #

Granted, its called Ceres. I wish I had a Death Note (without accidentally writing my name into it).

So this is basically the ULA's equivalent of 'would you like fries with that'?

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_North_Korean_nuclear_test

For simplicity, yes. As is the terrain on most planets that exist IRL. I've renamed Bellona to Ceres since they have the exact same physical characteristics. And the Ceres I had before was really unnecessary.

Brilliant work so far! So how much of the solar system have you done by now? When I was naming the worlds I actually forgot there was a real asteroid named Eros lol. It was actually based off Gilly from KSP.

I imagine Venus would look a bit like this:

What if 9/11 was actually done by terrorists using airplanes only, and the government deliberately did everything they could to make it look like they did it for the lolz?

KIA Note: Adds a small device that kerbals can use to... remove any kerbal who's name is written into it. This mod also adds Humans, but they are only visible to kerbals who have touched the KIA Note.

So long as they get along with all the others i'm fine with having them around. EDIT: I've just done a 365-day-long simulation of a moon-sized Enceladus to see how it would affect the rings and other moons of Saturn. The results are quite surprising: It doesn't. Well, It did have a minor effect on the nearby moons of Mimas, Tethys and Dione, but the rings didn't even notice.

- waves Chinese flag -

I'm not saying it would happen early on, but I am saying the technology would exist early on. And it wouldn't be used for this for a while. I'll do some simulations in Universe Sandbox to see if there is a way around this. If there isn't, I suppose we can get the rings and move them somewhere else. This is basically the central theme of this thread.

Source? This is the first I have heard of this.

Depending on who says it: 'Exactly as planned.'

Good news! I'm back! I never said it would be easy, but concepts of Orion-powered starships have existed since the 60s. With modern tech later on it could all be possible. To get a feel of how big I imagine Aether to be, just think of Uranus and Neptune being merged into one planet. -__- Huh, never knew about that. I look forwards to seeing it.

I say we leave them alone for a really long time and see what happens.