Hannu2

That would be ridiculous, but unfortunately it is the fact that KSP can not sell forever and Squad have no reason to develop or update it infinitely. Or add some very complex and expensive new content, like multiplayer mode, better physics, better terrains or massive graphics overhauls. That would need a large team of programmers and artists. They will certainly not hire such army of professionals if there are no possibilities to incomes enough to pay costs and give profit to Squad. I hope that the old promise will not eventually prevent Squad's decision to continue KSP. I hope that they will find some way to make new paid content without being claimed to be dishonest. They have made massive updates (like migration to Unity 5) and lots of new high quality content years after that. In my opinion it is far more than they have ever promised and far more than customer can honestly claim.

Do you have part limitations? I use several LV-Ns. I try to get acceleration to about 2.5-3.5 m/s^2. It gives typical departure burns at about 10 minutes. About 4-6 LV-Ns per 100 t should give suitable thrust.

I would not like it. In my opinion there could be more realism based mechanism to punish the player. For example some kind of volume cells based system. Debris left in orbit would increase the debris density during long period, which would diffuse during time in larger area. Crafts would have probability of the damage depending on the debris density of the cell they are. Debris densities would need updates only every now or then and crafts could just check the precalculated density in the cell they are, so it would not be a significant CPU load. It would also be very easy to disable if someone wants easier game. But it would need some time to program and violate against rules which forbids random events.

I would like to have better planets. Better and more interesting terrains (3D surfaces with caves and fine details) with physical interactions (flowing fluids, temperature effects, corrosion, toxicity, surface properties etc.). There should also be reasons to explore planets. Randoms spots from different biomes should give just maybe 1/4 of science. Rest would be scattered on procedurally generated spots on celestial bodies (based on a seed number which could be changed between saves to give new spots). Something would be able to see from orbit with suitable detectors and something would require unmanned landers, rovers or planes and something would need kerbals to be revealed. Some would be on the caves or bottom of the lakes or seas. It would be the content which is impossible to mod into the game. It would be expensive to develop it and I think that I could pay couple of tens of euros from it. But I would not buy any graphical enhancements, parts without new physical functions, new planets which are similar colored almost physicsless balls than current ones (in stock and mods), etc. stuff for which there are plenty of high quality mods. I am also not interested in multiplayer KSP.

In my opinion they have concentrated last years too much on Kerbin's surface and atmosphere. There should be finally something to do on planets. I hope that now when so many crew members, including the boss, have changed, there is a little bit hope that new guys lift the old ban against procedural terrain and science generation and make an exploration update. It would have better terrains (I prefer physical functions over fancy graphics) and procedurally generated special places to find science and resources to keep every new save interesting. If it will not be 1.3, then later. I am certainly ready to pay several tens of euros for it, if it is necessary to keep the development running, but I will not pay for better graphics. I think that I have already got very fair amount of entertainment compared to the price I paid (actually I felt it about 10 minutes after I got my first paid version, 0.18.0).

I think that if there will ever be KSP 2 it will try to be high level commercial product from beginning. I am quite sure, that it can not be better than KSP for me. If it seems good I buy it, but if it is too easy or unrealistic, no thanks. In my opinion KSP have developed years to wrong direction while it have grown in the commercial success. But I hope that the success of KSP encourages game developers to make many space flight games which are specialized to different things. And there will be also a nerdy micromanagement game for professional engineers and students. A game which try to be as realistic simulation as practically possible and not to become famous or be easy for all. There should be procedurally generated 3D planets, N-body trajectories for crafts, challenging aerodynamics and hundreds of micromanagement things to be taken into account. And lots of exploration to do. Orbital like flight mechanics combined with possibility to build physically well modeled crafts and some progression in resources and exploration would be nice. I do not need to eye candy graphics, cartoonish characters or such stuff.

I use always MechJeb. Certainly I could play without it (or other mods) and I have made manned voyages on every celestial body by calculating dvs by pencil and paper and calculator (in some ancient versions before I found MJ). However, it was fun only couple of first times when I learned something and then it became boring source of errors and I wondered why such an obvious thing was not included in spaceflight simulator. I have same feelings about routine maneuvers so now I do not even think playing without MJ except when I start a new career and have to research MJ functions.

It is much said about a game in which it is impossible to make any tracks. But I would like to see even a rudimentary implementation of the rail traffic. For example something in Factorio, tracks, turnouts and simple signals. It is certainly out of the scope of the vanilla game but it would be very interesting mod. There could be for example many ore drilling units on area of several square kilometers and an automated train would collect the ore and haul it to the refinery. Unfortunately, it seems that KSP's current game engine would not allow it.

Probably there is not significant difference. Multithreading of KSP (and Unity) is still quite primitive and I do not think that i7's hyperthreading give anything to KSP. Stock KSP also does not need more than 2 GB VRAM but I do not know if some mods have so much huge textures. I would base my decision to other needs than KSP.

Light speed is infinite in the KSP world. Otherwise there should be futile CPU and programming time consuming calculations to draw other celestial bodies to places and positions they were when light began its way to the player. There are also not any non-Newtonian physical effects at high speeds. However, crafts speeding at hundreds of thousands of km/s will certainly attract Kraken's attention at certain situations but these effects are not predictable. Therefore I do not count them as physical effects. My favorite speed depends naturally on where I am and where I want to go. I do not understand what is actual point of this question. 0 m/s after landing or docking is probably the most common single number.

In my opinion yes. In my opinion also my country (Finland) should take part in ESAs projects with more money and activity. On the other hand, I understand why states do not spend if they are not sure that their industry benefits enough. There are severe economic problems in many European countries (including Finland), there are more needs than money and public services must be weakened. I think that scientific knowledge is valuable as such but unfortunately most people prefer entertainment and possibility to buy insane amounts of cheap junk and it is very common to think that science is futile or even bad thing.

1. I am sure that 2018 is in any case overoptimistic estimate, like most Musk's suggestions are. But in my opinion it would be great if SpaceX could do Mars mission in 2020 or 2022 windows. 2. Do you also think that it is not insane to ride Niagara falls in barrel, because few crazy individuals have done it? Of course this is just my unprofessional opinion, but I would like to see a little bit longer succession statistics before I would land my billion € spacecraft on Mars with a Skycrane. But on the other hand, space exploration is pioneering work, in which there are no development without brave attempts to do things by new insane ways. In my opinion Skycrane is insane in positive and ingenious way. It is just what space exploration needs. Just as landing of used stages on barges on ocean. 3. This is true but it is exactly why SpaceX probably have to display its capabilities to achieve trust. It can not be done with Musk's overoptimistic promises and fancy videos. They have to make some engineering test missions showing that they can do it reliably and in time before anyone buy even cheap planetary transports. I fear that Musk's daydream level marketing talk about Mars colonies and other unrealistic stuff make this worse instead of increase trust among potential customers.

Why you do not tell us how your story goes on? You initial assumptions are contradicting. It is not bad, there are illogical assumptions and events in almost every story, but then there is not one logic chain of consequences. Every author weights different assumptions and get different story, and probably the original author does not like anyone of them. For example you told that they can easily product any elements by using nuclear reactions. But you do not like easy and natural solution of massive nuclear war between Earth and Mars. Resource depletion is also very illogical assumption in solar system scale production. Material can not disappear. If you mine some elements and use them, they stay in waste and with infinite energy resources they can be always recycled.

It is technical test flight and marketing display of company's capabilities. Surely there will be some scientific instruments, but it will not be the highest priority of mission. If they succeed they can begin to sell transport services for space agencies interested in exploration on Mars. Standard transport capsule would certainly decrease development costs of current insane sky crane mechanisms and deliver rovers easily. It is so large that return stage of the sample return mission may also be possible payload. I think that all current talk about manned operations is just daydreaming but if they manage to develop Falcon Heavy and Dragon to be reliable and economic way to deliver scientific payloads to Mars (and maybe some other celestial bodies too), it will boost solar system exploration significantly.

If we assume that aquatic aliens (for example species with squid like tentacles which are able to manipulate their environment with precision compared to fingers) would have succeeded to develop technology needed to space operations, they would surely have metals, composite materials etc. Rockets would be very similar than ours and they would operate from some kind of floating ships. Aerodynamics would restrict that. I think that they would need some kind of thin water filled space suit in manned operations like humans need an air filled suit in EVAs. Water filled cabins would be too heavy and probably such a species could not achieve manned flights without inventing a suit compatible with their anatomy and respiration functions and possible to use during whole missions. Probably they would need such a suit for aviation before spaceflight era.

I feel that Antares is quite a boring. It is just a tool in relatively mature phase of development. As far as I know it has no interesting technical extremities (or kerbalities) compared to other rockets. Saturn V is largest, Goddard's was first liquid propellant rocket, Falcon is (partly) reusable etc. but Antares is only intended to make money for some company instead of develop some new rocket technology or achieve spectacular scientific achievements. Of course this is just my personal feelings and I do not think that Antares is not good in its job. It gives more room to new tech or science in space when orbital launches become "boring" routine stuff.

Both are building games without restricted goals which I like. I like averagely more about KSP because I like physics, math and space exploration but sometimes I get bored to KSP and I feel better to play Minecraft and other games. Last weeks I have been addicted in Factorio.

Yes, traveling in space would surely be much more dangerous than office work. I think that humans can not advance in manned space exploration before we learn to accept risks. It should be like explorations hundreds of year ago. Kings sent many ships to expeditions until some of them returned. It would be technically possible to reduce radiation so that astronauts could stay able to work during expedition. If not, let's add little more radiation shielding to next ship. That's why I have so pessimistic view of all current space projects. All governments and space agencies lack of pioneering attitude. But of course first applications of nuclear reactors would be probes. It would make heavy probes possible to all bodies in solar system in sane travel time (<10 years).

Of course, but I do not see any reason to go to dangerous area. It is also relatively easy to avoid with proper planning (for example during docking and EVA). Landers should use chemical engines also for thrust. Ion and other electric engines are very weak.

No, I do not think so. Popularity of nuclear power is very low and decreasing all around the world. Therefore it is nearly impossible that we will get politicians willing to release practical ban of nearly all nuclear technology in foreseeable future. It means generations, 30-50 years. Maybe more. There was some primitive investigation of nuclear propulsion in 60s. It told that it would probable be technically and economically possible. But we can only guess what would be actual limits on nuclear technology. Or what would be true environmental risks of using nuclear powered crafts in atmosphere. I am not sure if atmospheric nuclear vehicles will ever be a good idea but extreme negative prestige of nuclear technology is very unfortunate thing because fission powered electric propulsion would have so obvious advantages in manned and unmanned research of solar system.

Welcome to Finland. We have foreign weather system including cryogenic air temperatures and supercooled lakes for everybody who come from truly habitable climates. If you want to fly though the air by a crazy way, you can rent skis. Io would probably be very interesting place. Also Triton, because blue color of Neptune is really beautiful.

They talk about O-rings and thermal insulators, but part clipping is why real space Kraken took two Shuttles.

I am not sure but I think that both systems are used. GPS at high altitude and radio beacon and radar near the barge (maybe along with GPS which gives 3D data).

Surely same technology can be used to land on other bodies, at least after they establish some kind of positioning system around the planet. But I can not see any sane reason why it should be kept secret. I think there is not much competition in these days or in foreseeable future. It is clear that landing of first stages gives economic advantage to SpaceX in relatively short period and developing costs are quite cheap because they can experiment with paid commercial launches. It is very obvious reason to develop it. However, it is very uncertain when the system will be used on Mars and what kind of business is related to such projects. It may take 25 or 50 years or even more. It is far too long time to develop business. It will be bonus, it if happens, but actual profit comes from reusing of expensive rocket stages.

OK. I wrote sloppy. Of course business does not think so far. I thought that it is reason why governments does not see colonization as a productive operation unlike colonization of different continents couple of hundreds of years ago. But if government is not interested in space colonization of course it does not buy equipment from companies. I think that we can discuss politics on general level without comparing countries or political ideologies (if not, moderator please notify). It is impossible to talk about ideological space projects, like colonization and exploration, without politics because politicians decide practically all of it. Maybe I am little cynical. It is better with politics. But I do not see that cold war begun suddenly in normal conditions. There was World War II in which USA and Soviet Union was allies and cold war developed after that. Developing of space race took 10 years and its main motivation was development of intercontinental ballistic missile. There is no such motivation on next cold wars. Even relatively poor countries can achieve ballistic missiles now and colonization equipment have not straight military applications. There is also other thing. Apollo was short period project compared to any colonization projects. Even most primitive space colonies need huge investments over several decades. I think that it is very improbable that cold war like situation can stay stable so long. It ends or leads to actual war. It is also difficult project for democratic governments because it should stay over tens of election periods.