JoeSchmuckatelli

Someone better tell the FAA. Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

Note to self: No surgeries in China.

Given that it would take tens of thousands of years for V-ger to reach Alpha Centauri (were it aimed that way)... yeah, it passing another star is gonna be a while. Phobos is nearing Mars at a rate of six feet (1.8 meters) every hundred years; at that rate, it will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or break up into a ring Gliese - projected to pass near the Sun in about 1.29 million years O'Donoghue and other scientists estimate that the rings will disappear in about 300 million years.

@Vl3d - I'm not sure my link above was the one I meant... phone was dying and I grabbed the link and went with it. But then there's also this (time linked) I think the atmospheric scattering that they showed in the show and tell might use some of what you're describing. But then I look at this, and think you're not far off: ... I admit I don't know much (anything, really) about game design or Unity - but my impression is that a lot of those scenes, fantastic though they may be, are sets. Everything thought out, designed and placed. With KSP2, outside of the various terrain given the geometry of the moons and planets we could land on, I suspect that veggies and rocks and the like will have to be randomly generated visuals. Sort of a coded 'this area gets these objects to scatter about with x level of density'. So - I'm saying I expect an upgraded version of the trees we can see in KSP on Kerbin, where a few special items exist on the planet, but in general everything except terrain is something you can just drive through. (like the rocks on the Mun & etc. too).

So... Those are beautiful. But I'm not sure they're applicable for KSP2. Maybe volumetric lighting, but unlikely all the trees and etc Given this

Frankly - that's what I thought when I first saw the announcement trailer all those years ago. And yet, after my recent conversations in the hype / 22 release threads it looks like there are several solar systems available which makes it a much larger game than I first imagined If you go through the videos and speculation about them - the consensus is that there is no chance of all those planets around a single star.

Also in news: Another Denisovan tooth found. This time in Laos. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/17/asia/tooth-laos-denisovans-human-evolution-scn/index.html

There was a lot of talk last year about ULA & BO delays SX likely not patient with that

Cosmology is weird. Now in an effort to cram the universe into the lambdaCDM model they are proposing 'invisible space walls' that constrain galaxies https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/scientists-space-invisible-walls/amp This is WAY over my head... But maybe some of you learned folks (like @K^2)(?) can explain whether this is a reasonable line of inquiry or rampant speculation by people who are overly tied to the model because it works in many ways elsewhere? Edit - this odd little video provides a tldr:

That kind of stuff does happen - and often gets other assets called in to see if they can determine what it was. However due to lag time there are often gaps in the coverage and now we get congressional testimony about little green men

That's the thing I'm coming to grips with. In retrospect, the 2019 version looks like an updated KSP with some colonies / outposts and likely a single 'other star system to visit' (which I'd have been fine with - and was excited for) Lately I'm getting the impression that for all you good players who can visit every planet and moon and do SSTO grand tours - the 'end game content' is going to be massive! Thus - instead of a modern refresh of a classic we will get a legitimate successor and effectively a whole new experience

Yep - and the thing we should remember is that the 2022 release expectations were fueled by forecasting. Nate's 'rip the band-aid off' post was from 2020 where they likely forecast a best guess given what they hoped to achieve and where they were. I wouldn't be surprised if after it's all said and done we learn that the release version is significantly different in scope than what was originally planned by the original studio (despite the announcement trailer) ... So much so that instead of us thinking the release game has been 'in the works' since (whenever) the real work of the final project started anew with the studio / publisher change

I just wish we knew why - which I know is cribbing... But fact is, I have a strong suspicion that multi-player is the anchor around this albatross' neck. As in the KSP2 bird could fly just fine without it. Like they're saying with consoles being a later date, adding multi-player down the line would be fine for me. It would let them wrap up and put the finishing touches on the game, ship it, and then maybe break off a team to keep working on the problems with MP while the rest of us get a viable v2 game to play the way 90% of us are going to play it throughout its lifespan.

Yup. @Gargamel - you win today's one internet.

Command decision to eliminate Multi-player? <ducks>

Hmmm... There is a National Churro Day next year as well - but it's not "early 2023". Looks like I'm losing the office pool.

I stayed up to watch it... ... Rain.

111 That's a lot of not wasted rockets/boosters.

Oo ~

I'm wondering if it is about payload deployment. I don't know enough about airframes but I do know that sport convertibles lack the rigidity of sports cars with a full roof - so by extension - absent a deployment method that uses only the nose cone, deployment strategies that break the cylinder of the main part of the craft likely bring additional design challenges

If you have a craft in orbit it's already traveling at Ludicrous Speed compared to the atmosphere... So no matter what you are going to get friction and thus, heat. Balloons, to fly, need to be exceptionally thin and flexible and light and not porus - anything that meets those criteria does not manage heat well enough to survive reentry. Plus other stuff mentioned above

Speculation about why?

That's her! Some of her papers are quite interesting (okay, yeah, as I typed this I realized I'm talking about a Laureate... of course they are!)

That's an interesting thing... We are right to be amazed at the rapidity of the launches that SX is delivering... But if they remain so manpower intensive w/r/t control teams - that right there is a price barrier. Perhaps in 10 years we see 5-person teams managing each launch?

Such a relative word