Awaras

\'Species\' is just a convenient label we place on living organisms for easier classification. In nature it is a lot more fluid with unclear borders.

First of all, If you do 35,000m, should that count as completing the 10,000m and 16,500m missions as well, since you technically went over those altitudes and landed safely? The rewards for doing things that you technically already did (doing 16,500m after you did 35,000m) should be much lower than for missions that you do for the first time. Just curious, I have done 10,000m, 35,000m and submitted a flight to 70,000m in turn 3. What would be my reward if I did 16,500 now? Also, if we have the cash, can we do multiple launches per turn?

Keep in mind that the average life expectancy in ancient Rome was 22-25 years of age compared to today\'s 70-80. Then factor in the sanitary conditions, lead plumbing and the odds you would end up as someone\'s slave... And that\'s the point, isn\'t it? The percentage of people \'that weren\'t a peasant\' back then is enormously small...

If that is true, than HOW DO THE REPTILIANS TRANSFORM HUMANS INTO THEIR OWN SPECIES?!

I don\'t mind the errors, who cares if it is not balanced yet, keep working on it and it will get better. Yes, there are inconsistencies, both with the reward system and the default prices (I mean, a radial decoupler costing almost as much as a command pod is not very logical in my book, but those are prices displayed in game so I guess we\'ll make do) but this is not something that can\'t be dealt with. That said, this campaign has been a breath of fresh air and also a taste of what KSP will be like once the campaign and research is implemented and we will have to watch our budgets. I hope you continue with the campaign.

Turn 3 submitted.

That\'s why they build pipelines...

Keep in mind that no fuel source is ideal, and they all have drawbacks - the product of burning hydrogen is water vapor, which is by itself a serious greenhouse gas. There is no telling what would happen to the climate if we suddenly start pouring billions of tonnes of water vapor in the atmosphere, but there would certainly be consequences. As for fusion, we have been \'almost there\' for the last 40-50 years and by the looks of it we might be 'almost there' for another 50. Also, fusion does not leave any radioactive waste but the walls of fusion reactors become intensely radioactive after a relatively short period of time, and would have to be disposed of periodically in the same manner radioactive waste is disposed of now... I am having trouble discerning the truth about thorium reactors, but if the positive things i have been reading about them are true, the radiation released is orders of magnitude less intense than in standard fission reactors, the temperatures are much lower, practically eliminating risk of meltdown and radioactivity of the waste products drops below background radiation intensity in around 10 years. Another plus is that the fission products of the thorium reactor are supposed to be lithium and other rare earth metals that are used in modern electronics and which are starting to run out right now. I agree with this completely. Barring a large war or a cataclysm of some sort, the population of the earth is not going to decrease significantly in our lifetime and we will need more energy in the future, not less. Looking on the whole, nuclear seems the safest option. I was surprised to learn that a typical coal energy plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant - all coal contains a small amount of uranium and other radioactive elements, and when you multiply that small amount with the thousands upon thousands of tonnes of coal a coal plant burns over the course of one year, you end up with a couple of tonnes of uranium that stay in the ash that has to be dumped in an ash pile or is released in the atmosphere...

A question: When do we declare leveling up tech? At the start of a turn or at the end? That is, since I have not invested in tech yet, can I state it in my turn 3 submission and use new tech for it, or would I have to wait for turn 4 to use new tech? If I can, I would like to purchase tech levels 1 and 2 before submitting my turn 3 craft.

In that sense, petrol is renewable too... As you mentioned, we could build factories that suck CO2 and water vapor from the air and create hydrocarbons (well, biofuels are basically this). I don\'t know how energy efficient it would be compared to hydrogen production, but it would plug in nicely into existing infrastructure.

When I said \'it\'s not fuel\' I just meant that it is not a net source of energy because, unlike petrol, you have to spend more energy producing the hydrogen than you get burning it, and that\'s without counting the energy needed to compress/cool it, store it etc.

Sorry but I just had to chime in here... Actually, the amount of CO2 released from ALL volcanoes on Earth (both on land and under the sea) is estimated to be on average around 200 million tonnes per year. The total CO2 released by human activity in 2003 was estimated at around 27 BILLION tonnes per year, which means that ALL THE VOLCANOES on the planet release less then 1% of the CO2 that we put into our atmosphere. (Source)

I am at a loss trying to understand how people succeded in building a craft to go over 35KM with the starting budget... The best I made barely reached 20km. :\'( Did I miscalculate the budget? By my calculations, after buying the command pod, zoxygen system and parachute, I had enough money for 4 SRB\'s. How do you reach 35km with 4 SRB\'s?

Huh? \'Freon\' is just a commercial name FOR CFCs... Hydrogen is NOT a fuel (that is, it is not a source of energy). You can think of hydrogen as a \'battery\'. It is a relatively practical way to STORE energy, but you need to spend more energy separating the hydrogen from water than you get burning the hydrogen. That means that you need another practical source of energy to produce it. Producing enough hydrogen to power all the cars in the world from solar power would require covering the area equivalent to a few countries with solar panels, which are (at this time) pretty expensive to make. Another solution would be nuclear, but it is not very popular at the moment. I like the things I am hearing about thorium reactors since they appear to be much, much safer than present ones with thousands of times less radiation and lower reaction temperatures. Bill Gates has invested a lot of cash into the development of thorium reactors. Also, Caddilac made a concept for a thorium powered car (appropriately called the WTF - World Thorium Concept) that could travel something like 30.000 km on 100 grams of thorium (presently, 1kg of thorium costs around 50 USD and it is thousands of times more abundant and easier to extract then uranium). However, I believe that the public will be against any sort of mass nuclear power generation since \'nuclear\' has become a word to scare children with...

@Togfox Can you post a list saying how many people have successfully completed which mission?

You have never used RAR before?! Get WinRar (It\'s not free, but you can use the trial version pretty much forever) or a free archiver like 7zip, extract the archive into some folder, copy files or folders from there into the matching folders in your KSP installation folder (parts into the parts folder, plugins into the plugin folder) and you\'re done.

Yeah, I also included the command module (for a hefty 1600$) in my shopping list... I hope that is right.

Ship submitted

It is attached to one of my previous posts (the one that says 'Well, I have gone ahead and landed my ship...')

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9413.msg138779 *Note that, while the ship is fully stock, you need modded parts to help you create it, so I guess I\'m walking a thin line between stock and modded...

Yeah, cellphone radiation has been classified as a class 2B carcinogen, alongside such dire health hazards as coffee, gasoline and pickled vegetables... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens *edit* Hmm... And DDT apparently. I was led to believe that DDT is much more hazardous than coffee or diesel fumes... Strange.

Well, I have gone ahead and landed my ship using the persistent.sfs file from the OP. I hope that is OK. If not, please ignore my file and move me to the end of the list... Looks like my ship was afflicted by the reappearing strut bug... Let\'s just say that it is an antenna or something.

I\'m still waiting for confirmation. If it\'s OK, I\'ll land today when I get back from work.

I was just thinking yesterday how the black/yellow strip of the ASAS stands out and does not match the similar strips on the SAS and the fuel tanks. Nice work, sir.

This is brilliant!