SOXBLOX

Just last night I dreamt I was in bed, browsing these forums on my tablet. Or was that real...? René Descartes to the rescue!

I hope they leave the atmosphere mostly clear. It would be a shame to hide all that beauty underneath a smog layer.

LAVA!!! The terrain is beautiful, the music is beautiful, and the rings..... Wow! I like the name, too. Gurdamma is fun to say... So, is it pronounced /gɘɹdama'/ or /gɘɹda:'ma/ ? Maybe we can start a new Mün pronunciation debate around this... @Nate Simpson Who names the bodies, anyway? A hat tip to them, whoever they are.

Well, first you'd need nuclear power, so you have to wait on NASA to scrounge together the plutonium. Then you have to launch this (presumably large) probe on something. Then, it would orbit Enceladus, map it in high-resolution, select a landing site where the crust is thought to be thinnest, and set down the submarine, which would slowly melt its way through the ice. Maybe you could send two missions, a mapper/relay probe and the sub + lander.

Why is Raptor's nozzle greenish? Is it the alloy, or is it discoloration from a test fire, or is it both?

If you're thinking of a model rocket, three is probably the best. The more fins you have, the harder it is to align them properly. I never use fins in-game except for outsized payloads, when I need more control.

As @kerbiloid said, the Airless Force.

Only if you gerrymander the definition of South Texas...

I'm gonna go with life extension....aaagh, but I want a torchdrive... Just imagine what someone could do if they lived for three hundred years. You could grow up normally, work in one field for 60 years, and then retire. Then you'd go back to college to learn a new field, and repeat the cycle. We'd create a world of polymaths. Of course, that depends on how the life extension works. Does it slow down mental development long enough that you can learn new skills at 100? Or does it not? If it doesn't, that means you'd be stuck in the same field, doing the same things for 300 years... I think I'll take the torchdrive.

I didn't say those would make sense... But I guess, a dozenth* of an inch and a dozen feet? Four yards? There are 440 dozen-feet in a mile, so that works. Sort of. *I know, I know, it isn't English.

Pretty sure the precision is related to the wavelength of the waves you're studying. So, radio scopes can deal with precisions of a couple meters, but optical needs precisions measured in nanometers. Here's the wiki page on the radio version of this. The name of the technique is Very Long Baseline Interferometry. The trouble seems to be the methods. Current optical interferometry actually uses mirrors to bring the light from multiple telescopes together, while radio scopes record the data separately, with a timestamp from an atomic clock. Then, the data is combined in a computer. Here's a set of much better answers: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/29082/is-optical-vlbi-theoretically-feasible-if-not-why-not

On the other hand, if base-12 is the best, 12 in./ft. would suddenly become logical... Some cultures count in base-8. They do it by counting with the spaces between their fingers. I think it's mostly a Native American thing. If you expanded this to include the spaces outside your fingers (i.e. past your thumbs and fifth fingers) you would get base 12... Surely this is how we were meant to count.

I think it would work for radio, but IDK about optical. You need precise knowledge of distances between sensors for that...

Seriously, though, I use metric for my woodcarving, and really any fine measuring I have to do. Millimeters are so nice and clean. 16ths of an inch are just dumb.

Somehow I think this is more of a Hollywood thing... not KSP...

All due to Mr. Paul, of course. @SunlitZelkova and others, you put an amazing amount of thought into the posts above. I love it when we get deep threads like this. Thank you all. IMHO, I don't see much in the way of economic justification for deep space exploration. At least, not today. The only things I can come up with are unlimited hydrocarbons from Titan and metals from the asteroid belts. And He3 from Saturn or whatever, if that ever happens. Beyond that, I just scratch my head. But tomorrow, figuratively speaking, we could have an economic use for space. There is a law of economics (I forget the name...help!?) which says we cannot predict distinct future inventions in detail without actually inventing them, if in thought only. In other words, you can't predict the rise of an original idea without having the idea. I can't think of a better way to phrase it... But the point is that we could have a need to go to space sometime in the near future; we just can't see it coming. For example, people didn't really need mass production of steel until the railroad made it necessary. And no one could have predicted railroads without inventing the idea. Of course, that's not an argument for deep space exploration today. You could say that we should launch probes now, to make using space easier later on, when we need it, but that has no economic benefits in the present. -------- Since there are few economic reasons at the moment, we can resort to philosophical arguments. For example, if the person you're debating is religious (I hope this doesn't violate forum rules...), you could say that the universe is designed to be explored and enjoyed by mankind. You can also say that it's really none of their business what other people are doing on their own time, provided they're not hurting anyone while they do it. They may refute this by saying that not intervening to help the starving is harming them by inaction, but you can reply by pointing out that they can no longer indulge in any luxuries, lest they harm by inaction. And lastly, if they're honestly looking to keep money from being wasted, and not just going after space exploration because of a vendetta they have, there are many, many more "wastes" of money present, at least in the U.S. Federal budget, than NASA. I mean, do we really need <insert hated federal program here>?

I think it would be worthwhile to point out to anyone who thinks exploring space is a waste how small NASA's budget truly is. @tater showed in a different thread that it's actually (a lot) less than the New York City public school system's budget.

I'm glad you asked. My favorite resource for this which I've found so far is Günter Paul's The Satellite Spinoff, a translation of the original work, Die dritte Entdeckung der Erde, translated by Alan and Barbara Lacy. My edition was published 1980-ish. I got it from my library, which had pulled it from circulation. Telecommunications: He starts off asking what use space exploration is to humanity. He begins with the field of telecommunications. Trans-Atlantic cables were expensive, and could only handle a low volume of messages. The communication satellites changed all that by making Trans-Atlantic calls and faxes cheaper and more abundant. This has economic ramifications, improving trade, besides the human factor of someone being able to speak to their family from a distant place. The Westinghouse Corporation was getting tired of paying for its employees to fly everywhere for their business meetings. They began using telecommunications equipment, and the number of their people flying was reduced by 20%. That reduces pollution. Geology and Cartography: Next, geography. How do you think they made maps before satellites? Were they probably very accurate? No, especially in remote locations. French scientists used Echo I (1950s) to determine the distance between Europe and North Africa to an accuracy of 12 meters. EDIT: In Brazil, scientists at the Brazilian Space Exploration Office reported that, by comparing a satellite image and the best existing maps at the time, they had found striking results. The Amazon was drawn on the maps with an error, in some places, of over 20 miles. Several tributaries were found to flow in entirely different directions than previously thought. In some cases, the differences approached 90°. The sad thing is, the pictures revealed that several dozen bridges built as part of an Amazon superhighway were completely superfluous. Were the satellite pictures available earlier, much money could have been saved. Satellites are used to watch and study tectonic plates. They give advance warnings for volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters, but we'll get to meteorology later. Resource Management: And then, look at an atlas from the time he wrote this. There were still areas of low detail, where cartographers had little data. Yet, in future, he points out, we will have to develop new centers of agriculture to fight world hunger. Resource management is a very important area of satellite usage today. A satellite can tell you exactly what kinds of trees are in a forest, or what kind of rock a range of mountains includes. It can measure soil types and gather data which helps humans efficiently use only what land they need, instead of older, more wasteful methods. Atmospherics: Of course, satellites play a role in studying the atmosphere. I believe the ozone hole was discovered with satellite data. Navigation: Aaaaand then there's navigation. GPS is of unlimited utility. It helps shipping, airliners, etc. in massive ways, every day. Using GPS to optimize air traffic over the North Atlantic saved $46.5 million dollars (1976) a year. The benefits are greater to shipping. By saving one percent in the areas of both astronomical navigation and fuel usage, the industry would save $150 million a year. I'm certain it is waaay higher today. NOTE: I'll edit this post to add the rest of the summary later; I've gotta put this down now... Meteorology: EDIT: In August 1969, pictures from the new Essa satellites arrive. The weathermen noted a cloud formation similar to those from which hurricanes were known to develop. As they watched, hour by hour, Hurricane Camille grew and moved across the Caribbean. On the night of August 17, it hit. The Mississippi overflowed its banks, and Pass Christian registered a stormtide 26 feet above normal. It had the second-lowest air pressure of any hurricane in the United States. It flattened 6,000 houses, and severely damaged 50,000 more. Property damages amounted to more than 10 billion 2020 USD. Only ~260 people died. The satellite data, by providing advance warning, had saved more than 50,000 lives. I dare anyone to put a price on that. Hay, after being mowed, needs to dry for three days before being collected. If it rains on the hay in that time, it rots and becomes much less valuable. Weather satellites predict these three-day windows. According to the book, at the time of publication, that capability would save ~$28 million per harvest, per state. That number is surely much higher today. ----------- So, space exploration has saved billions of dollars, created an industry, and inspired tens of thousands of people. I think it is safe to say that the savings to the economy from space exploration have more than paid for all space activities, scientific or otherwise. In addition, we have used the vantage point of space to save countless lives. And that is priceless.

^ That is pure awesome.

I know it's still a ways away (<-that looks weird) but I'm awaiting Bethesda's Starfield with interest. It has a nice aesthetic...

*facedesk* Are they going for 15 years on the ground?

Here's a relevant video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5EUjnEKzjQ

Maybe the US should switch to counting in base-16, and create its own logical, metric-esque* system for that. Because hexadecimal is obviously the best base. *(since they're both French roots, can I say "metriquesque"?)

Ehhh... I'm sceptical. The KSP1 engineer thing? Absolutely. But just rebuilding your ship from the ground up feels a little OP.

I read the article @Dientus linked, and oh boy, are there some pretty pictures there. There was only that little bit on LS, though, saying that KSP2 will not be a resource management game. So I think there will be a life-support mechanic, it just won't kill your Kerbals to not have it, or not have more than the baseline.