[Practical propulsion methods for manned interplanetary travel]

From a politicians viewpoint, launching a nuclear reactor into space would have a lot of political fallout, so as the op states the nerva wouldn't be practical.

Launch the engine, then launch the fuel on a rocket with a man rated LES.

VASIMR looks promising as a propulsion system.

[Life on a generation ship.]

Why not? Wouldn't you want the spares to last as long as possible? One set of fuel rods won't last you 300 years, so you will need spares to replace them, and since you can't turn off radioactivity, shouldn't you make some attempt to keep all the radioactivity contained inside the fuel rod as long as physically possible?

Doesn't work that way. Radioactivity isn't something you can keep in a box. Making the container out of neutron reflective material means you have more neutrons passing through the fuel, causing it to "burn" faster.

[How would you design a satellite to last 5 billion years?]

I would design a synthetic lifeform and throw it at a passing comet. It then spreads to other bodies in the outer solar system. Each colony records and stores data, then transmits it to it's neighbors. The ultimate in "cloud" storage.

[Fortresscraft Devs = Ultimate Scumbags.]

EDIT: Ignore this, confused this with another game with a similar title. My bad.

[Should we bring back the dinosaurs?]

Like I am going to say no to a pet chickenraptor. I'll call it Fluffy!

In all seriousness, I see no reason not to. Worst case, we can't make a viable dinosaur analog, but gain more knowledge and experience manipulating DNA, which can only benefit humanity. Best case, pet dinosaurs.

[Space Engineers]

New update, and it's a big one. The game is now 64-bit! Slightly less exciting are the new motor blocks, and nameable beacons.

I have to say, the game is shaping up nicely.

[Space Engineers]

I'm terrible at this game, but I don't care.

Everyone's making epic spaceships, and I'm just sitting here trying to build a decent station.

EDIT: So I accidentally Alt-F4ed trying to take a screenshot (why the screenshot button is F4 is a very good question) and now the game crashes every time I load up the world. Good job, game.

Sounds like your world got corrupted. Does the game still crash if you try to load a new one?

In other news, we have another update! Copy/Paste/Delete functions are now in the game, which makes testing crash resistance much easier. We also have the beacon block, which puts a marker on your HUD that tells you how far away it is.

[Maybe a solution to the anthropic principle?]

I will never understand why some people think it's strange that we live in a universe where life is possible. Wouldn't it be stranger if the universe where life isn't possible? And if we didn't live, regardless of if life was possible or not, we wouldn't be wondering about it anyway.

[Space Engineers]

WEEEAAAPPOONNNSSSS.

Please? :3

If you take the Uranium ingots out of the large reactors on the quickstart maps, and throw them through a ring(or 3) of 10 gravity generators, the results are...interesting.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=196550403

Now here's the fun bit: that screenshot is facing towards the grav-cannon. The ingot clipped through about a third of the ship before deciding to wreck the place. My next ship is so having one of those as a main weapon.

[Space Engineers]

New update has come, adding symmetry mode to ship construction and increasing astronaut speed to 105 m/s and letting you turn off inertial damping. Also, cargo pods now have items in them, though there isn't much to do with them yet.

Next update looks like it might be 64bit capable, but we will have to wait and see. Still no word on multiplayer or survival mode yet.

[Chlorine Trifluoride]

This thread is over a year old guys, let the dead rest in peace.

[Space Engineers]

The devs have added magnetic landing gear! No more holes in your hangar walls(probably)! Be sure to leave the reactors on in the small ships, it helps.

[Space Engineers]

Spaceship! With obligatory structural weak point!

[Space Engineers]

Some of the asteroids have caves. The best one by far it the large roundish grey one.

Here is a base I built into a small one:

[Why does the universe exist?]

I don't believe it doesn't have an answer. The universe was created. By natural or random forces or through will in some way or another. Why wouldn't you ask the question?

The word "why" implies intent. Intent implies a creating entity. Any being or beings capable of creating a universe would so utterly alien that trying to understand their motivations would be impossible. I would rather ask questions that can be answered, such as how the universe works.

Sorry of this seems a bit ranty.

[Why does the universe exist?]

Why does there have to be a reason? We have a whole universe filled with questions that we can answer, why do we need to ask ones that have no answer?

[Nuclear salt-water rocket propulsion]

Not to mention the fact that you have to build a spacecraft that can withstand a continuous nuclear explosion.

[ISP and multiple engines]

ISP would remain the same, thrust would increase based on how many engines you add, and Delta-V would decrease due to the extra mass.

[A Colony-site survey of the Kerbal System]

Every time a discussion about radiation on Laythe comes up, people seem to forget something; it has a rather significant atmosphere, which should absorb a lot of radiation. Also, all those volcanoes mean a molten core, so Lathye may have a magnetosphere of it's own. Still have to deal with radiation on inbound/outbound flights, but that is just an engineering challenge.

[Economics of spaceflight]

Hopefully we'll one day need all that helium 3 on the moon.

There isn't THAT much He3 on the moon. You would need to process several million tons of regolith to get just one ton of He3. It would probably be more efficient to get it from Saturn's atmosphere.

[Hyperloop]

Meh. A flight from SFO to LAX is an hour long. The wait time on the ground is several hours long. Guess which one I would rather see shortened. I'll keep waiting for my train, thanks.

[How to get into Aries 3A from groud?]

Hold down Shift and D, and then jump. You should land on the winglet. Then just enter the cockpit.

[I just wanted someone to celebrate with]

Nice! You'll find that rendezvous and docking are much easier after you've done it a few times. Good luck with your future missions!

[Explanations for the Extreme Densities of Kerbol Worlds]

All the planets are Dyson shells surrounding a core of material from a neutron star. Same with the sun.

[Lagrange Points in KSP]

AFAIK because of the physics calculations on every single part of your ship plus the nature of n-body physics you would need a supercomputer to make it playable as a game.

Actually, the physics calculations would be perfectly doable. The problem is that you can't do them in advance without them being ridiculously inaccurate.