Khrissetti

RPayne was hypothesising about a future world where land was so scarce that colonising another world is being considered. In that sort of world (approaching ecumenopolis state) we'd more likely consider my suggestions before heading for the barren worlds of Mars et al. As for cities and land use, you have to consider more than the physical buildings and tarmac, they require much more land for water, food, energy, etc. While a city centre is more efficient than a suburb, we can still improve them greatly. If you've ever been to any of the super-big cities like Beijing you'll know how we need to improve efficiency and air quality. Also, as a city centre dweller (in an apartment with a great view) which couldn't be much closer to the zero-point if I tried, I salute and approve of this anti-suburb chauvinism!

Launched a fully stock Voyager I mockup to Jool and is currently on its way out of the solar system.

We'll switch to a primarily vegetarian diet before we move to Mars for more food. Meat consumes an obscene amount of land to grow, if overcrowding gets that bad, meat will be too expensive to produce. Trust me, it isn't such a bleak prospect! Further, there is massive untapped room for food to grow on rooftops and basket crops, hopefully we'll start to take more advantage of rainwater and greywater harvesting in the next few years in our cities. Current city designs are massively unsustainable, but the potential is there. The Vertical Farm project is just one idea to help with this project: http://www.verticalfarm.com/ A change in diet, greater sustainability of our cities and the 'greening' of concrete spaces are all tactics we'll use before we start to think about sending people to Mars (And they're tactics we should really be doing now.) http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/10/diet-little-meat-more-efficient-many-vegetarian-diets

My god... it's full of Kraken!

I'm hopefully buying a telescope on Saturday, so this can be one of my first targets!

Ablative armour, that is to say, a layer of foam or other easily replaced material which is designed to absorb the energy not reflected back into space and vaporise, protecting the more delicate hull underneath. NOT the magic ablative armour of Star Trek: Voyager - Endgame

Perhaps, but at the moment we've huge swathes of Antarctic and Desert land, not to mention the oceans, which are all more congenial to human life than any other planet around the Sun. Considering even most of Siberia is largely uninhabited and that's a veritable paradise compared to some places on Earth and you can see that we've no need to go to the planets for real-estate any time soon.

an orbit to drop our periapsis as close to the sun as we dare, followed by a burst of Orion explosions, followed by a couple of gravity assists is probably the best way I can think of pulling some serious velocity....

This is a problem I've faced in my writing. My intention was to write a hard-sci-fi novel set in Earth and Lunar orbit, with the protagonist exploring a mystery amongst the satelites and stations. The problem is finding a realistic reason for people to be up there at all; almost anything we can do, 'bots can do better, 'bots can do anything better than us. My solution was a massive solar flare and startings of a Kessler syndrome which seriously damaged most space infrastructure, which requires human astro-technicians to make the repairs , whilst carefully maneuvering around the debris. Oh, and the remilitarisation of space, which requires actual people to go from structure to structure instead of sending transmissions which are liable to interception.

Cheers, Hal. I'm currently looking at this http://www.celestron.com/astronomy/celestron-astromaster-130eq.html telescope which I've seen for approximately $200 which is within my price range, plus a couple of filters/ lenses/ etc. Portability's fairly impotant to me, as I live in a high-rise in the centre of a fairly large city and my car is parked a distance away, so whenever I want to do anything apart from viewing the Moon plus the half a dozen other bright objects visible through the light pollution, I'll have to lug the equipment across town and drive out to the hills. I'll have to check out Nightwatch.

If the Earth stopped rotating, I suspect the weather would be the least of our problems... enjoy your nine hundred mile-an-hour hop to the east...

I've been interested for a while, but watching the Perseids last night has inspired me to get into astronomy a little more seriously than being able to identify Orion and the Plough. Do any other amateur astronomers have any suggestions for a relatively cheap starter telescope and some general tips for the hobby?

I crashed on the Mun but had the crew survive, so I sent up a rescue craft -- and forgot to include any batteries or solar panels, which meant that the rescue craft was stranded in orbit of the Mun. I had to send another ship up to dock with the rescue ship and supply it with power. Thanks to a wonky landing I learned to make pinpoint lunar landings, as well as performing my first Munar rendezvous.

My girlfriend, friend and I took the car out of Birmingham (UK) up to the Lickey Hills with a picnic and a flask of tea about 10pm. the view of the city lights was enough of a reason to go,but the shower kicked off about half-ten with a spectacular fireball and lasted until about midnight when the clouds put a stop to stargazing. It looked like it could clear up again but I had work in the morning. I have to get me a telescope.

Anybody else watch the spectacular meteor shower last night? I went to the top of a hill a few miles from home and watched them flash above the city, a couple of spectacular fireballs as well as about a dozen normal-sized streaks. Was anybody lucky enough to live somewhere apart from a major conurbation and thus with access to some properly dark skies?

I found that the thing which really helped me understand docking was EVA. Once you know which buttons are for up/down etc it isn't really any more difficult docking small ships together thanguiding a kerbal back to a hatch. I took this to extremes when I made a Kerbal land on Minmus, take off again and meet his ship using only his jetpack (and 99.8% of his fuel!) I've also done it on Gilly, but a gnat's fart is enough to send you into orbit on Gilly.

My longest drive was from the mountains to the sea on Eve (Stopping off at a curiously hovering boulder along the way) Never again am I going through that.

I only usually care if it's so bad that it becomes possible to ignore (Like the Enterprise falling to Earth instead of the Moon in Into Darkness. Knowing some space physics makes watching some sci-fi brilliant, take the death star run in Star Wars, how great would it have been if Vader had destroyed Luke's wingmen and just got a lock on his X-Wing when: Vader: "I have you now! Wait, what?" Luke; "It's great that we don't need to be facing our direction of travel!" Spins around, shooting back at Vader whilst flying towards the vent Vader: "The astrophysics is strong in this one..."

A science module (Crewtank filled with the scientific instruments) Communications array (loads of antennae and dishes) Docking ring Refueling module

Good constructive criticism, Johnno. Balancing the time limit is tough because what would be excessive for a Mun mission is barely adequate for an outer-planet mission. I can think of a few workarounds but I wanted to keep it as (relatively) simple as possible. I'm happy enough leaving MJ in, as it's one of the few really game-changing mods out there (apart from hyperedit, which I can't imagine anyone who wanted to use the Roulette would use, anyway. Why deliberately make a challeneg then hyperedit it complete?) and is easy enough to know whether you're using a mod or not. I like your bronze mission idea.

Well done! Now get him home safe!

Get an equatorial orbit, then land. It's like surveying possible landing sites before you put 'er down.

I just tested it and got the following (Bronze) missions: Send an orbital probe around the sun and Eve Send any ship into solar orbit Send an unmanned rover to Dres Land and return a manned craft from Moho Send a manned ship into Dres orbit put any craft into an equatorial orbit of any body Land a manned ship on Eve Send a manned rover to Eeloo Send a manned ship into Tylo orbit and return home Put a manned ship in equatorial orbit of Gilly You have 80 days to get any ship to Dres (Don't know how doable that one is) Ralathon: 0_o Good luck!

True, as I said, you'll sometimes get some absurd missions. These are kerbals, we're talking about, if the guys at KSP are the smartest their species has to offer, imagine what kind of crazy exists in the wider world! Mission Control: - Hello? This is mission control, oh hello, Mister President! Yes, of course, we're always excited to take on the dreams of kerbal-kind! Uh huh.... yes.... I'm sure we can-- wait, what? Mister President, do you know how far away Eeloo actually is? Well all I'm saying is... no Mister President, I really DON'T think we can land there for your Daughter's birthday!

Inspired by Egon's thread, I present the Kerbal Space Program Mission Roulette! If you're ever short on ideas or want the illusion of an imposed mission, this roulette is for you. Simply get three random numbers from www.random.org (or roll some d10 dice) and find out where in the solar system you'll be going today! For added challenges, simply add more special conditions. Obviously there are some absurd mission possibilities (Landing a base on the Sun.) But remember, part of running a good space agency is knowing how to turn down the crazy requests, so simply ignore these and re-roll! Happy (random) flying! If you're told to land and have an equatorial orbit, you should get into an equatorial orbit before you land. EXAMPLES (Silver): A:6(6) B:0 C:7 Send any ship to Tylo without using Nuclear engines A:4(0) B:9 C:4(2) Send a spaceplane to Duna for less than $20,000 A:3(5) B:3 C:7 Put a ship in orbit of the Mun without using nuclear engines (Platinum) A:4(9) B:0 C:6 A2(2) C:0 C:7 Visit Ike and Eve with any non-nuclear ship without a fatality