Duxwing

I'm so tough I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep. Welcome to the Salty Spitoon: how tough are you? -Duxwing

And that ease is good because the Space Age has given almost everyone beginning KSP an intuition about rocket design. Staging is already obsolete for all but the largest payloads because of the 3.75 meter parts: the only reason to stage until budgets arrive is aesthetic. -Duxwing

How about a regular-old strobing LED? On for a second, off for two. Were all cars and roads smart, we would not need road markings because the cars would ask the roads where to go. -Duxwing

What would the panels' LEDs do instead? -Duxwing

My hideously-bad, ignorant estimate indicates that the panels would waste enormous amounts of electricity: A high-power LED uses one watt. Let night, on average, last twelve hours. A high power LED therefore uses twelve watt-hours per day. Let each panel have five LEDs. Each panel therefore uses sixty watt-hours per day. Sunlight provides ~1kW/m^2 Let each panel have an area of 0.1m^2 and an efficiency of 0.3 Each panel therefore produces ~33 watt-hours per day. 60 watt-hours/day - 33 watt-hours/day = -27 watt-hours/day -Duxwing

An INES >4 rating is not a "major disaster": it is an "accident with local consequences," at worst killing a few. For a major disaster, see INES >5. Let's not: we're comparing power sources, not activities in general. Let's instead consider wind power. Ignoring the Chernobyl accident's extra cancer deaths because the estimates thereof vary from four thousand to almost a million and could make the number of deaths from any power source infinite, I found that nuclear power accidents have killed fewer people in history (136) than wind power accidents killed last year (~160). Should wind power keep killing at this rate (which actually will increase with the number of turbines) and we include the extra cancer deaths from Chernobyl, wind power will out-kill nuclear power in twenty-five years. Nuclear power plants produce almost no pollution because they are few, power themselves, and yearly each produce about a few tons of waste--replacement parts and ludicrious safety standards included. Whereas wind turbines require constant, expensive maintenance and must be built by the hundreds, further increasing cost to life, limb, and ledger. And where will they be built? Also, coal is far cheaper than wind and produces enormous pollution. A wind turbine is not only noisy but also can just fall over, crushing whatever lies beneath it and partly exploding into shrapnel; they therefore render huge swaths of land uninhabitable to all but the many people foolishly living near them. -We can say the same to you about your scientists. -See my data. -Chernobyl was wisely not built near a city. Is money more important than the workers' lives? I would gladly pay more for safe power: would you? While some people gawked at Chernobyl and its staggering death toll, wind power crushed them: literally. Wind accidents are routine and expensive, and at the current rate of wind power expansion, we will have to either consign huge swaths of land to power generation or literally live under the blades. -Duxwing

I want to have extra-Kerbolar systems once the game is scope-complete lest necessarily-uninformed early decisions about the distance etc. should impair development of such more-important features as contracts and budgets. -Duxwing

He is inclined to strangeness to a degree. -Duxwing

And we answer with the adage, "Those who eat sweets take up two seats". Only for obese people or for people in general? If the former, then aw man, poor obese people. If the latter, then I disagree because I have thrice lost considerable body fat by diet and exercise. -Duxwing

I like this plan: how shall I effect it? -Duxwing

I meant the above. Thanks. -Duxwing

Thanks. I tested it with a Kerbin->Duna->Kerbin mission with an "Optimal" trajectory and got the following results: Maneuver_|_Given Time_______________|_Recalculated Time 1_|_Recalculated Time 2_|_Mission Elapsed Time (MET) K->______|_Year 1, day 231 at 0:14:24_|_Day 456 + 231______|_Day 687___________|_Day 0 ->Du____|_Year 2, day 56 at 4:14:24___|_Day 456*2 +56_____|_Day 968___________|_Day 281 Du->____|_Year 3, day 239 at 0:50:24__|_Day 456*3 + 239____|_Day 1,607_________|_Day 920 ->K_____|_Year 4, day 79 at 5:26:24___|_Day 456*4 + 79_____|_Day 1,903_________|_Day 1216 This wait is so long and the planets so close that I wonder: can I burn harder to return sooner? -Duxwing

How long must I await the return window from each planet to Kerbin? I ask because I use TAC Life Support, which necessitates supplies, the amount whereof I therefore want to know. -Duxwing

Suburban sprawl is a known problem in Real Life v.2.0.14. Bug fix seems unlikely--especially whilst the 'all-natural' fad persists. -Duxwing

The lay public might become interested in space were it well-advertised because I have rarely encountered the anti-space sentiment posters here describe. I know that four other kids play Kerbal Space Program at my school, two likely because of my relentlessly discussing it, and I lectured some kids on Kerbal Space Program during the year's end. My only encounter with anti-space sentiment was my middle-school friends' saying they would not trade a wealthy, wonderful life on Earth for a spartan, scientific life on Mars. I hope that other schools resemble mine. -Duxwing

If the store has sold the item at some price, then it can thereafter arbitrarily lower the price and declare the item "on sale". If they store has not, then whooooo boy, are they in for a legal butt-whooping. -Duxwing

@TheSonicGalaxy Thanks. I hope KSP becomes 64-bit soon. -Duxwing

I have considered getting Near Future Electrical to solve that problem. -Duxwing

I tried using Better Atmospheres with the following mods and got the following crash report. Mods Toolbar Atmospheric Sound Enhancement ActiveTextureManagement City Lights and Clouds Chatterer CoolRockets Deadly Re-Entry Distant Object Enhancement Engineer Environmental Visual Enhancements Ferram Aerospace Research Final Frontier Firespitter Plugin Force IVA JSI KAS KerbalJointReinforcement KerbQuake Kethane Klockheed_Martin KSPRC MechJeb2 MechJeb2RPM MP_Nazari NavBallTextureExport NothkeSerCom Precise Node Procedural Fairings Procedural Parts RCS Sounds Real Chute SCANsatRPM Select Root SH_mods Ship Manifest SmokeScreen SoundtrackEditor Stock Rebalance Texture Replacer TAC Life Support Mk3 IVA Vessel View Kerbal Alarm Clock Module Manager 1.5.7 Crash Report Crash.dmp Error.log output_log What should I do? -Duxwing

What effect does Stock Rebalance have here? My interplanetary fleet uses NERVAs and therefore so much fuel as to necessitate extensive, heavy-duty ISRU (Kethane) and enormous launch vehicles. I want this ion-engine tug to reduce my propellant requirements and thereby my fleet size. I hope to replace my ISRU system with a fuel tanker carrying Xenon that will refuel my likewise-fueled Interplanetary Shuttle and two Interplanetary Tugs, one with payload and the other with supplies. Perhaps some further explanation is necessary. For the past few months, I have been developing a fleet that can explore, exploit, and return from any world. This fleet will have one kind of each craft--tug, shuttle, station, and rover--with extra tugs hauling mission-specific payloads. My current-generation plan is: 1 - Gravimetric Probe for testing dV requirements 2 - Sensory Lander 3 - Sensory Rover 4 - Kethane Scanner 5 - Station, preliminary ISRU, vehicles, and supplies 6 - Interplanetary Shuttle 7 - Finish ISRU, do science. 8 - Fleet returns. I want such a low-propellant tug as an ion-powered one could be because it would need much less fuel from Kerbin after the fleet returned. By my mental estimate, this reduction would be 6-12 fold. -Duxwing

Wow, thanks for building that craft and sharing it: you're nice. The RTGs' output need not meet the ion engines' input to reduce my battery mass; e.g., meeting it halfway halves my effective input, vastly reducing my battery requirements. Ion engines seem to be the thinking Kerbal's engine, and I enjoy this intellectual challenge.* -Duxwing *Arrogance duly noted.

Oh! The irony! >_< The Register confirms your suspicion. -Duxwing

Our having gotten more science from unmanned exploration of Mars than we have manned exploration thereof is banal because we have only tried the former. Moreover, manned and unmanned exploration provide different benefits; e.g., rovers can tirelessly explore barren wasteland for years, whereas humans can be subjects of diverse biological, psychological, and sociological experiments about spacefaring. Such missions as Mars One could provide these benefits by permanently colonizing Mars. You're just twisting words: we all know that telepresence is not presence. For example, putting a laptop in the pews to watch your best friend's wedding is not going to his wedding. And has this forum not treated you well? Come on, everyone, cuddle-puddle on Nibb! What does "on the scale of the universe" mean? Guessing, I offer this rebuttal: as a species and on the scale of the universe, we comprise all known intelligent life and therefore the only, in the words of Carl Sagan, "...way for the cosmos to know itself". -Duxwing

Manned missions can do much more than robotic ones; e.g., self-repair, advanced on-site resource use, manufacturing. They also provide spacefaring experience every civilization needs. *hugs* Well, at least I hope you don't think of me that way. And I think it's better than you think: we've come a long way since the days of stone tools and megafauna. -Duxwing

@super The sky calls to us. -Duxwing