Duxwing

Nicely-done! To Mars! -Duxwing

@Nibb @MBobrik I think you each misunderstand the other's point: Nibb wants to have probes study the universe for us, and MBobrik wants to humanity to expand into space. These two ideas are not mutually-exclusive. -Duxwing

O_O My head hurts... What is the practical implication of these findings? -Duxwing

@Wandering Kid The fine would vary with the cost of the part, encouraging recovery without crushing small budgets. @I thought I implied that pilots could do such basic science as crew and EVA reports. The failures would not be 'random' in the sense that players could not entirely prevent them: failures could occur only on such complex craft as could bring an engineer. @All I proposed the class restrictions because I believe they would encourage multi-Kerbal craft by necessitating all three classes for large, scientific missions to distant places. Safety-minded players would bring duplicate or even triplicate Kerbals, increasing payloads and thereby challenge. -Duxwing

:_( *hugs* -Duxwing

I'm playing Custom difficulty (Hard with Quicksave and Revert) and loving it! The skills are very useful and challenges exciting, and the experience point system keeps the pace reasonable. Problems -The paint on the first VAB's floor disappears when viewed from directly above. -Between scenes sometimes appear such disturbing images as a huge, standing, orange-suited Kerbal from neck to knees. -Vague "reasonable" tolerance for orbital missions' parameters. Recommendations -Stronger class definition; e.g., only Scientists can remove data and take surface samples, random part failure rate reduced or eliminated by engineers' presence. -Environmental contamination fines for crashing parts into bodies; except Kerbol. -Life insurance payout to dead Kerbals' families; payout proportional to experience. -Duxwing

For fits and giggles, we should shoot an unmanned alcubierre ship into a brown dwarf and watch it explode. -Duxwing

*groan* This is one of those blogs: "Meh, who cares if you kill everyone at your destination? It's not like that wasn't the plan anyways. Kill everybody, deplete their natural resources, and move on. It's the circle of life the future. DUM DUM DUM!" -Duxwing

@pizzaoverhead Would you please make the hiss-bang of throttle-closure comport to thrust before cut-off? This change would improve immersion and prevent fine, rapid maneuvering from eliciting metallic clangor. -Duxwing

Oops! Wrong mod! -Duxwing

Sorry, I didn't mean to celebrate the suit--just to point it out lest others should waste time arguing whether Peru should sue or not. -Duxwing

NathKell, could you remove the hiss ending every RCS burn or make the hiss proportional to the burn's thrust? -Duxwing

PERU SUES GREENPEACE! -Duxwing

I think he meant: Were we interested in space, we would have built SSTOs. We were not interested in space. Therefore, we have not built SSTOs. Were Skylon merely half the craft it's claimed to be, it could still lift 16,500 pounds to orbit for almost nothing. The potential markets would be vast: -Launching disposable CubeSats -Retrieving reusable Cubesats -Orbital adventuring -ISS crew transfer -Satellite maintenance and disposal -Manned orbital experiments -Duxwing

I think he meant: Were we interested in space, we would have built SSTOs. We were not interested in space. Therefore, we have not built SSTOs. -Duxwing

A Grand Tour is landing on every solid body in the Kerbolar system, never refueling or ditching. The tour's glory is solving such mundane space-faring problems as delta-V requirements. -Duxwing

vexx32's point about mental disease is important: some people become conspiracy theorists due to such psychological or psychiatric problems as paranoid personality disorder. -Duxwing

I infer from our many complaints of films' insufficient intellectual stimulation that we expect it from them. So often are we evidently disappointed that I hold we should question this expectation: perhaps films are not meant to stimulate the mind. -Duxwing

Or the engines could just retract. -Duxwing

I wish we could build this thing. -Duxwing

May history remember this day! -Duxwing

My blunder aside, I have some responses: Methods and Purpose Yes, whatever we do, we should do ethically... and now I look like a totalitarian lunatic for not having mentioned this time-honored lesson. I meant this thread to inspire clever, interesting ways of achieving immortality: suppose you had nothing holding you back and just had to make everyone live forever. Ethics I believe immortality, whether achieved biologically or otherwise, morally-necessary because else everyone dies. Whoever (rightly) considers my example horrific must also believe sacrificing billions of people for 'progress' infinitely-moreso. I strongly doubt that, were humans naturally-immortal, anyone here would say that older ones should be executed lest society should become bad. Yet everyone here also knows they would be just as dead by gunshot as by Alzheimer's, cancer, or a simple heart attack--and that execution need not involve the decades of prior suffering and degradation usually-associated with aging. Therefore, a valid but absurd conclusion of opposing immortality is supporting omnicide. One might nevertheless argue that immortal life would not be worth living. Again, I disagree because death is the worst fate and cannot be undone. Furthermore, even if some fates were worse than death, and even if people suffering those fates should die quickly, who but those people should choose whether to live or die? Nevertheless, one might argue that immortality would make civilization-scale life not worth living, and I disagree yet again. Our forebears endured worse during the millennia of savagery and barbarism preceding civilization, whereby they overcame their problems: are we not their equals? Indeed, they have solved problems like those immortality would create. Needing land, they ventured the wilderness like we can the stars; needing minerals, they mined the mountains like we can the asteroids; needing food, they incited several agricultural revolutions like we can today. Engendering the creativity needed to solve these problems was my aim when creating this thread, and I hope we will have it here. -Duxwing

It was an example! >_< I thought it was obvious that I didn't think it through! -Duxwing

Those magnificent Kerbs in their flying machines! -Duxwing

Longevity research seems the most-necessary kind: its every gain saves lives, and its ultimate aim of immortality would save us all. Were your task to make man immortal and your resources all mankind's, what would you do? Ill-Conceived Example Preventable death would be eliminated by whatever means necessary. Smokers would be convinced or forced to quit, smoke dealers locked away, and the world scoured of smokable drugs. Meanwhile, fat people would be sent to fat camp, ones regaining or not losing weight would get surgery. The crackdown could lead to civil war, but the casualties would pale compared to the alternative, and the culture would eventually change. Next the organization would tackle cardiovascular disease. It would develop artificial hearts and blood vessels, manufacturing and directly giving both to surgeons implanting them. Once the hearts and vessels could be left inside patients for years, all but a small watch group would move to cancer research. The organization would try to maximize the number of lives saved yearly, always researching only one cancer at a time and focusing on reducing fatal effects until encountering diminishing returns. Once all the big killers were tamed, mop-up operations would begin. Vaccination would be mandatory and cures and vaccines pursued for infections disease. Artificial hearts and vessels would be tweaked to last longer and therefore require fewer replacements. Other organs would be grown. -Duxwing PS I am terribly sorry for my example's having seemed... brutal. I meant for it to stir discussion and not represent what I would have done.