Stargate525

...uh, why not transfer it with a nerva and a ISRU? Use the asteroid to propel itself?

You're adorable. The idea that there is a surplus of supply does not necessarily mean that the cost won't be astronomical. I could simply point you to the diamond cartels, who price FAR higher than any reasonable supply/demand curve would indicate. And if you suddenly open an abundance of metals that are otherwise expensive or difficult to acquire, you allow a whole plethora of experimentation in materials science. And if not rare-earths, then helium. that is legitimately running low, to the point where scientists are starting to worry about us using it for party balloons.

There's two big ones that I can think of. Waste Processing: If we're able to ship the rather nasty byproducts that arise from some production processes offworld, that's a very lucrative boost to our economy. Many things are done in a less efficient manner because the most efficient one is horribly polluting. Without having to worry about killing the local wildlife or contaminating the water supply, I could see quite a bit of industry being done offworld. Rare Earth Mining: Grab an asteroid, capture it, break it into chunks, send it down, recover and smelt it down. There are asteroids estimated to be worth billions in rare earths.

I think you're confusing 'efficient' with 'easy.' This isn't efficient in any form of the word, but yes, it is theoretically easier if you want to spend the extra 400-800dV. Almost as easy is turning to 45 degrees at 2k height and just holding that.

Hey now, they're both sandbox/exploration games... So maybe between a Lamborghini Aventador and a Lamborghini Nitro? I'm in the 'why not both' camp. I play em both. Like em both.

Except... I think you're the only one saying that.

Which usually comes down to the first tax deadline, at which point the government will very insistently and (usually forcefully) insist that you are, in fact, a subordinate of the nation.

Actually... No. We whitewash a TON of the popular opinion of the US before and during wars. In 1936 it was entirely possible that the US could have thrown in with Germany. They, like us, were lagging behind on colonial claims abroad, and we weren't terribly happy with how we had to bail France and the UK before. A large majority of the population of the United States was (and mostly still is) Germanic European. There were a number of powerful and influential .... sympathizers (remember, this is before anyone knew anything about the death camps). Contrary to popular belief, we did not declare war on Germany. They declared war on us after their 'ally' attacked without provocation. Had they instead broke treaty, declared on Japan 'in support of our Germanic bretheren' or some such, we would probably have had a much, much different war.

Nah, nah, you launch it pointing DOWNWARDS. Use the dish's back as the top of your fairing.

Mainly? Because it's bloody inefficient. General radio broadcasts of the type that bleed into space are basically shouting loud enough to be heard by your receiver. If they die off, they obviously aren't going to keep broadcasting either. Which makes their contact transmissions an expanding shell, with a thickness of however long they've broadcast, expanding at the speed of light. If you're 'inside' the shell, you won't hear them either. It doesn't help us at all if the advanced aliens of Alpha Centauri were spamming radio across the galaxy; if they stopped more than five or six years ago, their transmissions have already passed us, and we have no way of knowing whether they did or no.

That's really not surprising whatsoever. It just means that there's no alien societies who have, within the last fifty years, done all of the following: -Broadcast a radio signal -With sufficient power to reach earth -With enough clear space from interference from stellar phenomena -To hit a receiver -Which was listening at that specific frequency -And was actually identified as a non-terrestrial signal The universe is actually fairly noisy in the radio bands. Picking out an alien's bleeding signals (like our old TV and radio programmes) rapidly becomes a case of sifting through noise akin to reading the waves of a man slapping the water from the other side of the ocean. And if we're talking about a general broadcast from another GALAXY... Well, the only energy event we've seen from other galaxies is gamma ray bursts, and those would annihilate life within several dozen lightyears of the event. It would be like using nukes for smokesignals. If it's a narrowband, like laser, the odds of it hitting our little planet is astronomical. I don't remember the book, but there was a sci-fi novel I read once with a civilization which sent communications by placing occluding satellites at specific periods around their sun. Sort of a massive interstellar heliographic billboard.

you may also have to do some aerobraking if you're going to dive into the planet from high orbit.

Cheers! ^^

I don't see anything un-steampunk-ish about using good old fashioned plantlife for your carbon cycling needs. I imagine a big brass n' glass greenhouse (sorry, conservatory) strapped to the back of the rocket would fit right in.

I wish the devs would stop putting their foot in their mouths, being caught in lies/dishonesty, and otherwise get better at PR or stop trying it. I'd also with for a community which didn't focus on everyone being 'nice.'

It indicates whether there's dropdown items for 'back to space center' or 'recover'. Its color depends on what's hidden up there.

Except the biggest thing is that 'it hasn't cleared its orbit.' According to certain definitions, EARTH hasn't cleared its orbit.

Or you would have to land in daylight and watch your shadow.

Well at least my debris is naturally tidy...

I just built my first WORKING shuttle! And the main fuel tank is recoverable! WOO!

Most recently, I managed a mun return with less than two units of fuel left. I usually want a quarter tank of wiggle-room, so that was... worrying. My favorite though has got to be my abort of an under-fueled munar ascent vehicle. I ran out of fuel, and so my kerbals bailed from the doomed ship and made orbit using their EVA packs for later pickup. Juggling three kerbals and eyeballing an ascent trajectory was... interesting, but seeing them all orbiting the mun safely made me cheer.

Funny story; an Australian managed to get a patent on THE WHEEL. It was only after he started suing everybody that they reformed the system.

A single PV on the roof will probably be just enough to keep your fridge going. Maybe. You want to run a sump pump to keep your basement dry? Power tools? floodlights? It adds up quickly.

If we all just vanish? (By this I mean that there's no deliberate destruction of our infrastructure) For power, we'll last as long as the main supplier in your area stays online. It's most likely coal, and will most likely have a few days of fuel at most. After that, the demand placed on the grid being met by the paltry supply of wind and solar will probably bork the system completely. Water and sewer is most gravity-fed, so you'll have that for a good long while, and sewer even longer. Internet and television depends on power. Radio will go longer, as many of them have generators in case of emergency.

I know there is voodoo that you can do with phantom forces and part clipping... To rule that up, throw a probe core up there in hyperedit and see what happens to it.