Jokurr

I did a return voyage of a mission to the Mun in realtime once. I did the launch, put the game into IVA mode, and then did a bunch of cleaning around my apartment that I’d been neglecting for far too long. I read a book as well, periodically looking at Kerbin from the ship's window as it slowly became bigger and bigger.

As far as temperature goes it is only a function or altitude for each of the planets, though I believe this is a placeholder for the moment and a more complex model will be introduced eventually. The temperature on Kerbin at the equator and the pole is the same for a given altitude.

Technically yes, though the difference is negligible.

I do not think that would be possible, the planet would be able to form. Though if you suspend your disbelief and we somehow had the earth as we know it rotating that fast, I believe you would have a zero g environment at the equator, with gravity increasing as you move towards the poles, where the gravity would be 1g. Assuming that the atmosphere had the same composition as it does now (it probably wouldn't), you would not be able to put a baseball in orbit, due to drag. Though once the baseball’s speed was reduced to zero from drag, it would just float where it stopped (assuming you hit it along the equator).

I'm a mechanical engineer, I work in the design engineering depart of company that manufactures turbomachinery.

Interesting stuff, this is the first I've heard of it. A crazy high specific impulse and a thrust level that beats ion engines by a considerable margin. If it turns into a reality that could have profound implications.

I've definitely become more angry than I'd like to admit after botching a docking, best thing to do I've found is to stop playing for a bit, come back later.

I can't claim to be an expert when it comes to research on dolphins but my understanding was that we have quite a bit of knowledge on how they communicate, and what they are saying to each other. We can identify mating calls, agression in dolphins, hunting patterns, etc. Not only that we are able to train them to do various tasks, that would be impossible if we couldn't communicate with them in some way. We also have enough research to know that they are not nearly as smart as we are. They may be the next smartest creature on the earth after us, but it's a distant second.

Screw microchips, I’m going straight for the nanochips, put them all over me!

The super intelligent alien who created our universe in his computer program would get a divide by zero error.

I don’t have KSP on steam so I don’t know exactly how many hours I’ve put in, though it is by far the game I’ve put the most time into over the past 2 months, probably around 100-150 hours.

I played it during beta and then a bit after release. Has the game changed much since then?

He's dead and doesn't appear to be coming back anytime soon.

Most bodies in our solar system have atmospheres; it’s just that they are so thin it’s hardly worth mentioning.

While not asparagus style staging as we know it in KSP, the N1 rocket had 30 rocket engines in its first stage, and it was a tremendous difficulty to get all 30 engines working together properly. From a reliability standpoint, it is much better to reduce the number of moving parts on any type of rocket design, which the N1 failed to do when compared to the Saturn V. Any slight variations in fuel fed to each of the engines can be catastrophic. Having such a complex system to feed all 30 engines of the N1 was part of the reason why it was ultimately a failure.

I think that most people (except the most ignorant perhaps) realize that Hollywood movies are fiction and unrealistic, even if they do not fully understand why or how it really works. Hollywood makes **** up all the time, across all genres of movies. Unrealistic movies are not unique to the sci-fi genre. I'd go so far as to say that it is common knowledge that Hollywood movies should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to assessing how realistic the movie is. I very much doubt unrealistic Hollywood movies affect how much funding the space program receives. There are many reasons for the average person's rather apathetic view towards space, but unrealistic movies isn't one of them.

"Hard Sci-fi" is rare, quite simply because it doesn't sell. Mainstream audiences have very limited knowledge on physics or the realities of space travel, nor do they care. They don't have the patience to learn it either. Because of that, it's much more entertaining (and thus profitable for movie makers) to watch big explosions while sexy actors/actresses get involved in some heavy drama that makes little sense in reality. I watched the first 3 minutes or so of the movie you posted and I will have to watch it when I have time, looks quite interesting.

Here is some fun math. According to the Kerbal wiki, Kerbin has an equatorial radius of 600,000 m, and a mass of 5.29x10^22 kg. You can calculate surface gravity with g= G x M / r^2 G is a constant, 6.67x10^-11 N-m^2/kg^2 M is the mass r is the equatorial radius So with those values you get 9.81 m/s^2 as surface gravity. If you increase the radius to that of the earth, which is 6.378x10^6 m and keep the mass the same, surface gravity would be 0.087 m/s^2, less than 1/100th of before. Very unlikely that the planet would be able to retain an atmosphere. If the density is kept constant (58 485 kg/m^3), the new mass of an earth sized Kerbin would be 6.36 x10^25 kg, substantially heavier than the actual earth (5.97 x 10^24 kg). This results in a surface gravity of 104.28 m/s^2. I very much doubt you'd be able to stand up.

I think if the aliens who may find it are intelligent enough to get into space they will be intelligent enough to figure out that it is not devoid of information. They may or may not struggle with finding a way to read it, but I think they will realize there is something there.

Do the densities of the planets stay the same? Kerbin is made of a super dense material that allows it to have the same gravitational field (g at surface level = 9.8 m/s^2) as that of the earth, yet be a fraction of the size. If we scaled Kerbin up to the size of the earth and kept the density the same, it would actually be much harder to escape, if anything. In fact the gravitational field would be so strong your bones would be crushed.

Speaking of IVAs, does anyone know when they will add one for the mk2 cockpit? A little disappointing that there is still a lack of windows or flight controls.

So this mod has given me a bit of grief with the latest update. When I tried copying over the mod as it was from 0.19, it gave me an error and said the parts were missing when I tried to load any spacecrafts with it. I noticed that the mod was updated for 0.20 so I downloaded it, but the problem still exists for any old crafts that had quantum struts. I can add them to new craft without issue, but unfortunately this means two of my spacestations have disappeared. Is there any way to make it compatible with pre-existing crafts? Edit: hmm I probably posted this in the wrong place. If this could be moved to the requests & support forum that would be great.

To reiterate my previous post I accept that theories can be outright disproved. Though the multiverse is still not a theory. We were both wrong .

You put the first part of your post in quotation marks, are you quoting that from somewhere? Anyway, I think you are underestimating how much proof is needed for a hypothesis to become a theory. I don't think an explanation for the Tunguska explosion counts as a scientific theory. That was a one time event, not a repeatable experiment. From wikipedia: An explanation for the Tunguska explosion doesn't really fit in with the second point, as that was a one time event. Like I mentioned earlier theories are often incomplete, or as the wikipedia article put it "not completely correct", but that isn't to say it is incorrect or flat out wrong. Theories can expand or grow when phenomenons they did not account for are discovered, but that is different from being disproved outright. You can't test it, which is exactly why it remains a hypothesis. Only once there is some way of testing that hypothesis can it become a theory. EDIT: Another interesting wikipedia article I just stumbled upon. I will concede theories can be disproved, though this is an extremely rare event. The original point I was trying to get across still stands, the use of the word theory in this thread was not correct in a scientific context. Nor is an explanation for the Tunguska explosion a theory.

The idea of a multiverse that you refer to is not a scientific theory, it is a hypothesis. Labeling it as a scientific theory is incorrect. Scientists do not constantly work to disprove theories, because if it is a scientific theory, then it is already scientific fact and cannot be disproved. At best, it may be an incomplete picture and what scientists are seeking to do is fill in the gaps.