K^2

I don't think that's likely, but Zynga making a mobile game based on KSP IP? I wouldn't be surprised. I just wonder if it will be anything worthwhile or just standard rubbish. "Looks like you ran out of delta-V for the day. Would you like to purchase more delta-V for just 25 Mun Rocks?"

You know? Maybe? It's a little early, I think, but also with no physical E3 this year, they might decide to release info a little earlier at a conference people will care about. So yeah, maybe KSP2 at PAX. I would be pumped, since I have my passes already. On the other hand, digital E3 is still taking place, and T2 will probably have a showcase, just like the last year, and that would be my main bet. I can pretty much guarantee that KSP2 will be featured, and I think T2/Intercept should be confident in release date at least to a month by that point. So I'd expect something like "Coming in November" at E3, with maybe the exact date announced a little later, plus a new trailer or several.

I think Intercept is just getting back into the swing of things after the winter break. Usually, by the last year of work, teams are pretty tired, and it's not unusual for an extra long break at this point. The entire studio could've been out since ~20th and only got back to work full force this week, with some people padding that with even more vacation time on either end. They might simply have nothing new to share yet. Give them another week or two, and we'll probably see another show-and-tell or a dev blog. That said, yeah, there will probably be a quiet period before they open up the gates for a hype campaign, and yeah, I suppose that quiet period could have already started, but I would expect that to happen some time in the spring, with media campaign in the summer and game releasing late fall to early winter. I'd like to be surprised with an earlier release as much as everyone else, but I doubt it. So you're right about the pattern, but I don't think that's it yet.

An NTR will already run as close to the melting point as possible for both efficiency and thrust, so I don't think adjusting reactor temperature buys you anything. Reactor fuel efficiency really isn't a factor, after all, and so long as you can dump the heat, thermal losses are kind of irrelevant. The efficiency you're after is always the propellant efficiency, so you might as well always run as hot as possible. Likewise, chamber pressure is as high as you can make it given temperatures involved and materials available. Going to lower pressure never helps you with thrust or efficiency. Therefore, you really have just two things you control, the fuel flow and nozzle diameter. And really, it's one thing, because at a given pressure and temperature, for given nozzle diameter, a certain amount of propellant exits through said nozzle and has to be replenished by the pumps pushing propeller out of the tanks, through the heat exchanger, and out the nozzle. For any high thrust application, the limiting factor on NTR will always be heat exchange. You can try to open up the nozzle, force more propellant through exchanger to maintain pressure, and get a little bit more thrust with colder exhaust, but you quickly hit diminishing returns. If the channels in your exchanger are too wide, heat only gets transferred to propellant that flows close to surfaces, and you get nothing. If you make channels small, you increase drag. If you try to force more propellant through narrow channels faster, drag goes up. There's really only so much propellant you can push through at high speed without increasing size of heat exchanger, which is extra weight, which is what we're trying to counter with thrust in the first place. So you really have to change tactics. You have to heat slow-moving propellant and then mix it with cold propellant in the chamber to reach some sort of intermediate temperature. You effectively have a two stage rocket, where first stage is an NTR, and second works kind of like an afterburner. Which is viable, but now we're talking about dumping tons of propellant. So a question might be, if you're pushing through atmosphere, why not let air in from outside via ram scoop? And if you do that, instead of heating your propellant, which is presumably hydrogen, why not just ignite it with air mixture instead? For a conventional chemical rocket, it's usually not worth the complexity of mixing in airbreathing since you're carrying oxidizer anyways, though, of course, there are prototypes even for that. But with NTR, if you're not bothering with an oxidizer tank and you're looking to help yourself out with early ascent, a ramejet seems like a far better choice.

H is the scale height, which for Kerbin used to be exactly 5km until the aerodynamics overhaul. Likewise, terminal velocity at sea level was pretty much fixed at just over 100m/s unless you used a very large quantity of certain parts that would alter drag. With new aerodynamics, scale height varies with temperature, averaging about 5.6km, and terminal velocity will depend on your rocket's construction. But this can still be used for a ball park estimate. Edit: As for the origin, I've derived this equation by integrating vertical ascent at optimal velocity in constant gravity and exponentially thinning atmosphere. That model was surprisingly accurate for the way aerodynamics in the game used to work and is good enough for a ballpark guess with more realistic atmosphere.

Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine with WAY less GPU than that. I'm only mentioning 6700XT because it guarantees better-than-parity with PS5. But CPU's still going to be the hard part, and graphics way, way more tunable. There's just way too many variables in play to have a useful guess on min-spec for GPU at this point, hence me giving a very, very broad range. GPU is also one of these requirements where even if Intercept does end up going with all the bells and whistles for graphics even at lowest settings, a lot of these things could be disabled with mods, meaning that it might be possible to play KSP2 with graphics that's way under the min spec. Again, purely speculation at this point, but at least that's on the table. CPU, though? I'm pretty sure that will be a solid wall for people under min spec, whatever that will end up being.

It is an identical picture once you correct for Coriolis forces.

I don't know if there are other factors, but they have an enormous range. You would need a fighter, drone, or a cruise missile to cover the distance, which, given the altitude, would make them easy targets for counter-fire. That's my best guess.

Which is well documented to be compensated for by motor system, resulting in effectively identical motion after a surprisingly brief acclimatization period. Which is once again, why I'm insisting that a person jogging at effective 0.2G inside a 5m circle on Skylab means it's a good mode of locomotion on a flat surface at the same 0.2G. Outside of things that are involuntarily compensated for by human body, the two experiences are identical. It's a very common thing for people to keep trying to come up with arrangement of magnets that results in perpetual motion, which all comes from the fact that they don't understand the fundamental theorems of classical field theory that categorically prevent any such configuration from working. Even conservation laws aside, you don't need to figure out what all the forces are going to be, and solve complicated equations to discover that they cancel out for every single case when you can solve the general problem to show that no work is being done, and therefore, no net forces are possible in the first place. Same concept. If I can do a change of coordinate system and show that the effective shape of the surface is identical from perspective of the runner, I don't need to puzzle on specific movement of the feet and how they impact the ground. It can't be different, because there is a trivial transformation from one coordinate system to another, preserving equations of motion. If it works for a runner in a circular track on a space station, it will work for flat surface with same effective gravity at the surface. It doesn't matter if the surface curves towards me because I'm moving along a surface that's actually curved, or if I'm moving in time through space-time that's actually curved. It's an identical picture.

If your rotational rate matches your forward velocity, as it does on the video, the impact is always normal to the surface, as you can clearly see on the video. Seriously, the only difference is Coriolis forces on your limbs that you have to correct for. Otherwise, these are mathematically equivalent systems. Like, the equations of motion are identical in their respective frames. Please, stop trying to come up with differences. This is like trying to invent perpetual motion with magnets. Just because it looks strange, doesn't mean it's magical. The equations are right there.

If you briskly walk at 3.5mph, the radius of curvature of Earth's surface is about 2.5m from perspective of an inertial frame of reference. This is about what it was for the track on Skylab. The pace of astronaut in that Skylab demo is closer to 5mph, or a light jog, which on Earth would give you radius of curvature of a little over 5m, so double that or Skylab track. It's all in the ballpark, though, and certainly comparable to stride length in both cases.

What do detonation engines have to do with any of what has been discussed? The topic was conventional jet engines, unless I'm missing something.

How exactly? From perspective of the runner, both are accelerating frames of reference. When you're running on the flat surface of the planet, planet's surface might as well just be curving up towards you. There's literally no difference unless you change pace.

There has been research into extended stay in increased gravity. Soviets did a centrifuge experiment with ~2G. There wasn't a lot of space to run around, but what footage I've seen doesn't indicate like they'd be doing a lot of running even if there was room. For lower gravities, though, I'm aware of precisely two data points. Lunar missions and this wonderful bit from Skylab. (Timestamped, but it's a short clip.) If this is in real time, I'm timing a full circle to be about 7s. And the inner diameter of this track is about 5m, which would mean it's about a fifth of Earth's gravity. That does actually tell us things, as that's not a lot higher than what you'd experience on the Moon, and yet running seems fairly effective, even if it looks like slow motion. So hopping on the moon might have been due to reduced mobility of the suits, and not just the problem of low gravity. That said, I'm sure there's a lower limit in gravity where running just doesn't work anymore. So with that in mind, I think there are only four viable options. Hopping in very low gravity, running in something closer to Earth's, walking in higher gravity, and if you can't walk, maybe you can crawl. That's not a lot, but with two legs, permutations are limited.

Distinction between multiple combustion chambers and single chamber with multiple combustion zones can get rather academic for jet engines. Cannular designs are pretty common. They have multiple combustion areas, but a shared cooling channel. Do you call that a single combustion chamber or multiple? Does it matter?

PS5's CPU is effectively a slightly slower Ryzen 7 3700X, at least, when running on all cores. So that's as high as min-spec can go, because otherwise gen 9 consoles aren't going to make the cut. Bellow that, it's hard to say. Incentive to spend time optimizing drops off sharply once the consoles can run the game, but even if Intercept stops optimization right there completely and call it good enough, there can still be some wiggle room. Like, if the game is still severely main-thread-bound, which KSP certainly was, then maybe 8 cores won't make much difference against 6 cores, and then Ryzen 5 3600 will do just fine, and that's a huge difference. So even going with this pessimistic view, it's hard to say. But 3700X is a good marker for, "At least, min spec won't be higher than this." If you have that or something beefier, you're good for sure. If not, we'll have to wait and see. Rendering-wise things are way more complex. It's way easier to cut minimum requirements by degrading graphical fidelity without cutting into playability of the game. But I kind of think you'll want 4GB of VRAM, which does narrow things down to something reasonably recent. RX 470 might be a fine guess based purely on that. The performance is closer to a PS4 Pro, but there are games running essentially the same graphics features on that hardware at an ok quality and framerate. But depending on what Intercept does or does not let you disable, this can go quite a bit lower or higher. Like, if you drop atmospherics and procedural vegetation and tune down texture and shadow resolution, 2GB will probably do just fine, and then you can get away with an older or lower tier card. But if Intercept decides that you really, really need these fluffy clouds and dense forests, maybe RX 470 won't cut it performance-wise, and you'll have to have something better. Worst part, given that CPU pressure will be pretty high, comparatively, at least, I don't even know if that's an incentive to be more flexible on graphics requirements or less? Given how many people won't be able to play without expensive upgrade because of an old CPU already, do you try to scrape as much as you can, and drop min spec on graphics dirt low? Or do you go, "Well, people who have that kind of CPU will have decent graphics as well," and crank it up? I don't know. That's for somebody in marketing to figure out, and that will play a lot into min spec on graphics. And for sake of completeness, PS5's GPU is RDNA2 with 36 CUs. That falls somewhere between RX 6600XT and 6700XT. So the latter of the two basically guarantees that you'll be able to run same fidelity as PS5 or better. If for some reason you do want to just build a PS5-spec PC to ensure you have at least a base-line experience, that would be Ryzen 7 3700X CPU with RX 6700XT graphics and 16GB of RAM. Not that I would recommend doing this actual build, because that's a very unbalanced one, but it's a data point to get bearings from.

Non-starter for me personally. I live in one of the few areas where letting the cat out, I wouldn't be worried for the birds, but the other way around. Don't know which would get the cat first, the ravens or the eagles. But then we also don't get snow, as mentioned previously, so moot point. But yeah, if cats go back and forward, you have a point. I'm assuming cats OP presented are kept outside, at least, during the day. Hence my suggestion of creating a warm spot for them somewhere. Though, in retrospect, heated blanket is probably not it.

People with a lot of snowfall have complained about buildup. You can tell when something has been designed by Californians when we completely forget that snow happens. I assume, under mild snowfall the warmth generated by the dish is enough to melt it, but there are plenty of places where that's not going to be enough, and you have to be able to sweep the thing. That's probably part of the reason why it's on the ground and not on the roof somewhere. The problem with tilt is that the system decides on its own where to point the dish and that can change as the constellation shifts. So it really needs to work across a range of orientations, including with relatively flat top. I suppose, making the top into a round dome instead would have been better, but somebody probably decided that this is more compact. Probably not the best call, as round top would have helped with a lot of problems here. Also, I can't help but notice that you focus on being mean to the cats so they leave, instead of being nice to cats somewhere else to lure them away. I won't lie, that upsets me just a little bit.

You might have to sacrifice a heated blanket to create a more attractive perching spot in the vicinity if you want your internet back.

Both KSP1 and KSP2 run on the same engine, both utilizing PhysX and GameObjects. And these things have not improved much in recent versions of Unity in terms of how they utilize your system's resources. They are still going to fully stall with your CPU showing 10% utilization, because the main thread is at 100% and all the other cores got nothing to do. There are ways to work around that, but that requires significant time investment. And no, ~10 engineers is not a AAA team. I've worked for mid-size studios with over 40, and we weren't making AAA level stuff there. I've managed engineering team of similar size to the entire engineering of Intercept, but at a AAA studio, we were just one tiny team of many. Intercept has more experienced people that what Squad had when they started out, sure, but it's still an indy-size studio still working on growing to a mid-size. [snip] I have experience making games in Unity. I have shipped titles across multiple platforms on a proprietary game engine running PhysX, same physics setup as Unity. I have also shipped a title running completely in-house engine with fully custom physics. My previous job was Engine Lead at a AAA studio, and my current title is Director, though the team I currently manage is actually smaller. I have many years of experience with exactly this type of work ranging from being a grunt in the field doing the necessary optimization work to managing teams and deciding how the engineer time should be allocated to meet goals. I also have direct experience with software, tools, and platforms involved. And based on this experience, I doubt that Intercept would want to allocate significant resources to improve performance beyond what is necessary to get the game running well on a PS5. Stuff happens, and studio or publisher management could always push for a lower min spec, but if I was leading tech development on KSP2, based on features we expect, the timeline given, and the engineers I see available to the project, I would strongly advise against it, and recommend that engineers spend the time polishing the game with focus on stability and multiplayer instead. [snip]

You have a very odd notion about how software development happens and how software works that are both very far removed from reality. I have actually worked on a title where we had a contract with Intel for additional CPU-heavy features. They have requested these to be optional and helped us optimize the game to make sure we aren't just heating air to no effect. The idea that Sony's somehow conspiring with Intel to sabotage performance is absolutely laughable. Doubly so, seeing how Playstation consoles have been running on AMD chips for over eight years now and have ran on Intel chips never. Other than the fact that they haven't bothered to update logos on the site, what makes you think this hasn't changed? We have not heard anyone directly state that these platforms are getting KSP2 since Intercept has taken over the project, and by this point, I very highly doubt it. Given how much KSP has struggled on gen 8 consoles, and that while KSP2 is going to be much better optimized, it's also far more feature-rich, supports continuous collisions, warp with physics, and multiplayer, all with a team of about ten engineers having to deliver all of that. The odds that KSP2 will be able to run on PS4 are not good. And I can't imagine Intercept wasting resources to try and make it happen when by the time KSP2 releases, we will be two years into gen 9. I have high confidence that PS4 and XB1 support has been dropped over a year ago, and we just haven't had anybody bother to do a press release or update the website. This will likely come whenever there is an update on the release date or a renewed marketing push. It's not unusual for publishers to just "forget" to give the fan base bad news until they can cover it up with new hype.

This is all still based on common origin of the life forms. I don't think it's a risk outside of Sol. With life that emerged independently from ours, viruses aren't a concern. Even if the transcription chemistry our life uses happens to be common, the number of possible permutations of various components is mind boggling, and for the most part, arbitrary. Parasites and bacterial/fungal infections might be a concern, but not viruses.

Not a whole lot. Volcanos don't generate new energy, just speed up release of thermal energy already on its way out, and that's a limited supply. For earth, geothermal energy is believed to be roughly equally split between radioactive decay and primordial formation energy. So if you were to significantly increase the rate of energy release somehow, this would rapidly cool the core, and that would be kind of bad. If Laythe had sufficient tidal heating to compensate for reduced thermal flux from the primary, then yes, I would expect it to come with a lot of volcanic activity getting that energy to the surface, but that's a consequence of the tidal effects, and not volcanos themselves directly contributing.

Yeah, but it's something that evolves over time, not something that a virus will be able to turn on and off instantly. That's why the most deadly viruses are typically the ones that cross species. We aren't their target host, so they never evolved to keep us alive and merely sneezing. Of course, there are also viruses and parasites where killing the host is part of spread strategy. Rabies, zombie fungus, various parasites in fish... Point is, if we were to get an alien virus that could successfully infect human host directly, which is honestly in sci-fi territory already, in my opinion, I can't think of any reason why it would be specifically deadly or not deadly. At that point, it's pretty much up to random interactions with completely new environment to that virus, some of which human body will correct for, and others it will not. This can be anything ranging from asymptomatic to the worst pandemic ever. But we are much more likely to get a virus like that from another species, one whose immune system is similar enough to ours. Like bats, or something. Case in point.

That would probably be very difficult to mod in, unfortunately.