magnemoe

Probably more important than tanks, engines are far heavier, mainsail who has best twr is 25, real world is 75 to 150. Falcon heavy plans to use if for heavy loads however they does not earn as much as we do in KSP

I did not notice, however the top of magazines are nice places. Not only does I carry four monoprop tanks but the orange tanks hold 400 ton of spare parts each. I filled the stacks so they went over the girder structure of the engine, the other option is to just fill the stack half full and add things on top. I only have problems with anything side mounted but I also assume heavy load.

No but I can guess, yes using relativistic missiles is easy if you can make an starship so you can destroy planets. It however require two things, first you can make an starship, second that some of your targets does not have infrastructure in the asteroid belt who can be self supplied in an emergency, or far worse you hit an colony world to somebody who hold many star systems. Now I doubt anybody capable of making an starship don't have serious industry in the belt so they are probably aware that just hitting the planet has an high chance for retaliation.

800 year is an very long time, high chance an asteroid close to earth would be mined dry in 2-300 years. As for climate change parallels, they are an totally different case, first they will be far more expensive than stopping an asteroid, secondly its not just an question of who take the bill but also that many countries see this as an way to get free money or get industry moved to them. An total lack of priorities, the groups who focus most on climate changes are not only strongly anti nuclear but also don't want wind farms close to them. Stopping an asteroid would be very simple political compared to this. Mainly an question of who takes the bill. Another issue would be that the simplest way to change the path of an asteroid would be an improvised orion pulse rocket. Set off some nuclear bombs designed like the one planned for the orion spaceship at some distance from the asteroid. Upside is that you don't have to match speed with the asteroid, you use multiple pretty lightweight bombs who are easy to launch with existing technology and you don't have one ship who can fail. Unclear how well this will work with an pile of rocks as its pulse detonations however the trust would hit most of an hemisphere, heating the surface and create outgassing might generate most of the actual trust. This would be controversial and not done unless it was imminent danger, say 20 years to impact. The treaties would simply be suspended or agreed on don't apply in this setting.

Yes you are right, however the function is very weak, so weak it makes hard to land, luckily the rotpower on small probes are reduced so they don't rotate as crazy as they did in before. Still the weight of the 1.25 and 2.5 meter asas look swapped, 0.2 ton sound more correct for 1.25 ton parts.

why not add the winch on the side at the beginning, or rather, front/ back on airship, just get it as close to center as possible. engines will change the balance more than the one ton anchor. This shows one of mine airships, this is an sample return probe for Laythe, two grinders for balloons engines and solar panels, engine and tail rotor in the ends. Anchor is connected to rocket with seperators so I can drop it before accent to orbit with one ton less the balloons can take me higher before starting the engines. If not I might have placed it on either some center structure or the back grinder.

Look like small probes and landers got an nerfing in 0.211. The new version of the asas module is 0.5 ton, the reaction wheel who replaced the SAS is 0.3 ton and the 2.5 meter asas is 0.2 ton for some reason. The old asas was 0.07 ton, old sas was 0.1 and the 2.5 ton asas was 0.5 ton. Look like they mixed up the weight between the 2.5 and 1.25 meter parts. Problem is that without the controller an probe will not stop rotating, this make especially landings hard. I would actually like an miniature asas controller with no build in reaction wheels for small probes. And yes an larger version of the 2.5 meter part for heavy ships.

Problem with this is that how could we know they was not around anymore expect building starships and finding ruins. An single signal would likely to be one pointed in out direction. We tend to go from large radio towers to cell based communication using lots of small transmitters, make an lot of sense to use lasers between ships and satellites in space, high chance unidirectional powerful radio is an niche like emergency signaling. Now one of my fun ideas is finding some sort of alien probe in the solar system, either it was an one way probe who broke down after mission compleeted or something who was designed to refuel and continue but failed. Note something like would give access to alien high technology, you might see an pretty intense race to reach it first, could make an interesting movie.

Sounds a lot like the tsunami in Indonesia, US geologists measured it but had no channels to contact Thailand where fast communication would save lots of lives as nobody thought that US earthquake centers should need direct communications with other countries.

800 years is an serious long time, its safe to say that launch costs will go down over the next 100 years. in 400 i guess most of the asteroids close to earth would be mined. Add that the laser is the only decent non nuclear way to move asteroids we know off and it will be heavy, I would just want to sent an probe to it to explore it, if its an solid rock it would be easier to move, if it has useful stuff on it it would be commercial interesting and so on.

Yes it work however it require careful handling, anything to fast would rip the ship apart. For safety I think I opened it over 10 km up and then just set downward speed to 30m/s, problem was that it was falling nose down and just checking off keep attitude at 500 meter would disintegrate the ship, yes it was strutted as much as an mainsail and orange tanks rocket need to be. Going up was just to click 100 times to increase inflation. My in-game explanation was that Jeb was just floating because of the pressure made the atmosphere as heavy as water so no way to plat it, Jeb is to stupid to just drop it and call it planted.

Yes, by buying an unfinished game your standing is pretty much like the random kerbal with max courage and stupidity lined up to test an radically new rocket design

Note this is how I expect first contact with aliens to be. http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/177/0/0/first_contact_by_olsen1a-d54w5jo.jpg http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/177/5/4/first_contact_5_by_olsen1a-d54w8yu.jpg http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/181/1/e/firstcontacts13_by_olsen1a-d55g3li.png An robotic probe from earth run into some stone age alien in an nearby star system, they was not discovered before landing. The problem with an advanced interstellar civilization is that it would spread out. Probably pretty slowly but you would get new colonies over time and this would add up over millions of years. Note that an interstellar civilization is pretty much immune to anything who could destroy an planet bound one so it would last pretty much forever. Either they are very rare or something is stopping them, perhaps entering the matrix is more fun? Another thought the most obvious guys who create interstellar civilizations would not be welfare states they would do it for the emperor or to spread the word of Om. Not people you want to run into think Klingon or Kzin.

Yes I agree, the idea is stupid however it legal to speculate

Pretty much this, protesters are mostly an media phenomena as media like to film them. They has close to zero impact, exception is then an very large group of the population is protesting or the protesters highlight something dirty others dig into. Becoming violent does not help, Al queda is pretty much as violent as you can get and it has not helped them very much, however the response here would be far stronger.

Yes but you you only have to calculate the stars, not the atoms, an 10 degree of magnitudes less job. In any strategy game the AI enemy is moving around collecting resources, building and perhaps moving to attack you. This is real actions as if you view one moment and know speed you can intercept at an later point or see they are building an house and come back and see it completed at an calculated time. Yes in games where is cheating, you can predict and intercept the Khajiit caravans in Skyrim, if you have an quest for them you can track them on the world map, same in Oblivion and Fallout 3. However they will not run into enemies unless in the same game cell as you, note that this is not rendering graphic but actions with consequences and you will find the bodies, rendering of graphic only happens then they are visible. This has some fun effects if you are aware of it, even exploits, lasts was to tell an follower to pick up an expensive weapon on ground and move trough an load door to an indoor cell before the follower reached it. The follower grabs the weapon and follows you, however the weapon also lay on the ground where you dropped it. The simplified out of cell AI handling did not remove the old copy. You might see Schrödinger's Cat as some of the same effect, purpose of all this is naturally to hack your self into root access on the matrix.

note that with no gimbals and no reaction wheels or control surfaces your rocket is dumb like an firework rocket, an small offset will grow large over time, this is common in real world. An longer rocket would be more stable, rotating it would also help, this is done on unguided artillery rockets like the ones launched from Gaza towards Israel, note they miss towns from 20 km away. Anything more complex like the V2, scud missile uses some control system to keep on track, they are not smart missiles but uses something like asas to keep direction straight.

Makes some sense that if you kill a lots of kerbals fast you lose the game. The kerbal government accept some losses and rover accidents are natural events, however huge losses like losing capital ships are very unpopular.

Yes and the best mission was the guy who used it to get off Eve, weight of rocket on pad was 5 ton or something.

Note some mods have more advanced engines, multiple fusion engines, an bussard ramjet and an orion pulse engine.

About living age I agree, they will probably live pretty much forever, you also has the option of suspended animation, however if you don't age you can just as well sleep. However an robotic probe makes more sense as you don't care about returning it or even if the trip is high risk unless the robot is sentinel who is also an high probability still an benefit in that you don't need an life support. About size and speed, not to small, smallest posible sentinel entry would probably be an robot using an nanotech brain in 3d, current chips are nanoscale but only in 2d. You still have heat issues so it would not be bacteria sized, more like an insect, more probably it would control the ship. For sentinel species I you can get to small even with an far more efficient brain I think it still would has to have some size, think small mammal. Speed, they will operate around as fast as us or faster, to slow and they would never get any technology, more probably some faster predators would eat them first. Randomness indicate they have been around a long time, chances they had had star travel for millions of years is higher than 100 years. Study and not disturb makes a lot of sense, first we are in the 10.000 year time period between stone age and star travel other would likely be either stone age or have technology to make their own starship. If they contact us it will change history, just seeing who technology work and who don't would have impact, it might become messy and this interfere with the study program. You don't want the animals to see you if you make an nature program. One reason to contact might be to establish an base, decent chance they use pretty similar biochemistry. So contact, give some technology for us setting up the base as payment. Yes they could do it themselves but it would require work, now they only has to send the high tech parts and integrate. Other reason might be to study earth ecosystem, we don't know how common complex ecosystems are, hard to do without contact and again you can let the locals do the hard work. Now the reminding question is why has not anybody contacted us, might be that we are in the sphere of influence of somebody who want to study. Other option is that alien civilizations are rare. Say more than 100 lightyear apart, with slower than light they might have done an study here 15000 years ago and plan on another in 5000 years and don't expect much to have changed

This is my main issue with steam, no way to run multiple version of an game and the do not update setting is broken. no for most games this is not an huge issue, even games with lots of mods like skyrim as the update rarely breaks stuff, for skyrim it was the script extender and it was updated in a day or two. However for ksp this is critical, new updates breaks saves and mods as the game is under development, the updates changes fundamental stuff not just, fix bug and perhaps add some features.

Just done one launch with the new system, however it look like it works nice, yes I used novapunch and one of their large reaction wheels but one 5 meter module on an 1000 ton rocket is not bad, however I have used torque mod parts since 0.18 and find them pretty much required.

Yes they does not like heavy load on top of them, on an orion you have the option to put them on top of the magazines and don't put very heavy stuff on top of them. Some modded versions are probably better, try kw or novapunch 3.5 meters.

Just tested this in 0.21, first rocket was an 5 meter with four 3.5 meters boosters, lifted 100 ton to LKO with no wobble so I'm very happy. Needed very few struts to, normally I would need clost to 100 for an so heavy load.