WestAir

A lot of star systems have more than one, some as many as three stars. Planets passing through these systems might be handed off between stars until a capture is completed. Additionally, some star systems may have large Jupiter-esque planets that can loop a passing planet back in for a second or third pass of the star, lowering its speed below escape velocities. Finally, most (all?) planets are born from the protoplanetary disk. Planets that escape probably rarely get captured by a new system.

Unlike in the past, there's really no reason to transport goods or people any faster than a day. We have e-mail, text, video calls, et al to send information from London to New York in under 1/6th of a second. What reason is there to invent vactrains or super high speed transport, when it takes more energy to move these vehicles faster than the average train? Is the gain in time worth the loss in fuel? In todays world, many business leaders would say no. One of the calculations pilots use to determine their "fuel efficiency" for the flight is literally "what do we gain by going faster?" If there are passengers who will likely miss their connection, they might be told to go faster. If there is senior crew onboard who get paid way too much per hour, they might go faster. Otherwise, there's really no point in burning the fuel. I imagine that business model will carry over into any future transportation technologies.

My Lunar Base: My Legacy Space Station. The wobble consumed and destroy it, though.

21,000 knot windspeeds might ruin the SR-71, yeah.

Is it possible for Kerbin to pass by close enough that the atmospheres momentarily merge at the point of closest distance? Close enough that a vehicle like the SR-71 could fly from one planet to the other? [ignoring the fact that the fly by might occur in under 10 minutes]

A scientists favorite statement, and for good reason.

In horizontal flight is it smart to have an engine right in front of another engine like that?

How big would a supermassive black hole have to be to stop the Galaxy clusters in our visible Universe from escaping our visible Universe due to the metric expansion of space? In other words, how much [new] mass would I need to shove into a singularity to stop the visible universe from growing? Is it impossible due to the fact that gravity only propagates at C?

True, but that doesn't make it impossible. I imagine if we both Googled the number of impractical endeavors we've overtaken since 3100BC, we'd have a list long enough to read all night. [i know you were just joking, but at this point I'm just messing with you. ]

I'm not sure it's impossible to create a settlement on the moon.

Sometimes humanity doesn't consider purpose or efficiency when partaking in an endeavor. Now that I think about it, that's probably the cause of a lot of our issues.

Wow. You people are just beacons of semantics, aren't you? Atom bomb is a term widely used in the mid 20th Century before the invention of thermonuclear weapons. I live in Las Vegas, NV, where a lot of "atom bombs" were tested nearby. It's a term that survived, and its usage is completely unrelated to my point at all. Not only did you ignore my tongue-in-cheek question, you insulted my intelligence to parade your own by suggesting a term that does exist doesn't. I found that to be unnecessarily disrespectful.

What about an atom bomb?

The reason to live on the moon is the reason itself. Ask yourself why did man move to the isle of Manhattan hundreds of years ago? London, Rome and Paris were doing just fine. Why would anyone make a city in Las Vegas, Nevada where there was nothing but a dry desert with a 115*F summer and no land suitable for farming or herding? Because we can. Because someone wanted to. You can't tell me no body wants to take the challenge of moving to the moon. The people that want to exist. And that's all the reason we need.

I'm not quite sure biology cares about semantics.

Seret, your reply was most definitely the most interesting, informative, and well made point I've read today. +1 to you. You answered every question I had before I asked it and even elaborated the why's. Thanks.

Computers can experience time a lot slower than we can. If it's possible for computers to adjust the flight paths of "smart bullets", or its possible to adjust the angles of multiple barrels in a timeframe expressed in milliseconds, then it's probably possible to shoot an incoming bullet with another bullet. That's all that's needed to make incoming fire a null threat. If your M-16 can't hit me because I've got a turret next to me that shoots down all of your bullets, what threat do you pose to me?

One day iron domes will become effective enough to take out nearly all types of incoming artillery, from personal rounds to artillery to ballistic missiles. To what level it goes is uncertain. If infantry can deploy a robot capable of forming a ballistics shield around said infantry, protecting them from sniper fire, missiles, and rpg's with a miniature iron dome, well that would be a very valuable asset to any military. Ammunition would become all the more crucial, however, because it would be exclusively relied on for defense and attack.

I absolutely did not mean battle Mecha by mechanized infantry. I meant robots equipped with lethal weaponry capable of combating frontline soldiers. A simple 2 foot tall gun on tracks with an active denial system would suffice.

Inside the wormholes, obviously.

Stupid [black Hole Related] question for the physicists in the thread: If a stellar object that is massive enough to fall into its own schwarzschild radius, but doesn't collapse into a singularity because it is spinning fast enough for centripetal force to counteract the force of gravity, finally slows down enough to begin collapsing into a black hole, can you stop the collapse by spinning the stellar object faster again? If so, is it possible to undue a collapse by introducing centripetal force?

I'm not certain we'll reach a point where the ENTIRE military is autonomous, mechanized, or droned. The next step in infantry is sophisticated mechanized infantry under the command of one or two human soldiers, I'd imagine, in your standard fire team. It's just a guess, but I'm under the impression that the Generals, sub-committee legislators, and veterans aren't in a rush to trust our protection to microsoft and intel just yet.

By the time such technology exists, wars will be fought by mechanized infantry, drone fighters, and automated strategy algorithms.

The reason they have you test in the air instead of on the ground is because they can test it on the ground themselves. They need your rockets to do the in flight tests.

Looked real to me.