Gargamel

Somebody has homework questions I see Tracks, I think. You need traction more than the ability to navigate rough terrain, because in this case you just move the rough terrain. The 6 wheel design allows for the rover to go over the contours/rocks in it's way, a bulldozer.... well... it just eliminates those things. Edit: Although...., on second thought, the complexity of the tracks needing to function in a vacuum in space might decide for us. Wheels have a 'single' point of contact, in the bearing. Failure to turn, won't result in loss of mobility, as we saw in Oppy and Spirit. Tracks have multiple wheels, and each link in the track might require bearings instead of pins to prevent cold welding of the metals in direct contact. Loss of movement in any single point in a track might result in loss of mobility. 3rd thought... Wait... there's been tracked rovers before right? How'd those work out?

You are absolutely correct. I had completely missed (twice!) the OP mentioning an escape system, and had thought this was build an airplane that recently crashed. The post had also caught me in a foul mood at the time. So my apologies to the OP @Maxisdumb, carry on!

Ordered pizza for breakfast at work like I do every few weeks. 2 weeks ago I broke down and filled in their (Marco’s) survey, got a free cheesy bread coupon as a thank you. Tonight I used that coupon, along with my half off pizza coupon that has been working for the last two years (Pizza50). I get another email survey tonight, and another free cheesy bread coupon, applied directly to the app. I get a fully loaded pizza, it looks like a dang chef’s salad (sorry no beets @Geonovast) and cheesy bread, now with the coupons I have to also get a drink to bring the total over the delivery minimum. AND they ran out of 20oz so they gave me a 2L, which is actually cheaper, but still. Yay cheap Pizza!

Which Top Gear? *slowly taps cudgel in palm of hand*

Is that really a good reason for a challenge?

Locked by OP request

Are you aware that KSP 1.12 is officially the last KSP-1 release? Before we get into anything, I believe we are arguing two sides of the same coin. Potato Potato. Non native English speakers may not get that idiom. When you cancel something you usually stop production prior to delivery. In some cases, cancellation can refer to the stoppage of production after initial delivery. Whatever term you choose to use, we can all agree that major development on KSP has ceased.

Good thing she wasn’t a method actor.

This. I know she’s playing all those parts. I know it. I just don’t believe that it.

That debate still rages in the back of squads to this day.

If you think Near future is complicated, wait till you actually try getting a stock Kraken Drive to work be playable. You have to take a bug that occurs in only very specific conditions, and then build a functioning, controllable, ship. It's not impossible, as it has been done, especially with since patched bugs. I think we need to define what a Kraken drive is though. A Kraken drive is an exploit of a bug in the code of KSP, which result in some amount of thrust/propulsion without the use of fuel. They are completely unrealistic (Standing on a ladder, banging a kerbals head on a roof will get you to orbit), and have been pretty actively hunted down and removed from the game. Some do remain though. I do think you are looking for something like that of the Near Future packs, which are actually based in theoretical reality, and you're going to see a lot of similar drives in stock KSP2. The NF engines are pretty simple (relative to interstellar travel in general), find the size engine(s) you need for your ship, a little math to figure out how much EC you need to power them, then power them either through solar or nuclear.

Where is this recent fascination with ground launching Orion's coming from? Maybe if the planet is doomed anyways, but let's just orbital launch these things. They're going to be generational ships, they're going to be huge. And if they're not generational ships, they're going to be high speed, reusable, interplanetary transports. They should never need to land anywhere, just dock with the orbital space station. Ground launching from a planet means you can only launch them so many times till there isn't any usable surface left.

This was required viewing for noobs in the station house when I just started as an EMT. Those two actors are still keynote speakers at the various EMS conventions. Little back story to the show, I'll get the details a little fuzzy, but the general idea is what matters. Before the time of this show, Ambulances were basically body trucks that would pick up injured/sick people and drop them off at hospitals. You were luck if you had somebody ride in the back with you. There was no treatment aside from bandages. You just had to hold on and be lucky. LA County in California had started up a pilot program where they took the smartest firefighters around (Those are hard to find :P) and gave them some medical training. These guys were doing a lot of the things we see today, Cardiac monitoring, IV drugs, etc. They had far less autonomy that medics today, as they had to call the hospital for orders for just about everything, and the doctor in the ER was the only one allowed to read an EKG, but the medicine was out in the field, and pre-hospital survival rates were sky rocketing. Then there was a car crash that involved a famous Hollywood TV producer. He was amazed at the job these guys were doing and wanted to showcase it in a new TV show. Hence, Emergency! was born. The rest of the country then got to see this amazing system LA had in place, and they started asking why their city didn't have paramedics. It's estimated that the show Emergency! advanced the rollout of pre-hospital medicine by 30-50 years in less than a decade, as normally it would take a long time for the results of their program to proliferate through the industry.

Why make a reference to Star Trek, but then negate it by changing the ship to something completely unlike Star Trek? The physics/realities of Star Trek are their own special kind, as mentioned, we can't completely change the rules of the game, then expect to play by the original rules.

Lost is one of my favorites, yes, but... To say they had a plan with the story lines is a bit of a stretch. They didn't expect more than a couple few seasons, and had real no story line planned out, Hence why the 4th season really wanders. Then that lack of planning is what got it cancelled in the 5th season (with plenty of warning, they were told they weren't getting renewed after 5 during 4). You can see the rushed wrap up in the 5th season and they try to round out the story lines. It's like JJ Star Trek vs JJ Star Wars. He planned out Star Trek to the letter, while Star Wars was just an abomination of a cash grab.

You must also remember that the forum has gone through several engine changes since we've started. Not every version had likes, and those likes didn't always carry over. So some posts might have had more likes in the past and have since lost them.

As you're not looking for discussion directly about the game, we'll move this over to the Science and Spaceflight Sub.

"The Churn" really makes the 5th? season all that much deeper and richer. There's a lot of personal interplay with the two characters so much better than can be shown in an episode or two.

I knew that was buffy even though it didn't load. But No. Firefly. Or perhaps Sherlock.

Depends on the location. Some places have burn bans, some don’t care.

Moved to Add-on discussion.

Moved to add-on Discussion.

Having reread your question, I see I misread it the first time. I answered "Which medium would be easiest to set a new record". I still like my answer to that question though. The question you asked.... It's invalid. The only real limiting factor in speed records at this point is the resistance caused by the medium. After some pondering on this question, I think we're just tossing out some fundamental laws of physics. No air resistance? Cool, but how do we steer? No resistance from the ground? Time to fall through the planet. No resistance from the water? Good luck stopping. Vehicle strain is caused by the very item you told us to ignore. The answer is either all or none. It basically boils down to how big of a rocket motor can we afford to make?

The latest I've been hearing from the sailing racing circuits is that Engineers are starting to hit 'theoretical' limits of the hydrofoils, for the same reasons you listed for the submarine. You can only push a hydrofoil through the water before you start exceeding the physical ability of it to not break apart. They have to be extremely light ( along with the rest of the boat), while still being able to handle the insane forces that are in play with high performance sailing. To answer @ARS's question though.... it's kind of a "it depends" answer. Are we looking to break the ultimate speed record of each medium? Or are we just looking to find a category of speed record that will get us a plaque to mount on the wall with the least amount of effort? If it's the first one, I think land will be your best bet. Air records are broken by investing a not insignificant percentage of a country's GDP into R&D to go just a little faster. That alone rules that out. Same with subsurface, weapon technology has already produced, supposedly, the underwater equivalent of hyper sonic cruise missiles. Going beyond this will again require serious R&D. Sailing, because of the various racing circuits out there and independent record breakers that are already pushing the leading edge, it will require a pretty major campaign to mount a serious attempt at an all time best. Sailing boats are approaching theoretical and weather limits already, and motorized boats are pretty much limited by the surface conditions, much faster than what we have already done usually results in disaster. Land though, the fastest cars in the world are still basically a group of guys in a garage, with donations for funding, and a decently organized and funded campaign has a shot at setting a record. If it's the second, then I think it's subsurface. The other three pretty much all have a "low" barrier to entry, planes just gotta fly, cars gotta roll, boats gotta float, and people want to go fast so they will. There has been a long history in these three areas for record setting. Subsurface though, has been primarily a military endeavor, and anything that isn't military really hasn't given a hoot about going fast, it's either deep or shallow with lots of windows. The military probably looked at manned fast subs, but when they realized those are the equivalent of an underwater Leroy Jenkins, which doesn't bode well for it's occupants life span, they gave up. So there's probably a very large niche of manned high speed subs that hasn't been fully explored yet. So if all you really care about is going fast and not drowning, It could be a relatively small campaign to build one that goes fast enough to set a record or two.

Right before the X Prize made space flight the billionaire fashion trend de jeur, round the world balloon flights were all the rage. IIRC, this was an issue the engineers had to plan for. More buoyancy during the day, less at night. The difference wasn’t enough to launch or not, but it was enough they had to account for it, especially later in the flight when the envelope had leaked a bit of gas and they might have problems clearing some higher peaks.