vger

Alternatively, something more realistic would be the option to use the EMU while walking. You could apply a very slight, but constant downward thrust to keep you planted on the ground. Really not worth the trouble though. I just wish turning on EVA wasn't so clunky, and you could 'drive' a kerbal the same way you do a vessel in docking mode, with the ability to switch between rotating and vectoring.

And here I am sitting in my tin can, far above the Mun. The snack reserves are through, and there's nothing I can do.

I'm an oldschool gamer, so I'm partial to the early days of Thrustmaster, which was about as close as you could get to having a real military flight-stick without breaking the bank. These days if you want that, CH is the way to go. http://www.chproducts.com/Consumer-Products-v13-p-124.html#5 Or if you're filthy rich, get the Thrustmaster Warthog. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Guillemot-Thrustmaster-Hotas-Warthog-Flight-Stick/15268503 Not that military is automatically good, but they feel more natural than a lot of the more 'fancy' sticks out there.

Given the number of calculations that go into planning a 'normal' trip to another planet, if something like that were to happen, it's either a joint effort between the U.S. and the U.K. (where someone failed to convert English to Metric) or you're Han Solo. I think accidentally hitting a massive body is the least of our concerns with getting a functional warp ship. Though that makes me wonder... given what would be necessary for a successful warp ship test, would we even bother trying to drop out of warp near a planet? I think simply being X-distance from Earth would be sufficient, regardless of whether or not any significant objects were nearby. Worry about trying to rendezvous with a planet after we're sure it works the way it should.

Sheesh, my 'jump rover' broke Minmus orbit by accident (took less than 2 seconds) and I had to do a 180 roll and fire thrusters again to get down. Gilly oughta be fun...

Orbital construction isn't unrealistic. I have assembled ships in KSP by sending them up one part at a time. But having a drydock in orbit, with no regard to how the materials/parts are getting there, IS unrealistic.

Thank you very much for that link, Mazon. That will keep me busy for a while. Well, won't that make life interesting if humanity actually achieves FTL travel. The astronauts could fly to Neptune, come back, and then tell us when and where to point our telescopes so we could see the ship in a couple of hours. *mind boggling*

Meters? Did a prefix get left out here?

Yes, there could be an asteroid belt. The challenge would be implementing it without the gamers unanimously agreeing that its name should be the lag belt.

There's something wrong here. This thread is half a day old and I'm the first one in this thread to say it. TARDIS.

That just feels far too unrealistic. Not to mention it would make the game disgustingly easy by allowing us to completely remove 'Phase 1' from all of our missions. That aside, OP falls in with what I've read in a lot of threads. There are many aspects of research and exploration that don't yield any science, but probably should. For example, a probe orbiting a planet a couple of times, can gather just as much data as a manned space station that has been in operation for 10 years. That doesn't sit well with me.

Oooh, marvelous. TYVM!

Not long ago it turned out that the launch code for America's missile system was 00000000, for roughly 20 years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2515598/Launch-code-US-nuclear-weapons-easy-00000000.html Even the Spaceballs had more sense than that. Oh well, at least the code wasn't "admin."

This was also done in the movie, 'Space Cowboys', if I recall currectly. During the Reagan era, such installations probably would've made a LOT of sense. Unlike ground installations, you could have a source of missiles, of which the whereabouts were unknown to anybody but you. Therefore, if someone were smart enough to disable your nuclear capabilities on Earth, you would still have this wildcard in orbit that could hit a target in half if the time that it would take conventional MIRVs to do.

In a way, it still feels at least similar to thrust. A radically different method than what we're used to though. As for the cost, heh, has anyone even tried to estimate how much it would cost to build one of these? Not that it really matters that much. If there's enough funding to build the LHC, there sure as Hell better be enough funding to build an Alcubierre.

A couple days ago, it occurred to me that I had never seen Apollo 11 in its entirety. Then I wondered if there has ever been an unedited video of the entire broadcast. I don't know exactly what it would have looked like when it originally aired. Were there commercials? Was it a non-stop feed? Was the signal lost between landing and when cameras were moved around? Basically what I want to see is exactly what would have been seen live on television, even if that means four DVD's amounting to 20 hours of dry footage. What I DON'T want is a documentary film interspersed with more recent footage of folks explaining what is happening. Has such a thing ever been released? Searches mostly seem to point to a bunch of stuff about moon hoaxes and "UFO" sightings on the moon.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/super-cheap-paper-microscope-could-save-millions-lives-133616732.html?vp=1 Sign me up, please. Edit: courtesy of Streetwind for anyone blocked by Yahoo.

Wow, nice. That paints a much more hopeful picture. Given the sensationalism of modern media, I'm amazed this didn't get better coverage. When the first lab test was being set-up, there were news bytes about it everywhere. And I knew the schedule pretty well. After the fact, I didn't hear a peep about the results. I had to do a bit of digging to find any info, and the only tidbits I found were very discouraging. Strange how it went that quiet so quickly. Did that many journalists really just throw their arms up in the air and sigh, before they heard the whole story? I suppose that could happen, but it seems very out of character.

Yes, because editing posts is a true sign of evil. Actually, all you're doing is further-supporting what I implied. Now you're smoke-screening by using college-level vocabulary instead of high-school. "Why not mitigate that failure by reading?" is blatantly bratty. I've seen it thousands of times on different forums, and it is always used in the same way. It's a way of telling someone they're stupid, while trying to make it look somehow more intellectual than a 4th grade insult. I'm surprised that you brought ID vs. Superego into the discussion at all. Your original jab certainly did NOT come from your Superego, and neither does your "I have logic, scepticism and objectivity on my side" claim. But prey-tell, why did you mention skepticism and objectivity? Where in this argument do those two things even apply? Tolerance doesn't mean treating each viewpoint like it is equally valid. It DOES however mean that one can argue against a viewpoint without being an elitist jerk about it. And Trolls? Really? Speaking of assumptions...

Aww, did assuming I'm uneducated help make you feel superior? I have read about it. It makes no more sense than it did beforehand. All I see is another lame excuse to launch a crusade, just like all the other lame excuses for launching crusades.

Oh gosh, how about... a space station for docking asteroids...

Kinda wish this discussion were about the Alcubierre's future (if any). Last I read, all recent lab tests on the whether or not the theory works, were deemed 'inconclusive.' After years of waiting for the result of those tests, I was not very enthused. Another dead-end in humanity's attempts to actually have a future?

I see the same limitations with that as I would if I was trying to create a wave within a wave on a surface of water. Yeah you 'could', but what would be the point? Once you hit equilibrium between the 'crest' and 'trough,' of the wave, wouldn't it become counterproductive? And that's assuming your vessel didn't get immediately torn apart like a flimsy aircraft breaking the sound barrier. You'd reach a point where your inner bubble would collide with the outer bubble. yeah, scratching my head here on what you're visualizing.

I want to give Kerbin a third moon.

Trouble is, what is or is not a conspiracy theory is very open to interpretation. Don't scoff at the Mayan Calendar thing though. On that date, the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened. Absolutely nothing changed. This kind of saddens me though. There's a lot of things I'd like the opportunity to discuss with people who have an average intelligence level that is higher than Yahoo comments.