Albert VDS

Having a news article with the title something like "LHC can create a black hole and destroy the Earth" is not proof that people are idiots. It's proof that the news is uninformed, or at least sensationalists. I would like to believe that if people were more informed on how and what of science then there would be more interest. That's true. First it needs to warm up so to speak and then it takes time to read the results after the test. So maybe there might be some actual new by the end of this year?

Come on Nibb, be more creative than "looking out a porthole". How about stargazing, zero-g massages, other activities which utilize zero-g, or anything that makes it luxurious. That's only a few things I came up with in a minute, there's bound to be more things to do in orbit which you can't on the ground. Putting VR goggles on doesn't make you feel difference in gravity and just watching LCD screens. Sending existing families families to Mars in the first decade(s) isn't a good idea to begin with. It should start with people who build up the settlement, make it into a sustaining community. At that point you start to create on planet building of habs, rovers and anything else to make life easier. After that you can expand and introduce families. Exactly, which is a good way to make money.

If it's only a few orbits around the world then yes, it's just a joyride. You need something which longer duration than that, to decrease the price per hour. Something like an orbital hotel could work. It would require maintenance and what not, but a week in space for would still be cheaper than a few hours. VR would never replace something like being in space, unless it becomes something like Star Trek's Holodeck. That's true, but it gives more possibilities to send something up there. The first settlers wont have comfort, total safety or direct better prospect for themselves, but that's something which increases when a settlement grows and advances in technology. Commercial exploration could be a thing if the cost of it is set lower and if there is return. Tourism, see above. Settlement might not be in our direct future, but it's closer than having VR as an equal experience as the real thing.

A "hektar", or hectare in English, is a metric unit of 100m x 100m. About the cup thing: Cooking is not a precise thing. Sure some recipes call for it to be precise, but sometimes you need a bit more water to get to the right consistency in your dough. You can use the same measurement for, let's say, your car. "Just fill 'r up with 30 cups of gasoline" just doesn't work. Because every ones cup is different. Now if you want it to be the same cup you define it by it's capacity, either in cubic meters or liters.

Lowering the cost through technological means is a way to reach a point where we have a reason to go up there. Space tourism would be one. At the moment it's restricted to hand full of people who have enough money to buy a ticket. Lower the launch cost and you increase the number of people who can afford it, more people use it and the cost goes down even more. Another technological way is making space probes/satellites cheaper. This includes making them smaller and modular. A good example of this is cubesats. Due to their weight they cost less to launch and can be launched simultaneously. The modular part makes it cheaper to design a probe/satellite while using tested technology. Of course lighter payloads wont help heavy lift rockets to increase in number of launches. Space tourism needs to move out of LEO for that. The biggest reason we can have to go up there is Mars. If we settle on Mars we have a reason to travel between planets. A settlement on the Moon would trigger the same thing of course. Basically there are enough reasons to go up there; exploration, communication, tourism and settlement. Those need to become reality first, making launches cheaper just gets the ball rolling.

It's not that people are idiots, but the way the media makes it's money and it's role. It defines our society, most of peoples like and opinions come from the media. It's a feedback-loop, the more it tells us "You like this" the more it thinks "We like this". Maybe you can compare it to cafeteria food, sure we are eating it and like parts of it. But wouldn't we enjoy it more if it was a properly put together meal.

Oh, I'm not saying that America shouldn't go metric, but that that's the only reason that could hold them back. There are enough reasons why they should do it.

"A place where science doesn't happen... very often."

The only reason not to is the time and money that needs to put into converting a country with a population of 317+ million people.

Why the need for ion engine lander in the first place? There are enough efficient engines to choose from to use on a lander. The only reason I can think of is that it gives you tons of delta-V. In real life an ion engine is an efficient orbital transfer engine, it can't be used to land on anything. Why change that characteristic? It's like asking for the rover wheels to be able to drive over water.

That a moot point, because KSP isn't a futuristic space game. It's portraying current achievable tech. If they did have an ion engine capable for use in landers then it wouldn't be an ion engine. Think about that. But let's say they did, then why would they still be using chemical rockets. Why not take it a step further? They could have create something which laughs in the face of the rocket equation.

For anyone having a bad connections on Ustream, here's a link to the live feed on youtube:

Just stop and think how silly an Ion Lander/Glider sounds. Sure gameplay is important, but what the game is portraying is equally important. In this case it's an engine which has a high ISP and a tiny thrust. Trying to make a lander out of it is like trying to move a house with a fly.

@toadicus: How about a stage disable function for fairings?

Alright, thanks! That fixed it. Now I can use my reusable rocket again without having to use action groups while staging.

Thanks, I just tried it and it fixed the bug. But now I'm unable to stage with docking ports.

Heres the player.log: http://pasted.co/f3c6ad05 To reproduce it you'll your mode and Flight Manager for Reusable Stages. Build a rocket with 2 docking ports instead of decouplers and set one up so it can stage. Launch the rocket, but make sure FMRS is enabled. After reaching space, or you could do it after staging, switch back to the decouple stage with the FMRS window. That craft should be hanging motionless in the air.

TweakableEverything causes the craft to be locked into place(altitude doesn't move or speed) when switching to an ejected stage in "Flight Manager for Reusable Stages". Is this a know issue? I'm running on it on Linux.

What I was getting at is, if it is real then there would be solid proof and then it would be seen as fact. If we were visited by aliens then we would have more than dubious photos and videos.

With every claim, be it aliens, ghost, talking to the dead, etc. etc., there is one major flaw: if it was real it would be mainstream. The vast majority of people would know of these things to be real and a lot effort would be put into gathering more concrete evidence and a way to explain describe why, how and what.

First you are saying "You can't just take human motivation and project them into some hypothetical alien" and in a later post you say "They could just do it for fun or maybe it is a sport". For all we know fun or sports may be a human thing. And before the fun an sport comment you comment on that more advanced civilizations might have more power per individual, again that's only concluded by what you know of one example: humans.

Like this:

So you think it's likely that alien motivation is: spend a large amount of resources and time to just fly over an exoplanet and not make yourself know?

Aliens do they exist? It's highly likely, considering the unimaginable numbers of stars in the universe (estimated from 10^22 to 10^24). Do they visit us? Let's see how likely that is. The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri, actually 3 stars Alpha Centauri A, B and then there is Proxima Centauri. This system is 4.24 light years away from us. So they would need to go the speed of light to reach us in 4.24 years. Other than the physical limitations of living things, reaching the speed of light is not cheap. You would need an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light. "But Aliens don't need to an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light, because they use an Alcubierre drive" I hear you say. May I add that aliens don't call it an Alcubierre drive, they call it an Qrt#-fwee drive with an emphasis on the #. Ok, they spend their time to build spacecraft capable of traveling anywhere in the universe. They pack their food maker 3000 and their world's version of 70's sitcoms and some disco, and head straight for Earth? Let's not get into why, they just want to go here. So they finally reach Earth and what the thing they do? Fly over land at an altitude where most of the dominant Earth creatures have their flying machines and weather balloons. Cause that's what they are going to do. Who would want to communicate with other life, just fly in the midst of nights and create crop circles. "But aliens are restricted from contacting less developed beings, as to not interfere with the evolution and such". Then why don't the ultra-smart, warp-drive-creating, galaxy-traveling beings create a cloak to hide themselves? Seriously who of you thinks it's a good idea to go through all that unimaginable trouble of going to an inhabited exo-planet and not communicating with it. That's like walking and swimming to the other side of the world and hide in the bushes just to oogle at people. It's insane.

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains it the best way in this video: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123384-My-UFO-encounter?p=1978328#post1978328