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The mod "Ship Manifest" allows you to dump stored resources without thrust, and there are a few other mods which add a fuel dump valve part (essentially exactly what you are asking for 0Isp, 0thrust engine) I think one is called "SmartParts". I have so many mods installed I am no longer entirely sure what things come from what or even what is stock anymore...

As pre-human intelligence rose, skull size increased to accomodate the brain. So the female pelvis got wider to accomodate live birth. But at a point, a very wide pelvis starts to become a hindrance so a limit was reached. This was solved by giving birth to an undeveloped child, so its brain and skull can continue to grow after birth. This is why a deer can walk within minutes of being born but a human baby cannot. So now parents have to live long enough to raise it to maturity, until it can survive on its own. Except parents need to hunt and gather to provide so we live long enough to become grandparents, assisting in the raising of undeveloped offspring. Octopuses have no skull and do not give birth, so no pressure to live longer - it would not increase their chances of passing on their genes. On the other hand, there does not appear to be any impediment to the size of their brains. *** Side fact - Our height was set at the big bang. All material properties were decided at the big bang, and we are as tall as we can be (to increase visibility and long-limbedness for speed and reach) without risking immediately fatal injury if we trip and fall. This height is decided by skull strength which is dependant on the strength of atomic bonds. I know almost everything was set at the big bang but its fun to think about.

You are right of course, they could rise up and conquer the monkey world, that is a possibility.

How does it outperform a standard kerolox rocket? Can it do something we cannot already do?

It is still up in the air if high intelligence and the construction of a civilisation is a benefit to survival. we've only been trying it for about 100k years, just a moment in evolutionary timescales. Who is to say that octopuses (yeah thats actually correct) are not thinking "Why are the monkeys spending so much time building...what a waste". We might be the only intelligences that thinks a civilisation is the goal to be achieved and perfected (Answer to Fermi paradox?) And by quite a few metrics, this is not a human planet, this is a bacterial planet, we just live here. Many bacteria simply see us as real estate. We might not be the ones on the route to evolutionary perfection.

I like reading them but they are very hit-and-miss. About 1 in 20 or 30 is really good though.

Sick dirtbike tracks with wicked jumps?

Laugh? What, like at the same time they listen to a hundred identical adverts whilst they fill out yet another subscription for something? They can be my guest!

He did say "pay" And yeah @YNM, old school music acquisition was way simpler and user friendly. Remember when you could actually borrow a tape off someone? Remember when you only needed a single set of headphones?

How does that work in other contexts? "pedant occupation of France"

The Demon is not called Maxwell!

The crux of it is whether that 40% of fuel (or whatever the figure is in todays best launchers) is more expensive than the cost of developing this project, and the final cost of launches. Delta-V efficiency is not as relevant as financial efficiency.

@RussWong Hi and welcome to the forums! Theres 1,000 reasons why your KSP might be crashing, more details!

What I mean is, sleep is weird and scary and nobody knows what it is!! Why does every mammal and many other creatures on earth have to turn off every few hours, for a few hours? You can say "to get rid of toxins" but the body is perfectly capable of eliminating toxins whilst awake. You can say "to rearrange the days memories" but nobody knows how memory really works either, except in the broadest of terms. Nobody even really knows what they mean when they say "rearrange the days memories"

Admittedly, some mods I have do generate extra save files, Kerbal Alarm Clock is a particular offender. Also various manual saves etc. And my current save files are 10MB and growing. I think the folder was maybe a couple hundred meg when I cleaned it? I never actually checked. I dont know why the size of the save folder is an issue, or if it only looks t save files or the whole contents, I only know that I had a really bad issue and (after trying several other things first) I had a hunch and cleaning out the folder completely fixed it.

The point is that you can discuss it until the cows come home, you still cannot prove it false. But its also kind of real in a small way, in that you are measurably a different person every time you wake up in the morning. We die every night and a new person is born every morning, the two people share some memories (but not all) and are physically similar (but not 100%). How is sleep any differnt from being killed every night and a clone generated every morning? Would you sign up for that?

This always appears to sound bad, but money is a measure of work. More work to manage hazardous materials = more money. Sounds a little more reasonable that way.

Should be go-to advice for most astronomical questions Question - if you had a hypothetically perfect sphere of uniform mass distribution, rotating on a vertical axis, orbiting a body. This body could *not* become tidally locked?

You might be an an engineer but this is basic stuff! You already said that you understand chlorine to be safe in table salt - it is precisely the same with fluorine in toothpaste. I could go into more detail about ions, bonding and toxicity but then I'd have to start talking about electron orbital and probably have to type out most of a years syllabus. Long story short, the toxicity/hazard of a substance is not denoted by its constituent atoms. We (humans) are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a few other things. But organise just those 4 elements in the right way and you can have everything from highly lethal toxins to high explosives. Or inert things like plastics and fibres. Do you not need elementary (heh) chemistry to learn about material properties for your engineering? The reason that fluorine specifically is so bad is, simply put, because it is "super-oxygen". In that it is an oxidising gas with a stronger oxidising potential than oxygen. And you must be aware of the hazards of say, things being exposed to a 100% oxygen environment? Fluorine is like that but much worse. Things tend to spontaneously ignite/explode/corrode is fairly short order. This includes human flesh. But the oxygen in water, and the fluorine in toothpaste, is of course, much safer, due to the way it is organised in the molecules. More accurately, due to the way the electrons organise themselves.

These all look like nice habitats (although they look a little too "IKEA" to be realistic, way too pretty) but is there anything about them which leverages the particular advantages of 3D-printing construction methods?

If the axis of rotation was pointing towards the star, and the pole tidally locked, the axis would have to change orientation as the planet orbited its star. This requires a truly massive change in angular momentum, so no, this planet would very strongly resist being tidally locked. If the gravity environment was strong enough, and the planet materially strong enough to withstand it (doubtful if this is physically possible due to extreme energies involved) then energy would very quickly be sapped from the system and the planet would fall into the sun.

@Xd the great @K^2 Ah, yup, I was missing something. I was fixed on the idea of statites over stars, rather than the slightly more complex version using a sail to hover over a planet.

I know, and light hits the sail even if you are close to the parent body...

How is that so? One of the advantages of Statites is that hey work at any altitude...?

I have heard that one of the largest costs in spaceflight is the insurance. I imagine that even modest increase in risk, or the risks associated with a fluorine accident, affect this in the upwards direction.