peadar1987

That's not actually as bad as it sounds, remember the size of the Apollo Command Module? It's not like you'd have to have a Saturn V docked to the ISS just to get back home

While there might be enough food to provide for everyone on the planet, that's not the biggest problem with overpopulation, it's providing people with energy, sanitation and consumer goods. We can feed everyone in the world and not have a problem, but we can't give everyone a nice house and a flashy car, because it will destroy the environment (at least with current resources and technology)

The current generation of nuclear plants are also going to go offline soon as well. We'll get maybe 5-10 years out of Hunterston, Hinkley Point, Hartlepool and Heysham 1, a couple more out of Heysham 2 and Torness. Dungeness is anyone's guess. It's filling the gap between them shutting down and new-build stations like Sizewell and Hinkley Point C coming online that's the problem. Things like this need to be planned many decades in advance, because otherwise you run short in the interim. Not to mention the fact that far more people are thought to have died due to the rushed evacuation than would have of cancer or radiation if they were just left in their homes!

To be honest, the system that makes the most sense is YYYY/MM/DD, as this means that a list of dates will be sorted into the correct order without any special date-specific jiggery-pokery. I believe the US military use this format, at least in certain applications

I heard the wiring delays were because Airbus switched to aluminium wiring from copper to save mass, not anticipating the longer lead time required to process and manufacture aluminium wire. In either case, I doubt it was due to a metric/imperial mix-up. All engineering in the UK is done in metric except for legacy projects like maintenance of last-generation nuclear plants.

I think specific part suggestions are allowed, but you're not allowed just burst in shouting MOAR PARTZ!!!1!!!1!

They're spelt "litre" and "metre" in the UK and Ireland as well. Slightly off-topic, but has anyone else heard that sulphur is officially spelt "sulfur" by IUPAC, as a concession so we got to keep spelling Phosphorus properly?! It was a rumour knocking round when I was in school.

I've had a craft explode a few hundred metres above the ground. The Launch escape system worked perfectly, delivering the Kerbals safely to the ground just beside the VAB, swiftly followed by the debris of a 400 part rocket. Much of it came down within a few metres of the capsule with Jeb inside it, in a great fireworks display. Didn't even make him blink!

Perhaps it could be done like terrain scatters. Instead of just adding trees or rocks, it could add small villages, Kerbals herding kows, etc. Maybe biome dependent. And throw in a few more easter eggs to add a bit of life to the planet. It's something that could conceivably be crowdsourced as well. I don't think it's too hard for Squad to incorporate mods into the stock game, so the community could easily put together 100+ interesting locations for us to visit.

Tenses are overrated. You can convey your meaning perfectly well most of the time by using the present tense and an adverb of time. "Yesterday, I play KSP a lot" "Tomorrow, I go for a walk" In fact, in many languages, it's acceptable to ignore tenses, especially the future. Dutch does this quite often, and I believe French as well.

Ignorant question, but, if I understand correctly, if you're going close to the speed of light, time for you will pass slower than for an observer, right? -Firstly, how does time "know" which one of you is the observer and which is the observee, surely which one of you is "moving" changes depending on which reference frame you use, so why is there a difference in situation between accelerating a spacecraft away from the earth, and accelerating the earth away from the spacecraft with a gigantic motor? -Secondly, does the change in perception of time mean there is an optimum speed to travel? So if you're heading towards the edge of the galaxy, you don't want to travel too fast, because even though it will take less time from your perspective, to an external observer, it will seem to take a longer time? Or does it not work that way?

People can use whatever they want in their daily lives, whatever they're intuitively more comfortable with. However, metric makes infinitely more sense for doing any sort of engineering or scientific calculation. SI units are defined in terms of each other, except for the metre, the second, and the kilogram. Everything else follows from these. In the metric system, force is mass by acceleration, for example. In imperial, it is mass by acceleration by a constant. You do any sort of complex calculation, the constants start to stack up, and there is a hell of a lot to remember, and a lot of potential for mistakes.

3/10, the name's familiar, but I can't put any specific posts to it

I was thinking something very simple, no AI, no computer-controlled launches blasting off, flying through space, or anything (although it would probably be possible with a bit of clever coding to add rival spacecraft to the game in certain orbits so you could keep an eye on them). I really was just going for a simple timer, and maybe a pop-up or information box from Wernher von Kerman letting you know what the other Kerbals were working on, and roughly how much time you had before they achieved it (I think this would give you deadlines and things to aim for without overly restricting you. Hear your rivals are planning a Minmus landing and return? You can try and stretch out your budget to get there before them, or you can abandon the race to Minmus and instead focus on launching a probe to Duna. Or just ignore them altogether, but it would give a little sense of urgency and make your budget have some meaning) As an aside (please don't lock the thread!!), it's not really in the spirit of the game, and will defnitely never be implemented, but wouldn't it be fun if the much maligned female Kerbals had a space centre diametrically opposed to the normal KSC, and you could choose at the start of the game whether to play as male or female Kerbals, with your rivals then being the other gender?!

So a lot of people are requesting experiments that take time to complete, or deliver continuous science once deployed. However, the devs (and I agree with them) have said that this isn't going to happen, because it would be possible to just time warp, and get all the science instantly. The same issue comes up when budgets are being discussed, how do you have a budget that limits you without just being able to time warp until the next year's funds come through? Basically, for "over time" science to work, time warp has to be disincentivised somehow. My suggestion for this is for a "Space Race" with a fictional rival Kerbal nation. They will be progressing along their own path at a certain rate, and it's your job to stay ahead of them. Waste your budget, and have to time warp to get more money, and you lose precious time to the KSSR in the race to orbit. "Losing" to your rivals could have consequences for your public opinion, or as I'd prefer, it's just for your own satisfaction. Although a "show" space centre for them would be cool, along with spawning landers/space stations/bases, they could just be implemented as a timer, or messages that pop up whenever the rivals accomplish something. Any thoughts?

Irish... So I'd contribute far more to the ESA. And build a state-of-the-art launch centre on the Fastnet Rock

Yeah, and it's not Kerbal LANDING program either. Get rid of those stupid legs and parachutes as well. The game should be about launching things into space and leaving them there. How dare people even attempt to do things on other planets?!

Yep, the heat shields are in the tech tree

I think having to have a seismometer network and observatories is probably a little complicated, I would have imagined the impactor expriment as something to do for less advanced players who aren't yet able to make a controlled landing on the Mun or Minmus

I'd heard about them before. I was very surprised about the Norwegian one, strange to think that the only time the nuclear football has been opened wasn't during Cuba, or Korea, or Vietnam, but in 1995.

It's not really the completed warheads that are the problem, it's the weapons-grade material from the warheads that is. Even if you don't have the firing codes for the devices themselves, any moron with a little engineering knowhow* can throw together an inefficient gun-type fission design. *Okay, maybe not anyone, but 95% of the complexity of building a nuclear weapon is in amassing enough fissile material for the warhead. If some landed in the lap of some unscrupulous government, they'd be capable of putting together a crude nuclear weapon within weeks.

I'd like to see a science experiment (or at least science points) for flying a probe into a body like the Deep Impact mission, I think it'd fit well into early career-mode missions when we'll be looking for experiments that are cheap, uncomplicated, and don't require great piloting skills or higher-tier parts to pull off.

I've already suggested alternative launch sites elsewhere, it's an idea I love, hopefully it's just a case of the Devs throwing down a few pre-made buildings and a wee snippet of code, and we can add even more variety to Kerbin

Not until after the Kraken has been slain!

In my mind, changing the opening altitude of a parachute is something that any self-respecting mission control/spacecraft crew should be able to do. I'm happy enough to change the cfgs to solve problems like that, ones that are only problems because KSP is still an alpha, and things like tweakables aren't fully implemented yet. If I'd used it to recharge the batteries, get infinite fuel, or just disabled deadly reentry or something, I'd totally agree with you.