Mitchz95

This always bugged me. NASA constantly touts Orion as being the ship that will take humans to Mars, but it's obviously going to need a habitation module and fuel and everything. By that point you're almost better off designing it as one big ship and assembling it in orbit. Why do we need another Apollo-like capsule?

Thanks for the quick response. Is there a way to make the current sound effects work outside the ship in the meantime?

Are the sound effects IVA only, or can you hear then outside as well?

SpaceX's colony will have return ships available every two years. People will be able to evacuate if necessary.

The ISS will be well over 30 years old at that point. Keeping it running past then would be not only dangerous to the astronauts and cosmonauts that live aboard, but a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Landing on the Mun in the demo was the first big challenge I faced. Once I mastered that (without having discovered quicksaves, so it cost me a LOT of Kerbals) I slammed my head on the keyboard for a few days trying to master orbital rendezvous. When I finally got that to work semi-reliably, I decided that I liked the game enough to buy the full version. No regrets.

Because a seemingly-random mix of numbers and words isn't very memorable. But I agree, not every planet needs a formal name. Certainly not yet.

All I can think of as I go through these: "Astro-Club "Nippy" would like to propose for the sun-like star "epsilon Eridani" the name "Tilapia", while this star can engender and maintain a civilization of intelligent tilapias on one of the moons of the planet "epsilon Eridani b". Tilapia sapiens is a genus of fishes in the Cichlidae family. The similar extremophilic tilapias exist in warm Lake Natron in Kenya and Tanzania, and a saltwater ocean on one of the many small moons that orbit Saturn called Enceladus is the most likely place in the solar system for extraterrestrial life in the form of tilapias to be found." *slams head on desk*

I feel like it's a bit too early to start naming planets in other solar systems. We should save proper names for systems of special interest: ones that are targeted for interstellar probes, or ones that have Earth-like (as in habitable) planets. Still, I voted. Would have been nice to keep Bellerophon for 51 Pegasi b. EDIT: Who the heck suggested "Starry Bunnies" and "Tortoise"?

The updated version can be found here.

It just looks better.

Then send two rovers. Sure, we don't need to rush through things. But if we send astronauts to Mars, they'll probably be there for a good eighteen months. That's plenty of time to cover a lot of ground. Then what's the problem? If we don't need to worry about artificial gravity, that's another problem we can check off the list. As I said, the real benefit would be the inspiration value. The science, while also great, would just be a bonus. You cut one of my comments in half and thus removed the context. I said that public pressure and excitement would push them to do it. Then let's set things straight. Involve the public with every aspect of the mission: the astronaut selection process, picking the landing site, the construction of the hardware, etc. Educate people. Yeah, the Flat Earth Society will keep screaming fraud, but people (well, most of them) are more reasonable than we give them credit for. We just need to show them what we're doing, why we're doing it, and where it will lead. People will listen. I'm sure it will come and go in waves. The interest will flare up and down between each milestone: the launch, entering Mars orbit, landing, etc. But all the media coverage and some NASA outreach programs will make sure the public never forgets what's happening. Chris Hadfield went viral singing a David Bowie song on the ISS. Imagine two years of live tweets, video messages, and more from the surface of Mars!

Opportunity has covered 42 kilometers so far. Impressive for a rover, but a human crew with an airtight buggy and a few months (if not years) could do a lot better in a fraction of the time. As for gravity, there are a number of ways we could simulate it during the transit, such as using the fuel tank as a counterweight to create centrifugal gravity. Maybe not, but they'd be able to make decisions on the fly. If something goes wrong with an unmanned rover, it would be fifteen minutes before the controllers even realized something was wrong. Much more to decide on a course of action and send the command back. I'd say we need to take more risks in today's age. We need more heroes, people willing to risk themselves to advance human frontiers. Sure, the politicians might not be fond of the idea, but so what? If the demand for a manned Mars mission is high enough, and a realistic possibility of one in the near future existed, I think they'd have no choice but to go with it. As I said above, the excitement and inspiration generated by a manned mission would be a much greater benefit than any science they gather. People on Mars is a lot more interesting than another drone, no matter how advanced the drone is.

It wasn't a question of funding. They could have implemented Mars Direct for about $55 billion, which - spread over 10 years - was doable with the current budget. The reason it was rejected was that it wouldn't require use of the ISS or a Moon base, and the people who had invested in those projects feared they'd lose their funding. Also, NASA as a whole feared investing itself into a single project because its directives change every presidential term.

Landed the first part of my Minmus fuel refinery. It tipped over and rolled about a kilometer, but considering that it had no reaction wheels I consider it a win. I can always right it once the Kerbals arrive.

Go into your persistence file and find him. Make sure he's listed as EVA and not Debris, Station, etc.

Wow! This may become my go-to texture pack. Great work.

Would a red dwarf star actually look red from space?

Hello, I'm having a problem with Oblate. It seems to not want to have a bright glow at high distances. Compare that to the bright glow of Kerbol, which is visible anywhere in that solar system.

They spawn pretty high up (I don't have the numbers offhand) but their inclination and eccentricity are pretty much zero. The delta-v requirements that far from Dres are pretty low, so as long as you collect enough Ore to fuel your next rendezvous you can keep it going pretty much indefinitely.

Question: would the heat of an RTG be enough to sterilize it? We wouldn't want to contaminate any lifeforms we encounter on Europa.

What's the difference between naming a crater after a fictional TV character, and naming it after a fictional mythological character? We've named plenty of moons after Shakespeare characters, and asteroids get pop culture names as well.

It's been ages since I had a dream I could remember the next morning.

I mean that the site itself hasn't been updated with all the new data from Dawn and New Horizons. Nothing wrong with the link.

Awesome! The Solar System Scope needs to be updated, though.