szputnyik

Sometimes, flashing lights should emanate from an occupied Hitchhiker, and if you IVA into it, this music should play: Reason: Even Kerbals are bored sometimes.

In our school, you couldn't even type and had to write everything by hand, since it "might have been cut & pasted otherwise", and with writing it by hand, you at least had some exposure to the material at hand while writing it.

The downside of this "giving up all human work" approach is that eventually, almost no one will study anything, maybe illiteracy will also become widespread, and the majority of the population will essentially become big pre-schoolers, whom the robots entertain with simple games. If this happens, the robots will be already de facto masters of humanity, without any dramatic Terminator or Matrix-like takeover. Don't think that the majority of people will learn anything if they don't need to, for example to get a better job. I know young Austrians who don't study anything after finishing primary school, because factory work or becoming a cleaner or a waitress pays enough in Austria to live a good life, so they do it until retirement. In Saudi Arabia, the newest generation studies almost nothing, since the state hands them out benefits for nothing because of all the capital coming in from selling their oil.

I would like to see a prequel of sorts, taking place in the Old Aperture facility, maybe in the 80s.

Can you imagine North Korea joining this new space race, trying to repeat the Vostok and Mercury missions using very primitive cobbled-together equipment Kerbal-style?

There was also an issue (I think during Apollo 11) when the ascent stage didn't fire because of a faulty wire or fuse, so one of the astronauts had to stick a pen into an opening at the circuits, to get it to fire.

Soyuz. The tried and true, and safe workhorse of Earth to LEO transport.

In my opinion NASA has always thrown out money for bells and whistles to make its technology look futuristic (in reality, ridiculous) rather than to spend it on practical advancements. (Fighter jet-style Gemini capsule, the Space Shuttle etc) I much prefer the practical and down-to-earth approach of Russian and Chinese space equipment design. For example, look at Lunokhod. Yes it looks like mismatched kitchen equipment welded onto some Soviet peasant's old tin washtub, but in kilometers traveled, it's the most successful rover yet.

The problem with cows farting methane and chewing out the root system of grasslands could be fixed with replacing cows with kangaroos. They require less food, because they have a lower body temperature, don't fart as much methane and only eat the part of the grass above the surface, leaving the root system intact.

So let's imagine that a space agency has managed to build a self-sustaining space colony, like a Stanford Torus, and is looking for a place to "hide" it in the Solar System, in the sense to make it very hard to access, maybe because of interplanetary war, or the space station belongs to a rogue group who wants to escape persecution on Earth. I think a place like this would be retrograde solar orbit. It requires a large amount of delta-V to access, and it would be almost impossible to hit the station with something that's orbiting prograde around the Sun. The station could utilize a retrograde sling around Jupiter to get into a retrograde orbit around the Sun. What are your ideas?

There are also people for whom meat is almost their whole diet, for example the Inuit, who still live in traditional ways. What would they do? Lick lichens?

What I meant by "habitable" is whether there would be tolerable temperatures and enough arable land to farm, and how big of a population could live on a planet like this.

I think what EdFred is trying to say is that there is someone who for example doesn't eat Stuffed Potatoes, Raspberries and Chicken Kiev, but he doesn't go around repeating "Hi! I'm John, and I don't eat Stuffed Potatoes, Raspberries and Chicken Kiev!"

Yeah, make a backup first, better to be safe...

Here in Hungary, spaceflight is mainly associated with Soviet culture and those interested in it are mostly seen as odd historians or closet communists. Modern spaceflight (e.g. the Mars rovers and the Chinese space program) are usually ignored, and the Space Shuttle is regarded as "cool" mostly because almost everyone thinks it was an SSTO. What are the popular views on spaceflight where you live?

Install windows, install ubuntu on a new partition, when the installation asks about installation type, choose the option that's closest to install ubuntu on a new partition, and most likely it will put a menu in the MBR, from which you can choose windows or linux when you start your computer.

I love eating meat, it makes me feel full of energy, and if I feel weak, sick or have a headache, it seems to stop shortly after ingesting it. I don't have a problem with vegetarians, but there are people who try to make their dogs, or even worse, their cats vegetarians, because "if I can do it, so can they" they think. I think that borders on animal abuse, especially for cats, since they are obligate carnivores.

Mir. It was the first modular space station, and from videos and picture I've seen of it, it had a really good "house in space" homely atmosphere to it, rather than the more technical and strict-looking ISS. It would've had an interesting future in bringing space travel closer to the masses, had it not been de-orbited: One company was interested in converting it into a film studio, an other one wanted to convert it into a space hotel. From existing space stations, my favorite is Tiangong, and I have high hopes for future Chinese stations. Knowing China's heavily capitalistic economy, and determination to quickly advance in space, the Chinese space program could be the one, that will open space travel to wider audiences in the future.

About 2/3 of Earth is dominated by water. During the Permian, this 1/3 of land was concentrated in one supercontinent, and only the coastal areas of this continent were habitable, while the inlands resembled Martian deserts. If there existed a planet homologous to Earth, except containing only 1/3 of water, distributed among large seas, sort of like the moon Titan, would it be habitable outside the seashores? Or would everything far from the sea turn into something like the Sahara desert?

NATO countries usually give their soldiers field rations which are superficially similar to modern space food, without all the microgravity adaptations. Essentially meals individually packed in pouches, which are edible for years, called MRE (Meal Ready to Eat). Fresh food products are only available to astronauts for a few days after a supply shipment, since the ISS has no refrigerator, but MREs are only to be eaten for a week maximum, if I remember correctly, and after that, doctors recommend the soldiers to eat real food from the field kitchen, a canteen or other sources. What is different in space food that allows it to be consumed for prolonged intervals?

Neither the Soviets. Baikonur is nowhere near the Equator. The Germans could have built a space center in Travemünde, because it's next to the sea, not in a heavily populated area, it could serve as a homage to the then East German-occupied Peenemünde, the original launch complex, and the proximity of the East German border would ensure a good place in the propaganda war, with GDR border guards regularily seeing West German rockets lift off.

If current in-game Kerbals are asexual, why are they given male names like Jeb, Bill and Bob, why not made-up gender-neutral names like the names of robots in many Sci-Fi's?

For rovers (and if in the future implemented boats and propeller planes.) Oxidizer tanks would make it possible to use the IC engine somewhere other than Kerbin or Laythe, and it would also be usable for jet engines.

Do you think it would be a good next step in space habitat research to establish a space station in Lunar orbit, after the ISS is decommissioned? Lunar orbit is outside the Van Allen belts, thus that environment's effect on human biology would be more like interplanetary space encountered on future missions to Mars or other planets. It is more remote from Earth than a LEO space station, so it encourages more self-reliance, not a bad skill for future interplanetary missions. It would be a good platform for close observation of the Lunar surface, and future Moon missions, which could be operated with simple shuttling landers between the station and the surface. When the station orbits above the far side of the Moon, radio noise and light from Earth is completely blocked out, thus it could be a good deep space observatory platform. What are your thoughts?

It had the strongest economy is Europe, if the Soviet Union could do it, so could the Germans. Or was it banned for them because of the general disarmament of both Germanies after WW2, and that they were technically still under Allied invasion until the Reunification in 1990?