Unit327

Just a heads up to linux users that you can use mumble-overlay to view the FPS. I used it to check the difference between the nvidia linux drivers' threaded optimisation thing (__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS) and found that it didn't make much difference either way in ksp. Though I think mumble-overlay might hijack the LD_PRELOAD environment variable so it's possible the two don't work in concert. Regardless, when eyeballing ksp's performance it seemed identical with/without the optimisations. This was all on 313 drivers on a 680.

Only a fraction of the surface of the earth between the tropic of cancer / capricorn can ever have the sun at the zenith. For any one fixed location in that band, the sun only ever goes near the zenith for a fraction of the year. It almost goes without saying, but when it does so, it is only near the zenith for a fraction of the day, and only a fraction of those days will have clear skies. A solar power sat near geosync gets full solar radiation 24/7 365.25, and can beam that power anywhere on the globe. The idea clearly has merit, the main argument against it being economic. As electricity prices rise, demand for clean energy increases, and costs decrease, they become viable. The powersat corporation says they are viable now:

This big picture science podcast is handy: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Power_to_the_People Stuff like solar sattelites aren't "a long way off" because the engineering is insurmountable. It's just that the research funding, investors and economic incentives aren't there (yet).

I see renewables as a superior solution, and ultimately the end goal of where we want to be. No need to mine, no waste to dispose of, and practically endless supply. Sure there is more research that needs to be done before they can completely supply all of our power needs, but I don't think that's so far off that we should invest heavily in stop gap measures like nuclear (fission). Temporary solutions have a way of becoming permanent, and I think it would kill the incentive to research renewables. I want my orbital solar microwave death ray power station please. Most renewables also have the benefit of decentralisation and distribution being much easier than with nuclear. This makes them ideal for developing countries as well.

Sorry for resurrecting the thread, but I think this might doable in a mod (assuming they can add sphere's of influence). Hell, even just put a small asteroid on rails with a 10km SOI where L1 would be, then you can just orbit that as normal. It's not realistic but it might be fun. The asteroid's orbit might look weird (being the same peroid as the mun but much closer in to kerbin) but by my understanding the "on rails" nature of planets and moons don't need to follow newton's laws anyway. -snip-

Get the Kerbal X and build yourself a tiny detachable lander on top. Get into a decent circular orbit around the equator, heading east, then just burn prograde when you see the mun come over the horizon. Watch the map view while doing the burn; when you get an intercept with the mun, kill the engines. Fast forward till the mun encounter, burn retrograde at periapsis until you are in an orbit rather than escape trajectory. After that lower your orbit to a circular one at 10-15km. Quicksave, then burn retrograde and crash into the moon. If you don't like crashing, quickload, get out your landing gear and use the rockets to slow down when you are around 2km up from the surface. Don't forget landing gear, and make sure to build a low, flat lander rather than a tall skinny one which will be more likely to tip over. Try to land on the sunlit side so you can see the surface, and put some lights on the bottom; they help in judging the distance to the surface. Good luck!

Somewhere on reddit I learned a good rule of thumb - if you are in a lower orbit than your target, thrust when the tangent of your orbit at your current position intersects the current position of the body you are catching. Or to put it simply, draw a line between yourself and your target; when that line is tangential to your orbit, hit the throttle. Apparently works if you are in a higher orbit as well, the line just has to be tangential to your target's orbit instead of yours.