Northstar1989

Lol. So anyone with thoughts about the science itself? Regards, Northstar

I think it already works in 1.1, I just haven't had opportunity to test it. Give it a try and see! If not, I'd love somebody with a bit of programming experience giving me a hand updating it for 1.1 !

Naming a new moon of Jool (if they ever add more- after all Jupiter has TONS of moons... or better yet, a moon of Gas Giant 2- if they ever implement it!) after HarvestR sounds like a good udea to me. Instead of a silly monument nobody will ever find, why not a whole moon?! Regards, Northstar

Great discussion guys! Keep it up, and maybe a dev will notice!

So much great discussion! (and a few tangents- try not to get personal here guys!) I love it when you guys actually discuss the topic at hand, particularly when it comes to programming! It reminds me what a smart and diverse player-base we have! To contribute a little- I've noticed KSP has awfully high baseline CPU usage too- even when I'm just sitting in the space center with no crafts or debris anywhere on Tracking Station and no ability to track asteroids unlocked... I would think SQUAD could at least do something about this- no game should require large amounts of CPU when it's essentially sitting, doing nothing... Some dynamic loading might be nice too- honestly, I think the decision to load all parts at start makes zero sense to stick with at this point... Regards, Northstar

The downmass capabilities would have been economically worthwhile it the Shuttle's originally envisioned role- as the linchpin of an entire NETWORK of space transportation systems- in fact that's why the Shuttle was called STS (short for Space Transportation System)- because it was originally part of a vision for an entire SYSTEM of getting things around the Solar System and Earth orbit that included not only the Shuttle, but also a network of stations (starting with an ISS-like station, but eventually expanding to include many more), a Nuclear Thermal Tug for orbit-to-orbit operations, and much more... If the Shuttle had come at the eve of an era of heavy space exploitation, we might have found an economical use for it. Asteroid-mining recovery operations for one: there are Near-Earth asteroids which are RICH in valuable elements including Platinum and far more valuable elements still than even that. If we have started asteroid mining in the 1970's, the shuttle could have carried down the separated metals (since it wouldn't make sense to bring down from orbit useless tons of rock- you would just want to carry down the purified elements) in quite considerable quantities on each mission, for instance. Sadly, Nixon slashed most of the STS plans and we never made it further than the Moon. We didn't develop the huge network of space infrastructure that was expected after the Apollo era, and thus the Shuttle didn't make real economic sense, and couldn't have even if it had been built and developed in a more efficient matter (and made use of simpler, lower-performance engines that would have been much cheaper to refurbish). The Shuttle's development process and the manufacture of its components also became a political process, "gold-plated" to hear the engineers write in their memo's years later... The components of the shuttle were developed and manufactured all over the country, not where it made sense but where important congressional districts were located or represented by a powerful politician, in an inefficient process designed to create high-paying jobs and not a cost-effective product, and then had to be shipped from all over the country to be assembled with no thought to cost-efficiency in the manufacture. If the Shuttle development, manufacturing, and refurbishing had been optimized for cost and centralized in the kind of way SpaceX optimizes and centralizes its production of Falcon 9 rockets, then it would have been a much more economical system... A final note- the Buran Shuttle could fly entirely on autopilot, but this doesn't mean it wouldn't have carried crew, as you implied. In fact the Buran Shuttle had a much larger crew-capacity than STS (and none of them had to be trained pilots- which meant they could send up more scientists in their place! Think of the equivalent in KSP- a manned ship controlled by a probe core rather than a pilot to save mass or increase crew capacity), as well as a larger cargo bay that could hold more payload than STS too. This was, as I stated, the result of removing the engines from the reusable spaceplane and putting larger, lower-performing, cheaper ones on the disposable boosters (although it is true, the Russians also had plans to try and recover the boosters on later missions- in a system more similar to SpaceX's booster recovery or the re-use of the American Shuttle SSRB's than the much more costly and less efficient spaceplane landings of the American Shuttle...) Best Regards, Northstar

KSP continues to show sadly lacking performance for the level of graphics and functions the programming has to accomplish, especially on weaker computers. This game really shouldn't take that powerful of a computer to run at vastly better performance levels than it does now, yet its performance for any given CPU and graphics card setup *is* lackluster relative to what it should be and a sometimes laggy game (especially on weaker computers) is what we have to work with... I have started this thread as a development discussion thread: to solicit discussion of what the devs could actually do, in concrete terms, to improve the performance of the game (this is NOT a thread for off-the-cuff suggestions by people with no understanding of game programming, I want to see people with actual programming and optimization knowledge make specific educated suggestions here), and to remind the devs at SQUAD that the poor performance and lack of real optimization in KSP is still a major issue they need to work on, one that is still very much holding the game back from reaching its full potential. For that matter, a small tangential bit of commentary and a liberty I am taking as thread author (please do not side-track the discussion by commenting further on this, it is only my opinion)- I do not think the game should ever have been declared "released" in its current state. In my mind, the game will never truly be an acceptable product for a released game until it has seen a substantial amount of additional effort devoted to improving the game's performance (reducing lag, CPU load, etc.) within the context of its existing features. Go forth and discuss! And remember to keep the discussion educated, knowledgeable about the subject of programming, and on-topic! - Northstar

My game is also crashing with DTL on game load- after first crashing while in the SPH, now I can't load the game at all. My only mods are DTL and MechJeb2. Here are the files generated upon the latest crash: Output_log.txt https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12192342/output_log.txt Error.log https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12192342/error.log Crash.dmp https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12192342/crash.dmp Will test if uninstalling DTL fixes it (although that will probably revert me back to getting horrible framerates). Regards, Northstar

The Shuttle/Buran allowed the recovery of scientific payloads and ENTIRE SMALL SATELLITES, which is hardly a trivial functionality (although it was used far too little, in my opinion). There is simply no other system we have ever had in operation, or have in operation now, which allows or allowed the recovery of similarly-sized payloads from orbit... The Shuttle was designed with a future in mind where we would make much more extensive use of space, and Buran sought to copy its capabilities... The Russians didn't stick expensive reusable engines on their version of the Shuttle because they REALIZED that Shuttle-style reusable engines don't make any economic sense. At least not with the level of performance you need out of them to get something like the Shuttle into orbit and back (a big part of the reason the SSME's were so expensive to refurbish was because they were so very, very complex in order to obtain maximum performance- a simpler engine with less complexity would have been MUCH less expensive to refurbish...) I would argue that you could have stuck cheaper, simpler engines on the Shuttle and refurbished them at a substantial economic benefit if they were only meant to SUPPLEMENT a main set of engines on the external booster... But to get the kind of performance you got out of the SSME's, and still re-use them profitably, just wasn't possible... So, the Russians took the cheaper approach of using conventional disposable boosters instead. But with a very cool reusable spaceplane attached so as to acquire the desired payload-recovery function. The Buran really was a better system when your goal is to recover payloads and you don't obtain any economic benefit from refurbishing your engines. The Russians decided they would rather use the space the Shuttle used for engines for things like payload/cargo and crew space (as well as a considerably more advanced avionic system than the Shuttle's, capable of flying back to the runway entirely autonomously- as it in fact did in the Buran's single orbital flight and re-entry/landing, which was completely unmanned...) Given the premium you paid for every cubic meter of volume in the Shuttle/Buran, they probably weren't entirely wrong in the assessment that the space was better used for other purposes than expensive-to-reuse engines... Regards, Northstar

The "brick-and-mortar" stores are largely going to disappear, one way or another. And the self-driving car is the future- terror won't change anything about that. The reality we need to embrace is that HUMANS ARE OBSOLETE for doing many jobs. With time, we will eventually automate so many of them (or replace them with more efficient systems, like online shopping) that we will simple be unable to employ most of the population. Laissez Faire capitalism is sowing the seeds of its own doom with technology and productivity- certain "adjustments" will eventually be needed. Mainly, we need to cut the link between employment and sustenance. Already we are developing a permanent underclass with large sections of our populace (even college graduates!) stuck in mind-numbing jobs in retail and food-service and paid barely-livable or unlivable wages... The solution is something like a Universal Basic Income- funded mainly by taxation of the rich. The wealthy are, after all, the ones who inevitably pocket all the profits of automation and ever-increasing productivity. Even when the workers simply work harder to produce more goods, they almost never, ever, ever get paid more for it- the rich simply pocket the extra profits and the income-gap grows... Meanwhile, corporations rarely get into price-wars anymore that would actually see these gain distributed back to the lower classes (through their paycheck purchasing more goods and services) because they form trusts and associations (legal or illegal) or work out unwritten agreements and understandings so as to avoid "destructive" (really only for the incomes of the rich) price-wars... The result is ever-increasing prices and a working class squeezed by stagnant wages. A Universal Basic Income allows us to provide the entirety of the population with the necessities it needs and eliminate social ills like homelessness and extreme poverty that capitalism has proven completely unable or unwilling to eliminate- even in EXTREMELY wealthy countries like the United States. Those at the top would have us blame the individual- call them "lazy" or "stupid", but the reality is it's the SYSTEM that is rigged- it forces the lower classes to work for unlivable wages, and stomach risks like going with little or no healthcare (the inability to meet medical bills is actually one of the leading causes of homelessness, by the way...) or working in a business that might close down or ends up laying off many of its workers... Those at the bottom cannot afford such risks when they are already teetering on the edge of survival- and the current welfare system is horrendously broken, with perverse incentives not to work and tremendous social stigmas for going onto it. We can do much better- and a Universal Basic Income is a VASTLY better option than the current welfare system (with none of the associated stigma, since EVERYONE receives it, rich or poor...) My point is that things like brick-and-mortar stores and trucking jobs are GOING to disappear, one way or another. We could delay this a good bit by implementing a low Universal Basic Income and greatly lowering the Minimum Wage (some might call this subsidizing businesses that pay the Minimum Wage- but the reality is the workers exist and need to be supported anyways, regardless of whether or not they are employed- so we might as well not ask businesses to pay their entire cost of living if it keeps them productively employed for longer into the forseeable future) in order to delay further automation, but the reality is sooner or later large segments of our population are going to be unemployed through no fault of their own, and we will need to find ways to adapt (hiring more teachers, police officers, and scientists funded by the government could put SOME of these people to work- but would require raising taxes on the rich even further...) Future cities need to be built with these future trends in mind- that people will work less in the future (either through higher unemployment or a decrease in the length of the working-week: another trend that could be supported by changes in labor laws and a Universal Basic Income), that more good will be ordered online rather than purchased in stores, and that cars will drive themselves (in fact, it would behoove many cities to eventually outlaw manually driving cars withing the city-limits: as computerized drivers will be able to safely drive in much more crowded streets without accidents...) Regards, Northstar

People hate/fear GM crops out of ignorance, not because there are good reasons for it. With time, these altitude are likely to change- either out of education or necessity to continue eating in an increasingly populous world... Also, how do you think they calculated the cost of underground farming? Or tabulated costs when they actually built working test-units to confirm their assumptions? (it turns out the costs were actually lower than they assumed, in fact) Of COURSE they accounted for energy costs. And no, they aren't too high- that was the point. The controlled environment allowed such massive gains in productivity as to outweigh the energy costs, and very nearly outweigh the costs of digging the tunnels (so, using existing tunnels it's cheaper- but digging new tunnels it's initially more expensive until you amortize the cost of the tunnel over many years...) Regards, Northstar

That is incorrect sir. History shows that lower wages on a national lever draw people into cities, not drive them out. Jobs tend to be easier to find in cities (especially important when nation-wide wages are low, and the welfare system is minimal), and you can survive there without a horse/car to get where you need to go. It's actually the rise of a middle class that could afford cars to commute long distances into cities every day that drove the creation of suburbs in the first place... The existence of a minimum wage well above the market-price of labor has had the odd effect of driving people out of cities. Mainly because the minimum wage is so much above market-prices for labor that employers tend to pay it wherever they can- which means wages at the bottom tend to be more or less the same in cities as in the countryside. Without such a high minimum wage, wages would be higher where demand for labor is highest- which tends to be in cities thanks to the concentration of industry and commerce... (also, labor unions do much better where industry and commerce are concentrated rather than diffuse- and tend to further drive up wages in cities...) Additionally, a high minimum wage makes it feasible for more people to afford cars to commute from suburbs into cities each day- an arrangement that makes living in suburbs but working in cities VASTLY more feasible... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To clarify- none of this should be taken as my endorsement of suburban sprawl, low wages for workers, the destruction of labor unions, or the abolishment of a minimum wage. In my opinion (actually, when you look at the economic value of a worker to an employer vs. what they are actually paid in a free marker capitalism with a competitive wage system like the United States, this a matter of economic FACT, not opinion... A worker's efforts might be worth $24/hour to an employer, yet he might be paid only $8/hour and the rest is siphoned up the corporate ladder- and this would be worse still with a lower minimum wage where employers could pay workers the market-value of their work- that is the lowest wage they could get away with based on the oversupply of labor vs. available jobs...) workers receive far less than their fair share of the economic pie (although a high minimum wage is the wrong way to change this- a Universal Basic Income is a better option, as it creates far less economic distortion and better income-securtiy...) I'm just elucidating how each factor affects this issue. Regards, Northstar

*cough* With ZERO subsidy?! Are you MAD?! EVERY, and I mean EVERY major agricultural or transportation system we have today benefitted (or continues to benefit) from heavy subsidies to help it develop at some point in its history... No. If the technology/system were cost-competitive today (which, as I've already stated, it's not- at least with current construction costs) then it should ABSOLUTELY be subsidized to help balance the costs of people adopting a new system and competing with an established one. Or the existing systems all heavily taxed to help change the balance of costs- but that's likely to be a lot less popular... Although such a discussion is more-or-less pointless when it comes to vertical farming, it's MASSIVELY relevant when it comes to something like Electric Cars. Or renewable energy. Or underground farming. The existing system ALWAYS has a massive amount of wealth, political capital, and sunk investments built up- and they DON'T go down easily to a newer, better system. At least some subsidy is ALWAYS necessary to level the playing-field, because otherwise established players will CRUSH a new technology that antiquates their own, even if that means selling at below-cost for an extended period of time to do so... (generally, they'd rather lose a little money now than lose a lot of money later, when a new industry obsoletes their own...) Regards, Northstar

Did you miss the part of the articles where they say these can be manufactured at a *fraction* of the cost of traditional solar panels? (or, sadly, like most people who post on articles in a forum did you simply not bother reading the article?) Yes, the best PROTOTYPE units can get 40%- those are the types of bleeding-edge ultra-expensive technology they send up on spacecraft when they can get them. The best units you can buy to, say, put on your house or factory rooftop, however, only can achieve around 20%... These optical rectennas should be able to regularly achieve 40% efficiency at a fraction of the cost of even medium-efficiency traditional photovoltaics once the technology is mature, at least according to the inventors (who also claim the technology could mature very quickly- MUCH faster than the PV cell development curve). So, perhaps a wise technology for the government to invest heavily in, if their claims turn out to be true. The higher efficiency is nice (and has practical benefits in particular for things like solar panels used to power electric ships and planes- though theses are still more a novelty than anything else, especially since we already possess the technical know-how to "manufacture" synthetic fossil fuels to continue to power our boats and planes once our "natural" supply runs out) but the COST advantage is game-changing... What planet are you living on? Haven't you ever heard of Moore's Law? Manufacturing semiconductors is an EXTREMELY cheap process when done in bulk nowadays, and that is *precisely* what we'd be doing for a device meant to replace traditional solar panel's role completely... Regards, Northstar

Carbon Footprint =/= Cost. I'm talking about dollars-and-cents COST of transporting food. Not just from the farm to the warehouse, but more importantly from the warehouse to the store (which is often accounted for differently than "Transportation" costs as "Distribution" costs). With food grown in the same building people live, it becomes a possibility to have people work part-time in the farms near where they live (more for diversity of activity and the chance to work with plants than as a major source of income) and collect part of the produce as the reward for their labor. This cuts out both transport to the warehouse AND to the store- as well as the need for retail clerks, managers and such to run as many grocery stores (which tend to be rare anyways in the downtown parts of cities) in the first place... Let's not also forget that part of the reason transport in the USA is "cheap" is large because we have a well-developed long-distance transportation infrastructure built and paid for generations ago (although much of that infrastructure is now falling apart, and won't be usable for much longer- thanks mainly to the Congressional Republicans' policy of "Starving the Beast"- that is, refusing to fund almost ANY infrastructure repair or maintenance projects unless certain laws are repealed requiring contractors to pay higher-than-market wages to the construction and maintenance workers on these contracts...) However in many other (especially developing) countries this does not hold true- and systems that reduce the need for construction of infrastructure in the first place tend to be much more cost-effective in such places. All this is NOT saying that Vertical Cities make economic sense- because they don't. You save a *little bit* on transportation and distribution costs (I never said it was a lot- despite some individuals mis-quoting me to try to give what I said that appearance), but you get saddled with a HUGE construction-cost burden that massively outweighs it. Construction of tall buildings would have to become MUCH cheaper before vertical farming would make any economic sense... A side-note: the main benefit of vertical farming is, once more, having an easily-controlled environment not subject to the vagaries of weather or free-roaming pests. For that reason UNDERGROUND farming is actually cheaper than aboveground farming if you do it in abandoned coal-mining tunnels and such (the safer ones not in danger of collapse or full of toxic chemicals). And not a heck of a lot more expensive than aboveground (that is, more expensive in the short-term, but in the long run it eventually pays for itself) if you dig out NEW tunnels for it. But, the cost of building such a controlled environment in a skyscraper is MUCH, MUCH higher and simply doesn't make any economic sense. Regards, Northstar

*cough* Given the massive amount of time allocated to complete the challenge, it's really not much of a limit. A clever player can still send dozens of Kerbals in the time allotted with sufficiently-clever design and launch-schedules... But weak computer are lucky if they can handle 4-Kerbal missions, if that...

You don't see anything like Sea Dragon anymore because the calculus has changed, so-to-speak. We have achieved enough improvement in "Smart Booster" performance, that it makes much less sense to trade performance for cost now. Sea Dragon was close to the peak of what a pressure-fed rocket could achieve (with MASSIVE benefit from the Square-Cube Law due to its huge size and RIDICULOUS expansion-ratios for its exhaust, including use of expandable nozzles), and the potential of such a design has only improved a little- mostly due to improvements in metallurgy and the economics of producing certain high-strength steel alloys (Sea Dragon was built mainly from steel, not aluminum, since it's easier to machine with existing low-cost techniques). On the other hand, Smart Booster technology still hasn't reached its theoretical peak (Full Flow Staged Combustion still hasn't seen hardly any use yet, for instance, aside from talk of the yet-to-be-built next-generation "Raptor" engine being developed by Space-X), and Space-X has worked out methods to MASSIVELY improve the efficiency of manufacturing "traditional" high-strength Aluminum-alloy "Smart Boosters", and has developed technology for first-stage re-usability on top of that... Compared to what Space-X has now, with the Falcon 9 (and soon the Falcon Heavy), Sea Dragon style rockets just don't make much sense anymore. Big Dumb Boosters would only be slightly cheaper in terms of cost-per-kg than expendable Falcon 9's, and reusable Falcon 9's beat something like the Sea Dragon by a long shot... (and that's INCLUDING the fact that Sea Dragon was actually designed for limited first-stage re-usability om the cost equations: but more in the sense of the Shuttle in that certain parts would have had to rebuilt after every launch due to the hard-splashdown of the first stage...) Sea Dragon and a Mars mission would have a much better (and cheaper) successor to Apollo and the Saturn V than the Shuttle and International Space Station. But it's all water under the bridge now- stuff like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the way forward. I just like to point at Sea Dragon and Big Dumb Boosters and say "Hah! That's the way we *SHOULD* have gone after Apollo!" Regards, Northstar

In order: (1) Range-safety is LESS of an issue with sea-launches. And it does drive up costs (although not significantly). The emphasis was on the lack of need for a launchpad, though. (2) Shipbuilding isn't cheap in absolute terms, but it is RELATIVELY much, much cheaper than current methods of building spacecraft. A ship is much cheaper in terms of cost for a given tonnage than building a spacecraft using current manufacturing methods. It's like the difference between a really expensive car and a really expensive airplane- sure, a Ferrari isn't cheap, but a private jet is a heck of a lot more expensive. Your argument holds no water (pun intended). (3) "Over-engineered" is the wrong choice of terms, and you know that. The idea isn't that expendable rockets are over-engineered, in the sense that people spend too much time designing them- the idea is that expendable rockets needlessly over-emphasize performance instead of cost. You *CAN* design a rocket that gets much worse performance (in terms of mass-ratio), is just as reliable, and is much cheaper. All you have to do is trade off performance for cost, which is what a Big Dumb Booster is all about. On the knitty-gritty level, a Big Dumb Booster works by having wider engineering-margins in its manufacture than a "Smart" Booster, such as to allow less precise manufacturing techniques. For instance, if you say that the wall of X fuel tank needs to be 11 mm +/- 2% instead of 10.75 mm +/- 0.1% you're going to get a cheaper rocket despite having an overall less efficient design, because cheaper manufacturing techniques can be used. This is how a Big Dumb Booster works- EVERYTHING is specified to a standard where there is more room for error in terms of its manufacture without part stresses falling outside acceptable safety limits, but the trade-off is that you get a much, much worse mass-ratio despite getting a better cost-per-kg to LEO... The bigger rocket can't launch from any existing launchpad, so you have to launch it at sea (which is actually cheaper than building a new launchpad, but requires a bit more engineering to make work). However the benefit is a lower cost-to-orbit, despite having a massively less efficient (but still extremely safe) rocket. Regards, Northstar

From what I saw browsing the 1.1 pre-release sub-forum just before the release, it doesn't look like the reliability is quite as good as it ought to be yet. I really wish they would have taken 3-4 more days to squash a few more bugs before release (modders also would have had more time to port their mods during this time anyways, so for many players the delay would have meant little...) Still, I congratulate SQUAD on this achievement. I just hope they will realize that KSP still isn't quite where it ought to be yet- only now is it finally nearing the point where I think they even should have released it as 1.0 in the first place (IMHO Unity 5 should have been a prerequisite for the 1.0 release), minus a few bugs...

Sea-launches are *very* practical in the real world. They eliminate a lot of range-safety issues and the need for a launchpad entirely, thus bringing down costs considerably... And, I think history has shown that the prohibitive limit on space exploration has been its cost. Politicians (shortsightedly) simply aren't willing to spend very heavily on space programs, as they are too ignorant to see their many benefits. If we can bring down the cost of getting mass to orbit (which the Sea Dragon would have done, for very large payloads- or something like the Aquarius that can't properly be called a "Big, Dumb Booster" due to its low reliability could have done for small payloads) we can get a lot more done in space exploration. Speaking of Big Dumb Boosters, I think the *REAL* problem was nobody designed one for small to medium-sized payloads (except the Aquarius- which once again didn't really qualify as a Big Dumb Booster as it had good mass-ratios and wasn't very reliable). A Big Dumb Booster designed for small payloads might have been as large as a medium-sized "Smart" Booster (due to poor mass-ratios), but it would have been just as reliable (in fact more so), and a lot cheaper per kg of payload to orbit... The Aquarius never really hit it off due to its poor reliability (politicians don't want to see failed rocket launches in the news), but once again it wasn't really a true Big Dumb Booster. It didn't meet the primary criteria of having a poor mass-ratio, and besides there is nothing about a Big Dumb Booster that says that having a low reliability is OK (and Sea Dragon was VERY reliable). Regards, Northstar

That's not how Big Dumb Boosters work... Big Dumb Boosters are so-named because of their poor mass-ratios (ratio of mass on the launchpad to payload), *not* because they are unreliable. In fact, the Sea Dragon would have been MORE reliable than the Saturn V- mainly because with a Big Dumb Booster you assume a certain amount of leeway for everything in manufacturing (this is why they are cheap- they have very loose manufacturing margins, which brings down manufacturing costs immensely), whereas with a "Smart Booster" you design everything to work just-so, with *very* tight manufacturing margins, and if ANYTHING goes wrong, the whole rocket tends to fail... The greatest difficulty with something like the Sea Dragon was its ludicrous size. It would have been big, extremely cheap (for its payload capacity), more reliable than any other launch vehicle in existence at the time, and once again BIG. That's why they called it the "Sea Dragon"- because it was so huge the only option would have been to launch it at sea, as no existing launchpad could have launched a rocket of that size... No, Sea Dragon was built for crew and would have been HIGHLY reliable (and definitely safer than the Saturn V). Once again, Big Dumb Boosters like Sea Dragon aren't "Dumb" because of low reliability, they are "Big" and "Dumb" because of their terrible mass-ratios. They are actually SAFER and *less* likely to fail than conventional "Smart" boosters... I think the problem here is low-reliability concepts like Aquarius stealing the title "Big, Dumb, Booster". Aquarius was neither Big (only 1 ton payload capacity) nor Dumb (its mass-ratio was comparable to "Smart" boosters), rather it relied on an only 66% target success rate for its launches to bring costs down by allowing looser engineering margins (whereas something like the Sea Dragon compensated with over-engineering to keep success rates extremely high, Aquarius simply swallowed high failure-rates as acceptable for cargo-launches...) Aquarius only relied on water-launches because of its low reliability (to alleviate range-safety issues). Unlike the Sea Dragon, which would have been *extremely* safe, but so huge that it could be supported by no existing launchpad... Regards, Northstar

Construction costs are indeed the killer- but I think you drastically underestimate transportation costs. Oil for transportation isn't cheap, and it's only going to get more expensive. The energy costs of actually growing crops in a vertical or underground farm really are much, much less than the costs of transporting fresh produce into a city at today's transport costs (not to mention the controlled environment drastically reduces your need for pesticides- which also cost energy to produce) the problem is mainly the construction costs being prohibitive, not the ongoing energy costs (which are much, much, much lower than transportation costs to ship food into a city). Regards, Northstar

You're taking the Peripheral Route to analyzing the issue- looking at the superficial aspect of the website rather than the scientific merits of the idea... Regardless, here are some more reliable articles on the topic: http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-optical-rectenna-converts-light-directly-into-a-dc-current http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/optical-rectenna-could-doube-solar-cell-efficiency No, Carbon Nanotubes have only proven to be a pain to create large/long continuous tubes of. There's no problem with creating forests of lots of microscopically-short tubes, which is all these Optical Rectennas require... 60-70% is far beyond the theoretical efficiency limits of multi-junction PV cells, so where do you get that idea? This technology would be capable of 40% efficiency, and that's already a huge step above the 20% efficiency that the very best commercial photovoltaic cells are capable of today, and on par with (but much cheaper than) the 40% efficiency that the very best prototype units are capable of today (and which are close to the theoretical maximum performance for the technology, at least with current understanding/materials...) Regards, Northstar

Vertical cities and vertical farming are cool ideas, but sadly they don't make a lot of economic sense... More compact urban development would require much higher transportation costs. Theoretically the oil supply beginning to dry up and being unable to keep pace with demand could drive this, but electric cars will ultimately allow us to just power our automobiles with coal and wind power... (preferably Wind, it's actually the cheapest power source- as coal produces a lot of pollution and CO2 that is not accounted for in its direct costs- some estimates indicate the TRUE cost of coal is as much as 3x the cost currently paid by consumers- as the ecological, health and property damage from the sulfur and nitrogen emissions, increases in lung-cancer and acid-rain from a coal power plant are not currently paid for by the consumer of the electricity...) As for more compact farming- there are a lot of solutions to obtain more food from less land we're already not making use of. For one, genetic engineering of crops is still really just in its infancy compared to the increases in crop yields we could obtain with more aggressive adoption of the technology. Further, multi-cropping (that is, planting multiple crops in the same field- such as vegetables beneath apple trees, or potatoes in the same fields as brussel sprouts...) really doesn't see enough use either, mainly as it's difficult to automate and thus requires a lot of labor. New technologies to permanently improve the soil such as Biochar hold a lot of potential to improve the base fertility of farmland as well. And finally, there's a lot to be said for growing crops underground in manmade caves, Dwarf Fortress style (just without the giant man-eating spiders), with growth-lamps, as doing this allows you to carefully control the temperature, humidity, and keep out many pests/weeds entirely (in fact, some studies have shown it's CURRENTLY economical in certain abandoned mining tunnels, with the gains in productivity making up for the costs of electricity). All of these will see more widespread use as increasing population drives increases in the the cost of food, driving farmers to increase yields in progressively more expensive ways, long before we start making serious use of vertical farming... EDITL Scratch that- it looks like we're ALREADY starting to make use of underground farms in some places (notably London), even if it's still just a novelty at this point: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/agriculture/farming/11706406/Londons-first-underground-farm-opens-in-WW2-air-raid-shelter.html http://growing-underground.com/ http://www.gizmag.com/growing-underground-subterranean-urban-farm-london/38297/ Regards, Northstar

Let's not forget THIS baby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_%28rocket%29 Would have been a great low-cost option for a Mars mission- but too high of a payload capacity for anything much smaller... Regards, Northstar