KerikBalm

Honestly, sometimes I think that we should have done nothing less severe neasures because of things like this. Mostly Old people would die, but by and large they lived full lives with a quality of life better than younger generations - who are now even worse off. We are crippling the young generation's future too buy a largely spoiled generation that caused massive problems another 5 years before something else gets them. And I say this as someone who has benefited from the pandemic because I now work for a virology department at a hospital...

You are making an affirmative claim on the basis of a lack of evidence. This is not proper Not correct according to what is currently known. We do NOT know that it is more infectious. We do NOT know if it is vaccine resistant. We DO have hints that it is more infectious. We DO have hints that the vaccine may be less effective against this variant ... by how much, we don't know. Some of its mutations are known to be associated with escape from neutralizing activity from convalescent serum or monoclonal antibodies. In particular the N439K mutation and the delta69-70 mutations, which were also present in that mink variant that everyone was concerned about. We also see some mutations that may increase affinity for Ace2 (Y453F, and N501Y if I remember correctly off the top of my head), which should have a similar effect to the D614G mutation - which hasn't actually proven to be particularly more contagious even though it is now dominant worldwide - it may just slightly outcompete other variants within each host... On the other hand, this new variant has a very early stop codon in the ORF8 gene, which should result in a complete loss of function. Another variant with a deletion in the ORF8 gene was determined to be milder. ORF8 is also involved in evasion of cellular immunity (as opposed to neuturalizing antibodies), which could make it MORE susceptible to the vaccine if the vaccine elicits effective cellular and humoral immunity (some vaccines only elicit the later) - which I think it does. Then it has a number of other mutations that have completely unknown effects. So don't go saying "correct" to affirmative claims about this strain. We don't know one way or the other at this point, and there are signs that point to valid concerns. At the same time, don't jump to conclusions like this: We are studying the new variant, wait for more information, do not jump to conclusions.

Too early to tell, it may also be milder

Expanding the kerbin system as an intermediate to interstellar travel is a really good idea, and I hope that they do it, and it would be a shame if they didn't just because they wanted to keep the kerbin system the same. I want OPM+ kuiper belt to include eris, makemake, hamua, and Sedna analogues. Heck, throw in a hypothetical planet 9 analogue. Even if planet 9 doesn't exist, something similar could exist, and kerbin system != Sol system. It would be a great distant (but not interstellar level distant) place to go to after the ksp1 planets that are all perfectly reachable with standard chemical propulsion

You can't rely on a short range relay antenna and a long range direct antenna for your relay probe (I know, it seems like you should be able to). So if your only relay antenna is... say an HG-5, then you won't be able to relay from Duna to Kerbin (you could relay from an HG 5, to anther relay antenna, such as an RA-15/100, and then get a connection to kerbin. So you could have 1 RA-100 in the duna system to relay back to kerbin, and then multiple smaller HG-5s to relay all around Duna so you have a connection anywhere on the surface). Your relay sat could have a communotron 88-88, and be connected to kerbin, while being unable to relay anything to kerbin with its HG-5 antenna

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/here-be-dragons-the-mythic-bite-of-the-komodo#.Ucq2z_n3pz1 Komodo dragons normally kill their prey quickly, and didn't evolve to bite, wait, and eat

First is a really good point. Second, that could work, or you could use superior technology to make your own bioweapon against the offending native species. Release an aerosol, wait for the resulting pandemic to remove the problem. Rate of diffusion. The bigger the animal, the longer it takes to kill, and also the longer it takes to inject a sufficient dose thanks to a v^2 vs v^3 oof the cross section of the venom channel to volume of target. Venom becomes too slow when the other creature can kill you mechanically in a matter of seconds. Or how about just a fence and net? Or just genetically modify your cattle to have a chitinous carapace that is thick enough to stop the bites of these bird-things

I fully support adding kuiper belt and scattered disk objects, not just ot other systems, but to the hoe kerbin system. I know they said that they want to keep the kerbin system the same, but reall,y they could keep everything hte same, and add a proper outer solar system. It just makes sense that you'd go visit bodies like Eris, makemake, Hamua, and Sedna, before going interstellar. Incorporate OPM, and expand it further. I'm not sure I'd go for plant IX though... while there seems to be more evidence for it than metastable metallic hydrogen, its not conclusive. On the other hand, this isn't the Sol system, so it can have a planet IX analogue, even if our solar system doesn't have a true planet IX

Yea, which is why the proportion of nitrogen would be lowered to about 8% at 10 bar. I mean, you could remove it completely, but you'd want it to grow food. You could put a nitrogen containing fertilizer in the greenhouse soils, and just have a helium and O2 atmosphere in the colony

Well, this is going off topic, but I don't neccassarily agree. I think kids asking questions is a good thing, and can show that they have understood what was given to them, and are thinking about it. Some teaching methods will first ask a student what they think and why. It is important that students understand the reasoning behind the science that iis taught to them, and how we know what we know. They shouldn't just accept what they are told without question.

I would be shocked if kids aren't taught the above facts in school. However, I would also ask what age are you talking about. Teaching about electron layers comes up quickly in chemisty, as is what they are numbered after, etc. Isotopes aren't gone into detail until later (other than acknowledging that they exist and have different numbers of neutrons). So I wouldn't expect this to be taught to an 8 year old yet, but I would expect it to be taught at some point in school. Also, its good if they ask why, but I think many kids will just understand more mechanical stuff intuitively, like how angling an engine can make you turn, and how offset thrust can make you turn... I mean really, if you can understand why thrust needs to be balanced, you can understand how RCS works. If you can't understand that, you won't get far anyway. I, for one, do not want to see KSP dumbed down any further. It doesn't have to be "smartened up", and it can have more tutorials to try to explain things better, but the core gameplay should not be dumbed down just to reach poorly educated children.

a tutorial with a bunch of reading may not be a good idea. Just have a tutorial that has you fly rockets with/without various control mechanisms, in a regime where you encoutner their limits, with popup hints when those limits are reached... like when egine shuts off, it pops up with "note that engine gimballing cannot control your rocket when the engine isnt firing"... or the tutorial purposefully has you use up all your rcs, then it tells you what happened. anyway, yes i dont expect saturation in the game, much as i want it

Well their strong torque is a separate issue. They could still have a high saturation threshold, sufficient for a small-mid sized beginner craft to get to orbit. Besides, if one uses controllable fins, or a gimballing engine, it wouldn't be a problem until a coast phase. Ksp2 is supposed to have better tutorials anyway Furthermore, in ksp1, already we have some command pods with built in rcs thrusters, and monoprop storage. You could also tweak that so that q new player should have sufficient monoprop for control in space for their first orbit. You could even have rcs automatically activate when no other control option is available... disable-able of course, with a popup hint when it switches for newbies

Light sail plus big arsch laser installation = interstellar propulsion. I'd like to see them combined with a beamed power mechanic, where they (and other types of drives) can be powered by sunlight, or lasers/microwave arrays. They could lead to cool hybrid craft using sails close to stars and colonies with power beaming arrays, and some other propulsion (chemical, nuclear, purple space magic) at more distant destinations.

Well, absent small things that add up over time like photon pressure, residual drag, and tidal forces, reaction wheels would only saturate if they are expected to apply torque in one direction for too long (such as fighting a thrust imbalance), and thus saturation shouldn't be a problem in most cases. Of course, then one might make the counter argument that if the above is true, why bother... I guess that depends if people will use reaction wheels in ways that are abusive or not... if not used in an abusive way, then there's not likely to be a saturation problem.$ But I imagine there will be fighting thrust torque from STS style launchers, craft that become unbalanced when docking another craft to it, and perhaps some hammer-throw like decouplings. I'm still in favor of saturatable reaction wheels, but I'm not expecting them. They wouldn't work properly without persistent rotation (hence, wouldn't work well in KSP1), so since that is in, it shouldn't be too much to add them. Each wheel can have an X, Y, and Z torque-seconds threshold. It starts at 0, and torquing clockwise along the X axis increases the toroque-seconds count, until it reaches the maximum, then no more torquing clockwise along the wheel's X axis, but you can still torque counterclockwise along the X axis to bring that back down to zero, and then if you torque longer, it goes to the negative threshold value, and stops being able to produce counter-clockwise torque. I'd have a button to desaturate the wheels automatically... and then you just deal with whatever rotation that imparts to your craft. Then with reaction wheel torque off, you use RCS to stop the rotation - RCS on, reaction wheels off, SAS on... done... reaction wheels fully desaturated. I don't think it would be too much of a problem or be too hard to implement.

Regarding the mutations. Once the vaccine is out and approved, then simple modifications can be released similar to the yearly flu-vaccines. Immunity is expected to be unreliable after 1 year anyway (it is with other coronaviruses). However, even if you lose immunity after 1 year, its unlikely that you'll lose a protective effect. Your antibody titers will be down, the binding affinity for the next years strain may be suboptimal, but your immune response should still be somewhat effective. My pet hypothesis is that the reason this virus is so bad is that nobody has had it before. Get it as a kid, not that big of a deal, similar to other "common" coronaviruses. Get "common" coronaviruses as an elderly adult... well you've had it many times over the years, you've got some protection against it, not that big of a deal (although some "common" coronaviruses can cause serious complications in the elderly, but lets face it, if you are on death's doorstep already, it doesn't take much to cause serious complications) Get this one as an elderly adult... you've had no exposure to it, and not even a somewhat effective pre-existing immunity... it hits you hard... I expect after a few years of taking vaccines, and natural infections among younger populations, that it will cease to be much worse than the common cold viruses. Until then, stay safe... and it sucks that we have yet another virus to be a pain in the ass in the winters...

Nate has confirmed (in a reply to one of my posts no-less) that the star systems will be visible already, and you will need telescopes to detect planets and gather rough data on the planets around them. Furthermore, IRL, more movement is seen from parallex as earth goes around the sun, then from drift due to motion around the galactic center, IIRC. Anyway, the motion is expected to be small relative to a telescope's FOV, so the telescope could just have a fixed orientation. Additionally, we don't know if the star systems move relative to each other (around some sort of pseudo-galactic core), or if they are fixed relative to each other (as nearby stars are, for practical purposes over human lifespans). Also, they could just have you select a star to observe, disregarding telescope orientation, as the KSP1 sentinel telescopes disregard orientation (only factoring in orbital parameters). I expect KSP2 to be more polished, but it is not strictly neccessary. Anyway, apparently persisten rotation = confirmed. Yes, these things would be nice, good to hear that persisistent rotation = confirmed. Now the question will be if comm net dish orientation will matter (strictly speaking, comm net isn't even confirmed) If orientation matters, I hope we have robotics and automation tools to help keep alignment of dishes without having to rotate the whole craft, and match rotation rates just right.

@shdwlrd Why? You need sentinel telescopes to find asteroids in ksp, but there is no persistent rotation

I for one would like it if it comes with persistent rotation. That said, I doubt that it would be included

Its a bit of a necro, but I saw some points I had overlooked and not addressed: Well, I am hoping that they expand the NTR lineup. Why not gas cores? liquid cores too. And pebble beds, and LANTRs, especially LANTRs and pebble beds to overcome the low TWRs. I didn't say it did, I was referencing new challenges provided by new systems and their planets/moons. When you add the PSM engine to make getting to LKO trivial, you also affect the challenge of every new body. The only way to reintroduce a challenge to those, is to pump the numbers up as far as dV and required TWR. If the engine essentially functions like a chemical rocket, then its just a reskin of the old challenge, like the old RPGs with reskins (or even just different colors) that have better stats to match your characters better stats. From my point of view, its the automated supply routes that are there to remove old challenges. From my point of view, its the automated supply routes that are there to ferry fuel up. If the PSM engine functions just like a chemical engine with no specific quirks, then a chemical only challenge becomes the same thing as a rescaled system +stock parts challenge in KSP 1 (which, granted is something I do, having moved from 1x to 3x to 4x scale). Because it doesn't just make getting to LKO easier, it makes getting to orbit of any body easier. It doesn't seem very engaging, and its not even realistic (as upgrading an solid core NTR from a design with channels through a reactor to a pebble bed design would). NTRs and beamed power make the challenges different, not the same challenge, but with the dV reqs and engine Isp pumped up. The same can be said for establishing PSM channelling temples for PSM engines. The gameplay benefit is more in depth craft design, and new types of craft, like hybrid craft that depart under beamed power, and operate under chemical/nuclear at the destination. Nuclear could be a good choice at the destination, giving you good performance when there is no colony to irradiate, while beamed power close to the colony gets you good performance when close to a colony that reacts badly to irradiation. It would be a fundamentally differnt craft design. My fear with some other engines is that you build the same type of craft, just with better stats. Direct harnessing of solar energy close to stars is also an interesting possibility, perhaps some worlds don't need beamed power at the destination, as long as you don't land on the night side... granted, this is a bit similar to using OP ion engines in KSP1 (I hope that is gone in KSP2, since it supports thrusting while on rails/when the ship isn't the active vessel.

[snip] Yet, if you meant dry mass, you make inaccurate statements (high dry mass just means a higher thrust engine is required, its not a case of "no matter the engine"). You mention cooling stuff and that thrust will suffer, so I thought that you meant that cooling limits power output of the laser, and thus the thrust of a laser engine. It doesn't make sense if you aren't talking about lasers as an engine. FWIW, if a laser if 50% efficient, and its powerful enough to achieve kinetic effects, then it just produces 2x as much heat for the same kinetic effect as a 100% efficient railgun, so its actually not that bad. If you are trying to achieve kinetic effects, a pulse laser's heat sink is most important, and radiators only affect firing rate, but for a single large blast, you only need a sufficient heat sink. So when you said thrust, it seems you meant high dry mass. [snip] I really have no idea what you meant here, and I cannot even formulate a guess as to how those two statements are linked. The QED of the second statement seems to indicate that the point of this thread was to show "people already living in massive rotating space habitats with constant 1g acceleration scifi spaceships that either do not use propellant or are ridiculously efficient with it", but I suspect you meant what the abbreviation "eg" (or maybe "ie") means. [snip]

[snip] Ok... And this relates to what I said how? Do you mean thrust to weight ratio? or more properly, acceleration? You need to be precise when discussing technical subjects No, it doesn't, TWR does [snip]

As mentioned, why would you blast mine at all? By burning, I assume you mean melting, and that will take the most heat. For effect on target, you get the best damage per unit energy if you cause kinetic effects on your target. Nuclear thermal can have great thrust. You make a lot of sweeping statements with no facts or math behind them. [snip]

Im talking about weaponry, not as an engine. Lasers for thrust are best used for beamed power, where the laser isn't on the ship being accelerated. Also FELs can have decent efficiency (50%). Vaporizing a solid fuel block (ablating) can get decent thrust and isp, but not really comparable to a gas core ntr. Still, nuclear power + laser will do better than solar and ion. Also, isru options around the asteroid belt are great

Would it though? What would be the gas density if all matter in the observable universe were to be uniformly distributed. Space is huge, but so are black holes, I can't even judge the order of magnitude of the orders of magnitude So I thought more about it, you would just have a large hot hydrogen envelope, and a smaller colony hanging below it. At 10 bar, Saturn is a chilly 10 C, but just put on a coat. Your colony atmosphere would be like 2% oxygen, 8% nitrogen, and 90% helium. Gravity is below 1.1G, and you can survive in 10 bar... Although wind-chill factor is going to be higher because of the increased pressure... Maybe go a bit deeper, but if people have lived at 60 atmospheres for months, there is surely a place where you could comfortably go outside with just a breathing mask. Don't expect to ever leave though