78stonewobble

But seriously... Establishing a permanent martian settlement does not require "impossible technologies" and we have enough people to build a rocket and all the materials needed to fuel one or 10.000 rockets full of supplies and building materials. With that it's possible. I just don't know how many i-pads and designer kitchens we're prepared to give up to do that and I'm not certain I want to give up too many myself. Allmost anything is possible with enough money and lives thrown at it.

Haha, yeah thats definately not gonna happen. Especially since the number was based on guestimates on global domestic product. Don't think the chinese or the russians wanna sponsor nasa or vice versa, probably won't even happen across the atlantic and we're relatively "close". It was just mostly an illustration that the entirety of humanity do have quite a bit of ressources available overall. Ie. during ww2 humanity could afford to have like 100 mio. people "wasting" their time fighting (necessary but sad waste of time and lives). Today it would be quite a few hundred mio. we could dedicate to any important enough task.

Hmm... I couldn't say yes or no, because I think that it'll have to be replaced with something different. Something that allows for some ownership, but not ownership at any cost. Ie. there should be provisions making it illegal to bulldoze an apollo landing site due to it's historic value or wipe out that single oasis on mars with life or other stuff like that. Sites of special scientific or historical significance should not just be destroyed. I think we should try to behave a little better in space than we have done here on earth. But as long as those provisions are made I have no problem with atleast certain places on the celestial sphere being exploited for their ressources. EDIT: In the beginning I think it would probably be best for not to allow it to be a "free for all"... but rather we set aside certain areas on ie. the moon or individual asteroids for private use. EDIT2: Ownership as such, would only be applicable, if it's a permanent presence.

I think that it is technically possible to create a permanent colony on mars, if not exactly today, we can do it with very near future technology. This is what I meant, by assuring supplies. If we send people with early generation food/air and water supply technology, it will most probably fail in some way at some point and need repair and backup. Alltoghether it would be extremely expensive, akin to ie. the apollo program or the manhattan project, but not impossible. All that is lacking is will. I do belive that establishing a 2nd and permanently self-sustainable presence of humans and life on another celestrial object is the single most important objective for humanity, but it is not an especially pressing concern right now. Stil I think it would be worth it to sacrifice half to 1 percent of the global GDP on it. Which is still something like 359-718 billion US dollars. EDIT: I agree that relieving earths population pressure is well beyond any current technology, however, that isn't the point of going in my example, which is more of a humanity and life backup thing.

I'm all for the "one way" missions to mars actually. As long as it's a voluntary thing and they'll get the necessary support to stay alive, even if certain things break down.

Oh, it's not a scam, if you truely belive your idea is great. Doesn't necessarily mean the idea is any good tho... Besides it would be discrimination to not allow delusionals to be entrepeneurs.

Them? Don't you mean "us"... us with access to internet and using enough ressources that could sustain like what? 3-10 times as many people in the developing countries? The last report I read guestimated that global warming will cause an extra 5 mio. deaths a year over 25 years. Thats allmost as bad as ww2 alltogether, certainly up there with the worst genocides ever. Atleast from a numerical pov. rather than percentages. You don't need a gun to cause deaths... All you need is a bright idea, get wealthy and have kids. But I like to be rich (relatively)...

Yeah, I rewatched the show the other day and those guys were some extremely cool customers. Heck, they're slightly intimidating as grandfathers! *lol*

Sorry, I read it as that... *lol* I read recently that the public support for the apollo program, when it was running, only 53 percent thought it was worth the cost. Which seems a bit sad. Personally I believe it was worth it. Not so much for any technologies developed or spin-off's. Simply because of it's ability to let us all dream and inspire to greater things.

Irrelevant... If there is only 2 choices of action / inaction: A: Leads to 95 percent of everyone dead. B: Leads to 100 percent of everyone dead. Then A is the morally correct one. No matter how many you'll be killing... Because it's morally acceptable to kill to save lives and thats what you're doing in A. B... Is just killing. Oh sorry for this off topic'ness it's just an interesting moral dilemma imho, if farfetched as hell.

Well I'm not suggesting mass murder just for the sake of suggesting it... *lol* I literally meant that, if the only alternative to mass murder is an even bigger murder. If there's another alternative... offcourse I'd go with that. PS: I'm not worried... I think "highly" of humanity. We're like the ape version of rats and roaches... Some of us are gonna make it somehow.

Had it been up to me, we would have gone nuclear a long time ago. I'd prefer some "local" "garbage" problems, rather than being part of killing 125 mio. people plus... -..- Sure, the supply isn't endless, but there would have been alot less rush to go with alternate energy supplies. ... In any case... If we need to modify the environment large scale and relatively quickly I think spacebased solar shades is the best way to go. Combined with widespred rationing of ressource usage offcourse.

Yes, I did have history in school. You missed the point of my post... and the irony of your own though. Which boiled down to commit mass murder to prevent mass murder and killing so one self can survive. In any case, my point was that, in such an extreme situation. A situation where we have to kill ie. 95 % of the people and the only other alternative, through action or inaction, is to kill 100 % of people. Then the choice that kills the fewest people, or conversely saves the most lives (depending on whether you're a glass half full or half empty kinda guy), is the morally correct one. If the result is as you describe the scenario, then it wont matter who started and who ended, the problem might fix itself anyway and very few will hold any moral highground, when it's all over.

I'm not convinced renewable energy is a solution. If I remember correctly... (big if) here in Denmark, we have enough (have had for quite a few years actually) windpower capacity to generate about 60 percent of the countries electrical power. However, since we need to have our coalpower plants running to cover demand on less windy days and so on, we can actually only use 30 percent wind generated electrical power. PS: I just checked for today... It's quite windy here so we're generating quite a lot of windpower today. Sounds great, but we still can't turn off the coalpower plants. So we have to export this energy. If we had to cover all our, not only electrical power, but also heating power, from ie. wind and solar power It would be an incredibly massive project. Building something massive "pollutes", in the sense that it adds to global heating. It pollutes to take ressources out of the ground. It pollutes to turn those ressources into turbine and blade and solar power panels. It pollutes to transport them around. It pollutes to replace co2 absorbing plants with massive areas of powerplants. Denmark, a small country with only 5 mio. people, would probably need 148 squre kilometers of solar powerplant to cover the electrical needs or 2000 windmills or a combination there of. In addition to that comes the added poweruse for heating.

Well, if we literally are in a situation, where the alternative to... well mass murder... is that all of mankind dies, but also any chance of life on earth (sofar the only place we know there is life)... I'd have to say it's the only place I'd be ok with it. Because the alternative action or inaction causes more deaths (all) rather than the action of mass murder saves "some" lives. It is morally acceptable to kill, to save lives. Ie. for a cop to kill someone that is a danger to others (even if it's just 1 other person, which numerically comes out the same, but we'd rather have a cop living than a guy thats a danger to cops). In principle the amount shouldn't matter. Realistically and for questions of morality, I'd rather spend the ressources making sure that some lives are saved on mars or in a space habitat though.

*lol* Well sometimes... You'll never agree on somthing, but thankfully people don't have to do that and it would be a peacefull, but incredibly boring world if everyone allways agreed. In any case, I might have rustled some feathers and I'm sorry for that. I tried to stay on the ball, while keeping the debate as sober as it has been.

Suppose the engines do get nerfed and a player then mods the engines to get back to his subjectively preferred efficiency/power/realism level, the original one. He would then get barred from a challenge... And enter this thread .... and we'd have the exact same argument to change them back. If it's unfair you get barred from challenges from choosing the way you want to play, then it is equally unfair that guy gets barred from challengs from choosing the way he wants to play. Then it would be unfair to nerf the engines. These 2 cancel each other out. There have been many great arguments as to how the engines should be balanced and why, if one wishes them to be balanced. I've yet to see a good argument as to why they should be balanced for everyone, that isn't ultimately just based on: Because I prefer it that way. So much so, that other people should be forced to play my way. Again cancelling eachother out. IMHO, there is more choice in leaving the engines be for now and thus less forcing people to play a particular style, since all the original engines are still there. Anything you could do before is still possible.

I am sorry if I in anyway misunderstood your post. It happens... I jumped on the statements that means that the new parts limits people's "variety of playstyles" or "creativity" or what you want to call it... due to their higher efficiency and/or power. It might do so, however, as I said, there has allways been one hyperoptimised solution to anything in the game and that has seemingly not limited creativity noticeable. So no, it isn't obvious and it certainly isn't proven that having an easy way of doing things mean it will get picked an unproportional number of times or significantly curtail people's wishes and ability to be creative. This next part is not so much at you, but a more general extension of the above. Nonetheless, even if it was true, that some undefinable amount of people picked an easy option. It still haven't been established that this is a problem. Especially as long as there is a choice so that people who want to make it a bit easier can do so and those that want it harder can make it arbitrarily much harder on themselves.

Haven't the suns total luminosity increased somewhat since then? It's not much over 1000's of years, but those eras of many times higher co2 in the atmosphere are quite a few millions years back right? If I remember correctly and that's allways a big if...

Hmm I'd argue that the fact that they use cartoonish characters does suggest that realism was never the utmost priority versus "fun". In any case deadly reentry has never been stock in the game, so with that in mind, I ask you this. What has these new parts removed from the game that you can no longer do? Secondly... How does it affect your gaming experience with KSP, that another player in ie. singapore uses one of the new parts?

The B2 also had quite a few problems in the beginning of it's service, if I remember correctly.

There's a good reason for those responses, since the argument opposing this basically boils down to: "This is how I prefer my Kerbal space program and I thus think it should apply to everyone else. The game should actually be molded to fit my subjective needs, not others." That is presumtious and egotistical. You say there is now no "need" for anyone to put any thought into vehicle design, because there is one most "efficient" way to do things now. Well, there has allways been a most "efficient" way to do things and that hasn't stopped people from trying out a multitude of different designs and ways of doing things. So what's really inarguable is that having an "easy option", as you so derogatorily call it, doesn't really matter much, as long as there is also options to do it another way.

I suggest packing leather pants and Bruce Willis... Good luck stilgar PS: Also recommending the alarmclock mod for multiple flights.

Assuming that is desirable for players, ie. that they think efficient rockts is fun, you don't need to balance the new parts to do that. You could use a combination of better and/or expanded tutorials and add motivation to strive for increased difficulty via ie. bonus science from use of simpler parts or rocket efficiency. Personally I think it's better to let people be able to make it as hard or easy as they want it to. That way people can start out easy and, if it's for them, get into challenging themselves. If not, they can still have fun with it.

The "Oberoni Fallacy" is not entirely true... Whether there is a problem is subjective. The problem is hypothetical from one point of view and real from another point of view. Obviously you can construe a solution to a hypothetical problem just as you would with a "real" problem. Besides it was an ironic comment on another posters similar argument and the point was entirely different.