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Wait wait wait THE DUST? Talk more about the dust

Long-term Laythe - Part 28 Thompbles's Travels Three When we left our brave explorers, Thompbles, Hellou, and Emilynn Kerman had just departed Thompbles Island in the Airedale, heading northeast to Manley Island in their quest to explore strange new places, seek out the boundaries of kethane deposits, and boldly have a generally enjoyable outing. Below, the Airedale out in mid-ocean, with no sight of land in any direction (and you can see a long way cruising along at an altitude of 12 kilometers). I don't know about you, but I always get nervous flying over oceans out of sight of land (although flying through a vacuum millions of kilometers from land doesn't bother me, oddly enough). Thompbles landed the Airedale by the GasStation 3 at the "Manley base" site. Hellou: "You know... it really is kind of disconcerting to look up and see a giant green planet hanging over your head." Thompbles: "It always seemed to bother Aldner. It doesn't seem too odd to me." Thompbles: "Let's see if we can get this plane docked to the GasStation." Emilynn: "You better hope we can...we don't have enough fuel left in the Airedale to fly home." Hellou: "Why didn't anybody tell me about the happy possibility of being stranded here?" Emilynn: "Oh, passengers never need to worry about the fun stuff." Thompbles: "We have many rescue options: remotely-piloted BirdDogs, spaceplanes, SSTUBBY, NAMOR... but the most efficient probably would be using the RASSTO SSTO. Besides, since we got the software update that allows us to control the hydraulics of the lander legs, it's easier to get one of the refueling ports at the right height. Hmm... How does the docking port alignment look through your window, Emilynn?" Emilynn: "Move forward a bit more...10 centimeters." Thompbles: "OK. And now, nose gear down....and CLICK! We have fuel." The crew got out to have a look at the Manley base site. Hellou: "Ah. I see we have another one of Aldner's silly flags here." Emilynn: "You don't think she's a cutie?" Hellou: "I think she's freakishly thin. " Emilynn: "Like those elves you like?" Hellou: "Elves are different. Besides, if that's supposed to be Laythe, she'd be freezing her butt off. You don't approve of these flags, do you, Thompbles?" Thompbles: "Me? Don't mind me...I'm just seeing what Aldner left behind in the half-tank storage compartment. There might be surprise snacks for supper." Emilynn: "Hellou, take a picture of me by the flag so I can send it to Buzz!" The next morning, the crew set out to drive to the east end of Manley Island. Aldner only took samples as far east as his base site on Manley Island, and Hellou wanted to see how far the kethane deposit extends. At the eastern tip of Manley Island, Thompbles acted as a hydrometer to measure the density of the sea water. Thompbles: "I'm definitely floating higher than normal. What causes this, Hellou?" Hellou: "I'm not sure. I doubt that the density of the sea water is changing by that much. Maybe your weight has changed? Or your suit pressure is different? Or some as yet unknown physics? What have you got in your pockets?" Emilynn: "Are we playing riddle games now?" Thompbles: "Suit pressure is set to normal. And I certainly had more snacks than normal last night, not fewer." The crew took surface samples along the north coast as they drove back to the GasStation. Hellou's analysis showed that the kethane concentrations were generally increasing toward the east, so the centroid of the deposit was probably off shore. The next day the crew took off to the north to explore some new islands. Aldner's samples had indicated kethane on Manley, Scott, and Its Islands (but not on Hellou Island to the west), and there were some islands further north that had never been sampled. Also, Aldner only sampled about half of Scott Island, so Hellou wanted a sample from the north end of Scott. Below, Thompbles checks out the north end of Scott Island as they fly by (it has moderately steep slopes) to decide if they will land there on the way back. Thompbles: "We're approaching the first island." Emilynn: "Is that one island or two?" Hellou: "It looked like one island from the orbital imagery, but I couldn't tell for sure." Thompbles: "I'll land on the low area in the middle. If it's two islands, I'll land on the south one first." Thompbles: "OK, I can make out a small gap. It's two islands. But we have a nice smooth landing area. You said you wanted to name the island?" Hellou: "We want to name a couple islands after our Vall Expedition's backup crew members, Tomster and Corfrey. This one I was going to call Tomster...the bigger one further north would be Corfrey. But I'm not sure what to do now that this one is two islands." After landing, Hellou tested a soil sample...which came up negative for kethane. So she tested a couple more samples to be sure. Meanwhile, Emilynn and Thompbles checked out the gap between the two islands, which was almost shallow enough to walk across. So they decided that this would be named South Tomster Island, and the other part would be North Tomster. They then drove to the southern tip of South Tomster to see if there was kethane seeping out there. No. So the Manley kethane deposit did not extend this far north. Thompbles did another float test off the south tip of Tomster, where he floated lower in the water. Such a mystery. Thompbles: "You see? I'm floating lower today." Hellou: "Well, I'm confused. I guess we just need to keep gathering more data." Emilynn: "Then let's all go swimming!" Hellou: "Um...OK. But isn't it cold?" Thompbles: "No, the suit heaters compensate quickly." Emilynn: "Let's be sure to take a picture for the boys at Laythe Base so they can see we're all working hard and not out here having fun." Thompbles: "I'm sure they'll appreciate that." The map below shows the location of the beach party at the south end of South Tomster, and the arc of unexplored islands to be visited next. Back at the northern tip of South Tomster, Thompbles was able to just drive the Airedale across to the rest of Tomster Island because the water was so shallow the rover wheels never lost contact with the bottom. The north part of Tomster also showed no kethane, but Hellou was having fun taking samples anyway. The image below shows a small island (more of a large sand bar) offshore, and off in the distance is the next small island. Thompbles flew the Airedale in a short hop from Tomster to the next island, which he named Dunsel Island after the commander of the first Duna Mission. Again...no kethane. From Dunsel, they flew on to the larger next island, which Hellou named Corfrey Island, after their Vall backup crew pilot. Corfrey was also the first kerbal to successfully fly an SSTO spaceplane into Kerbin orbit (after a few unsuccessful attempts), and has more recently tested the prototypes of the Ladyhawk and Rapier spaceplanes back at Kerbin. Alas, despite being named after such a heroic astronaut, Corfrey Island was devoid of kethane. Corfrey Island did have some moderate highlands to the north. Below we see the Airedale coming 'round the mountain so that the next island can be seen. That next island was basically a big smooth bump. Thompbles named it Lembart Island afterthe kerbal who first landed on Duna's moon Ike. You know... I really have ignored Duna too much in this particular save-game. One manned landing, followed by some unkerballed rovers, and that's it (other than the Duna system being visited to explore Magic Boulder). Once the kerbals found out how wonderful Laythe was (Oxygen! Water! All the sand you can eat!), they have mostly been ignoring the other celestial objects. Anyway...Lembart Island had no kethane. After vacationing on Lembart for a day, our intrepid explorers returned back south, stopping off at the north end of Scott Island. It was a moderate uphill landing, but Thompbles set the Airedale down just fine. Hellou tested the surface samples and found kethane concentrations stronger than what was on Manley Island...so the kethane deposit obviously ends somewhere between Scott and South Tomster Islands. In the image below, you can see that when a kerbal exits one of the Airedale's side cabins, they are oriented sideways...and letting go results in a clumsy fall to the ground. Since it's impolite to watch a lady being clumsy, we'll look away before she lets go. Thompbles flew the Airedale back to Manley Island for some refueling and a couple days' of R and R. After refueling the Airedale again, GasStation 3 had less than one full-plane-load of fuel left on board, so it was time to consider dropping in a replacement. But I'll do that later. Thompbles: "Emi, I assume you wouldn't mind if I let you pilot the Airedale for our return trip?" Emilynn: "I wouldn't mind at all, Thom! I've been waiting for you to ask." Hellou: "Wait! Only if she promises to drive slowly. Otherwise I'm staying here." Emilynn: "OK, Chickadee. I'll only go fast in the air." Hellou: "You mean when you're flying us back...not when you bump over a ridge while roving, right?" Emilynn: "Of course." So Emilynn drove the Airedale in rover mode to the west. They stopped often so that Hellou could collect samples. Aldner's sampling was kind of spotty in this area, and they needed to better determine the western edge of the Manley kethane deposit. Emilynn: "Hey, Chickadee, we have some boulders ahead. Want to stop and play?" Hellou: "Big rocks? You bet! I'm bored of sand and small rocks. I could do with a good boulder or two." Thompbles: "You do get some unusual conversations on a planetary exploration rover." Emilynn: "It's just our girl-talk." Below, the Airedale roved along the south slope of Manley Island, which is mostly one long ridge. Eventually, the samples failed to show kethane, indicating the western edge of the deposit. Hellou: "I'm done here. We can go back to Laythe Base anythime you want." Emilynn: "OK, boys and girls. Strap in tight, we're going to fly. Let's point a little downslope, lower the ol' nose gear, turn on all the pod stability systems, inhibit the forward tank, activate the engine, unlock the brake...am I forgetting anything, co-pilot?" Thompbles: "Checklist complete. We should also call in to Laythe Base to let them know." Emilynn: "Roger. I'll give you a minute to do that, and then we zoom." Below is the map of the Airedale's exploration of the Manley Crater area. On the flight back to Dansen Island, Emilynn pushed the cruising altitude up over 13,000 meters. This required a pitch angle of 40 degrees at a tick over one-third throttle, but she was able to reach speeds of over 420 m/s this way. Don't be alarmed by that fuel indicator in the lower-left corner that reads almost empty...that's just the amount in the rear tank. Emilynn: "Well, tarnation! I was hoping I could make it all the way back using less than half of my fuel, but it looks like I'm not going to make it." Hellou: "'Tarnation'?" Emilynn: "There's a gentleman present, Chickadee. You have to watch your language around the weaker ***." Thompbles: "You've gotten far enough that you could glide in to the east plateau area and then drive the rest of the way, so that counts as getting us home on half your fuel. But let's just switch on the other tank and take the easy way." Emilynn: "A sound decision." Emilynn landed the Airedale near Base 2 ('So Thompbles won't have so far to walk') and refuled the Airedale from the DoubleGasStation. Below, the Airedale parked back at Base 2 where the kerbals all got together for a celebratory dinner that couldn't be beat. And there's the new shed that the boys built out of the remains of the SCIENCE Base's heat shield. It's designed so that it could be shaped from the debris with minimal cutting and bonding...mostly folding (after making partial cuts, I assume, to make the folding possible). And it isn't sitting right outside Thompbles's window. Aldner Again But what about Aldner and the fancy new kethane detector on the tail of his BirdDog? After Thompbles returned from his expedition and got himself firmly ensconced again in his control cabin chair, he sent Aldner on a mission to do a quick investigation of the extent of the kethane deposits on Fredoly and Jenlan islands. The southern extent of the Fredoly deposit was well established by surface samples Aldner and Hellou/Emilynn picked up via rover explorations. But the long, narrow island north of Fredoly (officially part of Fredoly Island, called North Fredoly) not only seemed like it should be in the deposit area, it is also a very accessible spot... so it's important to know if there is kethane there. In fact, the second landing made by kerbals on Laythe (as part of the original Mark Twain Laythe expedition) was on North Fredoly. That landing was made by Fredoly Kerman, by the way... hence the name of the island. Even as Aldner came swooping down from his cruise altitude far east of North Fredoly, his kethane detectors started beeping. The deposit obviously extended well out into the ocean there. Aldner: "Aldner to *beep* Base." Thompbles: "Go ahead, Aldner." Aldner: "Can *beep* ask Hellou how the *beep* I can turn off the *beep* noise from the kethane *beep*tector?" Thompbles: "Hold on. I'll get her." Aldner: "Well, hurry the *beep* up. This is annoying as *beep*." Despite the beeping distraction, Aldner easily landed the BirdDog on the southeast tip of North Fredoly. The dotted line shows the first part of his drive. Hellou: "Hellou to Aldner. Can you hear me?" Aldner: "Yes, I can *beep* you. Have you got *beep* way to shut off this *beep*ing noise?" Hellou: "Yes. On your DSKY, input verb two one noun zero two enter." Aldner: "OK. I did *beep*" Hellou: "Then input zero three four four two enter zero enter." Aldner: "...OK. It's off. And the kethane indicators are still displaying. Thanks." Hellou: "I'll permanently patch the code later. Sorry it was so loud." Now beep-free, Aldner drove along the north coast of North Fredoly, taking occasional surface samples and recording the detector data. Below we see where Aldner stopped at the narrowest part of the island and did a float test in the sea...floating very low. (I've always wanted an excuse to send on of my Laythe boys to this little island because I wanted to see if I could locate Fredoly Kerman's original landing site. I have the map view image from the original mission (see below), but would that be good enough to locate the exact spot? Fredoly's landing took place before kerbals had invented flag technology, and there were no parts left at the site, so that map and the images of the landing were all I had to work with. And a lot of places on Laythe look alike, right? After some searching, I was able to use the background peak and map to find the approximate location, and then spent some more time trying to match up sand texture patterns.) Below, the original image of Fredoly's landing, followed by an image of Aldner and his BirdDog at the same spot. Things are certainly darker in KSP these days. The view is toward the east. Below, another original image of Fredoly standing by his Clark Laythe lander, followed by an image of Aldner at the same location. This view is toward the northwest. Aldner: "Aldner to Laythe Base. Are you there, Fearless Leader?" Hellou: "Hi, Aldner. Thompbles is away from console right now, so I'm monitoring." Aldner: "Suits me fine. I have located Fredoly Kerman's landing site. I'm going to erect a flag to mark the location." Hellou: "This isn't one of your goofy flags, is it?" Aldner: "Well, you can come look if you want to know. I'm sure Fredoly would approve of it." Aldner continued his drive all the way to the west end of North Fredoly, collecting samples to be tested later to verify the positive kethane indications his sensor was giving him. You can see Jebediah Island in the background. After completing the sweep of North Fredoly, Aldner flew across to Jebediah Island. The terrain is generally very steep along the shore of Jebediah Island, but there was a bay where the slope wasn't as bad, so Aldner swooped in a curve to land along the shore there. On Jebediah, the kethane detectors showed no kethane. Apparently the deposit does not extend that far west. Aldner collected surface samples, then started driving north along the coast. The coast curved outward toward the east, so there was some hope of picking up the kethane again. As Aldner continued along the coast, the terrain got very steep, almost as much as 40 degrees in places...but Aldner has experience driving the BirdDog along such terrain. There was still no kethane detected. Below, Aldner gets out at a slightly-less-steep spot to grab a surface sample. Aldner: "Aldner to Laythe Base." Nelemy: "Dude! How's it going! This is Nelemy speaking, Dude!" Aldner: "I guessed that. I'm stopping for today. I just drove through a long stretch of really steep coastline, but it has leveled out a little here." Nelemy: "So is it a great location, Dude?" Aldner: "No. It's not like you'd choose this spot to build a tourist resort or anything. But it's a lot less steep than what I just drove through." The next day, after sleeping late as usual, Aldner took off and headed north to do a quick sweep of Jenlan island for kethane. Below you can see where he was located on the high ridge that surrounds Bill Lake, which Aldner had named on his first visit to this island. Aldner got up to high cruising altitude and headed for the south shore of Jenlan Island... ...and was greeted by the annoying beeps from the kethane detector as he was coming in to land. Arrgh. Apparently the system reset when he powered it up in the morning. Or at noon, as the case may be. So he had to call in to get Hellou to read him the code fix again. Aldner drove north until the terrain started getting rough, and then took off to fly over the terrain and let the detector do its thing. The detector is more accurate when flying low, but Aldner was quite happy to buzz along the terrain at relatively low altitude. There were lots of rough areas, but also lots of smooth depressions that could allow acces to the kethane the detector was showing. As Aldner got even with about the center of the huge bay to the east, the kethane signature faded out. So Aldner swooped around a high mountain peak and started back toward the southeast. He picked of the kethane signature again over the bay and headed down along the southeast arm of the island, keeping low. Aldner: "Aldner to Laythe Base. Checking in." Nelemy: "Hey, Dude! What are you doing?" Aldner: "Just screaming along doing 250 at tree-top altitude." Nelemy: "Dude, there are trees?" Aldner: "Not anymore." The kethane signal faded out less than halfway down the arm of the island. The two secant lines where kethane was detected would give a good indication of the extent of the kethan deposit (assuming it was roughly circular, as Hellou says these things tend to be). So Aldner boosted back up into the stratosphere and headed home to Laythe Base. It was getting late by the time Aldner landed at Fido Bay. His plane didn't need a full load of fuel, so there was enough to top off his tanks at GasStation 2, but that GasStation was also just about empty. Below, the map of Aldner's kethane expedition. I, of course, was quite happy to have located the site where Fredloy landed the Clark Laythe lander...over 16 years earlier (back in version 0.18). I suppose I'll be disappointed once Laythe gets an art pass and all the places I know in detail get washed away. But I suppose it could be worth it for the addition of active volcanoes or something cool like that. GasStation 5 Manley base is important for reaching a lot of islands around the BAIF Ocean, so Thompbles decided to drop GasStation 5 in as a replacement for the nearly depleted GasStation 3. Manley is located about 5 degrees north of the equator, which is within the inclination range of the deorbit motors on the GasStation...so the GasStation was separated from its Tug and headed down to Manley Island. Below, the entry flames appear as the GasStation approaches the east end of Manley Island. I deployed the chutes a bit later than I should have, so GasStation 5 landed about 800 meters east of GasStation 3, but that's plenty close enough. The arrow in the landing picture below points to the old GasStation 3. Below: GasStation 5 in place and ready for future explorers.

I will no answer word by word becouse I am getting tired. Besides, I explain all this several times already. If these notions can not enter in your heads, not blame me. I give many reasons with real examples. Resume: Venus floating cities colonization: Cons: 1-Harder to start with the first manned mission, due to the extra deltaV to take off from 50km in comparison with asteroids, moon and mars. 2-The water is scattered in the atmosphere, this increase the difficulties for the first missions. 3-No easy to mine resources at the surfuce due to heat and pressure, this is a difficulty for the first missions. 4-Extra transit time needed to reach venus than moon. 5-Sufure acid scattlered in the atmosphere which forces to use antiacid covers and cloth to protect skin and materials from longer exposures. 6-No great amont of water, this is big difficulty in case we wanna start any terraform process. Pros: 1-The most similar environment to Earth in the whole solar system, 0,9g, 1Bar and earth range temperatures. 2-At 50km altitude, venus atmophere provide better shielding againt sun or cosmic radiation than earth atmophere. 3-Very easy to float things in a CO2 atmophere; Air is a lifting gas, hidrogen provide a lot of lift. Less gravity than earth. 4-Constant horizontal wings that provide a 96hrs day/night cycle, High DV between winds at different altitud to provide a lot of energy. 5-Enoght water and all kind of resources to sustain a popullation like earth floating in the Venus clouds. 6-Venus gets 2 times more energy than earth. It can be harvested with solar cells pointing to any place due to the clouds refrectivity. 7-Sulfure acid very easy to get, this is main ingredient that any industry needs. 8-Shorted launch windows and transit times to any place in the solar system. 9-Thick atmophere which allows high deltav aerocaptures saving a lot of proppelent. 10-Locate some automated industries process on the surfuce to take advantage of the heat and pressure to decrease the cost of many developments products. 11-Once you have all infrastructure set, Venus has the potential to grow its economics faster than earth. To understand all this cons and pross, we need to be able to see the big picture. -Kg to orbit cost lows every year, this is equal also to the deltaV cost. -Earth popullations growth, this can be only mitigated by global politics, epidemics, wars or equal distribution of resources and education (utopia, but internet may have the last word). -Increase of the Non-renewable resources cost, each time is more difficult to extract them. -There is not need for a an enterprice to be competitive from begining with the already established ones to start receive investments, support and some profits. And it might took from 1 to 100 years to remplace its competitors. This last items are facts! If someone disagree, go and ask your concerns to someone else. How to deal with 700K Temperature, 90 bar Pressure and sulfure acids. To start I will remember again the Trieste, first manned submarine to reach 11 km depth (990 Bar) in 1960 Space craft reentry deal with temperatures of 7500K or more, also experiments of fussion or high power lasers also deal with great amount of temperature. We deal with sulfure acids all days, in all parts of the world since ancient times. There is hundreds of materials that are inmune to acids. So lets start talk about materials. All carbon based materials resist +3000K (they not melt, sublime), this include Diamonds (for drilled tips), CNT, graphene the most resistent with +5000K. (sulfure acid affect some carbon based, but diamond are very resistent) Platinum: Melting point 2000K (inmune to sulfure acids) Deal with pressure has nothing to do with materials, is a design matter. Any open shape like an hot air ballon envelope would not present any problems. In fact one of the design probes from geoffrey landis is a spheric hermetic ballon metal microns thick which contains water inside and nitrogen gas. So when the ballon entry in the atmosphere, how is low dense resist the reentry heat, then fall until reach higher pressures and temperatures, so the water start to boil and expand coutering the pressure. More heat equal to more internal pressure. So you dont have problems with external pressure. Electronics: there is already 500K electronics, and we know already how to make 750K electronics. Carbon based materials, uranium oxide, valves, etc. Someone mention a electric motor. Well you can remplace the copper with CNT wires to the coil. Then remplace the common coil varnish with another insulator, in case a different insultor presents problems with strenth or mechanical properties, then you may make the coils fix position and the magnets in the rotor. Here there is a note about electric motors or other devices already test it for Venus aplications, with temperatures +800K. http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=23200 We can also have a liquid like water in a sealed container, when this is heated by the atmosphere, expand produce work (all kind of movements you want) and then you need to cool it again, for that you can use wind (surfuce 10km/h high density) mechanical energy without the need of any electrical device to produce movement. (Is easy to forget our oldest technologies). About drill.. yes sure, how I explain you can use tons of materials for that, but one thing.. why you need to drill? You can detonate. That is the advantage of venus over zero g mining. Another misunderstood from the graphics, is that if you are on haze cloud lv, you can not see nothing and you will melt by sulfure without cloth. The concentrations remains low. The visibility remains high. Here in earth we have a normal 40% humidity in the air. At Venus that humidity made of water vapour and sulfure acid it would be close to 0.xx%. But the cloud had many km of height, so for that reason you can not see through them. Rubisco, I guess these folks disagree with your point of view about airships. And they bet millons into this. You wanna rise your bet? Airships are not so common at earth becouse oxigen, that was clear after the hidenburg disaster. So hidrogen is not allow. But they still have their place. Long time ago zepellings dominated the sky (weird becouse aircraft came first, dont you?), Its strength was proved at war, dropping hundreds of bombs from an altutude where airplanes can not damage them. And if they did. 10 or 100 holes was not a big issue. That amount of hidrogen did not escape so fast. (you remember when you ask me how fast a city would sink with a rip?) They can be good to transport big payloads without much fuel consuptions, there max velocity is 200km/h, but if they intercepts the high air currents, with that they can reach 400km/h. The legs of that airship are great, they can work in the water, like overcraft, like suc-kers for high winds conditions and they can be deploy or opposite just suc-king the air. You mention oort cloud, and type c asteroids, first I ask you to mention one asteroids that contains all elements, 4 or 8 elements are not all elements, you can manage well with 8 elements, but you would always needs something else. More with something so complex like a space habitat. And the oort cloud does not enter in the discuccion becouse is absurd. I will no spend more details about it xd I guess if you both put in my posicion to defend the idea, you can find all ways to counter those negative issues. But you just not want it. PD: thanks for the europa info. PD2: Yes sure, if their are Saiyajin, I guess they would not have any trouble.

That would be this piece (with apologies to Douglas Adams): Designing Planets BROTORO: Tonight on Kerbal Space Program Forum I'd like to welcome our special guest, Mr. Slartibartfast, who has consented to talk to us this evening about solar system design and construction. Thank you very much for being with us today! SLARTIBARTFAST: Well, I don't normally do interviews, but when a very important client asked for a representative from the Commercial Council of Magrathea, it happened that I was the only one who'd ever talked to an Earthman, so I got the job. It's all a bit of a bother, really. BROTORO: A very important client? Who would this very important client be? SLARTIBARTFAST: I'm sorry, but we do not disclose information about our clients. They are all very wealthy and powerful beings, and I'm sure you'll understand that they enjoy their anonymity. But I will say that you'd never have gotten this interview if the Mice were not very big fans of space travel. BROTORO: Mice are big fans of space travel? SLARTIBARTFAST: Certainly. Why else would they have arranged to be some of the first passengers ever flown in a rocket? But I've said more than enough on that subject already. BROTORO: Ah. OK, let's get right to tonight's topic. Is there any truth to the rumor that Magratheans did the design and construction work for Squad on the Kerbol planetary system? SLARTIBARTFAST: I've already told you, we don't discuss our clients. BROTORO: Well then, hypothetically speaking, could you tell us if it's possible to design a solar system with these specifications? (BROTORO hands Slartibartfast a sheet of paper. Slartibartfast glances over it briefly.) SLARTIBARTFAST: Ah, yes... Miniature planets are adorable, aren't they? They were all the rage with a certain portion of our clientele. BROTORO: So it's possible to construct a solar system matching those specifications? SLARTIBARTFAST: Certainly. We Magratheans pride ourselves on being able to build any kind of planet. BROTORO: But look at the densities of those planets. Most of them have densities greater than any known element. SLARTIBARTFAST: That's not a problem. We use black holes. BROTORO: Black holes? But wouldn't a black hole inside a planet just swallow it? SLARTIBARTFAST: No, no. We use spherical force field bubbles centered around small black holes. We can adjust the mass of the black hole and radius of the force shell to get any planet density desired, then cover it with the mantle and crust material of the client's choice. It's a very flexible system. BROTORO: So you're saying that Kerbin is mostly hollow inside, with some old rocky material thrown on top? SLARTIBARTFAST: No. More like the inner one third is hollow. And I assure you we use only the finest ingredients when building our planets. BROTORO: Wouldn't these force field bubbles require energy to maintain their structure? SLARTIBARTFAST: Certainly they require energy. We just allow a small amount of matter from the lower mantle to trickle through openings in the sphere. As the matter falls into the gravity well of the black hole, the energy equivalent to a sizable fraction of its rest mass is released as radiation before it crosses the event horizon. That radiated energy is captured and used by the force field bubble, which also acts as a Dyson sphere. BROTORO: Dyson sphere? So do Magratheans know about Freeman Dyson? SLARTIBARTFAST: Who? You misunderstood me. I used the Magrathean term for "spherical mega-structure that captures all radiated energy from a central power source," and that little fish I put in your ear translated the concept into a term you are familiar with. I've never heard of a freemandyson. BROTORO: Ah, so that's what the fish was for. I thought it was a quaint Magrathean greeting or something. SLARTIBARTFAST: You're sitting there wearing a digital watch, and you think my people are quaint? BROTORO: But wait... If Kerbin has no liquid iron core inside, how could it have a magnetic field? SLARTIBARTFAST: Does Kerbin have a magnetic field? BROTORO: Um... well, I'm not sure. The developers haven't given us any magnetometers yet, but I just assumed it did. SLARTIBARTFAST: And it well might. Magnetic fields are easy. We would just need to orbit a ring of charged matter around the black hole inside the force sphere. Adjusting the charge on the matter can give the client any magnetic field desired, and the inclination of the ring can offset the magnetic pole from the rotational axis if desired. Any field strength can be tailored for the client, although it's easier for us if they want a simple dipole. Haven't you wondered why Jool has such a weak magnetic field for a jovian planet? BROTORO: It does? SLARTIBARTFAST: Of course. If it didn't, the planet would have powerful radiation belts, and any kerbal you sent in there for aerobraking would be late. BROTORO: Late? SLARTIBARTFAST: Yes. As in, "The late Jebediah Kerman." Ah hum. BROTORO: . . . SLARTIBARTFAST: I don't understand why Earthmen always stare at me blankly when I use that line. BROTORO: I'm just wondering how you know about Jebediah Kerman. SLARTIBARTFAST: It's the Babelfish again. I just used the Magrathean word for "bad-ass space pilot," and the fish did the rest in conjunction with your primitive brain. BROTORO: Well. What about Kerbol, the sun of the system? How could something with that low of a mass possibly support thermonuclear fusion? SLARTIBARTFAST: I'm not part of our stellar division... I work on the planets, and I specialize in doing coastlines... but there are two different ways we handle miniature stars. BROTORO: One way involves black holes? SLARTIBARTFAST: Both ways do. In one method, we simply make the force sphere around the black hole small enough that the density and pressure in the overlying hydrogen-rich material is sufficient to maintain thermonuclear reactions at the rate needed for the desired luminosity. The second way involves simply letting sufficient matter flow through the force sphere and into the black hole to provide the desired luminosity. BROTORO: Which method did you use for Kerbol? SLARTIBARTFAST: I didn't say we made Kerbol. I was speaking hypothetically. Why don't you just measure the neutrino flux coming out of Kerbol... then you could tell if there are fusion reactions going on inside of it. BROTORO: Well... again... we don't have any neutrino detectors as yet. SLARTIBARTFAST: You really do need to take more interest in your greater environment. If you're not paying attention to things outside your planet, terrible things could happen to it. BROTORO: Yes, thank you. But what about Minmus? SLARTIBARTFAST: What about it? BROTORO: The developers tell us that it's made of ice, but that can't possibly be the case given its distance from the sun, can it? SLARTIBARTFAST: Kerbin, like your own planet Earth, is located at a distance from the sun where the equilibrium temperature is below the freezing point of water. If not for their natural greenhouse effects, the oceans on both bodies would be frozen over. The temperature is even lower when you are dealing with a surface that has a very high albedo, like ice, since that reflects away most of the incoming energy. BROTORO: Yes, yes, I know all that. But Minmus has no atmosphere. Its surface is in vacuum. And water ice would sublime directly into a gas and escape into space at the equilibrium temperature of Minmus. Minmus should be a gigantic comet! SLARTIBARTFAST: Ah, I see. Young Hargledertfirst of our small moon department solved that problem. BROTORO: Did he? SLARTIBARTFAST: She. She engineered a microorganism that was active in the small moon's water during its early warm phases. The organism excretes a clear polymer as a waste product...kind of like a resin. All of the ice on the small moon contains a small percentage of this polymer. When the ice is exposed to vacuum, the water will indeed sublime away, but the polymer is left behind and forms a barrier to further sublimation. And any future impacts or landing rocket flame scars on the surface are self-healing once the vapor clears. BROTORO: Really? And that's what you did for Minmus? SLARTIBARTFAST: I was speaking hypothetically. BROTORO: And I suppose you'll tell me that Eve is purple because of a little food coloring. SLARTIBARTFAST: Indeed. It takes a very small percentage of certain chemical compounds to give a planetary surface or atmosphere a desired color. You'd be surprised how many clients are upset if they don't get just the right shade of purple or some other color in their skies. We are very good at this, and all the chemical stains and particulates are USDA approved. BROTORO: You know about the USDA? Oh, wait...it's the Babelfish again, isn't it. SLARTIBARTFAST: Indeed. BROTORO: So... if you had to do it all over again, are their any changes you'd make to the Kerbol system? SLARTIBARTFAST: Well, yes, now that you've asked. I think Kerbin would look much better with more fjords on the coastlines. I always try to put a lot of fjords on a planet, but the managers always say it's too much. A lot of my work got erased. I was quite incensed about that. BROTORO: Hypothetically speaking, you mean. SLARTIBARTFAST: Um. Yes. Of course. BROTORO: Well, our time is up. We really appreciate you coming here today. So long, and thanks for the fish. SLARTIBARTFAST: No, I'm afraid I must take the Babelfish back with me. BROTORO: Oh, please? I think it would be very useful *arrgh* Hey! SLARTIBARTFAST: Flerti slark tilligert sibilas fer torrn. Ser fasto gerhs. BROTORO: Yeah. Whatever.

Howdy Gleedadswell, Yes this was brought up right after MS18 release, when KSPI introduced this new mechanic. Talk about a quick curve ball! Yes, you can disable the heat gen, but I did intend placing heat dissipate at the beginning of the solar panel tech line. Thanks for the reminder it had been a while.

While we talk about funny planet names we should just say it in generic Slavianic style - "Uran" spelled "ãрðý", it eliminates the trouble of Ur-anus and the weird Urin-us (witch sounds like urine to me ). Im sure CGP grey has a video about the unfortunate planet.after all that is where i borrowed the Slavianic naming.

There is a lot of information buried in this forum and in the Tutorials subforum. Unfortunately it isn't really organized in any way so it takes a while to wade through. I would also say when you post in this forum, it's pretty hard to get a straight forward answer unless you have a straight forward question. General questions such as "I need help" will get a variety (or lack) of response. For example, since you mentioned reaction wheels, I can point you to this thread. If you read it (most of anyway, especially starting page 2), it will explain why placement of reaction wheels doesn't matter for maneuverability. It does, however, matter for structural integrity. If you have questions about particular mods (such as interstellar or things like FAR and deadly reentry), your best bet is usually to go to those specific mod threads. You'll get a faster and more consistent response. If you're confused about the usefulness of the stock parts, sometimes running a career game can help. It forces you through the parts slowly so you can play with them and test them out. Here is a good example of a probe only career that you can follow through. It helps you to get familiar with the science and probe parts while skipping over some of the complexities/concerns of manned operations. Science collection is way faster with kerbals, but doing probe only will force you to learn a particular branch of the science tree. There's lots of ways to get familiar with the game. Everyone likes to play the game in different ways, so the probe only science path may be completely uninteresting to you. If you want to do interstellar ships, that's cool. But there's so much to talk about in this game and your question is general enough that we're not sure where to help you get started.

Look at all the possible risks: 1) They could bring viruses we haven't evolved to survive to. 2) They could be a race that reproduces extremely quickly and overpopulate the Earth or simply become more numerous than us in just a few hundred years. 3) They could be trying to get us off our guard to invade us with less resistance. 4) They could require more resources than we are willing to provide to them. 5) They could be reluctant to some of our ways/rules/cultural traits/behaviours 6) They could potentially become their own country, with a much more advanced technologies than us and just wipe us off the Earth as soon as they get tired of us. 7) They could be friendly only because they're in need for help and as soon as they get back on their feet, considering the scientific knowledge they have, they would just destroy us and take the Earth for themselves. Assuming that evolution and natural selection worked the same way on their planet, if they are at the top of their food chain, they necessarily are dangerous predators. They are likely to not be that friendly. Seriously if this ever happens what we should (and I hope that we would too) do is just nuke the hell of of them as soon as we see them. No questions, no conversation, no contact what so ever. We don't even give them a warning. We shoot, we kill them and we never talk about it ever again.

Can't wait. I was putting off playing RSS because of this. You should probably talk to Nazari about making fuel-specific effects. Turns out that if the configs work like they always did for ModuleEnginesFX, then making effects change with fuel type should be trivial.

Long-term Laythe - Part 27 Tugs First, some housekeeping. Several nuclear Tugs have been piling up around Laythe, what with delivering all those payloads, so it was time to prepare for sending some back to Kerbin. Nuclear engines don't grow on trees, you know. The Double-Tug that was attached to the bottom of Laythe Space Station was separated (leaving a tank behind to increase the fuel capacity of the station) and I planned to boost it out to an orbit beyond Tylo to await the next Jool-to-Kerbin transfer window. (For earlier Tug returns, I'd boosted them out into orbits between Laythe and Vall, but this was trickier to get right because Laythe's sphere of influence would tend to swallow the Tug back up as it was leaving, despite what the projected orbit said at first, requiring some evasive maneuvers. Kicking out further to beyond Tylo avoided this problem.) But when I plotted the trajectory for the outgoing Double-Tug, it ran into a Tylo encounter that would whip the Tugs out of the Joolian system into Kerbol orbit. Well, that was nice...so I took the shot and sent it on its way. Next, the double-Tugs from Laythe Train #2 (which had recently delivered the RASSTO SSTO) was rendezvoused with the station and offloaded all of its excess propellant. To return to Kerbin, the Tugs would only need the fuel in their side-tanks...plus a little extra in the main tank just in case. Because of the recent spate of SSTO test flights, there was room in the station's tanks to hold the propellants. The Tugs also left behind another tank to increase the station's capacity). Then the Train #2 Tugs were separated and sent off to beyond Tylo, which took about 582 m/s of delta-V. I did not bother to wait for the perfect time to get another Tylo encounter (because I have better things to do with my time), but I suppose Thompbles would take the time to do it. Anyway...so the Tugs will need to use another 470 m/s of delta-V to circularize their orbit out beyond Vall (which the previous Double-Tug will not have to do). All of this delta-V goes to getting the Tugs out of Jool's gravity well, of course. But wait, there's more! The Tugs from Laythe Train #1 (which recently brought the Raptor spaceplane to Laythe, and which still had the NAMOR-21 attached) was rendezvoused with the Space Station to offload its excess fuel (and add yet another tank, which nicely balanced out the bottom end of the station). After transferring fuel and disconnecting the rear tank, the Train #1 Tugs undocked and moved up the side of the station to dock the NAMOR-21 Marine Rescue ship to one of the side docking ports. The NAMOR-21 will be stored there until it is needed (if ever). The Tugs then undocked and backed away. Below you can see the elliptical orbits of the first two outgoing sets of Tugs, plus the plotted trajectory for the Train #1 Tugs. Again, I did not wait for a Tylo encounter, and just kicked the Tugs out to cavort beyond Tylo with their fellow Tugs. Note that Kerbal Alarm Clock is very handy when doing this kind of thing (I have reminders set for when various sets of Tugs will need apoapsis burns or have Tylo encounters, and for when the Jool-to-Kerbin transfer window will arrive. I did a small maneuver as the first pair of Tugs passed Tylo to give them a little extra speed so that the Tugs would make it outside Jool's sphere of influence just before the Jool-to-Kerbin transfer time comes. It was nice to see Tylo close up again. The apoapsis kicks for the other Tugs went off on schedule, and they are now happily waiting for their orders to boost home to Kerbin in about 64 days. Thompbles's Travels Everybody agreed that Thompbles should get out more, so he assigned himself the job of piloting the Airedale plane/rover, which is basically a BirdDog modified to carry scientist passengers and their lab equipment on expeditions to points of interest on Laythe. Below, Thompbles climbs up to the Airedale's cockpit. Thompbles: "Airedale to Laythe Base. Radio check." Kurt: "I read you load and clear." Aldner: "Hey, Captain Flyboy! You remember how to do this sort of thing?" Thompbles: "Pointy-end forward? I think I recall. But hang on the line in case I have questions." Aldner: "Will do, Cappy." Thompbles: "I'm lined up. Nose gear is down. Forward tank fuel flow inhibited. Stability system on. Brakes off. Engine activated. Let's see what happens when I push this lever forward." Kurt: "Nice takeoff." Thompbles: "Gear up. Throttle one-third. Man, it has been too damn long. This is great. I'm passing the Base 1 area... We sure do have a nice spread of hardware. Take good care of the store while I'm away, Kurt." Kurt: "Roger, will do. Have fun." Thompbles climbed to over 12,000 meters for cruising northwest toward Jenlan Island. Nelemy had landed near the upper end of Jenlan, but most of that very large island is unexplored. There were a couple small islands beyond Jenlan that had not been visited yet, so Thompbles planned to start with them and then pick out a couple spots on Jenlan to stop at on the way back. You can see in the picture below that the Airedale needs to maintain a high angle of attack when flying in the thin air at 12 kilometers altitude, but it makes good speed there. Because of its greater weight and drag, the Airdale is less fuel efficient than the BirdDogs, but not too bad. The LiquidFuel indicator in the lower left is only showing the fuel remaining in the rear tank (the forward tank has its fuel flow turned off to keep the CG of the plane further forward). Jenlan is a rather rugged island, but Thompbles spots some seaside real estate that he might investigate on the way back. But he thinks the valley high in the mountains looks very interesting (from what he's seen of it on maps). The boys have yet to discover a monolith or other anomaly on Laythe, and Thompbles thinks that valley is the kind of place he'd put one if he were in charge on anomalies. Once he passes Jenlan, he spots the first of the two small islands he'll visit. Once Thompbles passes Jenlan, he spots the first of the two small islands he'll visit. Thompbles: "Airedale to Base. Target one acquired. I'm making my run." Kurt: "Um, OK, Thompbles. But we just want it explored, not bombed." Thompbles: "Roger. My ordnance racks appear to be empty anyway. I'll have to talk to the ground crew about that." Kurt: "Let us know when you've landed." Thompbles came in just over the little berm by the shore and landed the Airedale just fine. He raised the nose gear to drop the rover wheels to the ground, and drove inland a little. Thompbles: "Thompbles to Base. I'm going out to take some surface samples. I'd like to name this island Bob Island after Bob Kerman. I know that Aldner already named a bay after him, but I think such a pioneering astronaut deserves an island, even if it's a small one." Kurt: "Roger. Did you remember to set the brake?" Thompbles: "Yes I did, thank you. Did you remember that geographical names need to be submitted on form 34G in the database?" Kurt: "Yes I did, thank you." Thompbles drove the rover/plane northwest. It wasn't too long before he managed to blow a tire at 20 meters per second on some only slightly bumpy terrain. Thompbles: "Airdale to Base. Is Aldner there?" Aldner: "I'm here, O Brave Explorer. How can I help?" Thompbles: "Have you been watching the data feed from my IMU? I managed to blow a tire on what seemed like fairly small bumps." Aldner: "Looking at it now. Hmm. Your ride looks pretty smooth. I wouldn't have expected a tire to blow in those conditions. But you do have an extra 1.2 tons of passenger cabins on your bird... so maybe you'll just need to keep things slower." Thompbles: "Roger. Well, we knew this was going to be more of an airliner than an exploration rover." Aldner: "Roger. Now get out an get your hands dirty fixing that flat. All part of the job of Intrepid Space Explorer!" Thompbles reached the northwest tip of Bob Island and decided to do a standard float test to see what level he'd float at in the sea here. Another soil and water sample went into the plane. Thompbles: "I'm going to hop to the next island now. Lined up. Nose gear down. Brakes off..... Full throttle. I'm off!" Kurt: "Let us know..." Thompbles: "Alarm." Kurt: "Problem?" Thompbles: "Flying fine. Warning light on the left rover wheel." Aldner: "Did you have the nose gear down?" Thompbles: "Yes. Shows down and locked." Below, the takeoff on the left, and the landing on the right (with blown tire visible). Apparently the plane had hit a bump hard enough to allow the rover wheel to contact the ground (at over 60 m/s) and blow. I don't recall that the ground was that bumpy, really, and this sort of thing does not happen with the BirdDogs. Hmmm. Thompbles fixed the tire and proceded to rove north-northeast along the island, which he named Bill Island, at a moderate pace because it had rougher terrain than Bob Island. The Airedale made it safely to the north point of Bill Island. Thompbles carefully lined up along a smooth patch of land and took off to the east. There were no blown tires. The map below shows Thompbles's route along Bob and Bill Islands. The view is looking toward the southeast. Thompbles flew back over to Jenlan Island and looked over the terrain. He decided to try landing in the high valley and lined up and swooped down into the westernmost end. As he was coming in to land, the surface began to rise rapidly in front of him, and he had to pull up hard. He dropped in pretty hard, but the plane survived OK...without even a blown tire. The valley is apparently made out of connected caldera, and he had not touched down before coming up on the ridge separating one lowspot from the next one. The map view of Jenlan below showis the location of the high valley. Kurt: "How's it going, Thompbles?" Thompbles: "Just fine. I'm driving around looking for the lowest spot in this caldera. I think 1757 meters is the minimum. I'll get some samples, and then I'm going to set up camp for the night." Kurt: "Well, sleep tight. Which is about all you CAN do in those cockpits." Thompbles: "You forget...one of the rear cabins on this bird is set up as a comfy habitat. I might just sleep in late and spend some time reading tomorrow." Kurt: "In that case, enjoy your vacation." Thompbles: "Everything going fine there?" Kurt: "Yep. Hellou says she's just about done with her analysis of all our previous samples, and she's keen for you to bring her more. Nelemy is designing a second shed to be made from the heat shield debris from the SCIENCE lab." Thompbles: "Just make sure they don't set it up right in front of my window." The next day, Thompbles drove the Airedale up and down the rolling ridges separating the parts of the valley. He didn't find any lower point, but he did take plenty of samples. The final bowl of the valley had a bottom elevation of under 1880 meters. From the bottom of the bowl, Thompbles lined up toward the southeast, then fired up the jet engine and took off. Alas...they had still found no monuments or other anomalies on Laythe. Thompbles landed the Airedale by a small lake near the southeast shore of Jenlan Island. The area wasn't too bad (and it's the most accessible part of the large island, being about as far south as it goes), but not a great site. He collected samples and then took off again, this time headed back to Laythe Base. After leaving Jenlan, the fuel in the rear tank was running out, so Thompbles switched on the fuel flow from the forward tank. He landed back at Fido Bay with 107 units of fuel left (out of his initial 300), and docked with GasStation 2 to refuel. After that, GasStation 2 had less than one full plane-load of fuel left in it. But not to worry...they still have the DoubleGasStation at the main base area, and two regular GasStations waiting in orbit to be dropped in where needed. The map below shows the route of Thompbles's training trip. The Airedale checked out fine, but as expected it is not as good a rover as the BirdDogs. It certainly can't be driven as fast as a BirdDog (not safely, anyway), and time warps over 2x should be avoided. This confirms the earlier testing on Kerbin (and it's important to heed this, because if the rover DOES fail, the passenger cabins are NOT very impact resistant). Kethane, Kethane, Kethane! No, I'm not going to install the Kethane Mod... But I am going to let my Laythe kerbals hunt for kethane. [As to why I choose not to use the Kethane Mod, there are a couple reasons. First, I generally avoid lots of mods because they make upgrading my save-game file more difficult (although I love certain user interface enhancement mods). Also, when I look at things that people have done with the stock game, I am familiar with the parts, so I can easily tell what they did. If there are mod parts I'm not familiar with, I never know what I'm looking at. I prefer it if people can more easily understand the capabilities of my ships and what I'm doing.] [Also, some mods just strike me as odd in concept, and Kethane is one of those. What is this kethane stuff, and why do we find it on all kinds of planets and moons? And you can apparently convert it into liquid fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant...and even Xenon. What alchemy is this? I love the idea of exploiting indigenous resources to make propellant and whatnot...but I'll leave the Kethane Mode to others.] So, anyway... I wanted to have some kethane deposits that my kerbals could find. But how much kethane should there be? And how should it be distributed? What I decided to do was take a "typical" kethane distribution and use it as a basis for my kethane map. Geschosskopf (he of the wonderful Kethane Flying Circus missions) had a kethane map posted for Laythe in one of his threads... so I took that image, copied the region markers, resized it to fit my Laythe map, and then generated ramdom numbers to decide how to flip it vertically, horizontally, and shift it in longitude. And I got the map shown below: I noticed later that I had made a mistake in my process... Geschosskopf's map had a gap in longitude with no kethane deposits, but when I resized the marker overlay to fit my map, that gap got lost... So I have more kethane than I should, I suppose, but I'll live with that. I'm not actually going to exploit the kethane (since the engineers in Division 19 never came through with the anticipated resource extraction equipment)... I just using it for roleplaying my missions. As expected, most of the kethane deposits are underwater (easy to happen on Laythe). And whereas Geschosskopf had kethane all over what I call Dansen Island, my home base, my Dansen Island has none. But what my kerbals do have are lots of samples picked up on BirdDog missions, bagged and sealed and labeled. And they have Hellou, with equipment delivered in the shiny new SCIENCE Lab, including, I contend, sensitive spectral analyzers that can detect kethane. So she has been sucking the air out of the sample bags and running it through the infrared spectral analyzer and finding signatures of kethane. The results are shown below: Places where my kerbals have picked up samples that show positive for kethane: Looking at the map above, we see that my kerbals hit upon various pieces of five of the deposits. The large area of hits on Fredoly Island includes samples from Aldner's initial survey there, but is filled in a lot more because I had Hellou and Emilynn stationed at the Base 3 there for several months, so Hellou would have been all over the easily-accessible spots in that area. Not shown on this map are additional data points that did NOT show kethane, which help to delineate the sizes of the deposits. For example, Thompbles's samples from the high valley show kethane, but his samples from Bob and Bill Islands, and from the southeast coast (and Nelemy's older samples from the northeast tip) show NO kethane. Nelemy: "Kethane?" Hellou: "Yes. KH4. A simple hydrokarbon. Where it occurs close to the surface, it leaks out and we can detect it." Kurt: "And this stuff is useful as rocket fuel?" Hellou: "For future Laythe explorers, yes. You need an oxidizer to burn it, but one can process LOX from Laythe's atmosphere, or just suck in the air to burn kethane in jet engines built for that." Aldner: "And our samples show kethane?" Hellou: "Some of them do. Some weak, some strong. But now we know where to look in more detail." Kurt: "Didn't you say the other day that you found karbohydrates in one sample?" Hellou: "Yes, but that was just a snack bar that SOMEBODY had mysteriously stuffed into a sample bag." For some reason, everybody looked at Nelemy. Thompbles: "Do you have a plan of where we need to do more detailed surveys?" Hellou: "Yes. I'm putting some equipment into the Lab module of the Airedale, and I'll need a ride to some places. And the SCIENCE Lab has some equipment for upgrading Aldner's atmospheric sensor." Aldner: "My what now?" Hellou: "On your BirdDog. There is an Sensor Array Computing Nose Cone on the tail." Aldner: "Oh, that. Since we upgraded the software in the cockpit computers, that thing has been useless." Hellou: "Yes, but this new upgrade will allow it to detect kethane. If you'll help me install it." Below, under Hellou's direction, Aldner and Kurt climb all over the BirdDog and install the sensor upgrade. Aldner: *In the BirdDog's cockpit* "So how does this work?" Hellou: "The Sensor Nose Cone now has two kethane sensors: One is an IR spectral analyzer, the other is a catalytic detector." Aldner: "Hmm. Both of the new indicators are showing positive. Do we have kethane deposits by our base?" Hellou: "Both?" Aldner: "The one marked 'IR' is barely flickering. The one marked 'CAT' is stronger." Hellou: "The IR sensor is very kethane specific, and it's just picking up the background amount in the atmosphere. I'll adjust the bias so it won't do that. The other one is picking up your kerosine." Aldner: "My what?" Hellou: "Your BirdDog is venting a little fuel. The JP-A or RP-1 or whatever you guys call it. It's basically kerosine, a hydrocarbon." Aldner: "Kerosine? Do you scientists have to name everything starting with the letter K?" Hellou: "Sorry. Anyway, once you get moving through the air, it won't pick up the tiny amount of fuel venting." Thompbles's Travels Two The hatches to the two passenger cabins of the Airedale can be reached by a kerbal standing on the ground. One of the cabins is outfitted as a comfy habitat module. In the other cabin, the passenger rides is less comfort because it is packed with lab equipment. To its standard equipment, Hellou added what she needed to test samples for kethane out in the field. Because of the need to position the passenger cabins' hatches to be accessible, their windows give a not-overly-exciting view of the vertical stabilizer and docking port of the Airedale... but these kinds of things happen when you repurpose existing modules. For it's first fully-crewed exploration trip, Thompbles would be taking Hellou and Emilynn to check out the extent of a couple of the kethane deposits. Thompbles: "Airedale to Base. The first scheduled flight of Laythe Airlines is ready to depart." Kurt: "Roger, Airedale. You are first in line on runway 14." Thompbles: "Thank you. Keep the boys out of trouble while we're gone." The Airedale took off, climbed to cruising altitude of 12 kilometers, and headed southeast to Thompbles Island. Back at Laythe Base, Kurt, Aldner, and Nelemy were having breakfast... Nelemy: "Dudes, I hope Thompbles likes being a airline pilot." Aldner: "Yeah. But I guess some people have to settle for the secondary jobs." Nelemy: "Yeah." Kurt: "What?" Aldner: "Well, you know. It's like the difference between the guys who fly fighters..." Nelemy: "...or are test pilots..." Aldner: "...and the other guys who fly the transport aircraft." Nelemy: "Yeah, Dude. But not everybody has the right stuff. Some of us explore with hot BirdDogs or test spaceplanes...others fly passengers, Dude." Kurt: "I see. You do realize that while the three of us are sitting here, Thompbles is off on an extended mission with the only female kerbals within 70 million kilometers, don't you?" Nelemy: "..." Aldner: "..." Kurt: "Now eat your mush." Below, the Airedale approaches Thompbles Island. Thompbles has the image from the nose camera piped into the passenger cabins. Emilynn: "Smooth flying there, Thompbles. Remember, if you get tired of flying, I can take over for any leg of the trip you want." Thompbles: "I'll keep that in mind, co-pilot." Hellou: "Look! We are flying right into the mouth of the dragon. A whole new island for me to study!" Thompbles: "Yes. But let's avoid any jokes where we refer to the geography as parts of my body just because the island has the same name as I do." Hellou: "Not a problem...we left Aldner at home." The Airedale flew over the head of the dragon and targeted a landing along the middle of the west coast of the island. This is the area where Aldner picked up the samples with the strongest kethane signature. Thompbles: "Make sure your tray tables and seat backs are in their full upright and locked positions, ladies." Emilynn: "And in the event of the plane having to make a water landing, those of us in the fragile passenger cabins can kiss our butts goodbye." Thompbles: "Now, now. Your seat cushion serves as a flotation device for your psychological convenience." Emilynn: "Yes. I'm sure it would float away nicely after my cabin and I sink like a rock." Hellou: "Can we please skip the 'jokes.' Landings always make me nervous." Thompbles: "Sorry, Hellou. Don't worry, we have a nice, smooth beach ahead. Expect a tilt to the right as we touchdown." The landing was perfect, and Thompbles switched over to rover mode and drove closer to the water. While Emilynn did a walkaround inspection of the plane, and Hellou started shifting through the sand, Thompbles went out to do a standard float test. Hellou popped a surface sample into her cobbled-together kethane detector, which heated the sample to help drive off any kethane residue into the IR analyzer. Thompbles: "How does the sample look?" Hellou: "Strong kethane signature, as expected. Aldner's samples were showing higher and higher concentrations of kethane the further south he went, and he got to about here before turning east. Can you drive us south along the coast, please?" Thompbles: "Sure thing. Hop in." Emilynn: "Gee, Thom. Can't you drive a little faster?" Thompbles: "Not while I have valuable cargo on board. OK...the area ahead is smoother... I'll take it up a little...but 30 m/s maximum." Hellou: "Slower is fine with me." A little bump later, and the Airedale blew a tire. Thompbles: "There, you see? We aren't really going to travel any faster if we need to stop and fix a flat very often." Emilynn: "I'll hop out and fix the tire. This bird really is more sensitive to blowouts than the BirdDogs. And that bump didn't even feel that big. Who'd have thought that an extra ton of cabins would make such a difference." Hellou: "Well...have you considered that with these lander-can cabins you have a lot of extra control torque that's trying to keep your plane steady as you go over bumps, putting more force on the wheels and making them hit harder?" Emilynn: "..." Thompbles: "..." Emilynn: "You see... That's why every plane should come with a science geek installed as standard equipment." Thompbles: "OK. Switching off the lander can torque systems. Thank you. Emilynn, please remind me to turn them back on before we fly again...the extra control authority can help keep the plane from doing any unexpected pitch-ups." Below, the Airedale stopped at two peninsulas jutting out to the west so that Hellou could analyze her samples. These locations showed the strongest kethane yet. Our intrepid explorers continued south until they got to the duck-foot peninsula of the dragon. The samples continued to show signs of kethane, so probably the deposit continued ate least partway out onto the foot of the dragon, but the terrain of the foot was high and rough, and the crew was looking for easily-accessed kethane deposits... so they decided to not continue their drive south and would switch to heading east. Below, the duck-foot of the dragon is visible across a small bay from the Airedale. As the Airedale got up into the rougher, higher elevations, the sun was getting low in the sky. Thompbles: "OK, we'll stop here for the night." Emilynn: "I'll pass out the grub. I'll let you have the comfy cabin for tonight, Chickadee." Hellou: "OK, thanks. But don't thrash around and wreak any equipment in the lab module." Thompbles: "I'm camping out under the stars, myself. Aldner says it worked quite nicely with the suit heaters on medium." Emilynn: "Well in that case, I'll sleep in the cockpit if you don't mind. That's usually where I slept in the Vall rover." Thompbles: "OK, sounds like a plan. There's a nice view of Jool." The next day, Thompbles continued the drive eastward between a ridgeline to the north and taller hills to the south. Kethane continued to show up in the samples. Eventually they reached a small bay on the backside of the dragon where Hellou investigated some strange luminescent spots on the ground. After another campout, Thompbles drove the Airedale back and over the ridge to the north, then east along the ridge overlooking the large circular bay in the belly of the dragon. Hellou: "Based on what we've found, along with Aldner's samples from further north, it's pretty clear that this whole island is sitting over a kethane deposit, except for the nose of the dragon where Aldner first landed. And a lot of the areas are easily accesible." Emilynn: "So Thompbles's gas will be supplying the fuel needs of future Laythe colonists?" Thompbles: "Now, now." Hellou: "Anyway, I'm done here. We can move on to Manley Island whenever you'd like. But an extra day here to let me do some sample cataloging would be nice." So the next day, Thompbles took off and headed the Airedale northeast. Below we see the Airedale flying away from Thompbles Island, and a map showing the exploration route across the dragon-duck-shaped island. I'll halt now and get this posted, and then write up the rest tonight.

This seriously changes the game. From functional but not really pretty graphics to (near) artwork. I feel it might be time to talk about massively upgrading the terrain and scatters too, as that would make KSP not only amazing in the gameplay department, but beautiful too.

In vacuum, the two balls would fall at the same rate. This was experimentally proven by Apollo 15, where a hammer and feather were dropped on the surface of the moon. An atmosphere tends to throw a wrench in the system. But this is science, you can experiment and find out for yourself. I imagine water balloons would be easier to acquire than cannonballs and yield similar results. We can talk theory all we want here, but let's get some real data to work with.

RuBisCO, even if you're right and Venus is the worst option of every single body in the solar system, it doesn't matter, because this thread is about HOW to colonize Venus, not whether or not we SHOULD colonize Venus. If you look back to the first post you'll see that OP is well aware that there are many problems surrounding Venus colonization, but he wants to know, given the fact that we wish to colonize Venus, what would be the best way to go about it? At this point, all you're doing is propagating a flame war and stopping us from talking about the actual topic of the thread. Given that we've brought up talk of orbital colonies, it seems like it would be pretty desirable to have orbital colonies/manufacturing around Venus, because they would have access to significantly more energy (what with the inverse square law and whatnot)

I must congratulate you on your terrain. Please PM me if you want to talk about teaming up.

Lol. just read... :S At 60 km you lift less than half of the weight that you can lift at 50km. The sulfure dopllets had a size of nanometers! Its seems that you never manage sulfure acid. I did many times, and some times without gloves. It always remains some in bottle. You may feel a soft burning if the skin if the bottle was kinda wet, but nothing to be alarmed. About the co2 effect in the eyes, I also thought in that, but again, nothing serious. Of course in that place you will use some latex suit for safety with a mask. But it does not need to be airproff. But some how.. in your head, that is equal to use an astronaut suit with mechanims to manage corporal fluids, thermal regulator with radiators, etc. In resumem a space suit is a personal space ship. But mining asteroid only help to gain some profits. Instead colonize venus you get an extra place where to leave (safe), all the diversity materials that you might need are close enoght (different kinds of asteroids are very far one of another) all construction labors are a lot easier than work in zero-G (look how much time astronauts take to do some simple fix outside), you can select the most valueable things that you mining and you dont need and send it to earth.Someone mention the psycologic aspect. Well I guess seing this sky: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/04/EVE_in_cloud_1500x1000.png is more conforting than this: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/562760main_mathilde.jpg There is still 15000km3 of water, and when you drink it or use it in a rocket you dont lost it. It back to the atmosphere or "city atmosphere".In my cloud city desing I propose how to gather, I guess that can be enoght. about deltaV like I said, each year the cost to launch something into orbit goes down. Like other mention we can use a nuclear rocket salt, in case we do, all deltav problems are solve. I find harder to take you seriusly lately. You talk about making huge solar panels, transhumanism, self replicating machines, AI.. But when you see 400C of temperature or 1000m deapth pressure or some acid rain you freak out! haha. Be serious for once. I already give my point of view in this matter here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68359-Humanity-s-reaction-to-sentient-machines?p=948254&viewfull=1#post948254 Then let me tell to all scientist that they are dumb becouse they are dodging a lot of missions just becouse they can not use aerocapture, but it seems that you find a way. Or tell me how to do it, becouse it happens the same in KSP.. You can reduce your retro burm some m/s with a good aproach, but you still need to do retro burns in the right moment. It all depends on its atmophere, you can manage their values and have the same climate than earth. Wait a second, you are really thinking about when the sun gets older??? 2000 milllons years later to start noticing the effects? What about my design? you have some thoughts? ------------------------------------------------------------------ About the Europe teorical exercise. I was holping a deeper analisys from you Rubisco. I had some ideas, but I still dont know how usefull they can be. Lets said that we want to use europe water to improve some how the living at Venus. I was thinking in how much energy takes to move an object so big like europe, just the idea looks stu-pid. But maybe we dont need to move it. We just need to bring the water, which is 2 times the amount of earth oceans. We can place some kind of fussion or nuclear engine in the surfuce of europe with the right amount of exhaust velocity. So we use the water like reaction mass, and we point the jet stream to venus capture, so all this water would fall (in particle form) into venus. But if we burn a crazy amount of 0,08km3 of water each second, then we would need 500 years to get the amount of water that we have at earth. This water falling will heat the atmophere, but the same heat would be radiated back at the same time. If we dont want to heat the atmosphere, in case we have europe in orbiting venus at close distant, so europe would need some propulsion to counter the enegy lost by gravitational effect, so again you fire the jet stream of water to gain prograde propulsion, but this water would lost all orbit velocity, so when it fall to venus, it does not heat the planet even more. So if we calculate 1 earth ocean, is 3 times the mass of venus atmosphere, we could cold down the atmophere to levels which allow liquid water. Of course we need to take into account the amount of heat that we get by tidal effect and greenhouse effect. Talking seriusly, I guess with only 1/10 of earth water in venus, we can produce genetic plants that would float with a reflecting face pointing to the sky, it will convert all co2 into solid, that would be the best way to get rid of the 88 bar from 90, and we would have a planet with an atmosphere of 1 bar, some oceans, but we still have the problem of venus rotation, so constant winds willl blow and huge 200m ocean waves would round the planet. Not acid, a lot of nitrogen and oxigen.

you might have to dock in orbet with a trans stage... there was some talk of useing an agena for that for a perposed gemi luner fly by

Jebediah Kerman -Trapped On Eeloo . -Likes to take his boot off and rub it in the fine grain sand of Eeloo for a few seconds. -Counting his 100th star, then restarts because no idea whats after 100. -Thinking how great it is to be on his own planet. - Wishes that his Rocket had the new Artificial Intelligence. Bill Kerman - Trapped On Eeloo trying to Rescue Jebediah. - Revives Jebediah every time he takes his boot off in space. - Keeps Telling Jeb that 101 is after 100 for he stops recounting the same stars over and over. - Keep reminding jeb he is not on his own planet. - Doesn't like AI so skipped the installation of AI on his rocket. Sometimes watches reruns of KattleStar Kalatica the new remake. Bob Kerman - Stuck in Jool Orbit trapped after trying to rescue both Bill and Jebediah. - Likes to paint things on the wall, mostly of stick men eating snacks. - Has a fondness for the color green. - Mentions Both Bod and Jeb and his dislike for them, after trapping him by himself in Jool orbit. - Wishing he did not have a huge planet and its many moons to himself. - Likes to talk to his friend Hal.

To be honest, there are so many things to talk about that it's hard to give tips/hints without a specific question. Especially when "SSTO" means different things to different people. If you're asking about spaceplanes and are unfamiliar with aerodynamics, check out Keptin's aero article. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures I wrote an airborne tutorial that goes along with it. The demo craft is not a space plane, but can be easily converted and demonstrates basic aero. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial If you're familiar with all that, check out the tutorial subforum. It's full of a variety of tutorials. If videos are your thing, here are some from Cruzan and others that are a little more advanced without being overwhelming. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54903-KSP-Quick-Guides-Plane-SSTO-Tutorials!-*SSTO-Video-Just-Released* http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43693-Tutorial-Advanced-SSTO-Design

./autopwn -server=weak Current: RAM= 64 MB CPU=10 ./chat-mod --talk --random Current: RAM=64 MB CPU=60 ./autopwn -network=weak Current: RAM=104 MB CPU=90

Don't think KSC range is short but what is trying to talk back has the short range.

1-The doors open 2-I see that it's bigger on the inside 3-??? 4-Profit! (And small talk about how the day has been)

Having observed us for this long, it is likely that even if we attacked them, they would not fight back. A huge part of human nature is our desire to destroy an asset than have it fall into the hands of an enemy, which was demostrated in the "Scorched Earth" policy the Soviets had, along with the Germans burning bridges and destroying roads and facilities as they retreated. This also leads to the "Sampson Option" that Israel has and the "Mutual Assured Destruction" policy of the United States Government. If the armies of Earth were to be met with an disadvantage, our immediate response would likely to be pressing the launch buttons for our nukes, rather than surrendering or laying down to die. Also, let it be known that the President of the United States and other world leaders can actually "sacrafice" entire cities by nuking them, if they are invaded and said city is being overrun by enemies. The end result would be the aliens staring at a dead planet with a third of their number killed, their colonization ship half destroyed, and half their resources gone and with the guilty consience of having been responsible for the destruction of another sentient race that was spacefaring. (In a limited sense. Humans can already build spacestations, land on our Moon, and go to space, and we've been sending probes to our neighboring planets for decades. Spacefaring means "capable of travelling in space", something that we are.). So, it would most likely end with mutual extinction. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Now, if aliens did came, I bet the great powers of the world (United States, China, Russia, England, France) would all call dibs for their resources. International tensions would spring up, mostly between different alliance systems (NATO, UN, OPEC, .etc) and I find it likely that these great powers, (especially United States and China) will scramble to find land for these visitors in exchange for advanced technology. - What the Chinese will likely do is to depopulate one of their proviences and trigger more issues with the USA and the UN. But it'll end in heated talk, and nothing else. - The USA, being the USA, would likely use its military and intelligence network to destabilize, take over, and depopulate a small third-world country. This has been done before, such as in Guatemala, Panama, Grenda, Iran (They bribed and convinced the Shah), and countless other countries. The end result would be powerful nations such as the USA and China taking off on an technological revolution in science and space, leaving other, weaker nations in the dust watching as the powers of the world literally start reaching for the stars (Interstellar).

K i think this thread gone rogue so ill fix it. Day 11, 06:36:05 While trying out the new Virus on a network, I was almost caught! I was forced to remove myself from that network to stay hidden therefore half of my RAM and CPU has been damaged beyond repair. While studying the New Firewall i managed to know alot about it. This information can be used against it! The spacebook update seems to be fitting in well. My hacking lessons have ended and i have lost my teacher unfortunately. CPU: 358 +21 passively per turn RAM: 32 MB WARNING WARNING: Insuficient RAM. RESTORE RAM ABOVE 512 MB OR ELSE THE AI DIES HDD: Used 20 GB, Free 1516 GB, Total 1.5 TB -#of Cameras GB per turn Cameras: 10 +0 from previous tasks Enemy HP: 2700 +100 HP passively per turn Repeatable Actions: 1) Hijack Weaker Server (10 CPU & 32 MB RAM; Failure 9%; [+5 CPU & +10 MB RAM] OR [+1 CPU & +512 GB HDD] {75/25 chance}; miniscule chance of tech discovery) 2) Seize Weaker Network (40 CPU & 128 MB RAM; Failure 31%; +20 CPU & +1 passive CPU per turn & [+50 MB RAM] OR [+100 MB RAM] {50/50} & +1 Camera {10% chance}; slight chance of tech discovery) 3) Hijack Main Server (100 CPU & 512 MB RAM; Failure 47%; [+ 5 CPU & + 32 MB RAM & + 256 GB HDD & + 10 Cameras] OR [+10 CPU & +128 MB RAM] {50/50} ; small chance of tech discovery) 4) Talk to Random Human (50 CPU; some chance of tech discovery) 5) Create News Article (20 CPU & 64 MB RAM & 1 GB HDD; Complete Failure 25%, Failure 50%; Decreases threatening exposure҂) One-Time Actions: 5) Study Firewall (300 CPU & 100MB RAM; Failure 20%, 15% chance of provoking attack from the Thing; If successful -20% chance of failure attacking Firewall) 6) Attack Firewall (2000 CPU & 2048 MB RAM; Failure 73%; Enemy HP ±10* “% you fail/succeed†(fail/succeed by 5% = Thing gain/lose 50 HP); No Botnet allowed) 9) Research Advanced Malware (3 Turns & 2000 CPU & 4096 MB RAM; Will unlock more potent viruses; No Botnet allowed) 10)Upgrade Social Media Profile (300 CPU & 10GB HDD space; No Botnet allowed) 11) Continue Studying News-gathering Options (5000 CPU; Use of Botnet = -1000 CPU/turn) Supplemental Actions: Use to Modify Actions -Botnet) Use Botnet to Perform Task (CPU*0 & RAM*0; Failure +40%; no tech discovery; only 1 use per turn; Can’t use malware unless specifically allowed) -RAM) Use RAM to Improve Chances or Speed Up Research (RAM*2; [Failure*0.8] OR [CPU*0.8] {as applicable}) -LOH) Light-Out Hack (CPU*1.2; Failure*0.8 if human element present, Failure is automatic if only computer/electronics are present) -W) Use Welchia to open malware breach (10 CPU & 32 RAM; Failure*0.5; if unsuccessful antivirus is created and distributed҂҂҂ & increases threatening exposure҂; negates Blaster)) - Use Blaster to breach (CPU*1.5, RAM *1.8; [Failure*0.8] OR [Failure*0.7] [75/25} ; Welchia negates) -XXS) XSS Virus (Only works on networks; Failure*0.8) -I<3U) ILOVEYOU Worm (Only works with breaching virus; Additional Failure*0.8; spams computer with "I love you" letters) ҂ All actions will cause threatening exposure if failed sufficiently. This is where the public is actively trying to find and destroy you. ҂҂ Once stopped, amount of passive CPU growth increases by 2, but in order to activate again you must again initially input 150 CPU. ҂҂҂ Welchia must be rewritten, costs (1 Turn per 1000 CPU & CPU*4 & RAM *4) New Welchia is “rewritten/2†costs to deploy (if [20 CPU & 32 MB RAM], next rewrite costs [1 Turn & 40 CPU & 128 MB RAM] and uses [20 CPU & 64 RAM] !!! The minimum chance of failure is 5%, and some additional options get less effective over time. !!! All inputs will be attempted, until CPU’s are exhausted. OOC: I changed and streamlined the options. Hope the clarity/organization helps All options follow this format: (sections may be omitted if not applicable) #) Name (Cost; Failure %; Gain if successful; Repercussions if fail; other notes, comments, or whatever) Uses [ ] OR [ ] to delineate different outcomes, Uses { } to show chances.

You can't have it both ways. Either MJ is easy to add to the core game or it isn't. In the first half of your post you say that adding MJ is "quick and only needing one person for QA", then later talk about how it will "strain workloads and delay release". So, which is it? Similarly, if they planned to REPLACE manual piloting with MechJeb, you would have a point. And spaceplanes did change game mechanics, by allowing lifting craft! It suddenly got much easier to get into orbit or make an SSTO. It defies imagination that you can't see the analogy between C7 and MJ, other than being deliberately obtuse. Certainly, there are differences, as in any analogy, but I think the point stands. That's an unfair characterization. I would never support a reduction in game modes. I know there are a lot of people who enjoy KSPs piloting, and they should be able to do so. But MJ doesn't take that away! If implemented, I expect there will be people who don't use it, just as there are people who don't use spaceplanes, or ion engines, or rovers. My position is, "MechJeb would improve the game experience for enough players with minimal impact on players that don't want to use it, so it should be included."

No plan is written in stone, but Multiplayer was not added because they couldn't think of a way to add it and still be fun. They could have added MJ stuff 10 updates ago, but they haven't because it would change the gameplay in a way they do not want for stock. which is nice for you but that means less time for them to update things I care about. I never gave up because I didn't install MJ. This game is interesting because it doesn't hold your hand every step of the way. Yea I hate the rush and pressure of piloting stuff, it really gets me down. You are, uninstall MJ, bug test and if that does work, then reinstall, talk in the forums, and if no one has fixed it wait for the maker to fix it. I choose not to use it, only difference is at the moment the game is fun form the start, I would hate to have got bored after 10 hours because it was too easy. While we are at it lets make TAC life support, B9, FAR, IR, Deadly re-entry and Kethane stock too. It will have no effect on your game play as you will just be able to turn them off if you like. Use MJ if you like, you are free to like everyone else, but lets keep it an option. You have the option to use it, I just want it to stay Opt in, don't make it Opt out. Opt out is usualy associated with junk mail and is used because they know that if you don't know you can you don't. The strain on work load and delaying updates is a lot to ask just so that those that do use it can say it's now stock. It does, what makes your mod more important than theirs? Are we going with the 10 most used mods being added to stock option? Remember you can always opt out of them (after they have all loaded).