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Talk about threading the needle! I thought the mun arch was hard and it is easily 100% larger and oh my lord that 1:1 orbit mmmmhhhhhhmmmmmm

DMagic, that's a great report, thanks for that. To confirm, you talk about landing an unmanned unit. With a seat on top, do you see that managing to circularise an orbit and make a return?

Well, this is embarrassing. Somehow I managed to duplicate the post before this. Since I don't know how to delete it, I guess I'll just make use of it with a little more storytelling... Meanwhile, Mission Control was in a raucous. "They did WHAT?!" the mission control head, Northstar Kerman, asked. "You mean to tell me that they headed all the way out to EIGHTY-TWO THOUSAND KILOMETERS before they made their transfer burn?!" "That's what they did sir" replied one of his subordinates. "That's UNBELIEVABLE. Do you have ANY idea how much fuel they wasted?" "We're more than aware sir" came the reply. Northstar Kerman was angrier than he had been in as long as anyone at Mission Control could remember. Fortunately for the Kerbals of the Duna Crew Module, he was also well-known for being quick to calm down... "Alright," said Northstar, rubbing his temples "How much fuel do they have left- and what's their trajectory? Patch me through to the Duna Crew Module on the double." Northstar had worked long and hard to oversee the design and construction of the Duna Colonization Flotilla. It was supposed to be Kerbalkind's finest hour- not only their first putting boots on the ground of, but also their first settlement of another planet or moon outside the Kerbin system. The last thing he wanted to see was this effort go up in smoke, after all the effort he and so many others had invested in it. He also wasn't sure the Kerbal Space Program could ever afford another set of missions like this if this effort ended badly. Everything was riding on the mission's success. Fortunately, after a long talk with the Kerbals on the Duna Crew Module, it was clear both to them and to Mission Control that the mission still had a robust chance at success- and that no more of the kind of the foolish impatience that had led to this mess would be tolerated...

Slight correction. First post of the thread, fairly easy to miss if you're not paying attention, I had to hunt for it a bit to find this quote: [edit] for those looking to change that, there was talk of it a page or two back.

Not rocket scientists, engineers! In my experience scientists can and do read(talk to any about peer review work), on the other hand an attitude I found common among engineers was that manuals got thrown out with the packaging and wrapping - and anything that they couldn't figure out how to work, coax or kick into working was either "designed wrong" or "came broken".

Thank you for clarifying. I had thought that the earlier talk of energy networks was theoretical. It would be nice but I believe you're right in that the current transmission is p2p and will not relay. I'll be testing this to be sure once I unlock them in my career mode play.

You see, you guys keep saying NEWTONIAN physics. Not everything obeys these laws. Go on google and look up "superconductor", find the Ted talk on it. Here's some quick facts about them: They have ZERO electrical resistance. They can lock themselves in 3-DIMENSIONAL SPACE around a magnetic field. They can carry over 70,000 times their weight. They, most importantly, have ZERO ENERGY LOSS. We are dealing with QUANTUM physics here, not Newtonian. With more research in this field we could find a way to make a FTL spacecraft.

@Seanner I've made a replay to your post earlier, but deleted it because it wasn't any good, but now seeing your "nvm" I'm super curious what was that about Oh and one small thing i wanted to point out, is that fuel itself (unless its antimater) is generally much cheaper than engines. So it would take a lot of launches to net a profit on efficient engine. Right now fuel goes for around 200 for most tanks (with a 162,5 minimum on the 16t one). Aerospike costs 2566c per ton and LV-T30 costs measly 680c per ton. Yes the numbers aren't balanced but i do believe that when we have "credits" implemented in career mode engines will be at least 5x more expensive than fuel tanks (that's when the second TWR revolution will come and things like 1,2-1,3 TWR will be the optimal for standard rockets ) And if we wanted to talk about real engines, i think even thou we could retrieve the engines they won't be able to do much launches before scrapping or total overhaul (maybe 5 or 10) so the benefit's of lower fuel usage would be minimal.

I haven't personally tested this, but as far as I know, there is a relay value on either the receiver, transmitter (I can't remember), so I am like...90% sure that you can relay power as long as the transmitter sats have both receivers and transmitters on them. There was talk a while back on how to best set up a low Kerbol power network and I believe that using relays was key to getting the most out of that set up.

Hey Nauthy, I don't mean to nag, but the last day I have to make youtube videos until December (I think) is tomorrow (Friday). Could you just talk to him, see what he's doing? Thanks. -Cake

This is not any more OP than welding the parts together using the welding tool. To me, launching is a grind, and the exciting stuff happens in space. I'll talk to UbioZur to see what he thinks of this idea.

I can't seem to be able to sync with the rest of the server. It displays that I'm synchronizing with the rest of the world when I log in, but it actually does absolutely nothing. It only lets me sync when I'm seemingly piloting a spacecraft, and after it syncs up KMP disconnects me from the server, essentially making this mod useless apart from me being able to talk to others, like a slightly worse version of Kerbal Live Feed(because I can't pause and quickload). EDIT: That error is gone for now, but now KMP attained this nasty habit of randomly disconnecting from servers! AAARGHHH! It's like it's trying to do anything it can to keep me from playing Kerbal Multi Player and to trap me into Kerbal Single Player!

"No mission is beyond salvaging some usefulness- even if its goals do change." Scant consolation that is, thought Jerbo, remembering the mission controller's words to calm him down. Jerbo had come to realize that, painfully, he probably wouldn't be going to Duna. Instead, he and Doneley- with that weak stomach and blank stare on his face all the time- would probably be forced to spend the next few days extracting aluminum and oxygen from regolith, and the next few months or more performing research on the Mun. "At least we won't necessarily be stuck in this same ship that whole time" Jerbo thought. There had been talk of landing the supplies for a more permanent base at their location- as it appeared reasonably flat, and was near several craters that might prove worth visiting. Mission Control had even provided them with an orbital image of the vicinity of their landing site, to illustrate this to them. The Lunar Science Module- as some buffoon initially renamed their mission- would eventually be drained of remaining fuel and scrapped. It's the *Munar* Science Module, thought Jerbo- what's Luna? (OOC: Luna is the name for Earth's moon.) In the meantime, their mission was now to rendezvous with a new model of Duna Science Module, that would be launched from Kerbin shortly- and transfer what fuel to it they could. "Great", thought Jerbo- "we've become nothing but the space equivalent of oil drillers and gas station attendants." He knew, of course, this wasn't true. While Mission Control did speak of searching for Kethane deposits around the Mun- and especially in their vicinity- no gas station attendant could fly a 100-ton rocket, thought Jerbo- also thinking back to the 900-ton plus behemoth it had been back on the launchpad... \ Regardless, he had a mission to perform- and Mission Control was providing him with the tools to do it... As a first step, they had immediately ordered that a small probe be sent from the LKO Spacedock carrying a new "radiator tower"- whatever that meant- to allow them to cool their craft and reactivate its nuclear reactors and associated generators. In the meantime, they were to begin performing research on the local geology and radiation levels, to advance science and better characterize their location's suitability for a permanent base. Most of a day of research (6-7 hours) passed, and the radiator tower arrived as promised. Jerbo's first duty was to remove the still-functional solar panels from the nearby crashed-down skycrane-style probe that had been used to transport it, and re-attach them to the radiator tower facing towards to now setting sun. The extra electricity, mission control assured them, would help a tiny bit with running the ship's power-hungry electrolysis systems... Meanwhile, Donely would be employed at the much more "hazardous" task of re-routing the ship's heat exchange fluid to the radiator tower, and re-activating the ship's nuclear generators- as mission control still didn't trust Jerbo's unstable mental state since his breakdown... (OOC: KSP Interstellar's Science Labs appear incapable of utilizing ElectricCharge directly. Instead they utilize the "Megajoules" representing mechanical energy stored in its generators. However the generators only produce this resource when the ship is producing surplus power, and proportional to the surplus- as they are essentially a form of electrical storage. It is unclear to me if the maximum rate of Megajoule production can be raised by having a large EC surplus- but it *IS* clear that a proportion of the generator's Megajoule output can be diverted to produce EC instead if the ship would otherwise be running an EC-deficit. Since the Munar Science Module originally had no other method of producing electricity besides the generators, this was always the case- and so utilizing a few working solar panels from the gently-crashed ship would slightly increase the Megajoule output of the generators...) Finally, after a hard day of work unscrewing solar panels from the crashed probe, and drilling them onto the top of the radiator tower- after carefully navigating to the top by RCS jetpack- Jerbo finally finished his part of fixing the electrical systems. Shortly after, Donely burst into the Science Module with a wide grin on his face, and announced "It's finished! The radiators are venting the reactors' heat correctly, and we'll be electrolyzing regolith at full-power now in no time!" "Great" thought Jerbo- "now we get to haul glamorized rock-dust for the next week, and get filthy electrolyzing and purifying it into rocket fuel-grade materials". Of course, he didn't say this- instead he just game Doneley a half-hearted high-five, and returned to the scientific experiment he had been working on in the corner... "This is going to be a looonnnng month ahead of me", thought Jerbo... OOC again: As you can see, I did manage to figure out a way to save at least some of the usefulness of the damaged Science Module. Unfortunately, I don't trust a radiator stack tied to the front of the ship by nothing but a KAS stack winch to survive aerobraking on Duna... I could be acting over-cautious about this, but I've decided to go with launching an entirely new ship with two built-in 2.5 meter inline radiators instead of the deployable sort that broke before (the inline radiators would be identical to the two the tower you saw there was constructed of. They're heavier than the deployable radiators, but they should have a lot less chance of breaking on a possibly less-gentle touchdown on Ike than the super-gentle one I made on the Mun before- which still managed to break them anyways...) In the meantime, I'll be needing to launch another Duna Science Module, and the Duna Crew Module, soon- and get them out of the Kerbin system before the necessary intercept orbits become any slower or require any more Delta-V: (Keep in mind that Duna is to the RIGHT of Kerbin's prograde vector as seen here. It should be DIRECTLY in front of the vector for the fastest and lowest-energy Hohmann Transfer, ideally- and it will only continue to move further to the right the longer I delay my additional launch windows... It would be to the LEFT of the prograde vector if it was *approaching* the transfer window instead of moving away from it, by the way. Given its current position, any intercept course will have to have a significant radial component outwards from the Sun in addition to its prograde component- which is a lot less efficient of a way to get a transfer...)

Chapters Chapter One Chapter Two Prologue United Pronvincal Ballistic Rocket Research Center The sun rose over the mountains as the launch preparations for the new rocket began. A mass of fuel tanks and engines thrown together at a moments notice, the rocket still represented the best that Kerbin-or, atleast, the United Provinces could offer. Wehner looked at the pad, at the small rocket standing glistening in the sun. The words UPDF were scrambled on the side, and a engineer was securing two fuel tanks together. The LV-909 engine stood on the bottom of the spacecraft, the newest breakthrough in engine propulsion-well, that is, until his team on the LV-45 would report in. A truck arrived, bearing fuel, and the engineer and another Kerbal ran out and began to fuel the rocket. "The Kraken-8 represents the best in rocket technology... Actually, other than modified Q-4 rockets we got during the Big War, we have no rocket technology." The scientist kept silent, fingering the medal the Great Leader had given him during the war. Bobfred approached him with a stack of papers, and set them on his desk, and went out to grab a cup of coffee. Wehner looked down at the papers. He looked back up. The first rays of sunlight where peeking over the mountaintops now. Hopefully the test payload was secured along with the control unit, and the rocket won't fall apart and lose control in mid-air. The Rocketry Research Division needed a success to get their funding, after all- the Parliament kept threatening budget cuts if the Kraken-8 wasn't completed in time for action in the Bali Insurrection or something...it didn't matter. He'll show them. Bobfred entered the room. "Bobfred." "Sir?" "Please go perform a full system and structural check on the rocket." "Yes sir." "And once you're done, head over to the local Kerbucks and get me a kappuccino. Extra sugar, not decaf. Frozen, with whipped cream. Oh, plus twenty of their glazed doughnuts. Large. I need to restock the Employee lounge." "Yes sir. I'll get it. Back onto the launch pad, Gene was securing the last of the bolts. He had heard about the first Kraken-8 test flight, and he didn't want it to happen again. After all, the last one did almost get him laid off before he even started his job, until Wehner intervened and managed to cajole/beg/bribe Parliament into approving another million for the Airforce Rocket Division....that was enough for another month-and that was if this flight was successful. A 23-million annual budget gets you nowhere, after all. The screwdriver stopped shaking, and he took it out and patted the bolt. "Keep in there, little piece o'metal, and I'll get to support my family another year." "Gene!" "Huh?" Bobfred ran up to him, panting and gasping for breath. The rocket was shining in the early morning now. "What's with Wehner? He hasn't left the main Headquarters for a while." "There's air conditioning there..." "Oh." "Gene, can you check over everything? Wehner wants to be sure." "Ok." Bobfred then ran off toward the employee parking lot mumuring something about frozen coffee with extra sugar and twenty glazed donuts. Gene bent down, making sure the bolts where secure. He opened a small panel, and stuck in a metal rod. It came out wet, stick with some black substance. "That's good. Fuel full." He closed the panel, and secured the bolts one last time. Bending down, he felt the engine, and checked it over for cracks and dents in the bell. Nothing. This rocket was ready for launch. Another truck arrived, and several workers exited, and started carrying large red supports. "Hello, I've managed to deliver your order from Jebediah's Metalworks. Nice day today, isn't it? Now, where should be put them?" "Uh, arrange them around the rocket, activate them, and attach them to the fuselage." "Got it!" The workers put the launch clamps around the rocket and fastened them to the pad, before activating them and driving off into the distance. Jebediah...had he heard that name before? Wasn't he that cheery (And slightly insane) young airforce officer who came here one day and asked them if they had a space program, and if he could be a astronaut? No matter, there was work to be done. Gene climbed a clamp, and started to secure it to the rocket. After aligning the suction cups and structural parts, he sighed. One down, three more to go. He clambered down, and went to work on another clamp. After this, he had to touch up the paint job. It was still morning. Back at the building, Wehner worked on his plans. Well, plans that would come to fruition if Parliament ever made a space agency. Even the current Missile research agency was criminally underfunded. And their funding was on a downwards spiral. He needed a success. "Sir! The Kraken-8 is ready for launch! And I got your coffee! They ran out of donuts, though, so I got fifteen." Bobfred stood there, grinning. Wehner motioned for him to come in. "We'll launch right now. Tell Gene to hurry up, and set the engine ignition timer to Five Minutes." "Got it. Can we get one of those little devices that you talk in and other people can hear you? Like the ones we see in old war movies of the Big War?" "They cost money. We don't have money. Besides, you have to exercise. Now get out there and tell him!" "Yes sir!" Bobfred ran out, and rushed outside, cursing the Parliament under his breath. The budget was a issue. Wehner looked at the watch. He had a appointment with the Secretary of Defense in a couple hours. Outside, two Kerbals scurried off the launch pad. The timer was set. It was almost noon. The few engineers in the building would be at their posts now, watching and waiting for the launch. Over the only radio in the entire center, he could hear excited chatter amongst the scientists in the control room as the timer slowly counted down. Picking up his papers and a pen, he opened the door and went down the stairwell to join in the excitement. Five minutes later, the little rocket hurled toward the sky, blazing fire and smoke out of its engine. Wehner went to the telemetry station, and immediately began to observe the information coming from the craft. The altitude started to rise, and the speed picked up as the little rocket soared towards the sky. Several engineers looked out the window, watching as the glowing streak of light slowly disappeared as the rocket soared above the clouds, leaving a trail of smoke. "So, I think the gasoline and sulfur combination worked." "Sulfur?" "Yes. Gasoline as main fuel, sulfuric acid as oxidizer. By the way, what's the odd smell in this room?" "Uh....." Gene got up and left, and so did the smell. A second later, he poked his head into the room. "I'm going to take a shower. Be right back." "Smells so much better now." "Engine burnout in five secon-now." "Apogee?" "105 Kilometers. It'll land several hundred kilometers away." "105KM?" "Yes." The control room cheered as rocket neared its Apogee. In space. But that wasn't the only reason they cheered. This would secure funding for some time, and they had families to support with a hefty paycheck, after all. Telemetry ceased from the first stage-the decoupler had fired, and the test payload was now plummeting back to Kerbin. Wehner was tense, slowly chewing on the ice cubes in his finished coffee. The heat shield was the only part they had not tested. "Reentry in five..four...three...two..one!" All telemetry ceased from the payload as it dove through the atmosphere. Some numbers came in, but they where scrambled. Suddenly, the temperature dropped, and the craft fell through the clouds, toward the small recovery ships below. Telemetry resumed. Loud cheering could be heard in the control room, and the parachutes opened, readying the Kraken-8's payload for a splashdown. Wehner looked at the readouts joyfully, and back at the smoke plume that the first stage had left, growing fainter and fainter by the second. Gene returned from his shower. "I'm back! What happened?" "Mission Accomplished, Gene. Mission Accomplished." A thousand kilometers away, the test payload bobbled in the waves as a recovery ship secured it with ropes and nets. The captain of the vessel watched as his sailor hoisted the small craft out of the water, then looked above toward the stars. This was only the beginning.

Is there a dummies guide to the communication system somewhere? I've got a couple of comm satellites in orbit but I can't get all of them to talk together.

I'll 2nd this. SCANsat should be released. Talk to that guy from "part from my garden shed" get his permission, put your stuff together, release and you will "Win" . No further discussion needed.

Partial Update Well, nothing has been working. it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and I was ready to just HyeprEdit the darn thing up there until I realized that I as going at this, THE WRONG WAY! I mean really, talk about Uber Facepalm through the skull. I mean, if you've guys seen the screenshots, it should of clicked already, if not, then don't feel bad, because THIS is what I should of done. Oh and I kept forgetting to boot Jenbur out of the Lander Cab, it's like, DUDE, you are NOT going to the MUN! I know you miss your buddy Alan but you are STAYING here pal! I hope this works....

Well firstly, if it was possible to make universes with life on a lab, then we could already be a micro-verse in someone elses lab. As for the rest, i really dont know, but one can simply go with .. 42-> Big bang -> create universe -> expand -> shrink -> Big anti-bang -> 42 .. He can go ..42 -> Alien Multidimensionals -> Lots of drinks and 9 months later -> create universe -> 24 .. All im saying, is when the discussion is going at this scale, you really dont talk about physics, but Philosophy. Tell that to the Nobel and PHd lads for me. Just a small final edit to just say that the discovery of the fitness or otherwise of our universe, really doesnt add or change anything about our perception of the kosmos. It is (at least for us humans) something of a big deal already, it doesnt make a difference in the "wonder" part, if we were ment to be or just barelly made it in here. At least for me.

I guess the main reason I asked is that I'm a Unity developer myself, and converting my projects this week has been as simple as opening them in the newest version of Unity. Generally I've seen some small improvements and encountered no conversion issues (yet.) KSP is obviously a fair bit more complex than my projects, but I wondered if there was some talk of them already experimenting with 4.3 on a git branch and if it had rendered any interesting results. Ever the optimist, I guess..

Hmm, you might be right. But do consider moving the NovaPunch 5m parts to Experimental Rocketry - it will allow you to shift most of the NP tech tree towards more advanced technology, bringing it more in line with the stock parts. I just think we get the 2.5m parts a bit early. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about NP. So I have a question: will there be enough shuttle-derived parts in this mod that we can make an SLS, or will that require too many non-shuttle derived parts for you to include it here?

Luna and Sol are old names right? Atleast I remember that Luna was the goddes of the moon. And you always see Sol in Sci Fi storys, when humans talk about theyr own star. It would get kinda weird if you talk about all stars as suns, and than name your own star The Sun. Better give it a name

Ha ! Talk about it My attempt to an Eve lander that can re-orbit does one (and only one) backflip through its ascent, ruining the already very limited DV (in regards to crazy Eve requirements). Trying to do an universal grand-tour SSTO lander (that refuels itself with Kethane on the ground), so far managed to make one work until Tylo, but Eve requires additional stages, and those are already quite crazy difficult with stock game, with FAR it's a real challenge Since every additional weight on the top stage means exploding masses for the bottom stage, and that universal-SSTO is around 83t (but has around 4000 DV by itself), lifting that off Eve surface (after landing successfully ! that means sound structural design) will require some creativity.

Well a computer lock-up made me lose my first version of this post earlier today. Let's see if I can get through this one without getting interrupted by the Kraken. For any who are interested, I've updated my set of mods and Eagle Craft files again. Here's the new link: Logan's Eagle Mods and Pods So what's new? A few tweaks to performance of the Eagle. Specifically the way the side translation thrusters were mounted for better balance to make it easier to use in both VTOL and Orbital operations. An attempt to reduce part count, complexity and redundant mods necessary A couple of new parts custom made by Lackluster. (That guy is awesome!) And a completely new type of pod for carrying and deploying a set of mapping probes using the SCANSAT mod and plug-in. First off - the RCS translation issue. The way I had mounted the thrusters before was adequate for VTOL operations. But it was off of the COG enough that it made the ship roll too much. And in orbit/zero-g this made it very hard to dock with anything. So I took a close look at where the most common Center of Gravity was for the Eagle. It changes a bit with different load-outs, but I found what I thought was a "sweet spot" and did some more testing. The end result is that instead of mounting 4 RCS blocks tucked behind the truss on the sides, I was able to reduce it to 2 RCS blocks - 1 fore and 1 aft. Clipped into the top of the body. You can see below where they are (the small squares on the "roof" of the fore and aft part of the main truss tank). This change does two positive things - it makes for steady side-to-side translation with minimal roll, and it reduces the part count since I could get rid of the redundant RCS blocks. In regards to further reducing part and mod count, I reduced the amount of struts I was using and used standard Squad struts instead of going overboard with the tougher and weightier B9 struts. Turns out not to have compromised the structural integrity at all. Apparently I was "over-building". Overall I managed to reduce part count there as well. I love the B9 mod, but I try to use it sparingly. What I don't use sparingly of course is the LLL parts. They make up the majority of the pod designs. Probably the most popular pod is going to be the passenger pod since that's close to the original show. I asked Lack if it was possible to create a single part pod that could replace the multi-part version that I was using before. He not only said yes, he did it himself. And I've included it in my new mod pack above and in the craft file. It REALLY helps reduce the part count. I was using around 15 parts before to make those pods. Now it's down to 7-8 and the overall part count on a passenger Eagle is around 35. Down from nearly 50 before. I don't remember if I did this on this version or the last one, but there was a slight tweak to the design of the Kethane pod. I put the crew hatches up near the front, gave them ladders for easier access, and added an extra set of solar panels. Also - I moved 2 of the 3 RTGs that this Eagle was using from the Eagle itself to the pod. That means the pod if it's dropped on its own somewhere is much better able to power itself. It has a total of 3 RTGs and 6 solar panels, with a pair of extra solar panels in the KAS boxes just in case they're needed. Lastly - here's that new pod I mentioned above: There are 4 of the SCANSAT style mapping probes on this carrier. They are self-powered with solar panels batteries, xenon tanks and Ion Engines for tweaking of orbits. They also have comm-dishes in case you want to use something like Remote-Tech. And if needed, they can re-dock with the Eagle. Imagine sending a pair of Eagles out to Jool. One could be the Kethane prospector, the other could be this one. The Kethane Eagle could keep itself, the second Eagle and even the probes topped off with fuel for an extended survey of the entire Jool moon system. So there you go. Test and see what you think! Lastly - I want to talk about quantum struts. I tried to refrain from using them before because they seemed a bit of a "cheat". But after banging my head on the "Drop and pick up" problem all this time I decided to give in and try it out. OH. MY. GOD. 4 Quantum struts placed on the truss bar and pointed straight down makes the pods totally stable - AND you can (with some deft piloting) dock with one and pick it up again and it won't fall off of one end or the other! It'll actually re-dock perfectly straight! And they can be placed very unobtrusively with hardly any of the "beam" showing at all. Just the tiniest pinprick of light between the quantum strut part and the pod that's easily ignored. I didn't put quantum struts in my mod pack above. But if you want to use the Eagle for moving stuff around? SERIOUSLY consider getting the Quantum strut mod! It'll absolutely complete the Eagle experience! Well that's it for now. The next pod I design I think I'm going to try for the classic winch pod. Wish me luck! (And Devo - I hope you're still out there, mate. Getting a little worried about you!)

There is quite a lot of coal in the ground, over 1000 GtC. CO2 response in ppm CO2 is roughly half of that value -- 500ppm CO2 just by burning all the coal. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were 275 ppm, we're now around 400ppm. That would kick it up to around 1000ppm CO2. You're correct that CO2 has a half-life of around 50 years in the atmosphere so it depends on how fast we burn it all up, but if you assume we are unrestrained in our acceleration of fossil fuel burning we can do that on the order of 50-ish years, and throw in oil and nat gas (and lets not talk about methane release from fraking nat gas) and 1000ppm CO2 is probably conservative. From paleoclimatology, the last time the Earth saw levels that high was roughly 40 million years ago -- and the Antarctic had melted. Once you put the poles melting on the table, you get ice-albedo-feedback for one since the ice caps at the poles reflect radiation back into space, and that leads to further warning, so that even if you decrease the CO2 levels you have to take the time to re-freeze the whole Antarctica. There's also a feedback between high temperature as a cause and higher CO2 as an effect -- so that once temperature changes have taken hold, the biosphere actually produces more CO2 and doesn't wash it out as effectively, so you can't consider just the half life of CO2 without considering that you're bumping the equilibrium up to higher values all along the way. There are a whole lot of feedback loops that occur which make it likely that if we hit 1000ppm that the Himalayas will melt in 300 years or so, and Antarctica will be gone (probably on a longer timeframe like 1000 years, which is still a blink of a geological eye). So, it will return, but it took 15 million years from the Eocene maximum until the Antarctica reglaciated. And the globe was clearly habitable the whole time. We're not going to sterilize the planet through CO2 by any means. The problem is what kind of issues we cause ourselves in the meantime and what the cost is. Humanity will also survive (assuming we don't kill ourselves through strife and nuclear war or secondary effects like that). But far from having to worry about the Antarctic melting, we already are likely to have an ice-free Arctic in the summer months. There's evidence, and a strong reason to believe, that this is already changing weather patterns, and leading to very strong atmospheric blocking and a series of heat waves and (seemingly paradoxially) cold snaps, leading to a rapid rise in the number of billion-dollar weather disasters per year (more than can be accounted for just by land usage and inflation). You also dump more heat in the atmosphere and you energize weather systems. You have more moisture in the atmosphere so that rainfall is on average heavier -- and even snowstorms are on average heavier (they'll still occur and when they do they'll be more energetic). And then sealevel rise and inundation is terrible for communities living close to the sea (lots of them being very poor and not having any ability to mitigate the problem).

So. One of us could talk to Nova and ask him to release the coding of this mod so one of our more programming/texture orientated friends could finish this.