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[Cheese]

I agree with int, this could bring back the interest in space and mean that humanity can finally be awoken as to how much we need space travel and research.

[neotemplar]

The ought to just make it an MMO and drain the  profits into some proper science.  Heck Warcraft is practically a voluntary tax already for some

[rutsber]

Which means travel time will be considerably faster. At least reletively.

Not so sure.
Maybe I'm wrong - and I think I could be...
But performing a Hohmann Transfer is pretty delicate, both in angle and velocity. Sure, you'd have better acceleration and range... But if you go faster than you need to, chances are you're going to miss your target.

...And... Fusion? Really? I thought there where laws against that sort of thing.

I'm fairly certain I looked this up and the U.N. bans all nuclear rockets within the atmosphere*. You could launch up parts of it, perform a docking procedure to put them together and have a nuclear rocket in space that broke no laws. It's been a while since I read it though.

_{*I say atmosphere but technically the atmosphere extends indefinitely so It's more of a relative term. Basically the same distance out as the ISS.}

[Rakonas]

Which means travel time will be considerably faster. At least reletively.

Not so sure.
Maybe I'm wrong - and I think I could be...
But performing a Hohmann Transfer is pretty delicate, both in angle and velocity. Sure, you'd have better acceleration and range... But if you go faster than you need to, chances are you're going to miss your target.

...And... Fusion? Really? I thought there where laws against that sort of thing.

I'm fairly certain I looked this up and the U.N. bans all nuclear rockets within the atmosphere*. You could launch up parts of it, perform a docking procedure to put them together and have a nuclear rocket in space that broke no laws. It's been a while since I read it though.

_{*I say atmosphere but technically the atmosphere extends indefinitely so It's more of a relative term. Basically the same distance out as the ISS.}

There are laws against the nuclear pulse engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 but there's no such thing as a nuclear fusion rocket, and I'd assume that hypothetical future fusion wouldn't be outlawed by the UN.
Also, I hope this is like Nasa Station 13.

[Shadowlord]

Looking up VASIMIR on wikipedia, there are no nuclear reactions going on as far as I see.

"The engine design encompasses three parts: turning gas into plasma via helicon RF antennas; energizing plasma via further RF heating in an ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) booster; and using electromagnets to create a magnetic nozzle to convert the plasma's built-up thermal energy into kinetic force. By varying the amount of energy dedicated to RF heating and the amount of propellant delivered for plasma generation VASIMR is capable of either generating low-thrust, high-specific impulse exhaust or relatively high-thrust, low-specific impulse exhaust."

Also, that's not so much a law against a nuclear pulse engine as a treaty banning nuclear testing anywhere except underground. Project Orion, if it were to be built and tested, would violate that treaty. As for whether it might not include "nuclear rockets," someone would have to read the treaty to find out, and have some non-vague idea what a "nuclear rocket" was, for that matter. In any case, China, for one, never signed that treaty.

P.S. This does sound neat, aside from hoping it doesn't turn out like Moonbase Alpha: I played Moonbase Alpha for 2-3 hours at most. There is virtually no replay value, almost nothing to do, and no challenge. And you can't even take a dune buggy and go explore the moon and drive off dunes properly.

[andrea]

it is a bit depressing to know that 50 years ago we had the technology to move thousands of tons across the solar system, quickly and cheaply ( compared to rockets at least), and we did nothing with it.

however, I can understand the necessity to sign that treaty against nuclear explosions.

[Shadowgandor]

It'd be more depressing if said technology went boom in our atmosphere.

[andrea]

true, true.
but nukes don't explode so easily... it would probably be safer than many people think ( although I guess your concern was about the potential cloud of radioactive materials)

[Twerty]

Ouch, this game has a pricetag of 50k, huh? And has gotten, in a little over two months, just 1.4k, and has just 26 days left... As far as things look, this thing is pretty far doomed.

[inteuniso]

Well, they're getting 500k from the government, so don't feel too bad. But basically, for every dollar they raise, the feds match it. so, 250k raised, 250k matched + 500k.

[neotemplar]

true, true.
but nukes don't explode so easily... it would probably be safer than many people think ( although I guess your concern was about the potential cloud of radioactive materials)

The problem isn't with the nuke exploding but the rocket it's getting boosted on.  If that goes bang, nasty gets spread all over.

[Fikes]

true, true.
but nukes don't explode so easily... it would probably be safer than many people think ( although I guess your concern was about the potential cloud of radioactive materials)

The problem isn't with the nuke exploding but the rocket it's getting boosted on.  If that goes bang, nasty gets spread all over.

I know none of the facts in regards to the rocket, but I will say people are way way way too afarid of radiation. 3-mile Island released as much radiation as a dental x-ray.

I will pledge to the project at the $30 level, but I don't see it having any chance of success. The scope is far too broad. Making science fun is hard in and of itself. For the most part, space is about waiting. Just getting to the ISS takes days and the only fun part of that would be launch. I do not see how they could make it into an MMO, unless you get quests to gather 12 moon rocks.

[TheBronzePickle]

They'll probably have super-fast travel or something. Make a minigame out of plotting course and all that, and then boom, you enjoy your short trip through what should be hours or days worth of flying in the scope of a few minutes. Scientific stuff could be boiled down to mingames too. It wouldn't be as realistic, but it would make it fun enough to play and they could slip actual information in to educate people.

[Sensei]

I don't see why they can't just have a timeskip/time acceleration function like most flight simulators.

Also, speaking of threats to humanity:

[TheBronzePickle]

Time acceleration is usable in singleplayer because there's only one user to worry about, so the entire game universe can be affected by it. When you have two players, one of which wants to accelerate time and one of which doesn't, things become much more problematic. The closest I've ever seen to multiplayer time warping was a game where the multiplayer had a collectible that made everyone have bullet time, but enemy players would be slowed down with the bullet time while friendly players were unaffected.