Winter Man

Any force would change its orbit hypothetically, but even something the size of a Saturn V wouldn't be anywhere near big enough to do anything appreciable. You'd need some kind of gargantuan Orion drive-like system to do anything worthwhile.

They all kind of do, angle of attack is factored into the lift coefficient. In fact, the lift and drag coefficients change with the angle of attack. So the proportion of lift to drag will be different for every wing shape, but it's still the same principle.

Have a picture to better illustrate (ha!) what I mean. The red arrow is the actual force generated by the wing moving through the air, the blue is the lift component and the green is the drag component.

Yup. Because lift and drag are actually the same force (in aircraft), just separated into vectors to make calculations easier. Lift you oppose with weight, and drag you oppose with thrust. Makes everything a bit neater.

Lift IS proportional to density. Lift = Cl*0.5*ÃÂ*V^2*A, where Cl is the lift coefficient (determined experimentally in a wind tunnel), ÃÂ is density, V is velocity and A is the area of the wing. Density's pretty important to lift.

You like planetary detonation? Look up helioforming.

A giant airsofting civilisation, wiped out by failure to defend themselves against an alien invasion (on account of their weapons only firing plastic).

Pretty sure he means if you exclude the pressure, not if you don't make your rocket to withstand them.

Doesn't really need that much fuel to do, you just incrementally increase your apoapsis and decrease your periapsis. I did it in an average shuttle. Still though, you're right in saying there's no point (any more).

I don't think it should be as simple as fading the background when you look at the sun, there should be distance (and brightness) factored in there somewhere.

Nice to see the map view zoom has been fixed for larger orbits, too.

Like the moon in the Time Machine! Best bit in an otherwise lame film.

That\'s what\'s got me puzzled - it\'s been said that all the planets are coming in one big update in the past, how can we have a complete solar system without gas giants?

It was always said that planets wouldn\'t be added until a pretty decent weather/temperature/atmospheric model was added, but I see no mention of it in the .17 thread. Just wondering.

So yeah, Vango put a tent in space. An inflatable tent that didn\'t explode.

Heh. Totally gonna go fly my rocket into the Mun\'s gash (and yeah, it\'s an extraordinarily common term in the UK; frowned upon, but common).

Disastrously awesome consequences, you mean!

I see a problem with that. Look at your throttle. It\'s set to \'wuss\'.