something

Oh yeah. I totally do cheat if I feel cheated by the program. Especially version upgrades cause all kinds of crap which needs to be adjusted by savefile editing. I even "copied" vessels from the KSC to Duna in order to keep going after an upgrade. From time to time I need to dock or undock vessels via savefile and the KAS/KIS struts are screaming for savefile editing as well...

Really depends. The more complex the mission, the more time I spend designing the vessels. Just discovered that I am working since March 1on a design that will take a few Kerbals to Jool.... If it is a space plane on the other hand, I usually spend no more than a day, until I just reinvented the already existing design ... If it is a rocket. Just a few minutes. Since you throw it away anyways, it doesn't deserve so much time.

Yeah once had a similar issue: I accepted the contract while the vessel was on the launch pad. Contract didn't fire as the vessel was no longer "new". In the end I manually edited the contract to be completed and added a certain amount of funds to my account. My lawyers then argued that rolling a rocket out of the VAB certainly did not make any difference to its state of being new or old and furthermore there wasn't any specification stating whether new meant "after signing" or "after requesting" and it hence was totally legit to build the vessel while negotiating the terms of the contract...

Gravity Waves are created at the interface of two fluids of whatever kind. This might also extend to aerodynamics and different layers of air (which then cause certain cloud patterns). As far as I can tell there are three options: a) Only one kind of gravioli particles exists in the vicinity of a vessel, basically rendering the vessel detectable. b) Both kinds of gravioli particles exist, rendering the vessel detectable. c) Positive and Negative particles annihilate according to the Einsteinian equivalence of mass and energy, generating a surge in radiation which could be detected again. Also, any accelerated mass generates gravitational waves (and I assume, that's what you meant), although extremely weak which are a distortion of space and time that can be detected by a precise interferometer. As it was stated that the Enterprise was equipped with lots of sensors, it is fair to assume she should have the capability to detect electro-magnetic radiation...

They're probably sending a weak omni-directional signal to align receiver and transmitter, and then switch to a highly directional mode which actually allows communication. Would reduce the probability of interception to a minimum. Also, I finally know what word "bloak" has been derived from. I always assumed "cloak" but since @Kuzzter wrote "block" that actually makes sense as well. Might as well be a merger of those words - a cloaked block? If I recall correctly, Star Trek established some sort of "tachyon field" (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tachyon) created by cloaked vessels. KF-AJO has done something similar with "positive graviolis" or whatever it was called. Hence, there seems to be some similarity regarding the functionality of that device at least.

Paid content ... so we came there, finally. It's not that KSP wasn't worth it or it was no fun or whatever. For me there's a more fundamental question. Am I willing to pay for something, or am I just going to download another mod? I mean there are countless part mods out there. So the only thing which I would purchase is the mission editor, and there are lots of missions in the challenge forum, complete with ranking etc. Some of the most remarkable and long running challenges do completely fine without it *K Prize Challenge* *cough*

Finally someone came around with a brilliant idea. Since months I was looking for all those nice challenges from years ago, but couldn't find them due to this forum section being littered with more or less well thought of challenges. So yeah keep up the good work.

Well the Germans got it from the Chinese but then the German publications (and scientists) spread in the western world due to a 'lack of infrastructure'. It is quite common for scientific expressions to transcend into English language and then further into other languages. We commonly use cavity, rampen (to ramp), locken (to lock), carrier, sideband etc in everyday German lab language when speaking of optical cavities and - you won't believe it - we do speak German then... On the other hand Eigenvector, Eigenvalue are German expressions (eigen meaning 'self-' un that case). Maybe some translator took Eigen for a scientist or whatever. The German variants are Eigenvektor and Eigenwert which literally mean Self-Vector and Self-Value referring to the fact that they are projected onto themselves...

Ok, now that localisation is being released Squad teases us with even more localisation - a feature I won't use. So see you in 1.5 or 1.6 or whatever version will have settled all those bugs introduced by localisation...

I couldn't resist, doing this: 'Ok lads, I gonna make this one quick and painless - we do have a huge PR problem. The public does have the distinct feeling that nothing changed in the past years. Society is bored of just being told of the 42nd landing on Laythe or Eve. We need something new. We need the WOW-effect.' the CEO started the meeting. The employees were overwhelmed and for a short time which felt like half an eternity nothing was heard at all. In fact, you could have heard the vacuum fluctuations if that was possible. Finally an employee, apparently a scientist, raised his voice 'We could discover new planets and moons every now and then.' The crowd agreed quickly, although tempting, this proposal would lead to a landing on a planet which is just like Duna. The wow-effect was completely missing. And anyways, there is only one solar system out there. A software engineer proposed, now they had invented communication and the not bouncing wheel, it might be of particular interest to investigate the speed of transmissions as a first proof-of-principle experiment in order to determine the speed of light, should it have any. While this idea certainly was brilliant, it lacked the wow-effect. A physicist then proposed to build huge scale interferometers in space in order to research space-time disturbances. This and many other ideas were proposed but then a trainee, who had studied economics analysed the situation 'Guys, according to a survey, most of our viewers on TV tune to other channels, as nobody knows when the actual action - the launch - starts. We can adress that problem by telling them how much time is left until the next launch.' 'Well and in the mean time we do show footage of explosions and add exciting contests. We make the launch an event that is entertaining' a woman from the Marketing Department proposed. A sociologist asked which language was to favor for those contests, still a bit sceptical. The CEO raused his voice. 'All of them. Just translate it to all the languages' This was a truly amazing idea, everybody agreed. From now on the company would directly contribute to the understanding of peoples and maybe even win one of those famous Peace Prizes. The thundering applause in the meeting room did not go unnoticed - several kiloparsecs away, a pair of three satellites, orbiting a main sequence star in a distance of 152 million kilometers, noticed a tiny disturbance of its laser links...

So you want me to write a piece of satire in just 300 words? Oh man. I don't know what to say about this. I mean 300 words are barely enough for a scientific article and such a piece of literature doesn't even need to worry about playing with words. How to sum up the contest rules? Maybe this way? Difficile est, satiram non scribere....

Conducted first simulations of the new interplanetary transfer vehicle...apparently four big reaction wheels are enough to keep the vessel dead straight under acceleration... The final product will come with an included garage and a rover for free. Nonetheless, there will be a variety of options: The environmentally aware customer may purchase the "eco-blue" package which replaces the engines with Poodles and an additional three Ion engines, additionally the dangerous RTGs will be removed and replaced by solar panels... For the dynamically flying customers a bigger engine might be an option. Why dealing with 4m/s**2 if you could have a triple S3 KS 25x4 drive? Afraid of electro-smog? We'll remove the antennae for no extra charge...

What's EST? Estimated? Ethiopian Standard Time? Australian, Eastern Standard Time? No idea. Honestly, if it isn't an estimated time, why do people refer to some arbitrary time zone, rather than today's standard of timekeeping - the UTC? I mean, obviously they cannot refer to US Eastern Standard Time, since it was 4pm EST in that case. I mean, @Squad basically implies, I could read their minds - which isn't the case. And even if I did assume what they meant by EST, it was - by no means - unambiguous, as I just prove. Are you seriously expecting me too look up the UTC offset of EST? If it isn't clear, when to attend a press release, or whatever it's going to be, then it probably isn't worth waiting for it.

when your 1st stages impact on Kerbin causes a tsunami that wipes out the KSC. when you measure thrust in multiples of Krakatoa

I've never been to the badlands. I mean it's just so far away from the KSC, that I never really bothered to go there...

Kerbulans use Hyperedit, Kerbals use the persistence file. Interesting duel. However, I tend to slaughter the Kraken by editing, instead of growing it, like Bill and Bill do. But yeah. Everyone as he prefers...

Wow, that helps a /lot/. Thx for that piece of information. The Moho slideshow now became an action movie and Duna is doing pretty well as well... Although, I have to say, the Legacy shader has a less realistic terrain shading. I guess I gonna switch it on and off as needed. Will the calculation of the terrain shader improve with a graphics card? 'cause I guess the bottleneck I am experiencing is caused by my integrated GPU then..

What kind of OS / processor / graphics combination do you use (and what's your FPS?) to get these images? They look pretty stunning and I guess that comes at a certain requirement, concerning your hardware...

Alternatively mount a crew cabin at the bottom and get your crew up and down by the transfer option. Saves quite a lot of parts which might be an issue in any big mission...

With a Jool window coming up and essentially having the technology to send Kerbals out there, I started building a ship which gets them there. Doing so, there are a few points to keep in mind: The rule of cool dictates, you can't build any given ship but need to assemble it in a way that allows for maximum awesomeness. After all, I guess, I will have to live with it for a while - my last Duna trip took me about 10 Months real life and Jool seems to be a bit further out....

Using kubuntu as well. Using integrated CPU graphics, I realised that framerate is a function of planetary surface. Moho sucks computational power like nothing. The result is a slideshow, which is (almost) unplayable. Same thing goes for Duna. Eve, Kerbin, Minmus, Mun and Laythe run relatively good with yellow counters. While framerate increased in 1.1 most of the gains were compensated in 1.2, especially on Moho and Duna.

I don't know if that'd be possible easily. After all I had to come up with a political map, an economical map with resources and then derive an infrastructure out of that. To see where certain resources are locate, I needed to derive the history of the planet Kerbin back several Megayears including continental drift etc.

Kerbals aren't native to Kerbin. There is no evidence on Kerbin supporting the evolution of a society that developed space worthy equipment. There are no harbours, cities or other centers of civilisation. In fact there are 4 structures on Kerbin: The KSC, Baikonur, the old airfield and the Pyramids. Several of the DSN stations are built in locations that obviously are not accessible by road but need airlift. The most prominent hint supporting this theory is the saucer in the northern hemisphere. Furthermore the superior Kerbal construction methods are worth a note - they don't even need factories or construction sites. All they ever do, is miraculously generating components in the VAB.

Population centers are the cause for roads. First people settle and then they build up an economy. By doing so, a lot of separate markets appear. Naturally then people appear trying to make their fortune transferring goods between those markets, essentially connecting the markets. In that process ports, roads and finally airports and freeways appear. Connecting two population centres which are situated at a river or road seems to be a bad idea in the first step. The waterways are way cheaper to operate. At a time when waterways can no longer serve the demands, railroads and roads appear. Naturally, always trying to build the best connection mountains are avoided (if feasible) and as few bridges as possible are build. Take Alaska as an example. The big markets are connected by road (Fairbanks, Anchorage, Valdez), while the small indigenous population centres don't even have a road connection. There just isn't enough demand to satisfy the investment of building and maintaining roads. The only reason the Dalton Highway exists is a market at the northern shore demanding maintenance of oil fields... Another example is France. The big markets are connected with a special focus on Paris, since a certain investor called 'the king' used to live there. Such a centralised system can be seen in Spain, Russia and the UK as well. On the other hand, a decentralised political system as Germany has kind of a fuzzy road network. With the invention of the railroad and cars first long distance networks were build and they connect the big markets... On the other hand a country like Norway features almost all population centres at the coastline, which is why - even today - a remarkable part of goods is shipped - by ship. Having said that, I think you should place cities first and then connect them with special regard to their geographical and political background.

Ok, so @Kuzzter accidentally destroyed the Enterprise and now he's trying to glue the parts together again. That is, right after he caught them from the debris field which is now canonically known as Kessler I . I understand this takes time....