Amram

https://books.google.ca/books?id=-LGZETtVCiAC&pg=PA220#v=onepage&q&f=false ~20 minutes. remember, you can orbit in 90 minutes, which means you can cover 180° in lat/lon in 45 minutes, yet targets will generally be closer than your antipode, often considerably so, and in the case of slbm's, they could be close enough that the missile never actually goes suborbital.

speed is definitely the most powerful factor. ½mv². Note the v². assuming "medium" sand, from the third reference, assuming spherical at 0.25mm radius, it has a volume of 6.54498E-05cm³, aluminum oxide has a density of 3.95g/cm³, so the fleck is around 2.585E-04 grams. at the lower 10km/sec they mention, and assuming their spec masses about the same as a grain of sand..., 2.585E-06kg * 0.5 * 1E5²m/s = 12925 joules By comparison, that is 3.7 times the punch of a single round from one of these

composed of what? I hope you weren't thinking steel..... The problem is both strength and mass. Whatever material is used, it must be strong enough to support its own weight, which necessitates very low mass at very high strength of you are never going to have a "cable" reach GSO, let alone beyond it. Important note: your anchor mass must be beyond GSO. If its in GSO, it contributes no counter-mass at all, and all of the mass below GSO will be suborbital and will fall and take the anchor with it. This eliminates trying to have a short length untethered that periodically lowers some cable to raise other bits, you'd leave orbit(one way or another...) if you tried, unless we aren't talking a pure space elevator but some unusual hybrid with active thrust to keep it up there..... If so, i hope you have a trick to get more fuel up there than the elevator burns trying to lift that fuel up there. If you don't have active thrust, your anchor must be beyond GSO, and if it is, but is not constantly tethered, then it will not remain in GSO as its center of mass is moving too quickly for the orbit its in, and it will enter an elliptical and otherwise useless orbit. Go here, look at breaking strength: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_strength Breaking strength is the length, in kilometers, of which you can have a vertical column that will be able to carry its own weight, we can't do it yet, even with nanotubes, we can't make them strong enough, yet. Of course that is compounded with us being unable to even adequately produce them, let alone sufficient quality. Off the top of my head with no google-fu to back it: Kevlar would be better than steel I think, its light and has great tensile properties, which are necessary, but its still far too massive for a space elevator. Now remember, that's just the breaking strength, which is, as noted the measure of how much of itself a column can hold up under earths gravity, but you need to double that when you are looking at your centerpoint, because everything below wants to fall, and everything above wants to rise, and the upward force is greater than the downward of the elevator will not be so for long. We have nothing that is remotely feasible yet, but we do have a few promising materials that may work out after some lengthy R&D.

"working" copies should not be present in a single online service, for the reasons you mention, anyone else remember megaupload? Here today, gone tomorrow. Backups are different. They are by definition not the working set, its a backup. If the backup evaporates with whatever company's collapse, you create a new one from the current state somewhere else. If your primary fails, you recover from the backup. Having a single potentially volatile backup is the bigger issue. If you rely on online, you need to distribute, 2 or more complete backups on unrelated services, the odds of losing all..... And still, the in house backup is warranted. I have important excel sheets and program code. I'd go totally mental if I ever lost the data. It exists on my primary drive, secondary drive, a thumbdrive that only ever sees use as a periodic backup of key files, and across google drive, onedrive, mega.co.nz, and copy.com. Mega might go down, as may any of the other online services. Two drives may fail the same day. The PC could take a horrendously absurd power surge and bake all hardware installed. Multiple services could go extinct simultaneously. But 2 internal drives, a thumbdrive, and 4 separate online services to vanish simultaneously? Online backups are perfectly viable, just don't rely on a single service as the sole source of backup for the data, and especially not as the working set of data.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-1-0-3-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-15-3-1-Garabedian-6-22-15?p=1924777&viewfull=1#post1924777 that's an itemised list I made of what far did that stock didn't at the time. Stock's aero feels a bit better now, but its still lacking in all the key areas, bubblewraps the player way too much, does some really odd stuff with its wings and cargobays, and over here we've got Ferram pulling hair out to match the strangeness we call reality that much more closely. I suppose there is one very singular advantage here over stock. All the world's literature on aero, damned near all of it applies in far in some way or other, that was the whole point of FAR, reality in ksp, can't say that about stock.

I've gotten above 2.1 on a wheasely's in Ferri. Took some design work, but it let me get there, careful piloting becomes every bit as important - you need to find your design's optimal altitude its not always the same one. Engine optimal and design optimal don't always match. you need enough wing to stay there with low AoA to keep induced drag minimised, yet little enough wing that you keep drag under control. that particular design was plagued by poor rigidity, since its mostly composed of tail sections radially attached to eachother. Pull 8g and she snaps in half - the wings can take it, the fuselage can't. Though the design goal was the best speed I could manage, everything else secondary. Still, hopefully that lays to rest that 2+ is totally possible. Mach 2.106 on 2 basic jets. I'm fully aware this doesn't meet submission req's, isn't intended as one.

CoL is not CoL with far, its CoP, or center of pressure. Its also a poor indicator of stability, the graphs should be used as they will tell you WAY more than anything else - not only whether or not it can fly. They will tell you if it will yaw uncontrollably, what AoA you have to pull to take off, whether you can push the nose around or have to stay right on prograde to remain in control, so much more. As to the "CoL" arrow, its not disappeared, its removed.

So what is considered to be a good ratio of cross section to wave drag? I have a twin engine fighter at 10.86 currently. I did have a turbofan fighter at similar, but I crashed KSP, and on reload....no dice, lol, much higher, possibly the voxels positioned a little differently on me or far was a touch erroneous prior to the crash. Also, how fast is considered the extreme limits of the Wheesley turbofan? Do we have a noted record on it yet? I've hit 2.105 in level flight for a twin engine aircraft. I can get to about m2.248 sustained in level flight at 9200m, but it takes finicky design work, and careful exploration of its performance to find the ideal altitude. I essentially built a missile with a mach drag of just 0.189221m²(ratio of 13.52) to see how fast i could get it going. Stability is well...its decent once your up to speed, but until then it has issues, and the first few seconds after launch are reliant on the gimbal to keep things in check. Almost entirely lifting body with only as much control surface as I could add without increasing wave drag - those tail fins reduced it quit a bit actually. Launch is vertical and gradually flattens out at around 9000m for the speed run. http://imgur.com/gallery/8v3FFN3

Replace the COL indicator with a text caution? They turn it on, and get told flat out: There is no CoL indicator. This is not a bug. Use the graphs. While I suspect a large number of people would find a way to not read it, or complain anyways, I'd wager the number would be fewer than those that currently complain its not right, or would complain if its missing.

Who cares? Is this cheating? Is that? What about x mod? What about <insert here>. Answer? Someday people will get over themselves and play however they want and not care that they or others might play differently....I suspect I'll be retired long before then.

maybe because it does many things stock doesn't even consider, and while its at it, ferram ripped its guts out for this version and replaced it with something vastly superior to both stock and previous versions.....of course its going to have issues. Its damned near a 1.0 release of a new mode this update was so significant. Thats a big part of why it took as long as it did after the update, and why it still has teething problems, find me a 1.0 release for something this complex that didn't have issues. Stock started with not even knowing how drag worked..... to still not really knowing how drag works. Far has issues because it's not running full fluid dynamics, be happy, it wouldn't be a slide show, it'd be a picture frame that might update hourly if your machine is powerful. Approximations have costs, usually in the form of things they ignore, and sometimes you have to build those things in a less intensive manner, which means improperly, but close enough, and that means more edge cases. Edge cases mean problems, and look what we have here.... And be patient, impatience doesn't get you an answer faster, we are here to post or we are not, your editing in anyone? doesn't coerce us to sign in any sooner, check this thread, and answer it. Its simply wasted, sometimes grating, at worst annoying.

yep, right click your part. if its a booster, right click the booster,and remove some/all the solid fuel, so your only hoisting an empty tube, much easier to get it up there. For fuel tanks, same thing, though when testing engines its simpler to just not attach any fuel for that engine at all, it doesn't need it for the test(an oversight imo...) btw, the pod carries 10 units of RCS, early game, when you have no thrusters, right click, remove, save weight, more dv.

drag is a square function, the basic point of that is that going 10% faster, from 100%, to 110%, will cost you 21%(1.1²-1² = .21) more drag. The faster you go, the worse it gets and the faster it gets worse with increases. The faster you go in thicker air, the more you will lose to that air. Go too slow and you lose too much to gravity. Of course, thats nitpicking, too fast is well, crazy fast before atmo losses outweight the savings in gravity loss reduction. Don't worry about it, it'll be a rare thing to see someone lose more to aero on the way up than they gained from reducing gravity losses. Giant post, but you did ask why, its hard to do why without explaining, and explaining tends to get big.....so..... 10k hours on stock atmo? You know how all of us far players detested stock aero so much, and couldn't find enough bad things to say about it? There's a reason. Forget everything you know about KSP's aero that you learned prior to 1.0, none of it will help you now in any way, and nearly all of it will hinder you. It was that bad. Everything you think should launch fine based on past experience? Don't bet on it. What stock really should show the player is Q. Q is the dynamic pressure your rocket is experiencing, and is a damned good indicator of just how much the atmosphere is resisting. Those very same effects you get down low will also happen at high altitudes, if your moving fast enough. Less air doesn't mean they can't happen, just that the forces are lower so they are easier to keep controlled, but raise your speed and they WILL occur despite lower densities. Stock should beat everyone over the head with this concept with a non skip-able tutorial, the headaches understanding this would solve.... If your losing it at ~mach 1 at 6km, then assuming mach 1 as 340m/s, density at 6km of of 0.369kg/m³, Q is 21326, pretty low, which means your really draggy, or deviating too much, or lack control authority for your piloting, pick your answer, they'll all solve it. first we need density of the air. iirc, that is calculated as e^(-alt/5000), so e^(-6000/5000) = .301194, that gives us the ratio, sea level is 1.225, so at 6km its 0.301194*1.225 = 0.369kg/m³. Next we need velocity, you said mach 1 is when you lose it, and afaik KSP doesn't moderate mach with altitude, so its 340 all the way up. Q is 0.5 * density * velocity squared. so 0.5 * 0.369 * 340^2 = 21326.06 228m/s @ 2km 278m/s @ 4km 340m/s @ 6km 415m/s @ 8km 507m/s @ 10km 620m/s @ 12km 757m/s @ 14km 924m/s @ 16km 1130m/s @ 18km 1379m/s @ 20km 2273m/s @ 25km 3748m/s @ 30km 6179m/s @ 35km ... Still, same forces doesn't mean loss of control, your mass distribution is very different as your burning fuel the whole way up, so the proportions change, the centroids move, your ability to control those forces changes. Its almost impossible to compare. To finally answer the question though, how bad is breaking mach 1 at 6km? NaN......or 10, depending on your flavour. Seriously, it doesn't have an actual answer, especially not in a 1 to 10 form. Although your launch is failing, clearly a 10 for that combination of design, piloting, and launch profile. How bad is it for a given design, with a given piloting skill, with a given launch profile? That has an answer, but its troublesome to figure out, and any changes to the design, piloting, or flight profile invalidate the answer and you have to figure it all out again....much easier to just launch it, and adjust if necessary. Piloting and launch profile are both player skill, and widen the margin for design variety. Pre-1.0 piloting will not help you here, pre-1.0 launch profiles will terminate every launch for you. Its a whole new game. What is bad is generating more force(Q times drag coefficient) than you can control, and then putting it where you can't control it. The torque the nose is going to impose on you depends entirely on how far from prograde it is, increased by the leverage you give it by placing the nose far from the center of mass. if its 100% perfectly aligned with zero error, the net torque is zero, and you'll fly just fine. As long as you stay dead straight, try to move, and the force offsets, produces torque, and if you can't control it, you lose it. If you reduce your drag, you reduce the force on the rocket, and that means you could go faster for the same controllability and drag losses, reducing gravity losses. Or you might maintain control of a launch you couldn't control before. Don't underestimate how draggy something can be, and for a change, stock is more punishing than far is(both because it doesn't occlude when you think it will, and it does nothing to inform you of such control problems and far does) The more you deviate, the more leverage you give that force. This is why you can't do the old "up 10 over 45" routine anymore. This is made worse by exposing the side of the rocket to these forces as well. Ever try to hold something large and flat on a windy day? Your rocket behaves the same. Once you deviate, it pushes on your entire length on the exposed side. If everything were equal, as it was in the old aero, it wouldn't matter, but its not. Heavy engines in the rear, huge drag force on the nose. The engines want to come forward and take the lead, the nose wants to fall back and slow down, and together they'll win every time with every rocket if the pilot and engineer let it happen. Whether the pilot even has a chance is up to the engineer. Rule one: Keep the forces control-able. Slow down if your design isn't aerodynamic enough. Improve the design if you want to go faster - more control authority and/or reduce drag. Rule two: Keep the forces under control. Put them too far out of alignment, while they are too large to handle, and your screwed. Don't deviate from prograde unless the forces are small, which means either low velocity, or little/no air density. Violate either rule and aero will violate your launch. Violate neither and you can do massive launches on nothing but engine gimbal and pod torque, no dead weight reaction wheels or fins. Reaction wheels and fins just widen the margin for error by increasing control authority, they don't make the problem go away, nothing does that. The short answer is this: Fly as fast as you can reasonably control it, and yes, that means slow down if you can't. But understand that the faster you go, and the more draggy it is, and the more you deviate from prograde, the harder it will be to keep under control. Less deviation, or more aerodynamic, or less speed, and the forces will remain lower, and you are more likely to keep it controlled. If everything goes perfectly, you could keep it flying straight on 100g's of accel right up until drag crushes it, good luck with that, you WILL deviate, you WILL lose it, but theoretically possible. There is no hard fast rule anymore, and there never should have been. Stock taught you a broken system, left you with it far too long, and then pulled the rug out from under you, your a 10,000 hour newbie......can't say I've ever played a game where that was the case before.

Time doesn't matter, fuel doesn't matter, only the method of use. Some require to you right click and test, others require you trigger them by staging -right click on the part, if it says run test, you do it that way, otherwise, stage it. I typically use a cheap booster and hoist just the engine(any test parts) high enough to do the job, and chute back down. Straight up, straight down, nearly full recovery, plus payout. Quick, easy, effective. Payout is usually meager, but you can often stack several into the same launch, and they take no effort to do. If the part is immediately useful, I typically delay contract fulfillment to continue using the part.

not the only one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144 in fairness though, barely half its 102 scheduled flights(55) had passengers, still, its enough that concorde isn't alone on the list of super sonic passenger aircraft.