Lukaszenko

You're obviously overdoing the aerocapture/ aerobraking, so no wonder you lose delta-V to make up for it. WHEN DONE RIGHT, aerocapture/ aerobraking can be a very efficient method, but again, you have to do it right. This is easier said than done, as you're basically walking a tightrope. In real life aerobraking is done VERY conservatively, where it takes many months and many passes through the atmosphere to get the final orbit. Aerocapture has never been performed, presumably due to its difficulty. That said, in KSP you can always save/revert, so that removes most (all?) of the difficulty.

Maybe the failure is not fun, but designing to avoid it IS, and that's arguably most of what this game is about. You can also always quicksave, which is pretty much what everyone does unless very experienced and confident. Either way, currently you pretty much can't fail in this way. I tried to burn up by flying a lander can (with NO heat shield) into the atmosphere at 8000 m/s and still nothing broke. I stopped there looking for the limit because probably even if I came in a straight line from Jool I wouldn't exceed it. I won't hold my breath for it to get fixed to my liking. I AM, however, holding my breath for DRE.

The reaction wheels also don't saturate, although this might be for the best since many real-world methods of de-saturating them probably cannot be used, not to mention that rotational momentum can be cancelled by simply time-warping. They're also overpowered, but then so are other things for the sake of gameplay (such as the EVA suits). There's other small things that I think can be exploited if you're really bored, such as being able to "walk" a spaceship across space simply by shifting its center of mass around.

Apparently catching a coin in mid air is more "random" than letting it fall to the ground, due to the fact that coins are usually biased. Interesting video on the topic:

Perfectly reasonable indeed. Except clearly engineers should cost more to hire. In the game, too.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about going from .90 to 1.0 I saw a slight speed-up there but still had adequate time to go browse some forums or take a quick nap. I'm talking about going from 1.0 to 1.0.2 That was supposed to be a few quick bug fixes, not the gaming equivalent of a nitrous kit (at least in regard to loading times). Just quite shocked about the whole thing. Don't really know what to do with myself, but I guess I'll just have to roll with it

I just updated to 1.0.2 and it seems to load about 3-4x faster, no kidding, than 1.0. Wth I had this whole ritual set up checking my web pages and whatnot while it was loading and that's all gone now Am I the only one experiencing this? Did I install 1.0 wrong or something?

I've done it with deadly reentry and FAR. It's definitely harder to get aerocaptured (sometimes impossible, as g-loading is also an issue), but it's definitely more realistic and fun. I would always simply aim high in the atmosphere and bring extra fuel to get captured (and keep in mind that an aerocapture has never actually been performed in real life). Jool aerocapture was actually pretty forgiving, I presume because the planet is so big that you can spend extra time in it's atmosphere.

Jesus...of course. I forgot that you can always just, well, fire backwards. I guess with age my brain is getting tunnel vision.

I'm obviously thinking of an extreme (although probably not even the most extreme) case, where something's orbit is exactly opposite of yours. I'm also guessing you're better off shooting something coming directly at you than something going in the same direction, if you want the resulting ejected plasma to slow the debris down.

Yeah but in your example the target and and the projectile are both "on rails". Still, the more I think about it the more I'm starting to realize that yeah, it should be possible. The motions of the debris and the ISS are pretty predictable and understood, and these crazy telescopes can apparently see the debris....

Yeah I get that a laser cutter in a machine shop can be precise, but surely the MANY orders of magnitude increase in distance and even more orders of magnitude increase in speed has some effect on the precision?

They can really aim and hold a laser at something 100 km way, moving at 14 km/s?

Doesn't make sense, if just because what did he get for it? It's great to want billions but if nobody pays it then you usually go down with the price or shop around, but at least you get something. What did he get? The satisfaction of taking it to the grave?

You're making it sound like engineer= rockstar or Fortune 500 CEO I'm actually pretty sure quite a few people here are "actual" engineers.

...which is still as thick as it needs to be to cope with the known and understood stresses + a safety factor, which I understand from what Elon says is actually much higher than normal. I mean yeah it's a challenge to get the best combination of everything, but I doubt is as impossible as some people make it out to be.

I doubt a hull experiences higher stresses than engine parts. Even if it did, you're saying that we can make this that operates at the limits of material capability, but we can't make what amounts to a tube with a couple tanks? I'd even venture to say that a rocket's hull is simpler and experiences similar, if not lower stresses than an airplane's.

Is that true? Jet engines operate at the extreme limits of material capability. You can't get much higher stresses than that. Yet they are considered much more reliable than reciprocating engines. I see no engineering reason why rocket engines can't be the same. Very rarely is it because of outright material failure, and never is the solution "look at and test EVERYTHING, EVERY TIME". Nevertheless, crashes can never be fully eliminated, but this is no reason to make the whole concept of reusable airplanes (and rockets) prohibitively expensive.

What posters are saying, is that this not necessarily be true. If it can be shown that the engines work reliably without this whole process after each flight (much like jet engines), then what reason is there to do it?

Since "space flight" was a spinoff of military technology, it IS a good thing. Without space flight we would still have military rockets and atomic bombs...but without the civil stuff. Even if it was the other way around where space flight led to military applications, it's still a technology and, as others have said, a double edged sword. You can use it nicely or not. That said, why did you get stuck on space flight? Why not question pretty much every other technology out there? If it's because space flight can deliver a weapon of mass destruction, why not question the technology of the actual weapon (nuclear power) instead of shooting the messenger (space flight)? If it's about the amount of damage that can be done, why not focus on chemical technology? or biological? Those can be arguably equally destructive.

I'm not saying you're not screwed, and I'm not saying I know the real distance. I just remember that they used a big ass crane to drop a dude onto concrete or water, and measured the accelerations involved. Water was always softer by a large factor. I recall the accelerations being in the hundreds of gs (so you're screwed either way), but concrete was always much harder, even going off the scale for the higher falls.

Mythbusters tested this, and as I recall it is far from the same as hitting concrete.

Extinct or not, finding signs of life not from earth is a HUGE deal...if not the hugest.

This thread isn't about laughing at people for not knowing about space, it's about laughing at people who THINK they know about space, when they in fact they don't. It's a huge difference, and imo it's valid to laugh or look down at anybody who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about "There's no gravity in space." = you're an idiot, please shut the hell up. "I think there's no gravity in space." = probably reasonable, rational person.

How fast does the belt run in the opposite direction? 1 mph? whatever it takes to try to stop the plane? Or, as I originally saw this riddle worded, the same speed as the plane? Depending on how the conveyor functions can make the answer to the riddle easier or harder to pin down.