Doozler

So completely ridiculous. but then again... I think in-universe people (well, mutants) regularly have power levels comparable to nuclear weapons, so put that way it doesn't seem too bad!

Hi all, If we're all having a go I'll chip in my attempt! From what I understand you want the number of tanks (Nt) and number of engines for a give engine type (empty mass Me, full mas Mf), fuel tank type, payload and delta V. I get an equation for number of engines: which tells you how many engines you need to lift the craft off the ground, and an equation for the number of tanks, Which tells you how many tanks you need to give you the delta-V. Where alpha Gives the ratio of the desired TWR to the "excess" thrust to weight after you take off the weight of the engines and Omega Is something like the Delta-V left for accelerating everything but the empty tank. I should be able to substitute one into the other to get an analytic solution... give me a moment Edit: Got it! Even better got it in a way that might mean something: The number of tanks you need is Nt:

Is the idea: given the desired delta V, engine type and tank type, calculate the number of tanks and engines? Then would it be better to have the unknown variables just Z, number of engines, and Nt, number of tanks? Then you would just have two variable to solve for? I'll have a play over lunch.

Yeah, this was the main feature added in 0.23.5, didn't you hear?

As a career-only player (so far), I've been converted to the yes camp. I've just unlocked the mainsails, and it still feels like OMG MOAR POWER!! Even though the ISP is lower. Same for the ion engines. As long as the unlocks bring new opportunities and are at the edges of the thrust/ ISP curve, there's still (for me) that sense of progression.

Was this an old pre-update rocket? I used an old lifter subassembly and it kept tilting to the right. When I remade a similar thing it was fine. I'd assumed this was my fault but it sounds like you had a similar issue?

According to wired (not the most legit, I know) 150 kW would be enough to clean up space junk. Maybe for 0.25...

This may sound insulting, but if you want further reading have you looked at http://www.dummies.com/how-to/education-languages/math/Calculus.html It has an intuitive approach (talks about slopes of hills etc) and more importantly is online and therefore free!

Real life laser weapons seem to be in the tens of kilowatt range http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/13/us_military_laser_truck_destroys_mortars_drones/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2551219/Lockheed-Martin-reveals-portable-LASER-weapon-used-the.html And a gigawatt is 100,000 times more. So 2 GW would be quite hefty.

Doh! Good work. Next stage is pendulums and springs! Pull down a weight on a spring (or push a pendulum away from vertical) and there is a force pulling it back. The force gets bigger the further you pull it, and it pulls backwards (in the opposite direction to your pull). So the force on the weight for a given position x is: F(x) = - k x Where k is just a number telling you how beefy the spring is. Let's pretend it equals 1 for now. Your tasks: Write the acceleration of the weight for a given position. Re-write the acceleration in terms of derivatives of x (Themo gave you the answer) Guess a function x(t) that fits the equation Check that it does!

You got it! Now work out the derivative of Sin(x) and we'll tell you how pendulums work!

I never got comfortable enough with groups to know what is weird and what is not! I'd enjoy reading your ruminations on it, but I'm not sure its appropriate for a thread on 8th-grade derivatives Maybe we need a thread-lecture of group theory...

This has been mentioned on another thread but I'll repeat it here: MIT have a FPS game where as the game goes on the speed of light gets lower and lower, so relativistic effects start to come in as you run and walk around... http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/

K^2 said "sin(1/x)"! Actually, Sin (x) and cos(x) are fine. In fact, here's your first assignment (should you want one! ): Plot a graph of Cos(x). Try to plot a graph of it's derivative/ slope. You can either try to do this by eye, or using graph paper and Nascoto's method ("up divided by across" for a little bit of the graph) See if you can guess what function the derivative of cos(x) is! We'll be waiting

I will defer to your superior knowledge on this matter! The comment came because I had just read the below article on measuring the gravitational acceleration of anti-hydrogen for the first time at LHC: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/31/cern_team_uses_gpus_to_discover_if_antimatter_falls_up_not_down/ I probably should have replaced "not sure if antimatter fall down" with "not experimentally verified that antimatter falls down"

I think this sort of thing is a good idea. It gives a "penalty" for death but without making the game any harder for new/ reckless/ sadistic players. This and beards for kerbals on long duration flights...

Thanks for this! I didn't realise this was off by default. I've only lost Jeb and Bob on my first lunar landing...but they came back! I thought there was something magic about the orange trio...

...and "mass" in the above sentence means "rest mass, m_0" So yes, photons have (relativistic) mass because they have energy, but they can travel at light speed because they have zero (rest) mass.

This IS exciting! Am I correct that those of us who altered the settings.cfg file can now just delete it, and the game will generate a new one?

Yes, agreed of course. ...but when I'm king of the world, no one will be allowed to discuss the uncertainty principle without passing an exam in Fourier transforms Edit: I sound a bit snide there! Seriously, I think this is one of those things that simply don't make sense until you have the maths. It never did to me!

Not quite right - its not that the particles are destroyed. The idea here is that to measure the position more accurately, you need a higher frequency laser. The higher the frequency, the more energy the photon have so the bigger the "knock". You now have an accurate measurement of the position, but have no idea how fast the particle is moving after its knock. That's the basic idea. I don't particularly like this description as it implies that the uncertainty principle is just due to "poor experiments" and that some bright spark could come up with a clever idea to get around it. If you believe in wavefunctions as "real" then the point is that well-defined position and momentum do not exist at the same time, not just that they can't be measured. (P.S. I have a PhD in physics and K^2 is correct)

The question itself is a bit sneaky as a minor re-wording completely changes the meaning of the question. If it had said: "What is the average magnitude of the acceleration" Rather than "What is the magnitude of the average acceleration " Then your answer would have been correct. I don't like maths questions that rely on English comprehension - especially when the "obvious" misreading is a more "sensible" question. Still, now you know your teacher asks sneaky questions you can look out for them.

Yup. Also some of the other "force carriers" The interesting one is gravity- we're not 100% sure if antimatter falls up or down!

Great. Thanks guys! I had another try and the behaviour that had seemed weird and buggy was consistent and understandable. Also the joints are a lot stronger than I expected - you can joint plates edge to edge fine - so it all was easier than I thought.

I've only killed the Jesus kerbals. Does that count?