cantab

Most of his difficulties are nothing to do with FAR. His problems were the stock game engine making ships fall apart when parts are clipping, the stock wheel brakes are too weak, the stock runway is too short, and that he's built something that lands at two hundred and eighty miles per hour. The only time FAR got him was when he spun, and guess what? You can spin an aircraft in the current stock aerodynamics too!

Fairings don't need to be procedural. Zero Point Fairings are fixed size and they work excellently. Select a fairing base from the various widths available, each with either a short or long variant, and put that under your payload, then attach a nosecone or other part to one of the two floating upper nodes and your fairing appears. Simpler than KW Rocketry, simpler even than Procedural Fairings. They even use the function that's already in the game for the LV-N's infamous fairings too, so they are literally models and configs with no new programming code required! And you even get your flag on them

None. Because Kerbal Space Program, while a very inspired and reasonably well-executed game, is being held back by its engine. I would rather Squad work on a KSP2, running on a far more suitable game engine, than spent their time making DLCs. What I and I think others would pay for would be fun tools and gadgets to work with the game. For example an updated Kerbalizer that lets you create a custom Kerbal and then import it into KSP. Or how about a VAB app for Android and iOS, letting you design your rockets on the move and have them automatically synchronised with the game on your desktop PC. I think that kind of stuff would be far better, and far better received, than just releasing DLC that is essentially paid-for mods.

I suppose that raises a question - are the old Spaceplane Plus parts still available? They weren't quite the same as the stock parts after all.

I forcibly set all parts to have zero drag and zero lift, pummelling the standard aerodynamics into limp powerless submission, then I run a custom aerodynamics model instead

The ceiling?

Yet more reason to be concerned at the UK and other governments that have gone to a phonics-only approach to teaching reading - to the point that English children are now tested on their ability to read aloud nonsense non-words like "spron, fape and thazz". It seems effective at teaching young children to read in that they can see a written word and pronounce it, but I know of no studies into how skills develop with age.

Granted. It's a dvorak keyboard now. I wish Valentine's Day would just sod off.

The significance of the 100 kilometre mark is rather that for an aeroplane to fly fast enough for its wings to keep it it in the thin air, it would have to be going at orbital speed and so wouldn't need the wings anyway! Of course it's not an exact thing, plane designs vary, but 100 km is a nice round number.

That at least exists - the polar ice caps! Unless you're flying solar planes I suppose.

Regarding reaction wheels, sure you can turn your spacecraft easily enough - when you're controlling it and paying attention. But if it's a probe and it ends up with all the panels facing away from the sun, and you didn't think to lock a battery (or that feature/exploit is stopped), you're boned.

Keep at it. I've not been playing with FAR for long but I'm getting decent at subsonic planes now.IIRC this is the Scott Manley episode I watched when he talked about FAR: One of these things is not like the other ones, one of these things just doesn't belong

Regarding fusion, one thing I've never seen talked about is the ramp-up/down time for fusion power. It could well be in the same boat as nuclear fission, taking so long to start up that it's really only suitable for base load. Wind on the other hand could actually be used for matching changes in demand. Generation capacity may not be controllable but it's reasonably predictable, and a turbine can be braked when not needed, and when unbraked will start delivering power in I'd expect a minute or so. Now, this isn't something that happens in the current economic climate because once a wind turbine is installed it costs basically nothing to run it vs not running it. But in a distant future where fossil fuel generation is marginalised and nuclear fission and/or fusion are meeting the base load requirement, wind could shift to the role of meeting peak loads, along with storage systems and hydroelectricity.

Experimenting with super low TWR ships: Took my heaviest command module, added some xenon, and a single ion engine. It's making steady progress raising its orbit, at about a 1200x900 now I'm posting this. Not the kind of thing I'd want to fly all the time, nut it is a proof of concept. Maybe I can get to the Mun or something.

Bill Phil has it, it was at a drive-in movie theater.

In Episode 8, we made a successful Kethane mining plane. Hurrah! The Dirty Rascal 1: https://flic.kr/p/qcwQcs It flew out to the desert, loaded up with Kethane, then off stream it returned to the KSC. Wants some improvement - the jet fuel container wasn't enough for the return so we had to refine kethane in flight, and the fully loaded takeoff speed is rather high at 75 m/s. But those are minor issues, the important thing is it works. In Episode 9, with the space program's future fuel supplies assured, Jeb went to orbit.

Not feeling too inspired now, so here's a non-original riddle. Or puzzle, really. Two men go to watch a film together. It's in a public place and lots of other people are also watching. At the end of the film, one of the men stabs and kills the other. The killer is able to take the victim's body away without attracting any attention. How?

Just be warned that in the case of Eeloo it will be a long wait even at maximum timewarp. I actually edited the savefile one time to skip a full 50 Kerbin years on a trip there.

Nice find. I've known it for a while, since I used it to name my asteroids I think, but it's not obvious - and I didn't actually know it worked from the Map View in flight. Renaming Kerbals though may have to be called a bug, since a name change changes the job.

I've found actually that as much as anything else I tend to count them in thousands and call them "grand".

And I'm not sure if that's even possible with the orbital resonance, not if you want to do it in less than a complete solar orbit.

Nice podracer taki! As for me, I went to space! For the first time in a while in KSP. Just a simple couple of orbits with Jeb.

I don't believe the British government attempting to change British English would be met well. Simplifying spellings, like American English has done, would already be met by decrying the "dumbing down" of children's education. Anything much beyond that runs into issues with accents like I mentioned before, and making spelling reflect a "standard" accent would be regarded as classist and south-centric (the south being richer than the north in England). As far as teaching English abroad goes, sure there's interest in some sort of a standard. But it necessarily can't conflict too much with native US, and to an extent UK, usage, which severely restricts it from changing anything. It's more just a formalisation of what to teach (and by implication what not to).

It's supposed to be impossible challenges, that's simple Take off from Eve with stock ion, no wings, and no cheats.

Well the OX-STATS should be light because they're literally just a solar panel. The others have the unfolding and tracking mechanisms. Placed round a cylinder as they usually are, OX-STATs will average generating 1/pi of their full capability.