cantab

I believe that an aerospace engineer has a concept for atmospheric entry, and in support of that a schoolkid wants to drop a remote-controlled supersonic glider from a high-altitude balloon. The second is entirely reasonable. I don't think it will amount to much beyond the balloon and maybe the sounding rocket launches, orbital speeds are much harder to deal with than suborbital ones and a launch to orbit will probably be prohibitively expensive. But I see no reason to think there's any fraud going on.And yes, they're using KSP, it's an easy way to knock up pictures of planes.

An ironic comment given both PC hardware and the major PC operating systems have always held backwards compatibility as important. Maybe not MFM, but with an inexpensive SATA-PATA adapter you can use a 20+ year old PATA hard drive in a modern PC if you need to.

5/10. It's just a bit standard really. And the pilot needs to lern2geostationary. On phone so no pic, but you all know the Hubble Space Telescope

I don't think it will be much of a problem. Any reasonable vehicle will probably fly in any reasonable aerodynamic model. By way of anecdote, I've flown two planes built in stock - Squad's Aeris 3A and Tanuki's Gunther - in FAR and both flew. They were a bit of a handful sometimes but they still took off. I've also made weird stuff myself to fly in FAR, and let us not forget that THIS http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1907_flying_machine.jpg Flew in real life.

11/10. *Marsellaise plays* Rate the plane, not the saucer.

Streamed myself crashing into Minmus.

Some of it can get into space so I say it counts As for above, 7/10. Intriguing design.

To be honest if you can't find out the actual model number that's not a sign of a good-quality properly-marketed computer. I would expect it to be stated reasonably prominently in the specifications. The i7 brand has been around for about five years and the old ones are a lot slower than the latest generation even at the same clock speeds. Add in that Intel have quite happily slapped the i7 brand on dual-core laptop CPUs - for context, that's like an i3 in a desktop - and it's fair to say that "i7, about 2.1 GHz, about 3 GHz turbo" is all but meaningless. It's like saying a car is a "Ford Focus, 4-cylinder petrol engine", without knowing the year and the engine size.

I was referring to Wanderfound's design inspired by the Lightning.

The vertically stacked engine design seems like a good idea - you can use thrust limiting to create torque when you need it. Unlike with angling you get full thrust any time you don't need torque. And ultimately maybe the best option is to just use TAC Fuel Balancer or Goodspeed.

If you're optimising for delta-V, a thin atmosphere and massive amounts of parachute in most cases. All that parachute will be heavy, increasing the amount of fuel required. Even if you dump them before takeoff, you still had to transfer it to the planet in the first place. Which is why delta-V is generally a silly thing to optimise for. Cost is ultimately what counts but is complicated to determine. Payload fraction is easier to determine and more closely relates to cost, though you would need to assume an engine performance.

Depending on the exact i7, and for that matter the laptop's screen resolution, probably reasonable. I'd guess somewhere between 30 and 60 fps on small ships that aren't CPU-limited. Not sure the part count where lag, caused by being CPU-limited, would start to kick in. But knowing the exact model would really help.

Includes a forum thread bumper.

For what it's worth I've used the keys maybe once. I tend to just do the clicky clicky thing on the window. You're not. DasValdez's suggestion is to put a dorsal marker, usually the smallest battery, on the "top" side. But even then you need to either rotate the ship appropriately or do the mental gymnastics. Try not to timewarp through SOI changes. Yet another mod, Kerbal Alarm Clock, can help you with this.

Here's a FAR entry, 1.4 tons. I know what you're thinking, "Hey! That's not fair! It takes less delta-V to make orbit in FAR!". Hold your horses, it's not that simple. Very small rockets experience proportionately more drag than normal-size ones, so the delta-V needs go up. Short and fat 1.25m diameter designs have stability problems while skinnier 0.625m designs suffer from the poor mass fraction of the tanks, and either way the aerodynamic parts like nosecones and fins are heavy on such a little rocket. So I think it's an open question as to whether stock aerodynamics or FAR will permit the lighter mass to orbit. Certainly mine is nowhere near the best. In the VAB: Orbit attained: More pics: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk4784jP Non-map orbit shot can be grabbed if you really need it.

750 Ti is a good choice in its price bracket, latest-gen card and very power efficient.

The thing is that just because you can max out the tech tree in Kerbin's SOI doesn't mean you should. Decide which you'd rather do - yet another Minmus landing, or a first visit to Ike?

+1 for PreciseNode. If you want to do any sort of gravity assists, or otherwise arrange your course precisely, it's invaluable.

8/10. BadS ship, but not finished, and that meteoroid shield won't stop a hole being made in an engine or fuel tank!

I'm not sure if you're better firing simultaneously or in a sequence. I have seen someone make space from kerbin using the nasa decoupler, which for some strange reason is physic less.

Haha, neither. And not any of the other guesses.

I suggest a one-way mission to Eve. It's about the easiest place to land on, though DRE will add some extra challenge then once your speed is down simply deploy chutes. Just be sure to build sturdy, the gravity's stronger than even Kerbin so no big ships on flimsy legs. If you want to run a return mission Ike is a good choice. Most if not all Mun landers can do Ike as well, the delta-V requirements are about the same. Aerocapture at Duna would be usual but with FAR you will need to either use trial and error or install the Trajectories mod. You can just do a powered capture, it takes around 350 m/s of extra delta-V which isn't an awful lot. Another option is to capture with an Ike gravity assist into an orbit as similar to Ike's as you can get, then you do a few orbits before encountering Ike again and getting into Ike orbit. To arrange such a gravity assist, set up a mid-course correction on your way from Kerbin to Duna and use a combination of then green pro/retrograde and the blue radial/anti-radial components, which lets you change your arrival time at Duna and thus where Ike is when you arrive. The same technique works to avoid Ike when you don't want an encounter! I strongly recommend the PreciseNode mod for any sort of gravity assist work, it makes it easy to adjust manoeuvres to 1 m/s or better precision.

Yes it has way too much monopropellant and an excessive engine, but it still does the job of letting you familiarise yourself with the game controls. It's not meant for anything more that that.

Oh yeah, more to add. The KR-2L I have memorised, but the quad engine cluster I just call, well, that. Likewise I know the RT-10 and the BACC, but call the long SRB just that.

The smallest rockomax tanks are pancake tanks. The giant Kerbodyne tank is, well, that. And the antennae are the low-gain antenna or the whip, the mid-gain antenna/dish, and the high-gain antenna/dish.