cantab

Well lots of those little bits are physicsless anyway. But even if they're not, a little battery sticking out on a big rocket or plane will be negligible. IIRC the Saturn V flew with the Apollo CSM's RCS ports exposed.

Laythe ascent vehicles here too. Mine is simple as can be and already proven, but that doesn't stop me derping.

There's a gotcha there though, the pressure's going to increase the boiling point. To passively vent the water vapour, the pressure inside needs to be at least that outside, and while an active pump might work against the pressure gradient I think it could only go so far.

Agreed, it means that Squad is getting into a routine, or at least as much of a routine as software development can have.

Does Ike count? Yes, it's in near-polar orbit. Yes, it will glow green as soon as I get round to editing the attached lights in the savefile.

Two words: Tweakscale, and Asteroid.

Speed only helps if you can get it for "free", which you can by climbing to a higher altitude. But at any given altitude, doubling the throttle is likely to double the fuel consumption but less than double the speed, therefore giving worse fuel efficiency. Though varying engine Isp with speed may affect things.

Flying the Aeris 3A stock plane I tended to cruise around 8 km, with the throttle set real low, like 15% I think. Much higher and the Isp starts to roll off badly. I flew from KSC out to the pyramids, KSC West, then back to KSC, so not too bad for range especially as takeoffs are thirsty.

This one at least is excusable. If you're trying to get away, you'd better keep accelerating or your pursuer will overhaul you. Of course you can then ask why the ship doesn't have a turreted gun, or even a fixed rear-facing one.

ITT: Nobody can spell "pigeon". Anyway, my guess is a bear.

Oooh, nice. This a mod you're working on?

The SP+ parts were reworked to be symmetric (not black on the bottom any more) so the one cargo bay will look fine either way up.

On a wing and a booster. Though that only hits the spaceplane bit.

Scales? With the riddle being on multiple definitions of the word.

Fused quartz is pretty resilient. As in, it can be used to hold molten steel resilient. Indeed a metal shell might not be a good idea anyway because while strong and with a high melting point it's going to conduct the heat straight into the interior. If the probe is heat-limited then a much more insulating material such as some sort of ceramic may be better. Of course fused quartz isn't going to match the likes of tantalum hafnium carbide, or even tungsten metal, but it can go impressively deep into Jupiter nonetheless.

While it's true that light levels get much lower when you get far from the sun, the human eye, probably the Kerbal eye, and a camera can all adapt to that. IIRC the light levels on Pluto are comparable to a typical living room, and Sedna at its furthest still receives about as much light as a full Moon night on Earth.

Indeed, flying high helps. As does not flying too fast (unless you're trying to go suborbital) since you'll incur greater drag that way. Though with the turbojet's that's offset to a point by increasing Isp with speed.

I've never heard that brand, but yeah, the thing that means you can shove your carrot peelings down the sink and it chops them up so they wash away. A dump? (As in the place where rubbish goes) A shower?

Is it not possible to disable hyperthreading in the BIOS? In which case time a couple of compilations and see. Intel themselves generally talk about a 10-20% boost, so it is indeed nowhere near a true doubling of cores.

Indeed eventually it would go dark. That would be part of the results, since it would give information about the atmosphere's opacity with depth.

If the probe body was two hemispheres with an insulator (maybe a strong ceramic) between them, then it could be used as the antenna itself. The toughest instruments would have to work by measuring conditions inside the probe body.

It seems sensible to me. Maybe not the exact numbers but I'd rate a rendezvous and docking as harder than a direct ascent Mun landing.And Duna is very able to screw you over, as I found out the hard way. My bigger concern is the lack of scope. No points for building a successful spaceplane. No points for a gravity assist or a free return trajectory. No points even for landing at KSC (something that I'm still unable to do). And so on.

Orbit, Mun return, Minmus return. Gilly, Eve, Ike, and Laythe landings. Docking, asteroid interception. No returns from my interplanetary missions yet, but the Ike and Laythe missions I expect to bring back. So I make my score... 2.2 *Indignantly claims poll is unfair*

It's largely moot for myself since I'm still playing .23.5. Though I do have Kerbal permadeath on. If it's stuff under heavy development, or stuff I'm doing pad tests on and not actually planning on launching yet I'm more likely to revert. If it was meant to be a final proper launch I'm more likely to accept it, especially since I should have an escape system for my Kerbals.

An orbit? 10cahr