cantab

Fuel tanks that you ditch when they're empty. As opposed to staging proper when you ditch the engines as well. Obviously you don't benefit as much as if you drop the engines as well, but in career or for roleplaying keeping expensive engines and just ditching cheap fuel tanks might make sense. In real rocketry the most prominent example is the Space Shuttle's external tank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft These things will act as fans, though I can't imagine the draft would be very strong.

Ultimately we're dependent on Unity. I don't think KSP 1 would switch to a different engine, that will be too much work for Squad. Maybe KSP 2 could use a custom engine better suited to physics on solar-system scales.

Not so many for me. Yet to upgrade to .24. I think it's three .23.5 installs: main, stock, and mod development. Also got my main and a stock .23, and I think the .18.3 demo too.

If Jeremy Clarkson can say a car produces 300 torques and emits just 50 carbon dioxides then I can say my rocket has 900 delta-V.

The red dot finders on the Astromaster range are widely regarded as rubbish, but you can always add a different finder.

The delta-V for a trip is symmetric, the same outbound as return, but it's how you provide that delta-V that introduces the asymmetry. On the return trip you can capture into LKO using drag from Kerbin's atmosphere, meaning you don't need to use your engines for that.And if you'd rather not use the LV-N, try the KR-2L. One should be more than enough thrust, and the superlative TWR may reduce your dry mass compared to a bunch of LV-909's or aerospikes.

The Heritages and the Skyliner are all on Dobsonian mounts. Simple and stable, you just move them up and down, left and right. The Heritage 100 will need sitting on a table, the Skyliner 150 goes straight on the ground, the Heritage 130 can be either way depending on how you feel. None need tripods. The explorer 150 is on an alt-az mount on a tripod. Pretty similar, might transport a bit more compactly than the Skyliner. The NexStar is on a GoTo alt-az mount. Once you go through an alignment procedure you can then input what yiu want to look at on the controller and the scope will point to it. Sounds great, but drawbacks include the need for batteries, the scope sometimes getting off target, and losing the satisfaction of finding stuff yourself. The Celestron Astromaster and the Evostar are on equatorial mounts. These have one axis aligned parallel with the Earth's axis, so by driving that axis in reverse the scope cancels out the Earth's motion to stay pointed at the same star or planet. They take more getting used to than the alt-az mounts, and with Newtonian reflectors like the Astromastrr 130 they can put the eyepiece at annoying angles, but once you get the hang of them they're good to use.

Well to start with you can shave off a fair chunk of dV by aerobraking at Kerbin. Then if you want it fully reusable you will need to pack quite a lot of fuel along with a big LV-N cluster. I'd say six LV-N's minimum, and you will indeed need multiple orange or Kerbodyne tanks. You could reduce total mass by using drop tanks, then redock new ones at Kerbin for repeat trips.

For me it varies. "Custom" ships tend to run pretty slim margins, but often I using modular ships with standard transfer stages so there's loads of excess dV. Of course for an interplanetary trip I have the option of using that to force an "express" transfer, for example I'm planning on making Kerbin-Jool in 140 (Earth) days.

As regards celestials, it's only going to work for small bodies with low orbital speeds. The snag is that they're where theres least need to save fuel anyway.

It's as much a matter of semantics as anything. At what point does it stop being a model rocket and start just being a rocket.

I think assuming constant atmospheric density is the big mistake. Kerbin's atmosphere falls off surprisingly quickly, with a scale height of 5 km (compared to 8.5 for Earth) meaning that 5 km up the air pressure and thus the drag is just 37% of sea level.

What did Jeb score in his piloting exam? B minmus. What did Bob get his girlfriend for their anniversary? A big jool. Who at KSC works out the cost of the rockets? Bill. What did the Kerbal pimp say? Don't touch mo ho. Bill: Whose is that silver thing in the sky? Jeb: It's Mun. How does a kerbal make a chess set? On a laythe. What does a kerbal put on his kitchen walls? Tylos. What's the most villainous journey you can take in the kerbolar system? Eve-Vall. Besides Kerbals, what other lifeform can be found in the kerbolar system? Pol ticks.

Worst movie I've had the displeasure of being dragged out to: Dance Flick. I walked out after about half an hour, it was just utterly utterly awful. Worst game I've had the misfortune of owning: Little Britain on the PS2. A cheap shameless tie-in, zero depth and barely playable. I'd have more fun if I used the disc as a frisbee.

Finding the exact CPU would help. On windows 7: Start > right click Computer > Properties. On windows 8: Desktop > File explorer > right click This PC or similar on the left > Properties. On linux: open a command prompt and type cat /proc/cpuinfo. Post the full cpu model number, it'll help others figure out exactly what you have and whether an upgrade is worth it.

£200 is a nice budget. A 6 inch Dobsonian such as the Skywatcher Skyliner 150 runs for about that. It's a capable scope but be prepared for a big box! If you want something a bit more portable there's the Skywatcher Heritage 130, very well regarded. Binoculars still might be a better first buy though. Examples of things to see include Jupiter's moons, the Pleaides star cluster (spectacular and better in binos than most scopes), Uranus (just looks like a star but it's cool to see it), and the Andromeda Galaxy. And that's just what I found on my first two nights!

Can you put the launcher in an orbit with a 4 1/2 hour period?

Wild guess: Maybe the adjustment to Kerbin's day didn't "sync" with the atmosphere. Could be tested with launches from other worlds with atmospheres.

I can just see how the conversation with the client would go afterwards. "So, did you test the BACC?" "Yes, all done." "How did it do?" "Well...err...it didn't actually do anything." "Huh?" "We took all the fuel out first. For safety, y'know." "..."

See the sort of thing shown in the link I posted. They're meant as sun filters but they're really dangerous, since they're trying to absorb the sun's light and heat after the main lens/mirror has concentrated it, and that heat can easily crack the filter. As such they're best just disposed of to avoid being tempted to use them. Modern solar filters go on the front of the telescope, blocking 99.999% of the light before it even reaches the telescope's lenses or mirrors.

This obvious wants fixing. The magnification of a telescope magnifies every wobble too, and an unstable mount is frustrating. Here's one of many sources with suggestions for improving cheap scopes: http://www.jotabout.com/portuesi/astro/ds_scope.html Black to look at or black to look through? If you have something that's a piece of black glass in a holder with a screw thread, bin it. As described here: http://astunit.com/tonkinsastro/sun/esf.htm they're an obsolete and highly dangerous type of solar filter.If you're seeing nothing when looking through an eyepiece, it's probably just a combination of the high magnification meaning there's nothing bright in view, and being out of focus meaning faint stars aren't visible. Anywhere from £50 up. Bear in mind a cheap small scope will be inherently limited and you need to choose wisely to get one that's enjoyable to use. I observe from a city and have managed to cope. How much light-pollution affects things depends on the object. Objects with low surface brightness, which tends to mean those that appear larger, are more affected. Light pollution won't hurt the views of the Moon, planets, or double or variable stars much if at all. Star clusters, both open and globular, do pretty well. For nebulae light-pollution impairs the view more, but if you have a large enough scope you can use a nebula filter to help. Galaxies are the worst hit and it's really tough to see them in the city.

480 m/s that low...yeah, that's a tall order. The smaller booster has a higher maximum TWR, which means it will be capable of higher speeds at a given altitude, so you might try packing some of them round a BACC for a speed boost. If you combine that with making a pitchover so you've got more time than if you ascend vertically, and reduce the fuel load of the BACC, that would be your best chance I reckon.

If you're not using wings, you can simply thrust limit the engines to get an idea of Eve performance.

When your wheels are capable of operating anywhere from the freezing vacuum of Eeloo to the dusts of Duna to the 150 °C heat of Eve, and all the while sipping power from a few solar panels or the gentle warmth of decaying blutonium, I think a bit of iffy handling is a reasonable trade-off.