cantab

Evil sonic getting a ring, it looks like.

A passenger train, probably American.

What I note is that just about everything nowadays - Windows, Android, Facebook, whatever - claims to offer "privacy" options but always adopts the approach of not private by default. That means it's hard, maybe even impossible, to know you're secure. I also regularly fear that any attempt to lock down privacy settings is futile because my personal information will already have flown the coop before I can even get to the settings.

I'd say that when it comes to a runway being used for takeoff and landing of atmospheric aircraft that's not an appropriate comparison. Flight speeds are not ten times slower in KSP than in reality, they're about the same. Aircraft TWRs in KSP tend to run a little higher than IRL, but I would argue that's partly because the runway is short. Brake effectiveness ... I dunno, I gave up trying to make wheels behave in KSP 1.1

Since when? It's 2000 metres, which is on the short side for real world major airports, let alone spaceplane landing facilities.

Except that the Twitch is considerably more compact. That matters if the ship has to fit inside a cargo bay, or might mean it can use a narrower fairing which makes the launcher more stable.

Most Kerbal deaths in one mission: Probably my complex trip to Duna and Ike with an asteroid in tow. Killed Kerbals trying to land on Duna, Kerbals trying to land on Duna again, and even Kerbals in one of the landings back on Kerbin. Biggest facepalm moment: Sending ten of these landers out to various destinations: Runner up: A Kethane mining ship I sent to Minmus. It was planned to land using ion engines, which were powered by the kethane generator, which is fuelled by the drills, which run to fill up on kethane once the ship has landed. Can you see the problem there? Physically biggest failure: This RUD of a large (4,000 tons to orbit) refueller.

Who on - or off - Earth thought that was a good cover design?

Minus eighteen dead elephants. (Kerbals against Humanity) In space no one can hear you ______

Whatisthisidon'teven/10

@FlushStroke for £350 that's so-so. It'll play most games but you'll often be knocking settings and even resolution down and it might actually be inferior to the consoles in visuals. For a future graphics card upgrade the power supply is a low wattage which will constrain you but at least it's a reputable brand and 80+ cert so you can probably trust it and graphics cards are getting more and more performance per watt. (Or you could just upgrade the PSU too). I think you can do better. I would shop around more and try to find something with a decent graphics card, it'll make a big difference to the visuals. It's not easy to find good gaming PCs for £400 but there should be a few. If you want to build, at the low end of the market getting Windows can be an issue, the standard full price is a huge slice of your budget and cheap copies make one wary it might be non-legitimate. It's still doable with bargain hunting on the components though.

I've done the odd wacky contraption: I quite like my retro-future VTOL interplanetary shuttle: And sometimes things just get a bit Gilly. Especially if you deorbit and then do nothing. Jeb bounced five times before coming to rest.

Plenty of thrust and a shallow ascent profile will heat you up to Boom Boom.

Granted, your cat shoots you. I wish this was the actual wish thread.

0/10 for using the wrong kind of football pitch

"Lack of lift", at subsonic speeds at least, might be because IIRC FAR assumes a supersonic-type airfoil, and hasn't added the option to choose airfoils yet. Also the default wing strength value is overkill for most purposes, knocking it down to 0.5 or below will save a chunk of weight.

Raxacoricofallapatorius

You also need Kopernicus and Module Manager.

I got started in astronomy with binoculars and I think that's the way to go. They're dead easy to use and there's a good range of stuff to see with them, whether it's studying the mountains and craters of the Moon, hunting out faint fuzzy galaxies, or wondering at bright open clusters and the starfields of the Milky Way. Especially in an urban location the binoculars will help "punch through" the light pollution. 10x50 are the most popular spec. Any more magnification or aperture and they get too big and heavy and sensitive to shaking to hold by hand. But anywhere from 7-10x mag and 40-50mm aperture is fine for astronomy. When choosing a pair, look for reviews in reputable astronomy or birding magazines and websites, don't just judge by 'box ticking' features because that says nothing about quality. $100, even $50, will get you a pair of binoculars that you won't need to upgrade. EDIT: If you already have a decent pair of binoculars, or you just really really want a telescope, then: In my view the most important thing is ease of use, and that comes from having a stable mounting. You want the telescope to move when and where you want, then stay still while you're looking through it. Remember that at for example 100x magnification, every little shake is also magnified a hundred times. You also want the focuser - the bit the eyepiece goes into - to be made decently too, for the same reason. All that makes the difference between an enjoyable time and a frustrating one. On a $100 budget the most usable and stable telescopes are the tabletop "Mini-Dobsonians" such as the Orion Funscope 76 or Skyscanner 100. I own a similar scope to the Funscope and can say it ticks the ease-of-use box. As far as views go, it's OK. It's a cheap small telescope and can't be expected to match bigger and/or more expensive stuff. Its strong point is widefield views and open star clusters, similar to what you get from binoculars actually, but gaining the ability to up the magnification to bring slightly smaller clusters to life, especially if you get an eyepiece giving around 50x. It's also good for hunting "faint fuzzies" - galaxies, globular clusters, even comets. They don't look like much in a small scope but the fun is in trying to see them at all. The weak point of these mini-Dobs is that they aren't good on planets, because they use a cheap mirror that isn't the ideal shape so they don't give crisp view at high (above about 75x) magnification. But then no small cheap scope is great on planets because to resolve fine details requires big aperture.

@Rassa Farlander what does your friend do with his PC, and how much do you really want to spend? Because I'd say both your build and Camacha's Alphasus's are paying high money for low gaming performance. And if you truly do want to spend $1000 you should consider not using that old motherboard, and instead having a free choice of CPU and mobo.

Yeah...a lot of laptops don't have the cooling to handle heavy continuous loads. And KSP does max out the CPU in the editor for some reason. I suspect, but have not proven, that the game's framerate cap is not being respected there, combined with the little animated space centre people using up way too much CPU. Fallout 4 and GTA 5, and most 'AAA' games, by contrast are typically GPU limited and the CPU actually has less to do.

UK Space Agency, because patriotism. Previously, my avatar, which I found on the internet somewhere and thought was fitting in a fatalistic kind of way.

"How have things that have made the game unplayable made it into 1.1.3?" Because Squad work to 'deadlines' set by upper management with no regard of whether KSP is actually in a fit state to release, do not have adequate QA and testing procedures in place, and are suffering from a large amount of technical debt - program code and design that is buggy and difficult to maintain - because they've spent five years operating that way.

Granted, it crushes them into bits instead. I wish computers used balanced ternary.