cantab

Check your local laws too. In Britain making your own solid rocket fuel is probably illegal unless you meet onerous regulatory requirements, but a bipropellant rocket is less troublesome. (It's because the solid fuel, with its oxidizer mixed in, falls under the same laws that regulate explosives). The USA seems to be more lenient, and I've no idea about Canada.

Physics A-Level. Two year course, fits after regular schooling and before university, and the people taking it have chosen to study it so everyone's pretty interested in science. There are a bunch of modules, four or five we have to do and then one that's a choice from a small list of options. The teacher makes the choice, not the individual students. One of the options was astrophysics, did we do that? Hell no. We got taught "health physics", a total joke option that the teacher chose because it was seen as the easy one. So I never even got as far as hearing people's space misconceptions.

Any measure to obscure the planet likewise has its benefits, but it doesn't stop an attacker taking pot shots hoping to hit somewhere relevant, or just sending enough firepower at the planet to damage the entire surface. Five watts on the HF bands will get your signals to the other side of the world. Lack of total bandwidth prevents widespread adoption on the same scale as cellphones and antenna size is a real issue, but it's feasible in stories where not so many people will be using it. In space, if the other end of the connection has big infrastructure you can be received over solar system distance with low power.

Why don't we find out?

Planets (and other celestial bodies) are sitting ducks. Their courses are entirely predictable so an attacking force can shoot them with impunity from the other side of the solar system, or potentially beyond. While a planet does have the advantage of considerable size, mass, and physical resources which help it soak up the incoming firepower, the only really effective defense is to take the fight to the attackers, and that means having your own space vehicles that can close the distance. Missiles count for that. Ground-mounted weapons could certainly have a useful role but they're not going to be much good on their own. Space stations I feel are even worse. They're also sitting ducks by definition (if they're capable of decent movement we call them spaceships instead) and they don't have any of the advantages planets do.

Actually, feral dogs might be one of the bigger threats. Especially in a pack if they attack you they can kill you. Maybe I will need to think about arming myself. And I certainly won't be setting other people's dogs free.

Call mum (who lives with me) and ask where she's gone. When I get no answer, be very worried and probably a bit panicky. Once it became apparent that *everyone* in my local area had vanished, try and figure out where they've gone, what the heck is going on, and in time try and find a way to get them back. Like someone else alluded to, I think the first indication that something very weird had happened would be the cars - abandoned, crashed (but probably not severely damaged because it's slow driving on my street), their engines perhaps still running, the doors closed, the seatbelts fastened, and perhaps even a pile of clothes in the drivers seat. Then I might check the web, and the lack of any news reports might indicate it's a more widespread issue than just my neighbourhood. In terms of practical considerations, I think I'd manage in the short to medium term. The loss of public utilities would be the biggest issue, but otherwise there don't seem to be many threats except maybe fire. In civilisation collapse scenarios the biggest danger is other people and that doesn't apply here, and Britain has a mild climate and no real dangerous wildlife. Longer term, I don't know what I'd do. Probably wander around, never quite stopping looking for a way to put things right. Quite possibly kill myself, it may seem like the only way of learning more. And miss my mum

Something to consider that I don't think has been mentioned. TAC Life Support is basically stable. It hasn't changed much and it probably isn't going to. Start using it, build to work with it, and you're good. USI Life Support is still under heavy development and we can expect new features and requirements to emerge, balance changes on parts, and so on. Even with the number of config options Roverdude puts in, don't be surprised when an updated version makes your old ship designs no good or even puts your Kerbals on strike.

Ditto here. Well, if the game performance increases enough I might add Distant Object Enhancement, it's one I really want but with how badly KSP runs currently I can't run any unimportant mods.

The "Notes on Stability Derivatives" is also informative. Generally I will run the analysis, then change something, and see how it changes the numbers.

Near Future Technologies for souped-up ion engines with "only" 3200 s Isp and nuclear reactors to power them. The transfer block used asparagus staging and maintained a TWR of 0.5 or so. Launch to leaving Kerbin's SOI was 2 hours 45 minutes and I was still doing the ejection burn at that point, it was about 3 hours game time total. (And probably more wall time because of lag). I don't know the speed when I finished the ejection burn, but I hit Jool's atmosphere at 40 km/s and pulled 155 gees in the aerocapture. Oh, and the payload was a 65-ton boat. [url=https://flic.kr/p/oGGiYs]the spacecraft what did it. Dang, I miss when this game didn't have re-entry heating

Tomshardware is another site with reviews. And if you'll be running Linux check on Phoronix, they do reviews and benchmarking under Linux. For assembly time, if it's your first build then clear a day for it, and don't be surprised if you have to get the bits you forgot about and complete the build another day. I'll be honest, I found my PC build physically and mentally exhausting, a lot of awkwardly hunching over the case and I was all tense about it. If you do finish the hardware side of things in good time you can use the rest of the day for the Windows and software installation.

It does change things around. Mainly it's kinetic effects - the different isotopes form the same compounds but the rates of reaction are slightly different. This means that chemical reactions and biological processes can "prefer" one isotope to another, which in turn means that precisely measuring isotopic ratios of a sample can tell us about its history. For example the isotope ratios of oxygen in the calcite shells of Foraminifera depend on the ocean temperature, and this allows geoscientists to learn about Earth's climate history. In some cases, especially hydrogen, the effects are more dramatic. Bonds can be stronger or weaker depending on the isotopes. That, combined with the importance of hydrogen bonds and water in living things, is why heavy water is poisonous in large doses (as in a significant fraction of your total fluid intake).

There isn't an orbit to begin with. There is no overall gravitational force between a central mass (Gilly) and a sphere or ring surrounding it (the spacecraft) - this is known as the "Shell theorem". So they'll just drift, each behaving as though the other isn't even there - right up until they bump into each other. (In the case of a ring if the central mass moves out of the ring plane there will be a restoring force in that direction, but there is nothing to oppose the central mass moving in the plane of the ring.)

Agreed with this. IIRC the way biomes are handled means they couldn't be added to a body without a solid surface, but that could change.

Opposed to some extent, but not to the point that any overclocking should mean abandoning all ideas of energy-efficiency. Let's say I got a 4.5 GHz overclock with power saving disabled, but only a 4.3 GHz one with it enabled, I might choose the second option.

I've tried something similar - but the bicycle wheel in question was weighted with a chain fixed round the rim. As others have alluded to, bicycle stability is complicated, but for "typical" bicycle designs the gyroscopic forces are not the primary factor. To say that gyroscopic forces help keep a bike upright is true, to imply that they're the only reason it stays upright is false. For another example of schools teaching incorrect things: throughout chemistry at school (when everyone has to study it) and even in sixth form (when only people who choose it study it) it was drummed into me, "isotopes of the same element behave the same chemically". Then come to university and I'm not even told that's wrong, the courses just start talking about isotopes behaving differently in chemical reactions. Very jarring, it took me unnecessary time and effort to get over that because I'd spent so long being taught an untruth.

More to the point, it's off-topic.

Engine clusters are a big help to push off-centre masses around, just reduce the thrust limiter on some of the engines. Trouble is nuclear engines are expensive, so it might be worth looking at a chemical engined design instead. Three Terriers should be enough thrust. The question is whether the extra fuel and tankage for the chemical option, *and* the potentially bigger launcher for it, adds less cost than the 30 grand for three nuclear engines.

In real aircraft with the usual wings-and-tailplane layout it's not uncommon for the whole tailplane to be adjustable to trim the aircraft in pitch, especially in tailed supersonic aircraft but also in some large airliners. That's problematic to do in KSP which probably hurts the conventional design. There are a few small all-moving fins but then you can get twitchy controls, and there's no good option for larger planes. Then again stock KSP doesn't feature the "Mach tuck" effect that motivates that powerful pitch trim adjustment. (FAR does, and I often have trouble with planes that can't hold the nose up through transonic speeds).

Indeed. And as Someguy123 said at the very start, a similar thing goes for the space station - the airlocks are designed so that the pressure difference mechanically prevents the doors opening.

Except that has its own practicality issues. Varying gravity and possible Coriolis forces as people move about between the hub and rim could cause issues. To make controlled manoeuvres in a spinning ship is going to be problematic, and to despin and respin it for every manoeuvre will either require a massive gyroscope or be a big waste of propellant. The overall design is constrained in ways that may not be desired. And it's out of the question on a test facility that will be added to the ISS. If the gas seal truly is an issue, there's a very simple solution: encase the whole thing in an outer, stationary, pressure chamber. This is I believe what was depicted on the Discovery in 2001 - the centrifuge was a ring inside the spherical crew section. A possible drawback of this approach is additional losses from air drag, but I'm inclined to think that needn't be too high.

It's sometimes known as a "Door popper" and it's a fairly common modification, though I don't know any vehicles that factory fit it to the main doors. (Motorised boot lids on the other hand are super common). Then again, if your door does open when you don't want it to that's not all that dangerous in a car really, not compared to on a space station.

Go figure, I've been having the exact same problem. It sounds like it may be related to the IWF. If so, it won't be the first time that filtering has mucked things up. EDIT: The same issue occurred, again with imgur, with Sky Broadband in 2014. It's not just a Plusnet thing, I'd say basically every UK ISP either has had or will have a screwup like this.

When I overclocked my old Phenom II I believe my procedure was to disable the "Cool 'n' Quiet" feature that clocks down the CPU when idle, do the overclock, but then once the chosen speed is reached I re-enabled CnQ and checked stability again. You are right though that power consumption and heat generation varies with load even without the clock speed changing.