cantab

About the same as what I got going from a Phenom II X3 to the i3-6100. Unless you can find some good deals, in general Haswell kit is not significantly cheaper than Skylake now. For an all-new build I'd be inclined to go Skylake, mainly for the ancilliary features like USB 3 support and also because why build a new PC with last-gen tech? Regarding 1.1, I'll say what I've said before in general: More cores helps the programs that can use them, but better per-core speed helps *everything*.

I'd say it's just too situational. You've got to have the airframe obviously crippled, while the passenger capsule remains hardly damaged. You've got to *know* that the chance of the capsule landing safely is greater than the chance of the whole aircraft being landed safely - and you really want to have that decision taken by a computer to cover for pilot incapacitation. There are myriad ways the capsule could fail, but probably the scariest is if it lands on a structure that cannot take the load and the structural collapse kills people on the ground. The remaining airframe could do the same, and the chance of that could be increased because its aerodynamics sans capsule would be upset. This system is not going to save people from a controlled flight into terrain, a major cause of accidents. It's not going to help in a runway incursion or runway excursion event, they happen when the plane is already on the ground and are again a major cause of air accidents. It's going to be problematic in any of the raft of scenarios that might damage the capsule landing system: mid-air collision, explosive decompression, uncontained engine failure, cabin fire, shootdown, bomb, and probably others. It's going to be of limited use in a hijacking.

Well let's say some magic force supports the iron core against collapse, then the shells surrounding it would continue fusing lighter elements and it would carry on as a giant star. Eventually what you'd be left with is a giant ball of iron plasma, possibly with an outer of lighter elements, that should collapse into a neutron star or black hole but Magic stops it doing so.

True, civilian launch companies will be more concerned about toxicity, but the technology of the toxic-hypergolic engines is ready while the kerosene-peroxide engines are much less ready. It's the same situation as Workable discussed with respect to solids. The Shuttle engines could actually throttle down to 2/3rds of their normal thrust. However the thrust of the boosters was vastly greater than that of the liquid engines, hence to make any significant difference to total thrust requires designing it into the boosters. The Shuttle boosters, and many others, could also vector thrust - a big omission from KSP's solids.

Storable hypergolic propellants were pioneered by the military to fuel ballistic missiles. I'm guessing neither the US Army nor the Red Army was overly concerned about using toxic fuels, not when designing and building the missiles was what both sides thought would avoid them losing a nuclear war. (Edit, and yes, I remember now it was probably the Air Force not the Army doing the missiles, but the point stands)

FAR. I consider what Squad came up with instead to be second-best.

So it looks like a couple of hundred metres and it starts to be Not A Dot to people with good eyes. But you need more like a kilometre for someone on the ground to be able to clearly make out the general shape.

Special relativity or not, if A is in motion with respect to B, then C cannot be at rest with respect to both A and B. That seems frankly obvious.

I was able to operate my ion ship at Jool on solars, albeit at severely reduced throttle. And I'm pretty sure that was after the solar panel curve was corrected. If you build for it you should be alright.

My two cents: For manoeuvrability, either clustered main engines or thrust vectoring. Either approach avoids the dead-weight of engines in all directions and the shortcomings of relying on secondary thrusters for turning. The cluster works better with a short wide ship, something like a flying saucer, while the thrust vectoring works better with a long skinny ship

Well it *works*, the rocket flies stable-ish straight up though a couple of stages want swapping (9 and 10 I think), and the results are informative for comparing different game settings and mods. But they aren't directly comparable with 0.90 results. Though maybe they should be plotted anyway. The increased unload distance is one of the factors that degrades performance in 1.0 for "real" launches after all.

Fix the UI "clickthrough" bugs and the delayed-click-registering bug first, then see if this is still needed.

IMHO there's generally no reason to limit TWR on orbital launchers now KSP has vaguely realistic aero. Provided your rocket isn't insane you're best off going full power all the way, or at least until very late when you may throttle back to circularise. On the other hand engines are heavy, so I tend not to put too much thrust on. A common design for me is a first stage with maybe 1.0 or less atmo TWR, SRBs, and an upper stage with around 0.5 TWR. At launch all engines ignite, the core sometimes being throttled back; by the time the boosters drop the fuel burn and improved thrust with height mean the core can come to full power and manage decent TWR. I've actually made orbit with the final 750-1000 m/s coming at as low as 0.25 TWR, but there's not much margin for error so I prefer more.

Maybe I'm biased, but I'm saying HOTOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOTOL And it's one that is being revisited today - the Skylon proposal, including the very SABRE engine that KSP's RAPIER is based on, owes a lot to HOTOL including being lead by the same person.

Not if we first destroy their space fleet. Or they never have one. Or we put a good enough shield on the sunshade. Compared to a space stations the size of a small moon causally popping planets while creating its own internal artificial gravity fields, keeping a sunshade in a desired position is trivial. Therefore I shall assume the post I quoted was disinformation spoofed by the so-called "heroes" and not a genuine message from Lord Antilles. Just as long as we learn the lessons from the last attempt to use that.

If the pole is "impossibly rigid", then it's impossible to swing it fast enough for the other end to move faster than light, no matter what non-zero mass the pole has. The energy required to do so is infinite, which makes the force required to be exerted on the pole also infinite. This applies regardless of the length of the pole.

1) The best handle we have on the rotation of a gas planet's interior is from observing its radio emissions, which vary depending on the rotation of the planet's magnetic field which is generated in the deep interior. For both Jupiter and Saturn this defines a respective "System III". The visible clouds undergo differential rotation. 2 and 3) An altitude corresponding to a somewhat arbitrary pressure is chosen.

Pffft, all this unnecessary destruction. Whatever was wrong with the good old Giant Sunshade Blot out the sun on your target planet and watch it freeze. A long slow suffering for all those so foolhardy as to oppose us. Once everyone is a popsicle, let the world thaw out then do as you please with its resources.

I don't see the Swivel and Terrier as really in competition, the former is a significantly more massive and more powerful engine. The fairer comparison is Swivel VS Poodle. In vacuum the Poodle is superior in both TWR and Isp, but the Swivel has a little less absolute mass, so in practical designs they can perform very similarly. The Poodle is usually the better option though I think, except of course on a first stage where it takes an Isp nosedive.

That only applies to the fixed features on the ground, aka the "Anomalies". There are other Easter Eggs in KSP, for example some details of part textures. "Albatross 3" being a reference to something else, for example Rescuers as suggested, would also qualify.

No quickloads or reverts. Exceptions are for 1) blatant bugs, and 2) unmanned launches that fail early, where it's just quicker to revert than to wait for the debris to land. (And in Science Mode there's no impact in that revert other than gaining a few in-game minutes).

There will always be more to do. But some of my current definite goals: Complete my first fully-operational shuttle. Then make a better one, then another, etc. Make my first base, on the mod world of Serran. Then make more. Find a suitable canyon somewhere, and bridge it. Land on every one of the planets and moons in my modded "100 Worlds" installation, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

Down to -96

Arriving at or departing from a specific highly-inclined orbit is a nuisance. I wouldn't put my ore refinery in a polar orbit. Maybe something like a 30 degree inclination, that's a good compromise between access from the surface and access to escape/interplanetary trajectories.

-91 (-)