cantab

-88 (-)

Quite probably some of the Sentinels did strike out for new lands. But what are the possibilities: They found at sea. Well that's the end of that boat crew. They found new land and never returned. They'll have formed a new society or integrated into an existing one. Either way, we can't trace them back to the Sentinels now. They found new land then went back home. Well how would we know about it? The Sentinels sure aren't saying!

Down to -88

Munroe discusses how, at these speeds - and even at the relatively modest 0.01c speeds - a "solid object" will expand outwards thanks to interacting with its target. As far as Star Wars goes though, the key point you made is that there's no evidence regular starships can reach the required speeds in realspace, while a collision in hyperspace can do whatever the writers desire. Combine that with the argument I gave that the Death Star doesn't need to deliver the full binding energy of its target, and that a beam weapon isn't subject to the rocket equation whereas a ramming ship might be, and I think we can get a galaxy where the Death Star and weapons like it work but just ramming a planet with a starship doesn't work. But in general, I stand by that enough mass moving fast enough will destroy a planet.

Randall Munroe begs to differ https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/ The Mythbusters results with bullets are irrelevant, results with kinetic energy penetrators are irrelevant, even light gas gun studies are irrelevant. When you're talking about relativistic and ultrarelativistic impacts, more relevant are results from things like particle accelerators, but even then you have to consider the vastly greater number of atoms involved with a massive relativistic impactor.

Heh. I find myself having to light the rockets at around 20-22 km. If I get the aircraft flying too high too slow it becomes a real handful to keep under control. I think my ascent is most similar to the "float" type, maybe that's not great and I can do better. Thing is I'm often a bit deficient on pitch authority because good flight characteristics at low speeds tends to mean a nose-heavy aircraft at supersonic speeds as the lift shifts back and that makes entering a zoom climb problematic.

Since the engine efficiency nerf in 1.0, it's harder than it used to be. On the other hand I suspect it's still possible. IMHO it wants a combination of excellent efficiency and good TWR which makes the Rhino the leading candidate, but that does make for a large lander. The increase in TWR as you burn off fuel is important - you can easily be starting your landing burn with a TWR of 1.0 or even lower, it will rise by the time you touch down. Some versions ago I did my Tylo landing in this: https://flic.kr/p/qK65LP I was using a custom engine nerf at the time, which brought performance down to a level similar to what we now have. Now that lander was deliberately overbuilt, I could easily have done it with a single engine. In the event I didn't make it back to orbit but had to bail out and use the jetpack.

There's a bug in the Windows build of KSP running under Direct X 9 (the default) where everything stored in VRAM is needlessly duplicated in system RAM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance As you can see the maths is a little complicated. But it's a common calculation, you can probably find a website that does it for you.

Or "Han was bragging", which would seem entirely plausible. He shot first too.

As a general feature I'm not sure it's good, KSP is hard enough as it is. Where I think it could work well is for part test contracts. The experimental parts would have somewhat randomised performance, with I think the possibilities being: Nominal. It works like the standard part. Underperform. The part works, but some aspect isn't as good as the standard part. For example an engine would make less thrust, a decoupler might not eject the part straight. Overperform. The part works and some aspect is *better* than standard. For example higher thrust in an engine. Failure. The part does nothing. Catastrophic Failure. The part goes kaboom, possibly taking out other parts. Or in some cases perhaps the part gets jammed, for example a control surface gets stuck. In all cases just running the test should complete the contract, but it would still add some interest and unpredictability. Do you plan to rely on the test part, which might go wrong, or haul it as deadweight which makes a more costly mission? To compensate, make the dang part tests have more sensible and less nitpicky constraints.

Shuttle screenshot323 by cantab314, on Flickr screenshot325 by cantab314, on Flickr That has like 3 km/s of delta-V in the ET, as designed - this thing can go to Laythe and land a payload there. In theory. (In practice I have a modded system anyway).

Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Down to -85 in the first post of 2016, at least according to Big Ben.

This is a common approach for me as well. Simple, like a real rocket, and burning the core engine from the start (sometimes throttled back) gives me crucial thrust-vectoring for control, since KSP doesn't have vectored SRBs. Well I'd say it's not quite so cut-and-dried. Most real rockets feature two payload ratings - one for LEO, and a second lower rating for Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Sometimes other configurations are used too, like Saturn V where the third stage put the spacecraft on Trans-Lunar-Injection. Or New Horizons, where the Atlas V's second stage reignited in low orbit to start the ejection burn (that was completed by a Star 48 solid motor which you can argue was part of the payload). What I think is more generally the case is the launcher is doing its burns around or below low orbit. Sometimes there's a wait and reignition in low orbit, but once you start thinking about the burn to enter geostationary orbit or the burn to capture at your destination planet or moon, that's definitely something that's the job of the payload. Though since KSP lacks fuel boiloff and part reliability concerns, if I have excess delta-V in my launcher I'm probably gonna keep it with me anyway!

"We at Squad are proud to announce our acquisition by (insert hated game company here)."

Keep doing stuff that tests my design and flying skill.

-83 (-). Tick tock

Considering that Han Solo also bragged about his ship's speed without remembering parsecs measure distance, he was probably exaggerating about hitting a star too. (And spare me the "flying by black holes" nonsense. I know, I know, it's now been made Star Wars canon, but as far as I'm concerned that's just something Lucas made up instead of admit that he got it wrong.)

The Rhino is significantly more efficient, and actually a great choice of vacuum engine if you have a large payload and don't want to use the LV-N.

Yeah, I've rarely found the need for asparagus staging. Just look at real life rockets for some inspiration, you'll see a few common approaches.

1.1 lags worse with high part count ships than 1.0.5. I don't want to hear it ... but I won't be surprised if I do.

In my experience the problem in re-entry is down to the flashy flame effects, they're actually quite demanding on both GPU and CPU. (It's actually a fur shader making the effects, and hair and fur are well known as very demanding to render, so it's no great surprise considering). On the contrary, KSP has had multithreading for a long time. It's just that most of the work, including all the physics calculations, is done by a single thread. And top uses a scale where "100%" means 100% of one core, or the equivalent of that.

A few factors: There is a limit to the delta-V from a single stage, depending on the efficiency of the engine and the mass ratio of the fuel tanks. Even with staging, each stage needs to either be larger than the one after it or delivers less delta-V. This is noticeable with asparagus designs, there comes a point where it's not worth adding more boosters the same size and you should instead go bigger. You have KER in atmospheric mode. Rocket engines are more efficient in vacuum. Some are a LOT more efficient in vacuum, including the nuclear engine.

Various possibilities. No liquid fuel, of course. Liquid fuel not reaching the engine - I'm not sure anything can block fuel flow to a jet engine, but it's possible the tanks are locked. Not enough air, in which case try throttling back.

-81 (-)