Green Baron

Another limitation is my sense of aesthetics ... But of course, you are right.

"From the balcony" ? :-)

No. A program runs from random access memory, but a ramdisc is addressed like a discdrive. If you have much i/o, like from a huge database, then a ramdisc could help. Ramdiscs were vastly used in the late 80's and 90's. But today's discs normally are fast enough and modern os's have better means for speed and redundancies. Also, bootloaders may use ramdisc during initial startup, when the disc i/o system is not yet ready. As for KSP: a fast processor (number threads is not that decisive), min. 8GB ram and if you use many textures / part packs a graphics card with a lot of graphics ram speed things up. Edit: initial loading might be a little faster, but you have to load the ramdisc from disc first, so all in all you'll be slower at first loading, a little faster at sequential loading if you leave the ramdisc in ram all day long. But you loose ram that is probably better used as ... well ... as ram.

There still live people today who start to cry when reading this. This has gone far off topic.

A long trip back in 1.0.x.

When it comes to putting something heavy up, and doing it fast and efficient, asparagus is mandatory. The simplest is 3 cores, like described by Pecan. It reduces unneeded mass and prolongs burntime. Combined with the right engine choice (rocket parts pack(s)) it's hard to imagine anything more efficient. SSTOs are nice, but 200t 80t payload into orbit is hard work ... (nothing against hard working people :-))

Nonsense. Flint lies on the open ground and "Cavemen" only exist in cheap movies or comics strips. No offence, just demanding more respect for the elder :-)

The differences in the materials are probably not *that* big. Carbon, iron, oxygen, Calcium, etc. are best suited for the job. If an evolution had started elsewhere it is not out of the world to assume that it's similar to earths evolution. Other bases are imaginable (on the base of sulphur or silicium (silicon ?)) but that would probably not walk around and think about outer space. The distances are huge. It's not just down to the chemist you know :-), and communication speed is limited and range as well by transmitter power / size of receiver. You are most probably right to assume that it is very improbable we could become aware of "somebody else" in the near/medium future.

Depends on the airspace. If the rocket is going through controlled airspace you need to file a flight plan. I can imagine that if your serious enough and that plan is not too ridiculous that the flight plan will be accepted. You open it (phone call), start the rocket, watch it 'splode, and then close the flightplan ('nother phone call). I mean these guys are not there to make life more complicated, so why should they reject such a thing if there is no apparent danger to other traffic (IF !) ? I don't know what regulations apply to low orbital space / edge of stratosphere, but i would guess that the technical problems are the bigger ones ...

Multiple poles is "a very old hat" :-) E.g. in times of switching ... ... aww f..., wait .... "The Christian Science Monitor" ? What is that ? You see an astonished Kerbal before you ! :-) Edit: ... can make magentostratigraphy complicated.

LOX is 50.5 K (-222°C) ... contradicts your point 2

It's actually a very bad thing and an open door that programs spread their files over the whole system, often leaving the user without any control for access rights, one of the reasons why i don't use windows any more. But an excuse for the installation-program to demand supervisor rights and do whatever it likes, like installing rootkits in many cases. I like it when everything is nice and locked in a single directory tree. Gives easy control, the ability to run more than one instances, backup is easy, and building a sandbox for limited access (a user account f.e.) is up to the admin (me), not google or microsoft. There is absolutely no need that application programs to need supervisor rights for installation, it's the reason for most security problems today. :-) Edit: ah, sorry, a configurable path to savefiles/crafts/config is of course no problem ...

On earth, atmospheric oxygen is involved to form them. So, applying the principle of uniformitarianism or it's modern descendants we can speculate about oxygen-rich palaeo-oceans on mars. The paper suggests that, if mars had oceans and the planet's magnetic field decayed, radiation could have split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the hydrogen dissipated into space, the oxygen was bound in oxides. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069109/abstract Microbes are not needed for the suggested process.

"The philosophy of guessing has harmed physics" - there is part of the answer to your question. We are mixing philosophy/worldview (which anyone can talk about) and physics (only a few have the education/knowledge) and likely to draw premature conclusions like "faster than light comms". Furthermore things are often seized by journalists and transformed into something spectacular that, when taking a closer look, dissolves into pure speculation. Let's wait until the results have been replicated and implications become clearer. I have a very simple one: cut the ace of spades in two halves, send one half to europe the other to asia. Ask the european what the asian has in his hands. The answer will seem to come faster than light as well :-) Edit: nevermind, dear asians, you could have answered that too, i'm sure :-)

Ok, phew, a little over my poor head. I realize that two papers suggest a faster than light "communication" as a possible explanation for their observations. Let's assume there weren't any faulty fibre optic cables involved, rememder ? :-) I take it that entanglement is a system of two photons from the same source. Measuring one of them tells about the other. You send one of the photons to a different place, and still measuring one of them tells about the other. Ok for one pair of photons. Now what if there where many photons to make up a message ? Ok, then we measure a wave-function, right ? It's not possible to tell which photon exactly bears which information, you only get the double bell curve from behind the slit screen. Did i get that right ? This can hardly be called "communication" ...

Got you until "light has no mass", which my inner translator translated into "a photon has no mass" and then nodded to me. Idiot an the subject (and wikipedia-denier) that i am i kindly ask: what does the slot experiment tell us about quantum entanglement and ftl communication ? Always eager to learn ...

I'm far from understanding the math behind QM and probably will never do so. But discussing communication faster than light to me is like discussing whether we can "lift" ants to an intellectual level: nonsense. Or to put it less offensive and in K²'s words: lack of understanding of the underlying principles. It's the same with subjects like evolution. Too much fantasy is sold as science, until someone comes up with *reasonable* papers (i'd prefer papers that have been reviewed, not necessarily science and nature) all that ftl thing remains just fantasy. A TV-show might suffice ....

THIS ! And it's not limited to QM, it is so damn true for many other complex subjects.

Yep, and joint reeinforcements and a decent rocket parts pack. But sense of achievement first :-)

Ok. We do it step by step, one after the other. Build that craft in the picture (without the science stuff on top, instead place a large blue parchute). Launch it and try to do a nice gravity turn, pitch a little over after launch, let it go, it should hit 10-12.000 with 45°, that's what we like. You'll need a few tries until you get that. Afterwords you may need to keep the nose a little below the prograde marker. Keep on burning until AP is 100km. During that hold the nose down a little below prograde. When the ap reaches 100 cut the engine. Your speed should be around 1500m/s or so, more is better, less is ok. AP is 1-3 min away, that's ok for now. Set a maneuver node at ap for circularization. Orient your coasting rocket to the blue marker. Half the burntime before the node you fire up until the yellow marker is 0 (or close to). Hit x. Voila, circular orbit. Got it that far ? Than we do the next step. Edit: don't.forget.the.solar.panels :-) Editedit: don't forget the staging, press space when the outer engines die and maintain full throttle for ease, you can optimize later.

... aah, the tumbling: did you ran out of electricity cause you forgot solar panels ? Guess when this happened to me last time ...

Just read the instructions :-) Seriously, there is a nice wiki with tutorials and a lot of sample crafts, youtube videos etc. That'll help with errors like burn when timer hits zero (start burning around timer-burntime/2, plus a little for mass loss during burntime). TWR should not be too high, around 1.4 to 1.7 on the pad, that'll avoid that AP rises too fast. Start turning a few degrees to the east after clearing the tower, a little more when around 5.000, go through 12.000 with about 45°, these are rough house numbers but they work. Use throttle, every honest rocket throttles down during flight. Proper staging helps as well. Sample mun-lander rocket for not having to read 2 hours (but try 2 days until it works):

?? Pls go ahead, i'm curious .... :-)

Vacuum breathing, subspace floating and neutrino digestion. We can achieve that with current ridiculous level. Edit: science & spaceflight is a refreshing experience every time :-)

To come up with half-cocked claims is of course an offence to all those who dedicate their work to serious findings, so i can understand you guys perfectly. I too have my hobbyhorse and this is in some areas subject to heavy debate, even religious. But then again, this is a game forum and games are played by ... well gamers and not every gamer has a reasonable educational level. Another problem is that many people see wikipedia as the last resort of knowledge, which is *not* the case, everyone can write in there, you get my drift. I do hope that noone decides over fundings based on posts in a game forum and i do hope that people from the scientific community are clever enough to distinguish between the fools and the wise and we all know it's easy to make a fool out of a wise. My knowledge of this subject is very limited, i read some excerpts once every few weeks but they are very cursory. So if you could provide me with the current views you have the chance of making the one or the other fool a little wiser. I'm sorry, but i don't see another way. :-)