cpast

You're missing conservation of angular momentum, unless your scheme is more complicated than you're mentioning. The spacecraft as a whole, including its reaction wheels, is a closed system. Reaction wheels don't change its angular momentum, they just shift momentum around within that system (they remove angular momentum from that part of the craft that isn't the reaction wheels, but that's because they move it to the reaction wheels). You can't convert angular momentum to heat any more than you can convert linear momentum to heat (what's actually being converted to head is kinetic energy associated with the rotation). Trying to use friction between wheel and spacecraft will just give the rest of the spacecraft all the angular momentum you'd transferred to the wheel; it'll spin, and quickly (unless it's much, much larger than the wheel). If you then spin the wheel up to stop the craft, the wheel's going just as fast as it was before we started this exercise. Because angular momentum is conserved, the only way to desaturate reaction wheels that doesn't just spin the spacecraft a lot is to interact with things outside the spacecraft. RCS does it by ejecting things from the craft; the angular momentum of (ship + exhaust) is the same, but we don't care about the exhaust. If you channeled the heat correctly, you might be able to radiate it in a way that produces a small torque on the craft (if radiation pressure from the Sun can cause a torque, I'd imagine you can radiate heat in such a way as to cause a tiny torque, essentially using it to power a photon drive).

The Shuttle Landing Facility (which is now TTS instead of X68) isn't 3 nm, it's under 2.5 (it's 15,000 feet), which is 4.5 km. Many runways for commercial aircraft are around 10,000 feet (particularly at sea level), which is only 1.6 nm (and 3 km).

My medium-weight manned rover (pressurized module as the core, so I feel fine assigning crews to spend a night or two in it) has OX-STATs on the roof to provide some power while moving. It uses heavier panels to power it while stopped, but while it's rolling I often retract those to prevent them from breaking if it rolls. The roof panels aren't enough to sustain it indefinitely (it's drawing from its batteries), but they significantly increase its range before it has to stop and extend its charging panels.

Wait, did I miss something? Where did they say life support's being added?

But what's the alternative? If someone chooses biometrics alone for convenience, their alternative was likely either a really weak password or no password at all. The real benefit of more convenient things that aren't as secure is that they mean more people will use some security at all rather than almost none.

No. Scientists do research into what the world is like. Orbital guidance is not a research task; the scientists' job is to decide what the goals are for the craft and to define its mission, the engineers' job is to achieve that mission in the maximally efficient way. Flight dynamics officers have engineering backgrounds by and large; it's not a task done by scientists, because it's not a task involving finding out more about the world (it's instead applying known scientific principles to solve a specific practical problem in the best way you can, which is squarely withing the domain of engineering). Where scientists would play a big role is in helping you figure out where you should go, e.g. by showing you biome data, and finding anomalies, and that sort of thing. Scientists should help you find anomalies; they should help you tell what biome you're in; they should be involved in science experiments that aren't clickfests; but they shouldn't be needed to deal with orbital parameters.

They are not. It doesn't matter what the CTO says in interviews when the patents database is public record. There are no patents assigned to "Escape Dynamics" in the US, nor in any country included in Espacenet's database (Espacenet is run by the European Patent Office, and includes many countries' patent databases and published applications, including the US's). There are 3 results in Espacenet for "Escape Dynamics," all of which are US patent applications (not patent grants, and something isn't patented until you have a patent grant).

But the whole point of voting is you don't have to know the fine details of fifty gazillion fields -- you just need to elect people who can pay attention to it (or, as it happens, who will hire people who know where to look for the specialized knowledge and know how to put everything together). Knowing how to make a torniquet actually helps you in some situations; it's hard to think of how knowing details of space exploration would help you in some practical situation, where you wouldn't be able to spend some time asking people who do know about it to get some background (as opposed to first aid, where you need it *now* and can't call a friend). Not caring about space exploration is a far cry from "bragging about being illiterate." If you have down that "I don't know how this works," you're actually better off than many people (keep in mind that people who think Apollo was a hoax think they *do* know how to evaluate the evidence, and think they *can* determine for themselves that it was fake, which is worse than knowing you don't know how to evaluate the evidence).

It'll also have Pinto-level gas tank design, because it lets them make the car a little bit lighter and smaller. (I work on Macs, and that's a reasonable summary of Apple's battery philosophy)

Incidentally, my view on this has evolved a bit reading responses. I now agree that some sort of procedural thing is ultimately the only workable option, especially as compacting payload is a lot harder in KSP when you don't have the proper tools. However, I still think it makes sense to have a bit of "trying to make it fit," which one good way to do that is to have procedural fairings at fixed size increments - say, 0.625 m increments of diameter with increasing cost as diameter increases, so you get an outsized advantage making your payload fit in the next-smaller size without actually needing multiple parts, but you don't have to worry about that unless you feel like it, and you never pay too big a penalty for having a slightly-too-large ship. - - - Updated - - - Sort of the opposite, actually - it seems like the more vocal people are on the side of proc fairings. However, I really don't think "crusading" is a useful word in describing any argument, really ever. It's fairly pejorative, and doesn't contribute to constructive debate.

An argument that has been advanced, many times, for procedural fairings above procedural other parts is "in real life, it's not that hard to just build a bigger fairing, so there's no reason it should be that hard in KSP." Basically, people conceded that procedural engines don't really make tons of sense, and that in real life tanks are built to fixed sizes and can't be tweaked that easily, but maintained that fixed-size fairings present a constraint that isn't there in real life. You see it when you see people talking about why procedural fairings makes sense but aren't willing to say other procedural parts make sense. Earlier in this thread, I've been pointing out that that's blatantly untrue, and procedural fairings is a major departure from real-world rocket constraints. That's not to say there aren't arguments that it's more fun to have procedural fairings, but...well, it's been a discussion topic lately where the line should be drawn between fun and realism, no?

That's why biometric scanners work best when accompanied by a guard to discourage trying to fool the system. However, assuming passwords are secure is also not right; people tend to pick really, really awful passwords, and you literally cannot force people to pick good passwords (password complexity rules don't actually work to keep passwords secure, and if you make the rules too strict people will just write down the password). In contrast, biometrics can be awfully convenient, which means that people are more likely to use security features in the first place. For instance, while an iPhone fingerprint sensor can be fooled, you're more secure with a fingerprint lock that you use than a passcode that you don't use. Biometrics, when well-implemented, happen to be quite a bit more convenient than other schemes. They have limits, but for a lot of users they provide enough security for the user's needs without being too annoying for the user to actually use. For if it's stolen: That's really mostly a concern when it's deployed over an untrusted network. Biometrics with untrusted sensors degrades into "something you know," which is where it's really practical to duplicate. It's not practical to duplicate "something you are" and likely won't be for a very long time; attacks by lifting fingerprints or using a photo rely on sensors that don't fully verify that it's an actual human they're sensing. Proper biometric sensors have a lot of effort put into making them hard to fool by presenting something that's not a live person; that's what the guard is for in "guard+biometric" systems, but people are working on technological solutions. The actual way to implement biometrics is to have an entirely closed system containing both identifying data and the actual sensor; the sensor absolutely has to be trusted. This system would then output whatever it needs to (e.g. a password, cryptographic key, token, that sort of thing, or it could do something like sign data only when it gets the right input). The point is, the actual fingerprint data is only handled by the closed system, which makes it work against any attacker not disassembling the sensor.

Question: I know spacecraft sometimes use gyroscopes to maintain attitude. If torque is applied to the spacecraft, does that then slow the gyroscope, or what happens?

Actually, the people who calculate burns are engineers, not scientists. The line can get kind of fuzzy, but calculating burns is applying known scientific principles to achieve some specific goal, and that's much more "engineering" than "science" (science being more about discovering new things about how the universe works; if you're discovering new things about how the universe works during your burn, that's probably bad). Scientists might be involved in deciding what the spacecraft should do in general terms to achieve scientific goals, but there's a reason flight dynamics officers tend to have an engineering background. Very little about spacecraft *operation* counts as science in my book; the goals are scientific, but that's exactly how KSP uses its scientists (i.e. to do its Science, not as core people in charge of making and operating spacecraft that work through well-understood principles.

Ditto for you. Both of you are presenting valid views on creativity; however, you seem to not understand that you're advocating your view on creativity just as Jouni is advocating his. The game will have one approach or the other, but "just impose the limit yourself" is not actually equivalent to "here are the constraints, do wonderful things with them." You're trying to force your view on creativity as well, you're just acting like you aren't. As for "restrictions make a game a game," I don't think anyone here seriously disagrees with that. KSP already restricts you rather substantially - for instance, you have to build your rocket with lots of fuel in order to orbit, you will find it extremely hard to go from Moho to Eeloo in a day, you have to either launch your craft at around the right time for a transfer to a planet or build a very, very, very powerful craft, etc. Those are all constraints. Everything there is a rule the game imposes on you, and what distinguishes the game from a 3D modeling program. So stop pretending "no limits" has anything whatsoever to do with KSP or how it should work. KSP should have limits. Building a ridiculously wide rocket should be hard, because it should have a lot of drag with a decent aero system. You shouldn't be able to lift a 50-ton station into orbit with a single small engine and fuel tank (the rocket equation? That's a constraint). If you don't think fairing limits are a good constraint, that's one thing. If you don't think constraints should exist at all, your imagined game has little to do with KSP.

Almost, actually. A standard landing for a jet happens at idle; while there is thrust, the thrust level is dictated by how long it'll take to spool up in a go-around (which is why the engine isn't *off*, and is at "flight idle" which is higher than "ground idle"). Exceptions include aircraft carrier operations (where you go to max power as soon as you touch down in case you miss the wires) and when you can't do your preferred descent, but you generally want to be as close as possible to no thrust to descend (if you need thrust, it means you're either wasting fuel or you wasted fuel previously in the descent). Prop planes may be different, but from what I can tell the preferred approach profile for jets is the one that lets you be at the lowest thrust setting that lets you spool up to go-around power in 6 seconds.

Or build a superpowerful rocket to lift it. While I think there should be a mass penalty for huge fairings (something sticking out really far is actually going to have to be sort of heavy to stay in one piece), if you can launch a mushroom more power to you.

How fast are you going, and how much are you steering? I'd expect steering to be something you have to do very, very lightly at high speed. I'm also not sure what the actual difference is with real aircraft that causes it in KSP (again, non-pilot); maybe you let up on the brake on a real plane when steering, and have a much more stable wheelbase on anything going at high speed on the ground? EDIT: Actually, how's U-2 steering on the ground work? That plane actually tips over when it stops because it only has two wheels, both on the centerline; however, it's basically a powered glider, so its handling characteristics might be quite different.

AFAIK (and I may be wrong about this), the main way almost all aircraft in real life are slowed down *is* wheel brakes. At least for airliners, you aren't even allowed to include reverse thrust in your calculations for dry runway landing distance (you can do it for wet runways in some places and under some conditions, but reverse-thrust credit is an exception and not the rule); while spoilers exist, I remember reading somewhere that the main role of a spoiler is to reduce lift, not to slow the plane directly (they can slow you in flight by increasing AoA and so increasing drag, but it's more common to use them to descend without gaining speed; on touchdown, they increase drag a bit, but by far the more important role is killing any remaining lift and putting the full weight of the plane on the wheels, which makes the brakes more effective). So KSP does have the main thing used to slow down most aircraft, and an issue with stopping distance is best addressed by adding heavier landing gear with beefed-up brakes. (note: not a pilot nor an aerodynamicist nor an aerospace engineer, take with a grain of salt)

To your first question: Among native speakers, English actually works rather well. "Anything goes so long as you're understood" is not how English works; there are rules of the language, and violating them will make people think you don't speak English well (even if they understand you perfectly). There's a difference between the kinds of differences you see across dialects and the kinds of errors you see children and non-native speakers make. What it doesn't have is the idea that you need a standard version because dialects are not quite the same (although they're generally mutually intelligible). That's not to say that there aren't dialects that you'd be more likely or less likely to expect another native speaker to understand; however, there are multiple such dialects, all of which are pretty much totally mutually intelligible with all the others, and this really doesn't present any sort of problem for native speakers in practice. There is, however, no consciously defined standard version; there was absolutely orthography standardization in the 18th-19th centuries, but political conditions resulted in multiple standards, and as a result no formal standard is all that authoritative. If you try to create a lingua franca that's like English or a variant of English, you have to make it so people who can read/write English can read/write the lingua franca and vice versa, at least at a basic level of intelligibility (you don't have to be able to do so effortlessly, but it shouldn't take too much effort to understand not-too-complicated things written in the other one). Otherwise, there's not a whole lot of point in making it a variant of English: if everyone has to learn something new, it won't be easier to make it like what English speakers already know (and rely on them not absentmindedly mixing the two to too* great an extreme). You may as well just push Esparanto: if you're not making it compatible with a natural language, then why bother basing it off one? The issue with changing pronunciation and grammar is that either they don't quite stick (if people learn a constructed language as a native language, they will have a different grammar than someone who learned it by reading the standards), or else you're teaching it to everyone as a second language. You aren't going to be able to have lots of people learn it natively until you have people who speak it as a second language, so you need to convince people that they should learn it as a second language. But no one body has the authority to change school curricula for more than a small proportion of the English-speaking world. For places that have native speakers the majority are in the US, where control is at the local level and most school systems would resist this kind of change. For places that don't have native speakers, you have to deal with the exact same issues that prevented constructed languages from becoming lingua francas -- people learn second languages to communicate, natural languages have pre-existing native speaker communities, constructed languages do not. * no, I didn't plan this, but it is sort of funny in a post about English spelling and pronunciation

Even if you have a small fuel tank below and connect fuel lines?

I can't see any modders taking part in a system where Squad gets a cut of money paid. I paid Squad for the game; if modders make something and I'm paying someone for the mod, I should just be paying the modders.

Is it just me, or has 1.0 development been much faster than other versions? What's changed?

Isn't Squad integrating one of your mods into the game? In which case, it'd be more of "don't sell it without permission."

"App store" kind of implies that some of the things there will be paid. You don't call something a "store" if everything's free.