cpast

The K2 pod is what I'm using: 1.25m pod with a 1.25m base (that looks like a Mk 1 capsule base), a 0.625m top (that looks nice with the small parachute), and a general Gemini-y shape. Unfortunately the links in that post are removed, but just search it on Curse or Kerbal Stuff.

If it's revised, it shouldn't be revised to face away from the Kerbal. It should be set parallel to the camera plane, facing left-to-right.

That's the biggest aspect: English works. It has lots of quirks, but it generally functions as a language. That has just about always been the design principle of the language (i.e. "if you understand this it's perfectly valid"). For standardization: If German has a dictionary which is the written language, that's nothing at all like English. There is no standard English dictionary; there aren't even standard spellings worldwide. Webster succeeded in a partial spelling reform (confined to the US), which worked because that was around when spelling was standardizing anyway. Furthermore, the most standard English dictionaries (the OED and Merriam-Webster, for [tweaked] BrE/historical evolution and AmE respectively) are fully descriptive, and frequently update to reflect actual usage; even then, the OED has a couple quirks that people feel free to ignore (they prefer -ize to -ise, while BrE tends to use -ise; just because -ize is in the OED doesn't mean people automatically treat it as correct and -ise as incorrect). The concept that "this is the standard written language, and here is the standard dictionary that's official and controls how you actually write" is just not there in English; dictionaries are used as reference, but they follow how people write (and speak), not vice versa.

I think the "c" is actually there to indicate "pronounce the 'k' sound" - the word had the sound in it, but "aknowledge" would be pronounced without the hard 'k', so it's "acknowledge."

Somehow, I suspect the original fans do get information earlier than everyone else, then, albeit for pretty good reasons

Not really. English is spoken in a lot of countries, and in the US at least, there is no central authority that controls curricula. You can't force spelling change on schools. You have to deal with the lots of private schools that would want no part of it. There is no body that can force a spelling change on English; not in schools, not in administration, not anywhere. No one. You'd need hundreds of organizations to cooperate; while some might be willing to fall in line, you really couldn't expect large countries to fall in line with something decided by the government of one or two countries. So did it not change anything, then? It updated some rules, but the rules were irrelevant and people were already writing like the new rules? If so, then English doesn't really have that situation; for starters, something that people habitually ignore is no longer considered a rule of the language, because there's no formal list of the rules. Outdated style guides might consider it a rule, but the dictionary and actual linguists are pretty quick about saying "no longer a rule" -- no formal process is necessary. If words change naturally, then they also change in schools. If it did change something, we're back to "dictionary writers and similar don't consider their job to be deciding how language should work." If you go to a typical dictionary editor and say "these are better spellings, you should push for them," their reaction will be along the lines of "huh? Do people use them? If not, what's the point?"

Aren't the original fans the Orbiter forum? EDIT: Double ninja'd, with regex ninjaing my actual phrasing

But there is no body that can make a law for English, and English dictionary authors tend to have a view that "the language is what people use, not what we decide it is."

Right...off launchpads. This thread seems to be about launching off runways. That means you need infrastructure to support to launch off a runway. There are a handful of such runways in the US, but they're rare internationally. How are you proposing to launch it? If it's vertically, then the confusion is that we aren't talking about the same thing As for UAVs vs. piloted craft: Again, not what I was talking about. I was making a more general point: do not expect to escape regulation by going to another country with less regulation. The costs of dealing with regulation are very real, and can't be handwaved away. Uncrewed rockets are launched in the US; the regulation can be handled, and current launch providers do handle it. It's just not trivial or particularly cheap. However, that said, there's a big difference between a vertical-launch rocket that goes through controlled airspace fairly quickly, and a spaceplane that stays in controlled airspace much longer and has to do takeoff and landing from an airport. The Shuttle had to have TFRs issued along its entire descent path; if you're not the government, it's harder to get the FAA on your side. It's not impossible, but it's an expense that has to be factored in.

Also, I don't think the alternative to the current situation is Squad posting all their little tidbits and thoughts on the forums. The alternative would be not posting them at all. They do post a fair amount on the forums; if they didn't post tidbits (they aren't "announcements," they're off-the-cuff remarks) anywhere, they would still be providing quite enough info here, IMO. I don't see how it's in any way an issue for a developer doing plenty of communication on their forum to say other things elsewhere, whether because they just feel like it (personal tweets), or whether it's because they've decided another place is a more appropriate spot (the tutorial discussion), or whether it's because they're actually engaging with players outside of the official forums and something comes up in a discussion there that they think should have some info shared (e.g. SA). The in-depth stuff all goes here; so do weekly posts on what everyone's doing, and random comments from time to time. I don't see why it's some terrible thing that a bit of extra information is posted elsewhere.

Why? Different sources are suited for different things.

More like "why make us use IVAs for this information?" I don't see why AGL altitude should be specific to IVA. While I don't love that things like apoapsis altitude aren't available in non-map mode, I can see the reasoning (map mode is for stuff to do with the orbit, flight modes are for when you want to control the craft at a finer level of detail than "use my currently enabled engines" and "point"); however, I don't see why IVA is uniquely suitable for the radar altimeter.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't @KerbalSpaceP (and the Tumblr, and the Facebook) just as official a source as the forums? Why should they have to treat the forums as their only official source, instead of posting things on different official sources as they see fit?

Isn't all airspace in the US between FL180 and FL600 controlled? You don't need to worry for smaller rockets, but you'd have to worry if you're going into space.

That is among the very worst choices for a well-defined language. C++'s grammar is among the most complicated programming language grammars: there's a C++ program that is syntactically valid if and only if the number in some template is prime.

Exhibit A: 1.875m parts. An unofficial community standard, and not compatible with "0,1,2,3" naming.

It doesn't work like that, though. First, a company can't credibly threaten to move to many equatorial countries; anything with expensive infrastructure means you want to put it somewhere with lots of political stability, and a suborbital system requires expensive infrastructure. Runways are not all identical; there really aren't all that many runways in the world that support the largest planes. More than there are launchpads, but it's not like they're everywhere, and many of them are already being used for commercial airlines. You aren't getting away with a suborbital flight without heavy-duty infrastructure, and there's a reason the main example of heavy-duty infrastructure built in developing countries is oil field (specifically, because you can't build them elsewhere). If you do move elsewhere, you have to convince your engineers to move elsewhere (they may not be so happy having to move internationally), modify an airport to support your craft and build your launch infrastructure, and get them to give you the very large amount of time you need for a launch (big runways tend to be used often enough, and you would be taking up a big chunk of runway time). You can't handwave away regulatory hurdles with "we'll just move to another country that doesn't have them." There are reasons why countries with heavy regulation continue to have highly-regulated things done there; countries are not perfect substitutes for each other, and there are real and significant costs to going to a low-regulation country.

1. But other mods also tweak career mode, so this would be "something a mod's done." 2. Why? What would it add that Jool doesn't? 3. No argument from me, but this isn't a feature - it's optimization. Important, but not actually a feature (plus, ATM does something like it, so wouldn't it count as a mod thing to you?) 4. How is it worse to have a system based on a popular mod than to have an entirely new thing? 5. Not really something Squad can do; depends on Unity. 6. Impossible. This is flat-out impossible without essentially scrapping the current codebase and starting over. A really, really, really bad idea for Squad to do. 7. Fair. Saying "a mod's done it, so Squad doing it isn't adding anything" is wrong. A game needs to stand alone without mods. I know many here feel KSP doesn't stand alone particularly well, but saying "they shouldn't try to add stuff because a mod adds it" is shoddy product design. KSP is early access. While this superficially resembles games that get new updates to add things for current players, it's not the same. KSP updates are not designed to add something that veteran players can't get otherwise, they're designed to move the game closer to completion as a whole product. No, SPP didn't add something a veteran player couldn't have added, but it makes the game better because the parts were better than what stock had before. There are some things that are best left to mods, and not included in the game. But saying that anything a mod does is therefore not something the dev team should spend time on is missing the point: something that Squad thinks improves the game should be added to stock, and not left to mods. Squad doesn't get to rely on mods to provide features, and doesn't get to count things mods add as features of KSP.

You're just looking at wingspan. The wings of the very largest of airliners don't fit on a runway, which is OK because only their landing gear have to fit. Stratolaunch seems to have landing gear placed at about the width of a 747-8's outboard engines, which is around 45m, which is the second-biggest standard runway width (the biggest is 60m or so). However, with 45m between outer gear, you aren't able to use a 45m runway, and a 60m runway only leaves you 7.5m on either side if things aren't perfect, which is cutting it closer than I think any airport would be willing to do. The outboard engine is even further out, and is further from centerline than any other aircraft on the list; this is a major issue when trying to use a runway, because you have to make sure nothing out to engine width is going to get sucked in and damage the engine. Comparing just by wingspan misses the point: the aircraft is far wider than its wingspan would seem to indicate, because all the stuff that's normally near the middle of the aircraft is near the edges on the Stratolaunch. White Knight 2 did operate off a 200ft (i.e. 60m) by 10,000 ft runway, which was then lengthened to 12,000 ft. That isn't abnormally large for an international airport (it's wider than a 747 takes, but it's the same size that new runways operating an A380 are supposed to be built to). A newer airport operating 747s and A380s should be able to take WK2 on its runway. Note that not all airports with airline service have runways that big; WK2's runway isn't abnormally large, but it is at the very high end of runway sizes. Most airports worldwide can't handle that. Furthermore, the issues with an airport go well beyond runway size. For starters, you will not be able to fit Stratolaunch on just about any taxiway anywhere (they're generally at most 20-some meters wide; the width of a taxiway is driven by landing gear spacing, and Stratolaunch's is much, much wider than any other aircraft). White Knight 2 might also have taxiway problems, I'm not sure the gear spacing there. That means you'll need to either have an airfield where you don't need to go on separate taxiways to reach the runway, or build new taxiways, or have some other way of getting the craft off the runway (2 and 3 take expensive infrastructure). And even if the plane physically fits, the airport needs to be able to deal with rocket fuel, meaning they need to train their emergency crews for a crash on takeoff with rocket fuel involved in the fire. That's the biggest concern here - air launch (especially liquid-fueled) involves a rocket fuel depot on site, and a crash is likely to be much more severe than with an airliner. You can't really freely choose where to recover your spacecraft; you want to recover it in the place that imposes the fewest constraints on your launch trajectory. On recovery, you have to worry just as much about security, and if you want to recover airplane-style you need the really long runway (ruling out international waters completely, and also ruling out *many* airports in developing countries). You don't need the fuel depot, but if you want a runway you still need a full-size runway, infrastructure to deal with the plane after landing, and assurance that neither will be damaged or destroyed for a very long time. But I'm not really sure anyways why you're talking about recovery as the bigger issue; you also need to launch before you can consider recovery. As a side note: Don't launch things on suborbital trajectories from the US to China. That's a really, really, really bad idea, because another thing that launches on suborbital trajectories is ICBMs.

Most likely, "a post that I think deserves a virtual pat on the head (i.e. rep)." That's my criteria, at least - nothing more specific than "I feel like it at this moment."

Based on what I remember from GR, isn't there a relationship between conservation of energy and conservation of momentum? Or am I misremembering things?

Unless they've said otherwise, I don't think they intentionally put in flaps and spoilers code. Rather, flaps and spoilers are something you would expect to work from realistic aero, because they work in real life (that's probably the main advantage of realistic physics, after all: it means that applying concepts from real-world engineering works even if the devs hadn't explicitly thought of and designed that concept).

For the record, I was also skeptical of "Star Trek led to cell phones," but the guy who developed the first handheld cellular telephone (Martin Cooper) has publicly stated that he was inspired by Star Trek. It's not like the technology was unheard of (handheld radios existed in WWII, car-mounted radio telephones were invented in the late 40s, cellular networks were first described in '47), but Cooper pushed handheld cell phones as a personal communication device that anyone could have, which he has said was inspired by the show.

I can't imagine Squad not allowing for private servers.

In any motion, momentum is conserved. This isn't unique to rockets -- if you walk down the street, you're pushing the entire planet backwards by a tiny, tiny amount to push yourself forwards. The reason it's inefficient to hover with a rocket is that you have to carry that reaction mass on board; in order to hold against gravity, you either have to accelerate it to a really high speed, or you have to go through the fuel very quickly (and also expel it to fairly high speed). For jets, it's also normally inefficient to hover; that's because a jet generally can't pull that much air through, which means you again have to accelerate it to really high speed. With wings (and with helicopters), you have a lot of mass you're pushing down; remember, while momentum is linear with velocity, energy goes with the square of velocity. If you have to provide a fixed amount of momentum to your reaction mass, then if you double the mass you halve the energy required.