Jovus

When you blow off the rocket section of your graduate classical mechanics textbook because you already know what it's going to teach you.

Maybe you do. I'm doing math, not playing with a glorified abacus.

Correction: you are 65,536 monkeys.

Actually, given the size of the black hole in question, the red shift is most likely negligible. But even if it isn't, there's enough radiation in the upper and lower bands to compensate. No, the real problem is everyone on board would be dead of gamma ray exposure before the image even registered in their brains.

Chiming in here to say that it's the exact same thing with me - not a single male Kerbal outside the Big 3 in my game. I feel like there's a joke somewhere in the fact that there are all these women who got stranded in space...

With stewardesses! 8.5 cubic meters of stewardesses.

No, guys, you aren't getting it. Nemesis isn't just named that because it's an astronomical body; it's named that because it's intelligent and inimical. When we point telescopes at it it hides itself!

I get mine from the forums, by waiting for you guys to complain about how something was announced somewhere other than the forums. Or, y'know, it being announced on the forums. Either way.

I've honestly forgotten how to install Windows.

Hey, I agree with you there. I think it highly unlikely based purely on telescopic evidence that Nemesis exists. Dynamical arguments pretty much rule it out entirely, to my mind. I mean, yes, it could exist, but personally I think that's less likely than the explanation that intelligent aliens in space-ships are behind the braiding of Saturn's rings. (And just to be clear, no, I don't believe that.)

Two points: First, I still maintain, as a person who actually regularly uses the data, that it'd be pretty easy for WISE to have missed a red dwarf relatively nearby. You have to be looking for that kind of thing to see it. Yes, it'd be like missing a bonfire right next to you with binoculars - which is pretty easy, if you happen not to look toward the bonfore. Second, I don't think this makes Nemesis any more likely. The arguments against its existence are far too good, and the arguments for its existence are redolent of too much Velikovsky.

As someone who regularly uses that WISE survey, I can assure you that this is incorrect. There are plenty of red dwarfs in the data. That said, I'm not weighing in on this topic by pointing that out. Nemesis could still be a red dwarf that WISE simply missed, just like it could also be a brown dwarf or superjovian that WISE simply missed. (Or mis-cataloged. Or glitched out on. Or is indistinguishable from data artifacts. Or or or.)

I hope if it does have a large gimbal range they put the work in to allow gimbal to actually be a range instead of a circular toggle, so the rockets using it don't just wiggle their way to space.

Nope nope nope. It's simple. Even assuming the NeoWhig theory of history that allows for this technology to be developed (which, oh boy, what a huge assumption that is!) all this will do is act like any other selection pressure ever faced by the human species. To wit: Assume the singularity is a thing that happens. There will be, broadly, two classes of people: those that care about the singularity, and those that don't. Those that do won't breed. Those that don't will breed. Since human behaviour is susceptible to genetic influence, the number of people in new generations who will plug themselves in will approach zero. (If you don't believe me, check out the statistics on the rates of Amish defection.) Ergo, eventually you'll have a human population with no interest in the fact of the singularity going about their business. The only way that this could be not the case is if the technology does not in fact cause a drop in birth rates. But of course, that's absurd, because said drop in birth-rates has already happened.

Instead of 'rubber sheet' say 'three-dimensional LaPlacian' if it makes you more comfortable. It's still an approximation.

I hope so. Squad would see it's profitable to develop games like this, and Sony or Microsoft wouldn't partner with Flying Tiger's .... Nurses.

And the somewhat recent rash of developers leaving makes sudden sense... though I do hold out hope it's not actually related.

Nitpick that actually supports your point: some planes are designed with a negative camber.

I prefer "Senate Lunch System."

Indeed. :%s/realistic/plausible/g

So, it turns out, for those watching at home, that even with just FAR (and Hyperedit) installed, a Mk1 pod, parachute, 3 Science Jr's, a payload bay and a heat shield is stable at about 40 degrees (!) to the airflow. It doesn't look like an obvious bug (no voxelization errors, nothing in the debug log). It's just a very surprising aerodynamic feature.

Thanks for your help, Jrandom. One further thing I'm curious about: when you flew your test pod (without the larger heat shield) did it orient itself directly prograde when you left it alone, or did it form some angle with the prograde vector?

I understand where' you're coming from on the text/tone issue, so no harm done. I'm beginning to suspect a bum install or something similar on my end, so let me know how your re-entry goes and I'll go digging around in my logs and debug panel to see if I can't find something odd. 'cause long poles shouldn't be aerodynamically stable when set at 40 degrees to the airflow...

...whoa. It was an honest question, not a snippy one. I'm curious, given what Wanderfound said and the apparent lack of experience in common with mine.

So, do others just not bother trying to return Science Jr.'s?