nhnifong

Good grief this thread is old.

I'm still mystified about where the first stage is going to land. is it going to go mostly straight up, then turn around and come back? is it going to complete most of an orbit and come back down where it launched, or is it going to just land at the nearest convenient pad 500 km downrange?

IQ, if you recall is your measured "mental age" divided by your actual age, times 100. It tends to be higher when you're younger, and peak around 12 to 16 years old. When I was 11, my IQ was 140. Now it's about 100. no suprise if you assume the test consistetly underestimates the reasoning and problem solving abilities of children.

The same trajectory as a rocket.

Personally, I think the only purpose of a laptop is portability. I don't care if it's got a 4 year old CPU and 1 Gb of ram as long as it's battery lasts all day, it fits nicely in my backpack, weighs no more than 2 or 3 kg, and it wakes up immedietely upon opening. It'd be a nice extra touch if it was also waterproof but apparently that's just never going to happen.

I think they should bring thousands of different kinds of seeds, and the first order of business should be to erect a greenhouse, melt some water ice, and see what you can grow.

Hopefully one day, humans will send a manned (and womanned!) mission to mars. When that happens, what are they going to do on the surface? The most obvious things are collect rock samples and look for water ice and purify it into drinkable water. What kinds of things might they do that require a uniquely human level of judgement?

Just use a bunch of struts.

I don't need no antivirus software because I don't run programs I don't trust*. I've been doing it that way for years and it's worked out pretty good so far. Ok I run programs I don't trust sometimes, but usually in a sandbox, like Windows for example.

I tried to learn Ascendancy once. It's very complicated.

The only thing I'll boot up an old Windows install for is Roller Coaster Tycoon or Sim City 2. I'll occationally go back and play Ocarina of Time too. As for the not-so-old games, I have a lot of find memories playing Halo with my sister, and I would love to get another game of halo going with her again, possibly at thanksgiving, but it would involve several hours of fiddling around with software to get it working because I no longer have an XBOX. And for the extra old games, Go takes the cake. It's almost 2600 years old!

RESET: we have $672 billion this time. (the same as the 2013 DOD budget) I purchase a netbook and 1 year of basic internet access for every one of the estimated 77.5 million Americans who do not already have access. Netbook price $500. Year of Internet at typical promotional rate of $30 per mo. from Comcast or TWC: $360. Total: $66.6 billion. $605.4 billion remain.

Metaphor, I'd be really interested in watching your ascent on video. Are you up for it?

The combination of several poloidal and toroidal superconducting electromagnets can confine hot plasma into a torus in a device known as a tokamak. Can the same principle be used to create a protected bubble that keeps hot plasma out? Perhaps if such a device could be created and powered, it could serve as a shield for ships venturing into extreme environments such as the corona of the sun. What would such a device look like?

Heheh good one

Seriously none of these ideas are within our current technology. We can't have any noticeable effect on the core or the mantle, or the orbit of the Earth or the Moon. We can however probably wipe out 99.99 percent of all life in a variety of ways. * Creating a runaway greenhouse effect to ruin the temperature balance and possibly make this place similar to Venus. * Using nuclear weapons detonated over key Volcanic areas to fill the atmosphere with as much soot as possible and cause a prolonged ice age, although I doubt this would really kill all life on Earth or even all Humans. * Redirecting one or more large asteroids towards the planet using the same proposed technology we plan to use to deflect them. * Significantly altering the ph level of the oceans with added chemicals, stunting algal growth and triggering a cascade of extinction up the food chain. (again, not totally effective, life would probably spring back) I'd say using all of these in combination would be about the most destructive and awful thing we are currently capable of technologically.

The Enders Game / KSP Simulation Uncertainty Principle: One cannot know whether a given mission was actually a simulation until it ends in success or failure.

That might be indicated at least in part by whether the small roll at the beginning which resulted in a pitch in the wrong direction and several overcorrections was expected given the minor initial perturbation. I don't suspect that any guidance system worth it's salt would be capable of such a thing. I'm just betting my imaginary internet credits that the gimbal on engine 3 failed to actuate at launch. (number 0 is on the side with ßрþтþý written on it, numbers increase clockwise looking at the rocket from the bottom, yes I made up a numbering scheme just so I could bet on it)

I wonder if it has an interior or any added secrets..... Care to elaborate Bac9??

Thank you sincerely TheUndeadFish !

Anyone know the function that relates lifting gas volume, density, payload mass, and atmosphere density? I'd like to take a shot at figuring how big a balloon you need to get a pegasus rocket to 40km

Partway through the video, once the camera trains back onto the vehichle, it appears that the payload has broken off in at least two peices. Could this due to aerodynamical stress? seems like that would take a lot of force. Does the payload eject in case of error?

Does anyone know what kind of thrust vectoring is used on the Proton-M? I don't see any small dedicated vectoring thrusters like on the bottom of the soyuz.

I believe you are being misled by the word "plane". KSP is a rocket simulator with a hastily added loose approximation of at least one limited aspect of aerodynamics. If you want to build "planes" you should install FAR

It can snap but if you take it slow, and watch the oscillations you can easily avoid it. If your rocket is bending more than about 10 degrees at the docking port, throttle down. If your ship weighs about 10 tons, you can easily do full throttle. 25 tons, maybe about 2/3 throttle, and 100 tons, good luck.