Gaarst

We would all die. Crystalline osmium is relatively inert at room temperature, but it becomes pyrophoric (spontaneously ignites in contact with air) when heated or powdered; either way osmium will eventually oxidise, producing osmium tetroxide which is highly volatile and very toxic. It is also soluble in water, meaning that even if you sheltered yourself from the rain, you'd eventually drink it. Also, raindrops would probably hurt: each Os drop would be 22 times heavier, solid and much faster due to the increased density. Finally, assuming Earth's water cycle remains constant (it won't) and all water is readily available for rain (it isn't), you'd be producing roughly 1017 kg of Os (over 10,000 times the world annual iron production) consuming about 5*1015 kg of water (0.0004% of the total mass of the oceans) the first year, decaying exponentially onwards (because you have less water to change to Os). Half of Earth's water would have decayed to Os after about 200,000 years.

Here: https://imgur.com/a/0XXiA That was 5 months ago, so there probably have been like 200 updates that each individually broke albums; hopefully links won't break any time soon.

No.

I don't hate the stock aero anymore, so I made a plane. Entering the "Medium Regional Jet" category is the 100% stock Kerbalespace™ C-1K (or C-1000), with a range of over 2000 km, a cruising speed of just 240 m/s and a passenger capacity of 120 Kerbals. It is a standard airliner, priced at a competitive $210 million. For that amount you get the ability to move 120 Kerbals and 4 crew members up to 2200 km away (extendable to 2700 km when filling the wings, empty by default) at a cruising speed of 240 m/s flying 5000 m over the ground. Despite its high purchasing cost, it is fairly cheap to operate (maintenance is not covered by the standard revenue insurance) when full: a full range flight burns $3,136,000 worth of fuel, averaging $12 per passenger and per kilometre. [NB: our accounting dept reminded us that this is actually more expensive than pretty much every means of transportation ever, please remember to remove this part from the sales pitch]. Considering these numbers, Kerbalespace™ recommends operating the C-1K at its highest capacity on busy routes to make the most out of its large seating and economic fly costs. On the options side, it features fully functional cabin lights for all passengers (action group 3), thrust reversers on all 4 engines in case your pilots overshoot the runway a bit (action group 2), flaps providing additional lift for shorter take-offs (action group 1) [NB: our engineering dept reminded us that the flaps don't actually work, please remember to remove this part from the sales pitch] and a state-of-the-art cabin insulation technology based on gold sheets, more than justifying the cost of the cabin segments. Out test pilots were genuinely impressed by its handling once they understood that they weren't flying an aerobatic aircraft (and stopped trying to do loops) and were reminded that their paychecks were proportional to its handling score. The four J-33 Wheelsey engines provide more than enough power to bring the plane in the air at its cruising altitude and its max cruising speed of 240 m/s, with the added benefit of redundancy in the very unlikely case of an engine failure (engine failures and related matters should be brought to C7 Aerospace; Kerbalespace™ will not be held accountable for any performance and passengers loss when attempting to fly a C-1K aircraft with less than four fully functional engines) ensuring continued safe operation of the aircraft. The more than reasonable simplicity of the C-1K (82 parts) ensures cheap and simple maintenance providing an excellent turnover time reducing the operation costs even further, with our test engineers reporting only minor defects following extensive test flights totalling more than 2 flight hours. For all these reasons, it is with pride and honour that Kerbalespace™ presents its latest product: the C-1K airliner. We believe that our clients deserve only the highest quality and we have been working countless hours to make sure that your expectations are not only fulfilled but exceeded in every aspects. The C-1K represents the fruit of Kerbalespace™'s effort and the incarnation of this policy, designed and built to guarantee that you will be satisfied by our aircraft. Should you have any complaints, Kerbalespace™ will gladly refund you the full cost of your purchase (Kerbalespace™ will not be held accountable for performance lower than advertised; all purchases are definitive and non-refundable; by signing the acquisition contract the consumer agrees to be the sole responsible for the operation, maintenance and support of the C-1K aircraft). C-1K data sheet: Additional pictures: C-1K download link

The first Falcon Heavy will fly, and if it doesn't fail there might be the circumlunar launch mentioned a few months ago (if it's not just a PR coup, you never know with Musk). SpaceX have been pretty clear that they want to end the Falcon lineup, and while there might be an economic interest in keeping F9, FH doesn't fit anywhere in their plans (and remember that Musk himself said the rocket not N-1-ing its pad would be a success). I pretty much agree with regex on the rest: Vulcan and New Glenn can make sense: Vulcan is basically Altas VI, and New Glenn can take advantage of reusability and fill Ariane 5's slot (though Ariane 6 is being created because Ariane 5's dual launch is too constraining). It looks like the Chinese actually want to take a shot at the Moon, and it will probably fuel a couple SLS launches before it is scrapped. As for the Russians, I don't know if even them have an idea what they are doing. Angara seems dead, we don't really know how serious Feniks/Soyuz-5 is and who knows how much of Federation has been put together. I continue to think that heavy launchers don't have any economic interest unless the satellite market suddenly explodes, but with satellites getting smaller it's not sure the heavy launchers will have a use even then. I feel like it's a self-proving concept: LSPs want to reduce the prices to space to trigger a boom in the satellite market that will eventually make their big rockets viable, but there's no guarantee this will actually happen. Arianespace (the leader in commercial payloads for a few decades) bet on cheaper and smaller launchers in response to Falcon 9. The RD-0120 last flew 30 years ago. It shows the Russians can build a high thrust cryogenic engine, but you might as well try to resurrect Energia as a whole. Edit: they might have a few of them in a hangar somewhere but you'd still need to start a production chain to power any else than a gimmick rocket.

What I remember is that a developer (might have been NathanKell as well) mentioned that these 1.0 tweaks were to be temporary and eventually replaced by a more thorough engines rework. I believe this was at the time of Porkjet's departure and cancellation of his overhaul, so things were a bit messy but it was made clear that we wouldn't get an engines rework and so that the placeholder values would remain.

KSP is not balanced. The parts values are placeholders that were never replaced (word of a developer). That being said, the Vector, Mammoth and Aerospike all have their flaws. First they are all very late-tech and expensive so not the first choice if money is a concern (obviously this doesn't apply to sandbox). Second, the Vector and Mammoth are extremely heavy and powerful, too much for smaller payload; you'll find that a smaller engine with a lower Isp might be more efficient than a larger (heavier) engine with a higher Isp for some situations. When you're in space, TWR doesn't matter that much and a large engine is just dead mass. For an SSTO, mass is a major concern so you might want to try using lighter engines to see if you can get better performance (though it's not as important in rocket SSTOs). Third, the Aerospike has no gimbal and the Vector has too much. KSP's SAS is terrible and most of the time is can't handle the full gimbal of the Vector so you end up limiting it. Having zero gimbal is not too much of a concern in stock since reaction wheels are stupidly OP, but it's still more pleasant to fly a craft that can stabilise itself. The rest is mostly a matter of personal preference: if you want absolute best performance then you will end up using the same lifter engines (mostly because we barely have any alternatives for each size), but some people prefer to use other engines for better looks when efficiency is not the only objective. I have limited experience with Tweakscale, so I can't really tell how it impacts "balance".

If you have the space to put a camera on an interplanetary probe, you have the space to put something actually useful. Pics don't tell you how planets work, and artist impressions are more beautiful anyway.

Quantum communication is not about sending messages encrypted quantically, contrary to what most people think. The main means of quantum communication (there are other ways to do it) consists in sending messages encrypted traditionally, decypherable using a traditional key that is passed through quantum means. Basically, instead of sending the key "classically" to your Bob, you use superimposed (or entangled) quantum states to transmit it. If someone is eavesdropping (Eve), it will cause the states to collapse to a single state, and depending on the value of the state Eve measures it can change the value received by Bob. Because a part of it is random, Bob can freely communicate to you the values he measured (because Eve doesn't know what you measured, so she doesn't know if her measurements are identical to yours), and when comparing with what you measured you can tell with certitude if someone is eavesdropping. If not, send your message; if yes, you know that someone is spying on you but you haven't sent any critical information so it's not that bad. Now this doesn't prevent someone from intercepting your message, and try to crack it the old-fashioned way, but it is a lot easier (and quicker) to try to intercept the key than to decypher the message on your side using your classical algorithms. Another part of quantum communication is creating keys using quantum algorithms which would be virtually impossible for a classical computer to crack. Because people are anticipating that cracking keys will become much quicker with quantum computers, so that classical keys will not be secure once your enemy has access to quantum computers, it creates the need for quantum encryption that would take a quantum computer a long amount of time to crack. This field is called post-quantum cryptography. Back to your question, quantum communication has nothing to do with sending undetectable messages. Usually, the answer is yes.

Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, you're welcome.

Some people are against mods because they feel that playing purely stock and having to work with what the base game gives you makes it more challenging and difficult; they think that mods make the game easier and it makes them feel superior. Which is a bit ridiculous because there aren't many mods that actually make the game easier, they just enhance one particular aspect of the gameplay and makes it possible to go further than stock, and even if a mod makes it easier for you, it's your game do whatever you want. Because after all, the stock and kinda-modded plebs are nothing compared to the glorious RO master race, as we all know that using RO and adding maximum realism is the only true way to play KSP and makes whatever you create vastly superior to the toy rockets peasants scramble together to crawl their way around the laughable pebbles they call planets.

It depends on the type of black hole. Stellar black holes have very strong tidal forces and you'd be ripped apart before entering the horizon, but super-massive black holes have small densities and tidal forces are very weak even at the horizon, so that you would enter the horizon before being ripped apart.

Nothing in particular. The event horizon is just the point at which the escape velocity becomes greater than c, it's not a hard boundary and matter does not magically disappear when you cross it. You'd still experience the relativistic and lensing effects of being near a black hole and orbiting it at a significant fraction of c, but it wouldn't be any different from being a bit closer or further from the black hole. In fact, due to general relativity causing time dilation you probably wouldn't be able to tell whether or not you are inside the horizon because you wouldn't be able to measure your speed or position relative to a "flat" space-time far away from the black hole. Edit: actually you wouldn't be able to orbit the black hole at the horizon, because that would require you to travel at the speed of light, which is impossible if you aren't massless. "Standing" at the horizon would also be impossible since that would require an infinite force to avoid falling into the black hole. As soon as a part of you crosses the horizon, you can't escape it (not without leaving that part inside the horizon).

As said above, the console ports were... less than successful so they were removed from the console stores, see the post below for a few more details: Note that we were just given a "release date" for the console redone ports last week:

KSP in Scots would be amazing.

Microtransactions are not possible in KSP, end of story. Also there's already a thread for these rumours and fearmongering:

For some reason I understood that you bought it through the main website, sorry. I have never used gog.com so I don't know how to help you further, good luck with your issue!

If you bought it through the main KSP website, you can still access earlier versions: Go to the KSP website, click Store Log in My Account There you should see your purchase of KSP, and you should have a "download" icon, click it Select your language and OS, Get Links! Download whatever version you want

A pro drive is about 200 mph, that's 90 m/s using a system that makes sense. Orbital velocity is v2 = GM / r. Using density makes is more useful here because we don't know the mass of the planet, so M = (4/3)*pi*r3*rho. Put everything together using density about 2000 kg/m3 (average density for a large asteroid), and you find that your planet should have a radius of about 150 km. That's a very large asteroid which would have a mass of 2e19 kg and a surface gravity of 0.06 m/s2 (1/150th of a g).

Mods. Mods. Mods. Mods. Microtransactions in KSP would not work for a bunch of reasons already discussed. DLC is the only way developers can make money out of KSP in the long run (and even then, you could compile a "free Making History" using a dozen mods together). Also, if you don't like microtransactions, don't buy the game, simple as that.

MiG-approximately-29:

The link to the stream should be on the mission page on Arianespace's website, when it starts.

Absolutely not effective at all. In KSP you don't care about the wings shape or the sturdiness of a plane, it pretty much works whatever you do, looks usually don't impact performance that much. In real life it's pretty much the complete opposite: the requirements for subsonic and supersonic flight are very different (and hypersonic is something else altogether) and a cargo plane optimised for subsonic cruise would not be able to fly at supersonic speeds (mostly because it would fall apart before crossing Mach 1). Supersonic flight requires specific designs and materials to fly efficiently (see how different the Concorde is from any other airliner), and the faster you go, the more extreme these requirements get. Another problem is fuel efficiency: LEO requires over 9 km/s of dV. For an SSTO you want to optimise every possible aspect of your craft to squeeze the necessary dV, altogether an SSTO capable craft is built very differently from any other aircraft.

I think that he is pointing that the fact that a mid range 2013 laptop getting similar performance as a gaming laptop from the past year is a proof of non-optimisation: in an ideal world, the gaming laptop should vastly outperform the older one. @RealGecko KSP isn't well optimised because it was never consistently coded throughout its history. There were many developers working on KSP, there never was a clear roadmap and other factors make it that KSP's code is just recent things added on top of older code, without much concern about stability of the overall code (which is why newer releases keep getting slower). As an example just remember that KSP keeps generating empty folders since Alpha: no one ever went back to the old code and removed the couple of lines responsible for these folders. I don't think optimising KSP without rewriting most of its code (or structure at least) is possible, and since Squad has more economic interest in stacking new features on top of the older code, it's probably never going to happen.