SchweinAero

1486: you walk through a busy marketplace in Renaissance Italy without noticing the shimmering grid of lines on the horizon.

I excuse this in my game by saying that smaller tanks have stronger walls in proportion, so their internal supports take up less volume. Not saying the Oscar isn't a bit overboard, tho.

I presume your accent is non-rhotic (deletes /r/ before a consonant)? In either case, we have a new variant: [vɑːrl] or [vɑːl]. The latter of which might be spelled 'wahl' in a German-like orthography.

Finally, someone who uses IPA! I had almost lost all hope! Really, guys, we should all admit that English, with its plethora of accents and alternate spellings, is a horrible platform for showing unambiguous pronunciation in text. For the record, Laythe: ['leɪθ] when speaking English, ['lɛiθ] when not. Vall: ['væɔɫ] when speaking English, ['vɑl] when not. Pol: ['pʰɔɫ] when speaking English, ['pol] when not.

While angling engines outwards is never really beneficial in reality or in current KSP, there once was a use for the method. In the times when jets used to flame out much more unpredictably, you could have two or more engines next to one another, each one still applying thrust exactly on the CoM. You lost some of the thrust, but gained a ship that wouldn't spin wildly after an asymmetric flameout. @MeticulousMitch in particular made some interesting vessels using this technique and called it "StaboJet".

Interesting. I stand corrected. The fact that you only ever hear of gravity turns made on Kerbin, Eve and Duna should have been a clue.

This is mainly how I imagine the concave shape generator would work. The dev time would go into the smoothing algorithm and collision meshes.

The ideal gravity turn is just what it says on the tin: a turn made by gravity only. In that case, the rocket would smoothly fall over by itself as it ascends, requiring just a slight sideways nudge at the start and some throttle control throughout.

Devil's advocate: Due to how the KSP terrain is implemented, any change in the heightmap requires that the entire quadtree be rebuilt. Thus any crater could only appear after a delay that is heavily dependent on the user's hardware. Devil's advocate: It is much, much harder to procedurally create concave shapes than convex ones. Writing a new asteroid generator might not be worth the developer time.

Thank you for the sources. Looks like the global effect is very small then compared to, say, the carbon emissions of coal powerplants. According to the source on the Wikipedia page you linked, the existing temperature change is on the order of .5 degrees Celsius. @Green Baron has said nothing to contradict the evidence.

I'd like to hear the details of this mechanism. Is it a significant effect per unit of energy in comparison to other energy sources? Relevant citations wouldn't hurt either, if it's not too much trouble.

"The authors calculated that when wind energy is used at its maximum potential in a given region, each turbine in the presence of many other turbines generates on average only about 20% of the electricity compared to what an isolated turbine would generate." "Dr. Axel Kleidon, group leader at Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, admits that these scenarios of wind energy are hypothetical. Yet, he sees the results as highly relevant for the future expansion of wind energy." I find it hasty to say "clean energy is not so clean and not so safe for environment". At most the result means that wind turbines should not be placed right next to one another in huge numbers, which makes intuitive sense both environmentally and financially. To those who post after us: the OP did make a sweeping and provocative claim, but please let others be the ones who lapse into insults. Thank you.

Nitpick: a circular orbit means that the sum of all forces acting upon your spacecraft is 1. directed towards the central body 2. of magnitude (spacecraft's mass)x(speed^2/radius). How this combination is accomplished does not affect the craft's trajectory. Usually the only major force in play is gravitational, but it does not have to be that way. For example, here's a video showing simulated atmospheric flight at more than escape velocity.

They're not annoying per se, but in my opinion Moho and Eeloo are tied for least interesting planet. Their orbits are alright - just the bodies themselves are supremely dull. Usual gravity, no satellites, few unique surface features.

Let's try for a density record... "The astronauts on the American space station ISS have no mass because, continuously accelerating at escape velocity, they are beyond the termination line of Earth's gravitational influence."

Domination

Let me teach you all a thing about randomness. First, get a nice big square of white noise. By definition, this is completely random data. You can't predict what shade you'll find in the next pixel. Then, scale it up to 200% and crop it back to the original size, like so. This image is a rescale of the first, so it's still completely random. You can't prdict what shade you'll find two pixels over. Keep going until your last image is just four or two pixels across. Take every image you just made and add them together proportionally. Paste the 2x rescale over the source image at 50% transparency, then the 4x rescale over the result at 25% transparency, and so on. What you get has one crucial property: you still can't predict pixel values, but the uncertainty increases as distance increases. You can construct a mapping that assigns exactly one color to each greyscale value. This operation doesn't change the form of randomness present. It's customary to add shadows for purposes of visualization. And this is, in essence, how Kerbin was created. An overwhelming majority of procedural worlds are made this way, and you can do it on your computer with nothing but an image editor. Isn't randomness fascinating?

Underappreciated joke of the day. I play multiplayer, so my KSP is Cooperative Cosmic Communication Program.

I suggest borrowing from a KSP tech that does demonstrably work: gyro-driven propeller planes. One could use a reaction wheel on hitbox bearings like model ornithopters use a rubber band. Mark one point on the circumference, and link it to each wing via beams that have joints at both ends. As the wheel rotates, it will flap the wings simultaneously. The main problem will likely be stabilizing the joints.

It could be argued that warping forward to skip periods of inaction reduces only tedium and not actual difficulty, but I'm just playing devil's advocate. More flexible time control is welcome even if not a high priority.

I imagine the main argument against a stock slow motion button would be one about preserving game difficulty. If a craft is supposedly piloted by kerbals, arbitrarily short reaction times can be considered cheating. For probes, though? Sure. Or as part of the dev menu.

Hazard-ish did it as part of the Single Tank to Tylo video, at 5:00. https://youtu.be/w8wm2zaILzE?t=5m

I actually almost support adding an exaggerated "fake gravity" force to asteroids, but that has one pretty important limitation. Imagine you land a probe on an E-class without any claws or harpoons. Then you leave it there and do other missions. When you return after a year, the probe will be megameters away from the asteroid. Even though the two objects had zero relative velocity, they had different centers of mass and thus different patched conics trajectories. There can be no permanence on asteroid surfaces without a large amount of new code.

In memory of @NovaSilisko's ideas... A large but extremely smooth body made of soft hydrokarbons. Orbit at Tylo-level speeds, extend a wheel to the ground, brake to a stop over a continental distance. Bonus points for oblate shape or fast rotation. An extremely irregular moonlet where you won't know if you're standing on a plain looking at a mountainside, or vice versa. A disorienting experience. Bonus points for cave-type easter eggs. The false gas planet. Say goodbye to the inky abyss under Jool and hello to a frozen rocky core under a hundred atmospheres. Our old friend the Two Planets in One. Moderate surface pressure and poor visibility, but with spectacular mountains that top out close to vacuum. And a proposal of my own: A detached atmosphere. A ring of air (see The Integral Trees by Niven) in orbital motion high over a planet, modelled using already existing atmosphere configs with creative altitude and latitude curves. Can be used for aerobraking, stunning scenery, and kerbal-powered flight.

A Dyson shell is a hypothetical megastructure made of solid uniform matter, surrounding a star at a constant distance. If such a shell could be built, it would capture the entire energy output of the parent star and provide a vast surface area for habitation. However, all materials known to humankind have insufficient strength, and a rigid shell would have a tendency to drift around its star, necessitating a propulsive correction mechanism.