Terwin

So long as the rotational period of the bowling-ball/stick is exactly 1 orbit, and there are no other effects that might cause a wiggle, then the system can maintain the stick pointing inwards. If there are any other effects, then I believe the denser side of the stick/bowling-ball system will eventually become tidally locked with the denser side of the system(ie bowling ball) pointing towards the larger mass. (this is the case with the earth and the moon, the denser side of the moon always points towards the earth, and the earth is slowing it's rotation and will eventually always be pointing it's denser side towards the moon ) (but if the central mass is large enough that the narrow end of the stick is substantially heavier(such as near a black hole), then that denser-side will be the point of the stick)

Gravitaionally speaking, Black holes act like any other object of similar mass until you get close enough for wonky things to start happening(event horizon for example) Technically, the earth and the moon are both orbiting their mutual center of mass, it just happens to be under the surface of the earth. So yes, Black holes orbit all sorts of things, it is just that they are usually the (much) heavier partner, so they tend not to move as much as their partner does.

You don't want uncontrolled thrust, you want thrust that can be controlled. pushing liquid O2 past frozen CH4 and lighting it sounds like it would momentarily become a thermobaric bomb as the CH4 melts/expands/evaporates and bursts open the containment, then after it mixes with atmospheric O2, the flame shooting out of the nozzle will light the entire cloud. Or, if your containment vessel is strong enough to contain it, it will be much too heavy to lift off the ground. (you are dealing with the same sorts of forces Frackers use to shatter stone, so thin walled containers are not going to hold it very well)

Except with metallic hydrogen(in theory), which is why there is so much interest in it. Hydrogen is especially difficult to store, so if it is stable at higher temperatures and lower pressures after being made metallic, that would be a huge win. (not to mention the much higher energy per unit if you start with monoatomic hydrogen over H2, or the much higher density of metallic hydrogen)

Indeed, no one should use jargon. Shall I hop(open the door, sit inside, swing in my legs and close the door) in my(communally owned by my wife any myself for the last 4 years and fully paid off, so no bank ownership) car(2011 Nissan Alitma with a 4 cylinder 1.8 liter engine, front wheel drive, blue-tooth sound connection, auxiliary audio jack, quadraphonic sound, am/fm radio, glove box, seat-belts, airbags, including a sensor on the front passenger seat to optionally deactivate the front passenger airbag, roughly 97,000 miles, ......) to run(...) to the store(...) to get(...) some groceries(...)? Last night I told a coworker 'I am having a problem with a t-list filter, could you take a look? (url & login) Maintenance Manager > Asset Performance > Inspections > Dead Animal Report Parent Work Order column' And that coworker fully understood what I was talking about and how to access it. Anyone not familiar with our system would require half a page to explain the problem, how to access it, and how it should be behaving. Fortunately, I knew my 'target audience' was familiar with the system and I could give him a short-hand version. Your problem is, you want everyone to write with you as their target audience, especially those engaging in scientific research. Sorry to tell you this, but you are not the target audience, nor should you be. Science is not about 'proving' anything, it is about collecting evidence, counter examples, and making educated guesses to explain it all. Newton never 'proved' gravity, he just described it to the best of his ability to measure it. Einstein also never p'proved' gravity, he just came up with a better explanation that works in more situations. Indeed, still today it is not 'proven' that gravity is what keeps us from floating off the earth, or what keeps planets in their orbits, it is just a description of these phenomena which has proven useful for predicting future results. If, as you recommend, Newton refused to write down his ideas on gravity without proof, and Einstein did the same, then we would not have Newtons three 'laws' or general relativity. Personally, I prefer to have those who come up with novel ideas to write them down(preferably along with reasoning/evidence to support it) then for those ideas to get lost. 'Unknown fragment of DNA' is not at all accurate, a more accurate description would be something like 'non-coding DNA fragment from inrons 3812 to 4273 inclusive in the white mouse genome 32-B'(but be sure to list each of the thousands of non-coding segments if you want to be fully accurate) Also, the primary reason why the term 'junk DNA' is in the public lexicon, is not because Scientists put it there, but because some journalists took it out of context when publishing articles about DNA. We have a general grasp about several functions performed by DNA, we are a long way from fully understanding everything about what it does and how it works. Just from my basic knowledge about the possibility of lateral gene transference, I can say that if you had your thesis coded in DNA then accidentally spilled it into a pond you were walking past, it is entirely possible(if unlikely) that this would lead to the emergence of a super-bacteria which would eventually wipe out all mammalian life on the planet. Once again, you are not the target audience, the other scientists who fully understand the meanings of those terms are the target audience. If you have problems with it, then you should learn the 'genetics research' sub-dialect which is already known by the entire target audience. Much like Dante did not fail to communicate his Divine Comedy because it was written in Italian. His intended audience could read Italian, and if you want to read it you either need to learn Italian or get a translated version. True, but they are not trying to communicate with you, they are trying to communicate with their colleagues, and their colleagues understand all of the terms they are using. Indeed, much like computer games are seen as serving no purpose by a great many people who consider them just a waste of time. Science, like most other things, has a sliding scale of complexity, and to have a more in-depth discussion, one must assume a certain level of familiarity with the subject. Much like how I can mention the Vector, Terrier or Main-sail engines to you, and you already know that those are LFO engines and have an idea about their size, power, and efficiency along with how they are often used. How easily could you describe your KSP rockets if you had to provide the thrust, ISP, fuel flow rate, fuel capacity, impact resistance, connection size, weight, etc. for every part? As opposed to 'I used an asparagus lifter with 50 Vector stacks to get this monster into orbit' If you knew every term and definition in English, then you would not be confused by these terms, for they are all in English and your failure to understand the full meaning of those terms is just because you are not familiar with that part of the English language. Indeed, much like the term 'Steel' does not indicate what it is used for. 'DNA' and 'Steel' describe specific chemical compounds which may be used for any of a large number of different purposes. Are you saying 'Steel' is not a valid word to use? Would 'high carbon steel' or 'stainless steel' be better? Indeed proper names can be confusing. I am sure you have no idea who I am referring to when I say 'Christine' or 'Chris'(not him, the other one, no the other other one), or 'Christina'(not her, the other one). And I am sure you would never use terms like 'hexafloride', 'hydrox', or 'hydrazine' Science has been pushing the boundaries of language for thousands of years. You just think the last 50 years is absurd because that is the part you have context to understand. 500 years ago the terms 'microscopic' and 'microbe' were absurd and nonsensical, but then about 400 years ago the microscope was invented and they started naming different types of microscopic microbes. Today those are just normal terms. It is impossible to change the opinion of some one who refuses to listen to you. They have done lots of that, but that is not the sort of thing that drives enough interest for journalists to report on it enough to get into the public lexicon. I think your main problem is, you object to terms that were defined(and often mis-defined) by journalists who took the term from a scientific paper they did not properly understand, and then blaming the scientists for being confusing when they get quoted out of context. I have no doubt that the scientists themselves are even more unhappy about the public being taught bad definitions for the terms they use then you are.

Between the audit and looking at commercial alternatives, one might almost think NASA was trying to light a fire under the ULA when it comes to SLS.

From 1972 to 1990 the idea that 'Selfish' or 'Junk' DNA was of no benefit to the organism was generally considered to be accurate. I find it hard to fault someone for coining a term that was considered descriptive and accurate for almost 30 years after the term was coined. (and it is still a handy short-hand for non-encoding DNA)

Indeed, and they have been so successful in getting rid of other nonsensical terms like ATM Machine, PIN Number, DC Comics, UPC Code, HIV Virus, and LCD Display. Once a term gets into the public mind, scientists have no control over it's popular usage.

Ideally it will be kept on (minimal) life support until we have at least one proven VHLV on the market(at this point BFR looks like the leading candidate). Letting it die before that happens risks not having any VHLV capability at all should something happen to the private provider candidates.

Generally I disable the expanded roster types for rescues, but I will still hire kolonists for populating the excess capacity of my bases to boost both kolonization rewards and ratings for those bodies. As far as I can tell, more stars do not help kolonists in any way, so most of them being at 1-2 stars is hardly a problem.

Looking at @5thHorseman's computer above, the designer of the computer would decide on a convention of Red=1 and Blue = 0 or Blue = 1 and Red = 0, and everyone who used the computer would just look at them as 1 and 0. (the exact value does not matter, only that it is consistent for the entire computer) Only people who who write inputs or read outputs need to know that it is really red/blue and not 1/0. In a larger sense we use 1 and 0 because a binary number set is the easiest and most easily understandable set of values for doing math with 2 values. Computers really only do math, so something that makes that math with 2 values easier for humans to understand is probably the best way to represent the values used by a computer.

One of the reasons for it to be a wiki is so that when you find inaccuracies like this you can fix them. Generally I take the in-game information to be accurate and work from there.(Module details in VAB > KSPedia > Wiki)

The drills don't do 'conversions' the bit with the two resources with an arrow between them is for switching the harvest/production type. The same interface is used to change the production type of other parts as well. The one on the left is current, and the one on the right is what you get if you change it(it costs resources to swap, so you want to make sure you only need to do it once) The Smelt-O-Matic, Industrial Refinery, and Material Processing Units are what you can use to turn metal ore into metals(depending on which resource each bay is set to refine). The Assembly Plant and Workshop are used to turn those refined resources into useful materials(like material kits or Machinery). So, to produce metals, you would want your Drill set to metallic ore, and your smelter/refinery/mpu set to Metals to consume metallic ore and produce metals. For example, to produce material kits, you would need Minerals, Metallic Ore, and Substrate produced from your drills, which in turn would be fed to a refinery to produce Chemicals, Metal, and Polymers, which you could then feed into your assembly plant to make material kits. Sifters can also produce all of the raw materials at the same time(from Dirt) but at a greatly reduced rate.

Owls expel indigestible parts(bones, teeth, feathers, fur, etc) orally as pellets, I can't imagine that microchips would be treated much differently than teeth or feathers with this system.

Tweakscale is also a mod: I'm pretty sure most stock parts cannot be adjusted for size without it.

Not all of them: Auto-strut, Fuel Flow, and Rigid attachment are 'Advanced tweakables' and part of the core game, they can be turned on in settings.

I expect that the engineers at the assembly facilities will always be interested in watching their latest baby take to the sky, and letting any interested third parties watch as well is free advertising. They may well drop any added voice-overs(may have happened already) but there is no real added cost to letting the public watch the stream that they send back to the factory, and the publicity is of non-zero value, so why stop? It is not like they don't want the cameras and telemetry just in case something goes wrong with a launch, so dropping the live-stream would only save them a little bit of internet bandwidth, which is generally pretty cheap at corporate rates.

IF you have already started a game, go to the USI-LS button when at KSC and edit the configs for your game directly. I often re-set my per-seat value to 1 month this way.

You forget, steel is easy to hammer back out, it would only be useless if it were damaged(or potentially damaged) carbon fiber. One of the advantages of steel is the ease of working with it. Make a mistake and the worst you need to deal with is a bit of hammering and careful welding.

If you are compressing air in front of your ship, you are concentrating any oxygen that might be there. I don't know how much of the methane will have oxygen to burn with or how much that will counteract the regenerative cooling, but at the very least it sounds like something that needs to be looked at and tested as it 'might be a problem'. SR-71 had very tight tolerances for the super-sonic regime, as such, when the surface of the plane was not being heated by passing super-sonic air, it fit together poorly and leaked a lot of fuel. It was not really for cooling purposes. I think the issue is that you need the carbon fiber to be a certain strength when being heated or cooled, and the steel has a sufficiently larger heat tolerance that even though the frame is heavier, they can reduce/eliminate the (heavy)heat-shield that the carbon fiber would need. Perhaps if you think of it more as a heat-shield that removes the need for the carbon-fiber structural elements than as a straight replacement for the carbon-fiber?

Hmm, Methane might be a problem if you are getting above 1200f as it looks like methane will ignite at about 600c(1112f) ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304389484850013 ) Cutting structure and tank costs to 1/60 does not sound like a bad thing...

Are you asking about SpaceX being unable to get the satellites into orbit, or at least not enough to satisfy the FCC? I expect lots of legal wrangling to get an extension if it is not in time, and considering the SpaceX launch history, I think the 'not at all' option is rather improbable. If you are talking about the business side, you must consider: how valuable is it to be able to buy a box from Amazon that will provide reliable high-speed broad-band anywhere outside of the arctic? At $50/month you under-cut probably more than half of the terrestrial ISPs in the US, and provide sea-based service which is a fraction of the current costs and probably at least one order of magnitude faster. This is not even getting into the areas where there is limited/missing/damaged infrastructure and there is no other option available than satellite internet and Starlink will be the fastest(due to low altitude satellites). Then there is the mobile market(Smart cars, RVs, Busses, Fire departments, Emergency rescue, etc). Any company that can't make a profit filling those needs should fire their accounting and sales departments.

For gasoline to explode and not just burn, it needs to be mixed with sufficient oxygen. Usually this is not the case when it is sloshing around in a liquid form. If you shoot a full gas-tank with an incendiary round, you will probably have a tank with 2 holes and puddles of burning fuel forming on both sides. At best if you had a tank that was almost empty of liquid fuel and had the right mixture of air and evaporated fuel, you could cause an explosion inside the tank, but I don't know enough chemistry to say how much of an explosion that would be and if that could even rupture the tank.

Last time I checked, if you have GC installed you will have a part that can be used to create off-world kits. Not sure if it is included in the GC core that comes with USI mods, but the full GC mod has it.

1) As far as we know, there is no reason Amazon cloud services could not run an AI just as well as the special architecture in use in the AI lab(the AI might even re-write it's base components to enable this) 2) If an AI is smart enough, it can bypass any protections that it's care-takers control Once a true AI is loose on the internet, it should have no problems acquiring any resources it might want/need including any human labor to put it together(IT people do the same sorts of things as part of their day-job, and a 'rush specialty order' is hardly cause for a national alert...).