Awaras

wat

Yes, but heat dissipation by radiation is hundreds of times less efficient than heat transfer to another medium... Those big brownish \'wings\' on the ISS are not solar panels (solar panels are the smaller, grayish ones in the back), they are radiators used to dissipate heat and prevent astronauts from being boiled alive... *edit* My bad, those ARE solar panels, the heat radiators are the zigzagging ones in partial shadow As for SOLAR radiation, if you are exposed to direct sunlight you are not going to have a good time, but as long as you are in the shade you should be fine for a short time.

Actually, it\'s quite the opposite. Yes, the little matter there is in space is extremely cold, but the very fact there is so little of it means that that cold would not affect us very much. To put it another way, vacuum is a great heat insulator.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines) I was so surprised that I didn\'t think to get a zoomed out image until I was a little ways past the phenomenon. Here is a shot of the general area I believe I was over at the time of the first screenshot (I was heading due north and at 4000m at the time): For those with bad eyes, here is a cropped image: And my sad attempt to fiddle with the contrast to bring out the hidden shapes: Maybe someone else with better image manipulation skills can pull a CSI and ZOOM ENHANCE my early reconnaissance shots. In the meantime I will try to find these mysterious shapes again with a proper lander. Wish me luck... I don\'t see anything except some mirrored textures...

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/03/20/Saturn-squeezes-a-moon-creates-water-jets/UPI-22571332285020/

Well, if you are under acceleration all the time, than you don\'t need other sources of artificial gravity. Just make a ship that constantly accelerates at 1G... Simple... And if that acceleration is less then 1G, all it means is that your spinning sections will need to be at an angle so that the combined vector of the ship\'s acceleration and the centrifugal force of the spinning is 1G 'downward'. The easiest way would probably be to suspend the habitation areas from the central spindle of the ship on long cables or booms and then spin the entire ship. Also, we still do not know what would be the minimal gravity force necessary to keep astronauts in reasonably good health. It might not be necessary to provide astronauts with the full 1G of acceleration.

No sane designer would create a space ship intended for long-term habitation without some form of artificial gravity (spinning sections of the ship or something similar)...

After reading the OP, I was reminded of these quotes: And I\'ll reply with even more quotes: And, to finish off with Sir Arthur C. Clarke and his three \'laws\' of prediction: 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

ATV docking with the ISS. (Click to enlarge)

And also switches off physics simulation, which means the two \'docked\' parts will just drift apart...

Yeah, but accelerate time to anything over 2X while you are \'docked\' and see what happens...

Finally!

Sigh, I still can\'t find the monolith on the mun... A question for those who found it: If I landed in the center of the crater, would I be able to see the monolith from there?

Oh, nice. Just found the Github links. I thought that the attachment in the OP were the latest version....

This is what I mean (note that the craft was completely stopped using \'n\' before filming this, and that it is on a slight slope): http://youtu.be/3zIAHBn6bOg With the first version of the wheels I was able to prevent the rover from rolling down hill when uncontrolled by partially turning the wheels so they dont all point in the same direction. Now when I try it I get a lot of sliding and twitching. Basically, I like these wheels very much but I wish that they and the Cart mod would have a way to \'put the parking brake on\' so to speak, so that your rover won\'t roll off into the sunset as soon as you release control of it even if it is on a very small slope... *edit* Here is my persistent.sfs file, just select the craft called \'landerw\' from the tracking station. http://www.4shared.com/file/_qlZQA5w/persistent.html

Did something change with these wheels recently? I remember that when I first downloaded it, if I stopped rotating the wheels in the middle of a turn so that the wheels were not all lined up, the lander would stay in one place, even on a slope. Now, the lander keeps twitching when I try the same thing...

Heh, you can rely on Jeb to be smiling even in the face of imminent suffocation...

Drool... David Brown | NUIverse | 2012

They also said they would take down facebook, which didn\'t happen...

Here is the biggest stock lander I landed on the Mun:

Two ASAS modules are not needed, only one of them has any effect.

You can use these guys... http://www.shapeways.com/ Basically, you send them a 3D model, and they print it and ship it to you.

Yes, that\'s the thing I never understood about L-points. Everyone talks about them as stable points where you can locate large stations and whatnot, but they are, as you say, \'like trying to stand on one foot on top of a broomstick\' - basically, anything placed there would behave like an inverted pendulum or a marble balanced at the top of a cliff- move just a tiny bit in any direction and you will start to move away from that point. Wouldn\'t it take almost as much energy to balance a station on that point as it would to keep it in any other orbit?

Well, the lagrange points for the Earth - Moon system are in a relatively stable position in relation to them, right? It is probably a lot more complicated in cases where there is more than one moon around the planet, but for the \'simple\' three-body problem the five lagrange points are pretty much always in the same position... So, why not approximate the lagrange points by placing very small, very weak, invisible and immaterial gravity attractors at those points with their own tiny spheres of influence? I know that\'s not how it works in reality, but it would be a 'close enough' solution...

Step by step: 1. Put two fuel tanks on the command pod, just to have somewhere to put the cart on. 2. Place the cart on the top side of the rocket, the side with the windows. (If you put it the other way, the parts you make will be upside down...) 3. Place a small fuel tank on the connection point in the middle of the cart (you might need to move it around a little bit for it to flip and lock in place) 4. Now you can use symmetry to place decouplers at a 90 degree angle from normal 5. Next you place small fuel tanks and small engines on the decouplers 6. After you are done placing engines, landing legs, rcs tanks or whatever, you pick up the first fuel tank you placed. 7. Then you place it at the bottom of your rocket (again, you might need to fiddle it around a little bit for it to flip to normal position) 8. Now you remove the cart, make copies of the entire assembly and place it on your ship as you see fit. 9. The completed ship. You might need to place rcs tanks and other components in the back of the rocket to balance it, since it will tip over pretty easily if not balanced properly. ASAS is highly recommended. Note that the vehicle is now totally stock, since you removed the cart... Of course, as it is now, it can\'t even take off... You need to place it on a conventional rocket, get it in the air and then flip it over to horizontal and experiment with the balance... The one I made had a slight tendency to tilt upwards when I engage the engines, but the ASAS was able to hold it in place if I didn\'t use full thrust. I was able to launch it and land it on the mun.