Zeiss Ikon

I might also note that America is spread out, in large part, due to the nature of the land itself. A significant fraction of our land won't support dense population. We have one of the lowest population densities relative to our economy size (much of Russia is even more sparsely populated, but our economy is much larger than theirs) -- and there are a lot of places in the USA (and I don't even mean Alaska -- try Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, both Dakotas, parts of Kansas and Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada -- likely more than 30% of the land area of the nation) where if your car breaks down, you've got an emergency on your hands, because you won't be able to walk anywhere to buy supplies in the time what you can carry will last -- and if you were just passing through, you likely won't even have enough water with you to get anywhere to get more. I went to first grade in country where "jackrabbits carry lunch pails" -- so desolate anything that can't eat sagebrush and get along with very little water can't live there. The nearest town larger than the town I lived in was 50 miles (80 km) away; the next one larger than was twice that distance. Go the same distance west, instead of south, and you'd come to environs so desolate they tested a nuclear ramjet there and almost no one noticed. Even our cities aren't dense by the standards of the rest of the world. I drive 51-55 minutes each way for work, five days a week. My 2015 Fiesta (3 1/2 years since I bought it) has 62,000+ miles, about 95,000 km. I get 39-40 mpg (don't have the conversion to l/100 km handy); most weeks, I can buy gas the same time on the same day of the week as the previous week, 400+ miles (640+ km) later. BTW, America has never (as far as I know) had a restriction on specifically Asperger's individuals driving -- but they didn't even recognize the syndrome here until 1979 (I was 19 then, had been driving for three years), and it was expunged from the reference in 2014, replaced by "Autistic Spectrum Disorder" as a catch-all for anyone from "unable to communicate effectively" to "genius IQ with some personality quirks." An individual who isn't capable of making adult decisions likely will be under guardianship well into by-age adulthood, and would require a guardian's permission to attempt to obtain a driver's license (and hopefully wouldn't get that permission). Individuals who can live as independent adults, and don't have a condition that may render them unable to control a car (like seizures, narcolepsy, or cataplexy, among others) may get a license if they can pass the (written and on-the-road) tests and pay the fees (which are much lower than in parts of Europe I know about).

Yes, I am. If there's an issue with the new Mk. 1-3 not showing the boarded Kerbals, that's a part specific bug. Not sure how that one pod would fail to show the Kerbals, when other crewed parts appear to work okay (I docked with a station that had crew in a cupola and Hitchhiker and transferred crew, got the correct redisplays on docking and undocking).

Your math or measurements are wrong. By the time the halves of the molten projectile have been redirected to 90 degrees from their original vector, 100% of their "driving" momentum has been reabsorbed by the structure of the "thruster". Of course, this thing will disassemble itself when the first pair of projectile half, traveling "unbelievable" velocity, slam into the plungers. The wasted energy that goes into heating the slug is, well, wasted. Not to mention that if the divider and redirection tubes aren't just as hot (more wasted energy) as the melted projectile, the metal will solidify in the tube, leading to even more spectacular failure modes (if, perchance, the primary one, of the plungers blowing out of the sides of the housing, hasn't yet taken place). This device is good for nothing other than separating backers from their money. If it ever gets built (very unlikely, because either the "inventor" is a scam artist who knows it can't work, or sufficiently incompetent in science and engineering as to be completely unaware how to build it in a "functional" form), it'll destroy itself instantly, or "mysteriously" fail to operate at all when it's time for testing. Much more likely, anyone who offered up a dime toward "construction costs" will eventually figure out that the "inventor" has vanished, along with their nest egg.

The announcer called out an H219 motor -- that's 219 N average thrust (and Aerotech motors are commonly slot grains, near constant thrust profile), on a rocket that probably massed a bit less than 1 kg on the pad (including the full motor). Call it 20+ G liftoff acceleration, increasing a bit as the propellant burned off. That's on the high end of H motor thrust levels, as I recall -- my cert flight was an H128 reloadable, and part of my certification was the supervised assembly of the motor (nozzle, propellant grains, delay grain, both closures, and ejection charge) the day before the launch.

Just as with gasoline/diesel, electric energy costs differ in different locations. If you live in, say, Los Angeles, it'll cost you more to drive an EV than it would in, say, Seattle (where most of the power is from hydroelectric, with a little nuclear thrown in). If you live in New York City, it'll be worse yet, but then fossil fuels are high there, too. Electric cars are almost always cheaper to operate than gasoline or diesel, but then there's that battery replacement (costs about as much as putting a new engine in a conventional car). Bottom line, you have to do your own comparison on operating costs, but depending how the city rental system works, this may not even matter -- I read this as being a "drive when you need it" where you pay a monthly subscription and pick up the car at a charging station, drive where you need to go, park at another charging station, and continue on foot. In that situation, operating costs are almost meaningless; it's only a question of what the rental subscription costs compared to taking public transit -- and how much time you save, compared to waiting for the bus/subway/train/taxi. I don't see any reason a physician might refuse someone a license for Asperger's -- I'd been driving for twenty-five years before I was diagnosed, and my driving record was (and is) no worse than anyone else's. I've had three speeding tickets since 1976, two accidents in the same time (neither disabling the car, never mind injuring anyone) (plus several motorcycle accidents when I was working as a courier). Then again, I'm something of a borderline case -- much closer to Bill Gates than to Rain Man.

I've never had the delay problem with screen shots in my Ubuntu -- I've used Ubuntu for about four years now (Kubuntu 14.04, then recently switched to Ubuntu Mate 16.04), and used MEPIS 11 (Debian-based, very similar to Kubuntu) for three years before switching to Ubuntu. OTOH, I don't make screen shots at all frequently, and have never run Gnome desktop (Kubuntu uses KDE Plasma, Mate is a fork of Gnome 2 where vanilla Ubuntu has used Gnome 3 for a while). I've also never needed to explicitly install nfs-3g to mount my leftover NTFS partitions (1 TB drive with 7 partitions left over from Windows XP). If you're trying to screen shot your KSP, just hit F1 and find the images stored in a "screenshots" folder inside your KSP install. Otherwise, can't really help you. BTW, I play a couple (fairly demanding) Windows games on Ubuntu using PlayOnLinux (which is a front end and version manager for Wine). I play There on Linux since before it closed and reopened, and I've also played Path of Exile (like an MMO Diablo, only HUGE), and Myst Online: URU Live (the ghost of the MMO descendant of Myst, which failed financially, twice, but wouldn't die). PoE is perfect, the others have tiny flaws under Wine -- but the bottom line is, your favorite games might run without requiring you to reboot to Windows to play them.

Python is far easier to learn. It's very similar to Basic, in that it's an interpreting language natively. I'm a very, very rusty programmer, and a couple years ago I picked up enough Python to write a simple "adventure" style game, with inventory and situations that depended on it, in a matter of 3-4 weeks working on my own in spare time. Python also has extensions that can do on-screen graphics, floating point math (natively, Python is an integer language), etc. and is capable of handling Object Oriented concepts like inheritance. I've never tried Java, but everything I've read suggests it's much more like C++ in terms of the learning curve -- which is to say, you'll be a good long while before you can write a program that does anything noticeable. Edit to add: if you run Linux on your computer, you already have Python installed, and there is a free Python available for Windows. All you need beyond that is a text editor (there are some very nice, free ones around specifically for programming -- Geany works very well in Linux, and there's an extended version of Notepad that I've seen used in Windows).

I recall this story. The flying was done in the colony's air storage silo (very large open space, pressurized to a couple atmospheres). The combination of increased air pressure/density and low gravity allowed a human to fly with wings that mimicked a bird's functions (flex, alear movements, flapped with pecs and/or delts). A heater, needed to keep the air at a comfortable temperature (the Moon rock being cold once well below the surface effect of sunlight), provided an immense thermal that helped the less physically fit (including those born/raised in the Moon) climb more easily. For those who don't mind a little risk, even though you couldn't hit a golf ball into orbit, making a rifle that can fire a bullet all the way around the Moon isn't all that hard (as I recall, a .220 Swift, as it stands, can do it, likely a number of other cartridges). Picture target shooting where the your bullet has to make one orbit before hitting the target. Combine that with 'lith skiing, you could have a Lunar Biathlon where the contestants finish the ski trail course before their shooting can even be scored (the bullet would take more than an hour and a half to go around).

In my (nearly unmodified -- Better Burn Time is the only mod I use) career save, copying the save to the 1.4 install seems to have had no bad effects, but I haven't played long enough to be certain. Since I also play with the saves folder as a symlink to a folder on Dropbox, to allow playing the same save on both my desktop and my laptop, if it did cause trouble, I'm wouldn't be sure it was the game vs. the sharing method causing the problem...

Kerbal view worked fine for me in 1.4 after I transferred my 1.3.0 save. Wonder what's different?

Haven't tried it with a Mk. 1-3 yet, because when I upgraded I had a flight in progress with a Mk. 1-2 based rescue craft -- but that one docked without unusual difficulty. In fact, it connected so smooooothly it took me by surprise. I did find that a fuel duct from the vessel's SM tank to one of the "cylindrified" RCS tanks (to bypass the heat shield) didn't let me transfer fuel to the station where I was collecting the rescuees; it occurred to me, after undocking and maneuvering to pick up a Kerbal stuck about 5,500 km up at 11 degree inclination (i.e. when it was too late to go back and check) that I might have forgotten to enable crossfeed on one or another of the docking ports involved. We really need a simple way to transfer fuel past a heat shield, but I'll probably just start radially mounting docking ports on a tank instead of fooling with ducts.

Aha! My first High Power model came a couple years after returning to the hobby (I flew Estes rockets for a couple years in 7th-8th grades, early 1970s). I was pretty skilled at building by the time I attempted/spent the money for HPR, and I also built the rocket in part to prove a point I'd made at a launch a while before -- that with correct construction, you didn't need the weight of epoxy on rockets in the H-I-J power range. I selected a kit with plywood fins that went through the body tube to the motor mount tube, sandwiched them between the centering rings (i.e. wood to wood geometric construction), then applied the same techniques for fillets and paint that I'd been using on smaller rockets: double glue joints with yellow carpenter's glue, aerodynamic fillets built up with lightweight wood filler (non-structural), and multiple layers of wet-sanded primer before applying color. I also had a car to transport the rocket...

Just right click again, somewhere other than the goo canister or the open goo canister window.

I can confirm (from loading my 1.3 save into 1.4) that the Mk. 1-2 is still a valid part in the new version. Beyond that, I'm not sure why you'd want to keep it -- the Mk. 1-3 is significantly lighter, has built-in RCS ports (looks like mainly good for roll, hardly any pitch/yaw authority, but I've only glanced at a photo), bigger battery, and they moved the hatch around to the same side the pilots are on. I see no reason to prefer the old 1-2.

Don't have any video (smart phones weren't around/affordable yet back then) but I certified High Power with NAR in 1998 (then quit flying rockets, mostly due to expense, around 2002). I see your rocket is a veteran -- bump marks in the white paint, reattachment of fins, etc. Good to see multiple flights; so many folks build HPR and don't think it's a bad thing when the rocket disassembles sometime during the flight -- and don't even bother to pick up the broken pieces from the field.

Since the Leaf is an electric-only car, it should be pretty simple to calculate the minimum (energy-only) operating cost. The standard battery is (IIRC) 40 kWh, or 144 MJ, which gives a range of approximately 85 miles (135 km). Use your local electric rates (or the cost of charging at the dealer's charging stations) to calculate your energy-only cost per mile or kilometer; multiply by your daily, weekly, or monthly expected usage. Note that the 2018 Leaf is to be offered (by end of the model year, at least) with a 60 kWh battery, and an even larger one coming soon (2019?); those will increase range, but shouldn't change the cost per kWh or MJ. Also note that there will still be maintenance costs beyond the energy cost, as there would be with any car (though if you're renting on a daily basis, those are likely to be priced in). No oil changes, injector cleaning, engine intake filter replacement, etc. for an electric car, but you'll still need tire rotation/replacement, alignment, shocks/struts, brakes, etc. at similar intervals and cost to a gasoline powered car. I'd have seriously considered a Leaf for my most recent car purchase (summer 2015), but my daily commute was within a couple miles of the car's range; too much chance of getting stranded along the highway, not to mention the purchase cost (not quite double what I wound up paying), battery replacement cost (after 2-5 years), and the cost of installing a home charging station. The Ford Fiesta I bought (base model, 6-speed dual clutch automatic and 1.6L normally aspirated direct injection gasoline engine) gets about the same highway mileage as a Prius (can't compete around town, but 95% of my driving is my daily commute, nearly an hour each way), and cost less than half as much.

Default settings on parachutes require some (rather significant) fraction on an atmosphere to fire. Duna's atmosphere is a lot thinner; they might have fired just before impact -- or maybe just after, if there'd been a little more "down" available.

That's what I said. My opinion -- Dean never had a working drive; he had something that, via resonance, fooled a scale, as well as fooling Campbell and Stine (because of their limited ability to observe the device). Furthermore, he knew it; he used the fact it could spoof a scale to try to get a bunch of money (out of 3M and presumably Boeing -- "large aerospace company in the Northwest") that he could then use to vanish.

You might see if there's an Eve gravity assist available -- if so, that could save a lot more than 200 m/s. Might require waiting in a parking orbit for a transfer window, but worth it...

First thing to try is putting a new, clean KSP (no mods) in a new folder, and launch that to verify there isn't an underlying OS issue keeping the program from running. Then add back your mods one by one until you find the one that keeps the game from finishing the loading process. If (as might be the case if there's just a corrupted file) the game runs okay once you have all the mods back in, transfer the "Saves" folder to the new install (and optionally delete the old install).

For the benefit of others who might find this thread in a future search, would you mind saying what that small trick was?

Haven't downloaded either 1.4 or the DLC yet -- soon, soon, when I have time (and can confirm that my one indispensible mod, Better Burn Time, is ready for 1.4). Just hoping it doesn't provide new and exciting bugs...

Mine worked fine last time I ran it (Wednesday evening). What you describe sounds like there's a problem with a mod.

You may have taken the "slam" part of "hoverslam" a little too literally...

Yeah. On the patent application (according to an article I read in Analog magazine in the 1970s), the drawings make it clear that the original Dean Drive was in fact a tape drive -- not anything to do with reactionless thrust. Dean always claimed that he falsified the patent docs to prevent making his invention public; the Analog article pointed out that this would actually invalidate any protection his invention might have gained from the patent. I met a man at a convention in the early 1980s who claimed he'd built a "skyhook" drive based on the one described in Star Driver -- after talking to G. Harry Stine (Lee Correy was his peudonym for SF stories and novels). Mind you, he never reappeared as a billionaire, so I'm inclined to believe it didn't work. The principle here was that no one had tested that the third derivative of displacement (i.e. "rate of change of acceleration") was in fact zero relative to F=MA, and the "skyhook" drive assumed that if you changed the acceleration rapidly enough, you'd get more or less acceleration relative to the power applied, resulting in a net thrust from a system that accelerated particles with a high "jolt" in one direction, and very low "jolt" in the other. The principle is still generally untested -- from what I understand (I'm no physicist) it's fairly hard to set up an apparatus to actually measure this particular condition. Heh. "Speaking almost inaudibly from his nursing home bed..." Edit: Oh, that's quoting from Pournelle's 1950s perspective. The rocket scientist might have been in his 50s then.