CptRichardson

And they have a good idea on how to TEST for the reaction mass already and are trying to design a rig to test for it. Granted, it still bends/ pretzels quantum mechanics as we know it, but it doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics.

Except for the repeated results being replicated by various individuals, successful modeling of the phenomenon to within 2% of test results, a whole load of other factors as they work to eliminate all possible instrumentation errors and keep getting the same results. And also because their explanation DOESN'T violate the laws of physics as we know them once they spelled it out, and while messy still fits and should clean up with more data.

Except they're saying that's NOT the case. They're trying to figure out how to check for it, but they believe the push modifies the virtual particles so that they do not immediately annihilate, but instead convey the thrust reaction out. They're trying to figure out how to check for a particle wake right now as part of their continuing study. - - - Updated - - - Already ruled out from what I understand.

Uh, it's already about... twice the thrust an ion drive would get with the amount of power being put into it. At a proper kilowatt (they're only using 50 watts right now. For reference, the lightbulbs you use to look at stuff use about 10 watts more), it should be about .1 newton with the current test article. As said, that's twice the thrust of current ion thrusters. If they can tune the thing properly, even without using supercondutor magnetic confinement they believe they can hit .4 newton per kilowatt, which would be 7 times the thrust of current ion thrusters. - - - Updated - - - Virtual particles are the electron/positron pairs that are constantly popping into existence and annihilating in micro-seconds always, everywhere. They're a part of the 'quantum foam' that is the substrate of the universe, and a major part of hawking radiation and other fun stuff. But, as it turns out, kicking them with radio waves and magnetic fields keeps them from annihilating for long enough to be useful.

That is the case. This is why they believe they can get WTFBBQ grade thrust with superconducting magnets, as they'll be able to magnetically confine the thrust into a near laser beam of semi-virtual particles. Granted, they'll also have to figure out how to cool their engine at that point, as it seems it will climb up to 1000 degrees celsius at that thrust level. - - - Updated - - - This is actually sort of their explanation, yes. The two dielectric disks are forcing more particles to come into existence on one end, which are then further excited by the radio transceiver inside, then their bounce out is kinda contained by the magnetic fields, forming thrust from the then semi-virtual particles, thus upholding the conservation of momentum and thermodynamics.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/02/more-emdrive-experiment-information.html#more The official topic on the NASA forums where they're discussing it is here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.420 Interestingly, they seem to have solved how it works without violating the conservation of momentum. The act of kicking against virtual particles transforms them into semi-virtual particles with momentum equal and opposite(ish) to their engine. The issue they're having is that their magnetic confinement isn't very good and they're losing a large percentage of their thrust as random scatter in all directions if their model is correct.

Uh, no, because they got reverse thrust from reversing the current. - - - Updated - - - Uh, they've gotten as perfect as they can to vacuum. If they had seal errors, it would have been pretty obvious, and given that the test results are within something like 2% of the atmospheric tests, it seems to not be an atmosphere thing. Likewise, they did check the magnetic interactions as stated in the article, and have ruled out most, if not all such events. I will grant that the copper plate ablating is possible, but I don't know. Addendum: Nope, copper ablation can be ruled out. A second article just posted shows that the copper housing doesn't even reach 100 degrees F.

Not particularly, no. Given that my capsules are designed to land with their engines, I usually just trigger the final stage seperator, angle towards the VAB and power my way out of unhappy thoughts situations. It works remarkably well.

STAND BACK! We're going to perform SCIENCE!

Uh, no... they're kind of throwing darts at the wall to see what sticks, but there aren't any firm ideas. The front-runner is producing virtual particles to thrust off of.

It WAS a good game. Unfortunately, they're rapidly falling down into the F2P traps, and it's swiftly becoming as bad as most Chinese MMO's when it comes to paying just to be able to remotely play.

Earlier, it sounded too good to be true. Now, it sounds like we need to throw funding at them so that they can squeeze whatever quantum crazy fairy is doing this until they learn the dark magic secrets of this arcane SCIENCE! Seriously, it's reproducable, it works in vacuum, and they already are producing as much if not more thrust than ion engines if I'm reading this correctly (production model expected to have .4 newtons at 40 kilowatts, this model has .1; the expected production model will have 7 times the thrust of Ion Engines...) - - - Updated - - - It's not a photon drive. They ruled that out.

Orbital/Aerial survey of a planet. Radar bounces down, comes back. Kerbals happy because they have SCIENCE! on the exact topography.

Commanding the San Kerbsisco Drive Yards in Minmar Polar Orbit, awaiting the arrival of the planetary lander to begin harvesting resources from Minmus to begin constructing the yards to their full glory.

Working on designing the next section of my San Kerbsisco Drive Yards, of which I need to actually post up onto the forums.

Biggest thing I can think of, once more, is getting a better tutorial system in place. Maybe some kind of interactive system of launch guidance for optimal trajectory that you can see somehow in-flight, or perhaps narrated in-game by Scott Kerbley.

Put a 250 ton space station core into an 18 kilometer orbit of Minmus in one go, to be the crew quarters/utility section of a 1000-12000 ton station to be eventually built.

Please do not kill kittens. The kittens are your friend. They are sad; for you want to kill them when they have done nothing wrong. The happy fun kittens wish you to exist in a realm of eternal fluffy-fuzziness where all hate is forgotten. Do Not Tempt the Happy Fun Kitten.

I have 200 part rockets.

Yeah. It's kind of ASSUMED that when you start doing crazy edge outlier stuff like heavily modding your game that things will start breaking. Any game will when you start heavily modding it. And 'giant space station' only starts running into issues in the thousands of parts for me. Those aren't 'major stability issues'. You start making calls for 'major stability issues' when certain part combinations in STOCK cause the game to crash on a regular basis. Combinations that a normal person will encounter quickly. Or '200 part rockets explodinate' without cause, or other major things that cause regular crashes every 10-30 minutes in the normal course of an average player, not the edge cases of crazy people on the forum like you and me. And even with all of the stuff we do, there are a couple of ways to get things going nicer that won't take a miracle like 'Unity 5 arrives', like spending time working on Directx 11 proper integration. I say KSP is ready, especially now that they're filling out the content. I'd like MORE content, like GP2 or some more contract types, but I'm pretty content with what we have. Heck, I'd say KSP is in a better state than Minecraft was at 1.0

If they properly balance everything, then quite frankly, as far as I can tell it's ready. I see no glaring super-bugs, only minor quibbles for the most part. If they've got the tutorials properly updated, then the game will be just fine. Plenty of far more successful games with far nastier glitches and bugs than KSP. WHAT major issues? They're addressing aero, warp issues, adding even more variety by making Karbonite stock, and I rarely, if ever run into bugs. And both of the ones I can think of involved doing things absolutely crazy. As I said above, if their tutorials are properly up to date and marked clearly, I don't see the 'major, glaring' issues you seem to be on about. Yes, Unity 5 would be nice, but given that we know that Directx 11 works pretty well for cleaning up the game, I'd rather have them working on getting it fully compatable and using that to massively reduce any issues. They've already said they're rebalancing everything, adding in more parts to make things easier in other spots, and have worked to get the contracts turned into something fun. Seriously, everybody I talk with have been wondering why KSP hasn't been updated to 1.0 since about March last year.

Famous engineer who worked on Project Orion?

Preparing to launch the Primary Crew Quarters/core of the San Kerbsisco Drive Yards into Minmus Orbit.

That looks more like sand coming loose from gravity than former water flows...

I know that. You know that. There's a disturbing large number of people who have said that they'd still pay it, and in today's world of microtransactions, company execs tend to pull such asinine stunts.