UmbralRaptor

I suppose the demo needs a physics update at some point, but the big thing would be adding the LV-909 back (like it was in the 0.18.3 demo).

Oh, this'll be easy to test- nope. Still an email address adding barrier. Also, looks like they've gotten rid of the direct download of a zip in favor of a patcher-like executable, or torrent. Trying out the torrent for the windows download... Patch notes only go up to 0.90. Odd, given that last I saw the demo was based on 1.0 Ah, start screen shows v1.0.0.813 Beta Demox1. Earlier when you jumped through the email hoops to get a direct download, it showed v1.0.0.813 Demo. Not sure about other differences. edit: a quick skim of parts listings doesn't suggest any. Also looks like the extraneous part.cfg files in KSP/Parts are still there. No clear differences in the physics file either.

Bleah, the news site managed to have a broken link to MNRAS, and didn't make it obvious that they had one to the actual paper. Also, the image is of the antennae galaxies, rather than the actual collision because reasons? edit, 3.8e9 M☉ likely isn't much compared to the galaxies as a whole, but I'm having trouble finding any figures on stellar or halo mass.

??? The 1.0.5.1024 and 1.0.5.1028 zips were 583 MB on Windows.

The windows version specifically? Probably being fixed at this moment. (Though more confirmations is good)

Store version (ignore that this OS can't run the 64bit version for the moment)

Okay, it looks like some unevenness in the store update has shaken out. But while the windows version has the 32bit executable, the 64bit one was apparently dropped?

Is it a Steam exclusive still? I just checked the store and saw 1.0.5. edit: oh, an announcement that 1.1 is almost out, and the store is being taken down. This isn't funny.

Very low surface brightness. Its absolute magnitude appears to be no higher than a globular cluster (and is likely lower than the brightest ones), and yet it's very roughly 50 times larger in radius. The abstract that was linked to is very helpful.

If we go by mass, then why bother with anything besides solar observing (where ~99.8% of it is)?

http://astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm Scroll down, and note the variety of photos and author credits. Or were you looking for something else?

If we're talking something like Starshot, all of the above and more (presumably Lalande 21185 isn't in there because of the mid-northerly declination?). I'd prioritize Luhman 16 and Sirius (especially Sirius B) for astrophysics studies, though. And then pick up some more brown dwarfs and Procyon (closest thing to a red giant in the solar neighborhood, and a white dwarf rather different from Sirius B).

@ImmaStegosaurus! *did* say it was powered by witchcraft. I'd still be suspicious of any flight that claims to get to Mars in a few weeks and isn't an Orion or Zubrin drive, though.

Er, which is it? In any case, assuming a 3 day (259200 s) brachistochrone, one can get get reasonable numbers by playing with the kinematic equations: t == 259200/2 == 129600 s (we only need to work out half-way) x == 5.46e10 m (opposition with Mars at perihelion and Earth at aphelion) to 4.013e11 m (conjunction with both planets at aphelion) a == 2*t-2*x/2 == t-2*x == 3.25 m/s2 to 23.89 m/s2 vmax == a*t == 421 km/s to 3096 km/s (0.0014 c to 0.0103 c) Δv == 2*vmax == 843 km/s to 6193 km/s. Sure, the acceleration in the first case is low enough that gravity sort of matters, but given the absurd ΔV, not as much as one might think. If there's a coast phase, expect higher accelerations to keep within the time limit. Assuming some sort of impulsive accelerations, the speeds run from 211 km/s to 1548 km/s (with expended ΔVs of 421 km/s to 3096 km/s.)

Building features: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Center Experience required for Kerbal levels: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Experience And what those levels do: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Pilot http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Engineer http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Scientist (Assuming everything is up to date)

Short version: There are no "legitimate" methods. Long version: 0.01 c (just under 3000 km/s) is almost 73 times the effective exhaust velocity of the IX-6315 "Dawn" ion engine. This gets you a mass ratio of very roughly 4e31. Imagine a rocket with a fully fuelled mass of our sun (Sol, not Kerbol) and a dry mass of ~50 grams. Kerbol-diving gets you closer, but with escape speed at the surface below 95 km/s, the Oberth effect runs out of oomph well beforehand. As noted upthread, you can can get hyperbolic excess speeds of 100+ km/s, but OP's question was for 30x that. I see multiple flybys mentioned also. The actual number available is less than you think, and 100 km/s is a whopping 3% of what was asked. In more detail, let us consider a spacecraft that does a flyby at Kerbol's surface (Ve == 94672.01 m/s, distance from center == 261 600 000 m) Situation Speed at Kerbol periapsis (km/s) Eve Apoapsis (9 832 684 544 m) 93.437 Kerbin Apoapsis (13 599 840 256 m) 93.774 Jool Apoapsis (72 212 238 387 m) 94.501 Infinite Apoapsis (Vinf == 0) 94.672 Vinf == 1 km/s 94.677 Vinf == 10 km/s 95.199 Vinf == 100 km/s 137.71 Vinf == 1000 km/s 1004.5 Vinf == 3000 km/s 3001.5

11.5 years and counting for something that Virgin Galactic claimed would take 3. Meanwhile, most-all of the other competitors have quietly vanished. As for those that haven't, consider that XCOR is in much the same endless development with no launch service. Between the X-Prize's post-winnings fizzle, the similar fizzle by Armadillo Aerospace, and the way the GLXP deadlines have been repeatedly delayed so someone can actually claim it* (5 years so far, and government lander-related penalties conveniently vanished just before Chang'e 3/Yutu's launch), I no longer trust the competition/prize model for increasing space access.

There are mods for it (eg: tweakable everything). For stock, you'll want to use aircraft tanks, as they are already all fuel and have better mass ratios than rocket tanks with the oxidizer drained.

It means that the forum transfer didn't properly deal with exotic symbols like ' and so lots of old posts are full of garbage characters. Yes, I just called a printable ASCII character exotic. Welcome to the glorious <7bit future.

I think you want to edit the MODIFIER_KEY entry in the settings.cfg file. Note that this will also alter other things that depend on Alt. (But you probably want that)

@Wemb, @Boris-Barboris:Yes, and no. Using boosters means kicking the mass out above the 18 tonne limit, or dropping a fair amount of high-Isp tankage. It might help with a partially fueled RT-10? (Though of course, a shorter stack also means less wobble). Tanks as fins is promising for stability, but ultimately needs fuel pumping. (not available at that point in career mode, and if it were, one can apparently gain enormous stability from pumping fuel up!) @GoSlash27 Yeah, bending might be a bigger issue than I thought -- shorter designs (albeit with more fins) have made it to LKO. Er, and it's just using an LV-T30. Control authority is sharply limited. A completely serious attempt to explore part of the design space. For a more general update, it turns out that a partially filled booster, 3-4 upper tanks locked down for the ascent, and very careful attention to keeping the craft inside the prograde marker can get to LKO. And then run frustratingly short of enough ΔV for a munar flyby. (I estimate 840-860 m/s, with my best attempt getting 820 m/s. For most of my ascents it seemed like I could get ~740 m/s with 25 tanks and an RT-10 with 30% fuel, but only ~670 m/s with 23 tanks and 50% fuel in the RT-10. edit: It is deeply bothersome when an approach suggested by someone who starts off by insulting you works best. But using 2 stages of LV-T30s resulted in bringing almost 990 m/s to LKO. I ran 11 tanks in the upper stage and 13 in the lower from a best guess on split efficiency in my spreadsheets. The ascent was comparatively unremarkable, with pitchover starting at 50 m/s, and then just staying inside the prograde marker until I got a 70ish km apoapsis.

Or, why does this flip wildly after a bit if I tell it to go straight up? (And/or try to pitchover) Especially as nothing is sticking out near the front, and there are fins in back to move the CoD. For additional context: while the examples are in sandbox, it's for a Munar flyby in a career with greatly limited resources (so an LV-T45 is iffy, and an LV-909 or steerable winglets are right out). What I'd like is to get something so seemingly simple to be stable without the fins (freeing up part count for additional FL-T100 tanks) Alternate configurations (eg: preventing propellant flow from the uppermost 2-5 tanks, placing tanks around the sides instead of fins) can help with stability for purely vertical flight, but not if I want to pitchover. Yes, I'm being careful. But at some point, the aerodynamic forces just rip the nose out from inside the prograde marker...

If you try to select a strategy that requires more reputation that you have, you'll see the current value. I thought that the percentage one showed your value/10, though.

He did. But they managed to rather mess up a test firing, and damage 8 of the engines as I understand it.

Fair enough. I just get annoyed at how it gets thrown around in lots of places like reusing rocket parts is easy and certain to be cheaper. In some ways it feels more like 1976 than 2016 (though I'll admit to sometimes treating the present more like 1996 or 2006 than 2016).