Steel

What software are you using for the CAD and CFD?

It's not Relativity being an edge case in Newton's laws, it's Newton's laws being a special case in Relativity. Newton's laws can be derived directly from relativity given certain constraints (i.e. v<<c, the system is in an inertial frame,...) on the system, so - contrary to popular belief - they are not proved incorrect by relativity. In actuality they were just shown to be a special case of relativity when certain conditions are applied to the system. On the other hand, EM-/Q-drive breaks local symmetry, which is what Gauge theory is entirely based on, hence completely destroying gauge theory. Not rendering it a special case, making it completely wrong. (Also, I'm not entirely sure I have the full picture with just Gauge theory, as I said my knowledge of Field Theory is very limited, so there's likely other reasons why violating local symmetry groups is a bad idea) I hope I made the destinction clear-ish, it's quite hard to explain this. As K^2 was saying earlier, it's not that a new theory can't happen, it's just the absurdity that everything we've ever done is using completely false reasoning, but gets the correct results.

I'm no expert, as we only get a very brief overview of this sort of stuff at undergraduate level (so if you want a more detailed explanation, wait for K^2's return) but I understand the significance. So here's my attempt to explain: Basically, Gauge Theory (and more broadly, Field Theory) is key in physics. As my lecturer in 1st year once very helpfully said, if you get stuck with remembering Newton's EoM in the exam, you can always derive them from local gauge invariance. Local symmetry groups are a fundamental concept of gauge theory. In their purest form, they are a mathematical concept that basically define a group that is invariant to certain mathematical transformations in local coordinates (as opposed to global symmetries, which are invariant to transformations in any and all coordinates). Now I've almost certainly butchered that to a point far from the truth, but its a difficult concept to explain to someone without going into lectures on mathematics. I admit it's difficult to see the significance, but trust me, if K^2 is worried if these local symmetries are broken, you should be too.

The smallest error we could have made for this to work is the error of assuming local symmetry. I think K^2 says best what the consequences of this are:

I think you might be under reacting. What K^2 is trying to get across is that if this is in fact somehow the way the universe works, we have absolutely zero understanding of it. That's not just the scientists get a bit embarrassed because they were wrong, that's a world where we wouldn't actually know how our computers, power stations, light bulbs, e.t.c actually work, just that they do work somehow, but not the way we designed them with our old theories.

A quick Google search reveals a ULA launch (so that's just a rocket and some fuel) costs, on average $225 million. Then there's the cost of man-rating the rocket, capsule building & integration and the insurance costs of sending actual people into space. So I would say you're not going to be far off the $900 million or so of launching a brand new satellite.

But is the act of writing that code illegal, or is it only illegal if used?

Well at the end of the day, it is just a number, nothing illegal about it

I just found out something that blew my mind. There exists a prime number, that when converted to binary and executed, is a program that de-crypts DVDs. Obviously programs like this break copyright laws, so are illegal in many jurisdictions, but can we really make a number illegal? EDIT: Just to clarify, as it stands the number is not illegal What are your thoughts on things like this? (by the way I came across this watching an episode of , about 35 mins in if you're interested)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime

I read that the Wow! Signal wasn't the only strange looking signal observed by these guys (nor was this sort of weird signal a rare event), it was just the only one someone thought to write "Wow!" by and so its the only one that's still remembered

These are the best non-stock parts I've seen since Porkjet's! Seriously amazing job!

The issue here is twofold. Firstly you're arguing with K^2 who is the most knowledgable physicist I've seen on these forums. Secondly, you keep referring to the centre of the universe's expansion, which simply does not exist

First of all, do we know gravity is a wave? There's excellent evidence to support gravitational waves (disturbances in spacetime), but none as far as I know supporting that gravity is a wave (unfortunately, despite those two sounding the same, they are in fact two very different things) Secondly, there is a theoretical, but currently unobserved, particle called the graviton that could be responsible for mediating gravitational interactions Thirdly, while its true photons do not get weaker over distance, the intensity of the electomagnetic field due to the photons (brightness as you called it) does, and its this field that we observe and effects things. In the same way, a graviton would not weaken as it travelled but the intensity of the gravitational field (or if the like the 'brightness' of the gravity of an object) will weaken I hope this helps

I hate to say it but it certainly doesn't have much grounding in actual science.

The issue here is you're trying to look at it from a purely probabilistic viewpoint, in which case there will be no difference. The test is a physical one, as the difference in probabilities is caused by the physical properties of the system, not mathematics. To actually test whether there is a difference you need two entangled particles, which you cannot, unfortunately, program in MATLAB (or at least I can't) (And of course there's the other issue that random numbers in computers are not truly random, but let's not get into that!)

Also just on top of what AbacusWizard said, G in this equation isn't a variable, but the gravitational constant, so there's no need to worry about it, you just plug in the number into your calculations every time a G comes up. Can you define a little better what this means? Acceleration due to gravity (which is what is usually measured in g's) varies with distance from the body, so you need to define where you have an acceleration of 0.49 g to have this make any sence.

There are actually a couple of rocket stages that could in theory (and perhaps with a little work) have the performance to be ssto, although they would have terrible payload fractions. The most notable is the Saturn V second stage (the S-II)

BlueCosmology makes a good point, those who justify that their mathematics is correct through experimental evidence are physicists, not mathematicians. On the point of maths being able to describe natural phenomena, is this truly a reason to believe that maths plays a role in our universe? If we think about it, a lot of physics uses completely arbitrary factors (by this I mean number that aren't just simple integers) to make the numbers agree with observed values (i.e. the gravitational constant). From this surely it's possible to argue that all we have are a system of rules and factors that give us the numbers that we expect to be associated with an object, and not any deeper understanding into the true nature of how the universe operates. Just some food for thought. - - - Updated - - - A point made by one of my lecturers is a good example. It is something along the lines of: Consider an electric or magnetic field. Is this field an actual physical object/construct/whatever you want to call it, or is it a human invention that allows our number to agree with what we see?

"Steel has just applied to the Kerbal Space Program" The sad life of a forum lurker...

"Didn't get good landing/impact video. Pitch dark and foggy. Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces." - Elon Musk's Twitter *EDIT* Ninja'd

"Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced..." - Elon Musk's Twitter

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho." - Elon Musk's Twitter

On a completely unrelated note... Wow! The website you sourced that from is a treasure trove of information, great find!

I think its probably more like -70 something C

By my (rather quick) calculations, if you've got a 20 m radius asteroid that weighs 3000 tonnes you're only going to get around 0.0000005 m/s^2 of gravity on the surface, so its not really worth using the CPU cycles to calculate.