DerekL1963

I tried a variety of things, no dice. But having gotten within 50m and having more than sufficient mono I called the test a success and moved on. It was an unmanned vehicle in the sandbox, so it's not like I *had* to dock.

Just curious, why not use a pair of PB-NUK's on the spaceplane instead of solar panels?

If KSP hadn't decided that I couldn't select the docking port on the tanker as a target, I would proved that this lander can cycle from the tanker to Duna's surface, and back. Meh, close enough. Reference picture of the lander in the VAB.

Installed this the other day, and it doesn't appear to be properly saving current save time - it's always equal to current session time. I have the latest version. Ideas of how to troubleshoot?

No, you can't avoid someone looking at the right spot - because people are watching practically the entire globe looking for missile launches. Not to mention we (the US) have a radar system constantly tracking pretty much everything in orbit. (And that's setting aside the very significant numbers of amatuer astronomers and sattelite watchers.) Seriously, y'all are way off base here. You're concentrating on concealing the trans-Saturn cruise and orbital operations at Saturn, and missing that it's pretty much impossible to even get to and operate in LEO without getting noticed.

What are the teaching kids these days? The ability to discern truth from bovine exhaust it appears. Most of the money wasn't spent on developing technological know-how, it was spent developing, building, and testing the specific instruments or the various support systems. If I spend a hundred grand learning how to design and build a million dollar house, and the house burns down - I've still got the education, but I'm also out a million bucks. (And don't give me that carp about NASA and all the wonderful things we got fifty years ago.) In the same vein, a successful mission isn't "gee-whiz", it's the reason the mission was funded in the first place. It's the reason we explore space in the first place. Everything else in fanboy smoke and PAO mirrors. That being said and closer to being on topic - all the folks talking about the wonderful things JWST could image seem to have forgotten something... Unlike Hubble, JWST isn't a general purpose astronomical instrument. It's a dedicated infrared telescope and has no capability outside the infrared bands. (Even the guidance sensor operates in the infrared.)

I didn't say they weren't. I didn't say anything that anyone reasonable could possibly interpret as saying that. I quite reasonably questioned the sanity of anyone who claims Concorde was designed only for the North Atlantic and US Domestic markets. Um, no. I didn't. You said 'x'. I said 'x because y'. In no reasonable universe and by no sensible individual can the second statement be taken as a repeat of the first.

How exactly is such a question relevant? We're discussing engineering reality, not market driven appearances. But to answer it, while year-to-year may not (generally) show a large change - when you step back and compare larger timescales, the change is immediately visible. Similar, yes. But "similar" is not "the same as". Virtually every system onboard is radically different in the current mark than in the original vehicle.

o.0 I'm not entirely certain what the point is of quoting me and then repeating what I said. o.0 The UK and France teamed up and put their national pride on the line to build an aircraft for the US domestic market? What are you smoking? BOAC in particular was eager to operate them on a wide variety of routes - but sharply increasing costs (both to purchase the aircraft and operational costs) and limiting supersonic flight to overwater pretty much ended those plans.

Yes... and no. While the Soyuz booster remains largely unchanged, the Soyuz spacecraft is radically different. The Soyuz of 2017 only resembles the Soyuz of 1966 only in the general moldline and gross details.

Just so we're clear, it's not just noise that limited Concorde to the North Atlantic corridor... There's also a range issue, which is what prevented it from entering the trans-Pacific market.

When it's in a commercial reactor? No. There's no compression and virtually no confinement and the fuel isn't sufficiently enriched. The fuel itself? That depends on the reactor... commercial power reactors, certainly not, as they only use lightly enriched fuel (if it's enriched at all). Naval reactors OTOH use very highly enriched fuel, some sources think possibly weapons grade. Certainly enough to generate a very nasty 'fizzle' (fizzles can still yield from tens to a couple of hundred tons as well considerable fallout and contamination) if nothing else. But note the large number of states that have both a native atomic power industry and atomic weapons. This is no accident, as the same basic technology underlies both. It's also why we keep an eye on countries with enrichment programs (such as North Korea, Iran, and Iraq)... the same equipment and technology that can produce mildly enriched uranium for reactor fuel can produce highly enriched weapons grade material. Commercial reactors generally produce "dirty" plutonium (that is, it has a large quantity of plutonium isotopes other than 239, making it useless for nuclear weapons). But they can be designed (as in the UK), or operated (as is generally believed to have been done in North Korea) to produce "cleaner" plutonium with fewer objectionable isotopes and more Pu-239 making it useful for weapons manufacture.

True, but even so the effectiveness of it's controls limits what it can do. (It's a kit that bolts onto the tail of something that was never meant to glide in the first place.) No, mostly because the warhead is coasting at that point.

And that's a problem - how?

Much depends on the cooks of course... But yeah, the food is generally better than the rest of the Fleet (in part because the boats get a larger budget per person and more latitude in varying from the recipe cards). If you're at or near 1g there's no particular reason why you can't cook just like you would here on Earth. I suspect (as a hobbyist cook) that in microgravity, your biggest problem is going to be splatter from frying/boiling as it's going to travel further. (Until you're at low enough levels that frying/boiling is sufficient to turn the food or cooking liquid into a projectile in it's own right). Sautes and stir frys at fractional g will be interesting too, probably mostly a matter of practice though (again, unless we're talking absurdly low). Which puts us right back up against the "we know nada about fractional g" wall again.

There's a dev build, and it works just fine with the current version.

Thanks! I figured it was something like that, my earlier comment wasn't meant to imply anything other than simply "I was waiting", I hope you didn't take it otherwise.

Thanks!

I'm borrowing this design for a rover lander, and want to double check a detail... the nose heatshield was attached to the propeller hub?

Nope. 60% O2/ 40% N2 at atmospheric pressure on the pad, bled down to 5psi during ascent, then purged (by venting while backfilling with pure O2) to pure O2 over the next 24 hours.

They say that kitchens are right behind bathrooms in terms of adding to a houses resale value...

Something "telephone pole" shaped would retain most of it's speed all the way to impact, so yes it will be obscured by plasma all the way down. The CEP of an inertial system depends on a number of factors, such as the precision of the initial position, the precision of the control systems, and the precision of the inertial system itself. You can only buy so much for $22k/unit (2007 dollars) even with mass production, and only fit so much into a space not much bigger than a coffee can. (And I doubt that they're babied, calibrated, and aligned to the level we did in the Navy for SLBMs.) Trident-II, which travels much (much) further than the JDAM (and spends most of it's flight time coasting with no controls whatsoever) has a CEP of 90 meters. I can't find an exact number, but sifting through the web it seems a MK6LE Trident II guidance system (which is physically larger than the JDAM guidance system+electronics) runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $750k/unit. (And unlike JDAM, that figure does not cover the control systems, which are part of the missile.)

Nice! Still waiting on the ruling on my first, but considering Jeb's Level as the goal of my upcoming Science mode campaign. Curious as to why you didn't use Kerbal Alarm Clock to keep track of everything though.

Only if you presume the place is free of races that are no longer bound to planetary surfaces.

Pretty much everything you do in your home kitchen in the same way you do it in your home kitchen. The only real difference is we have filters and electrostatic precipitators in our ventilation system to scrub particulates from the air. There's no particular need to avoid frying, or to have your spices in anything other than their usual forms, or any other such nonsense. (At least not at 1g.) (USN Submarine Service, USS Henry L. Stimson SSBN 655.)