Jokurr

I'm not sure if I fully agree with the article. A lot of the comments mention how the examples actually further prove just how useful the scientific method is. The comment by "Kelvis Ymeri" about 6 comments down explains this quite well. I will agree with the author on the note that the way the scientific method is often taught in schools/universities is not the best, and often far too rigid. Too often the emphasis seems to be getting to the right answer, not how you got there. Did your conclusion not match your hypothesis? Well then go back and fudge the data until it does. I was guilty of this myself in university. After doing a 3 hour lab, you get data that appears wrong. What do you do? Get the data from someone else who did the lab earlier and got full marks. Instead, greater emphasis should be placed on analyzing what may have caused your data to appear the way it did, and that doesn't fall outside of the scientific method.

Why is a ship designed for war "the ultimate"?

Which scientists are these? Also the blatant misuse of the word “theory†in a scientific application in this thread irks me greatly.

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist who has written some fascinating books on what the future might look like. I highly recommend his book Physics of the Future

Hmm looks like I’ll have to remove the subassembly loader when I get home. I noticed the game ran great without any mods, and then I put them all in at once (including subassembly loader) and it ran terribly. Didn’t have a chance to go through mods one by one last night but now I know where to start.

After clean install, it ran smooth as silk. After putting my mods and save back in, it lags horribly so something is not compatible. I guess I'll have to figure out what mods are creating the ruckus.

Calculating the drag that the atmosphere induces is the tricky part, there are a lot of variables to consider, and to be honest I don’t know if the game even fully represents everything that occurs in real life. In the game, is turbulent flow around a rocket represented, or does it stay laminar, no matter what? What is the skin friction coefficient of various parts in the game? Is compressible flow represented and can shockwaves form at supersonic speed? I don’t know how detailed the physics calculations of the game are. If you knew what exactly goes into the games drag calculations, you could determine your speed at any point in time by using basic differential calculus. You would need to know the rate of change in pressure, rate of change of mass, due to expended fuel . Both of these rates of change would be with respect to time. It would basically boil down to the most fundamental of physics equations: F = m*a In this event, F = Fr – Fd Where Fr = force produced from the rocket engine (constant) Fd = force created from drag (not a constant, function of the change in pressure). m (mass) is also not a constant, it’s changing with time, as mentioned above. As acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect with time, you could rewrite the equation to look something like this: Fr – d(Fd)/dt = [d(m)/dt]*a Not by any means a simple calculation for an atmospheric world. For a non atmospheric world it’s not as bad, I will demonstrate: d(Fd)/dt goes to zero (which is by far the hardest to figure out), and I’ll rearrange the equation to this: a = Fr/[d(m)/dt] d(m)/dt again is mass changing with time, which when written as a function of time, could be represented as m0 - k*t, where k is a constant (0.1 ton/sec as an arbritrary example) and m0 is your original mass. So we have this: a = Fr/(m0 - k*t) Thanks to the handy dandy kinematic equations you learn is high school physics class, you don’t have to do any actual calculus here (don’t know if you know it or not… I might have already gone over your head). You may recognize this equation: x = vi*t + 0.5*a*t^2 where x is your displacement (ie position or altitude) Since vi (initial velocity) is zero, we can rewrite this as a = 2*x/t^2 So we have 2*x/t^2 = Fr/(m0 - k*t) Rewritten as: x = Fr*t^2 / [2*(m0 – kt)] And there you have it, an equation to represent your position with respect to time. Let’s plug in some numbers to try it out. Let’s assume your engine puts out Fr = 100,000N of force, and your change in mass rate is k = 100 kg/sec and your starting mass was 100,000 kg. At t = 10s you would be 202.02m off the ground. At t = 60s you’re 7659.57m off the ground, and so on. Hopefully I’ve done the math right, if anyone sees an error please point it out. Edit: Yikes, well I already discovered one error in my work, I completely forgot to account for gravity, which is again another changing variable. So where I had written F = Fr – Fd It SHOULD be F = Fr – Fd – Fg Where Fg = G*M*m / (x + r)^2 G is a constant (6.67 x 10^-11 N*m^2/kg^2) M is the mass of the body you are on r is the radius of the body you are on x is your displacement above the bodies surface, which is what we were trying to calculate in the first place (or actually I see now you wanted velocity, not displacement, but the two are related). So yeah, the math for this got quite messy quite quickly, and my head hurts.

Is there a way to know what parts have this property when attached? Might help me streamline some of my larger creations.

Once I get home, I will likely continue working on my SSTO. Right now it tends to lose control in the upper atmosphere but I think I can get that worked out. It has come a long way from when it couldn’t even get off the ground.

Uh, it wasn’t? The flight’s official name wasn’t even “Apollo 1†it was AS-204. There had been plenty of missions in the Apollo program beforehand, just none of them manned. The entire point of the mission was to do a manned test of the newly designed command service module (CSM), though they didn't get that far.

I miss having more than 2 weeks of vacation a year.

For stuff like aerobraking I think it is fair to use it because it’s often a hit or a miss, and I’ll be damned to actually work out the necessary equations to calculate where I need to be. I also used it extensively while flying my Mun base to the Mun, mainly because it lagged so much that the process of flying it over was completely unfun, and I definitely did not want to do it again. I had to rage quit a few times as it was, and that was with quicksave, nevermind without it. Otherwise, I don’t really use it, it adds to the tension. I currently have a fuel tank on its way to Duna because I used up way more fuel than I needed to on the descent. I could have just reloaded a quicksave, but turning it into a rescue mission is much more fun.

One thing you can also do is use RCS thrusters to push your rover down onto the ground if you think your rover is about to become airborne. This also is great on low-gravity worlds as it allows you to get more traction and accelerate much faster.

I think I would be a builder. I often get ideas where I think “Man, building a vehicle that could [insert random task here] would be so cool!†Only to never actually use the vehicle for said application. I also have more fun building the stuff than actually putting the stuff to use in many cases. I enjoyed building my Mun base but actually sending that thing to the Mun made me want to cry, it lagged so much that controlling the thing was an absolute nightmare. A while back I tried to standardize/streamline a bunch of my designs (thanks to subassembly loader) so I could spend less time in the VAB/SPH and more time actually flying, but I find that pretty much everything I build becomes more or less custom and using standardized designs doesn’t save me any time .

For Sci-fi I’m going with the good ol’ Star Destroyer. Of course it makes no sense realistically, but damn that thing looks badass. Maybe it was because I was a little kid when I first saw it but I just love the look of it. For real life, the Saturn V of course. Because it’s so ridiculously big and powerful. The N1 would be a runner up if the thing didn’t explode every time they launched it.

I believe Chris Hadfield mentioned he has no interest in politics, to which I say good. I have great respect for Chris, more than any politician I know of. I'd prefer that he and others like him not get mixed up in the nasty business that is called politics.

How is that propaganda or trolling? I agree with everything Secondguessing said in that post.

Could you please explain why exactly the avionics package is better for planes?

I am really failing to see the logic in that argument. Why would the lack of an Apollo program result in the USA dropping more nukes? As mentioned above me, the Apollo program was already an extension of the nuclear arms race and I fail to see how its existence prevented further bombings. Even if ICBMs were never invented the possibility of mutual assured destruction with the USSR still exists and that should be enough to prevent the USA from using anymore nukes.

I was lucky in that my junior high school math teacher was really, really good. He made what can rather be drab topic somewhat interesting and engaging, and more importantly he made it easy to understand. He went in for heart surgery when I was halfway through grade 9 and the teacher we had for the rest of the year was one of the worst I’ve ever had, so I feel for those who’ve had bad math teachers. Sometimes it can make all the difference. But yeah, for anyone who wants to pursue a career in physics/engineering, sorry to say it but math is a critical skill that you WILL need, there is no getting around it. I completed a degree in mechanical engineering a few years back and 95% of my courses involved math, in one way or another.

Launches, mainly because it’s something I’ve done countless times. I turn on mechjeb and read a book now.

If it was not a “race†and NASA took their time getting to the moon, say by the mid-late 70s instead of the end of the 60s, they probably could’ve gotten there for a significantly reduced cost. But because of political pressure, money was thrown at the program to do things as fast as possible (which ended killing people along the way) in a very inefficient, albeit quick manner. So yes, I would consider it to be an economic “waste.†That said, I believe it was worth it.

Jeb, Bill, and Bob are dead in my save as far as I can tell. I didn’t edit my save at all (I wouldn’t even know what to edit) and they have not respawned for a mission in a long, long time. I have other Kerbals that have died repeatedly and exist in multiple places at the same time, but for whatever reason in my game, Jeb, Bill and Bob appear to be gone. Don’t know why this happened in my game and not others.

Thanks, I'll try moving landing gear. I guess an ideal place would be just behind the C of M / C of L, just enough so the plane doesn't tip over when it's on the ground?

So I’ve been experimenting with a variety of different planes lately that serve different purposes, and I find that a lot of my larger designs (but not THAT large) have a hard time getting off the ground. Once they are in the air they control just fine, but for some reason they are reluctant to become airborne. What usually happens when I take off at the KSC runway, is that I pitch up the whole time with nothing happening, and then at the end of the runway, there is a little bump in the ground that gets me a few feet off the ground and from there I never have an issue getting into the air (assuming the tail of my plane doesn’t smash into the ground, which has been known to happen). Is there some trick to generating lift while you’re on the ground? Realistically I know large airplanes rely on flaps to generate the required lift, though I’m not sure how to design this in game or if it is even necessary. Seems silly to have to rely on bumps to get planes into the air, so some tips are appreciated.