Brotoro

But if the magnetic field is getting weaker over the last six months, I'd expect the cosmic ray background level to have increased, not decreased.

The flights were lower than the Seattle flight, which was at 40,000 feet (but not THAT much lower in the case of the 38,000 ft. flight). And the Seattle flight had high readings soon after takeoff while I was still far south. Maybe it's because of a difference in solar activity.

It was in my camera bag along with all my other assorted small electronic devices, and it passed through security check-in with no problem. On the plane they said people could use small handheld electronic devices all through the flight as long as they were set to some mode where they did not transmit. Large laptops needed to be stowed for takeoff and landing, but my iPod set to Airplane mode was OK. And my RADEX does not transmit in any case...although there are new versions that have Bluetooth. They let people use their phones the whole way if they were "set to Airplane or Game mode"). These rules were more relaxed compared to what I've encountered before. That, and I didn't upset any flight attendant by simply not showing them my RADEX.

The friend I was visiting had some Fiestaware plates, bowls, cups, etc. from the 1930s that has the orange pigment made from Uranium. The picture below shows the RADEX inside one of the cups, with another cup sitting to the side (the RADEX's geiger tube is along its left side), showing an impressive 51.6 microSieverts per hour. Later Fiestaware used a different pigment for the red/orange that was not based on Uranium...although the color was not a good.

I was on a little vacation this week, so I took some more in-flight radiation exposure data using my RADEX 1212. I used its automatic recording feature to store the radiation level in the plane every 5 minutes. NOTE that all takeoff/landing times below are Mountain Daylight Time (since that's the time set in the RADEX). The zero time for each recording was before takeoff so that a couple data points could be gathered on the ground. Similarly, the recording was not turned off until I left the plane so that ground level readings could be collected after landing. Flight 1 was Southwest Airlines Flight 718 Albuquerque (ABQ) to Houston Hobby (HOBBY), May-25-2015, takeoff 11:35 AM. The pilot made no announcement about the cruising altitude, but he did say that the flight detoured way south of its intended flight path to avoid thunderstorms over Texas, so we landed 10 minutes late. Flight 2 was Southwest Flight 3976 from Houston Hobby (HOBBY) to Nashville, TN (BNA), May-25-2015, actual takeoff time 3:13:30 PM MDT. The pilot announced that the expected cruising altitude would be 35,000 feet. This flight experienced two very sharp turbulence bumps (largest I've ever felt) out of nowhere, three minutes apart at 32 minutes into the flight. Flight 3 was Southwest Flight 826 Nashville, TN (BNA) to Kansas City, MO (MCI), on May-29-2015, takeoff around 9:35 AM MDT. Pilot announced cruising allude as 38,000 feet. Landed at 11:02 AM MDT. Flight 4 was Southwest Flight 1017 Kansas City (MCI) to Albuquerque (ABQ), on May-29-2015, listed takeoff time was 2:20 PM MDT but was 10 minutes late. Pilot did not specify cruising altitude. Of particular note is that the radiation levels measured on these flights were considerably lower than what I measured on my flight to Seattle back in February (see old thread)

List of things I have seen in the sky for which I have no explanation: .

I would NOT be in favor of Jool having a powerful radiation belt, because there would be no point in having cool moons like Laythe and Vall and Tylo if you couldn't send kerbals there without sentencing then to death. Jool is only about the size and mass of Venus, so there is no need for it to have a powerful magnetic field if Squad should decide they don't want it to be a kerbal death trap.

I approve of Lord Ferret's opinion.

It now functions in Safari. Good work!

Is this where I ask Squad yet again for a hose to do surface refueling? Because I can keep doing that.

Kerbals have figured out how to measure gravitons, or how to measure the curvature of space-time. We have no such instrument.

I've tested planes on 1.0.2 Duna... And I found that I can cruise at about twice the altitude that I could in the old Duna atmosphere (because of the increased lift in the new atmosphere), and I found that it was much easier to land horizontally on the surface (which I was able to accomplish every time I tried it in 1.0.2, but hardly ever managed it safely in 0.90). Whether or not it's a good or bad thing is a matter of preference, of course.

I don't know WHAT you are looking at, but when I actually test this out in the program, a ship in 0.90 with LFO exhibits a delta-V of 3980.0 m/s. The same ship in 1.0 (with LF only, and the oxidizer removed) exhibits a delta-V of 1731.6 m/s. The ship tested in 0.09 with an extra part added to make up for the difference in engine mass between the two versions gets 3279.1 m/s of delta-V. - - - Updated - - - No, that doesn't address the concern that there are no good 2.5 meter LF-only tanks. Kerbals engineers wouldn't make a tank that was designed to be used half-empty. And clipping fuel tanks together (as you did) would not be an acceptable solution for me..although that looks cool.

No. It's not a "buff" to not carry the oxidizer in the tank. With only the liquid fuel, you have less propellant in the tank. You get much less delta-V from the tank.

When I press Calculate, the Console shows: [Error] ReferenceError: Can't find variable: performance plot_chart (engines, line 254) onclick (engines, line 606)

Correct. Load page. Load defaults. Calculate. ...nothing happens. It DOES work in the Firefox 37.0.2 browser on my system.

No...you are wrong. There have been studies to use nuclear thermal rocket engines with other propellants besides liquid hydrogen (methane, carbon dioxide, water, etc.). Well, it's a good thing we have people like you around to let us know what combinations of engines and tanks are cheating in our single-player sandbox game.

iMac Quad Core 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7. Mac OSX 10.9.5, Safari browser 7.1.6.

How many minutes should it take before something appears after you click Calculate (with the default settings)?

If those are the drag coefficients, what are the frontal areas of each of those parts?

I noticed the powerful drag of struts when I was building 1.0 spaceplanes. I had a spaceplane that could reach orbit, but it was very flexible (it would sag while sitting on the runway). So I added some struts to make the airframe more rigid...and found out that the plane could no longer get to space. I think this is very unfortunate. It's true that I can get away with a lot fewer struts nowadays than I could in earlier versions of KSP, but I still need struts to brace very wobbly payload stacks. Because these struts are being used to overcome a limitation of the program (in real life we could build more rigid airframes without external struts), it seems unfair of Squad to hit us so hard with the dragginess of the struts. I would recommend that Squad reduce the drag of struts.

Realistic? Certainly. Anybody who favors realism in KSP would be hard-pressed to argue that using MechJeb is not closer to real spaceflight than eyeballing things by the seat of your pants (now THERE's a weird expression). BUT...the point of the game is to have fun. And your fun may or may not be maximized by having MechJeb do certain things for you. Once I did certain things by hand several times, I often find that MechJeb taking care of that relieves the tedium and increases the fun.

I didn't look at that (mainly I was interested in the range the plane was capable of)...but the fuel-cell DunaDog cruised along at double the altitude of the old DunaDog, so the air was pretty thin up there -- so I expect that it was close to vacuum values.

Solar panels SHOULD generate less energy under an atmosphere that in orbit, just because the atmosphere is going to absurd/scatter some of the light. Good job, Squad! They should also generate less when the sun is at very low elevations above the horizon...but the decrease to 6.14 seems like a bit hit there (but I haven't calculated the air mass). - - - Updated - - - OK...The air mass is about 5.7 times what you have straight overhead when the sun is 20 degrees above the horizon, so I guess the results seem reasonable given the loss from one airmass (the difference OP found between space and noon surface values).

I used to always have my nukes mounted on side pods equipped with parachutes so that they could be separated and recovered, both to prevent creating a little radiation hazard site and (mostly) to recycle them. In general, I don't drop nukes on other planets/moons...but mostly because my nukes tend to be on reusable Tugs. One of the problems with the goofy new overheating aspect of the nukes is that I can no longer do this (because the nukes have to be attached directly to a structure with lots of thermal mass).