Brotoro

I say, "Meh." But, yes, the damage is overdone.

Or: NIGHT OF THE KRAKEN!

Launch giant sunshades into space between the Sun and Earth. Pump particulates high into the atmosphere. Use ships to spray ocean water into the air to increase cloud formation. Build more nuclear power plants and open Yucca a Mountain, ya babies. Then go, "Oops," when you accidentally tip the Earth into the next ice age prematurely.

Dres dread.

No. If you fall from a standing start, even from a very great distance, you will only be going at escape velocity when you reach the Earth (or Sun if you want to fall onto that). The escape velocity of the Earth, and even of the Sun, are far from relativistic speeds. That's what escape velocity is...the speed you have to go away from an object if you want to barely keep moving away at greater and greater distances. So falling in from far away simply reverses the process.

If you drop something onto the Earth, it will never move fast enough for relativistic effects to become important no matter how high you drop it from, so you won't be able to calculate such a height.

I used Keplers 3rd Law. P2=d3 Where p is the orbital period and d is the semimajor axis (the average distance of the Moon from the center of the Earth) If the Moon is stopped in its orbit and falls straight down to Earth, it's essentially now in a very skinny elliptical orbit that has a major axis equal to the Moon's distance from the Earth. The orbital period of the Moon is p=SQRT(d3) For the falling Moon, the orbital period would be SQRT((d/2)3) because it's SEMImajor axis is now d/2. So the time to fall will be half of that. So take the orbital period of any object, and the time to fall straight down would be that orbital period divided by 5.66 Sidereal period of the Moon is 27.322 days, so it would fall in 4.8 days. Note that this is the time it would take to reach the center of the Earth, not its surface, but it's going to be moving pretty fast by the time it hits the atmosphere and the shock wave annihilates you, so you won't have time to complain about the small error.

4.83 days, if you stopped its sideways motion instantly and let it fall.

Yes. I also fell prey to the annoyance when zooming in and out and accidentally messing up the maneuver node settings (by accidentally having the cursor over one of the controls). Can't say that I'm a fan of the added feature. Of course, I use the Precise Node mod, which has the O hot key for opening collapsed maneuver nodes, so I at least don't have to scroll in to open the collapsed node, then scroll back out again.

Maltesh points out an important thing here, so I give unto him some kerbal snacks. Sidereal time is not very useful for Joe Kerman on the ground at KSC.

I've made some standardized rockets, then tested them to see what they can lift into orbit. When I have a payload of a certain mass, I grab the appropriate launcher. Although recently I've designed my payloads with the lifting capacity of my most-used launcher in mind. If I need something heavier in orbit, I launch it in parts and dock them together.

Well, it wasn't working in version 0.10 for me. But I have just installed 0.11 and it works fine again. Thank you!

Hmmm... With it's diminutive size, I wonder if the answer to Life in the Kerbol system is 4.2

Some people use parts clipping because they care first and foremost about the aesthetics of the ship. I'm fine with that, but I wouldn't use such ships for normal gameplay. Clipping that KSP lets me do without having to turn on the Allow Clipping cheat, I'm generally fine with (unless it seems too unrealistic). And any similar clipping, even if it required turning on the cheat, I don't mind (because KSP has a limited selection of parts, but in a real spacecraft you'd have the option of blending parts together). Some things that strike me as too far-fetched are clipping engines inside of other engines, or clipping air intakes into other air intakes where they couldn't all be physically getting air.

This thread is totally confused.

Nicely done!

Arrgh. Today I did my first set of interplanetary maneuvers since installing Precise Node 0.10, and the O key not working drove me nuts. It has been a long time since I've had to do without that handy keystroke to open collapsed maneuver nodes, and I guess this reminds me how much I count on it. Even worse now, when I scroll-scroll-scroll in to reopen a collapsed node, and then scroll-scroll-scroll back out…I've managed to accidentally be scroll-scroll-scrolling on top of one of the maneuver node handles…which messes up all your maneuver node settings in 0.23.5. Arrgh.

Kooks. Squat, bug-eyed, green-skinned kooks. And after calling them that, they will drop an asteroid on us. So, really, it pays to be polite to spacefaring races.

I don't know what a "stock rebalancing project" is, therefore I have not considered it. I can't think of a good reason my kerbals would want to redirect an asteroid to Laythe.

Planet orbits have changed? Uh, oh...

Um... What happened? And why do I have cake crumbs in my beard?

Yes, but the backwards message is in Spanish, so it doesn't work on me. Also…that means it's just kerbals singing.

Preview for Part 31... CONFIDENTIAL For eyes only of listed KSC administrators, specified friendly senators, and designated officials in member companies of the Kerbodyne Launch Consortium. Certainly NOT to be seen by any officers or employees of Rockomax Conglomerates, any officers or employees of member companies in the Rockomax Launch Alliance, any unfriendly senators, any members of the press, and especially not that guy Phil who runs the lunch counter in the Astronaut Complex…he blabs everything. CONFIDENTIAL

Hmmm… Yes, the diagrams and the timeframe are correct for it to have been this Medusa system (but I don't remember him using that name…nor do I remember if the guy giving the talk was Johndale Solem). As I recall, the "parachute" material was some kind of high-tech plastic, quite thin. And I presume shaped charges would be used, yes. Better efficiency. "Image: Medusa in operation. Here we see the design 1) At the moment of bomb explosion; 2) As the explosion pulse reaches the parachute canopy; 3) Effect on the canopy, accelerating it away from the explosion, with the spacecraft playing out the main tether with its winch, braking as it extends, and accelerating the vehicle; 4) The tether being winched back in. Imagine all this in action and the jellyfish reference becomes clear. Credit: George William Herbert/Wikimedia."

The pusher plate of an Orion is not a kilometer in diameter. Also, the shock absorber problem is just one of engineering. I once attended a talk at Los Alamos National Lab where the presenter discussed a variation of the Orion concept that used a large canopy (looked something like a large parachute) that would be on lines kilometers ahead of the main body of the ship. The propulsion nukes in this case were detonated far ahead of ship, but behind the "parachute" which acted to catch part of the expanding cloud from the bomb. This rapidly accelerated the "parachute", and line was played out from the main ship while it was accelerated forward. Once the impulse of the blast had been absorbed, the "parachute" was reeled back to its original distance from the main ship and the another nuclear propulsion charge could be sent forward for the next impulse. The talk was titled "Bungie Jumping to Mars" or something like that.