K^2

It doesn't matter how massive an object is. It's still going to follow the same trajectory through a galaxy. The only difference is how it's going to affect its neighborhood. A rock will just sail right through. A rogue planet might pick up some gas clouds. A wandering black hole can throw star systems it passes close to way out of wack.

How are jagged lines an aliasing artifact? These are related, certainly, but I don't see how it's aliasing.

Yeah, it's something that didn't occur to me right away either, but you can't have covalent bonds with this metastable Helium state. Long story short, any covalent bond would require an electron from another atom having opposite spin to get close enough to this excited He for it to be pulled right into the s1. Pretty much the same consideration would forbid any ionic bonds. Not that we would seriously consider these anyways. So Van der Waals with something really, really inert is your best bet. And something like an fcc lattice with regular He does appear like the only option.

There is a type of SRB which can operate with what's essentially a slow detonation wave. A fuel this unstable and this energetic would be ideal for this SRB type. Of course, this requires a polymer matrix, which will absorb a large chunk of this very impressive ISP. But yeah, the problem is making it stable enough to simply be storable for any duration. A strong magnetic field can help you keep the electron spins polarized. But at cryogenic, LN2 temperatures, you'd still need something like 10T for the field to have any sort of an effect. For reference, the strongest magnet I've seen is 11T, weighs over a ton, requires liquid helium cooling, and has a bore of only about an inch in diameter.

There is no real way to run fusion past iron without supplying enormous amounts of pressure. When I say enormous amounts, we are talking star core collapse here, because that's how heavier elements are naturally created. You can get heavier elements by smashing individual particles together, as is done at some accelerator facilities, but amount of matter you can generate that way is tiny.

Nah. That was a different approach. Genetic algorithms have demonstrated an ability to take an almost optimal path, and tune it up. They just aren't very good at converging when you start very far from an optimum. So I might still make use of them if I find a good approximate solution analytically. I do have a couple of other ideas I'm trying out. I'll figure something out eventually.

AA isn't a script. It's a rendering technique. Typically, you render at higher resolution (hence the xN that usually goes with it,) and then down-sample the image to screen resolution. The primary purpose is to actually get rid of aliasing, as the name suggests, but it also helps with jagged edges. Most of the differences between various AA methods are in how the down-sampling is carried out. That said, yeah, there are shaders (aka effects) which allow you to get individual objects rendered as if AA is on. They tend to be a bit more "expensive" than full screen AA, because they are accomplished in multiple passes, but sometimes the effect is worth it.

I think I just wrote the worst optimizer ever. Pro-tip. Discrete space techniques do not work for trajectory optimization. This would make an awesome path-finder, though. Back to the drawing board.

void FloatCurve::Add(float time, float value, float inTangent, float outTangent) ... this.Add(float.Parse(strArrays[0]), float.Parse(strArrays[1]), float.Parse(strArrays[2]), float.Parse(strArrays[3])); So the order in the config file is key, value, inTangent, outTangent. The in tangent is on the left, while the out tangent is on the right of the key.

Ah, I see. I didn't realize source for MechJeb was available. Yeah, that gives me an ideal starting point. Thank you.

Simplest way to understand this is to consider the centrifugal effect of your orbital velocity as reduction of gravity. As you start to accelerate horizontally, it's as if you perform ascent in lower gravity, letting you reach higher altitude with lower vertical velocity. So going straight up, then accelerating horizontally is way less efficient than starting to build your horizontal speed early. Of course, you don't want to start too early either, because that would result in too much drag. Hence the whole procedure of gravity turn, and figuring out the best way to do that. Speaking of which, I have an idea on how to do full 2D optimization in a much more elegant way. But I'm finding that just running simulations is a bit boring. Is there a way to feed a curve with throttle and attitude to MechJeb, or some other plugin, perhaps? Or am I better off writing one from scratch?

Or distort the gravitational field around them until they are equipotential. But yeah, one of these, definitely.

Just do everything in a rotating frame of reference. Add centrifugal and Coriolis forces to your rocket. Centrifugal acceleration is Ω × (r × Ω), while Coriolis is -2 v × Ω. If you need forces, multiply each one by mass of your rocket. From there on, you just work with it as Newtonian problem in 2D without further complications. You don't. The fact that thrust doesn't decrease with velocity already gives you a power boost at higher speeds. Power is equal to F∙v.

That's one of the interpretations. There are several, and they are all mathematically equivalent. The difference is primarily in what you call an observer and how strict you wish to be in switching between observers. (There are some other important differences, which you can look up.) If you want to chose just one observer for the entire system and stick with it, then you may as well assume that collapse happens when that observer interacts with the observed sub-system. That's your Copenhagen Interpretation. If you want to consider system with multiple possible observers, you start to have to worry about what happens with measurements made by different observers at different places and different times. Naturally, some interesting phenomena must take place, but there are some physical limits to how significant they are. One way to restrict this is to consider decoherence. And most statistical or ensemble interpretations will take this into account. Here, like you said, you assume the system collapsed when decoherence has taken place. Finally, you can consider the whole QM problem as a whole, without simplifying it by collapse. Then you have no choice but to look at Many Worlds Interpretation or similar. The key here is that you have to consider a global wave function, it never collapses, and any observer is always a quantum sub-system in a super-position. It has limited practical value in describing experiments, but it's the interpretation where you can intuitively see resolutions to most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics. In MWI, you can immediately see why EPR is not a paradox, why entanglement carries no information, but you can use it for Quantum Teleportation, and even Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser doesn't seem so weird. But the key thing to remember is that these interpretations are equivalent. There are some crazy ones out there that are almost nonsensical, but Copenhagen and MWI are equivalent on the level of theorems proving equivalence. Which is why I always recommend looking at anything "weird' in QM from perspective of these two. It gives you two diametrically opposing views on the same thing, and anything that looks unintuitive from one end is clear from the other.

lodestar, you understand that everything you are talking about does not meet criteria of a theory, right? As such, they do not belong in a science section. You can have a philosophical discussion on these subjects, but it doesn't belong here.

You have to take the polls with about a truck-full of rock salt. Same polls in Soviet Union would also reveal majority to be irreligious. Yet, somehow, within just a few years of collapse, over 90% where Russian Orthodox. When you can't be member of the party and openly admit to being religious, and you can't have a half-decent job or go to university without being member of the party, when they ask you if you are religious, guess what you say? As for organized religion or not, I'm not sure how much difference it makes to the topic at hand. It still points to people choosing superstition and spirituality over reason. An irreligious person doesn't necessarily have to be an anti-theist. In fact, anti-theism is practically a religion of its own. But when majority of the population are keeping various religious symbols and worship in their own ways, whether or not they go to specific temples makes no difference. They are religious people. I suppose, it's not quite as bad in the big picture, because at least nobody is exploiting their religion. But it's still a symptom.

There is a huge difference between atheist and non-religious. China and Japan are dominated by atheist religion. That, by the way, despite best efforts of The Party in the former. You only need to take a look at post-Soviet Russia to see how this works. So while yes, I would agree that these regions are predominantly atheist, they would still have, by far, a religious majority.

"Hm.. Are there any games about modern spaceflight in your days?"

If the in/out tangents for key are specified, you just use the values that are there. If tangents are not specified, you compute what the in and out tangents would be in pieceweise-linear case. But then you set both of them to average, id est, t_in = t_out = (t_in + t_out)/2. That gives you a smooth curve instead of a piecewise-linear one. Of course, for end points, you only have t_in or t_out, so you just use that value, rather than averaging it with zero or anything else. I've written a C++ class that handles animation curves. So if you find it easier to reference code, feel free to take a look at it. I wasn't trying to code for clarity, though. Oh, and if anyone wants to use the whole thing or any parts in their work, consider this an unconditional permission to do so. curve.h curve.cpp Be warned that I have not tested DropKey methods, and there is no clean destructor. (Keys will be lost in memory if you delete parent curve.)

You are on the right track, but I would like you to take a good look at Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment. In a nut shell, it says that you can make a measurement, but then if instead of taking a look at results, you quickly erase the results, it is as if the measurement has not taken place. (Yeah, there is some of that famous over-simplification.) Worse! The data can be erased after inteference pattern has already been recorded. Now, there are some restrictions on all of that, but at the face value, it contradicts everything you've just said above. At the end of the day, what you say is absolutely correct. It's the interaction between measurement apparatus and the object of study that effects a change. But interaction between observer(s) and measurement apparatus are also measurements. And the underlying objective reality itself is just a touch more complicated, because when all's said and done, what we're really dealing with are fields, and we have to be talking about a field theory. The cool thing about your basic Quantum Mechanics is that it helps you step around a lot of these issues by introducing a few nifty axioms, making sure that math works out even if you haven't figured out exactly what sort of a thing you're studying. Does it contradict your normal, every-day understanding of causality? Yeah. But why shouldn't it? Actual locality is not violated within Quantum Mechanics. Information is still local, and causality is preserved. But if you aren't careful about your choice of interpretation, you end up with "spooky action at a distance". It really is just a problem of interpretation, however, and isn't the problem of core theory.

The actual control input is rate of turn. So if it's trying to change its angle at circularization, any turn input prior to that is going to be an adjustment. So these end up distributed almost evenly through the coasting region. All of the parts in the test rocket are default drag model, which does not take angle into account. And you can see that it was trying to get rid of that abrupt change. So yes, what I'm working on now is starting with something a bit better. Currently, the seed has a turn that starts at 30s and ends at 130s. I'll try it out.

We really need to do something about that education system.

A preferred-frame model that properly treats field theory does not exist. Experiments that demonstrate preferred frame do not exist. Saying that there is a preferred-frame theory is the same as saying that intelligent design is a scientific theory.

No. For the delta-V computation from ISP you always use 9.81m/s². The reason for that is that ISP is impulse you get per weight of fuel. But it's always weight on Earth/Kerbin. It's really just a terrible definition that results in that. A better definition, and indeed, what Tsiolkovsky used, is to define impulse per mass of propellant. In which case, you end up with ISP measured in m/s instead of seconds. It also ends up being equal to average exhaust velocity. And then you don't have to carry around a convention constant. Alas, most of formalism on rocketry comes from U.S. engineers, and they have a funky way of dealing with weights, resulting in some weird constants you have to drag around. (Basically, it all comes down to pounds of weight and pounds of mass.)

You've claimed that dark matter is not necessary, because General Relativity is wrong. Now you are back to claiming that GR is correct, it's just not the only correct model. If an alternative model is equivalent to General Relativity in your chosen frame, then it will make all the same predictions, including dark matter. And yeah, you can pick Earth as the center of your coordinate system, then warp things about with "density" variations until time flow is consistent with General Relativity. Guess what? You've just went and constructed a special case of the manifold which is generally described from perspective of relativity. You haven't solved any problems. Just created a bunch of new ones. And even then, you still end up with galaxies having way more mass than they should based on luminous matter. Now, if you don't feel embarrassed about saying dumb stuff like that, that's unfortunate, but it's your right. But please, do it somewhere else. This is a science section, and we have certain standards around here.