J.Random

I didn't tweak anything, except commenting out the CityLights config. A couple of weird things: - the film grain effect on terrain. Not sure if intentional, looks kinda cool. - z-fighting? Sun high above, turned on the landing gear lights to see terrain better. Flickers. Was on OpenGL at the moment, not sure if important (performance impact is HUGE under OpenGL, btw). - wrong cloud shadow direction near the pole.

Guys. This site shows some 2500 objects and it's scary? It's actually close to 19000 man-made objects (2009 NASA report). If you include natural objects (which always were there and somehow didn't cause Kessler cascade), it's estimated as up to 300000 objects larger than 1cm (same report). Now, what would be a proper representation? Spatial density graphs and cumulative flux maps. They can also be scary if you look at the graphs themselves (OMG IT HAS DOUBLED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS), but then you look at numbers and they're all like 10^-8 objects per km^3, or 10^-6 objects per m^2 (yearly accumulated flux). ISS performed 5 PDAMs in 2014, 0 (zero) in 2013, 3 in 2012. That's the amount of tracked objects which passed through the 25km-wide "pizza box" and had a chance of hitting ISS higher than 1:100000. Most of the above was taken from http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/. At least it has numbers, not just pictures of extremely crowded near-Earth space.

Not my point. You say, ISS has to dodge debris all the time. I say, read on actual PDAM requirements. It's not like they dodge a bullet every time they move ISS. PDAM is executed when anything is predicted to come through the ISS security envelope (I'll leave it to you to google the "pizza box" dimensions) and has a 1:100000 chance of hitting ISS (some sources say that yellow danger level starts at 1:20000). It's not "OMG CLOUD OF DEBRIS WILL HIT ISS IN 90 MIN! WARP ONE MR SULU!" More like "Huh. This crap may get as close as 25km to ISS. Let's move it just to be sure." Debris is a problem, sure. It's getting more of a problem as we put more things in space. But it's getting blown out of proportion by graphical representations like the one linked in the OP. Measures have been taken already, with the requirement to deorbit satellites or put them into graveyard orbits. Space is HUGE.

You may need to read on when exactly DAM is executed.

I mean these objects' dimensions. If their icons/"blips" were sized proportionally to their real size and Earth, you'd see nothing except Earth.

Is disproportional graphical representation supposed to make it look worse than it is?

Minotaur (refurbished Minuteman)? And SpaceX wanted part of the market as well, what, they've canned Falcon-1 without replacement? Huh. I was under impression that the small LV market was oversaturated. Guess I was wrong, Rocket Lab may actually get customers.

Ever seen vehicle wheels bump over invisible terrain on runway without tipping vehicle over? Well, if you have both USI Tools (?) and RPM installed, you may also start seeing another vehicle internals clipping through your vehicle internals in kerbal portrait view roughly at the same spot. Or IVA hanging at funny angle in mid air in main view. Another example is that vehicle internal lighting, seen outside, may change depending on EVA kerbal orientation. I don't blame anyone and I'm not saying "OMG BROKEN FIX NAO". I think it's just how the whole "transparent pods" thing is done. It's a hack of Unity render layers (which also aren't great, to my understanding). Glitches like that can be considered minor, they don't leave errors in logs, and they can't be triggered reliably. They're PITA to debug. That's why, instead of pestering mod developers with bugs they surely know about anyway, I'm simply trying to not use said plugins. And all I'm asking is an option for that, if it's not too much of excess work for you.

Aren't there refurbished ICBMs for that already?

They say it right here: Launch cost can't be lower than production cost, can it? Their CEO claims that it's a "95% reduction in cost" in the video. They also claim that electric turbo pump powered by LiPo batteries (PhysicsSignificance = 1?) increases rocket engine efficiency to 95%. Maybe they just like the number, I don't know. This project looks really weird.

How can these guys compete in today's market? Seriously, 5$mil per launch of 100kg payload is 50000$ per kg. To low orbit! And they call it "the most affordable". Are they mad?

Just for those who tries not to use transparent pod mods because of how weird they may behave (especially together), can you add a "fallback" of some sorts? Pretty please?

The proposition to increase its payload has been made and refused, mainly because noone wanted to postpone the launch. Progress also rides "the old reliable" Soyuz-U this time instead of Soyuz-2.1. Also, don't count your chickens yet. It's 3 more days until Progress will dock to ISS.

I'm surprised none has mentioned the elephant rhino in a room yet.

Waste of time and money, unless you're talking about fancy PCIe flash accelerators. which would still be a waste of even more money for a home PC. Oops, haven't noticed the quote. Old flash cards may be good. Depends on how old are they. If they're not dead, they'll die fast under the swap.

I bet not a single SSD user noticed any slowdown caused by the parachute log spam.

KospY, not sure if you're aware, but there's some weirdness going on when you're attaching part directly from the container. I've dragged the left pipe connector directly from the container and node-attached it. It visibly sank down a bit. The right connector I first dropped on the ground, and only then grabbed and node-attached it - it stayed right on the node, where it should be. Screenshot is from the almost stock game: KIS, KAS, MM and AVC, nothing else.

I guess you mean "conductive". Yes (it's metal, after all). What I mean by "harder"? Surface tension. It tries to stay in a ball, and it may take some effort to make it grip to the surface at first. You have to be gentle with it. Another caveat is that it reacts with aluminum, so you have to use a copper heatsink (but I don't think that's a big problem, you probably don't even look at full-aluminum coolers if you want performance anyway). I mean Celsius degrees. Keep in mind, I don't guarantee you'll get that much from the LM, and if you look at reviews, they may call it exaggeration, but I'm speaking from my own experience: while my CPU stood at some 40C idle and up to 75C under load (at roughly 22-24C room temperature) with a thermal paste, with LM it was at 32-33C idle and never got higher than 55, maybe 60C under load.

Telescopic parts aren't the issue. Pulleys are.

As already mentioned, you can make working cranes with IR. Of course, they aren't proper cranes, but they're working.

If you try LM-based solutions (e.g., something from Coollaboratory), you will never want to return to thermal paste. Depending on cooler (radiator/fan), environment and CPU load, you may easily shed some 5-10 degrees in idle and up to 20 degrees under heavy load. The only caveat is that it's a bit harder to apply, especially when you're doing it for the first time.

There's Chatterer for that (except maybe for the "in space" condition).

That's KER parts. To have KER in flight in career, by default you have to either have engineer on board or one of these parts. I believe it's configurable.

Hold X. Or read the manual.

Ooooh, not bad!