p1t1o

Wh..what is this!! Th-there's petrol everywhere! And are...are you playing with MATCHES!!?

Very difficult to prove he *didn't* build it, but the lack of proof that he*did* may well be just as significant. Pics or it never happened. Still not sure I really understand the question lol! XD

Shame there isn't a "philosophy" forum

Copper and alloys thereof would be my bet. I just saw them install some new power lines at my local train station, they appear to be pure copper or some copper-rich alloy, weight would be an important concern there, combined with tensile strength. I dunno if its the absolute pinnacle of conductivity-to-weight but it must be pretty good.

It doesnt make you dumb, but it doesn't make you clever either - if you are interested in staying dumb, it will help you out just as much as those who want to get smarter. Hence all the flat-earth-creationist-moon-hoaxer-holocaust-denier-lizard-people-thule-society-melting-steel-beams freaks find each other and commence the great global circle-jerk whilst uttering their warcry "Doo summ reeserch sheeple! FACT!".

Im not sure if this really pans out, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read the OP: There is a phenomenon called a "starbow" which is theorised by some people to be what you would see if you were travelling close to the speed of light. Light coming from in front of you would be blue-shifted, probably out of the visual spectrum, light coming from behind would be similarly red-shifted, around you at the mid-point, you get the so-called "starbow" a bright band of un-blue-or-red-shifted light (just regular stars basically). If you were perhaps travelling through the galactic nucleus where stars are very densely packed, this "starbow" might resemble what is described, a "sun-band", if your planet was travelling through this region close to the speed of light. As the planet rotated on its axis, the band would appear to rotate around the planet. Im not sure but I think the "starbow" effect might not be universally supported and possibly you would see something else, and even if it worked out it might not be enough to be a "sun".

Build a house, just a regular house, with furniture and stuff, no rockets. Have a Kerbal in there and have him go about some day-to-day admin, maybe catch some breakfast.

No matter which way you cut it, you wont be able to do that without dumping some heat into it, it will expand.

I think you might be overestimating the complexity of ramjets, there is a reason that they are sometimes known as "flying stovepipes". And there are plenty of declassified designs available to peruse, but calculating a new on from scratch, since we are talking the aerospace industry here, should be relatively trivial. Sure, if you want the engine to be a ramjet and something else as well, things start to get tricky, but a plain old mach 2-3 ramjet should be easily attainable given any reasonable design effort. They are so simple the Nazis experimented with coal-fired ones. *edit* For some reading on the design process of a high-performance military ramjet, there is a ton of information on the development of the Talos missile here: http://www.okieboat.com/Talos history.html

+1 would like

I feel that that would be limited by the time it would take to select and upload the content to the drives themselves, before you even load the car. But heh, cool. XKCD is smart.

I suppose so, the spacey graphics got an upgrade though, and star trek isnt the only offender.

I rolled my eyes so hard when I saw the dirtbike on the poster... And come on, this is 2016, can we PLEASE get a better alien than straight-up-no-frills human in striking makeup. It must not have cost a lot to phone in female darth maul. Having said that, I heard the film is a laugh so I'll probably watch it. No spoilers!

Humans, even scientists, are not naturally cold, logical knowledge machines. Even a scientist who has spent his whole life in the pursuit of knowledge can be ignorant outside of their field. And there is the instinctive resistance to changing our point of view, if we are already comfortable with it, faced only with verbal proof of something better. Example 1: My father is a pretty accomplished chemical engineer who now runs a university department teaching a PhD course which merges design, fashion and material science. However, I have on more than one occasion heard him express doubt that the Moon landings were real. Example 2: You ever get a graze or cut that required a plaster? Did you sometimes take the plaster off to let the wound "breathe"? The prevailing medical science supports "moist wound healing" wherein a dressing is kept on at all times (amongst finer details). This knowledge I picked up whilst working R&D in consumer wound care. We would run consumer studies to find out how best to tell people on packaging that you shouldnt remove these dressings for them to work best. No matter how we expressed the faster healing rates, reduction in scarring and much reduced chances of infection, people would nod and agree with you till they were blue in the face - And almost without exception, would go home and immediately remove their dressing. It was impossible to sell "moist" over "breathe" no matter what rationale, what pretty diagrams or solid, multiple clinical data we had.

I've actually had this one since I first got a hotmail account way back in the mid-late 90's.

So what Im hearing is that the atmospher of Pandora is...farts with a bit of Xenon? On topic: There's tons and tons of data available with a bit of googling on what happens when a human is exposed to low pressure, low oxygen or vacuum environments. For low pressure/ppO2/vacuum exposure, you're not looking at more than 10-15 seconds of useful conciousness. There is at least one documented example (Soviet fatalities notwithstanding) of a human being explosively decompressed to vacuum, he lost conciousness in approx 10 seconds, was quickly rescued and made a full recovery. Said he could feel the saliva in his mouth boiling.

Well, I could talk for a while about what I think is bad about marketing, how I understand that not every industry/company is the same and not all marketing is bad in-and-of-itself but I dont want to derail the thread with boring discussions about work Suffice to say quite a lot can be summed up by: decent pair of jeans = reasonable price, half-decent pair of jeans with a Levi logo = absolutely flipping ridiculous price. There's brand recognition and profit generation, and then there's just being...for want of a looser forum filter...a big bag of sausages. I just dont want to read in a headline sometimes in the future something like "Today the OchreManta probe was dispatched proudly bearing a 2-foot nickel-cadmium Iron Man statue, this will be the furthest a Marvel representation has travelled into the solar system, although it doesn't quite match the DC record for a 270kg solid iron Batman that went to Neptune last year. See pages 2-11 for a full breakdown. For scientific news on the matter see page 398. For sex tips, see the rest of page 398."

Well the reason I setup the poll was because when I saw the article, I wsan't sure which way I leant, to optimism or pessimism - so wanted to put it to a group. Im glad that the prevailing opinion leans towards the brighter side Empty marketing and branding purely motivated by profit (and/or basically arbitrary marketing doctrine) is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but on the other hand I know that having "pet peeves" can make one overly pessimistic when they appear.

Dont worry, I only mentioned it because I thought it was darkly amusing

Slightly disturbing, thread title reads like the subject heading of an email in Josef Mengele's inbox!

Ah, the Sprint, one of my favorites. And one of my favorite anecdotes to go with it: (Quoted from "ABM Research & Development at Bell Laboratories" http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/WW3_Documents/ABM_Bell/ABM_Bell.pdf) "The SPRINT missile, with its acceleration to high velocity within the dense atmosphere at low altitudes, produced such high aerodynamic heating that its skin surface could be cooled with an oxy-acetelyne torch!" That PDF makes some excellent reading btw!

So there's this: http://io9.gizmodo.com/groot-and-rocket-raccoon-to-be-sent-into-space-sort-of-1784161530 Is this a depressing evolution of the conquest of our normal lives by out-of-control capitalism? Or: Is this a hopeful look towards a brighter future by introducing the general public more and more to the world of space travel/industry? Or: Is this, in fact, not really that big of a deal?

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Hmm? We are talking airliners here aren't we? Its not going to have smaller wings if it needs to fly at all, in fact larger wings would capture more ground effect and rebounded exhaust, increasing lift in the VTOL mode. No reason why any craft cant have lifting body characteristics either. Are you talking about an SSTO? About aborts, this isn't necessarily the case. For example, the concorde apparently had quite benign characteristic even if two engine went out on the same side at Mach 2. This was due to the way air was dumped from beneath the engine, countering the loss of lift and reducing the increase in drag.

All wheels are kind of broken right now due to problems in Unity, the next update, 1.2, should address them. Do not expect any landing gear mods to come out, or be updated, until some time after that. And no, there is no current ETA on 1.2, it comes when it comes. I'd give it 6 months.