p1t1o

Next week?! Dont Oort objects take *millenia* to fall into the inner system?

Anyone else bothered by the weird grammatical choice of "Kerbal is awesome!"?

Oh holy heck thats a long paper, tl;dr for reelz. I cant really tell how good the science is, maybe its sound Im not sure. The authors credentials seem to check out - in so far as I googled the university and his name and it didnt mention perpetual motion or conspiracies... But just because its more fun, I'll skip straight to cynicism. Points: First off, that is not a link to a peer-reviewed journal. Peer reviewing has its problems, but its something. Distinct lack of lots of squiggly equations for such a long paper, seems odd. Signal resembles an ET source because thats what they decided an ET signal would look like in a previous paper? Complete lack of things like prime numbers or other commonly accepted intelligence indicators in the signal. Was there any data in the signal at all? Not much of a "signal" otherwise. Unless its buried in the paper but I figure that would be in the conclusion somewhere... 234? All keen on communicating? Just going purely on Occam's razor I would believe a paper about how we are all in the matrix before that... Wasn't there a thing a while ago about a possible Dyson Sphere being discovered? Now this? What is next? The lead author wrote an article for scientific american in 1994 on the subject of liquid mirrors. FWIW I have heard of liquid-mercury telescopes before and they at least seem legit. ***edit*** Snopes to the rescue: http://www.snopes.com/strange-signals-are-probably-extraterrestrial/ Long&Short - Almost the entire scientific community thinks their ET conclusions are extremely far-fetched. The conclusion that it could be aliens because it matches his own prediction of what a signal would look like is circular. There is a lot of language like "this is highly speculative but it could be ET" is leant on far too heavily. On a side note a lot of publications seized upon this and started publishing articles with titles like "Scientist say signal is probably aliens!" and stuff - this however is more of a problem with scientific journalism, and a very deep-seated one at that.

Possibly relevant: "Cratering Capabilities of Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons" http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a108989.pdf Not kinetic, but it may as well be, it is still a direct energy-to-crater relationship. Tons of detail.

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-107_Passive_Attack_Weapon

Yeah that fits perfectly.

Yes that is probably accurate. The question of ships has been examined in the context of the new Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles, whose terminal phase resembles an orbital maritime strike. Without actually trying it out, only vague conclusions can be drawn, naturally, but here are some salient points IIRC: Yes, ships are vulnerable. ABM systems already in service on some modern ships are quite well suited for defence against these weapons. A kinetic projectile would likely be more physically robust vs. conventional ABM, but deflection would be possible. The "kill-chain" (Command structure, sensor network, and communication links to the weapon itself) is unusually long and is vulnerable to jamming/disruption. This is likely to be similar for orbital kinetic weapons too, complicated by the fact that ships are moving targets. The best defence against ballistic or orbital weaponry is political/deterrent in nature, especially since anything streaking in from space is indistinguishable from a nuclear warhead.

"Spice is the something-or-other of life." - My other half. "Everything in moderation, including moderation itself." - Unknown. Often attributed to anyone from Plato to Benjamin Franklin to "the president of my wine tasting club". Also I think I came up with it independently once...

See Newton's approximation for impact depth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth It is an approximation that calculates penetration depth based only on the relative density of target and projectile and the length of the projectile. The approximation is valid only at high velocities because at these speeds the energy required to break any chemical bond, regardless of material, is insignificant compared to the total kinetic energy involved. This theory and approximation does in fact pan out quite accurately for a great many situations from a long-rod anti-tank kinetic penetrator impacting armor to meteorites impacting the atmosphere. Note that velocity is not a component, above a certain threshold higher velocity will not result in greater penetration. I have also read, though I cannot find a reference, that as total kinetic energy rises further above the chemical binding energy of the target, the more spherical the release of that energy becomes. what this means is basically as kinetic energy rises through an order of magnitude or two higher than the binding energy, the energy release resembles a "penetration" less and an "explosion" more. This neatly ties into Newton's approximation in that above a certain energy, higher velocity does not increase penetration, but it does still increase the intensity of the energy release at impact. Note that this applies for projectiles penetration into the atmosphere, witness the way that meteors tend to explode in the atmosphere rather than penetrating all the way. Ergo, increasing (orbital weapon) projectile velocity only increases destruction of the target up to a point, beyond which you are just dumping more energy into the atmosphere, and further beyond which you risk premature destruction of your projectile. There will be an optimum re-entry profile for target destruction, another profile for maximum penetration and neither of which will be a "maximum attainable velocity" profile. NB: Funny that Newton derived an equation almost 400 years ago that is still relevant when considering orbital weaponry!

Oh dag-NABBIT I didn't realise lol! Schoolboy error... But anyhoo, I cant tell which side of the fence you are on...?

I think this is a gameplay allowance. Given that we have the ability in-game to accelerate time up to arbitrarily fast values, any temporal penalty is meaningless, the only meaningful penalty is quality of data. If one is that fussed about the realistic effects of signal degradation and bandwidth, then the way "science" and research has been reduced to a simple numerical count must send one into conniptions!

Yes, especially if they are at all interested in engineering or serious space travel applications, they will care...negatively.

Yes, with the target vessel - controlled from the target docking port is set to "align to target" (with the target being the incoming craft's docking port) - and then piloting the incoming vessel, having auto-align set to the targets port, (so both vessels auto-correct to point the docking ports at each other) you can pull of some ca-ray-zee dockings!

@sigmareaver Best thing to do would be to update the bug report on the tracker with your findings, or create a new one if you think it is necessary.

Real quick this one, see the poll!

A similar degree of pragmatism usually: MunProbe II, CommSat VI 90Mm, MinLander etc. Sometimes the wording might be "jazzed up" a bit if I have launched a lot of that class and need to differentiate a version, so "MunProbe XIV" becomes "MunSpy I" for example, or "MunSpike" for a lander. Occasionally for more significant craft (manned interplanetary, long-term one-off missions etc) I will give them a more whimsical, bespoke name like "Vision", "Duna Cruiser" or "System Phoenix" or somesuch.

On a scale of 1-10? I dunno, hard to say. I'd say its about right though, whatever it is. Sometimes hard, sometimes easy, and is consistent with its own logic. I've found that occasionally one gets "into the zone", a trance-like state where you intuitive comprehension of the forces at play seems enhanced and internalised. If you've ever played Need for Speed for any length of time you may have experienced this phenomenon. Im not the greatest at docking, but Im competent. But occasionally I have been attempting to dock some monstrosities, huge, heavy, off-centre CoM and non-optimal RCS placement. I will find that my fingers are dancing over the RCS controls (all by eye, no docking instruments) both rotational and translational, as if Im bishop from aliens doing that knife trick. Im hardly thinking about it but my huge behemoth is sliding into position with its off-axis docking port swinging smoothly towards the target. Then I'll try the exact same thing again later, perhaps during a later leg of the same missions and just careen it through the target like a train wreck through a herd of kittens. Its a mystery but I think its a common phenomenon in many games, at least in my experience: "THE ZONE".

LOL I write them and that is spot on " To avoid risks to human health and the environment, comply with the instructions for use."

And dV isnto TOO hard to calculate manually Less talk of what is "necessary" and this dV nonsense! Yes stock KSP could use a dV readout, but this is the wrong thread if you are interested in that. If KSP only contained what is necessary, well, I think it would be a lot less of a game. It would have far fewer parts for one thing. No eastereggs. The KSC models would look like poop etc. etc. And a wind tunnel might actually be of use to some people. Didn't even think of that, even better!

I presume this is because you can almost count the number of anti-atoms on the planet (at least in the hands of humans) with your fingers. I would wager that as soon as significant production becomes available, it will very quickly become a highly regulated substance. For one thing, it is already known that with a tiny amount of antimatter, you can make a H-bomb exceedingly small, and without using any fissile material. It will not be available in stores. My day job is in chemical regulation as it happens, I would *LOVE* to write a Material Safety Data Sheet for antimatter Now, what would be the most appropriate firefighting measures.... Handling and storage is going to be a long section... Penetration time of glove material? Oral toxicity? Odour?

And "what is that moving picture box!! What are you *wearing* seriously whats IS thisAAAAAAAAAAAGHDONTTOUCHMEDEMONAAAAAAAGH!" Yes but it was almost *entirely* made of struts! Match that!

Personally, I like how the aesthetics of my craft evolve as the design demands various parts to be added somehow. So if my craft requires struts, I rather they be manually added and visible, giving the craft a more "industrial" look and a more pragmatic feel. In sci-fi terms this equates to the ugly but practical "Red Dwarf" compared to the slick and shiny "Enterprise".

Presumably, just after the release of 2.0 it would be consumed by the sun as it expands into a Red Giant.

Uhm...I may not be exactly the best spokesperson, I have never actually seen this bug, or any other since I am on a KSP hiatus. I was simply chiming in because I think orbit related bugs are important. But as far as I understand it, it was reported that orbit apoapsis was becoming unstable when the periapsis reached within the atmospheric limits. Ie: a 67km x 100km orbit would decay even whilst the craft was at apoapsis. @sigmareaver reports it may be related to modding. @Sharpy suggests it may be related to hyperedit. Bugs which require extra burns in-mission? Nope. No thanks. Would rather have random full CTDs. RUD is bad too, but extra bug-commanded burns are are not solution for anything. Cant we just agree that as many bugs as possible should be squashed?

I think that that is going to be very difficult to know accurately at this point, since the kinetic energy does not come entirely (or even largely) from the annihilation of matter. But as a guesstimate I would imagine that it is going to be on the order of grams-to-kilograms, depending mostly on the final mass of the probe, but also on the efficiency they manage to reach with the final design. For illustration purposes only: A 1000kg probe travelling at ~5%c has the kinetic energy of 1.2kg of mass-energy. (note that this means that a 1-ton probe of this ilk would require significantly more than (1.2*0.5)kg of antimatter.)