Kerbart

The particle accelerator had taken 23 years to be completed, not counting the bureaucracy and red tape that preceded it. But here it was. The Accelerator To End All Accelerators. Of course there were rumors that it would create an all-consuming black hole. But scientists were certain, certain, that such pulp-fiction non-sense would not happen. A small group of scientists had collected around a big red "start" button, specifically made for this event. Of course, normally you'd just operate the thing through computers, and with a well tested script, but someone figured that if billions and billions of taxpayer money were at stake, there had to be something... visual. And so, out of some open-source electronics and a big alarm button acquired at the local army dump, they had something the press would just love, and never question its validity or function. All it really did was just replicate pressing the "enter" key, and a pre-programmed script would take over from there. “Are you SURE the world will not end?” asked one of the journalists. He was visibly excited, his tentacles squirming all over the place. Dwar 'Ev Plonki replied: “We can absolutely assure you that there is nothing, NOTHING in physics as we know it, that would cause something like that to happen.” Another journalist brought up: “But didn't you advertise this instrument as a means to, and I quote, ‘Uncover the physics previously hidden from us’?” Laughter arose from the crowd. “Good point, but we're pretty sure about this! now, if you'll excuse me, I have a button to press!” Dwar 'Ev Plonki pressed the button and they could hear the Quantum Defibrillators starting to hum in the distance. “See, nothing of that end of the world stuff is happe...” 13.7 billion years later, the inhabitants of the newly created universe still try to figure out what caused that catastrophic explosion they called “the big bang”

Wise man once said: “dark matter is to modern theory what the equant and deferrent where to Ptolemy’s model. We cannot really explain it but it makes our model match reality so it must exist” Any model that doesn't need dark matter is worth studying in my book. Maybe he's even right, who knows?

Python is rapidly becoming a mainstream language like C or Java, because it allows code to be developed so much faster (and programmers tend to be expensive). Dropbox and Instagram run on Python. And Youtube. That's not to say that it's limited to websites, just that it's not an exotic language only suitable to learn programming. A lot of real-world projects run in Python these days. On the other hand, it's always good to know more languages; it gives perspective and offers you flexibility. And once you've figured out the basics of writing code, and you've done a couple of projects, learning a second language is much, much easier than learning the first one.

I vaguely recall some back-of-the-envelope calculations that show that it's cheaper (DV-wise at least) to just launch something out of the solar system than it is to launch it into the sun. I might be wrong though.

Computer Science is very mathematical but the act of programming requires far less math. The kind of problem solving that you need in programming is the same kind of problem solving for mathematical problems though; people who are good with math usually have little difficulty with programming. That doesn't mean that if you have a hard time with math, programming will be hard too; don't despair. Not necessarily. A friend of mine runs an agency in Holland to place autistic and asperger adults in software companies as testers. People on the spectrum tend to be very precise and will not quickly take shortcuts in their jobs, which is exactly what is needed when running test scenarios. That is a direction you could look into as well. It doesn't require straight coding, but good testers don't just say "it not worky" but also figure out why it doesn't work ("only on Tuesdays and when you hold the mouse in your left hand" or something like that ) There's plenty of people on this forum you can ask for help about Python (I'm one of them). Once you get better you can also take a shot at the kRPC mod that lets you control your craft through Python scripts! An advantage of it compared to kOS is that Python programming skills are applicable outside KSP as well And don't forget that through the KSP forum you're building other skills as well, like becoming better in English as a 2nd language, and you're practicing your skills with interacting with people (even if it's written, not face-to-face) as well, not unimportant if you've been diagnosed with Asperger's. I wish you all the best! A good algorithm beats faster code in more complex cases anyway, and the modern scripting languages make it much easier to write "smarter code" as you don't have to deal with a lot of logical plumbing. Add to it that the popular scripting languages have high-performance libraries (usually written in C) to perform computational intensive tasks. With NumPy I can tear through a five gigabyte dataset in less than 200ms performing calculations. Of course there's a place for languages like C/C++; it does offer superior performance when coded the right way. And while KSP written in native C would probably be blowing the current version out of the water, it's also very likely that there would never have been a KSP if HarvesteR was forced to write it (and rolling out his own physics engine) in C.

I'm considering a script that just edits the save file. It's not like I'm starting/stopping my centrifuges all the time (unless you have a counter-rotating one it would induce a lot of torque on the rest of the craft/station after all) so for those rare cases I could just exit the game, fix the save file, and restart.

As a Python programmer I can recommend Python as an excellent language not just to learn programming in, but also to write real world code in (there's a surprising amount of large websites that run on Python, likely a whole bunch you visit on a daily or weekly basis). It's also fairly easy to achieve anything in it Most important though is that you find yourself one or more projects that you can actually start coding in what ever language you pick. Once you get past the initial “hello world” code and the examples in text books you need to go out and write something. That doesn't have to be the next No Man's Sky or Half Life, but it can be something as simple as a script that backs up your KSP files, or reads a KSP save file and prints a list (use HTML for formatting) of all your vessels and around what planet or moon they're orbiting. It doesn't have to be KSP oriented of course! But look for little things in your life that you want to automate and start cracking those problems. In the beginning it will be hard, but coding is always about problem solving, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. And it's representative of what coding always entails: in 99% of the cases you will run into a new well how do I do THAT?! kind of problem, and you'll need to google and research to find a solution. And probably do that three or four times; your first solution will rarely ever work. But it's fun to get something to work, and incredibly satisfying.

For NASA to be interested in this two things have to happen: It needs to work (a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted, “if it sounds too good to be true, it’s because...” etc) It needs to be useful For the second point a simple “we have a lab model that produces 0.0001 N of thrust” isn't meaningful, especially not when followed by “when powered by a nuclear reactor.” So the measured output is scaled to something that is easily to understand, in this case N/kW. I'm sure it's easy to look up how many kW solar cells or RTG's produce, and from there on you can extrapolate how much thrust your EM drive can produce. I doubt the measurement was intended as a statement of we assume it will scale lineary, more of if you have x kW of power on board, you can have at least y N of thrust with this device. Which for mission planners is interesting to see if this device would be useful to them in the first place. All, provided of course, it works as its inventor claims it does. That still remains to be seen though; looking forward to a cubesat test!

Why, is it that much off the scale to assume that if you fit 10 of these devices together, you wouldn't get 10× the output of an individual one? Maybe there's some scaling effects if you make one big one, but linear upscaling seems valid to me. If you're willing to believe that it's actually generating thrust in the first place, and that we're not measuring some unaccounted for side-effect.

Whenever there's a detailed account what happened before all people involved die, my alarm bells go off. “Really? Then who was there to write down what happened?” And then you check on Snopes.com of course. I agree that this one failed the sniff test.

[Insert link to Buzzfeed slideshow] He went to check out these anomalies but never expected to find THIS! Number 2 made me cry! Number 7 will drop your jaw! Number 11 will make you question everything you've learned so far!

Moving them out of harms way? Now why would you do that?!

Get that migraine fixed first! ok, actually, the USI-tools needed are included with Tokamak's pack. Those are just the tools; they don't activate the nefarious life support itself. Still a version with less clutter is always appreciated. Don't fret the "stop rotating" animation too much. I don't think anyone ever solved it (I think it was something inherited from the way Unity did continuous animations)

Suppose it hit the surface of some asteroid or comet that was covered with nitrogen "snow," guaranteeing a soft impact. Whenever the asteroid got closer to the sun, outgassing would create a thin nitrogen atmosphere and then it would liquify/solidify as the asteroid would be further away from the sun; it would come down as snow, covering the spacecraft over the course of thousands of years. Since it's now covered it's fairly well protected against cosmic radiation. Then some event happens changing the orbit of our asteroid, placing it closer to the sun. All the snow melts away, and out comes our spacecraft, in fairly good condition, to be discovered. Or mayne it's unearthed by our future ancestors when they are mining the asteroid? I'm sure that from a scientific perspective there's holes the size of Swiss cheese in it, but for the average layman it'll come over as plausible, without using techno-magic.

Thank goodness I don't have to program this myself or I would never dare to suggest it. You could use experience as a way to to control what kind of tourist contracts pop up: Zero star tourists: limited to Kerbin, suborbital and orbital flight One star tourists: Includes Mun and Minmus (flyby/orbit) Two star tourists: Duna and Eve Three star tourists: Moho and Dres Four star tourists: Jool Five star tourists: Eeloo That means that the game (or at least the contract system) has to keep track of your tourist pool. It also means that if you deplete your tourist pool by crashing a busload (literally!) on Duna you'll have to retrain the new ones before they're willing to embark on such a trip. Obviously grizzled 4 & 5 star tourists will pay far, far more for their exotic trips than the newbies will.

Hello @Deimos Rast, let me start by saying that anyone who puts in work to keep this mod alive is highly, highly appreciated, not just by me but by a large part of the KSP community, I'm sure! So thank you, thank you very much! As someone who's using Tokamak's version right now I'm a bit puzzled by your statment regarding the USI requirement. To the best of my knowledge the Tokamak pack works fine without USI. There's a USI folder included to support it, but it doesn't require it. Does it? That doesn't take away any of the work that you did, especially since it's providing parts not supported (yet?) by @Tokamak like the sphere pod. How does the centrifuge animation go, by the way? Is it stoppable or is that an issue that's more related to the animation module and thus unfixable?

The emergencies are awesome! This mod does not disappoint!

Turning on infinite fuel would be cheating. Using a mod with an engine that doesn't use propellant, obviously, is not.

The discussion at this point is if it should be stock or not. For reasons outlined, I don't think it should be stock. And you're absolutely right. I'm not using it. Yes, I think a 16 seat part, with the mass that goes with it (so it won't be abused as a cheap capsule) is absolutely fine. I wouldn't mind a part like that, even with a hatch on the outside. Perhaps we could lobby for that. As it would have 2*2*2 (or 23) times as many seats as the Mk-I cabin, I would recommend calling it a "Mk-III cabin."

Aside from violating Newton's laws of motion that are pretty much the basis for physics as we know it?

Because having a hatch would make it easy to use a hexcore pod (or any of the other models) and add a tank and engine and get an ultra-cheap, 2 kerbal space craft. Something for which the aircraft cabin was deliberately not intended. In the current state of the stock game you still get to use the cabin, but there's a price you have to pay for it. To me that feels like a fair balance. Pray tell me, what airliner has a "thing" like that on the roof? And if you say "but they have emergency exits," tell me the model that has an emergency exit every other seat?

That is based on the assumption that the Mk I has no hatch on the "outside" is an oversight, not a deliberate decision as has been stated in the past.

Oh c'mon, how hard can it possibly be? As long as I don't have to do it myself it must be ridiculously easy. To quote my late father (once again): “nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself”

There is! It's called "discovering during re-entry that you forgot the chutes"

And Perl. So we can have regex!