thorfinn

Wait, I don\'t understand... the classic interface doesn\'t have a start menu by default? Concerning Metro: the Win 8 previews I tried to install on virtual machines never worked well enough to let me evaluate the concept correctly, but the desktop metaphor and the WIMP paradigm NEED to die, so anything that tries to go forward is interesting to me Anyway, since the Start menu seems to have become a hot topic again after many years.... NOSTALGIA TIME!

not why you don\'t have liquid water in a place with no atmosphere. You don\'t have liquid water in a place with no atmosphere because when the ambient pressure drops below the vapor pressure of water, the water ceases to be a liquid. That\'s true regardless of the temperature. Well, now that\'s exaggerating a bit on the other side Above 374 °C, it\'s supercritical, so it\'s not really a 'liquid' nor a 'vapour' anymore. And below about -30 °C, you are bound to have some kind of ice. Well, it\'s not in 'deep' space at all, it\'s at the orbit of Kerbin

It\'s funny: to me, it\'s tablets that make laptops pointless I mean, if I had a device that allowed me to do all the 'light computing' tasks like web browsing, writing brief emails, reading ebooks/newspapers, showing pictures and videos to friends, making some quick notes/light calculations while walking around in the lab, displaying presentations... while on the move, I don\'t think I\'d use my laptop anymore. I don\'t really type so much on the move that I need a better keyboard than those supplied, unless I\'m at my work place; but there, I have desktop computers I can use anyway. I\'d go back to having a fixed PC in the home, for my heavy data (media center, file storage) and computation needs (games and big simulations... hell, I could even SSH into it from a desktop at work if I need it.) Also, touch controls aren\'t bad per se, it\'s just that people are still learning how to write really good applications that use that paradigm. But they can be even better than traditional controls in some areas: think drawing and retouching, for instance, if the stylus is good you get essentially a small Cintiq that\'s also the whole computer for less money than a true 12' Cintiq.

That\'s absolutely incompatible with Kerbin, physically (methane freezes at 90K) So, it\'s really Rule of Cool

Rule of Cool. Pure and simple...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/microsoft-unveils-surface-tablet-powered-by-windows-8/?comments=1&start=40#comments-bar 'One Windows RT tablet runs an NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM processor and the other Windows 8 Pro tablet runs Intel\'s Ivy Bridge Core i5 chips. One thing that looks really cool are new magnetic covers that are quite reminiscent of Apple\'s 'Smart Cover' for the iPad. But it\'s a lot smarter—Microsoft\'s cover actually includes a multitouch trackpad and a keyboard. There are two, as we explain in this story: a Touch Cover with virtual keys and a Type Cover with a tactile keyboard and touchpad. Typing on the cover is twice as efficient as typing on glass, according to Microsoft. There\'s also a stylus.' Also, USB3 and SDHC/SDXC integrated, and the x86 version runs full Windows. If they\'ll be RROD-free, Apple is in for a rough ride

Don\'t take my word at face value too But I have worked on radiation hardening of electronics (for CERN, not aerospace) and I doubt that the primitive ICs of an AGC were susceptible to radiation effects. A ionizing radiation particle can cause a 'soft error' in a computer because it is, well, ionizing as I said, and so while traversing the silicon it creates electrical charges of both signs that enter the electric circuit and can disrupt ist operation. But as you can imagine, this is felt much more if the circuit elements are very small: with transistors 65nm wide (or even less!), a modern chip is very susceptible and the problem is now concerning for aircraft computers too; but the comparatively huge features of these early SSI integrated circuits just see a little disturbance in the same event. I\'ve read quite a bit about Apollo computers, and I don\'t remember any talk about radiation issues. Also, most of the problems usually concern the memory banks. Core memory is inherently rad-hard, and that\'s why it was used in the Shuttle even if it was outdated by the time.

Oh, no I think they didn\'t even KNOW about SEU effects back then. It was just the best computer they could fit in the very limited size, weight, power and cooling conditions. Non-avionic computers didn\'t use ICs at all in that time period (at least during the design phase): IBM S/360 was discrete components, as were the PDPs of the time. The manufacture of the AGCs and missile computers was the thing that bootstrapped the IC industry. Also, it was 72KB ROM, 4KB RAM.

Gnuplot

It\'s simpler The temperature profile is copied from Earth, while the pressure profile follows the simplified isothermal model (a simple exponential). The two effects are superimposed without computing their interplay. You can notice that your graph of 'R' is a mirror image of the temperature graph.... As for the atmospheric density, I\'ve heard conflicting opinions. Somebody says that even considering the 'Aristotelian' drag equation snafu (mass term apparently involved with drag, etc.) you can work out the atmospheric density in SI units, and that it is 8 times Earth at sea level. Somebody says 5 times. And now that I think of it, we\'d need gamma to calculate the speed of sound, and that would be a very poorly constrained guess.... Well, for playing physicist in the thread, all the guesses can be interesting and fun: for the game proper, if the speed of sound is defined (and I clearly hope it is), it\'s probably better to just define it at sea level at a 'nice' value (something like 250 m/s?) and then work it out with the temperature profile from there. (Why 250 m/s, you ask? Well, it\'s a balance between being just too slow and having too small a range between normal flight and space flight. This would put standard orbit at about Mach 10, Munar reentry interface at Mach 14...) (Another reason for a Mach readout: lots of planets, lots of different atmospheres, many different regimes to explore )

Very nice. Now, who had the data about atmospheric density? We should combine the two and get the sound speed at all altitudes

I made some speculations about resource needs and population size in the past, based on the few things we know. (Read a few posts after that one)

All this stupid stuff makes me think that putting a half-a-cent cost for every email wouldn\'t be a bad idea...

The gashes should have been made by the parachute risers, along pre-cut lines: I suppose the chute pack was in that compartment on the side... Probably it looks worse than it really is, you\'re right.

As the subject says, I found on my hard drive this table of specific impulses that I compiled some time ago for I-don\'t-even-remember-what. It\'s made of data from real world, commonly used engines, and a little bit of extrapolation where necessary. This could be interesting, around here, so I thought 'well, a thread doesn\'t take up much space after all'.... Propellant First stage Upper stage sea level vacuum Solid 230 260 290 LOX/RP-1 norm 265 305 320 LOX/RP-1 best 310 335 350 N2H4/N2O4 norm 260 290 300 N2H4/N2O4 best 300 320 335 LH2/LOX 1960s 315 390 430 LH2/LOX modern 360 410 465 LH2/LOX Shuttle 363 453 -/- N2O/Hybrid ? 250 -/- H2O2/RP-1 250 280 305 LOX/Hybrid slightly less than LOX/RP-1 H2O2 monopropellant 150 Hydrazine monopropellant 220

A very interesting page with optical images of the Apollo spacecraft, en route to and from the Moon. (the best photos are the earlier ones): http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/space/apollo.html Do you remember 'From the Earth to the Moon', and the 48000x telescope on the Rocky Mountains to track the projectile of the Columbiad? Looking forward to seeing similar stuff in KSP, maybe

That doesn\'t really strike me as reusable...

Yeah, the appearance doesn\'t match physical constraints. I think that looks truped accuracy this time Anyway, the 'cracks' are fixed in 0.15.1

I like the idea very much, but DAMN, they could have used newtonian physics.... Babylon Five did it, it\'s not that hard, guys... The part I like the most is the ship building / customization. I\'ve been waiting for years for a game that let me costruct my own small-midsize fleet and name my ships, without being too encumbered by RTS mechanics. I called it 'the admiral game'... some people told me that Nexus the Jupiter Incident was what I was looking for, but they also said it was hard and buggy

As you can see, I did not have much time to do anything with this idea, sorry -.- What you asked is one fo the many things I wanted to add; I\'ll get to do this, but for now my dissertation sadly has precedence... (Also, I\'m trying to understand the new architecture of 0.15: lots of things changed under the hood)

wrt the effects for the ion engine: have a look at As for balancing, consider that a 'ion engine' that doesn\'t need to thrust for days on end is ultra overpowered by definition

Yay! MARSPROJEKT! http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1952.htm No, seriously, it would be great to a larger set of spherical tanks in a similar style, following more or less this design: The 'xenon tank', scaled up and with a couple of radiation signs on it, would seriously look like a Orion pulse unit magazine to me As for the specific impulse of ion propulsion fuel, it\'s around 5000 seconds, so it\'s just about 10 times more the unrealistic liquid fuel we have... (Isp should be slashed about 40% to match LOX/Kerosene)

It\'s not like he writes posts about his personal life here

Very good, just today I was thinking 'hey, we could really use 2-way and 4-way couplers besides the old tricoupler'. Very well! (Do you have a 4-way also?)

Very nice, C7, but I don\'t understand the braketorque and the 'extremum', 'asymptote' etc. values (all the traction block, actually) I was expecting just the three friction coefficients (static, dynamic and rolling)