StrandedonEarth

I read somewhere on these forums that the lift/drag from the fairing is applied way out in front of the rocket, which caused me no end of grief and required some hugeS fins to keep it straight. I heard there's a fix for that but I haven't downloaded that yet. Airbrakes sound like a great way to keep the flamey side down, I'll have to try that if and when I play again before 1.1 drops.

I use a Protoss Arbiter to recall a rook and a knight behind your pawn line. Check!

How about bugginess in console games? My boys bought the Lego Movie video game for the XBox 360, since they love all those Lego games so much. But this one must have been rushed out, because there were many places where a character could become trapped. No problem, you think, just kill the character (no real penalty for death in a Lego game) but it respawns in the same spot! The only way out would be to restart the level. Very frustrating, they obviously didn't spend much time on QA. Had to rush it out to make the movie release, I guess.

The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy postulates that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42, but they don't know what the actual question is. I posit that the Question is: "If everyone is created equal, then what are they equal to?" In other words, if you sum up the value of every trait and characteristic of someone, it will add up to 42. On a more serious note, my pet hypothesis has to do with the death of supermassive stars. I'm in sort of a hurry while posting this, so this is the nutshell version: When a star of over 10 solar masses fuses its way up the periodic table, it will eventually build up a core of iron. When iron fuses, it absorbs energy instead of releasing it. Without energy being released in the core, gravity will cause the star to start to collapse, which generates more heat, which fuses more iron, which absorbs more energy and the collapse continues. Eventually the star rebounds in a supernova. That is the standard stellar evolution theory. My idea is that the energy absorbed by fusing heavy elements during the collapse is stored as radioactive heavy elements, the subsequent fission of which helps power the supernova. Of course, it is also powered by elements fusing on the surface of the iron core during the collapse/rebound.

If I'm not mistaken, this happens when you press 'Caps Lock' to put the RCS in 'fine control' mode

This certainly sounds better than "Do the same things with less money and get less science"

For the life of me, I can't remember how i heard about KSP. It wasn't through Steam. I can only think it was mentioned in a comment on the SDC or SpaceFlightNow websites

On a more serious note, my wife is OD'ing on chocolate covered cherries and we have a dinner date later My daughter, on the other hand, is ripping up pics of her ex-bf

I believe it was proven somewhere that the drag of a Bussard ramscoop would exceed the thrust, but it should still be good for braking at the end of the trip

I posted a Cygnus here, but if you insist on the X-1... Oh, all right...

10/10 Very sleek

Insert obligatory Rush clip here:

What is really needed for interstellar travel is some sort of reactionless "space drive" (Rendezvous with Rama), because if reaction mass needs to be carried for both acceleration and deceleration the rocket equation will make the amount of propellant ridiculous, no matter what the Isp is. Anti-gravity (Kzinti gravity planer) would be the best, but I guess that isn't considered "theoretically possible" yet. The best bet with near-future technology would be laser-riding solar sail propulsion, with the sail being augmented by some form of nuclear propulsion (fusion pulse or NTR) at least for deceleration at the end of the trip. A nuclear reactor could be used for power generation during the cruise phase, and for thrust as needed, either as a nuclear-thermal rocket or powering fusion-pulse lasers. Launch mass might be conserved by collecting interstellar hydrogen for decelerating, while decelerating. As for the payload itself, while sending out a scouting probe would be ideal, by the time the results of the probe made it back to Earth the mission may well have been forgotten. That's if there's even someone left on Earth with the ability to "listen" for the message from the probe. Similarly, a manned scouting mission would be pointless. So it may as well be a colony ship. A full generation ship would have to be incredibly massive, so it would be better to have most of the people in deep-sleep. I wouldn't want to rely on machinery to keep everything running and to wake everyone up at the end, so some awake crew would be required. The crew would work in one or more shifts running anywhere from 5 to 20 years, before waking up their replacements and going in the sleep tanks themselves. Ideally, all the crew for all the shifts would be trained on Earth ahead of time, so they would just need to be briefed upon waking before the previous shift goes in the tanks. The "cruise" crews would need the least training with the "arrival" crew needing the most.

And I now have a new desktop pic, thanks This was my desktop for a couple of years:

Aw Aw fer..... "The uploader has not made this vidoe available in your country" Yup, working now

Jeb's Favorite song! On the album these two songs meld into each other, but the only videos like that were just static images of the album cover

Probodobodyne = Cyberdyne Systems (Terminator 2)

Well, it should make good practice for barge-landing the centre core of an F9H

What is the most popular social media on Kerbin?

This will probably get moved to Forum Games. I'm unclear on the rules here. Am I supposed to continue singing the same song (which is Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer"), or post a different one?

When I first read the title I wondered if a German V2 would fit in the Space Shuttle's payload bay. So I looked up the stats on the V2 (development name was the A4): Weight 12,500 kg (27,600 lb) Length 14 m (45 ft 11 in) Diameter 1.65 m (5 ft 5 in) Hmm, I guess it would. As for why? Good Question!