Evans310

I don't recall such a discourse, but I did some checking and, since I am unsure which box or shelf my copy of Nutshell currently resides in or on, I went to the interwebs. From Hawking's Blog: "[snip] Such objects were given the name Black Holes, by the American physicist John Wheeler, who was one of the first to recognise their importance, and the problems they pose. The name caught on quickly. To Americans, it suggested something dark and mysterious, while to the British, there was the added resonance of the Black Hole of Calcutta. But the French, being French, saw a more risqué meaning. For years, they resisted the name, trou noir, claiming it was obscene. But that was a bit like trying to stand against le weekend, and other franglais. In the end, they had to give in. Who can resist a name that is such a winner? " So there we have it. I guess trou noir is indeed euphemistic - though which hole it refers to is somewhat ambiguous...

I just don't see how complaining that you think the name of a thing is stupid is in any way related to the OP's questions on the etymology of the name. You complaining about the subject of a thread without contributing anything to the discussion is irrelevant and adds nothing to the discussion. Hence you're posting just for the sake of getting a response to your complaints. To me, this = trolling. If you feel that strongly that it's a poor name choice, start a new thread to discuss it. Don't clog up this thread about name origins with a seperate issue.

-1 for contributing nothing of relevance to the thread. Please, don't feed the troll. OP, my French is less than perfect, but the only term I've heard for a black hole is "trou noire", which is very much a direct translation. I can think of a few slang terms for lady parts, none of which resemble "trou noire". However, one thing I've learned in my very modest travels is that slang varies considerably from region to region, even within the same language. So I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility. That being said, it's the first time I've heard of such a reason for the term.

Yes, but the change in altitude is a result of the change in velocity, not the change in mass. Look at it this way: Your 5 tonne spacecraft orbits Kerbin at 2500m/s at 77km altitude. (numbers out my arse, for example only) If you want to dock a 3 ton spacecraft with it, you'll need to bring it up to 77km altitude as well, and match velocity with the target at 2500m/s. Height of the orbit is a function of velocity. Mass doesn't matter (at least not in a mathematically significant way).

^^ This clarifies the reasons behind the "prefix" nicely. If we're going to change it, let's go back to the Grav. ^^ This too is shown in the video Devo linked - I'm assuming that the sphere therein is in fact the one in the Avogadro project you mention. ^^ kelvin is the base unit for temperature in the SI. However, I don't see Celsius' scale going away any time soon due simply to its easy correlation to everyday phenomena, ie. water freezing and boiling. Then again, some people still insist on having their water freeze at thirty-two, which is even more arbitrary than 273 kelvin, so you never know. ^^ Love the use of an American governance institute to prove that an alleged American mis-spelling is correct. Like when my American friends tell me that their whole country spells it "color" so I must be wrong to put a "u" in there. You might just as well say "The American spelling is correct because the Americans say so!" I'll take the OED as my authority, thank you. But correct spelling is rather off-topic, so to get back on track: As far as the OP goes, the Litre is not an SI unit (as has been mentionned here) but rather a unit accepted for use alongside the units of the SI. Expressed in SI terms, it would be a cubic decimetre (10 cm cubed). Other units of this type that have been retained for convenience are the minute, hour, day, degree of arc, minute of arc, second of arc, hectare (10 000 square metres or 100m X 100m), and tonne (1 000kg). Rather easier to say "litre" than "cubic decimetre", no? Just as it's much easier to navigate using degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc rather than trying to use radians. For the folks who had questions about prefixes, there was a time when I had a dozen or so above and below memorized, but I admit that those days are behind me. So, from Wikipedia: Prefixes are added to unit names to produce multiple and sub-multiples of the original unit. All multiples are integer powers of ten, and above a hundred or below a hundredth all are integer powers of a thousand. For example, kilo- denotes a multiple of a thousand and milli- denotes a multiple of a thousandth; hence there are one thousand millimetres to the metre and one thousand metres to the kilometre. The prefixes are never combined, and multiples of the kilogram are named as if the gram were the base unit. Thus a millionth of a metre is a micrometre, not a millimillimetre, and a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram, not a microkilogram. Standard prefixes for the SI units of measure Multiples Name deca- hecto- kilo- mega- giga- tera- peta- exa- zetta- yotta- Prefix da h k M G T P E Z Y Factor 10^1 10^2 10^3 10^6 10^9 10^12 10^15 10^18 10^21 10^24 Fractions Name deci- centi- milli- micro- nano- pico- femto- atto- zepto- yocto- Prefix d c m μ n p f a z y Factor 10^−1 10^−2 10^−3 10^−6 10^−9 10^−12 10^−15 10^−18 10^−21 10^−24 Back to my own thoughts, The SI is unquestionably THE best system of units for any serious scientific calculations, but there remain some day-to-day applications where legacy units are more convenient either for spoken language or actual calculation. I certainly wouldn't want to plot a course for a ship or prepare a flight plan if I had to use radians in my navigation, and it's much easier to ask the grocer for two litres of milk than two cubic decimetres. Thanks for an interesting conversation gents, I'll be watching this one.

Welp, this might have to be moved because of 0.23, but I was reading this challenge and got interested. I took my first ever SSTO, just built it a couple weeks ago in career mode in 0.22, and rebuilt it here in sandbox 0.23 to see how fast she'd move. And then I gubered the screenshots and must have hit F2 or something when I hit my top speed of 2257m/s. Best screenshot is 2246m/s. Still no true machingbird, but she's a beast of a spaceplane and I was just happy to hit Mach 6. Also, my flight profile was probably sub-optimal; I'm still pretty new at flying SSTOs. Might give it another crack when I have time to kill. Stock, Manned, No mods. I know there's a nuke on there - this is my regular SSTO after all - but you can see by the oxidizer it's never fired during the flight. Now to really get going and build one just for this!

Welcome Rob, I'm not blowing any minds yet, but I've been Kerballing for a few months now and I'm with you. A friendly warning: It's addictive! Lots of great info out there. I've found Scott Manley's tutorial videos on YouTube quite helpful and entertaining. Also one of the mods here, Specialist290, maintains a thread called The Drawing Board that is full of useful info and tutorials. I found what I needed there when I set out to build a SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) spaceplane. Plenty more to be found here on the forums too. There's a whole section of threads on How To (do whatever), so if you have a particular goal in mind it can be a good place to start. Lastly, don't be embarassed if you spin out of control, blow things up unintentionally or kill Kerbalnauts. We've all done it. Don't Panic. And remember to bring a Towel. Jay

Same sort of thing happened to me. Suck it up my friend; the game is better for the change. Now getting beyond Kerbin/Mun/Minmus will be a nice challenge. Maybe think about starting career mode over. That's what I did.

SSTO Images as promised! I call her the XR-81, after the SR-71 Blackbird, which was my formfactor concept. Unfortunately game mechanics necessitated many more air intakes. I still think she looks pretty good.

A further note on my SSTO success story: Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat! So, being that this was my first SSTO, I didn't have any experience at all with judging re-entry to end up at the space centre. I came down too early and subsequently ran out of fuel trying to fly to the space centre. I thought it was going to be all she wrote for Jeb, as I was coming down over water. Well, I called up all my real-world glider pilot experience and managed to bleed off enough velocity (stock parts only, so no air brakes or spoilers) to belly-land it on the water. The plane broke up a bit, but the cockpit - and more importantly Jeb - stayed intact. A stroke of good luck. Now of course, because I'm a total forum NOOB, I missed a great opportunity to take pictures. I'm going to rebuild her in Sandbox and get an imgur account going so that I can show you the design.

Alas, with .23, my SSTO became horribly unstable. I don't know why. Due to the science changes I've decided to start a fresh career mode since the way I was progressing up the tech tree was sub-optimal for the new non-spam system.

Thanks Specialist, I did find the drawing board, and drew a bit on the SSTO tutorials I found there by buzz66boy. I already had an idea in mind based loosely around the SR-71, but with a science package, and his advanced SSTO helped me iron out some details that I was having trouble with. Sadly, I don't have the cubic strut unlocked yet, so I couldn't double up my intakes, but I managed to limp it in to orbit anyway. Pictures as soon as I have time to upload them!

Greetings fellow Kerbalnauts, Been mucking about with KSP for a few months now, off and on. Since .22 came out I've started from scratch to work through the tech tree. I'm not a hugely active forum type; mostly I lurk searching for info, but I'll probably jump in now and again if I think I can contribute to a thread. Just finally got my first SSTO in to orbit tonight, so I'm calling it off while I'm ahead. Took hours to get it to work right. Tomorrow, I'll worry about landing it. So that sums things up I guess. Take care all!