pincushionman

Not exactly an "upgrade," even if they were to work right. The issue is that the old wheel systems wouldn't work at all, and had to be completely reworked to the new U5 systems, which…are lacking. It's not just KSP suffering from this. So wheels that don't work vs…wheels that don't work. The devs are in a really tough spot here.

Not off-topic at all. When you design an experiment, you need to prepare for both confirming and disproving results. But it's awful hard to design an experiment to expressly disprove an a theory without a competing theory that makes a different prediction - there's no indication that a particular result should be different. Remember how I said if the predictions are the same the theories aren't different? GR experiment results don't really say "GR is proved right" so much as "GR is better than Newtonian by this much." Thing is, there already are experiments that disprove GR. It's just that they're all on the quantum scale, and GR fails them badly. So everyone knows GR is incomplete because of that. We just don't have any theories that can reconcile that and are predictive.

On earth, you don't exactly fly a great circle directly either. You break it up into a series of shorter segments you can hold a heading for. Unless you have more advanced navigation instruments than your compass. Which you need to know how to use anyway if things go wrong.

Here's the thing about axial tilt – it doesn't have to be implemented all at once, or even fully. Step one: Free the planets axes from Planetarium.Up, but keep everything else the same, as a beta. The modders will go crazy. Step two: Once we know that works and the bugs have been worked through, add a new body or two that takes advantage of the axial tilt to get players used to it. If "add a new body" by itself causes bugs, I'll eat my hat. Step three: Change the axial tilts of the existing bodies. Or just some of them. Or none, and leave it to the modders.

Yes. See: Newtonian and all preceding theories vs. GR. Space is flat…space is not flat. The former is such a basic assumption that it's pretty much overlooked when describing non-GR physics, up until GR came about and pointed it out. And why we're forced to use bad anologies (i.e. The rubber sheet example) when we're describingthe GR assumptions..

A measurement is an estimate with well-established bounds. Even a direct measurement, like a beam balance, only works so long as the apparatus is well-defined and understood. In these cases, the "apparatus" used are better-established portions of the theory. This is conceptually no different than using an electronic scale (which measures force, so you have to do math) to determine a mass in a lab rather than a beam balance (which works only when the balance and reference masses are shown to be correct).

Math. Knowing the properties of the electomagnetic fields in the test chamber, you can derive particle masses by studying the paths those particles are observed to follow. Sort of like how if you can obseve the orbits of a planet and its moon, you can determine both their masses. And not faster than the speed of light. Close to it, though. But making it work is a serious engineering challenge.

Possible, yes, but very hard. There are mods that can help, though, like MechJeb to circularize your rocket while you fly the plane, or one that is essentially a time-control mod to let you fly one craft, then rewind time and deal with the other. The other option is to loft your rocket so high you can go hell-for-leather and land before you need to begin your circularization burn. This is no easy task.

There are longstanding bugs regarding symmetry and the relative stiffness of parts and joints. Which causes planes to slowly roll in the air and is partially responsible for the craft drifting to one side during the takeoff and landing rolls. I suspect your plane shows a very slight roll due to this, which is not apparent during manual flight because it is so small and your design self-stabilizes. This can be corrected (some) by increasing the stiffness (using KJR or strutting). Also, SAS is not very savvy when it comes to planes, and is not smart enough to know that yaw and roll are coupled. Since roll causes turning, the appropriate response to an apparent "yaw-like" deviation is to apply aileron, not rudder. Rudder can even make it worse. Sort of like how pitch deviations might be corrected by throttle adjustment rather than elevator. TL:DR: Planes are asymmetrically floppy, and this causes roll, which causes turning. Also, planes are complicated. Also, SAS is not a very good autopilot when it comes to planes.

It costs the cost of the rescue mission. Which may be very costly. It may be more or less costly than the cost of hiring a new Kerbal the traditional way. One, two, three, four, five…<_<… >_>…Cost.

A theory is only as good as its predictive power. So yes, it still has to be falsifiable in some way. If it doesn't make predictions that are different from the prevailing theory, it doesn't tell us anything new, does it? Now, some competing theories that make some predictions that can't be falsified (currently) aren't completely without merit, so long as they match the prevailing theory on the things that can, or the things we care about. Newtonian vs. relativity is kind of like this; in a vast majority of cases the differences are insignificant enough we just don't care; we use the simpler theory in those cases because it's good enough. We even assume Keplerian behavior in KSP, and that works all right for us? A scientist may care more, but us engineers absolutely live for "good enough," and celebrate it when it happens. Also, two theories could be equivalent. Quantum mechanics problems can be approached from calculus, or you can use matrix methods. Different math. Same answer. In this case everyone agrees it's the same theory however you slice it, even though you go about it in completely different ways.

You'll want to look into CKAN. Module Manager is a tool for modifying module entries in parts, and is itself a plugin mod, not a modification manager. But be careful and be ready to manage some of them by hand. Several mods, FAR chief among them, do not play nicely with CKAN.

The airplane one would be better served with *actual* aircraft AP modes (attitude hold, altitude hold, wing leveler, etc.). The other ones I can't argue with.

You looking in the main menu settings or the in-game pause settings menu? 'Cause it's certainly in the latter. Din't know what it says in the main settings.

Got it backwards, kinda. If you're going to the trouble of copying out to a new folder, go ahead and run it from that new location, especially if you use mods. It will than be "safe" from updates that might break mod compatibility. KSP doesn't take advantage of any Steam features; it is used strictly as a distribution platform.

Surely the wheel "stick" can be pointed in an arbitrary direction. Including "whatever direction the nearest surface/edge/point to/within the wheel locus is this frame," rather than a pre-defined direction. Could that kind of catch eliminate the misalignment corrections and force all responses to be as if the wheel alignment is in the correct direction? The only problem I see there is the wheel physics routines are themselves what you count on to determine whether an interaction has happened. And that your suspension might actually be in a different direction. Okay, maybe not such a clean solution. Uh...we don't want to use older PhysX. We already had it, and it's part of the limitations the old KSP had. Which, besides wheels, appears to be working out pretty well for us.

When you go on about girders, it makes me think you expect to place girders or trusses between existing sections? I've got bad news: you can't. Not in the VAB, and not after the fact with KAS. The "tree" vessel structure does not allow such connections. The only ways to create such connections are strut parts and multiport docking, and from what I've read here multiport docking has suffered in the 1.1 engine port (someone please tell me I'm wrong). So struts are the only answer, and the only way to attach them after launch is using KAS. The only other thing is to make your station stiff enough without reinforcement. Clamp-O-Tron Sr.'s help a lot here. Also, your station should rarely be under thrust.

If i'm not mistaken, the L4 and L5 Lagrange points (and the others as well, but they're already unstable so it's less of an issue) only really work when the test mass is small compared to both primary bodies. So a "soft" upper bound to the size of bodies occupying an L4/5. Is my understanding correct?

Are you running the 1.1.1 patch? One of the changes was intended to adress that specifically.

Keep in mind, much of what are required for KSP modding are in fact the Unity tools, which are already available.

I was going to say it's not that much different from a paper airplane, but the I remembered those are folded, so it's not a single ply. How much of this steel foil do you get to play with? If you need to do some quick small-scale prototyping (to determine "yes, these shapes might work to produce lift"), you might be able to get away with aluminum foil, coathanger wire, and tape (all cheap and easy to get)

Part. Clipping. But that's probably a "hell no, not with my Krakenbait" kind of thing.

You'll notice that the loading screen image has been replaced by a picure with two of the three plus Val. Don't know which of Jeb/Bill, Jeb/Bob, or Bill/Bob it is, and the only reason we know it's any of these characters in particular is because they're explicitly wearing their orange suits. Presumeably the other guy was holding the camera? we can't comfirm the identities of any of the kerbals on the menu screen, by the way, since they're all wearing white suits!

An update! As you can see from the above trackers, we have met our pledge goals. However, this does not mean that you've missed your opportunity to give! The Tour is on April 30, which is still 7 days away! Any monies given now will still go towards the same essential programs; the only difference is I've met my participation requirements. There is still plenty of need for your donations! Give today, and be part of the search for a cure!

Calm down, man. The window with the prompt is clearly a Steam window. It's the same sort of thing that DasValdez had to restart Steam for in the release party stream. That info comes from the steam package itself, and wouldn't require a build change. One thing to check would be your Downloads page for the last time KSP was pushed to you. That would tell you if there was an actual update to game files in the time frame you're concerned about, or if it was only the Steam database entry.