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KSK

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    Kerm Telegraph Maintenance Engineer
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    The North Grove, Duna.

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  1. To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care if we’re on either - and I don’t recall mentioning Bezos at all, so the point is moot. But what I meant is that, whilst IFT was impressive and a big step forward over IFT2 and IFT1, there’s a way to go yet before it’s a workable disposable rocket, let alone the fully reusable, chopstick landing (or whatever method ends up working), in-orbit refuelling, Artemis landing beast that it’s intended to be. Yes, yes, test flight, iterative improvement etc etc. I’m well aware of all that. And, with their track record, I’m certainly not betting against SpaceX to deliver all of the above eventually. But what I don’t give a damn about is Elon vapourware about the next super-duper-double-the-payload rocket, because it doesn’t make much difference if your rocket carries 200 tons or 400 tons if you can’t get it to point the right way. Frankly it feels like a distraction tactic and judging by the shift in comments on this thread it’s worked beautifully.
  2. And V5 will have a warp drive on the back, and V7 will usher in world peace and first contact with the Vogons. Or something. How about getting this rocket consistently pointing in the right direction first, and doing all the other things too, before flapping your everlasting gums about the next one? More prosaically, I'd prefer bread today than jam at some unspecified Elon Time tomorrow.
  3. Go - whoaah - mit, Comder! Are you out of your —yikes— —wowza— — ow-my-ears— mind?!
  4. One of the nice things about working from home, is being able to pop on some tunes if the afternoon's dragging a bit. So, after a bit of big hair rock, the algorithm decided to throw a certain well-known Journey piece at me... Resisting the urge to bust out the air guitar and <shred> was tough - but I'm a professional. And yeah, that song and this strip will forever be linked in the bowl of mush that passes for my noggin these days.
  5. IIRC, Elite Dangerous’s map was partly based on real life data and partly on a fairly sophisticated procedural generation system based on a proper simulation. The trading part? Unsure but probably not too crazy if you think of foodstuffs and such as luxury goods. In-game you wouldn’t trade foodstuffs between Earth-like worlds anyway since you’d almost certainly be trading between two agricultural economies dealing in much the same sort of goods. You’d be better off shipping them to some mining colony or an industrial station orbiting a mineral rich hall of rock somewhere. In which case I could see 20 tons of fresh fish being a desirable alternative to Space Rations or 3D printed burgers or whatever. As to how realistic the whole Elite economy is, I suspect the answer is ‘not very’ but it makes a nice gameplay loop.
  6. … who are sporting the very latest in high performance running shoes.
  7. Ahh, the High Impulse Propulsion by Particle InvErsion drive? Sounds groovy!
  8. I'm going to have to read that Deepmind paper because I'm genuinely curious to know how they're defining AGI. Whether or not I agree with that definition is another matter, but I think it would be useful to know what it is for discussions like this.
  9. I’m not sure that table is so helpful. Take calculator software for example - I’m willing to bet that it could be used to perform tasks up to at least Level 3 on that scale. Likewise, I reckon that image generators could be used to spit out work at Levels 1-3, possibly 4, depending what you prompt them with. I’m also slightly alarmed that 50% of skilled adults are less competent than Siri within its range of tasks.
  10. Following up from @Shpaget’s post, the combined mass of the Apollo CSM and lunar module was about 43 tons. Peak acceleration of the Saturn V was apparently about 3.9g. If they could do it in the 60s, I’m pretty sure it’s a problem you could handwave away. Also, why does the 1000 ton vessel require a 300 ton drive core rather than a 100 ton one? (Given that the 300 ton vessel requires a 30 ton core). Not that it’s important, I’m just curious. As for crew capacity, that’s difficult to judge purely from vehicle mass, but if you want some numbers, a Boeing 737 can hold about one to two hundred passengers depending on model, and has a dry mass of just over 41 tons. High gross weight max takeoff is just over 79 tons.
  11. Magnets huh? Well they’re close enough to magic that I’m convinced. Shows what the last guy knew though. He swore that his air car ran on pure water and got 150 miles to the gallon.
  12. Maybe it’s just me but I thought that last post had definite overtones of Q (from James Bond rather than Star Trek. ). ”Now pay attention 007 Mr Dilsby…”
  13. Man, that alarm is getting a workout. Ahhh - who cares... For Science! For Kerbfleet!
  14. Forget about Dyson spheres and other such namby-pamby concepts. Real spacefarers deconstruct their star systems to build pusher plates for yottabomb powered Orion drives...
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