FleshJeb

January 8

I like rocket companies that can get it up on the first try.

October 31, 2023

I'm guessing the emoji parser might be having a problem with the ":/" emoji and one or some of the other characters in the URL.

I noticed the ":1437623226_rocket_1f680(3):" emoji has some parentheses in it. I'm shocked the parser can deal with those. I've used a bunch of software that fails in creative ways when dealing with special characters. Given that it's the last emoji added, perhaps the parser is seeing the emoji list as unterminated.

If that line of inquiry is plausible, I'd test it by adding another emoji to the list and seeing if the forum software can actually find it.

October 31, 2023

I was trying to link a video from youtube, and when I embed it and hit submit, the editor throws this error:

I tried just the text of the video id in the test thread, and it works fine.

URL of video in question with a space added, and the link removed.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=6R8hdRiEWkY

Another random video from the same channel, just to see if it works:

Huh, that worked. I'll try the original video again:

same error

...yep, it's that specific URL.

Trying the short URL also throws an error, unless I remove the embed.

https://youtu.be/6R8hdRiEWkY

October 31, 2023

Video URL throwing embed errors I think. Trying this with JUST the last part.

6R8hdRiEWkY

This is the error when I do the full URL

October 31, 2023

Octopus Lady covers deep sea hydrothermal vents, including a little tangent on exobiology. I love her work, and this one is even better than her average.

To describe her as "perky" would be a gross understatement, but you will never have so much information shotgunned into your poor little brain in such a short period of time.

https://youtu.be/6R8hdRiEWkY

Weird, the regular video embed isn't working, no matter which style of link.

October 26, 2023

On 10/24/2023 at 11:26 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

Why didn’t anyone care about spaceflight in the 2000s?

If I had to go back to the root causes? Well, let me relay that in as politically neutral and factual a manner as I can muster:

Some very ugly events happened in 2001, and the U.S. got busy invading at least one country that had absolutely nothing to do with it. Several trillion dollars and approximately a million innocent lives were wasted as a result.

Then some comically stupid and greedy bankers caused a recession that just barely avoided turning into a second Great Depression, burning up even more trillions of dollars.

Now imagine that was written with 50% of the words not making it past the forum filter and my NSA/FBI file becoming actionable.

October 25, 2023

If Benjamin Franklin time-traveled to the present day, he'd be wrecking fools on Twitter within two weeks.

(Also, all his purchases would be made with hundred-dollar bills.)

October 23, 2023

I thought everyone just turned the percent thrust slider down on the engines...

October 23, 2023

16 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Absolutely. In my book, the instantaneous surface scanning was the biggest missed opportunity in KSP1. A well-known model that made orbital parameters significant in interesting and planet-specific ways was just ignored and replaced by something boring.

There's even the potential for replay value: In real life, you don't just scan a surface once. New instruments are created to answer new science questions with new missions. And you know that a new player is going to screw up the scanning orbit the first time or two, so the chance to do it over again but more efficiently offers a satisfying gameplay opportunity.

I want to see a benefit to all science instruments having persistence.

Drop a temperature probe on a planet, open up its properties and hit timewarp. You see a graph with a diurnal sine wave. Let that run for a day, and you get some science points. Let it run (and automatically transmit back in the background) for a local year, and you get a lot more. (The calc in KSP1 is deterministic, so this is extremely low overhead.)

Determining position on other planets is hard, so that data also has a quality rating. Over time, your relay satellite / ScanSAT bird can refine the position of your probe, perhaps using radio-ranging. Over time, and depending on the strength of the antennas, the quality metric goes up, acting as a multiplier to the basic science points you're getting from that instrument. (The calcs for this can be simplified a lot, and they depend on existing signal strength calculations, so it's also low overhead.)

Zoom out to map view and hit a theoretical Thermal View button, and it displays the running average temperature from that probe as a red radius around that probe. Drop probes all over the planet and watch all this data shift and blend together as you timewarp. (Some observant players will notice that it's latitude-dependent, and they may learn something.) If you've got enough coverage, and you've run it long enough, the planet's info panel will show you the minimum and maximum temperatures for that planet.

October 23, 2023

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The Jedi ability express test: a swab for Midi-Chlorians.

Spoiler

October 23, 2023

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The point was not to provide an “aha!” explanation of something already happening, but to set the stage for future stories. I feel like that might be different from the midichlorians being introduced and wrecking the previous majesty of the Force.

You're absolutely right, and I recognized that as a flaw in my argument. Perhaps a better example would be Star Trek making up the "particle of the week", such as the oft-used tachyons: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/database/particles4.htm#t

It's considered somewhat lazy writing / technobabble, but having magical particles is perfectly fine as long as that matches your story tonally or thematically. Or you just have more important things to get to, and don't want to belabor the mechanics of them. The issue is that your readers might spot the :science: OBVIOUS LITERARY DEVICE , and it could break their immersion.

So, you might want to bury the magic in something more subtle. What if it's just a heretofore unknown attribute of particles and quantum mechanics, and doesn't require anything new?

I was doing a little reading, because I hate walking into a conversation unarmed, and found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann–Wigner_interpretation

It contains this fun bit of text:

Quote

It can be predicted using quantum mechanics, absent a collapse postulate, that an observer observing a quantum superposition will turn into a superposition of different observers seeing different things. The observer will have a wavefunction which describes all the possible outcomes. Still, in actual experience, an observer never senses a superposition, but always senses that one of the outcomes has occurred with certainty.

So which of the multiple observers governs which way it collapses? The most powerful psychic, of course. Who most strongly wants Schrodinger's Cat alive or dead?

If I remember the plot of The Stars My Destination correctly, the main character is able to unlock his teleporting ability by being desperately angry and afraid. As it happens, he's the most angry and afraid person in the solar system, so he's really good at it.

Just giving you food for thought. Have fun.

See also: Moving Mars, or Blood Music by Greg Bear

October 22, 2023

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

A new particle, which I have dubbed the myalon

I'll just point out that George Lucas ruined the entirety of Star Wars by introducing Midi-Chlorians as a concept. I remember watching Episode 1 in the theater and thinking, "I'm gonna slap the beard off this man."

If you're going to explore the Anthropic Principle, there may be more elegant ways to go about it.

October 21, 2023

Works for me. Temporary error, probably.

Joe's gonna die if he can't post in S&S.

October 20, 2023

Great news! Congratulations Anth, you're a credit to the community.

There's another highly-technical game I play that just released a DLC and major update that busted the whole game down to the fundamentals. Dev communications about it have been abysmal. They even went so far as to publish a dev note whining about the negative Steam review-bombing from people with thousands of hours in the game.

I'll say one thing for Intercept: You guys do a fantastic job understanding and engaging with the community, and hiring Anth is a clear sign of that.

October 17, 2023

I'm guessing we don't have enough information yet to compare to ULA's canceled ACES project?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage

https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/exploration/evolving-to-a-depot-based-space-transportation-architecture.pdf

September 27, 2023

9 hours ago, IonStorm said:

Looks like there's some asteroid outside the sampler.

If the asteroid made a faux pas, I hope it's at least a little chon-drite.

(Under no circumstances should I be allowed to make puns.)

September 23, 2023

I just googled "DART Mission"

The results were amusing.

September 23, 2023

9 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Exposure to vacuum leads to a quick loss of consciousness (in about 15 seconds, or the time it takes for the deoxygenated blood in lungs to reach the brain). Death is quick to follow.

I've never bought that explanation. Surely you can hold your breath in vacuum just/nearly as well as you can on Earth. A couple of minutes with prep time is no issue. And your tissue should be easily strong enough to handle a one atm differential. So it must be another mechanism. Could it be rapid, whole-body vasodilation causing loss of blood pressure and consciousness? I don't know how strong the physiology is behind vasoconstriction, but we know it regularly handles swings on the order of 100mmHg (1 atm = 760mmHg). It stands to reason that one could get absolutely ripped on stimulants or other vasoconstricting drugs, and extend vacuum consciousness for a lot longer. Al Pacino in spaaaaaaccceee.

September 18, 2023

On 9/15/2023 at 3:36 AM, kerbiloid said:

Station?
Take it higher! Interstellar.

That's interSTOOLer, sir.

September 18, 2023

I've never read Shattered Sword, but Jon Parshall is a frequent guest on this podcast. it's a fun ride:

https://www.youtube.com/@UnauthorizedHistoryPacificWar/videos

September 18, 2023

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now that was an very detailed model.
On an tug, I don't think an bow port would be very useful. its more something you put on an ferry and I also think it was to low to be practical anyway.

Oh yeah, I'm saving the idea for a future build. That said, a coal-powered airliner that looks like a goose may indicate that I'm not deeply attached to realism: