[What have you been playing recently? (Other than KSP)]

I've logged about 2500 hours in Stormworks since last January. It's a terrible game, and the developer sucks worse than Squad/T2. Still can't stop.

Played a few days worth of Timberborn rolled back to the 0.0 version, because the gameplay is better than 0.2.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Let's just say I'd be interested in the tech specifications.

I only knew the term before I googled it and spent a few minutes reading (which I'm sure you've done by now). I've only dealt with 2 or 3 standard grades of PCC. The one time I had to specify something with custom performance, I called a PhD at the concrete mixing plant. Concrete and asphalt can be deeply technical subjects.

[SpaceX Discussion Thread]

7 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Has there been anything about differential curing of the concrete due to the engine testing? 

Not that there necessarily would be - but I do know that foundations exposed to a house fire often need replacing. 

They'll be using "refractory concrete" anywhere exposed to high temperatures. Very different cement (and possibly aggregate) mix and performance than standard Portland cement concrete.

You're right though. I've inspected several bridge abutments that were exposed to wildfires, and they lost almost all strength for a depth of about 2 inches. The field test for that is tapping it with a hammer--big flat chunks come off. I speculate that for concrete that was still curing, all the water would flash to steam and just detonate/spall it.

[Stock ornithopter / entomopter]

Awesome! I love seeing stuff like this. I managed to do a very rudimentary one (without differential control) using the helicopter blades, and changing the deploy angle.

You may want to check out DecoFox on youtube. He's done ornithopters of various styles in Stormworks, and some of his techniques/solutions may be useful to you.

[Silverware in the dishwasher.]

Lick them clean and put them back in the drawer, you casuals.

[To the KSP 2 Dev Team]

On 3/1/2023 at 10:47 AM, Dakota said:

Nate spends way too much time in his day scrolling through the screenshots channel, adding a heart emoji to each picture he likes.

If I'd released a game in this state, I'd be too busy dealing with gastrointestinal distress to do this.

As I wrote this, I realized that these two activities are no longer mutually exclusive...

Wash your hands, Nate, and good luck!

[Thread to discuss negative things in a very general way, just see where it goes y'know?]

I had to put my little munchkin down this morning. Rest in peace, Cleo--It was a joy knowing you:

[KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.]

2 hours ago, IncompetentSpacer said:

had to recreate Kerbal Space Program from memory using nothing but coconuts and string

My running (completely unfounded) theory is that they somehow lost the entire codebase but still had all the art assets. Then they called in the maintainers of KSP 1 to help make a recreation in a hurry. That would explain a lot about both games being in the state they're in.

[Imperial versus metric]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Precision = 0.04%

Try to find such ruler.

GLONASS/GPS

[Imperial versus metric]

11 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Anything over .01” tolerance could be called ‘A good starting point’.  I’m often dealing in tolerances +/-.0004” and often switch between metric and imperial with no issues.   

My tolerance is 1/8" but I can give it to you 500 feet away and over rough terrain.

31 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

civil engineering

This is your friendly reminder not to rotate and translate the site plan, and use DVIEW TWIST and a viewport in Paperspace instead.

(In my area, architects are notorious for having exceptionally bad CAD workflow.)

37 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

converting a paper site plan from 20 years ago into a digital format can result in a setback dispute

Honestly, put the liability for that on your civil/survey sub.

Picking on the architect aside, I agree that converting too many types of units is fraught with danger. The one where I have to interface with your discipline is feet and fractional inches to decimal feet. Especially if I'm staking a foundation plan and I need to do it in the field, in my head.

Feel free to PM me if you want to complain about stupid surveyors.

[Measuring the distance to Mars using simple equipment (UPDATE: first estimates of distance!!)]

42 minutes ago, cubinator said:

I'm not yet sure why you think this would cause the rise and set times to be different - I would think that Mars should come out from the Moon the same way it went in, because the angular velocity of the Moon and Mars are basically constant.

You're right, I was reconstructing the experiment in my head late at night and somehow didn't realize it's the motion of the moon (plus observer velocity) CAUSING the rise and set. Which is why my number is approximately the same as your rise/set angles. So the source of my cognitive error is that my skull is an oblate spheroid.

I understand the how the terrain heights and entry angle to the moon are having an effect, but I'm not sure what you're doing with the quantification--The units aren't working out (km rather than seconds), but I'm assuming you have some unwritten steps here.

(I'm including the below for the benefit of readers who are less familiar with the science of measurement--I'm sure this is something you already know.)
Generally speaking, the terrain issue is a "noisy/non-systematic error" and going to be difficult or impossible to quantify in a conclusive way. It's analogous to me looking down 500 feet of road on a hot day and trying to get an accurate angular measurement through heat shimmer/distortion. I can "eyeball average" the sight picture and take a guess at the error, but I'm better off not relying on it in my primary analysis and treating that measurement as corroborative rather than conclusive. The fun of doing science on a budget!

Hmm, I thought the observer motion would be the source of error, but it doesn't appear so from your analysis. I'm at the point where I need to draw a diagram of the the whole experiment to make sure I'm visualizing it correctly, but I don't have access to AutoCAD at the moment. (I'm actually procrastinating on quitting my job today.)

[For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread]

48 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

",   five picosecond".

"Look at that laser maniac.", whispering they behind your back.

Maybe these are all just references to my love life?

[For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread]

7 hours ago, K^2 said:

I'm kind of terrified of what someone with knowledge and a grudge can do with this.

This why when firearms enthusiasts ask me my favorite caliber, I respond with "one micron."

[Measuring the distance to Mars using simple equipment (UPDATE: first estimates of distance!!)]

On 1/2/2023 at 9:47 AM, cubinator said:

while Mars is rising and setting its own motion through the sky is negligible,

First off, thank you all for doing this project--It's really inspiring.

I love picking apart methodology and finding sources of error:

The refraction problem: As a surveyor, I'm reasonably familiar with the effects of refraction on angular measurement. If this experiment relied on measuring right ascension and declination, yes I think it would be quite significant. (Each pair of observations are about an hour apart, so the sky position will have varied about 15 degrees, leading to different refraction corrections.) However, we're just looking at relative times, so it's not an issue.

The moon topographic problem: Could be an issue, I need to quantify it better. I stared at a picture of the Moon's topography (I'm a professional!) and I think the worst-case scenario might be a difference of 4km. I don't know where you all saw Mars rise and set over the Moon, but the blue crater on the far right side (nearside, obviously) has a pretty big jump on the southern edge:

Spoiler

However, I think the problem is the assumption I quoted:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon

"The mean angular movement relative to an imaginary observer at the Earth–Moon barycentre is 13.176° per day to the east"

(We'll ignore the fact that it's the barycentre.) 13.176 deg/day * 1 day/86400 sec = 0.00015250 deg/s = 0.54900 arcseconds/sec. Over a 40-ish second observation, the Moon will have moved about 22 arcseconds, and that will definitely cause the times for Mars to rise and set to be different, as it's "pushing" into one, and "pulling" out of the other.

I'm feeling a little brain-dead at the moment, so I'm sorry for not looking at this in more thoroughly, but it appears to be quite significant.

[StarMods: Advanced Fly-By-Wire Revived!]

On 1/2/2023 at 10:34 AM, Cerious said:

I want to use my Hotas X52 in combination with BDArmory via action groups. The problem: AFBW doesn't seem to recognize a button being pressed for an extended amount of time, I can't "hold" the action group. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

The best place to ask that question would be here:

Best of luck to you!

[Steam game recommendations.]

I'll second Factorio. It's just about perfect game design and execution. I have 2200 hours without ever touching a mod. Early game is a bit slow, which is why I have 1400 hours on one playthrough.

EDIT: Also the demo is absolutely worth trying. I put 20 hours into it.

[The Rest In Peace thread: Joe Flaherty, April 1, 2024]

Ken Block crushed himself under his snowmobile. I wasn't a huge fan, but he sure made the art of driving fast look very, very pretty. Also he was very supportive of his daughter getting into racing, which I think is a heck of a good dad move.

Here's Ken tearing it up in a $10M electric Audi:

Spoiler

 

 

[KerbalX.com - Craft & Mission Sharing]

Have you considered extending this to games beyond the KSP franchise? The Steam Workshop is 98% drooling morons, and other craft/building game communities would really benefit from having an alternate site.

[How to NOT crash my plane?]

Just to support you in your future endeavors, this thread has some excellent intermediate to advanced advice:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/165435-basic-mk2-spaceplane-guide/

[High altitude aircraft stability.]

Try using the CorrectCoL mod to show your stability at various AoAs, speeds, and altitudes. It's saved me a lot of time getting things right the first time.

EDIT: CorrectCoL also accounts for non-wing drag, unlike the stock indicator.

The link for it is in my signature.

[Aerodynamic drag in cargo bay]

I believe the bug still exists that cargo bays used as the root part do not occlude drag.

Follow Moe's advice and put something on both the internal nodes. I'm pretty sure the bays DO work on surface-attached objects, as long as the center of the object is inside the bay. The "center" is not necessarily the visual center, so try tucking it in farther, or flipping it around.

[ULA launch and discussion thread]

On 11/11/2022 at 5:38 PM, tater said:

Blurred some of the hardware:

I'm assuming that stand has the ability to rotate the rocket so that they can even out materials creep (as well as make it easier to work on)?

[Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)]

On 10/30/2022 at 8:44 AM, Gargamel said:

I have a hard enough time getting the bed level when it's not shocking me and squirming around.  

CyberBride has a warranty, dude.

 

EDIT: or whatever CyberSpouse floats your boat. Robots, man…Can’t live with ‘em, can’t unplug them since the Android Rights Bill of 2032.

[I need to know how to stop my spacecraft from wobbling]

On 10/16/2022 at 7:46 AM, magnemoe said:

Are you using mechjeb? It tend to overcompensate, so turning off or restricting gimbal on engine might help as on an long rocket both the reaction controls in front and the gimbal at the rear can start fighting each other. If you have two reaction wheels turning one off also help. 

This is good advice both for both MJ and stock.

For MJ, I also found going into the PID-tuner and quadrupling the default Kd term helped quite a bit. It's been a few years since I played, but I think the default was 0.5 and I set mine to 2.0.

[[New] Spaceplane Discussion Thread]

I think it was Feynman who said (paraphrasing) that the Space Shuttle was an insult to Tsiolkovsky because the heavy part went to space. I'm in the minimal-downmass camp. Most of what you launch to space should stay in space. Someone will come by to reuse the material eventually.

I've had this on my office wall for a decade: