Okhin

Well, the thing that worries me is that those high industries needs people to be manned and to function. Which are usually dangerous jobs, currently manned by underpaid people (most of factories workers are well less paid than your average office worker). And I do not think you can daily commute to space at a low cost, you said it, companies are meant to reduce cost. So it probably is cheaper to maintain some people in space to operate the heavy industries up there. Which means you need to have people who agrees to go live into space (a dangerous environment) to do a menial and at times dangerous job. Or to stay on earth do whatever you do that does not involve taking hard risks with your health (current pandemics sets aside). So, how do you get people to go there and work for you? You create a social group of workers, usually uneducated people, usually poor people. And you work on your union busting skills (which Amazon is very good at, by the way). This is how you create Belters (Elon Musk wants to create the Mars Republic, let's get a live enactment of the Expanse). So yes, he never actually said "I want to turn earth in a private paradise", but given his strategy with Amazon (privatize everything, and maintain its low grade worker either as "sub contractors" or as barely paid drones), this is what it might come too

you mean, like self driven cars being trapped in salt circles ? (that's my favorite one :p)

Well, for the difference between Bezos and Musk and the place things takes in their lives, I would be very cautious about all the story telling both of them are doing. Also, I'm not sure they see space as a hobby. Bezos seems kind of focused on sending heavy industries in space to turn the Earth in a private garden for rich people, while it seems Musk seems to be motivated by the planet B strategy. Both ways of seeing things seems quite important in their world view (even if they have to deal with pesky small town competitor such as MS).

Well, this is where AI is used widely in place of automated. There's no AI in traffic light, there is automation. And some coordination for special effect (such as green waves), but once they're programmed, their code does not change. Usually, what is called AI, is second generation code, ie code generated by code. Which neural network does (you code the neurons, the neurons code the functions to make it overfly simplified). Traffic light automation are not second generation code. Mostly because you want to be able to precisely anticipate what the traffic lights will do in specific situation, which you can't do with AI (you can guess, estimate but not know for sure how an AI will react before it reacted, and explaining why it reacted this way might be extremely complex). In situation where you can have accountability issues (such as being sure that there's only one way that have the green light on a specific crossroads) to be able to fix, improve and share responsibilities, you might not want to rely on second generation code. You want to be able to be sure that if A happens, then the code will do B, each and every time. Which you cannot prove formally for AI (does not means it will not happens). Litigation department will hate all those self driven vehicles.

Well, that's nice of him, but did he actually did it (the 1B$ thing)? Also, does 1B$ really have any impact on him, given the amount of money he makes everyday ? I mean, it's not even a week of his income (which is estimated around 2B$ a week), so he probably won't miss it. So he could probably invest a bit more, instead of grabbing state money, to which he's reluctant to contribute.

Well, benevolent isn't even a requirement here. Faultless (or, to be more specific, better than a bunch of humans working together) is the issue here with most of computer driven solution. And, to a point, an automated (or close to automated, with not a lot of humans involved) system to move people around according to their wishes, can be assimilated to a public collective transportation system, which tends to be cut down in favor of the fallacies of self driven car. So, if you want to reduce human error, reduce the number of humans driving per humans being driven somewhere. Eventually, assist them with some computer and some data, but keep human intuition in the loop. Also, what if I need to have a low profile and be of the grid in this automated grid ? There's legitimate reasons (witness protection is one, escaping an abusive partner is another, doing investigative journalism another, etc) to want to get of the grid. How your AI can manage that ? She probably won't see the car and think the space is free, so she can move this heavy trucker right into your spot, right ? Since there's no car here ?

Maybe Bezos can print 1 000 000 000 $ bills ? It would make it easy to wield two cash gun than this hge backpack. On a side note, do Blue origin gets any money from government contract ? That would be outrageous, especially given the size of Bezos pile of cash (I mean, the income that guy has does not makes any sort of sense whatsoever) and the little his companies usually pays taxes (but I say that has an european, maybe Bezos do pays taxes in the US, even if I doubt it)

Something like that ? https://odditymall.com/cash-cannon-is-a-cash-gun-that-makes-it-rain

Yep. But you can strut the part on which the klaw is tied. Personnaly, on asteroid, I autostrut the first static part after the klaw to the heaviest part (which always will be the asteroid). I precise static, because I cluster claws and put them on piston, to have a bit more stability when grabbing an asteroid. My process of establishing a firm grab at asteroids goes as follow : I fully extend the first piston, grab the asteroid, free pivot, target center of mass, retract the piston half way, and then extend the three other in sequence (extend, grab, free pivot), once everything is grabbed, I lock all klaws, retract the pistons as much as I can, lock them, disengage the engines and autostrut to heaviest part the part where all the pistons are attached. At this point, I'm aligned with center of mass, and firmly dock. The forces will be spread on the different klaws, the piston are now basically just static rods of iron. I'll just need a hell lot of reaction wheel to turn the asteroids, but 12 or more of the biggest one I can find will do it. That's how I klawed that base on a class E : (However, I think the engine of this base are way to underpowered to move the asteroid in any significant way. I think I can reach .01 TWR, but I'll have to check)

Who needs fps anyway, when we're sharing screenshots :p I would say there is a formal limit, which is 8, which we're not supposed to reach, but that's just me being picky with formalism. And I guess, the non-formal limit should be around the size of an int, or something similar (so, probably around 65534. At which point my computer would have melt down in protest). I wonder what happens if you push it above this kind of limit. Is it a signed int ? In which case we could have negative symmetry factor (because everyone knows that 65534 + 1 = -65535), whatever that means. But then, I'm not sure I'm really equipped for those kind of experimentations (going above a thousand part in the VAB tends to kill and freeze the game on my setup)

I've reduced the over engineering. Two sets of four rotors are doing fine, no need for all those rotors. I've also tried to align the rings a bit more, gave those rings some power and a probe core (since their fate is to become autonomous ships interlocked in another), worked on my part count and improved the appearance of it. Ended up with 4 subassemblies that I can slam together to build a big space station. I'm still missing some (docking station for docking smaller craft, like Saturn V, in it; a docking ring, to dock two parts of the same hollow station; RCS module which won't be based on monoprop), but it make sthings easier. I now need to figure out a launch vehicle for that. I'm a little worried about those big rings in an atmospheric context, but that's a story for another day I guess. The Kerbal X is up to date. And some screenshots

Factoring symmetry. Turns out that symetry is not limited to 8, you can go way further (I've been to 256). It does not really helps with my already high part counts designs, but it makes easier to align stuff perfectly. Or to load a lot of battery on a 5m radius thing. @Matt Lowne explains it in this video But you can stack it more than twice, meaning you can reach at least 256 symetry. Which you can the reduce using Shift + X to get the number you need / want. If your building rotating rings, or where you want a lot of, say, neon drives, it helps to have them nicely arranged. But yeah, the part count goes insanely high, fast.

Sooooo.... Something probably a bit over engineered. It's a hallowed station, built around 5m structural tubes, and I still need to figures out how to send it to space. There's a pair of rings, rotating around the structural tubes. Meaning a lot of high power rotor and grip pads are involved, but it's quite stable (at least, until the remains of the two decouplers are crushed into explosions by said rotors). There's even iris door at each ends, and I need to figure out some docking port arrangement inside the tube. Building such hollow station is a bit weird (you can't just stack modules), but I think it looks a bit interesting. The part count is high though (946 parts) I need to work on reducing that. There's a kerbal X around here : https://kerbalx.com/okhin/Hollow-ring-station The iris is not a real full mechanical one, it's just triangle shaped panel stuck on 6 servos. Not sure if the mechanics needed for a functional iris (as is done in a camera for instance) can be easily done in KSP (can't do loops). I'll probably work on some sub assemblies to make it easier to build 5m hollow station (well, they're wider than 5m obviously). I'm not sure either about the look of the iris module. Maybe I'll hide them away in MK2 Bays. But I think I should focus on reducing the part count first. There's probably no need for that many rotors. Or for that many abuse of 8+ symmetry. And of course, there's was no hatch available for Val to EVA. Need to fix that too.

Doing some Engineering. For a while I wanted to build hollow stations (to be able to dock your ship inside its axis, or to stick an asteroid there), big enough to have 3m wide ships passing through. I also wanted to have rotating rings, around those hollow axis (or even around station modules if needed, like rotating rings around a science lab). I did try wheels, but the way they work in KSP makes them difficulty usable in a setup where they're in a ring (you have wheels rotating both ways, relative to the center of control which, in a hollow station, is on the outside of the ring) so I had to build my own wheels. I also needed to build some rails of sort, which would work in zero-G. I ended up with this: The part count is high (265) for a simple station core. There's a counter clockwise sets of rotor under the first one, to keep the ring from going away. At full torque it eats 30EC, but once the decoupler have been exploded away and everything is stable, it can be throttled down to 20% of torque, and it then eats only 3EC. There is no symmetry involved in the ring, but there might be a way. The main issue is that staging blow off the struts in a symmetry setup. Maybe using docking ports instead of struts could help. Anyway, it works somehow. Maybe there's no need for that many rotors (I've been exploiting the symmetry bugs which allows to go above 8). Don't go above 20 RPM though, or everything starts acting weird. I now need to build entire station around this Or a race track for space ships, using those as goals and pressurizeb public stand to witness high TWR spaceship racing around. Or something like that. There's a kerbal X craft file here.

Oh, ok then. I think ladder are a bit more advanced than wheels. Which are then more advanced than SRBs it seems. Kerbal's science is weird.

Well, doing science in space while not being tethered is not really the best ide. Add some ladders next to your science stuff, for Bob to grab'em and stop drifting away. Also, adding scales is a good thing to do. That way you won't starnd a kerbal in a gravity field because their EVA pack is not powerful enough for him to get to the hatch (ok, does not apply for Mun and Minmus, still, a good habit)

From what I read here, adventure mode will be career mode. But with better contracts, telling a story, instead of just popping them at random and a lot of them being grindy as heck, probably something akin of science mode + the World First contracts. Also it seems they're redoing the way science works, with science being unlocked as some milestones are reached ? Maybe it will do for something a bit better than the current science tree you can farm out of Kerbin SOI.

I had some contract about building a Mun base with ISRU and getting ore from Mun to Kerbin orbit. So I designed a rolling base for Mun. It fits nicely under the bridge, and almost no wheels were broken. Valentina said it doesn't matter, because there's twelve wheel, so one or two or three can broke and still it's OK. Since I do not have a lot of Kerbonauts, I recruited a pilot and an engineer to get this baby to the Mun. Those wheels make for a big fairing. i tried to put some robotics in there, but they just exploded under the weight of everything. I'll try a different approach next time (I have to send things at Gilly soon). Circularisation burn on a Rhino. You can now see the machine in a better way. The ISRU and drills are in the cargo bay, and that's 8 aerospikes for landing and flight. I did think about balancing the CoM on this craft, contrary to my previous one (currently docked at Minmus), and went for two belts of rocket fuel to attach them to the side, giving me a lot of dV. Heading for the Mun Orbital Lab, for the level up. And waiting for the survey mission to actually exist. I totally forgot that I did not send a survey satellite around Mun. So, let's repurpose one of those ion relay into a survey probe and send it to Mun, quick. Solar panel deployed, coms OK, let's get this trans munar injection burn started, shall we ? Circularisation down. Polarisation down too. The Cheetah is perfect for this kind of job. I'm also trying to get more efficient at jumping from SOI to SOI, so I'm working on aiming for low Periapsis (20km this time), which makes for way shorter burn for circularisation on high elliptic orbits. Which in turns makes those getting polar burns quite cheap. Next step is getting under 1000km and above 65km to survey the Mun. Cheetah stage is gone, we can transmit data. And ... battery capacity is too small, so let's activate partial transfer on the antenna and just wait a long time for the data to be sent bit by bit, EC by EC. I need moar batteries on those survey probe, I always forgot how huge those reports are and all the EC they need. So, with the survey data now online, we can land the Rolling Base[temporary name] to Mun. Right now, displaying the niceness of those brand newly unlocked aerospikes engines. For a TWR of 10 when empty, which surely should be enough. Given the anemic torque of those twelve wheels (I tried with the bigger one, but I did not really liked the total lack of maneuverability they provide), and even if we can probably jump over, let's look for a not too cratery surface to land, with a good enough quantity of extractible ore. And landed. On almost flat ground. It did not take a lot of time to slow this down (or even to accelerate). At this point i should probably add that this whole rolling thing, if I'm gonna dock everything in orbit each time, is not really working. I could probably do with static landing gear. But I think it looks kinda cool (and well, if I ever need to dock on the ground, I can do it). While ore is being extracted and processed, our mustache crew is planting flags and stretching their legs a little bit. And once their tank are filled with LfOx and ore, they took off, got an orbit of the Mun, and found a nice escape trajectory which will bring them back to an intercept of the Mun after one orbit around Kerbin, without any burn needed, allowing to complete the contract and get back to a docked position around Mun. And now, they wait for their next assignment. Which will probably be to transfer to Minmus to make some crew rotation with Bill, who's still over there in an unbalanced ore extractor which will probably be trashed. I do have some infrastructure to deploy there too, and a mission to Gilly to prepare which will probably be a huge train of hardware for Eve SOI, including a lander to get the girls landed there back up into orbit, as well as some fuel processing capability. I'll have to send it in two craft (to get the docking around Gilly contract). Should be fun. I also have to catch a new moon for Mun (a class E asteroid to put into orbit of Mun), and to rescue some stranded kerboauts in low sun orbit. How did they strand themselves there is a question for another day (and for another kind of kerbals).

Today I got to Eve, and landed a crewed outpost there. Undocking the mission from the space bar. This is the last time the crew there will be in Kerbin SOI for a long time, since there's no return craft (yet). It is planned for the next transfer window. Burning to intercept with Eve. I've burned the leftover of the transfer stage I got when I docked the outpost to the tug. Since I have to dock to something, I'm aiming for the small lab I left there when I sent a probe on the surface. It is on a 102° inclinatio though. Meaning a lot of dV to burn. In fact a bit to much, I ended up 100m.s short to rendezvous (I had a way to high Apoapsis for an encounter I think, I had like 800 m.s of speed relative to the small lab, could kill only 700m.s), and instead of redoing all the mission (and the last weeks of game), I just cheated for Infinite fuel. I really need to get better at transferring between SOI. In think, I should have aimed for a way lower Periapsis on encounter. While at it, I also fixed the 100° inclination thing. This is the station now, before dropping the outpost on Eve surface. A pilot will stay there, waiting for a return craft next window (and there will be some stuff to send in orbit of Gilly too). And nothing much for the Eve descent really, the outpost landing have been tested and tried a lot in simulation. And now it is down on Eve surface, solar panel and antennas pocking through the heatshield, making the outpost look like a big mushroom. I need to gather seismic data. But maybe I can crash a class E asteroid. Or a comet ? Did anyone tried that to see if they survive Eve reentry ? Anyway, the crew will stay there for a long time. At least one transfer window (plus the wait for a return one), but I think the mushroom is comfy enough for Kerbals. And they have data to crunch into science.

Steam got me because that's the only way I have to play most of video games on Linux, without spending hours patching wine, using winetricks and all. Even back before Steam play, there was Steam OS (basically, Ubuntu), which made some games available for my personal setup. Before Steam, one of the few native game I could play was Unreal Tournament (which had a native Linux install). Everything else required weird patching and setup, and I lost a lot of money on game I could never manage to play (because there was not really game rated Gold or Platinum back then). Even World of Warcraft needed some specifics to be sorted out, and had some native bugs (nothing making the game unplayable, but still). So I basically switched to console gaming at this time. At least I knew that I could play the game I bought. Now, I basically don't really have to worry about games working on Linux, thanks to the amazing works done on Proton then Vulkan and wine integration by Steam (ad the way they cooperate with the wine community, sharing a lot of the code, etc). And a lot of smaller studio are also developing game in multiple platform (though I suspect it's more because Unity is eating a bigger share of the market). And for the big studio games that won't run on my computer, I still have a console somewhere (which is taking a bit of dust, until the release of Cyberpunk 2077, where I'll use it again). But yeah, Steam made gaming on Linux a bit more easier, a bit less painful and a bit less frustrating.

Who said you had to empty the bud can first ? They're heavier and deliver more energy on impact if it's full. Also, if you shake them enough and you find a way to pierce the can on demand, to let the beer evacuate from the hammer, you'll have a fuel (kinda) propelled hammer to strike at zombies. But yeah, you'll do fine. Me ? not so much. I mean, farting rainbow in the sky while singing a weird song does not sounds like a good survival strategy. But then, maybe I can became a zombie leader somehow ?

Have you try to quickly warp / unwarp (not physics warp, classic warp)? It usually resets all the wobbling that I can feel after some loading / entering in physics range and stuff (I suspect it odes that by negating all forces, then recomputing them, reducing phantom forces and resonance).

Never works. Always makes people noises louder.

Yeah, but as I said, Prolog is a different paradigm than the classic Oriented Object / Procedural ones. That's what makes it weird to learn. The same way haskell or LISP are weird to learn if you've never learned a Functional language before. The reason I can read haskell and write functional rust, is because I learned LISP, which shares a paradigm with those. Prolog is really a bit alone in its paradigm though, so nothing you'll leraned before will help to get a grasp at it . I have encountered some code which behave a bit like prolog, but yeah, it's weird.

For the rover specific contract, you already have some of those (like go to those 3 points on the surface of whatever and do science there). Granted you could do them with a hopper, but it's easier to do it with a rover. Also the scanning arms are typically made for rovers (you need to go next to a surface feature to use them), but those arms are in Breaking Ground