kurja

What problem did you have? I've seen batteries last for a lot less in arctic weather, and had a laptop crash unless heated, but all of my cameras have worked without a hiccup down to around -30 celsius.

Source for apollo guidance computer system is public (github), is this the same thing?

Foveon?

I'm familiar with how color information is formed on an ordinary camera, but the Mariner pictures seem to all be monochromatic and I'd think they were taken each too far apart to be later composited into a color image. Hence the question. It's also interesting that there were only two filters. Maybe someone here knows what they were for? Not quite so - there's one sensing element for each output pixel, values for the other two color channels are constructed from values of surrounding sensels. If you're interested, pixinsight devs explain some of the possible methods here, it's not too long of a read: https://pixinsight.com/doc/tools/Debayer/Debayer.html#usage_002

Any idea what was the use of having those color filters?

Wikipedia says that it had red and green filters though, any idea what was done with them? I'm assuming the camera was too slow to enable compositing into color images.

It's basically an old tv camera type thing. I didn't know the signal was digitized for transmission back in the day, that makes sense though. What about printing? I don't see what you're after, printing pictures isn't exactly a dark art?

Galaxies are mostly photograph-eable in visible light, nebulae are often brightest outside of the visible spectrum (think hydrogen alpha). Any news on this front?

Range finder, valve & actuator & plumbing & co2 cartridge etc etc sounds like it's going to be bulky; can you reasonably assemble all that on a small hobby rocket?

Nice. I actually thought the ISS would seem even smaller (or, you'd need an even longer lens), I've never given it too much thought because at my high-ish latitude the ISS hardly rises above horizon - spotthestation.nasa.gov tells me that today I could view the ISS for <1minute, peaking 11 degrees above the horizon.

Not sure how it's better, morally or otherwise, to get hit with supersonic bullets & missiles & shrapnel, it's not like you can see them coming any more than a laser beam and you'll be just as effed or worse coming home from your first engagement if you get hit.

What camera & lens did you use for this?

duh obviously, you can just build it in KSP and see how she flies! right?

Isn't exhaust velocity (and thus delta v per fuel unit) reduced when throttling down? I'd assume thrust per fuel unit spent to be almost nil if oxidizer flow is throttled down to only 10% of what is presumably ideal for the engine.

I had a vic 20, which was first released in 1980. And yes it had a screen and inputs

Surprised about the overheating, I've used it for computation and more recent games than KSP, fps may be low but I've never before seen it get so hot.

Installed SVE and it works and does what it says on the tin (nice) - and it adds a ton of load on my machine for some reason. I was just trying to land on Eve but had to abort because my gtx560 video card overheated and booted the computer... Weird if you ask me.

If having difficulty slowing down enough to get a closed orbit, maybe try aerobraking over north or south pole; terrain over the ice caps is quite level, so you can go very deep into Duna's atmosphere without worry of getting cratered on a mountainside. Combined with trajectories mod, that should be quite easy.

Plate solving in PI has parameters, it's been a while since I used it, but it can label the smallest, tiniest galaxies... You have to choose which catalogues to use I think. Even just looking on my phone, I can already see many faint galaxies in your picture. Edit, try pgc (principal galaxy catalogue), messier and ngc contain only the most obvious galaxies - why we hobbyists use those catalogues ,) - but to label the smallest faintest things, pgc is better.

I always have fun looking for objects I didn't know about in deep images, there's a bunch in this one. Did you happen to run a plate solver? Color saturation is a little much for my taste.

I usually keep the monoprop in the pod as well & add rcs thrusters too, for docking, fine adjustment of my orbit etc. I leave them off pretty much only when it's a small-ish craft that can maneuver with pod torque alone and doesn't need to dock with anything. Then the extra dv gained by leaving them out can be pretty significant compared to the nice-ness of having RCS.

No, you don't. I accounted for the delta v available in the final stage versus delta v lost in the previous stage; loss of only a few m/s is the best case scenario in total delta v. No point in having any sort of argument over this, it's just a fact of math that adding monoprop thrusters & fuel to drive a final stage will amount to less delta v, than omitting them and their fuel. If it rocks anyone's boat to use them anyway, awesome, I have no problem with yours or anyone's gameplay. I'm just pointing out that if anyone is thinking that they'd gain some extra dv this way, they won't.

Certainly, as the final stage fuel & engine masses becomes some very small fraction of the whole vessel's mass, the delta v penalty diminishes. A 100 ton NERV-propelled stage might suffer by only two or three meters per second, out of ten thousand. If using puffs as a final stage is something you like, by all means do, it's just not going to give you an "emergency reserve of delta v", be the rocket small or large.

900 mm long tube? So if you have a 3mm ocular, that's already 300x magnification. Add a 2x barlow and it's 600x, when the twice-your-aperture rule of thumb suggests to stay below ~140x for ideal image quality. No wonder if your view seems blurry. Edit; you had a diagonal mirror between your barlow lens and ocular? You might try if it's any better without the mirror.

Receipt of purchase that they emailed you? Apparently I got mine in May 2013...