Nuke

oooh thats even more fun!

except in that case you are trying to contain charged particles vs repel neutrals. magnets are fun.

they want to pull 10 others, but they dont have an opening till the middle of december. also taco bell, how do you keep it down? you can make superior mexican food at home.

im alive and thats questionable. howabout you dont ask me stupid questions and i wont oughtright lie to you. i had a tooth out yesterday. unfortunately that was not the worst part of my day.

the slaves know not the way to cast off the shackles.

i am so glad i havent worked since 2008. dont miss it.

i want to say that the show is using this as a commentary on the political bipolarization we are currently going through in the usa. i dont think its so much as pushing one side or the other (but a clear bias exists simply that the side represented by the klingons is the opposite side from the one that runs hollywood). i want to say that they are using the show as a whole to show that its possible for both sides to understand eachother and help close the divide. i want to think that, but i have a feeling that the bias will be exploited to push someones agenda. i dont want to be too political but this seems to be the direction the show is going.

i like how easy it is to prototype a robot chassis with lego. considering doing a 3d scanner build. help automate the process of taking the hundreds of photos required for visualSFM, which turns them into a point cloud which you can use to generate model and texture data. its pretty much just a turntable, something to raise and lower the camera while keeping it pointed at the subject and a servo to take the picture. but i dont have a camera with high enough resolution to get good results.

went through a brick link phase. i dont think ive messed with my legos since i got my 3d printer though. ive doune some experiments printing custom bricks, but its easier just doing your build as one piece.

klingons didnt take the path of self elevation into a space faring civilization (the path the post prime-directive federation prefers other races to take). another race attempted to enslave them and the klingons revolted, seizing their technology in the process and later developing their own and expanding their empire. hence the mistrust for outsiders. they have learned that when another species 'comes in peace', that enslavement is soon to follow. they have been there before and arent going to risk it happening again. its also why the klingons have such a cultural-tech disparity. they have values of a feudal iron age warrior culture but tech superior to starfleet at this point in the timeline.

expect a merge into the other thread, think the mods have merged 3 into it already. captain seems more like a serial killer than a starfleet captain. especially that scene in the dissection lab with bits of alien critters everywhere. hardly creepy at all. was that a gorn skeleton?

i need something to watch until the expanse comes back on. hard scifi has ruined trek for me. discovery was just a nail in the coffin.

episode 3 what the hell did i just watch? space mushrooms, white rabbits, and beatles references. i dont think i can say more without breaking the forum's political policy. im even less enthusiastic about some of the new characters. we got star treks first openly millennial character, a captian that has more in common with hannibal lecter or jeffery dahmer than picard or james kirk, and a former cylon (its pretty much battlestar discovery at this point). the desk tribble is the best damn character in the show. oh and burnum is now andy dufrane. and discovery looks like a rust bucket on the outside, i was thinking it was a damn garbage scow, but is somehow state of the art internally. and the blatant set reuse. i can understand them doing something like this is season two or three. but come on, this has a vibe of a certain episode of ds9 that i found questionable.

im kind of a big fan of jon's law. "any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction." it always disappointed me when in star trek every time 'ramming speed' was called for that it didnt result in a massive nuclear-like explosion. considering how powerful trek's impulse engines supposedly are, instead you get a bit of minor hull ripping as if it were an ocean going vessel running into another at a few knots. it seems like a massive bit of untapped potential you usually dont see in mainstream scifi.

didnt mean to get this thread too political. but if space is regulated by governments like what we have now, dangerous things like nuclear reactors wont be available to everyone. however if human populations in space are self governing, then they could justify anything on the grounds of efficiency and planet bound governments are going to have to tolerate them and maintain good relations. if i was on the ground i wouldn't want to go to war with a space faring nation. what kind of government we have at the time is going to dictate the kind of propulsion we will actually use. in fact this kind of thing is why i like the expanse.

i think it was a mistake to retcon the forhead thing into the timeline. it was a silly plot line for what in essence was a spoof of a classic episode by a ds9 episode and then retconned in by a latter mediocre wannabe trek series. it always seemed kind of a silly way to explain away 1960s makeup design capabilities. they could do great things makeup wise in the 60s (planet of the apes), but not on a tv show's budget. i see the new klingons as undoing that silly mistake and imho its a good thing. those ships though, wheres my d7?

i bet the mouse has a clause in their star wars agreements that says they cant make star trek sets. cant support the competition now.

what we will run will be entirely dependent on what kind of power supplies are available. a fission reactor might be out of reach for a corporate entity due to government regulations and so your workhorse spacecraft are all going to be solar-electric or chemical. chemical will likely be dependent on a lot of isru bases, possibly with (government regulated and protected) nuclear powered bases producing the fuel, and a few nuclear powered tankers moving the fuel to various resupply bases and cycler ships. why carry the reactor everywhere you go, keep it on the ground (preferably low gravity ground) to improve efficiency. close to the sun many of those chemical engines would be augmented in an arcjet configuration. i get a lot done in ksp with an arcjet mod with about 600s isp, though irl arcjets would be slightly lower and distances larger. mr-510s (a quarter newton thruster) use hydrazine and get about 585s with 2kw. lh2/lox arcjets would be a little better in performance if you could solve the boiloff problem. solar would provide sufficient power in the inner solar system. ion engines mostly get used for all the low mass satellites and space craft, we just dont have the power systems needed to push heavy things around with ion engines. things might be better if space uses more of a libertarian model, where it would be considered ok for private entities to have mobile nuclear reactors. though this may pose security issues. we cant have space pirates sell radioactive material to terrorists now. we might also see next gen fission eliminate the non-proliferation issues with nuclear reactors. now if we get fusion reactors like the polywell or smaller, that changes everything. this gets you up to 100 megawatts so high power mpd thusters become viable for all vessels from the smallest to the largest. tea kettling might be the way to go in most cases, as its better to have an engine that can run on anything as opposed to require very high purity propellants that cost additional energy for production and can only be attained from certain places in the solar system. hydrogen based mpds might be the best bet, but it would be nice to have the option of also using nitrogen or argon in places where its hard to get. high cost and rare propellants like xenon might be used mostly for satellites and military use.

prior to skill trees i had mastered every mech in the game, selling back the bad varients, but keeping at least one to represent the chassis (more often 2 or 3). you could always buy them back and they would remain mastered. now when skill trees came out they closed this loophole. the mechs i have sold still have their mastery logged and i can buy them back and master them once, but that only applies to stuff sold before the skill tree redux. post skill tree ive just been buying all variants of each mech as they come out for cbills. if you havent played since skill trees you probibly should. they added a bunch of new weaponry since then. the skill trees weren't really that bad. i rather like the levels of customization.

i suppose. m*a*s*h still holds up to this day and its one of the few shows of its era that do so. a remake would never be as good as the original series/movie, so doing it a different way would be the only approach that wouldn't completely flop.

ever? id have to say b5. right now? probibly got.

im going to be intentionally vague so as not to spoil anything for anyone who didnt watch both episodes. from the previews for episode 3 we should finally get to see the ship in the show's title. it also makes the acronym for the show rather embarrassing. also only a few of the characters shown so far are regulars. so consider the first two episodes as kind of a prequel to set it up later on down the road. liked the shenzhou, seems to have the vibe of a refit nx-01 type ship. liked the other federation ships as well. it kind of has that crude asthetic rather than the 'clean' ships from tos and the more elegant designs from tng onward. liked the klingon redux. even though it seems similar to other alien races from the main timeline. though im less interested in their ship redesigns, i have a feeling were not going to get to see any d7s or birds of prey (probibly my favorite ship design in all of trek). im hoping that these are house ships and not production vessels. didnt like the softness of the scifi. ftl telepathy and the 'new star in the sky' bit because of violation of speed of light limits. i suppose thats trek for you but at least put a little effort into the handwavium to at least make it appear plausible. didnt like many of the characters thus far. the new alien spock/data analog doesnt really impress me at all. i dont ever remember a cowardly character in a show ever be memorable. they turn out to be annoying at best and typically get cut early. depends if/how they develop his character. didnt like how the klingons were being portrayed as religious fanatics, especially considering according to their belief system they were supposed to have killed off all their gods long ago. or to put them in the role of modern day terrorists when they should have more of a space viking/mongolian vibe. the protagonist was probibly the best character so far. lots of room for development there. too many characters in star trek come from pristine backgrounds and its nice to see a damage case with deep seated issues who tries to act cool and logically but ends up falling short. didnt like the new intro, it was too minimalistic and conceptual. at least they didnt use a crappy theme song (im looking at you enterprise). special effects are pretty good, though i found the warp effects too reminiscent of battlestar galactica. really liked the cloaking effects. speaking of galactica this show kind of has a battlestar discovery feel to it. remember when galactica ended and every show to follow it tried to have a bsg redux vibe. many of them fell flat on their faces (sgu being the biggest offender). this show feels kind of late to that party. however this is not entirely a bad thing. ive always wanted a more gritty star trek, like the way ds9 was going in the last few seasons. this seems to top that greatly. i kind of wish they would redo m*a*s*h and bsg the hell out of it, other than that i think bsging things needs to stop. story had some issues. like during the battle in episode 2 many of the actors didnt portray the tension appropriately. or how saro kind of seemed like he had just met burnham even though she had been a memeber of the crew for years. in that second scene where the protagonist and the captain were introduced, i kind of kept thinking that they were walking on the sand wrong, i kept thinking a sandworm was going to come kill them, then i realized i was watching star trek. ironically this was probibly my favorite scene from the first episode. this felt like trek. then the rest of the show contrasts that and its as if its saying, this is star trek, but were doing things differently. it did a good job at setting the tone of the show. mudd is coming. thats it for now. look forward to episode 3.

thats my other game. i have over 150 mechs and have recently made tier one. i find things have improved with the skill trees and new tech releases. though i think my biggest gripe is stuff like that should have been done 2 years ago. biggest issue right now is lack of map developments. the game has few maps and many of them are poorly designed. another being the unsupported version of cryengine that they are using, i find it buggy and somewhat limiting further development of the game. im kind of taking an extended break from the game. between the amount of grind, saltiness of the community, and bumbling of the developers, one can only play it so much before they get fed up with it.

had a 7.4 some years ago, but because i live in the middle of nowhere nobody gave a crap.

ive been enjoying my printrbot play for a couple years. it was about $400 plus another $100 for the upgrades. not much for build volume, even with the y axis upgrade, but its pretty reliable. ive considered printing a bigger printer but it probibly wouldn't be as good and would require a high dollar amount of unprintables, like stepper controllers, motors rods and bearings. im mostly printing project boxes for my electronics hobby, as well as various mechanical assemblies. usually breaking projects down to sub assemblies and joining them with ye olde bottomless box of screws. there are probibly better printers out there now at better price points. if i was going to buy a new printer id just go with a larger printrbot.