Mad Rocket Scientist

I don't know why, but the scale in those videos is really confusing.

That makes sense, thanks.

Someone did this on twitter:

So in a real application, you would send current position and velocity to the PID, then it would return a magnitude and direction to apply a corrective force, which you would turn into moving hardware, right? So how frequently do you run the controller's program?

Speaking of Elon Musk tweets, this seemed to have passed by completely unnoticed:

Good luck, and hopefully we'll see you around.

Any two particles floating in space will attract each other, so ignoring all forces, any collection of particles will eventually form into something that's roughly spherical. Maybe what your friend is talking about has something to do with the shell theorem?

Doesn't a multiverse imply a meta-universe containing all the other universes?

Been playing Return of the Obra Dinn, so I have this stuck in my head:

I can't blame them for doubting BFR, it would be really embarrassing for NASA if they had to change their plans because SpaceX delayed or changed BFR repeatedly.

So that means no Vulcan configs will beat DIVH until 2023?

Nuclear engines in KSP are weaker than those in real life for balance reasons. Any NTR beyond the earliest prototypes are spec'ed at overall better stats than KSP, although their higher mass/kn will probably mean that they will never be used as a lifter engine.

The only thing that seems a bit overkill is 16 gb of ram, especially considering how easy it is to upgrade that. Also, if your friend is going to do lots of art or 3d modelling, you may want to consider a 1 tb external hard drive. If there's more likely to be lots of games, an internal SSHD.

With the block 5 improvements, how much could a F9 1st stage carry to LEO flying as an an expendable SSTO? (Not that it could launch 4t to MEO, but I haven't seen an updated number on that since the B5 updates)

I strongly expect Rocketlab will announce a larger rocket soon. I thought I read something about parachute recovery on Electron, but I might be wrong.

A "bigger boat" indeed. The only question is when will rocketlab announce the purchase of a oil tanker.

In game tweaking would fix my largest complaint with KS3P. I tried using the unity testing setup described by the author, but it looked different from KSP to me. I'd be happy to give up on eye-adaption and vignette too (I think they look bad unless barely noticeable). Bloom and SSAO give the most bang-for-buck, I think.

Thanks for catching that.

I really doubt that the military would care more about exploration than NASA. Or that they would run a more efficient program. Government programs are, for better or worse, government programs. They don't have the luxury of being able to take big risks, mess up, or bet everything on something everyone says is impossible. SpaceX can do that, and NASA could do that too once. I don't know what kind of perfect storm conspired to let that happen, but I doubt the current US military could replicate it, or even if it would be desirable. SpaceX also has NASA to thank for at least some of its success, since they created contracts which SpaceX could compete for. I also don't ethically like the militarization of space, and although that is a personal opinion, it is one which I hope is shared by others. This isn't really the place to get into that though. In short, I think NASA and the military's goals are far from aligned, and the results NASA gets, at least for their science programs, are more than worth the cost. You might want to check your timing, the last 50 years includes the entirety of the moon landings.

Looks like an impressive launch to watch in person.

Stream is live, t-30 minutes.

Open all the files you wish to save with a text editor and copy down all the characters. Seriously, the .sfs (save) files and .craft files can be opened with text editors.

There are only 93 users online right now, and I'd guess only around 300 members who regularly visit the forums. That's only 100 m2. But I would want much more than 1 m2, I often wish I just had a whiteboard around for random things in my life. I think 2 m2, about the same as two standard whiteboards per person. Don't worry, all of us would make terrible murderers since like movie villains we'd invent a wildly over complicated weapon then explain in detail to our target how it works. Plus, Spaceception is ahead of you on my hit list since they mixed measurement systems.

Is it really that expensive to install streetlights? The largest issue I think would be the impact on animals which rely on the moon (or darkness) for stuff. Also people with skylights who want to sleep. It does say this in the article: "the precise illumination range could be controlled within tens of metres" although it's unclear how that would be: a) Possible b) Cheaper than streetlights, even over 100s of years of electrical costs c) Not a weapon This reminds me of the time I considered using airships with IR spotlights and night-vision contact lenses for every citizen to replace streetlights.

I assume you've seen this: http://virtualtrebuchet.com/#simulator I made a roughly 1 m tall trebuchet using this out of PVC, but either the counterweight was a different weight, or I was exploiting some weirdness in the simulation since it needed a lot of tuning of the sling length to work.