Mad Rocket Scientist

Good point, I'll run some numbers and see which of those would be lighter. My DST is actually the same vehicle as one of my TVs, so at least one of them has to at least once do a Duna-Kerbin-Duna flight without refueling. Thanks, how about enriched uranium?

A very simple interpreter would probably take less than several years of study to make. Especially if you skipped conditional logic and loops.

Congrats!

That's a good idea. I need to check whether my miner propellant transfer vehicle can survive Kerbin aerobraking, since that could save I don't plan to move it every transfer, just for the ones described there. Then leave it on Ike, and only refuel on the Duna end of each round trip. Because Advanced Deep Space Transit requires that it only refuel in Duna SOI, so no Minmus mining.

I've been thinking about how to bootstrap two transfer vehicles (TV) with minimal fuel and miners launched to orbit. I think I've come up with a way to launch only enough fuel First step is to launch TV1 with a miner that works on Ike and Minmus, and enough fuel to get into an elliptical Minmus orbit with its payload (not too much is necessary, since you can't launch very much payload before the first window). Then you mine Minmus, fueling TV1 all the way up, and redock the miner onto it. This then flies to Duna on the first window. While that's on its way, you launch TV2, all of its payload, and no fuel (or a very small amount). Meanwhile, you mine Ike to refuel TV1, then fly the miner back to TV1. Then TV1 departs Duna early, so it arrives before the second outbound window. This takes more DV, but it has almost no payload, so it should be possible. Then you mine Minmus to refuel TV1, and use TV1 as a fuel transfer shuttle to fuel up TV2. After both TV1 and 2 are fully fueled, TV2 departs for Duna on the second outbound window, with the miner. The miner then lands on Ike, and stays there permanently. Now you have a mostly fully fueled TV in orbit of both Duna and Kerbin, and infrastructure in place to refuel within Duna's SOI, to meet the "advanced deep space transit" requirement. Since only one is required for the achievement, it would make sense to only have one with capacity to support 5 crew. By the way, can we resupply life support at Kerbin and still get advanced deep space transit if we don't refuel?

Scott Manley just made a video on the PSP: And a time converter link to 3AM EDT (Launch at 3:30AM EDT): https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/event?lid=100,5&h=5&sts=25566000&sln=3-3.5&a=show

Hmm, maybe I should switch to TAC-LS. It looks much more complex, so it seems like it would be unfair to not use it. But what about the early mission prestige kerbals? The backup plan description specifically talks about an outpost.

It's probably lighter because of PBS slightly breaking USI's balance. The water purifier raises the recycling cap to 82% with only .7t for the part and .9t for the water drill, and the closest USI part only raises the cap to 79%, and weighs 3.75t. The algae farm, which allows for closing the loop, is only .5t, plus .25t for a small ore drill, and .9t for a water drill that's already needed for the water purifier. (I just realized now that the water drill may not work on Duna. I may be going back to the drawing board. EDIT: Water does exist on Duna, but only at the poles) But it does have space for 10 kerbals: Surprisingly, the PBS Mk1 planetary hab is much better than the Mk2. The Mk2 carries 133% of the Mk1's crew, but weighs 237% of the Mk1. It carries slightly more supplies and EC, but storage of those isn't a concern. It has a better USI habitation value, but I'm using 2x space instead of USI's system. As to the point of closed loop: simplicity and mission robustness. It may ultimately be lighter to launch launch life support, but with the goal of very long term presence or even full colonization, it's worth getting this working early. However, I may trim bits off and only close the loop on the next window, that way I only require supplies for a little over 2 years, when the closed loop part will arrive.

Alright, designed and launched a station with zero planning, so although I intended it to head to Eeloo, it stayed in kerbin orbit, due to a lack of solar panels and radiators. Behold the KSS Xenon Cheese! My score should be 230954, counting only stock resources. (pay no attention to the visual bug, something to do with running 81 mods, many of which don't even support 1.4.5.)

Closed loop USI + PBS life support for 5 kerbals in one 8.336t package: EDIT: Minus, of course, wheels, landing equipment, etc.

I don't really know enough enough about it to give you any good guidance, but some searching came up with this tutorial, which includes a complete portable lisp interpreter for python. It's only about 400 lines too: http://norvig.com/lispy.html Also this, which is a complete lexer, parser, and interpreter: https://github.com/marciok/Mu#writing-your-own-programming-language Also there's this, which is more of a meta-resource: https://tomassetti.me/resources-create-programming-languages/ Basically, your first task will be to decide what language you want to write the program in, and then figure out what features you want it to have. Then just implement them as described above, although it looks to me like for a very small set of features, there will be zero benefit to making our own language over just making functions. EDIT: Oh, and for ways to make learning programming easier, consider scratch. It's how I got started with programming before I graduated to python. It's a surprisingly powerful visual programming language that removes a bunch of the hardest to learn overhead for programming.

How about this?

Ah, Death Valley weather, always so pleasant. I just have never been there in january, and forgot it got like that.

I've been out there, did you go to see the rock racetrack? Also, weren't you dying of heat in a sweater and pants?

Looks like it supports unicode too.

The problem is that the easiest way to write a new language is write it in another language. You may want to consider how you could learn to enjoy learning programming, or consider collaborating on your project with someone who does enjoy it. The fastest way to get burned out on a hobby project is to hate doing parts of it. I think this is a bit unfair, they've never said that they know everything about programming. In fact they're said that they don't know very much, and are asking for help with, admittedly, something that is harder than the original project. It really depends on how you interface the software with the hardware, but in python it might look like (pardon extremely rusty python skills): degreesPerSecond = 0 time.sleep(10) rotateFin(["Fin1", "Fin2"], 10, 2) sys.exit def rotateFin(fins, degrees, seconds): for i in fins: degreesPerSecond = degrees/seconds #however you interface the code to your hardware, passing degreesPerSecond and seconds to the servo defined by the fin name return From my point of view, the hard part is the interface of hardware and software, and writing a custom language would only be pushing that problem to a lower level. EDIT: Just realized defining degreesPerSecond every loop is dumb, but you can't edit code, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I should have made it more clear that I have/had no idea how much rule breaking was going on, since successful moderation is invisible.

Before the november 2015 forum update, there was a subforum in the spacecraft exchange called the rocket builders. To quote @Ted: "This is a Forum for all your Rocket/Craft Building needs. Essentially, if you, or a group of people, are churning out rockets under a single name post them here. Additionally, if you need a rocket built for you, simply post in one of the existing threads asking the 'Company' to design and build you a rocket/craft." So if you made many craft they could be shown there under one banner, or you could work as a group. Also, you could make requests to have craft built by the "companies". However, I believe it was started before rules against role-playing were instituted on the forums, and so it was removed from public view entirely during the forum update (the moderators likely have a copy of it). Strictly speaking, the entire concept was based around roleplaying, however many people were upset by the decision to remove it, especially since some of the older threads were entirely wiped because (unlike active threads) the OPs were not active during the grace period to copy their threads over. I believe there were some actual examples of rule-breaking happening in some of the older threads too, and the rule against roleplay makes sense, but many of the threads were simply showcases and requests, although that was allowed to continue in the spacecraft exchange, minus the roleplay. @zekes said this about it, which I think is pretty much what everyone thought: "Well this is a large blow to me and I'm going to try to come up with some two cents to say about it, if I end up just blowing hot air in circles feel free to ignore me. The Rocket Builders have been dying. It's gone on for the past year, and I've been discussing it with a lot of other people. It was a great fun place a few years ago, but now it's hollow, the companies mean nothing anymore, there are no engineers working for them, and partnerships don't have a meaning (if they ever did at all, it's been lost on me). Nevertheless, I feel a certain nostalgia to the place that really is tied to KSP. I started on the forums because of SSL and Giggleplex, and their companies. My own company was based off of SSL, and For the past 3 years it's been where I hang out and enjoy KSP the most. Now, granted it's had it's ups and downs and I am partially responsible for a lot of the downs, but for better or for worse it was a part of me, of KSP. Just deleting the Rocket Builders will tear out three years of my life, three years of KSP conversations, of working to build up a community, of the past glory days of massive craft releases and conversations between builders. Getting rid of the Rocket Builders means things that i have worked on, names that I built will be lost. I'm quite sure most of you have at least heard of Zokesia Skunkworks through the years. But now that's *POOF* gone. Three years of legacy just deleted. How can I go on playing KSP knowing that most of the things I've built, most of the things I've spent my time in will be gone? I have put in hours and hours of work into running and managing my Rocket Builder Company, and I imagine the moderators see us as nothing but an annoying subforum, but Please at least understand we put so much time into what we built. So much time and memories will be gone if you just delete our forum. I say "our" forum because I really never felt part of the rest of the KSP forum - i'm not a modder, I'm not a craft competetor, I'm not a troubleshooter, I'm not a greeter or game player. Or at least that doesn't mean as much to me as the RB forum does. So if you're going to delete it, remember how much love, time, and effort some of us have put into it. Remember that without my company there is little reason to play KSP apart from the occasional craft release. I'm just sorry after all these years our forum's only achievement is being a nuisance to the rest of the forum and that we're not fit to continue on existing, or ever having a record of existing, in the future of the community. Respectfully, Zekes, CEO and Founder of Zokesia Skunkworks." I was not as badly affected, as I had joined much more recently, and never did very much collaborative building. I tried to backup the entirety of the subforum (there were only 25 pages) to the internet archive, but with only 7 days between the announcement and the wipe, I was only able to archive some of the larger threads. After that, some of the people (like myself) moved their threads to the spacecraft exchange, but since it used to be more busy, they would only be visible when a new craft was released, and served just as showcases. Which, in many ways, was fine, but it was never the same. Personally, I mostly made replicas of real world or fictional vehicles, so it worked fine. However, even later I and many of the serious replica builders began to drift away from the forums, or at least from replica building. I got burned out on KSP, and that, combined with college, meant that I stopped looking at the forums for a while. Even now I only have time for this tanks for summer break, and once school starts in a few days I'll be less active here. I think many others have had similar experiences. In short, it is a forgone conclusion that all forums will die, and the KSP forum is no exception. At the time of the removal, the rocket builders, as a smaller part of the forums, was already dying. While that meant that objectively, it impacted the forums as a whole less than if it was very active, it still felt like it was being killed instead of being left to die in peace. And I cannot complain about rules against roleplaying, since it is almost impossible to moderate it, I and many others were sad over the loss of what was, even if it was already gone. Hopefully that's a mostly unbiased and clear explanation.

If you want to run this on an actual rocket, you might want to just implement this with functions in C or C++ and use an arduino. Arduino has delay() built in, which already does exactly what you want, and you could just define functions to do anything else. Of course, even in trying to write your own language you would certainly learn a lot about programming, so if you're not concerned about making your rocket work quickly, it would work.

You may mean hypergolics, i.e. fuel-oxidizer pairs which ignite on contact. Unlike liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen, they often can easily be stored for long periods of time, since how long you can store them is limited by corrosion rather than boiloff. They also are more reliable, since they do not require a separate ignition system, and have flexibility in how many times they can ignite. They also tend to be denser than kerolox or cryogenics. However, they have a lower Isp, are harder to produce, and tend to be unstable toxic carcinogens. Personally, I'd prefer kerolox or methalox for cislunar operations, except on a very small scale with unreliable tech, such as Apollo. (Unreliable not because of record, but because it simply could not be tested very much.

This bring up in interesting point about energy from the sun: The entire global nuclear arsenal contains ~6*1018 joules, but the amount of solar energy that hits the earth every second is ~4*1018 joules. The entire estimated remaining fossil fuels on earth contain ~4*1022 joules. All solar energy released by the sun every second is ~4*1026 joules.

Factorio is less of a puzzle game, since there's infinite resources, and progress is limited by your factory's production capacity rather than arbitrary goals. Unfortunately, it also is not likely to go on sale in the foreseeable future.

Alright, thanks.

Yes, the internet archive has a decent archive of it, especially the parts that were deleted in the software change (because I archived it). Here's the earliest one: https://web.archive.org/web/20121021002818/http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum.php?s=9f34a5c05565584a31f6fa8dc3a35151 And here's one from right before the update: https://web.archive.org/web/20151124063713/http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com:80/ I shall not forget the rocket builders. *Sniff*

I was considering 10-year crew rotations as part of my long term mission architecture. Maybe I'll change it, I tend to aggressively min-max this kind of thing, to the point of the absurd. Power, control, and 30 days of supplies for 3 kerbals wouldn't really be that much extra mass, and it'd make more contingencies possible. By the way, how long does the Kerbin space station need to support 4 kerbals for? And can the crew shuttle launch supplies? Hopefully. About the Backup Plan achievement: do I need that for all kerbals at the base for the entire time, or just for all kerbals on Duna on year 10? For example, would I score that if I send the backup DAV on the 4th window? I'm still designing ships, and I probably spent more time picking mods and making spreadsheets than designing.