Mad Rocket Scientist

I'm looking for a external hard drive to hold my pictures, videos, zipped KSP installs, backups of files, and other stuff that doesn't need quick access. I probably want something with 1-4tb of storage, and isn't solid state. I care mostly about cost and reliability, although I'm happy with a disk drive since it won't be running most of the time. It also does not need to be quiet, or very fast. USB is the easiest way for my computer to connect to it. I'd like to spend less than $100USD, ideally less than $70USD. I was recommended this by someone who uses it, but I was wondering if anyone here had any other suggestions. I can't really find a category for this on places like newegg, everything there seems to be SSDs with faster connection types. Thanks!

It's been a while since I was very active on the Spacecraft Exchange, but from what I remember posting craft files was something everyone did, but wasn't strictly necessary. If you posted one without a craft file, someone would probably ask, but your post wouldn't be ignored because of the lack of one. What people cared about was the images of the craft, at least for replicas. I think Cupcake and Rune's stuff got more downloads, since it was more functional. Some of the craft which I posted, and got many rep for, could not fly or work at all without cheats, so downloading it wouldn't give you an experience much different from looking at the pictures. I made and posted those crafts because it was fun, and I enjoyed sharing them and seeing what others had made, and I would order the feedback I got in order of importance like this: Someone using a technique of mine in something of their own Text replies Rep, likes Downloads of the craft file If I had someone "ransoming" the craft files that they had made for money, I would think it was odd that they were even bothering to make it if they wanted a reward external to building it, and I would feel the same way about asking for rep. I do think asking for rep would discourage me and others from both "liking" the post and actually liking the craft. Honestly I would think the extra work of PM'ing everyone who "liked" it would not be worth the rep.

Here's the big list of everything I've enjoyed since last time I posted here. The Darkside Detective (Clever, but short) Factorio (Close to perfect) Gorogoa (Very clever, but short) Hacknet (Got it for free, thinking of picking of the expansion) A Hat in Time (Like 3d platformers? You'll like this) Heat Signature (One of the first rougelikes I've been happy to play as intended) INFRA (Think all the best problem solving of Half-Life, but better, longer, connected, and 20 hours to play through without getting any of the secrets.) Opus Magnum (If you've been put off by difficulty and puzzle-vs-problem-solving-ness in zachtronics games before, this one essentially lets you play with infinite space and money, the real fun is in going back and making them faster) Portal Stories: Mel (High quality, challenging mod for Portal 2. I haven't managed to finish it yet) From Earth (Very clever mechanics, and free. I'm stuck right now) Spec Ops: The Line (Also picked this one up for free. I don't really know what to say about it)

Wait... Why didn't I think of that? That makes perfect sense.

Hey, a chance to post Weird Al.

If you rotate a cylinder with a radius of 4.5m to provide an acceleration equal to mars surface gravity (3.71 m/s^2) on the outer edge, the cylinder needs to rotate at 3.7 rpm, or 4 m/s tangential velocity. At the height of your head if you're standing on the outer edge (2.5 m radius), the gravity would be 2.06 m/s^2, and the rotation rate would be would be 8.67. A study I found from 1977 based in a 15ft (~5 m) diameter room said that: "In brief, at 1.0 rpm even highly susceptible subjects were symptom-free, or nearly so. At 3.0 rpm subjects experienced symptoms but were not significantly handicapped. At 5.4 rpm, only subjects with low susceptibility performed well and by the second day were almost free from symptoms. At 10 rpm, however, adaptation presented a challenging but interesting problem. Even pilots without a history of air sickness did not fully adapt in a period of twelve days." However, some other studies showed a smaller acclimation time. This honestly sounds better than I thought, and I think the largest problem with this would be the way it makes use of the center of the ship much harder. However, much smaller gravities (small enough that coriolis effects are small to unnoticable), although they would be less useful in combating the effects of microgravity, might still be useful so objects can be set down and exercise machines could be simpler. That's an interesting idea. I wonder if that would involve sleeping in concave beds (might be bad for your spine) or flat (you'd feel like you were being gently pulled up or down from the center of the bed).

I think the sickening coriolis forces would be worst than the muscle and bone strength decay. I'll take a look at the math and see how bad it would be.

I was searching for weird instrument covers, and found something called the floppotron: On the way I found... Calculators: And tesla coils:

The best example of it I've heard is this (I think it's a true story): Imagine your fighting a war against an enemy, who has some number of tanks. You have captured one of their tanks, and you know that they are numbered sequentially, starting from 1. The capture tank is numbered 1,293. According to statistic theory (I don't know enough about it to define it properly) you should assume that, if the tank was selected randomly, it is likely to be close to the halfway point of all tanks that near to either end, so you should assume that the enemy has about double that number of tanks. If you replace tanks with humans, the doomsday hypothesis says that you should assume that you are human number 1/2x, where x is the total number of humans that will ever exist, therefore humans will go extinct (relatively) soon. Note that this hypothesis does not put any limit on the maximum existence of humans, or specify a great filter, it just says that this is slightly more likely. I see that Nick Bostrom has written something on it, and I like his articles, although I haven't read this one yet: http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/ali/alive.html

Not a mod, but pinning a thread puts it at the top of its subforum regardless of activity, so important or noteworthy threads are easily visible. This thread is pinned, you can tell by the green pushpin next to its name here and in the subforum view.

Make sure to take a look at the internet archive version of spacex.com sometime, it's fun to see how far they've come. Oh, and while you're at it, read this blog by Kimbal Musk about the very early days of SpaceX: https://kwajrockets.blogspot.com/

Just in case that post wasn't enough:

This is the thread I've been waiting for: One playlist of epic space music. Sorry for lack of proper format, but I don't really have time to get it all typed out.

Bumping to let people know that it seems to have been released: https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

IIRC, the rotation on the runways was not from the planet's rotation, but from the runway being flat, which makes the center of it closer to the planet. But if the speed was less than 1 m/s it's not that important.

I hate to do this, but the gravity of Kerbin (or any planet in KSP) pulls aircraft towards the center of the runway, as it is perfectly flat. That may be the rolling visible with the unpowered aircraft. It's not super likely, but starting the runway in the other direction (or even better, on the properly curved area the KSC is on) would eliminate all possible errors.

Finding weird covers of the songs that are stuck in my head today: Finally, I'll leave you with this non-weird song:

Friendly reminder that this book is available, for free (or for a tiny fee), now, from the WorldCat library system, which you can request it from to many libraries (especially university libraries). https://www.worldcat.org/title/ignition-an-informal-history-of-liquid-rocket-propellants/oclc/1005905184&referer=brief_results YYMV of course, but you should be able to ask at your local library about the nearest library that can request from WorldCat. It's also available from the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612

This thread was actually dead in 2015 on page 6. I remember posting on it: This brings up an interesting analogy: If a plane is sitting on a infinite conveyor belt, which is already moving backwards at a fixed, constant speed, and the plane is moving along with it, backwards relative to the ground and the air, it is indistinguishable from a tailwind. I believe this can help to narrow down the exact source of the confusion, as everyone can agree that most planes can take off in reasonable tailwinds. It seems like part of it is confusion over acceleration and speed, and how the belt exerts backwards force on the plane both as a constant, tiny friction due to speed, and a greater backwards impulse that only occurs when the belt accelerates (I think). However, the thrust from the engines is always a constant acceleration, meaning that the belt must continuously and rapidly accelerate if it wants to overcome the acceleration of the engines. Personally I think it depends on how plausible the conveyor, wheels, and plane are.

This is the bedtime reading Elon was talking about: http://eng2.lacity.org/techdocs/emg/docs/INITIAL_STUDY.pdf I didn't read it myself, the info is taken from a reddit recap. It is a 1.5k page study supporting a request for exemption from EIR for the proof-of-concept tunnel, claiming that it is built on less than 5 acres, and is eligible for exemption. It says that the tunnel is 14 feet in diameter, with a 1-foot thick lining. It also says that the TBM will draw 3,800 "kVA," whatever that is. This is a letter from the Brentwood Resident's Coalition, saying that an EIR is required, as the eventual size of the system will be larger than 5 acres, and there should be a margin around the current system when accounting size: http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2017/17-1342-s1_pc_4-19-18.pdf#page=3 Info from presentation: They want to make supports/lining out of the muck they dig out. They also said the bricks will be $0.10USD, and stronger than cinderblock. (5,000psi) I'm pretty sure compressive strength isn't very important beyond what cinderblock or concrete already has, and they're likely to be much heavier than cinderblock, but the price is surprisingly low. They're going to sell "lego" kits made from the bricks. They eventually want to go 0.3mph, 1/10th walking speed of humans. Goal right now is to beat snail speed, 0.03, which is 10x faster than TBM goes right now. They're using an electric locomotive with model 3 batteries to haul muck, they think it is the largest battery electric locomotive ever. They say it will cost 1$ per passenger. They're partnering with the LA metro, to link their stations. It didn't sound like they were going to connect the tunnels, just have Boring co stations near metro stations. The next TBM will be called "Prufrock," and (I think) be built from the ground up by the Boring co.

Isn't that just because you have assumptions about how many cars car manufacturers will make? Since there's other car companies, it's reasonable to assume that this isn't one of the few cars that came from a car manufacturer that only made 20 cars. It's not really possible to compare that to civilizations, since we've never seen any other than our own. It's like the thought experiment where you wake up in a room with no windows and no doors and no memory of how you got there, and so assume you're in a large city, since that's where people are statistically likely to be. It's highly likely to be inaccurate, but it's the only thing you have to go on.

The most impressive part is that he sung this backwards to make the forwards dubbing lip-sync.

Now I have this stuck in my head: