LN400

Ah! Thanks for the correction. My memory leaves a bit to be desired it seems.

Rizzo: That would have been a riot. A KSP clone of a real life KSP plane. Evanitis: The last one would be the Goblin, if I'm not mistaking. A prototype interceptor that was supposed to hang under a large bomber for the ride, launch to intercept then hook up with the bomber. Only problem was air under a massive bomber in flight did not favour an already unstable fighter design. It also reminds me of one of the greatest mad ideas of early aerial adventures, the USS Macon with its fighters:

SCE to AUX. 'Nuff said. ....almost. Recently watched a docu on ground control and its developement for/during the Apollo program. I still have my jaw on the floor thinking about the caliber of guys like John Aaron.

YNM: Mathematics is more than equations, arithemtics, algebra and geometry. Forgive my lazyness by just posting this link showing just a few questions that mathematicians/philosophers ponder over: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Recurrent_themes These questions don't have simple solutions in the form of numbers.

I know the feeling Luckily far greater minds than mine also know the feeling so I'm not too worried about it! Surprisingly non-trivial, these questions. Bright people haven't even agreed on whether numbers are real outside the human brain or not! EDIT: For anyone interested with 8 hours and 40 minutes (!!!) to kill, one such great mind's thoughts (not the final word in the matter but one I want to learn more about).

1+1=2 was mentioned. That leads to a host of questions as well. What are the properties of 1-ness, what are the properties of 2-ness and are those properties valid in all mathematical worlds? It may sound ridiculous but these are just 2 (yeah I know) questions that have been looked at real seriously by number theorists, by philosophers. The properties of numbers is just one field of study in mathematics and one that has led to a number of real life applications, like say the ciphers that protect your online bank transactions.

Bill Phil: ...or philosophy, or preferably both mathematics and philosophy. One thing is arithemtics under the axioms we have. Another thing is the greater world of mathematics as a whole. Take axioms, they are supposedly all powerful yet Gödel said that no set of axioms could ever prove itself and its items entirely. Take the problem of undecidability. P vs NP problems. These problems affect mathematics at its core. Then add to that the debate whether they really are about mathematics at all or rather our incapacity to fully comprehend one, final mathematical world.

Maths is certainly a tool, and a powerful tool to boot. Whether or not it is merely a tool, or if there is some kind of deeper truth underneath is something that is debated. Or, is our mathematics the only mathematics? It seems to me most would say yes. Our maths is the only maths. Still, that is up for debate as well. What other tools are in the tool box named The Space of All Mathematics?

PB666: Thanks for a thorough post. Something that Wolfram (in that video above) talked about which caught my attention was (if I understood him at all correctly) was, he argued that the reason we see mathematics as the language of the Universe is because we happened to choose a particular mathematics in a space of all possible mathematics (I have no idea what such space would be like, but I just started out!) which can describe what it can describe (circular), and we tend to think that is all there is. But as he points out, there might very well be other, radically different mathematics that can very well describe what we may not be able to describe (mathematically), while failing to describe what our mathematics can. This is a peculiar view, to say the least. EDIT: Somewhat on this note, a discussion over Gödel's theorems which go right to the truths (or rather how you can't really tell if you have the truth) in any set of axiom.

I posted this elsewhere but this has got to be my favourite KSP-ish aircraft, the Sack AS-6 frankenplane http://www.luft46.com/misc/sackas6.html

K^2: I hope I have enough wits with me to know where my wits fail me but one can always try to seek to understand. Even if it takes a lifetime it would be worth the time, at least to me, to understand only fractions of it all. EDIT: p1t1o: It is interesting you mention binary as 2 (true/false, is/is not) is the lower limit to how many symbols/values are needed to convey information. It would be very hard to imagine any being capable of awareness of its surroundings or even itself without the ability to have some sense of difference between at least 2 non-identical states. As it is, we clearly do have that ability. On a side-note: There are people who traditionally have words for 1, 2 and 3 or perhaps up to 5. Any number greater than that would be "many". How would they build a world of mathematics if they ever did? I can't say it's impossible, only I have a very hard time understanding how it would be done. Even what numbers are, is still debated and has been for at least 2500 years. To the Greek, apparently, numbers were not to mathematics what they are today. Shapes mattered, geometry was all there was, they didn't think of 1 as a number, or 2 for that matter. It didn't concern them. That was very different from the Indian, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians and the Arabs who were concerned with arithemtics rather than "shapes for the sake of shapes". Perhaps the focus on numbers is a bit of a red herring. It seems to me that there is a world of thought there that exists even without numbers, but one which numbers live in to have any meaning.

Rizzo: Great link. I am familiar with Numberphile. One of my go-to channels for a bit of nerding out! Heaps of interesting stuff there for anyone even remotely interested in mathematics.

p1t1o: I believe you are right there. To borrow from someone else: When we or any other capable animal, realized that 2 apples and 2 elephants have something in common, namely the two-ness, then we had a foundation to explore what that could signify. The ability to see that 2 apples and 2 elephants have something in common that 2 apples and 3 apples do not have in common, is necessary to form ideas that make up mathematics. So I do believe that is where it started a long time ago. The meaning of mathematics has changed over the millennia, and explosively so over the last couple of centuries. We got non-euclidean geometry for one thing, even the idea of zero had to fight for acceptance, not to mention complex numbers. Set theory, all sorts of new theories and fields have popped up. So where are we today and where would one want to start learning about it all? Those are some of the questions I have. But ultimately it comes down to what is underneath it all, that is the base for understanding things like sets, fields, group theory, all which are pretty high level terms.

Thanks for the post. I am not as much interested in solving particular arithmetic problems (altought I am studying engineering and will need just that) but rather interested in the foundations of mathematics itself. I did come across a (to me rather obscure) article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics From a very hasty read-through it seems this is one heavy topic, which is still investigated and debated. Still, it appears that somewhere in this field of investigation, are some of the answers. Number theory is indeed a topic I find fascinating (I wish my skills would match my interest) but it appears that even that is a sub branch of a much wider and deeper field. As for truths in mathematics, that itself is perhaps the main reason I started to look at maths beyond arithmetics. Axioms, and truths, as I learned later, are not carved in stone but rather chosen. An interesting video here:

I'm a curious fellow. Another topic here on the forums or rather a detour in this topic (the metric vs imperial topic, to be exact) stirred up that curiosity. What is mathematics anyway? So, I began looking around. First stop was ye ol' Wikipedia. Now Wikipedia can be a great source of information but it can be a wild ride sometimes (too often, in fact). Here is what is driving me up the walls (from Wikipedia's article on mathematical structure): "In mathematics, a structure on a set, or more generally a type, consists of additional mathematical objects that..:" So, to understand structure, I should know what a set is but wait no, a set apparently is only part of something bigger, a type so I should look that up first, or should I look at mathematical objects first, to understand better what a type is? So what I did was, as soon as I came across anything to the likes of "based on [new concept here]", or "a sub-set of [new concept here]" etc, I followed those links hoping to get to an even more fundamental er, fundament that would explain a certain idea or term. Soon I came across the article on mathematical objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_object Now we are rushing towards the realm of philosophy. Still I feel there are even more fundamental terms I should understand before really understanding mathematical objects. Looking around, it is true that often you will find say an explaination of A that requires a prior explaination of B, which itself refers to A for prior explaination, or to C which in turn refers back to A. Circular explainations are tricky. Most of the time, it seems, they ultimately fail to explain but one can not rule out that at the very base, there are in fact some A that can only exist if B exists and vice versa, the two are not the same but one can not exist without the other, and together they do form a unit (in lack of a better word) of foundation which all other ideas rest upon. If anyone here have ever dived into the depth of mathematics, here's a question: Where would one want to start to learn about mathematics in it's purest form if one wants to start at the very start, where the foundations have no further foundations underneath?

Interestingly enough, the ancient Kharosthi numeral system (works somewhat similar to Roman numerals) seems to be some kind of base 5 for single digits (like the Roman V) but when it comes to double digits it resembles more base 20 (a score) with 10 noted a bit like half 20 (unlike Roman which would be opposite with 10 and double 10, X and XX). The Babylonians used a positional base 60/base 10 hybrid. The Mayans used a positional base 20 system (curiosly enough, traditional Inuit counting would be base 20 where 1 would be "first finger", 2 would be "second finger", all the way up to 5 then 6 would be "1 hand first finger" and so on then 11 gets it going with "first toe" and when they get to 20, it's "first human counted for". They have some REALLY long names for higher numbers). The Indians introduced the 10 symbols for a positional system that developed into the 10 digits we use. If anything, it all goes to show that which base we choose, doesn't really matter. It's about what we are familiar with. You will always have irrational numbers no matter the base. You will always have nice and ugly looking fractions, or decimal representations. Back on topic: Same goes for Imperial VS metric. It really doesn't make any difference on its own. However, when we send probes crashing into Mars because someone thought the other team was using this system when they really used the other, then we have a problem. That's where standards enter the equations. I don't build Mars probes, neither do most people so for me, and I would think, most, it really doesn't matter in our daily lives. It's all about what we are most familiar with if we don't overthink it. As for international communications in tech and science, SI units and standard notation is where it's at now and mission accomplished. EDIT: Complete digression: How would it be to use a base in the complex plane?

Greenland dogs (caveat, see below). Our family has had them since long before I was born and we've had so many personalities among the dogs it still baffles me from the grumpy, not entirely safe for kids, to the most fun loving jesters who can't get enough of having people around. And they look awesome. Apart from that, I follow cubinator's notion that there are so many amazing animals it's impossible to really pick one. Can I pick a few hundred thousand? I don't even hate wasps. Just keep those spiders away from me.

I stand corrected there then.

Just a few stray thoughts. 1. Colonies in our solar system would first and foremost be science labs and/or resource harvesting. A relatively low number of people living there for a specific purpose of running these installations. Science would be the most likely as distances in our solar system are so vast an efficient transportation of raw materials and goods would be very far from trivial. Scientific data can be transmittet in a matter of minutes or a few hours. Sending recources around by cargo ships would take several years, possibly decades from origin to destination. To set up colonies meant as an expansion of human living space will at some point mean we will have to face the idea of transforming planets/moons. First, as of today that technology does not exist. Second, to transform a planet or moon to have say, plant life growing, would demand energy. We could perhaps imagine artificial light and heating (artifical suns, in a lack of better words) but that is to say the least, speculative sci-fi. Else, we will have to rely on the good old sun. That puts limits to how far away from the sun we could have a successful transformation. Next. If we one day are going to see transformed planets or moons, we can pretty much write off the moons around Jupiter and Saturn, and possibly Uranus and Neptune as well. The radiation levels hitting those moons would make for a very short life for any colonist there. Scientific colonies could be set up pretty much anywhere. Radiation and heat are two main issues but at least from Venus and outwards could perhaps be where we'd set them up. Industrial outposts, to serve industry and commerce here on this planet, I would think the moon, Mars+moons and possibly the asteroid belt. Another queston entirely is, are there resources there that are so important we are going to pay the pretty hefty pricetags coming with any freighter? 2. Outside our solar system. That is the most promising in terms of "colonies" for human expansion. Howeveer, the distances are so vast we should not make any illusions there would be a central, governing system with colonies. Rather, it would be fully independent systems. Even calling HQ back on earth would take the signals decades, or hundreds of years, or thousands of years, just to get to HQ. Then, after bureaucracy has wasted 10 years on debating the response, an equal time to get the response back to the colony.

Or as Niels Bohr once said: Anyone who can contemplate the questions asked on forums without getting dizzy, haven't understood the question.

As for the billion/milliard issue, or short/long scale issue, I personally find the long system has a greater consistency between the name of the number and the number itself. The short scale's names aren't totally disconnected from the numbers they represent but to me it's a more cumbersome naming system. Billion (long scale): A million has 6 zeros, bi = 2, a billion has 2*6=12 zeros. Trillion: Tri = 3, 3*6 = 18 zeros and so on and so forth. The "ards", milliard, billiard, trilliard and so on, go in between so you get 1.5*6=9 zeros, 2.5*6=15 zeros, 3.5*6 = 21 zeros etc. Short scale: Now I have to keep one factor of 1000 out of it, then look at the power for the remainding 1000. Billion = 10001 * 10002.for (1+2)*3 = 9 zeros. Trillion = 10001 * 10003 for (1+3)*3 = 12 zeros. To me that is more complicated.

Just adding to the above post. I found that I could have a 2.5Mm antenna extended all the way through the atmosephere as my only antenna, if I had it protected by fairings. Without fairings it will snap but protected, it stayed on. Also, to the OP: Look in the upper left. There's an icon there that is either green, yellow or red, Green means you have a good link back to KSC. Red means dead, Make sure you don't lose the link.

Just to clarify. Mass extinction. That has nothing to do with mass. Just thought I'd make that clear. Mass is still around.

For returning packages like yours, I fit 3-4 small fins at the nose. Use the small ones and place them so far up they won't get overheated on the return.

RC flying is very much a hobby for people of all ages. 2-90+. Guys and girls. It started as a hobby strictly for adults (as there were no kits or anything like that so if you wanted a model, you'd have to build it yourself from scratch) but the last 30 years or so younger and younger people are taking it up as models and kits have become fairly cheap and reliable, not to mention accessable.