cubinator

I've finally reached 18 likes! Amazing.

Today my can opener broke.

Who's to stop you?

Everything about the design of the Kerbal Space Center campus screams "Made by Kerbals"...Keeping in mind that most rockets are launching east, here are a few instances I've noticed of things being designed to be as hazardous as possible: -Launch sites directly downrange of one another -R&D/Training/etc. is directly downrange of multiple launch sites -Aircraft control tower should theoretically have a good view in all directions, but is blocked by the VAB right next to it -All landing pads west of VAB: If a booster is performing a RTLS to one of these pads, it must fly directly over the Tracking Station and VAB.

My 'letter issue' today was that I couldn't add a number to my flag title on the Mun, and I think I couldn't add a space after a hyphen either.

I like orthogonal views in the VAB. I like the way the sun glints off the ships. I like the rocket plume expansion as the air gets thinner. I like the stone Mun arch and the shadows that it casts. I like being able to select from the variety of launch sites. I like how beautiful the world is.

No, even better - that is a fully functional Rubik's Cube I built years ago in KSP.

I flew my first rocket, staged at the wrong time, recovered the capsule, tried again with more boosters, went to the Mun with it, but a heat shield had snuck under the upper stage engine so I couldn't use it, reverted to VAB and fixed that, then flew the rocket again, happened to spot a Mun arch from orbit and successfully landed beside it. Bob returned to Kerbin safely after exploring the arch! Then I flew a plane around the KSC, buzzed a few structures, then crashed it in the ocean after trying to see how fast I could dive. Valentina bailed out at the last moment and survived unscathed!

As a KSP fan, I just played it for over 3 hours and had fun through the whole experience. I saw plenty of small issues and a few larger ones, and I'll try to write out my thoughts on my experience in more detail sometime soon, but overall it seems like the game is just as much fun as KSP 1. It's also very beautiful and if I were to mod my KSP 1 to look the way this does, it would have taken 10 times longer to load.

I can't believe no one is playing KSP2 currently. Clearly dead.

I had a dream I was exploring freeze-dried mud slides on Mars. The mud was dark brown, malleable and sticky to itself, and formed into 2-4 mm sized granules, some of which were polygonal. It collected in between cliffs and hillsides formed by landslides. I couldn't easily go all the way up one of these hills in my spacesuit, but I could get partway and look out on the valley these were all in.

I am excited to crash my ship into a planetary ring! But mainly I am excited to go to another star.

Hmm, it would sure be a shame if I were to be snowed in on Friday...

Hmm...my print volume is not large enough to print this at 1:1 scale.

How's the weather looking at the launch site?

I had a dream that there was a dog that really liked me and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Congratulations! I am nearing the end of my Aerospace Engineering degree at UMN, and I wish you all the best on yours. I was a straight-A student in high school, and I took an extra year to do it. Don't be too hard on yourself when things get tough, it IS rocket science. Always ask professors for help when you need it, and ask them what cool stuff they work on too - that can be your most unique opportunity sometimes.

I think that there is still something wrong in how I am dealing with the velocities. Looking back at astronomy programs, it seems that the path across the Moon that I'm predicting isn't what really happened. I need to revisit this with some more different calculations. Maybe using angular values more in the calculations would help.

I think all that difference is mostly due to Earth's rotation.

Based on the Moon's velocity, I should have seen the occultation last 2785.4 seconds if Mars were completely stationary in the sky. if I were completely stationary.

This is a nice little set of equations that helps me estimate the Moon's travel path. If you squint very closely, you'll be able to see that it's an equation for a line in terms of theta, the inclination angle of the Moon's velocity at the time. All the "midpt" y and z variables are the locations of the observation sites during the halfway points of the occultation, when Mars was closest to the center of the Moon at a distance which I now know from correlating our timing data with my images. By the way, I now know how close to the Moon's center Mars got at all three locations. I made this superposition of two of my images from after the occultation using paint.net: Then I used LoggerPro to click a bunch of points on the edge of the Moon and generate a circular curve fit to those points. Then I took two more points for the locations of Mars, and made a linear fit to those points. This gave me essentially a mathematical illustration of the event as I saw it. I took the equation of the Mars line and calculated its tangent distance to the center of the Moon circle, and from there I could find the sector length for the path behind the Moon and relate it to the other locations' sectors using timing data. I found that the sector of the Moon crossed by Mars was 2908 km in MN, 2670 km in CA, and 2644 km in UK. The minimum distance to the center of the Moon was 950 km in MN, 1111 km in CA, and 1127 km in UK. These distances all correspond to physical distances at the disk of the Moon itself. I can now calculate the angular velocity of Mars. First I will calculate the linear velocity that Mars would have if it were at the same distance as the Moon, since all my values are in linear terms right now. CMN = VMoon/Mars * tMN VMoon/Mars = 0.733 km/s VMars + VMoon/Mars = VMoon VMars = -0.311 km/s = -.298 VMoon Now I can convert that "fake" velocity to an actual angular velocity, this is the most important value of the determination so far: wMars = -.7936e-7 rad/s Now I know how fast Mars moves across the sky, so the difference in timing of the occultations due to the motion of Mars while we waited for the Moon to cover it from each observation location can now be safely extracted. The timing difference that will be left is that due to parallax, which will allow the final distance calculation as well as the calculation of the true velocity of Mars and the size of Mars. Although, actually, that velocity is not exactly the one I'll use. The calculation I just did leaves out a detail that will change the final result somewhat. The Moon is not exactly collinear with Mars, so I need to use the set of equations at the top of my post to find the Moon's actual velocity vector, and use that to do an actual vector addition rather than a 1D addition.

I got a curve fit for the Moon's edge and Mars' position using two pictures from after the occultation ended. I'll figure out the path length tomorrow.

https://theskylive.com/2023bu-info It's too dim to see without a big telescope.

Argh...I yield! I will use my pictures! I have been stuck on one simple relationship for almost a month now, and since classes are picking up I figured I'd better at least give you all a number before it's not Thread of the Month anymore. Basically, the problem is this. Mars crosses the Moon along a line that doesn't perfectly intersect its center, so the length of the path behind the Moon is some fraction of its diameter which is less than 1 and different for all three observers. The relationship between the length of the path for the three locations allows me to calculate the Moon's exact position in space at all relevant times, which I need for the parallax measurement later. Unfortunately, I also need to know the actual lengths of these paths, which I do not yet. "Hold on," you might say. "Don't you know the length from the duration of occultation and the known velocity of the Moon?" I actually need to know the velocity of the Moon relative to Mars, which I've never measured. I've been trying to figure it out by using relationships between the positions of observers, the timings from single locations and between multiple ones, and generally flipping the whole thing inside out and shaking it to try to make something useful come out. I think that it's technically possible, but requires some kind of system of equations that I've not mustered the brainpower to fathom. Meanwhile, the easy answer has been conspicuously sitting in plain sight the whole time. This was a really cool looking event, so guess what I did? I photographed it. I took photos before and after the occultation which clearly show the Moon and Mars, and I've been reluctant to actually use them because I didn't expect to need them for the determination and I didn't take them with the intention of using them as scientific data. I can stitch the photos from before and after together using the features on the Moon's surface, and connect the dots to draw Mars' path. From there I can figure out the distance from the center and then use that as a basis to compare the duration of occultation for the other locations and get the Moon's exact position and velocity, along with Mars' angular velocity. This is now my plan. After using this method to find the Moon's path through space and Mars' path through the sky, I will be able to quickly find the expected location of both for an infinitely distant Mars and sift out the difference in timing between observations that results from parallax. Some further explanation and visuals that I didn't know how to fit into this story nicely but are still probably necessary to look at in order to understand it: And finally, here is one of my photos, since they are now relevant to this conversation.

Well they'll probably scrub the launch attempt at T-10 seconds at least once, and you can call that a WDR.