cubinator

Here is my orbital spaceplane. It's not able to land safely, but it can get to orbit! I'm working on retrorockets to help it slow down more during reentry. Edit: Monopropellant retrorockets don't seem to be slowing it down enough, any advice on how to get it slowed down to a reasonable non-explosive velocity? The only thing I can think of is using the bigger spaceplane pods, as they have higher temperature tolerance.

Actually, I've read that due to the way spacetime works, orbits would not be stable in either 2 dimensions or 4 dimensions, kind of like the way knots don't work in 4D. I believe in 2d gravity is too strong, so objects would fall into the parent body, and in 4d gravity is too weak so objects would spiral away. So while you could technically make an object go at orbital velocity around a parent body, it would not stay stable except in 3 dimensions. Probably.

1397: A man whispers in your ear, "There is still hope..." and discreetly hands you a business card labeled "Spacedock". He then disappears into the crowd.

Vending machine explodes as it is made of regular matter. Goes to new vending machine, inserts sea turtle.

When you watch the Apollo 11 landing in one window and browse the KSP forum in another (I've done this)

Green slime

I'd rather stay here. It's less complicated that way. Would you rather go to the bottom of the ocean or the top of the atmosphere?

When you joke about real-life applications of Schrödinger's Cat (which can be made literally all the time) whenever the opportunity arises... ...If I can't see anything behind me, do those things really exist? Does the universe simple not render things that no one can observe? Maybe that's why the framerate is so good...

We did manage to figure out the Mayan number system through archaeological studies, and they used a base-20 system a bit like Roman numerals. Numeric systems are not hard to figure out, unlike language, and to be honest, the first thing I would do if aliens landed in my back yard is write a list of numbers, then maybe some simple arithmetic like 4+5=9, etc. I use binary to count with my fingers, it's way more efficient if you're willing to put up with numbers like 100, 101, and 10000100.

Cloudy here too. I've looked at Jupiter several times in the past month, though. I wish the rocky planets were in the evening sky right now...not much to look at with the telescope. I had a beautifully clear night last week, so I went outside to look at the stars (without the telescope, it was a little cold and I was feeling lazy). As I was hunting for Castor, the six-star system, I happened to notice a small satellite passing right overhead from north to south. I don't know what satellite it was, maybe a GPS one, but it was pretty neat. I rarely see small satellites from non-rural areas, so it was a pleasant surprise. In rural areas, you can almost always spot a few in the evening.

I just made an SSTO spaceplane on the first try, although I have yet to find a way to reenter it safely. I think I should add retrorockets. I'll post pics tomorrow, as I've got no time today.

And I'm driving around the Mun! It's definitely not just rocket science.

Interesting concept, and a useful premise. I'll have to try this sometime.

Could it be used as a wheel?

We won't look the same. We can't imagine what we will be like. But just as there are still birds and crocodiles after the dinosaurs died off, something of us will likely survive. Maybe the sentient robots we leave behind will build upon human scientific knowledge and invent some amazing technology we can't even imagine today. I find it hard to believe humans will wipe ourselves out, some natural event would probably have to be the cause of our extinction. It may take only an asteroid, or it could take a massive volcanic event, or maybe the only thing that can stop us is the sun's death. But I am fairly confident that humanity's descendants will still be alive hundreds of millions of years in the future.

They're made of information.

Maybe one could make a rocket out of that? Not that I want to actually try this, it's obviously dangerous.

Unless we find a way to move it. We're talking billions of years to figure things out, so it might just be possible.

But orbits don't work in 4 dimensions, right?

I can't remember a time before Mythbusters. I think I would still have been interested in science if they hadn't been there, but I think their show played a role in my interest, and acted as a catalyst for it. Mythbusters has always been my favorite show, because nothing is quite as amusing as watching some of those absurd contraptions actually working. The show really showed us the true nature of science, the fact that any idea is valid and can be tested, and even the most ridiculous ideas may have some worth. "The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down!" -Adam Savage

But this is over 30 million years in the future. Think of how far we've come in the last ten years, in the last hundred, in the last thousand. 30 million years ago, the world was very different from what it is today. With our accelerating rate of development, we may have all the planets colonized by 2500. It's impossible to know what our motives will be in 30 million years. We might move away from space exploration, choosing instead to live entirely virtual lives. We might leave this solar system and head for the stars. I'm not sure there will ever be any good reason for us to move Phobos, but then again, we never know...

You know you play KSP too much when you're in a car and you expect the wheels to act slightly buggy in exactly the same way that your Mun rover does, and you are surprised when they don't.

Jeb will build the most Bad-S rocket ever, then land on them both and do that thing with the klaws that destroys the planet. That combined with the intense lag will make both of them oblivious to the fact that they just fell through the planet and shot out the other side at ~8c. They will both die in space and everyone will forget about the whole thing.

Before it impacts, it will likely break up into a planetary ring. It does seem to be just a big, loosely held together lump of rubble, after all.

CHAPTER VII: HI JEB! I got Jeb on board and out of the crater he landed in, that's about it. Now all I have to do is drive all the way around the rest of the Mun! Only 3/4ish to go!