cubinator

Some new discoveries about Jupiter's magnetic field in the 1970s led scientists to realize that passing through it would fry electronics on the upcoming Voyager space probes. The probes were scheduled to be shipped to the Cape, and there wasn't time to come up with a neat solution...The engineers headed to the local supermarket and bought all the aluminum foil they could, washed it in sterilizing solution, and covered all the sensitive electronics in the probes, successfully protecting them from Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.

Measurements of it's path across the sky, I suppose. It's mentioned here and here. Here's a paper on the 1844 comet. Orbital elements are on the last page.

It shares an orbit with the Great Comet of 1844, which means it might be a fragment of the same original comet.

I started Half Life Alyx today. It's good! I got through the part where it's dark. In VR. You can imagine what that was like.

9^2+9 bottles of beer on the wall 9^2+9 bottles of beer take one down, n=n-1; eighty-nine bottles of beer on the wall

I think it's possible to lock planets in place in Universe Sandbox. You could simulate an approximate cylindrical planet by placing many planets in a line and throwing moons about.

That's the Saturn 1 though, a much smaller rocket than the Saturn V. I wasn't able to find anything about Saturn V baffles. I know there were ullage motors on the third stage.

Well, you could have an infinite cylindrical mass and have a moon orbit around it in a spiral. I think a finite cylinder would just cause the moon to be ejected once it reached the end. Here's something really fun though: toroidal planets. A donut planet would theoretically be gravitationally stable, if you could get it to form in the first place (basically, you spin it up so fast that the centripetal force balances out gravity and you essentially form the planet in its own GEO) and it gives rise to some interesting properties, which I coincidentally explored with friends in college late at night on the back of an actual napkin. Here's what we came up with. But first, a visualization: This planet has a small moon which orbits in a figure-eight around the hole of the donut, seen in the third illustration. You could also have a moon in an "orbit" that just goes up and down through the middle of the hole. Both of these options are probably quite unstable. Some other interesting things about the donut planet that aren't explicitly related to orbits: Mapping is nice. Not only does the left side cross onto the right on a rectangular map, but the top and bottom are connected too! There's still some distortion around the edges, but you can get around that by having separate maps of the outer and inner regions. The outside and the inside of the donut, which we named the Outer and Inner Circles, respectively, have some distinguishing properties. They are separated by the North and South Circles, which are analogous to Earth's poles except that they are long loops instead of spots. Seasons and daylight on the Outer Circle work just like they do on a sphere (for reference, we decided to give this planet about 45* axial tilt, you'll see why it needs more than Earth in a moment). Crossing over to the Inner Circle, though, we encounter some very odd changes. First of all, timezones are phase-shifted by half a day! So you'll have to change your clocks by 12 hours going over the poles. Nighttime occurs when the Sun is behind the ground, but a lot of the ground is actually in the sky now! That's problematic because if the planet has low axial tilt, most of the Inner Circle won't ever get any sunlight! This is why we gave the planet high axial tilt. The Inner Circle is still in darkness during the spring and fall equinoxes, and thus is likely much colder than the Outer Circle. Of course, when you're in the Inner Circle you can see the other side of the donut hole above you. The horizon actually has negative curvature when you're looking to the equator, and positive curvature when looking to the poles! During nighttime you can see the part of the Inner Circle that's in daylight above you, so most of the time the night is quite bright. This effect is even noticeable in the Outer Circle. The polar radius of the planet is quite small, even smaller than Earth, but the equatorial radius is enormous. Thus, if you're standing on a mountain looking around on a clear day, you'll be able to see extremely far in the equatorial directions, but a very short distance in the polar ones. Standing on the inner edge of the poles, you'd be able to see that walking longitudinally you'd go in a big circle.

There are 2010s kids who are over 10 years old. That is all.

Minnesota has a stay-at-home order going into effect at the end of Friday, so I'll be formally in lockdown then. I pulled all my stuff out of my dorm room, so I'm fully living at home now.

And each time we grow back stronger. Algae and bacteria were followed by sponges and plants, the oceans were poisoned but we became insects and sharks and great reptiles who became titanic dinosaurs, and when the dinosaurs were finally put to rest the mammals rose up with empathy and emotion, agility, and finally knowledge and understanding. Now we are in another time of change, things are appearing on Earth that were unfathomable before - magical objects, gigantic structures, new chemicals. These crazy monkeys have figured out how to throw things at the stars. We'll survive this plague. We, Earth, will survive a long time, even if we're cut down back to the bottom. We'll come back and we'll do it better. Life in the universe is a fact.

97 tanks of RP-1 on the wall, 97 tanks of RP-1, Take one down, fly around the Mun, 96 bottles of beer on the wall

Happy birthday to you!

I've got a car to myself! But no place to go right now...

I'm currently living at home with my family, a short drive from campus. This is where I'll bring my stuff. I never came back to campus after spring break except to grab a few essential things after my trip to bring home (mainly winter clothes ), since the directives to start shutting everything down came during spring break.

I thought I might borrow some equipment for drawing very small critters for a class, but I'm worried I may not be able to bring the stuff back before they lock everything down here if I do that.

After my wisdom teeth were removed, I was on painkillers for a couple weeks. During that time, it hurt like a stab wound when I woke up in the morning with the drug having worn off in the night. I got up early a few days, since I wouldn't get any more rest anyway. After about a week, it started hurting more like a bruise as it got better.

Like in the old days. We truly live in the future.

I am to take all my stuff out of my dorm room and fully move out as soon as I can, in anticipation of probable travel bans in the near future.

Look at KSP challenges and mission reports. They're sure to get you inspired for some new missions! Learn how to solve Rubik's cube or other puzzles! That will keep your mind very busy! Already know how to solve a Rubik's Cube? Try this four-dimensional one! The satisfaction of wrapping your head around it is wondrous! Make some music! If you don't have an instrument, you can do it through your computer with loads of free software. I personally like Sunvox and have used it to make many great songs. Watch the sky, and look for the space station! Even if you can't go anywhere, you can still look to the stars when the weather is good. Check http://www.satflare.com/home.asp to see if the space station will fly over your house anytime soon! We also have a visitor named C/2019 Y4 who you might be able to see soon too. Play with Legos! No one is too old to make Lego creations. It's the perfect time to use your imagination!

We've already got Laythe in KSP1, which arguably could already be alive considering the oxygen, and finding life is one of the biggest reasons for travelling to the stars as we will in KSP2, so I think it would be wonderful to have some world in another star system where we can slip on slime that grows on the rocks. Beyond microscopic life and maybe some simple plants and bugs, I don't really feel the need to see, because that's beyond even the step of discovering that we're not alone. Perhaps we could visit the home world of the Mystery GooTM?

I dreamt I had a date.

That's when you just put a docking port on it somewhere, and leave it in orbit after renaming the vessel to "FREE FUEL" For my largest payloads, my best 'still halfway sane' solution is a powerful center core, with 2 nearly identical cores on the side* **, and on top of the center core is a vacuum optimized delivery stage with lower TWR, to be deployed when that's less important. I like to use one layer of asparagus, routing the boosters' fuel to the center stage radially. More than that is overkill. I put fins on the bottom of the main stage, but here's the kicker: I also put one fin on the outer edge of each booster. The drag it produces pulls it away from your center stage in a perfect flower! *4 if it's really big. **6 if I literally can't stuff enough Vectors under the rocket to get enough thrust to lift off the pad, but at that point I may as well just add boosters to the boosters.

Just got to drop this here

I'm in the USA, where we are still "recommended to practice social distancing"...So lockdown is not enforced yet in my state, but most businesses are closed or altered to accommodate isolation, and people are staying at home if they can, myself included. Public schools are closed until April 1, when classes will resume in online format. My university did the same starting last week, and so far things have gone mostly ok for me. Grading is going to be more lenient. This whole thing started during spring break. I've been playing lots of KSP, doing my homework as usual, and contemplating streaming planetarium shows like I would normally give at the museum.