IncongruousGoat

You forgot TKS, which never flew with a crew in its intended role, but was tested uncrewed enough times that we can be pretty confident that it would have worked, and was the base for several Mir and ISS modules.

I guess I'm somewhere between 6 and 7 because of the whole NCD Caveman thingamadoodle, plus the grand tour and 5, I think, (I lost count) Jool 5's. Oh, and that 4.5 ton Moho mission I did a while back, that was pretty nifty too. On the other hand, I'm not very good with aircraft. Or rather, I'm good by most people' standards, but not unusually good, and I hardly every build them since I just don't enjoy it, so... Though, I'm with those that say that it's difficult to put skill in KSP on a scale, since there are so few limits on what you can do. I'm pretty good at single-launch, non-ISRU mega-missions (request use of ISRU and my planning falls apart faster than a rocket without struts), and at hardcore career stuff. But I'm only decent with aircraft, SSTOs, and rovers, I have little patience for infrastructure-building (I don't do surface bases or space stations), and I know nothing about the more interesting abuses of the KSP physics engine (stock joints, propellers, etc.). Oh, and as I mentioned, I couldn't plan a mission around ISRU if I tried. Which means that, by some standards, I'm pretty good, but by others I'm either average or incompetent. And that's okay. Pigeonholing is unhelpful, and I'm generally not huge about trying to "rank" KSP players on some kind of scale. We tend to specialize too much for such things.

Well, if we're talking weird semantics for variables, there's FORTH, where you specify an integer is double-length by appending a period to it. So, 20000 would be single precision and 20000. would be the same value, but double-length. And if this makes you wonder, "How do you do floating point then?", well, the answer is that the core language spec doesn't include floating point support. It does exist as an optional extension, but interpreters are not required to support it. Because not all systems have native floating point support, and emulation libraries are slow (this is the actual justification). Although, those semantics are for numbers that are being pushed onto the data stack, and not variables. Variables are actually no-input functions that "return" (insofar as FORTH has standard function returns) an address that points to a memory region that's large enough to hold a single-precision integer. You make arrays by making the most recently defined variable's memory region bigger by literally (under the hood) incrementing an internal system pointer. And this is relatively tame as far as wacky FORTH semantics go. I haven't even gotten to how the friggin' control flow works, not to mention the reflection. Oh Kerm, the reflection. All good languages allow you to obliterate the entire runtime environment at runtime, right? The things you learn about a language when you decide to write an interpreter for it...

@Delay Ironically, one of the few things I consider Python to be good for is (modern) cryptography. It's got really good random number generators and other cryptographic utilities, and the arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic is actually useful (for once). Unfortunately, you're doing classic crypto... and Python is, as you've discovered, pretty bad for that. Or anything else that requires you to treat data as something other than a magical abstraction.

Hey, it's fine. If you're not promising Principia compatibility, then I'm not going to expect it to be compatible with Principia out of the box. I was just pointing out that the system, in its current default state, is unstable under N-body simulation. This isn't a complaint or a criticism; it's a statement of fact, for the information of other people who, like myself, might be looking to use the pack with Principia. I don't expect you to go out of your way to provide support. That's my problem.

JadeOfMaar would like to disagree:

It looks like the GPP system is currently unstable under Principia. Specifically, Lili is unstable. Principia throws the following error: and Lili flops around on a very strange non-conic trajectory that intersects the surface of Tellumo. This was experienced in KSP 1.5.1 with the latest versions of both GPP and Principia, but since this is related to system stability the KSP version shouldn't matter too much. As a stopgap, I'm taking Lili out of my game for now. 6.4x scale + Kerbalism makes Tellumo an unattractive target in general, anyways, so it's not like it's a crippling loss.

Sort of, but from the way the discussion is going, I get the impression that the OP is looking for a comprehensive answer to a question whose comprehensive answer is very complicated. The video you provided is a good illustration of how physical systems can perform computations, but it says very little about actual computers, and it's easy to get bogged down trying to reconcile something like a simple digital adder or a shift register with the complexity of what a computer does if one doesn't realize this. I'm just pointing this out, for their sake.

@5thHorseman That's not a computer, though. What was shown in the video is more akin to re-arranging transistors on a breadboard than programming a computer, since the machine's hardware is almost completely changed between runs. Now, sufficient transistors on sufficient breadboards can build a computer, and I'm pretty sure the same could be said of this thing (although I have neither the time nor the inclination to actually prove it), but the distinction is important. The thing is, simple systems that could be used to build a computer are all over the place (for the canonical example, I recommend looking into Conway's Game of Life). Making something that could be used to build a computer is very different from actually building a computer.

The one radio station I ever find myself listening to: http://radio.garden/live/troy-ny/wmht-fm-wrhv/ And, of course, I have to plug WRPI (even though I don't listen to them): http://radio.garden/live/troy-ny/wrpi-91-5-fm/ More out of institutional loyalty than anything, but they do have a pretty big broadcasting area and highly varied content. Most of it isn't really my thing, but then again neither is most of the stuff that plays on the radio around here.

Been on a bit of a Dan Fogelberg binge here lately.

@iAMtheWALRUS Congratulations on completing the Ultimate Challenge! Sorry it took me so long to get around to reviewing your entry; my life got taken over by a sudden bout of classwork. I'm particularly impressed by that spaceplane of yours. Can land everywhere except Tylo and Eve, can glide at 51 m/s without stalling, can travel anywhere in the system with cargo... And you completed the contract, and did the whole thing in under 10 in-game years. Very well done. Your entry has been added to the hall of fame, and... oh, I see you've already claimed the badge. Mount it in your sig with pride; you've earned it.

@Gargamel Are we doing tales from the Dacks now? I haven't got anything quite that good, but I've got a couple of fun anecdotes. 5 college buddies of mine and I decided it would be a good idea to hike Giant, early last May. What we didn't realize was that any trail in the Dacks in early May is going to be covered in a foot of sheet ice, where it isn't 2 feet deep in snowpack. And none of us had brought crampons or spikes, and three of the six didn't have a great deal of experience walking on ice. Somehow, we made it as a group to about 3/4 of a mile from the summit (somewhere around the turnoff from Rocky Peak Ridge), but at that point those aforementioned three decided that the going had gotten too hard, and turned back. The remaining three (myself included) forged on to the summit, but it was slow going. Eventually, several falls and one minor cut later (after one of the guys slipped and fell on some rocks), we made it up to the summit, and then back down to where the other three had retreated. Upon re-union with the rest of the group, we discovered that one of the guys who had turned back had injured his arm (sprained it, or pulled a muscle, or something - we never quite worked out what). So we had to make the remaining 2 1/4 miles of icy, slippery trail with a guy with only one working arm, a poor sense of balance, crappy shoes, and not much experience with ice. I count myself lucky that I made it to the summit without slipping and falling, but even that didn't stop me from falling down 3 times on the descent. Somewhat less exciting (from a things-going-wrong perspective) was our trip up the Dial/Nippletop loop. Nothing bad happened, but the weather conditions made several sections of the hike very creepy. It was really cloudy that day, and the summits of Dial and Nippletop (as well as the whole ridgeline between them) poked up into the clouds, which means we got several miles of trail with ~30 feet of visibility through the mist. It genuinely felt like something out of a cheesy horror movie, with the way the ground seemed to drop off and vanish to either side, disappearing into the clouds. Easily one of the most surreal places I've ever been.

Out of the Great Range, I've only done Gothics so far, although I'd like to do at least Upper and Lower Wolfjaw once the weather warms up a little. I'm going to be going on something of a hiking spree in the coming months; I'm moving to the West Coast in late May, so I've got a limited window of opportunity in which to bag as many of the High Peaks as possible. It's amazing how much a hard deadline motivates you to go out and do things.

Huh. Must come down over a longer period of time than it does here, then. We typically get our whole allotment of snow for the month in one or two big storms.

15? And that's a record? Once again, I'm reminded that I live somewhere that's really snowy by most people's standards. I can count the number of years we haven't had a storm at least that big on the fingers of one hand. In other news from the lands of ice and snow, here are some more pictures from the Adirondacks: It was a beautiful day for a hike. Temperature in the 10's to 20's F, with almost no wind and clear skies. The crisp, clean mountain air, the snow-covered trees, the near-complete silence... I wish I was still there. Alas.

My last post in this thread was rather lower detail than I would like, so here's a (somewhat) better one. Once again, coming to you from the top of a mountain.

A reusable lifter is fine, so long as you don't go using it to launch stuff halfway through the mission. Again, (because someone already got bit by this), once you leave LKO, you can't launch anything.

I don't see why not. It's not like recovering (or not recovering) hardware on the surface of Kerbin makes much of a difference for a challenge that effectively starts and ends in LKO.

Like @Snark, I'm in the lands of getting snowed on, and will be spending tomorrow morning shoveling snow off of my car. Whoopee. Fun. That's... not the word I would use to describe cleaning ~6 inches of snow off my car. For the third time this year.

Oh, that's very pretty. I like it. I like it a lot. ... I think that I'm going to make me a custom case whenever I next re-build my desktop.

For several weeks now. I just can't stop listening to it...

You don't. At least, you don't use a cage like that first one I built. The more aerodynamic, lower-mass way is to just use a "cage" made out of two capsules. There should be screenshots of such cages in any of the NCD reports (we all ended up using them). They're still not great to fly, but at least they can be put in orbit without Terriers.

@Xurkitree Congratulations on completing the challenge! Everything seems to be in order. Your entry has been added to the Hall of Fame, and you may claim the badge at your leisure. I found myself very impressed with your mission. The temptation is strong, when confronted with the problem of a non-ISRU grand tour, to just throw ion engines and/or moar boosters at the problem, but you did neither. A healthy mix of single-use and re-usable landers, of nuclear, chemical, and ion propulsion, and lots and lots of clever piloting makes for a good mission indeed. And all of this after having a submission rejected. Most people don't do the challenge once; I think you're the first to ever have attempted it twice. Take your badge and wear it with pride. You've certainly earned it.

Just out of curiosity, but do you have a citation for this?