IncongruousGoat

No ground stations in the middle of the Pacific

Yes we can!

The same reason no mission has ever used a Mars assist (to my knowledge), and the same reason almost nobody assists off of Duna in KSP - it's too small, and the velocity gain is too low.

It isn't big enough. Launching Clipper on an Ariane 5/6 would necessitate using several gravity assists to get to Jupiter, including a Venus assist. This would then require re-designing Clipper to handle the thermal environment of the inner solar system. Plus, Clipper isn't flying for another 5 years or so, which gives FH plenty of time to rack up successful flights.

"Have you got any Bear Claws?" "...wait a minute. I'll go check." *instrumental break* "NO, WE'RE OUT OF BEAR CLAWS!"

It was proposed and considered. However, there are several problems with a Gemini-based lunar mission. The Gemini capsule was really, really cramped, and staying in it for extended periods of time was, reportedly, very uncomfortable for the astronauts, who could hardly move in their seats. Moreover, a Gemini-based lunar mission would necessitate a one-man lander only accessible by EVA, which is a risky proposition that limits the kinds of lunar science that can be done. Also, Apollo had been in development for some time by that point, and once the pork barrel is rolling nobody in Congress is going to try and stop it.

Well, the pay is good and the job prospects are better. So long as you enjoy programming for its own sake I'd say it's a good idea. It's the latter point that matters - you can put up with how hard the work is if you like doing it. If you don't, a job in software is quickly going to turn miserable. So, as @Green Baron said, the best thing to do is to try it. If you like it, try it some more. It might lead somewhere.

Student of computer science here. I'd advocate C over Python, at least for your first language (you can learn Python later if you want to, of course). The reason I say this is that C, while not nearly as practical as Python for scripting, will actually teach you something about how computers work. Python is so complex and heavily abstracted that it's worthless as a tool for learning about computers. C, on the other hand, is a lot closer to the metal, and it's impossible to learn the language in any serious capacity without learning something about how computers work. Plus, since C is much simpler it's a lot easier to learn most of the language spec. Compare this to Python, which is so sprawling that I doubt that even the language's maintainers know the whole spec. There are lots of languages that companies are looking for; it really depends on what sort of software development you want to do. The only thing to do is to learn a bunch of them, figure out which ones you like and which ones you don't, and get really good at the ones you like. Getting a degree in computer science also helps; there's a lot more to writing software than just knowing a pile of programming languages.

I guess it doesn't, since you seem to not be seeing much. It was snowing for a good part of today here, and there's snow on the ground right now. Winter is being over-enthusiastic this year. As for the trees, they were even more beautiful in person. Ice and snow tend to cake onto the trees in a very photogenic way above 4,000 feet. It helped that there was almost no wind that day, which meant that I was able to operate my phone camera with only minor finger pain.

6/10. Concise, but the use of bold font is inconsistent and that [Badges Go Here] section is just begging to be filled.

This one is from last weekend. Anyone else who lives in the northeast can attest to how bizarrely snowy it was, and the mountains where I was hiking were no exception.

Technically, I have the whole album this is from running through my head right now, but this especially stands out right now. I'm content. There are far worse things I could have stuck in my head. Like that one time I got It's Raining Men stuck in my head while halfway up a mountain...

I've been trying to get Principia running in KSP 1.3.1 on Debian Linux, and like @Clockwork13 I'm running into issues with libc++abi versions. Debian Stretch's apt repositories, as it turns out, only support up to libc++abi 3.5-2. I have, however, found a (horrible) workaround. You can get a .deb file for libc++abi1 6.0-2 for Ubuntu, stick that somewhere, and then manually install it using dpkg. It's got no dependencies, and Ubuntu is close enough to Debian that it just works. Of course, apt will downgrade the package every time you install something which has libc++abi1 as a dependency, so it's probably best to just keep the .deb around and set up a script to re-install it whenever needed. Is it an awful hack? Yes. Does it work? So far, yes. I will update this post if something breaks as a result of this.

Assuming you have @e of pi's permission to do this, then sure, I might be interested. Otherwise... go get permission from the guy who wrote the thing.

Much easier said than done and not worth it. Writing a brand-new programming language is hard, and it would take up a serious amount of dev time (like, on the order of months) to develop one. Plus, if the devs were to go ahead and add this feature, the number of users who's use it would end up being a microscopically tiny part of the player base. Also, I'm not sure you know what you're asking for. GNC program require some serious non-trivial math, and are in all cases much more complicated than your little example two-liner. The physics of rockets is complicated; you've got an object of changing mass, with a variable thrust vector, moving through a non-uniform force field (i.e. the gravitational field of whatever body you're orbiting). It doesn't lend itself to neat analytical solutions.

I'm actually down to one partial install right now. My installs were mostly lost during the Great Desktop OS Migration of 2018, and I'm still only halfway through putting an RP-1 back together.

Real SRBs can have their fuel grain geometry tuned at construction time, which gives you the ability to set a throttle curve. Of course, this can't be changed once the booster is assembled, but still.

You're much more optimistic than I am. I don't think Falcon 9 will ever get to those kinds of cadences, even with Starlink.

I'm sorry, sir, but if we served you that you would be rendered unable to pay your bill. One medium-rare steak, please.

Huh. First SpaceX launch in the month of November, ever. That's interesting. Also (unless I'm forgetting something) that might makes this the first year in which SpaceX had at least one launch in every month, assuming the launch schedule holds. Wonder how long it'll be till we get to one launch in each week...

No, for several reasons. First, the F9 launch clamps are actual clamps that hold the rocket from the side over the flame trench - it's not mechanically possible to land on them, and even if it were the strongback would get in the way. Second, however, the BFR's descent guidance is supposed to be more sophisticated than that of F9. It's likely that it'll have extra control authority that the F9 lacks, to allow it to land on the launch clamps.

Pretty darn close, yeah. It makes the whole "land the BFB on the launch clamps" thing seem not quite so impossible. I guess if you spend several years landing dozens of rockets, you get pretty good at it.

I was under the impression that Glushko got the RD-270 working on the test stand, but the rockets it was being built for (UR-700, R-56) never got funded. Now, the RD-270M on the other hand... Pentaborane/N2O4 is just asking for trouble.

I think he's talking about the BFS upper stages they'll be using for hop tests in H2 2019. It doesn't make sense to try and recover F9 second stages.

Looking at the first full-day freeze of the season tomorrow, and if the forecast proves accurate it may be the first two-full-day freeze of the season. Winter is coming, and I'm excited. WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Getting at least 6 inches of snow tonight. It's still mid-November, right?