starcaptain
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Posts posted by starcaptain
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Recently there's been some press about a new company that's building ultra-efficient small aircraft, called Otto Aviation. Their prototype, the Celera 500L, portends to be a vision of commercial aviation to come.
The Celera is not very unusual from a strictly technical configuration: lightweight monocoque single engine prop aircraft for 6 passengers and one pilot. However it's the details that really make it a weird and forward-thinking design, and business case.
The composite egg/torpedo shaped circular fuselage and thin trailing empenage are designed to take advantage of laminar flow, keeping the whole form as aerodynamic as possible. This thing is ultra fuel efficient and fast, capable of top speeds of 460mph(!) (740kph) and a range of 4500 nautical miles (8300km)[1]. Because it can go so far and consumes fuel so efficiently (allegedly better than 20 miles per gallon, or 11.7L per 100km) it has significantly reduced operating costs compared to equivalently capable aircraft.
Obviously this would have a market for people who use business jets and care about their bottom line. But Otto has their sights on a much bigger opportunity, created in part by the disruption of Covid: demand for smaller aircraft, making more frequent and less common trips over medium ranges or less. The aircraft itself is more like a taxi or van than the traditional bus- or train- scaled big commercial jets with hub-and-spoke network models. With a small size, they are able to service more airports. Otto is already looking at mini cargo services, electric and hybrid engines, and even drone versions.
I personally think this is a fantastic idea, increasing the versatility of aviation as transport, while also making it quieter, less manufacturing-intensive, and greener. I look forward to seeing how they develop, and hope other companies copy some of their ideas.
And of course I'm going to try and model the plane in KSP.
[1] Otto Aviation "Celera 500L", https://www.ottoaviation.com/celera-500l retrieved 2020-12-12
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I sometimes have this habit of looking at whole numbers and adding their digits together to reduce them, until they're reduced to one digit. I wonder if there's a way to turn it into an algorithm.
Example of what I'm taking about; I'll type in a random number.
785655
7+8+5+6+5+5 = 36
3+6 = 9.
Is there a name for this?
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Everyone should post in this every day.
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The Sun is no longer the most spherical object we know of. LIGO tried to observe the gravity waves emitted from known pulsars and verified that even though they spin at tremendous speed, the variability of one side of a neutron star to the other is infinitesimal. We're talking nanometers or less of spheroidicity for solid objects many kilometers across, which is far finer than the nebulous atmosphere of our Sun.
This may or may not be a wrench in the works of the idea of nuclear pasta, and is a subject of ongoing research.
(Nuclear pasta is what some atomic configurations are called, which are theorized to exist in netron star atmospheres. At high levels, atoms blob together, forming nuclear gnocci. At mid levels, these blobs become quite long, becoming nuclear spaghetti. At deeper levels, the noodles form sheets all composed of many atoms smeared together, called nuclear lasagna. )
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I prepared dinner for my wife, and wrote down the cinnamon bun recipe I'll be using to treat my family, come Christmas.
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Baking in microgravity works about 1/4 speed. Due to lack of convection, heat only works by radiation.
The first cookies baked in space took 45 minutes, as well as almost half an hour to cool.
Worst of all, the astronauts didn't get to eat them! The cookies had to be returned to earth for study!
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1 hour ago, caballerodiez said:
popular mechanics
They're famous for being overly enthusiastic about potential technologies, but often scant on the technical details wherein the devil lies. The article is not very specific in explaining exactly what is Caballero's vehicle concept. It mentions a variety of technologies and crosslinks other PopMech articles but is not very deep about any of them.
This is the paper the article refers to.
Alberto Caballero's Solar One , unsatisfied with the payload capacity of the Breakthrough StarShot proposal, thought of his own interstellar spacecraft config. It would use a DE-STAR array and a mile-across version of NASA's Sunjammer Lightsail for acceleration, and an onboard portable nuclear fission reactor to power 1TW lasers for the decelleration phase. It also contains this unexplained paragraph:
Quote"Carrying the necessary nuclear fuel on board might not be the best option. As in the Bussard Ramjet, it would be possible to collect hydrogen from space with a scoop placed at the front of the cockpit. The electromagnetic fields produced would drastically reduce the time of deceleration."
The paper proposes no solutions for structures, mission management, communication, crew resources (it's a manned mission, by the way), and only trace mention for cyro-sleep (NASA's TORPOR project) and protection from subluminal impacts and micrometeorites.
Well I'd probably overcome these problems by using a smaller simpler spacecraft whereby there are fewer question marks for safety, and so it's not as big of a deal if it fails somehow. In other words, I favor Breakthrough Starshot by comparison. It may be unwise to go for interstellar missions manned before anything else.
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Wherehaps you heard this informational data content?
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Game progression in my mind is almost certainly going to be bound to just tech limits, just like how Civilization games are.
And as for "flexible" gameplay in that regard, I think of two things KSP and Civ" have in common: you choosing where you build, and tech bottlenecks.
Seeing as players can put operating bases literally anywhere except floating in the sky[citation needed] the ease and operability of your colonies and launch sites is entirely up to you. This is just like how you can make things harder or easier or strategic for yourself where you put your settlers to start new cities. Near resources? Near a practical landmass? Stuck between mountains? Two doors down? It's your choice.
Tech Bottlenecks refers to how the technology tree works. In Civ 5, you MUST research a handful of techs at certain junctures or else you cannot progress further scientifically.
If you open up this tree, you'll see that:
- In the first half of the Ancient Era, you MUST research Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Archery, and Mining. Or else you cannot research past the Industrial era.
- In the first half of the Medieval Era, you MUST research Theology, Civil Service, Guilds, and Metal Casting. Or else you cannot research past the Modern era.
Bottlenecks ensure players conform certain aspects of their design to certain ideas in order to make sure they don't spend too long trying to optimize older gameplay methods. Only opening new innovations when players are hoping for them.
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Eve 2: King Purple's Revenge confirmed
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Props go to the underappreaciated team members, like Programmers, Producers, Tool Developers, and vague job titles like "Additional Content Creators".
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As for making up planets, this app is great. https://managore.itch.io/planetarium
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I can imagine how daunting the UI/UX task must be for Kerbal Space Program 2. There is A LOT of information to convey even to do something pretty basic.
Simplification and streamlining such an interdisciplinary field as play-toy rocket science means there's so many things that must be explained easily through text, sight, sound or action, without sacrificing accuracy of the ideas they're related to.
Multiplying that requirement by the number of technologies that are counterintuitive to everyday life (MOST OF THEM) and then another heaping helpful that are speculative and based on future ideas that haven't even been built yet, sheesh.
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One subtle thing I can think of when it comes to camera action in the UX: subtle but it bothers me.
Camera shake.
Camera shake as it existed in KSP1 only made sense when it came to explosions or perhaps some collisions. It had the effect of adding some animated noise to the position of the camera with reference to the player's movement handle. The shake made no sense at all when the vessel was experiencing high-G load or high velocities in-atmosphere. In those conditions, the shake would make more sense as some kind of pull or lean in the direction of the forces. How to implement that, I'm not sure. But I always think of one scene in a movie that did that trick well: The Polar Express.
Notice how the camera gets pulled down. That's the visual feel I'd hope for.
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The main limiting factor of why we can't reproduce in space is that a lack of gravity [very likely] hampers the development of a proper cardiovascular structure for a human being. Without the pressure and resistance caused by gravity stresses, an infant's heart would be only strong enough to survive nominal and low-stress microgravity conditions. The physical stresses of being born would [very likely] be fatal.
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I agree with RealKerbal3x.
Though exactly what kind of reactors those be is just going to come down to probably "cylinder" shape, "pokey ball" shape, each available in a few sizes and a couple color schemes, and let the flavor text do the rest of the talking for how powerful they are and how long they last until you gotta wack em with a wrench.
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5 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:
Beamed power feels a bit cheaty to me- just park a massive reactor in orbit or a huge solar array near the sun and magically beam the power for a power-hungry base or ship right there without having to actually produce the power on site. There’s also the question of how detailed to make it- one single type of beam, different frequency bands, individual frequencies with different stats for distance losses/accuracy/heating/atmosphere penetration/etc.?
Well the thing is, KSP1 has already actually demonstrated a lot of the benefits and requirements of beamed power indirectly with the communication network thing. Beamed power drops off over distances and requires line of sight between transmitter and user. This makes it tricky to use over long distances or when maneuvering around bodies.
I would think that beamed power would be simply explained as "beam power" and not get into the particulars of its visible, infrared, microwave or whatever. Keep it simple, put the details in the KSPedia.
Like lots of other things that look gamebreaky in KSP2, my bet is that more powerful tech requires more grind or resources to set up in the first place. A large power generating and transmitting station, for example.
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yes i would like 1 hype please
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The Aziz has a hilarious signature and I always get a crack out of reading it.
AlamoVampire's signature basically looks like what I would put if the whole KSP ribbons thing was prettier.
Master39's is always eyecatching.
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Michael Gambon
Brian Blessed
Morgan Freeman
Maggie Smith
James Arnold Taylor
Tara Strong
John de Lancie
Edit:
We'd all vote for Sir Christopher Lee if we could. RIP Saruman
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A boring but fiesable solution for both is a hardsuit, the kind that have interlinked pressure vessels surrounding the person. However these have major movement limitations.
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I'm actually thinking about how borders are supposed to be represented in the game, even if they did exist.
Like in real life: imagine you were by yourself on planet Earth, with all the buildings there and your little rocket ship to go where you pleased. If you go to places like Russia or Korea or India, you'll see that borders are a thing. But they're just fences. They don't really mean anything unless you have radio chatter snarking at you, telling you to please leave or somesuch. And even if they were implemented somehow, it would not fit in the gameplay core to punish the player for violating airspace-- a distinctive that would vanish if they went high enough anyway.
National representation in the game I think is just as cosmetic as the flag you choose. Having rival nations or rival space programs doesn't really fit in my mind with what the game is supposed to be.
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2 hours ago, magnemoe said:
Yes that is an weird one, I assume it will turn into an black hole at some point as the total mass should be large enough for this.
The Quasi-star is TZO^x, one issue if if an massive star could form so close to an black hole, however an very massive star would start become an red giant very fast and might expand out so fast the black hole would not be able to eat the materials, still I don't think this would be stable so long the center of gravity would be at the center of the black hole, so you would have an hypergiant with an black hole inside it rotating very fast around the common center of mass. I guess it would be very energetic compared to quasars or stuff you are very happy can not happen in your galaxy anymore
There is such a thing as a black hole that stuffs its gob so fast and generates so much radiation and stuff that it pushes the thing it's eating away. This is called the Eddington limit.
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Kombucha
Kefir
Kernals
Kumquats
Ketchup
Kale
Kiwis
Kola nuts
Kangaroo meat
Korn
Best Hull/Thickness For Longterm Manned Spaceflight
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
Nate Simpson has said for KSP2 that they've already examined subliminal particle collisions and vessel degradation from interstellar travel as a gameplay mechanic. It proved to be counter-intuitive gameplay that lead to optimizing vessels that look like giant pills, made of enormously heavy shields at both ends of the vessel.. Some cleverer scifi authors have thought of shielding using water ice, and so their ships resemble icicles pointed prograde. However, gameplay that makes for convergence on these sorts of designs is boring, so KSP2 will not have any particle collisions in the interstellar medium, and vessel wear & tear will just be cosmetic on textures.
Whipple shields are a great lightweight solution for particle protection. I'd recommend looking up the ISV Venture Star for inspiration of what that looks like, for subluminal particle shielding.
As for radiation, unless you're going to presume some exotic material, radiation can only be proofed by biological resilience to it, or good ol' fashioned fat lumps of dense material. Smart people are trying to come up with some kind of lifeform that can eat radiation in a practical manner, but other than that, you might be looking at thick metal plating.
For an example of a genetically modified organism that eats radiation, look up the Japanese Miracle from the anime series Ghost in the Shell. Using something like that, suspended in solar-array-like algae panels might be a believable idea.