Confused Scientist

Spacetraindriver

Please see part one of my signature.

I hate it when Word Online does weird stuff like this. And when it was doing that, it was for a paper that was some crazy portion of my final history grade! Good times. Oh, and you know what else? Computer bugs. Specifically, the time there was a wasp in the computer room at school. And the music room, and a break room, and a bunch of other places like right under where the cross country runners stretched. I was only part of the 25% casualty rate among the runners because some people decided it would be a good idea to trample the nest and kick the bugs. For the rest of the year anyone that went within a meter of a wasp was off the team for a week. But that didn't help me when I was attacked by the Flying Tiny Mysterious Stinging [censored] Crazy [censored] [censored] Bugs That Live Under Rocks in Northern Ohio. If there's an insect expert reading this, do you have any idea what those things were? They can sting multiple times, I found them in a rocky area with lots of water, they swarmed, they didn't chase, they were fairly small, and they were extremely aggressive. Some other members of my hiking party were stung up to four times, but I got stung first. Sounds like a lot less work to believe the scientists and let them do the thinking for us.

Well, I was going to put a URL here for Google Maps that included "@NaN,NaN,NaNa,NaNy" but I think it broke my Maps and I don't want anyone else to suffer the same fate. It happens when you scroll to zoom before the map has loaded.

...Wait, did I just write myself into a massive corner? Oh, dang it... New tab -> YouTube -> Matt Lowne -> Expedition Eve I'm going to be here for a while...

Not even sure if my school will let us go outside when the eclipse starts. And I give it a 25 percent chance it's cloudy anyway. Even if it's not, it's still only a ~70% eclipse where I live. But a few years ago, there was a almost-total eclipse where the moon was a little too small to cover the sun, and it was pretty cool going onto the roof at sunset and watching a ring form around the moon. And the best part is, we still have the glasses, so we know they're legit and we can use them for solar viewing (like when a few months after the eclipse I looked at the transit of Venus for a few minutes.) I'm probably going to try to make an effort to get to Austin for the April 2024 eclipse instead- I'm pretty sure it won't be too cloudy and there's going to be a lot less fuss about it (I hope).

Wow... I wish they still launched rockets (not missiles) from White Sands. It would probably be a good place to land a Falcon 9 stage, though.

"We have located Elon Musk in a Tuscon diner after a multistate highway chase and unfortunately were unable to take him alive due to his determination to kill our field agents. His reign of terror is over and new laws are being passed to guarantee the equal treatment of second-stage rockets to ensure this situation never happens again." "Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the flight of the first woman in space, Vale... Valen... Valentinah... Valentina Tere... Tere... Terakosh... ...of Valentina Kerman." And, as a bonus on that last one: "At the same time, the Soviets also sent Val... Valery (uh-oh) Valery Bsy... Bkya... Bykov... Bykovskragoshkravok (I don't think that was right) into orbit around the Earth. This was their second time flying two spacecraft at once, the first of course being the flight of Pavel Popovich and Andry... Adrian... Andriyan Nik... Nik... Nikola... Nikolayevevesk. Yes." "We have looked at the forum challenges and this week, we're gonna need more money." "Wow. This is hard!" "The historic mission to salvage the mysterious artifact on the surface of the Moon failed because when the lander seperated from the command module, it was reclassified as a rover, and our telescopes don't track rovers, so it disappeared."

Pi!

...This doesn't look good for me. My profile pic was taken after bailing out of a nuclear powered plane on Duna at thirty kilometers. I guess there were zombies in the plane.

You don't know the difference between a blimp and a zeppelin, and so the dirigible fanatic community that makes up 97 percent of the taxpayers decides to defund your mission before it lifts off. I decide to build a refinery on the Mun with a ferry to take fuel into orbit for interplanetary spacecraft.

Chapter 11- G is for Gilly "Our radio broadcast has gotten a lot of attention," said Bill. He pulled up a news page from the Solar News Network. "A few kerbals have started to wonder if the United Kerbin is really doing the best they can in their favor. There's been a few articles published about it, and they point out smaller colonies and settlements are more likely to stray from the establishment- which gives us an opportunity." Bob looked up from the EVA helmet he was polishing. "Gilly?" Bill nodded. "Yeah, there's only about three hundred people there maintaining the mining equipment. I think if we called ahead they might let us refuel and give us sanctuary for a while." Jeb floated over. "But doesn't the IA have a strong presence there because of piracy issues? How do we avoid them?" "Well, the IA figured that since Gilly was a refueling stop, it was essentially just a space station," explained Bill. "And since it was privately funded, they thought that it would just be easier to let Gilly Control manage its own traffic. So the IA doesn't pay attention to incoming ships unless Gilly Control flags them for further investigation." "Well, it could be risky," said Jeb. "What if the controller on duty decides that we're worth the bail?" "It says here that nearly forty percent of the kerbals at Gilly are sympathetic to our cause," said Bill. "And that figure includes the four dozen IA troops stationed there." "Okay, let's put it to a vote," the commander said. "All for?" Bill and Bob raised their hands. "Okay, then. I'm calling Gilly and requesting permission to land." Jeb reached for the microphone. "GC, MkII dropship requesting permission to land and transfer fuel onboard, over." Gilly Control was unfazed. "Negative. Please give name of spacecraft and affiliated company." Jeb took a deep breath. If the controller didn't like the answer then it was all over for them. "Spacecraft is Kraken's Spit, part of the Jeb's Dropship Services fleet. Over." "Are you crazy? You want to bring the IA in on our heads?" yelled the voice on the other end of the speaker. "Actually... we're not. The IA doesn't need to know what they don't want to hear, if you get my drift. There's money in it for you- we have big fuel tanks, and they're almost empty." "And what if some officer notices that, hey, the three most wanted kerbals in the solar system are sitting eating lunch across the table from him?" "Then we'll let you turn us in and you can collect the bail. But if you go running to the cops before anyone finds out about us, then we'll open the first airlock we can find. We'll sabotage everything." There was silence over the microphone for a while. When the controller called back, Jeb could almost hear the smile in his voice. "Pleasure doing business with you. We'll have Pad 03 ready for your arrival in three hours." The Kraken's Spit abandoned its carefully planned trajectory the next day and settled into orbit around Gilly. Forty minutes later, Jeb gave the engines a five second burst at full thrust and they were falling straight down, so slowly, toward the captured asteroid. Two minutes before landing Bob said, "Are we sure we want to go through with this? It might be riskier than we thought." "It's too late to quit now." The ship fell with a dreamlike quality in the microgravities. Rather than use the normal accelerometer equipment to figure out when the legs touched the ground, Jeb just looked out the window. The engines were at two percent thrust, barely even glowing. The last meter to the ground was excruciatingly slow. At last, the landing legs thumped down on the first land they had touched in years. "Touchdown," Jeb said. During the two hours it would take to refuel the Kraken's Spit, the crew loitered in the lounge. It was almost empty, so they didn't worry too much that they would be discovered. Still, they should have been more careful- at one point a kerbal came over and was within two meters before they even noticed her. "My name is Valentina," she said. "And you look like you need a pilot." Nobody knew who this Valentina was or where she came from, or why they could trust her, but she seemed persuasive. And you could tell just by looking at her that she was one damn fine pilot, something that could come in handy while running from the cops. "Where are you fellows headed?" she asked. -Duna, or maybe Laythe. "Why don't you know for sure?" -Uh... you see, there's some guys hanging around the inner solar system that we don't want to run into. It's kind of a complicated story. "Lucky for you I want to head out to the icy worlds myself. Still, I can charge you a lot more if you're on the run." -Charge you how much? "Does eighty percent of your money sound reasonable?" -Holy kraken! "I'm just kidding. Really, I'll fly along with you for no charge- my ship was damaged by a runaway tanker, you see. And everyone can use another pilot." -Sure. Our ship will be fueled up in two hours, five minutes. We cast off immediately, so be at Pad 03 as soon as you can, or you'll miss your ride. Nobody questioned the wisdom of bringing Valentina with them. On paper, it was a terrible, terrible decision, but sometimes you just have to meet someone to know that they are mysteriously loyal and trustworthy to complete strangers that will probably get them killed, or worse, just by association. Some people call them adventurous. Jeb, Bill, and Bob started walking back to the ship. They killed time during the fueling operations by checking the ship's systems and making sure everything was okay after the ridiculous battles with the IA. Ten minutes before liftoff, they heard a knocking at the hatch. "I'll bet that's Valentina," said Jeb. "I'll let her in." They listened to Jeb climb down to the ingress hatch and almost immediately forgot he was gone. Five minutes later, Valentina entered the Kraken's Spit and sat down next to Bill and Bob. "I thought there were three of you," she said. Bill and Bob looked at each other. "Uh-oh," they said. The two of them sprinted into the refinery's galley, where they saw Jeb fighting to get free of the clutches of two members of the Interplanetary Authority. "Run!" yelled Jeb. "Save yourselves! Get out of here!" Of course, before Bill and Bob could start running, the two IA officers noticed them. "Forget this guy, there's two of them!" one shouted. By that time, Bill and Bob were already halfway to the Kraken's Spit. "Start the engines!" Bob yelled to Valentina. "Jeb had to stay here. Start the engines!" They climbed into the ship just as it started rocking with the vibrations of the turbopumps coming online, and the hatch was closed in seconds. "We can't stay here anymore. Liftoff!" shouted Bill. As the ship rose high into the black, Bob sighed. "Poor Jeb." Jeb was already on his third lap around the refinery. He needed to stop running soon, or else the IA suits would catch him. There! An escape pod! He ran in and closed the door. By their very nature, escape pods are fast-acting, and within seconds Jeb was kilometers from the station. Looks like I can catch up with the Kraken's Spit after all. However, before he could start accelerating toward a rendesvouz with his beloved dropship, two IA cruisers pulled up alongside him. Just by looking at them, Jeb could tell they could outrun him any day of the year. They want me to lead them toward the dropship. Well, he couldn't do that, and he couldn't just sit around in space, either, or they'd capture him. In fact, the only thing in his favor was that the escape pod was entirely self-sufficient, with compact recyclers for air, food, and water. Then an idea entered Jeb's brain. A crazy, idiotic idea, one that any other kerbal would have dismissed as utterly insane. And Jeb started grinning like a madman. "He's moving," said the captain of the first cruiser. They followed Jeb through a three-minute burn, slowly starting to wonder just where they were going. Finally, after nine minutes of this, the captain said, "Where is he- oh, kraken! Turn around! Look what trajectory he's on! One thing for sure, nobody's going to be able to claim a reward for his head now!" A few hours later, the escape pod entered Eve's atmospere. It did have parachutes and heat shielding, but they were intended for entry at Kerbin. To compensate, Jeb burned off all of the fuel slowing down at two hundred kilometers. After that was finished, he just held on to whatever he could find as the capsule shook and rumbled its way down. Whatever wasn't in the shadow of the heat shield was vaporized instantly. After the shock heating was over, the pod ran out of RCS propellant and started gyrating wildly as it tore through the clouds at many times the speed of sound. Delicate equipment tore off the outside of the spacecraft, creating a debris clouds kilometers wide. Four parachutes deployed and were destroyed, and four more reserve chutes popped out of their cowling. One failed, but the rest survived, and the spinning stopped, only to be replaced by a bone-shattering thud moments later as the capsule slammed into the ground and the landing gear sheared off. The pod started rolling down a hill, and at this point virtually all equipment mounted outside the hull had been destroyed. Finally, the main fuel tank tore off, and the pod came to rest in a valley on the most deadly planet known to kerbalkind. Jeb couldn't wait to step and see what it was like. He had even been able to make a flag out of spare items lying around the cockpit. Well, he thought, here I am. The first kerbal to visit Kerbin's twin. And then, wiping a drop of sweat off of his brow, Let's hope the radiators still work.

Your wish is granted... but then the Ghostbusters show up and accidentally cause a spacecraft with the Origonal Four onboard to go diving into mission control. They're dead, but you must go to space at any cost, so it's no big deal, right? Well... you're bankrupt, so you can't rebuild it, and since you have no active contracts, no active kerbals on the roster and no probe cores, you can't make any money. Your space program is dead. Its ghost roams the KSC.

Fine, then. You are now banned for using an SUV instead of a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Even though in this case, it would be an electric SUV (full of bloody kerbals). Sometimes it disturbs me how deep some of us can get into the "pain and suffering" part of this game. But, like, it's all good if you revert the flight, right?

Microsoft Office!

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision." -Randall Munroe Also: "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... let's go exploring!" -Calvin

Jeb, shortly after jumping out of a nuclear jet on Duna at 30km. I guess he was trying to go over the rainbow to look for a boy and a tiger in a cardboard box...

Jeb, shortly after jumping out of a nuclear jet on Duna at 30km. I guess he was trying to go over the rainbow to look for a boy and a tiger in a cardboard box...

1.2.2 never crashed for me as far as I can remember (I didn't play with mods) and my 1-month old 1.3 install with a fair number of mods has only crashed twice. Either way, beats previous versions (I downloaded 1.1 after I alt-tabbed to the forums after my game crashed.)

Frankly, the main reason I support this feature being an option is because I disabled stock Mach & plasma effects in the game menu, because I thought it was kind of ugly and it lags spaceplanes so much. As a mod, this feature gives me great plasma effects without the normal lag. (Note: I play with many mods, mostly environmental enhancement mods, and high-part-count spacecraft on a 2016 HP computer with full graphics settings, so lag is more or less subjective depending on how you play and what you play it on.)

And one more thing: We're still broadcasting.

Banned because profile picture does NOT show explicit kerbal torture and/or death. How scandalous! My picture was taken after Jeb jumped off of a nuclear powered plane thirty kilometers above Duna.

Granted. However, the universe moderator in charge of that wish doesn't know squat about computers, and he thinks "deep web" and "dark web" are synonymous. You are arrested by the FBI for super-hyper-mega piracy two days later. I wish for a cardboard box that I can turn into anything by using a Sharpie to write on the side of it. And it would go "Boink."

Chapter 10- What’s the Frequency, Kerbin? “Comms check on one and three.” The two hi-gain antennas on the belly of the Kraken’s Spit swiveled and connected with the Deep Space Network. “Comms check on two and four.” Two omnidirectional antennas mounted above the crew cabin screamed into the ether. “Okay, we’re online.” Bill moved away from the comms panel and floated towards Bob. “You got the antennas, now you can talk all you like. But we have to make a maneuver after each broadcast so the IA doesn’t get an accurate lock on our position. Jeb?” Jebediah looked at an analog gauge near his left foot. “Yeah, we got about two kilometers per second left, we’ll only need one and a half to get on Duna safely, so call it… a ten-meter per second burn each time. That will stop them from chasing us down” “Speaking of which,” continued Bill, “hundreds of tracking computers are probably triangulating our position as we speak. Say what you want to say and then get the kraken off the airwaves.” On four worlds, kerbals were sitting in front of televisions, tapping on phone screens, and pounding on keyboards. Hundreds of megabytes poured out into space every second. If she wanted to, a kerbal could instantaneously access all of kerbalkind’s collected knowledge and wisdom going back to the Great Purge, or she could spend hours trying in vain to get her mods to work together on Human Space Program. The point was, the most important utility in the Kerbol system was communication. And one kerbal aboard a spaceship was able to bring it all down. “Hello, we’re broadcasting to you today from an undisclosed location that shall remain secret until the cops get off our tail.” A million radio programs were interrupted by Bob’s voice. “However, you can see that right now, we’re in some sort of spacecraft.” The face of Jebediah Kerman appeared on thousands of screens across the solar system. “And this is Radio Free Kerbol.” “The fall of capitalism is fifty years in the rearview mirror, but communism is no longer necessary. And yet, the United Kerbin prefers to continue with the current style of beating down the masses until they conform to a larger plan that doesn’t exist. However, we have two things to say. “One, we are onboard the Kraken’s Spit. We have gone on the run after inadvertently delivering a terrorist to the surface of the Mun. His ship was full of plutonium, and he killed everyone aboard Munbase Two. And, second, we have figured out his goal: to give each and every kerbal control over their lives. Although we cannot agree with his methods, we can agree with his purpose. People of Laythe and Duna, we bid you: Break free from the influence of the Kerbin system! Give us sanctuary and embrace our cause! Support the rights of kerbalkind! And, people of the Kerbin system: Always remember that you are really in control and that the rest of the solar system is on your side.” The commander of the Kraken’s Spit finished his speech. The engineer scrambled the comms. And the navigator pushed play on a tape recorder. “Until next time, this is Radio Free Kerbol… and remember, we’re still broadcasting.” Decide yourself where they're gonna stay. They are running from but not away. Let them, let them, let them have your say. This just doesn't happen any day. Radio broadband, Decide yourself. Meet me in the prograde of this world. Dealing word games making us unsure. Let them, let them, let them tell us all. That we aren't one country at all. Radio broadband, Decide yourself. Calling on, in transit, Calling on, in transit, Radio Free Kerbol, Radio!

I've got some awesome pocket-size quadcopters. I actually fly them inside, in my bedroom, on my bunk bed.