boriz

The Spruce Goose was made of Birch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules

One of my favourite actors. RIP Donald.

Go here https://imgur.com/, upload your pic, after it has been uploaded and displays correctly on imgur, right-click the image and select 'copy image link'. This will give you the direct image link (must end in an image format suffix, like JPG or PNG). Then come here and click the button in the bottom right of this edit box labelled 'insert image from URL' and paste your image link into the form. Thus:

Simulated gravity on a SpaceX trip to mars: Send two starships. Once on a mars trajectory, have them line up nose to nose with a 100m cable linking them together, then give them each a gentle opposite sideways motion, causing them to both swing around the center of the cable, giving the crew say, 0.5G for the majority of the trip. If there are any psychological crew issues, a crew exchange could be performed. Or perhaps one could carry crew, the other supplies/waste, and maybe once a month a 'mass exchange' is performed. Either way, the crew will arrive in good condition and fully acclimatised to the lower G on mars.

Anyone have a Kindle Paperwhite?

I'll be fine, so long as the zombies don't have rope...

The Three Body Problem.

It's oscillating. It's a tuned system with positive feedback. The energy is provided by the force of gravity trying to drag it downhill. It'll stop when the slope gets too shallow (or too steep) for the system to be 'tuned'. It relies on the relative difference in the inertia of the legs and the larger inertia of the body. In your case, the flexing/nodding action of the uppermost section contributes to the tuning. It's lovely to see this sort of emergent behaviour in KSP. A testimony to the great work the devs did on getting the physics right. The principle has been exploited in children's toys for centuries. Here's some Ramp Walkers on YT.

EG: The x axis on the KAL graph = airspeed, call it ASP. Put ASP into the KAL x coordinate, and the y output can control propeller pitch.

"could you by any chance add some zeroes to the number?" - Ok. You inherit $46,345,360 Zimbabwean Dollars...

"this forum is possibly doomed in 4 weeks" - what? What makes you think that?

KSP was a passion project. A heart felt indi game, with all the unique little clunky quirks we have come to love. Something beautiful made by a hand full of talented artists/engineers that obviously loved what they were doing. KSP2, in it's current form. began with a hostile appropriation of KSP devs that were then put under the yolk. A bit like Peter Griffin poking the Asian Kid. It was dirty from square one. I remember saying on another forum that I was disgusted with this behaviour and would never give them a penny, and I'm pleased to say, I haven't. I genuinely hope they lost a lot of money on KSP2, and perhaps, learned a lesson. A lesson that, in an ideal world, other would-be talent sucking corporate vampires will learn too. (The music industry went the same way. I always hate the word 'industry' being associated with art. It feels like an oxymoron to me, like 'fragrant sewer' or 'honest politician'.)

Invest, donate, spend???

Sorry if this has been covered before... KOS provides access to internal variables like altitude, pitch, speed, time etc. Is it possible to make those internal variables available to the KAL system? Like this: Internal variables are passed though a user defined mapping/scaling function (to normalise between 0 and 1, or invert for example), then it is 'mounted' as the horizontal coordinate on a KAL control graph. Let's say for example, you wanted to automate your pitch change during a rocket ascent. You want the pitch to start at 90 (vertical) at altitude=0m, and end at zero (horizontal) at altitude=60000m. Assuming the ALT variable is in meters, and your scaling function is just x=x, you set the KAL x range to 0-60000 and mount the ALT variable to the x axis. The y axis range is set 0-90, with any ascent profile you like. The output can operate control surfaces/robot parts directly, or be mounted as the x component on another KAL graph. Possible?

Floor 4787-a: A very short, in-between floor, containing a portal into John Malkovich's mind.

"Dictators ride on tigers they dare not dismount" - Churchill.

I'm thinking of purchasing one of these. I'm not planning on creating any accounts or going online or connecting to wi-fi with it. I do not have a smart phone and will not be 'syncing' with it. I just want to upload some e-book files from my PC and read them on Kindle. And hopefully, not be constantly bothered with 'reminders' that I'm not logged in or registered. Will it do that? Or will I have to 'throw in' all of my private and personal details first, just to get it to run? (I was stung by this before, after purchasing a DJI product. Once bitten twice shy.) Will it accept PDF, TXT, and other formats or will I be tied in to buying stuff from Amazon? Thanks for any help.

Banned for saying it's a responsibility when it really is a compulsion.

The toilet absolutely needed fixing, everything they did needed doing. It was a tough job, and a thorough job. I observed them, and there were no "horizontal" sales. Every time they uncovered something, it too was rotten. Everything except the porcelain really did need replacing, including some pipework. £60 in hardware + one days work for three guys? You think I should have offered them less?

Had a handyman over to replace my broken toilet seat. (Still isolating. Can't go get one myself). Shouldn't take long or cost much right? He confirms my suspicion that the flush mechanism is faulty, and asks if I'd like him to look at it, and I agree. He leaves, returns with a new siphon mechanism. Can't remove the old one because everything is ancient and rusted solid. Eventually manages, but in so doing breaks other corroded parts. Leaves, returns with parts, and a colleague to help ... "Do you have a Dremel? I need to cut slots in these seized screws" ... leaves for parts, returns, with another colleague ... A couple of hours later, the entire toilet and cistern are completely removed and sitting in my bedroom, the bathroom floor is soaked, a leak has wet the wall and carpet downstairs ... Long story short, changing my toilet seat took three people all day and cost £200. LOL. To be fair, the toilet is very old, was on it's last legs, works great now, and it's a lot cheaper than a new one.

I have a webcam pointing out of my window. It doesn't record anything, it's just so I can see who's at my door before deciding to answer it. Yep. Tried to pause and rewind it. Several times.

I have been experimenting with a 'permaplane'. A plane that can remain aloft permanently, never needing to land or refuel. Entirely solar powered (no RTG). Enough battery capacity to make it through the night, and solar panels to recharge during daylight. Most of the flying is done with MechJeb Autopilot, though there is a crew of two, and I have done a lot of manual flying, perhaps not a complete manual circumnavigation, but I have sat and watched it when not flying hands-on, and diverted manually to places that looked interesting. I don't know how many hours I have watched this plane, but I'm certain that I'd be embarrassed to enumerate them here. By sheer accident, I discovered the cruising speed of 175m/s seems to be approximately sun-synchronous. So while flying West (in daylight), the sun remains pinned above, and the solar panels do all the work leaving the battery fully charged continuously. Indeed, were I to only fly west, I could save a lot of weight and carry no battery at all. Flying east leaves the battery about 1/4 full when the sun rises and begins recharging. 6000m was chosen as a compromise. It flys faster at lower altitude (200m/s@5000m), but you have a much higher chance of hitting a mountain. Note the mission elapsed time. I don't know how many circumnavigations that is, but I did leave it going while I slept. This was essentially my screensaver for a couple of days. Also, at reduced performance, it can carry 1200u liquid fuel anywhere for free, and with a very low stall speed, can land quite safely pretty much anywhere vaguley flat for refueling missions. Also Note, time acceleration does not work with these props, so by necessity, it was all realtime. (Thanks Squad) (Respect to the OG, Solar Impulse 2) P.S. Please please please, can modders add propeller/motor sounds? Hearing nothing but a slight rush of wind just annoyed me eventually, so I turned the sound off and listened to an audiobook instead.

Did you flashy-thing me? Banned.

And here I was, thinking it was just me!