Shpaget

So... Who's going to Photoshop an "Action Fern! Made with real Devonian ferns!" collectible?

As usual, xkcd to the rescue. Also, this:

Dull tools are more dangerous than sharp ones. When a tool is dull you use more force which leads to worse control and accidents. Of course, you don't need a straight razor to butter a toast, but in principle you want stuff that is supposed to be sharp to actually be sharp.

It's a matter of whether you are paid or have to pay to be in the spaceship.

Are we there yet?

In a heartbeat. I too am reluctant to take on risky stuff, but not because I'm afraid of dieing. I'm afraid of ending up in a wheelchair. A mishap during a rocket launch, slamming into the surface of the Moon, or Earths atmosphere is not likely to end up with me in a wheelchair, so I'll start to pack my carry-on. When do we leave?

Does anybody know how these boring bricks are held together? I don't mean with each other, but one brick in itself. Do they mix in cement to bind the excavated material, or is it just pressed and formed? I saw the video of them being formed, but didn't see the material preparation. Do we have any test regarding durability of these bricks? If they don't use cement or some other binder, will they just melt away if soaked? Another concern I have is, since the bricks are made from excavated material, the bricks will not be consistent. The material will change as the TBM passes through various soil/rock types.

Ugh. Do they really think that they could charge enough to make any difference? It costs about a hundred million $ to launch anything, what would a few tens of thousands actually do? On a similar note, I find it obnoxious when I see ads on business websites. I mean, I understand and can see justification when a news site, personal blog or similar has ads, but when a small (or worse, a big) specialized business slaps on ads on their site it just reeks cheap.

I had quite a few stability issues with it when used it last time (about six months ago). It does appear to have had a few updates in the meantime. Save often.

Looks like the Wall at the south pole. Behind it is the edge of the world. If you try to get near the Wall, black helicopters scoop you up.

Have you tried playing with different formats and codecs? Try rendering into something lossless and then pull it through HandBrake.

Since we're sharing... I crashed three years ago. I still don't remember it, but the police report says someone switched into my lane. There probably was very little or even no contact, but I ended up hitting my head on something face fist. Helmet (a proper AGV full face) took most of the energy, but still cracked and was pushed into my jaw which broke, along with a couple of molar teeth. I was wearing a leather jacked so my upper body was fairly well protected, but had shorts so my legs got scraped quite decently. Got some damage on the hands as well. An ambulance happened to come by from the opposite direction and the doctor inside turned out to be the son of my family doctor, and was able to recognize me. Apparently, I did not lose consciousness, and was able to tell him my name so my family got notified rather quickly (police couldn't find my documents since they were under the seat and not in my pocket). Bike did not sustain any major damage, but that was the last time I rode it. I get shivers when I see guys riding without a helmet or those that sit on top of your head. I haven't regained full functionality of the jaw, and probably never will, since the bone is still in two pieces. Surgeons say that an operation to connect them would likely cause too much nerve damage and that it's not worth it. Kids, always wear helmets.

Get well soon. A helmet saved my life too...

It's g as in garage. Seriously, I can accept that the creators of format wanted it pronounced as gin, but they're just trolling us. It stands for graphics and therefore must be pronounced as such. That being said, I will openly make fun of anybody that pronounces it as gin in my presence.

Honestly, I've never heard about it, but I can tell you the way I learned (what little I know). I started with Logo and BASIC when I was 13 or 14, as part of optional Computer Science classes in my elementary school. We also had a Robotics class I (naturally) enrolled in. Unfortunately, the guidance was very poor so for those four years I didn't progress much. By that I mean, no one really explained the for loop, so I lived in this little world where I thought that was some complicated witchcraft and I avoided it. Arrays, what are those? The mechanical and electronics part of robotics held my interest more than programming so my skills developed in that direction and software stuff stagnated. After elementary school, I made a serious life mistake of going to a wrong high school, something still I regret. While we had Computer Sciences there, it was all about Excel and PowerPoint, basically waste of time. My breakthrough came in college where I finally got someone to explain the basics and my eyes opened. We were learning C#, which came in handy rather soon. At work we had a continuous problem which required a lot of trial and error (something similar to the Knapsack problem). After a while I got bored of doing the trial and error thing and decided it was time to use my newly acquired programming superpower to solve the problem. The result was a tiny little windows form that would brute force the solution and spit it out in seconds. That was my first piece of code that actually had a purpose, and the feeling of solving a real problem is much better than just completing a tutorial. After that I switched to Arduino and did countless little projects for that same workplace where I still work. The switch to Arduino also came as a requirement, because most of the projects I do require interfacing with real world hardware (lights, motors etc.). So, back to your question, I have no idea if sololearn is any good, but I can tell you that finding a small problem in your life and solving it will be a much better experience and give you a feeling of instant reward. That problem can be anything - automated plant watering system, pretty flashing lights under your bed to ward off the monsters, whatever.

Also "Ops, something blew up, but we seem to be alive and the rocket keeps going. Mission status: Within parameters."

You don't need variation present in 7 billion. The lowest amount of variation that still leads to a healthy population is much lower.

I tried watching it but had to abort. I though it was going to be a nice little space themed sfi fi series, but turned out to be a silly teen drama show that fails at science at every step. @sevenperforce The space station does not get gravity from spinning. Sure it does spin, but gravity comes from air pressure (S02E08, Raven's spacewalk).

Earlier you said you wanted your flight computer to be as small as possible. That would mean a microcontroller and not a PC, right? Microcontrollers run compiled codes.

You don't need an interpreter for Arduino. Once you have the code written, it is compiled and uploaded to the microcontroller. The microcontroller executes the compiled code.

OP has not a lot of knowledge of the subject but has exhibited large amount of confidence in getting it to work. I don't thing that's unfair assessment. It was not meant as an insult. Everybody falls far the effect, nobody is immune. I've been tinkering with electronics and embedded systems for 15 years and still there are occasions where I think something will be trivial, only to hit a snag somewhere which forces me to go back to the books. @Cheif Operations Director is English your first language? I believe we might have a problem in communication where you don't recognize some specific words used here as having very specific meanings and then gloss over them. Let me try to explain some of them. This is a piece of code: const byte engine1 = 5; const byte engine2 = 6; const byte engine3 = 7; void setup() { pinMode (engine1, OUTPUT); pinMode (engine2, OUTPUT); pinMode (engine3, OUTPUT); digitalWrite (engine1, HIGH); delay (5000); digitalWrite (engine2, HIGH); delay (5000); digitalWrite (engine3, HIGH); } void loop() { } It is perfectly functional and complete. It is one click away from compiling and working. Programming language used here is heavily based on C++. However, this specific one was written for Arduino. All that this code does is to turn three physical pins on a microcontroller from logical LOW to logical HIGH (from 0 volts to 5 volts, in this case) in sequence, with 5 seconds of delay between each. If you hooked a microcontroller with this code to adequate electronics, you could turn on three lights, three electric motors, or three rocket motors with this. For solid rocket motors you can find in hobbyist shops (Estes type), you could fire them by hooking physical pins 5, 6 and 7 to gate pins of three N channel MOSFETs that act as switch to turn on electric igniters. The command (also called function) to turn on a microcontroller pin is digitalWrite, but for it to actually do something, there are quite a few things that have to happen in the background. If you use an existing programming language, you don't need to worry about that. However, if you want to make your own language you will need to not only write that part as well, but have a detailed knowledge and understanding of hardware and software part of the microcontoller you are using. For example, this is the back end of the digitalWrite function, the stuff that you'd need to write too if you want to go the diy route: void digitalWrite(uint8_t pin, uint8_t val) { uint8_t timer = digitalPinToTimer(pin); uint8_t bit = digitalPinToBitMask(pin); uint8_t port = digitalPinToPort(pin); volatile uint8_t *out; if (port == NOT_A_PIN) return; // If the pin that support PWM output, we need to turn it off // before doing a digital write. if (timer != NOT_ON_TIMER) turnOffPWM(timer); out = portOutputRegister(port); uint8_t oldSREG = SREG; cli(); if (val == LOW) { *out &= ~bit; } else { *out |= bit; } SREG = oldSREG; } You see? One easy to use and understand line of code suddenly expands into 15 lines that are not quite as easy to understand. If you want to write this part yourself as well, you better start learning about hardware timers, interrupts, direct port manipulation, bitwise operations etc... If you look at the code above, you'll notice there are five other functions in this one function. Each of them is another block of code you'll need to write. It can go all the way down until you get to bottom of the rabbit hole and machine code. How deep are you willing to go?

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontroller-ATmega328-328P_Datasheet.pdf Page 438 Or if you don't feel like opening it, that microconroller (ATmega328, the one that is used in quite a few Arduinos) is 4 x 4 x 0,9 mm. If that is small enough for you, Arduino is the way to go. How do you expect to make your own programing language if you don't learn other stuff about programing languages? I mean, knowledge required to make a brand new programing language capable of interfacing with any hardware is certainly greater than just learning an existing language and using vast amount of other peoples work that does the hard part in the background without needing to understand that as well. Believe it or not, but staring at the wall will not help you in making your own language, while an hour tinkering with Arduino will certainly get you a good deal towards the program you are describing. I am still confused why you think that making a new language and then writing the code in it is less work than just writing the code in an existing language. What are you going to do about interfacing with your components? You talk about guidance, that would suggest inertial navigation, barometric altitude sensor and possibly GPS. Do you plan on building those systems from scratch as well or will you use off the shelf components/modules? I would guess off the shelf components since, let's be honest, there is absolutely zero chance of you developing your own GPS module. Do you know how those modules communicate with other devices? Have you even heard of I2C and SPI? Do you plan on writing your own libraries for that as well? I'm not saying that's impossible, far from it, but that part alone is more work than entire software you'd need for your rocket. Let me be honest. You're at the peak of the Dunning Kruger graph. Pick up a C or a C++ book or an online tutorial and order yourself a few Arduino Unos from ebay (perhaps a starter kit with a bunch of other electronic components included) and just play with that for a few days. It will open your eyes.

I would not assume that earth was a nice little protected place. After all, formation of first life falls pretty much in the early part of the Late Heavy Bombardment period*. We apparently survived that. Furthermore, life forming "only" half a billion years after planetary formation would suggest that chaotic conditions are not a problem. *I'm aware that LHB is not confirmed, but rather hypothesized.

How do you go from to From everything evolution has taught me, once you have microbes, multicellular life is not a far away, give the time.

To answer that question first we need the answer to: "How big is their telescope?". In any case, first radio transmissions were done in 1880's, so best case scenario <140 ly. Which is pretty much equal to bupkis.