Jesrad

Welcome to the 1000-mile-high club

Yesterday I finished designing my Duna Colony Push group of vehicles. That's a science outpost designed to land unpowered (...hopefully) on Duna, an Ike&return manned lander, and a satellite for the occasional science requests and completing a juicy contract. The crews underwent months of training for this Duna Push. I have high-level scientists everywhere and an excellent pilot flying the Outpost to Duna. No orange shirts though, because I have bigger plans for them saved for later. Everything is now in LKO waiting for the launch window, and I've upgraded all my buildings to the max as well which has left my agency starved of cash and crew... Perfect reasons to go and grab other agencies' own stuff and staff, I say: I did one more grab'n'snatch before bed after that, my funds are purring happily again now.

Vall it is. Dres at least has its unpopularity going for it. But Vall is like a diminutive Mun parked between much more interesting places to visit. Tylo is more prestigious because of how challenging it is, Pol is, too, because of how excentric and littered with weird shapes it is, Laythe is off-contest, and Bop is the ultimate Space Potato and home to the Kraken. Vall is... well it's there. It's not even closest to Jool. It spins. It's bland, and the rocks on it are unremarkably ugly. Why would anyone bother to land on Vall at all, except as a mandatory chore for completing a proper Joolian Grand Tour ?

Nice progress My son learnt to read all the letters a little after turning 2, but he has yet to recognize a whole word.

I successfully designed, launched, filled and crewed my Low Kerbin Orbit Science Station project: My exploration/science vehicle has autopilot so I can put newbie scientists in it and have it fly painlessly (for 2 full XP levels on return), the "long" version requires struts on its space stage, while the "short" version probably need a pair of airbrakes on top for reentry stability. But otherwise a very successful series - and that was the "underdog" challenger of the design competition ! It beat both the Hermes and Nix series at the finish line. [Edit] How do I embed the imgur album ? [Edit2] Thanks kitten !

This experiment has been pretty much done, many many times, on simpler creatures. It turns out that the discrepancy between the two copies will accumulate quickly or slowly depending on whether they have a specific gene (and I cannot find the link back ). In any case, the behavior WILL diverge everytime.

Did my first Mun and Minmus v1 landings today, with Bill the Scientist doing both in a row. Thanks to grossly overengineering the vehicles (and careful balancing on top of a FL-T800+Terrier) I was able to biome-hop in both and came back home with several thousands worth of science. And suddenly I'm asked to build a 17-kerman station around the Mun ? RUSirius ? I was surprised to see the Minmus' vessel's heatshield used up just a single unit of ablator on the way down. Might not even need the heat shield at all, will test ! Hurray for saving up on mass a cost. Our company's outsourced designer is not called Scrounger's Shoddy Aerospace for nuthin. Remember that most of History was accomplished using stuff from the lowest bidders. I then toyed with the turbojet engine - that one's a guzzler, alright, but it can almost bring a minimalist airplane half-way to Kerbin escape velocity from a standing start - on one stage ! Way OP if you ask me. Next I'll test my hypothesis that the $35k Minmus-exploring vessel can go to Duna+Ike and make it back. Octuple Ant FTW !

There are quite a number of tricks to mind when landing on an airless moon. Starting point: you are orbiting circularly above the moon. Step 1: switch to SURFACE navball mode (click the navball to cycle through the modes), otherwise you will be stuck in Orbit mode and your indicators will be off. Step 2: align your ship to retrograde, and kill most, but not all, your horizontal velocity At this point your trajectory should be a prarabola going down to the surface steeply, but not straight. Step 3: in the Map, add a Maneuver Node right at the surface point of your trajectory, and pull the retrograde maneuver handle (carefully) until you bring your future trajectory to zero m/s at that point Now you should have a "time to impact with the ground" indicator by your navball (bottom of maneuver) and a "burn time needed to stop before you hit" (top of maneuver). Very handy to have ! Step 4: Align your vessel to maneuver target, and then a few seconds before the "time to impact" countdown equals the "burn time needed to not die" duration, apply full thrust Step 5: When your retrograde target in the navball passes over the "center of sky" cross, zero the throttle. At that point you should be still well clear of the ground, but with little to no horizontal velocity, and falling slowly. Step 6: align to retrograde, which should be "up straight" and not at all sideways. If it still is a bit sideways, though, you can apply some thrust, and that will slowly kill remaining horizontal velocity. Step 7: Lock the gimbal on your engine(s) ! If you don't your vessel will be very hard to steer finely as you apply and stop applying thrust in the last steps. Step 8: Keep your velocity reasonably low as you descend. 50 m/s is maximum if you are still hundreds of m above the ground. Otherwise keep it around 10 m/s. Step 9: When you can spot your ship's shadow or as you come within 100 m of the ground, slow to 5 m/s At this point you should have found the right throttle setting to stabilise your velocity. Keep a finger on the X key, add a leeeettle thrust before touchdown, press X immediately. Voilà, you are landed. If you're on a slope and your ship starts tilting and is about to crash, go to full thrust to clear the ground, straighten up (look at the NAVBALL, NOT the ship), cut throttle, and retry elsewhere. Take your time !

I've returned to KSP after leaving sometime in v0.24 (I think). The v1 feels like a new game, which is a very good surprise The new aero model is a welcome change, much needed IMO. Kudos to Squad ! The space agency management aspects feel well balanced so far and make progressing into the game possible at one's own pace. The XP/skills for individual kerbonauts makes sense and just fits. I can focus on make-do simpler work (testing parts, setting up satellites) or boldly put my tiny operation's reputation and financial health at risk by trying more challenging stuff (rescues, new records, pushing bounbdaries, etc.), at any point, without falling into a boring grind or a death trap.

Actually, it is realistic. If it took more energy to refine the ore, than you could get from the refined fuel, you'd be better off just using your input energy directly, than bother mining at all in the first place. And there would be no oil industry on Earth.

And that is why I absolutely love the webcomics Schlock Mercenary. In one previous arc, the mercenaries move in to investigate the destruction of a space station. How do they do that ? By moving half of their missiles on the scene, and the other half 60 light-minutes away, so they get to see how it is now, and what happened during the previous hour. That's how well this series is written. Orbitals is done right (there's a lunar space elevator which gets sectioned off by a bomb, we get a realistic telling of the evacuation of the elevator and the station at its end, complete with the correct timings). Relativity is done right too (like when Petey flings drones at 99% de speed of light at Tausennigans, or when the Lawyer Collective assaults the Toughs with relativistic foil cones). It's full of such nice details, the stories are action-packed and canvassed onto galaxy-spanning conspiracies. It's awesome. No mention of Space Cowboys ? I recently rewatched it, and the physics for when the satellite tries to boost into an evasive maneuver while the shuttle is clamped to it is done remarkably well. The whole "get halfway to the Moon, and its gravity does the rest" thing though seems fishy. Another good show for realism is PLANETES, an anime series made in collaboration with JAXA. No sound in vacuum, orbital realism, and the overarching story is built upon the Kessler Syndrome. In one episode a mugger is sent flying against a bulkhead by stopping then restarting a spaceship's rotation. And newtonian-accurate too: when the guys on the Moon jump from the top of the inflamed building to escape the fire they properly break their legs on impact because, even though they weigh a lot less, they still mass the same.

Whaaaaa ? No, nowhere near what I meant. However applying that thinking to life yields interesting definitions for "life" in general.

Click it... I dare you !

Chances are the Nicaragua people heard a sonic boom from some military aircraft that evening, then later found a fresh hole somewhere to blame it on.

I'd just like to point out again that ALL LIFE IS POLLUTION. Every single modification to its environment that a lifeform causes in order to persist and thrive, diverts the Earth away from its natural state. That's basic thermodynamics.

You are making the assumption that gravity from the comet stays constant the further you get from it. This: is inapplicable in this context, because g varies with H.

Oxygen, and not CO2, is a non-natural pollutant To think life cannot have a massive impact on this planet's climate is insane. To think CO2 is mainly driving the climate is insane too. To believe our current climate models have any use at all save for being mathematical curiosities is insane. To believe nothing's happening to our planet and everything will be fine anyway is insane.

That's just one video, there are a lot more. Also, in the code itself the acceleration is perfectly constant and vertical anyway, regardless of masses in vicinity or altitude Well everything in Minecraft is cubic, so the drag coefficient can be expected to be the same 1.28 for everything. But you're right overall. Occam still has merit though.

is called economics

I have no idea, I'm no astronomer I just loosely rely on Napier's papers here (links in the first post) maybe you can look in there ?

This idea is the premise for Greg Egan's book "Schild's Ladder", which contains layman-accessible explanations of the whole deal.

Or maybe the 100 heads streak falsifies even our understanding of probabilities Face it: if your theory isn't falsifiable, it's not scientific. And if it is falsifiable, then the 100 series is more than enough to falsify it, regardless of what you conjure up in its support (unbiased coin or not), because however likely sounding it still can't dent the crazy odds, and however improbable you make the alternative sound it'll still be vastly more probable than the "just a coincidence" explanation. This is a fun thought experiment in this way. Agreed with you on the risk of impact, though, because it's vaaaastly more likely than actually getting 'heads' 100 times in a row. Paradoxical ! With a mere 20 series of 'heads' you have the right answer, I'm just pushing past the limit of sanity for giggles.

Hmmm, then why do all monsters, blocks, items and Steve have the same observed terminal velocity of 64 m/s ? Also, why isn't the intensity of the gravitational field even changing by a tiny fraction with altitude ? Why aren't mountains deviating the direction of pull even a eeny-tiny bit, as you pointed out ? Why isn't it changing direction at all if you move 32000 kms in any direction on the plane, away from the coordinates origin ? => because it's not gravity, it's inertia from constant ~23m/s² acceleration Any actual gravity from the matter is so vastly overwhelmed by it, it might as well be zero.

Aaaaand you lose You are brave to try, though. 100 'heads' in a row falsify any and all of the untold assumptions you made that support your "50:50" hypothesis, with a huge margin of confidence. Even if the coin really is unbiased.

methinks you'll need ideas for missions, badly. I figure you'll roll through the tech tree in the first 3 hours max, then have every planet and moon colonized half-way through your marathon. Here are a few suggestions: Build tall poles/towers 'hotels' on both poles of the Mun, then operate a skip-bus between the two that flies as low as possible without crashing into a mountain. Put a "munar lagrangian" station sitting on the same orbit but just outside of the Mun's SOI, then see how little deltaV is needed to reach the Munar surface or to aerobrake into low Kerbin orbit from there. Also, see if you can manage to slingshot around the Mun into Kerbin escape from there. Jool-5 grand challenge Replicate famous aircraft Build the biggest truck you can, launch from the airport strip, climb mountains near KSC Set up a drag racing event on the airport strip And for the grand finale: put up a nice fireworks show ! ...oh, and, obligatory bragging: