Drunkrobot

What is that time in GMT? 6:45 AM? And will it be shown on NASA TV? Sorry for the annoying questions!

I had always thought horror games were stupid. C'mon, it's just a video game, right? Then, I stayed over at a friends house. He got me to play the prologue in Nightmare House 2. Needless to say, there were swear words. What I'm asking is if you have any recommendations on what horror games I should try out. Of course, KSP, Minecraft and Civ 5 will remain my darlings, but I would like to expand a little. Also, if you had a funny jumpscare moment or anything, don't be scared to share it as well.

This is kind of related to the subject of gullibility. I know of this YouTuber who created a "petition" to keep the Nintendo 3DS off the selves, because it "could cause blindness in children". Then he went out into the streets with a microphone and a cameraman, and told random people what the petition was about, and asked them to sign it. Of course, this is slightly different, the DHMO hoaxers lied by omission, this guy flat out lied. But it does aid to show our gullibility, through our instinct to not read the bloody thing we're signing. When he was typing the petition up, he wrote it like any normal petition, except for adding the words "Heil Hitler" somewhere in the middle of the paragraph. Barely anyone noticed as they signed it. One woman even claimed we "should be more critical of what we're told" as she added her own signature. Let me just leave this here:

In terms of expertise needed for future missions, Russia has a slight edge over USA. There are 2 key aspects of a long-term manned spaceflight that Russia is more skilled at than the US, long-duration flight and construction in LEO. Constructing the first multi-module space station in history, then living in it for months on end, pretty much on their own, makes Russia's case. Of course, the US has it's own advantages. If Orion/SLS manages to get built, then NASA has the opportunity to do a lot of cool things. The moment they take some ice from an asteroid, and use it to fill up the fuel tanks, asteroid mining would leap from something people say out loud to prove themselves crazy to something every space program on the planet will work towards doing bigger and better. But hey, at this point in the space age, ESA might have it worked out. ESA is hardly at the cutting edge of technology, and, my god, never look at the comment section of an article on ESA, but sharing the cost across the member nations makes it super cheap per nation. €8 a year per European is a damn good price for an full on space program. I think it was Bill Clinton who said that turning the space station Freedom into the ISS effectively divided the cost by two.

I suppose you have me beat on that one. I really should've looked this up before stating it. I can see that my post could be view as exaggerated-it is-so let me shamelessly save face by revising it. NASA could be seen as a contractor of good ideas. It is set a goal, and figures out what it would need to accomplish that goal. This translates into a long list of items with certain specifications. That list could be split into three-stuff NASA already has, stuff NASA doesn't have, but does exist, and stuff NASA has, and doesn't exist. NASA wants everything to be in list 1 before it launches the mission. Going from List 2 to List 1 is basic enough, NASA buys the item, maybe with a few modifications (Electronics must run on AA batteries, for example). List 3 is more difficult. Take the cameras the Apollo astronauts used on the Moon. While the principles of photography was established by the early 1960s, a camera that could be used by a man in a bulky spacesuit, in a vacuum, did not exist. NASA asked Hasselblad to create camera which could be used in those conditions. Hasselblad worked out the technical issues themselves, and gave NASA the cameras. This relationship was beneficial to both parties. NASA got their amazing photos, obviously, but making the Moon cameras made better commercial cameras possible, either by directly influencing manufacturing processes used by Hasselblad (I don't claim to have an intricate knowledge of film camera design philosophy before and after 1963-1972, but it is common sense to assume that "outside the box" thinking came often be superior to the convention) or by Hasselblad having more money to send to R&D, both through the contract money, and the "our cameras are used by frickin' NASA" selling point.

Sid, you're a cool guy. If at any point in the future you get sad, remember, you're a cool guy.

While NASA didn't invent much in the space race, it did create a need for those new technologies. Space travel is the most complicated, technically challenging thing the human race does, and space missions require the best results possible, not settling for "good enough". When the technologies mature, like a guidance computer that can fit inside a spacecraft, or polarising helmet visors, or cordless power tools, people in businesses around the world sees the commercial value, and adopt the technology. The key is that the technology had to mature. Usually, they're only at a conceptual stage, gathering little interest and seeming to many to be "not practical". Then NASA comes along, looking for some enabling tech to make their mission possible, and starts handing out the contracts.

We are all KSP-players here, we can appreciate the facts and figures of space and spaceflight a little more than the majority. But that doesn't take anything away from the impact an actual picture can have on us. The crab nebula, the remnants of a supernova 6,500 lightyears away, and 5.5 lightyears in diameter. And you're not even reading this, as you're too busy looking at the photo. I wouldn't blame you. This thread is a space of appreciation of these pictures, like a sort of gallery of space history. Why not post some of your personal favourites? What types of photos do you love most? I'll begin by posting a few. While I do love the astronomical photos like the crab nebula above (I'm also looking forward to the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, watching us go from a basic blur to beautiful close-ups of the surface will be very exciting), what I really enjoy is the images of us and our machines up there, contrasting the colours of planets and the black of space to the silvers and whites of mankind, at the same time displaying our ongoing quest to habitat space. Uh, Bill, you did pack the star-head screwdriver as well, didn't you? Pictured:One hell of a giant leap. A slightly weirder taste I have is the art of the earlier space missions, like this one: You tend to find pictures like these in old textbooks on space (lucky 70s kids, having beautiful things in their frickin' textbooks). In the time before CGI, these paintings would be created from sketches of upcoming missions and vehicles, to show the public what to expect. They had the side benefit on catching the attention of a percentage of children, who would put them on their bedroom walls, and be inspired to become like of the people who made the subjects of the pictures possible. Some people had pictures of bands or sports teams on their bedroom wall. These people are not that type of people. Note:I have a request, besides the photos. A friend of mine has suggested that I do a YouTube series. If I do one, I'll like it to be about the could-have-beens in spaceflight, designs that never got "off the ground". To make this series, I need material, like facts, figures and photos of proposed missions and vehicles. If you are aware of anything like this, a link would be much appreciated. Thanks!

It breaks my heart that hard sci-fi isn't as loved by the mainstream as it deserves. I'll accept that people can get by in life without learning a thing about orbital mechanics, but don't call Transformers a "science fiction" movie, please? I've read Red Mars, and my favourite parts were the more technically minded chapters, like Nadia (the Russian engineer) building Underhill, or the construction of the space elevator. I haven't read Voyage, but I did see this Orbiter video based on it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbvM5HuQRE I'll have to see if the library has a copy somewhere!

I developed an interest in sharks when I was in nursery school, which led to reading into marine biology, then more general biology, leading to the passion for Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology I have to this day (biology bringing up the rear nowadays, ironically). During this time, I found out that actual men walked on the actual frickin' Moon, so a love in spaceflight blossomed. Discovery of KSP turned that candle of interest into an inferno, and here I am today, doing the most difficult A-levels I could possibly have chosen, because SPAAAAAAAAAACE! We thank you, most noble of the aquatic killers.

The question is simple-what is the very first news story or historic moment you saw on the T.V or the radio etc. as it happened? Not the first story that happens in your lifetime (I was born on 25 Feb 1997, so the big news story back then would've been the fire on Mir), the first one you remember. I'll start. The earliest story I remember was a man being hung. He requested that he didn't wear a hood during the "ordeal". As it turned out, that man was Saddam Hussein. Yeah, I know, a tyrant being executed is a pretty bad first impression of the wider world. Hopefully, your stories are more cheerful. What piece of history introduced you to the human race?

By the way, Slenderman? I have something for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kj6YsUJLzE

<BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BE- Ech, sorry comrades, I'm going on a worldwide tour, and I need to sound good.

Eventually, some time in the future, there are going to be millions of people off of the Earth, and some of them are going to be minors. As space travel gets safer and cheaper, the restrictions on who gets to go to space will lax significantly. The dream is a surface-to-orbit experience slightly rougher than a modern plane journey, something most people, including teenagers and smaller children, can definitely survive.

I was joking. If I was an interstellar race making contact with another civilisation, I would do my homework. I forgive you for being mistaken. Tone of voice doesn't transmit very well through text. :l

If the satellite is small enough, then why not use a ground-based laser to "push" it into a lower orbit, so it can burn up in the atmosphere? To the person complaining about the GI Joe clip being "Hollywood science", it isn't really. It isn't made clear exactly how large the rod was, and a big enough one might be able to cause a small earthquake. And "we drop it" could be forgiven, since it does sound more dramatic than "we release it in a suborbital trajectory".

Kinectic bombardment. You have a set of large Tungsten rods in orbit around the Earth. If you want to show someone you really don't like them, you de-orbit one of the rods so that it will hit them at hypersonic speeds. Since the rod has a substantial mass, and is traveling at such a speed, the energy released when it hits the target is on par with a tactical nuke, without the fallout. Expect an earthquake when it hits the ground.

One day, an alien diplomatic escort will enter our solar system to make contact with us. As they make final approach, they're only going to get a glimpse of what appears to be a white and black cylinder with a bell on one end, before said cylinder hits them, and annihilates their ship. Seriously though, it is fascinating how our recent history is literally flying over our heads. I like to think that, when we have spread throughout the Earth-Moon system, exploration and exploitation of the Moon and NEOs providing unfathomable benefits to the human race, we'll build an actual "space museum" in orbit or at the Lagrange points, housing the pioneering space vehicles that made it all happen, instead of moving them to a "graveyard orbit" or burning them up in the atmosphere, as we would've in an earlier time.

We would first talk to each other in Maths and Physics. Assuming we made contact via radio-which is what is most likely to happen-the only thing we would know we have in common with each other would be the transmitters and receivers we communicate with. What do you need to create a radio telescope? Obviously, an intimate knowledge of light (Radio waves being light) is required. But there is way more to it than that. The machinery would require electronics to run at the necessary precision to hit a planet light-years away. Advanced materials to build their structure. The dish requires what we call euclidean geometry. Even knowing that those little points of light in the night sky are stars like our own needs astronomy. Even that isn't the full picture. How is that telescope even going to be powered? And most of all, who is going to discover this required knowledge? Only a society that values Maths, Science and Engineering would willingly spare the Euclid's, Galileo's, Newtons, Faraday's and Maxwell's of the world to pursue these secrets of the Universe, instead of making them do something "practical", like become a farmer, or join the military.

Nice suggestion! Maybe this thread could be the repository of ideas to enhance EVA? With the upcoming features (tech tree and SCIENCE!), there are many methods of making EVA better. Setting down experiment packages on other worlds, ALSEP-style, or releasing tiny cubesats in orbit. As you unlock better equipment, perform "servicing missions", to upgrade unmanned orbital platforms. Different spacesuits, with varying stats and abilities. Different "skins", at least to differentiate between multiple kerbals. (The commander has red stripes, the payload specialist blue, for example.) Post your own ideas. Don't be shy!

If I did everything at the same time (detach from rest of rocket, activate tower boosters, detach tower, deploy chutes) then the tower would just fly away uselessly (pretty bad) and the chutes would keep me glued to what was until very recently a fully-functional rocket (even worse). It makes more sense to split the abort sequence between two keys-that lovely big backspace to reach for when there is a RUD (Rapid Unplanned Disassembly), and the nearby 0 for when you are at a place of comparative safety, and you have time to think.

Land it on the roof of the VAB, and then I'll be impressed.

What is going to happen when some previously extremely useful, yet dastardly rare elements become ubiquitous? I'm not sure, but it's happened before. Go back to Napoleonic France. This Napoleon. You could tell how well you were doing in life by what material you're cutlery was made of. The troops has utensils made of Tin, the richer members of French society had Silver and Gold. Guess what Napoleon had to impress visiting diplomats, to show off the vast resources at his command? Aluminium Remember, it's pronounced "Alumin-IUM". This may sound very odd to you. After all, isn't 8% of the Earth's solid mass Aluminium? Well, you're right, it's just that in the early 19th century, we couldn't access the vast majority of it. It wasn't until later on that Electrolysing opened up Aluminium's potential. The thing to remember is this-many of the current applications for Aluminium didn't occur to those at the time it was literally worth more than its weight in gold. Engineering freak he was, I doubt Napoleon imagined giant man-made birds made of Aluminium as he gave his son an Aluminium-Gold baby rattle. Today is the same. The useful and rare elements are going to get more useful and less rare as asteroid mining develops into a real-life part of humanity's economy. It's just that we don't know what those new uses will be. Fictional secondary example: The MJOLNIR armour of FPS franchise Halo, made mostly of Titanium. Where was it developed and built? Why, the colony world of Reach, humanity's military capital, of course. Why yes, Reach IS incredibly rich in Titanium. That is the goal of the space program, to connect the technological and industrial expertise of Earth with the vast resources of space. The creation of agriculture opened up a massive supply of food, and freed up people to, instead of hunting and gathering, begin the first civilisations. Pictured: The day humanity conquered the world. The Industrial Revolution made the pioneering nations rich enough to put aside money for social progress , birthing public education and healthcare. They could've been a bit faster on the social progress, we'll admit, but hey, we're from the first county to industrialise, and we can expect to live longer than 30. When we link the Moon and NEOs to our mastery of the elements (it's a question of "If", not "When". Progress can slow down or speed up, it can never stop.), every single living thing on this planet is going to benefit from it. You know a field of science and technology is good for humankind when "harnessing the raw power of the Sun for our purposes" is a practical benefit. So, yeah, I think asteroid mining is a good idea. It would be nice to have "too much" rather than "too little".

I'm getting the feeling that this comic, and the last one, is topical. Robots rule, I guess.

Abso-frickin-lutely! If I have to put a kerbal into it, it gets an escape tower. What if there is a problem on the pad, and I won't have the time to stage up to the chutes? Action-group 0 is always-without fail-assigned to detaching the tower and deploying chutes. That tower gets tested, on the pad, and during ascent, before anyone is even allowed in the capsule. 10 more parts is a smaller price to pay than three Kerbanauts. Recently, I took out Obmy... Aeronautic expert. ...on a trip to orbit with the Aeris spaceplane. After a hairy moment with turning off the jets (flat-spins are horrible), I got up to orbit with the tiniest reserve of fuel left. Landing was the real emotional rollercoaster. At 30 kilometres altitude, Obmy is going at a few thousand m/s, with the a sliver of electric charge AND fuel left, over an ocean. At this point, I'm thinking "My god, I've doomed this innocent soul.". I decide to burn up the rest of the fuel, to get me the charge I need, and to reach the coast. Do bear in mind, I have very little experience in landing planes, and I could only have SAS on during final approach. I pull through, literally running out of power as I brake to a stop. Obmy lives to fly another day. It was one of the most satisfying moments in my time spent on this game. So, does that answer your question?