KSK

What's old is new again. Although I've taken the opportunity to try and tighten it up a bit.

Forty-nine years ago, on the 21st of December, at 7:51:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders set out on the boldest crewed spaceflight of all time. Riding the gigantic Saturn V booster into orbit and beyond, they circled the Moon, becoming the first human beings ever to see their homeworld rising over a new horizon. For the flight controllers at Mission Control this, more than any of the other Apollo flights was a voyage for the ages. It was the height of the Space Race with the Soviet Union. The stakes were high. The risks were even higher. The Apollo command and service module (CSM) had only flown a single crewed flight. With no lunar module to provide an emergency lifeboat, it and it alone would be responsible for getting the crew into lunar orbit - and bringing them home again. The Saturn V had only flown two uncrewed test flights, one of them plagued by pogo problems. The computer software responsible for the whole complex mission around two celestial bodies had only just been finished in time for the December launch date. ------------ The Apollo Program has been a huge influence and source of inspiration for my KSP writing. Even so, I didn't start out expecting my description of the first kerballed flight to the Mün to have quite so many parallels with the real thing, from the uncertain global situation in the background to the missing lander (albeit for budgetary rather than technical reasons). But since they are there, I consider this to be my own, very small, tribute to Apollo 8 and everyone who made it happen. "Please be advised - there is a Santa Claus." Part 1 - World on the Edge Part 2 - Go at Thirty-Six Part 3 - This One's All Yours Part 4: Beacons Part 5 - Mün Part 6 - Launch Vehicle 1

Bah to unreliable forum text editors. That's great news about the thesis though - best of luck with the viva!

I'll just leave this here.

So I was browsing for more Falcon Heavy news... And I strayed onto Space.com. Good gravy, what happened to that place? Don't do it folks. Not without an industrial strength ad-blocker and a military grade idiot filter.

You just might! A year or so ago I went to see the Cosmonauts exhibition in London (biggest display of early Soviet space hardware outside of the former USSR apparently), so naturally I wore my Gagarin T-shirt on the day. It did an outstanding job of marking me as a Space Nerd in his Native Habitat which was excellent for sparking really interesting conversations with the museum staff. Edit: @boccelounge - you're very welcome!

Ahhh - I'm doing that 'taking things slightly too literally again' aren't I? One moment please - recalibration in process.

Seems unlikely he'd have the time but man that would be sweet as if he had! I'd be very curious to know if my rendition of spaceflight manages to capture even a tiny bit of the feel of the real thing.

Hey folks, Not completely sure where this lives on the forum but I thought you might like it. A combination of a real-world astronaut with some nice things to say about KSP, a presenter whose eyes manage to bug out more than Jeb's and some fairly... relaxed KSP playing. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/12/video-astronaut-scott-kelly-teaches-orbital-mechanics-with-kerbal-space-program/?comments=1

Yep - I think if anything really hammers home the complexity and difficulty of real-world rocketry it's those pushers and the struts at the top. They don't look like very much at all considering that they'll need to be keeping 5.5 million pounds of thrust flying in sufficiently close formation and then separating it all nice and cleanly.

Not just yeah but hell yeah! Those 27 engines look badS beyond belief!

What that thing needs is about a kilometre of fairy lights and a metric boat-load of tinsel. If you're going to build a giant fairing catching net, you might as well build a sparkly one.

Just my wee jest. I'm 100% sure you meant to say exactly what you said. I just thought the resemblance to a common three-letter acronym denoting impatience, resignation or anger (depending on intensity) was too good to miss. Plus I could just imagine the flight computer talking to itself on the way down. "Aaaaand - pop! And spin and wheeeeeee - that was a close one! Bet that looked good on the tracking camera. Right - boooooooostback. Watch out LZ1 - I'm a coming in *hot*!' "And re-entr.... *KABLAM*.." "Oh F...

Good effort on the deliberately misspelled last word there. Nice to see forum sensibiliies being upheld. Ahem. FTS I would have thought. Burning longer with fewer engines wouldn't be an option for boostback or reentry burns I wouldn't think?

My personal prediction: Episode IX is not going to be a grand 'defeat the First Order' film - I don't really see how it can be for the reasons you mention. Instead, Rey and Kylo both die, balance is restored because the last of the old-style trained Force users are both dead and the Force is truly awakened as something that anyone can use. It's no longer the exclusive domain of Space Monks or psychopaths. The battle against the First Order will happen in Episodes X, XI and XII, with Force users aplenty on both sides. In other words we're right back to the Old Republic days. Bonus Cynicism Points if Episode XII ends with an exceptionally powerful Dark side Force user facing a lot of factional infighting and deciding to do away with all that nonsense in favour of a nice simple apprenticeship model... As for tracking ships through hyperspace? I was thinking about that this morning and... why the big deal? Wasn't tracking the Falcon through hyperspace to Yavin IV, a rather important plot point in Episode IV? You would think that Leia might remember that if nothing else. This. But that's going to be a problem with any sequel to a finished war story, especially when the war was epic in scope but sketchy in detail, so there's not really much worldbuilding, or motivation to fall back on. The Emperor wanted to rule the Galaxy because he was Evil (RTM) and ruling Galaxies is what Evil(RTM) characters want to do. OK, we see Evil(RTM) conveniently labeled as the Dark Side(RTM) of the Force(RTM) but a label is all it really is. The good guys won at the end of ROTJ. Yay, good guys! Now where do you go from there? Well, a couple of places, but ultimately it's going to boil down to much the same thing - one side fighting another for control of the Galaxy. Because that's just what they do. Well I guess we could do a story about the administrative problems of rebuilding the Republic. You know - trade disputes, the glacial pace of bureaucracy across a galactic civilization. Pretty sure you could make an excellent tale out of that.

It's no good. After @Zhetaan's fine lyrics, I couldn't get my own version out of my head. So after a bit of work...

And on a serious note, I think the thing that got me most excited about the last launch was the five minutes or so of the webcast that were devoted to talking about the new pad updates. Updating the sound suppression systems for example to cope with longer holddowns - because that means SpaceX can do the refurbishment and then static fire testing of recovered boosters right there at the launch site without needing to ship their recovered boosters to McGregor(?) and back. Increasing commonality of equipment and facilities between their three launch sites which is (presumably) cheaper and easier to manage. None of which is terribly exciting from a technical perspective but from a business perspective, I'm really liking seeing yet more evidence of SpaceX' step-by-step 'having a plan and executing it' approach, all with the goal of optimising, streamlining and further lowering launch costs. The kind of quiet behind-the-scenes work that will hopefully let them deliver on more of Elon's more aspirational goals.

But surely it is? After all, magic unicorn chow is a Highly Efficient And Very Yummy fuel/food. Coincidence? I think not.

I liked it on the whole. The Rey-Kylo storyline was well done, I liked Snarky Luke, enjoyed Yoda's appearance and was pleasantly surprised by the restrained use of cute/comedy sidekicks. Edit: I especially liked seeing the Luke vs Kylo confrontation from different angles. Very 'what I told you was the truth - from a certain point of view.' Pity that some of the obviously foreshadowed characters from Episode 7 didn't get much screen time though. I got the sense that TFA had bitten off more than TLJ could chew in terms of interesting potential character arcs and the pruning felt kind of abrupt. Wasn't a big fan of the opening space battle - both sides were remarkably incompetent and there was way too much fatalistic 'oh they've taken out our defenses - oh well' from the First Order. The literal bombers were a bit hard to swallow too, even with due allowance for Star Wars Physics. And yeah - lightspeed ramming. Very dramatic but opens up rather too many cans of worms for my liking. But I did enjoy it - honestly! The good parts definitely carried the lesser ones.

I can relate to that thinking. I don't have the personal experience but there are so many KSP mods out there now that I can easily see myself spending way more time trying to find just the right combination of mods than actually playing with the game. Hence I play vanilla with KER and... um that's about it. I've got nothing against mods personally. I do get a bit irked at folks who assume that modded is the only way to play and the minority who seem to assume that it's the players job to mod the game and that Squad should be providing a skeleton game only and leaving everything else up to the modders. That always struck me as being overly generous with other people's time. Finally, I get a bit more than irked at the pat 'there's a mod for that' response that almost invariably gets trotted out on any gameplay discussion thread.

Well hot-diggety. Note to self - before commenting on something, go read up on it first. Thanks @DAL59 - if that's ever released it looks like something I could get thoroughly engrossed with. In single player mode for preference - I don't have a lot of faith in cooperative multiplayer in a persistent shared universe where not being cooperative is also an option.

The range of temperatures that your body will actually work at is likely to have a negligible affect to enzyme catalysed reaction rates. I don't know enough neurobiology to give a sensible opinion on whether increasing reaction rates in the brain will actually speed up thought but I doubt it's that straightforward.

All of those can be learned, even creativity, but it does take practice and commitment. There's a somewhat worn saying about how to become a writer (as in a writer who wants to make their living from writing) which boils down to: read a lot and write every day, even when you're not particularly inspired. I can imagine that a version of that applies to pretty much any art or craft. Memory can be trained with practice. Maths can be learned. Comprehension, I would argue, is basically @Shpaget's comment about learning something about everything. The broader your pool of experience, the more you have to draw on when it comes to spotting connections, drawing inferences and making comparisons. As for thinking speed, I would argue that a lot of that is depth of knowledge and familiarity about a topic and analytical ability - which can be learned. Depth of knowledge means you can take shortcuts - you don't have to work everything out from first principles every time. Analytical ability lets you quickly pick out the essential parts of whatever you're studying and focus on that, rather than spend time being sidetracked by filler or stuff that you already know. Of course there's always the old saying about more haste, less speed. Sometimes it never hurts to check your assumptions and make sure that you're not discarding important stuff too. If you're looking for a quick technological or dietary fix though, I can't think of a reliable one.

Not as I understand it, although I'm saying this having never played the game. At least at launch, NMS seemed to be all about the exploration, with some personal crafting thrown in for good measure. Not so much about the infrastructure building, or meaningful interactions with other worlds. NMS actually looked quite fun to me, its just something I never got around to playing. And the miserable failure seemed to me to be a classic case of a hype train out of control with every gamer and his/her dog fondly imagining what the game was going to be despite having very little evidence to support those fond imaginings. Then, of course, when it turns out they were largely deluding themselves, the backlash began. I'm not holding out any particular hope that the game I described will ever be a thing unless I do a HarvesteR someday and sit down to write it (which I blatantly lack the skills for and don't have anywhere near enough time to acquire those skills). Too niche and too difficult to do well.

Prepping the warp core, finding a suitable CD and doing Elon's makeup. I've seen this one before... Edit - you don't actually believe that crazy 'gonna shoot my car into space' cover story do you?