Cydonian Monk

Not for me it's not, not in this country. Maybe to Australians. At least now that I know it's out there somewhere I can trawl through Google Books once I get home. Or more likely just buy a copy of the book.

I've been using the following patch. Might be some small issues, but none that break the cameras that I've encountered. It definitely fixes the "Hey, where'd my camera focus go?" bug that was present in the 1.1-pre-release version of Hullcam.

Yes and no. Most of the debuggers in IDEs will abstract the code that's being executed back to the original source and skip all of the Assembly level stuff. Yet if they have a debugger they will have some method of diassembling compiled code. I've not used the Visual Studio debuggers, but I'd imagine they have a way to also show disassembled code... might require some digging to find it. (Because Borland Turbo Pascal had it in 1995, so surely 20 years later the best-in-class IDE must also.... May be a bad assumption on my part.) And debugging the AGC was easy: They would eject the ROM card in question, pull out the moth that was stuck inside, and then reinsert it.

I have no idea what your development environment is, but in Linux/UNIX you can use a debugging tool to work backwards from the compiled binaries to assembly code. You can write a simple C++ program, compile it, then disassemble it to see how the C++ gets interpreted. Good way to "feel around" the code if you're interested in assembly at all. (My debugger of choice is 'gdb' which uses the 'disassemble' command to break down individual functions.)

It's an assembly language of some sort (dubbed AGC Assembly by the team), but I'm not familiar enough with early assembly or this project in particular to know if it's any specific variation of Assembly or something the team at MIT cooked up from scratch. (I suspect this was all developed from scratch.) It reads a bit like some of the custom peripheral assembly I've seen over the years. Edit: Part of the reason I suspect this was mostly developed from scratch is the team would also need to write the "assembly instructions" for how to turn their higher-level AGC code into specific physical windings in the core ROM. That's easier to do (and validate (and verify)) if you control everything. Logically there's only one real way to skin any specific cat.

That might explain something weird I saw this weekend.... Hmm. In terms of RTG part failures, I'd think it possible peripheral parts could fail - particularly electrical terminals (breaking due to thermal stress or oxidizing(?)/reacting to other metals poorly) or sustaining micrometeorite damage, etc. So I wouldn't think of it so much as the RTG failing as I would the RTG's connection to the ship failing.

So here's my thinking on the reactor nomenclature: A solid-core NTR uses the propellent as its heat sink - instead of water as we do for power generation purposes. It's a bad deal to keep a small pool of [plasmatic] liquid fuel superheated, and you don't want that heat to build up in the reactor mechanism itself, so when the engine burns are complete, the reactors are indeed shut down in a hurry. Thus SCRAMmed would be appropriate, regardless of the true etymology of the term. Scrubbing, the term I used, could of course be used for canceling a reaction, or for canceling anything [quickly]. Though I can't guarantee it's in use in the nuclear community at all, in my mind a reaction that has been deliberately and intentionally stopped/reduced has been "scrubbed," regardless of how fast it was done. (Don't know where I picked it up, I blame college.) Also, I used it as a deliberate synonym as SCRAM has become more associated with emergency actions. (We'd be having this same conversation both ways, I suppose.) Now it's my reactor design itself that might be a bit on the odd or dangerous side..... It's the fission you want to stop, and quickly, so I see a design with a moveable control mass (as normal, to absorb the neutrons and various other bits they need to absorb to maintain criticality), and a radioactive core that can be split to bring the mass back below critical. (The core would then be a "ring" into which a "rod" is inserted to achieve or balance criticality along with the control mass.... Whether the ring or the rod is the moveable element is up for debate.) Mechanically this is probably a bad thing, as 1) more moving parts in an already complex thing, and 2) the fuel in a solid-core NTR will be eroded by its very use (well, any radioactive core will be), as will everything in the reactor, so having 1/2 to 2/3 of the radioactive mass attached to a moveable piece means that moveable piece may break free at some point. NTRs place nuclear reactors into their worst possible environment and then proceed to abuse them some more, so my extra complexities are idealistic at best and malpractice or kerbslaughter at worst.

Wat. Wow. Knowing how imprecise the physics engine is, I'm amazed it didn't accelerate to something near the speed of light before exploding needlessly after colliding with the launch pad over Moho. Wait, what were we talking about? I don't remember any probe missions to Moho....

See, now I would argue that Brave New World completely broke Civ V by destroying the late-game balance. Especially with introducing the horrid World Congress nonsense that might work in multiplayer but always ends up being completely nutters in single player. The first expansion was good though, and most of BNW was ok, provided you finish the game before the World Congress renders it numb. (Or use a mod to disable said mechanic.) If I want my empire to still get happiness from my now-illegal oranges, I should be able to leave the World Congress, even if that means total political isolation. As for Civ VI, I'm still on the fence. I've not been impressed with anything Firaxis has released since the first release of the new X-Com, especially the "DLCs" they've released for their games. I'm not entirely sure we still speak the same language, me and the ghosts of Microprose. Maybe I'll like Civ VI, but I'm not jumping into it on day 1.

I don't know how it happened, I can only assume I fat-fingered something on my phone or tablet, but for some reason the forum thinks I rated this thread 4 out of 5 stars. (And it won't let me change it.... which is a bit insipid on the part of the forum software, to be honest.) I'm fairly binary when it comes to rating systems such as we use here - it's either nothing at all or 5 - so how your thread only got a 4 instead of the 5 I would've given it had I been awake whenever I bungled that up is beyond me. Anyway, I just noticed the glamour underbody lighting on your Minmus base. Very nifty little detail - not too overbearing, but adds a nice greenish/bluish "glow".

Now that's a sharp looking lander. There's a part of me that really wants to start using a mod that respects the rate of decay of the radioacives in the RTGs.... and then there's a part of me that doesn't know what the rate of decay of blutonium is anyway, and says "Bah, don't bother." Kerbalism is a very appealing mod, especially with the MTBF part failure mechanic that DangIt! had. Maybe someday... just not today.

Poor Enzin Ricky. Not only is he the 13th member of the Intrepid crew, that one kerb in the red shirt that literally everyone has forgotten, but now he's going on an away mission he is almost certain not to return from. If only he had some character development..... Or a different color shirt.

The mods are mostly listed in the OP, and I think all of the Visual Ones are. Scatterer, as noted. Also using EVE, Engine Lighting, Real Plume, Reentry Effects, PlanetShine, Distant Object Enhancement, probably a couple others too. The Skybox is, I think, the old Raerdon skybox just toned down a bit. I'll have to double check at some point. Cloud textures are mostly those that come with EVE, but I've tweaked a few here and there. Jool textures are a mix of a base texture I created from Jupiter sources and the EVE Jool cloud textures (not sure how much of that actually shows). Suit textures are Squad textures that I reworked way back in 0.21 or 0.22. Aside from kOS and Remote Tech antennas, the Potassium tugs themselves are stock. The things they're pushing are a mix of everything listed in the OP. The science experiments are mostly DMagic and SCANsat, perhaps a couple others. At one point I was adding craft files to a Dropbox link, but those are all for v1.0.5 and will definitely (kinda) not work in 1.1.3. I'll look into getting that set up again later. I'll look into it. The Aluminium X-4B needs updated.... landing gear specifically. Not sure what all I've got on it that's not stock, obviously most of the stuff on the trunk. As an aircraft it's relatively easy to build, but also easy to snap a few screenshots and toss it up on KerbalX once reworked.

Yay! It's been more than a year since I sent anything to Jool, and at least two years since I sent anything resembling a science expedition. Three of the four kerbsls on the mission should be able to dock: Thomlock and Gletrix because they're pilots (well, Thomlock is still a "Kerbal" class, so technically he can do [almost] anything), and Macfred could likely write a quick docking script for kOS if pressed. No space madness yet, just extreme old age.

Nothing as clear-cut as that. Just a random length of time.

Begin Kerbal Space Program Version 1.1.3 -- 99 Years, 343 Days, 2 Hours Silence. Nothing but the endless black and the silence of the universe. Ninety-nine years, most of it spent out in the black. Most of it in silence. An occasional bump as something small smacked into the craft at speeds none liked to talk about. Small rocks. Ice crystals. Bolts. Debris. Usually not enough to wake a sleeping kerbal. Usually. Cold. So cold in the freezer. Cold and silent. Silence. Nothing but ghosts and whispers. Dying stars, spewing their hydrogen and helium and heavier elements into the void. Into the black. Radio waves, telling distant ears tall tales of their existence. I existed. I was mighty and luminous. Now I whisper. An occasional chirp or scream or wow as some event intruded on the solemnity of the void. Death throes of distant suns. Then silence. Yet not silence. Hey. A tug on the arm. Had something hit the ship again? The stars beyond the capsule's tiny windows were spinning, and something was pulling on his arm. A pressure leak? Hey. Wake up. Hey. Thomlock. Was the ship talking to him now? Or was it the universe? A glob of water slashed into his face. Water. How did it get through his helmet? Another splash and he was awake. "Wake up!" Thomlock awoke and the dream faded, the memory of his Hawk 3-2 returned to its cage. Jumble of Parts. Right? That's where he was. Gletrix was tugging on his arm and squirting a water bottle at his face, trying to draw him from his slumber. Cold. The ship felt cold. He shivered at the crisp air. Deep space was cold, colder than space near Kerbin. He should know, with 99 years of flight time. Cold. Silent. Endless. Awake. He shook his head to break free of the cobwebs and smiled back at Gletrix. "Kids. Everywhere. Can't even escape them and their crazy pranks at the edge of the Solar System. What's up?" "Oh, not much. We're about to slip down into Jool's SOI is all. First time ever and whatnot. Momentous, ceremonious, blah, blah, get up, you old geezer." "Ah." Of course. First time kerbals had been in a gravity well that was predominately Jool's... at least that anybody remembered. Unlikely they were actually the first, though hopefully they wouldn't find any murderous space-crazed compatriots this far out. Still, it would be interesting to watch the navball flip. Always a strange sight that. Macfred had his headset on, strapped into the seat opposite Thomlock, no doubt still scanning through the cosmic song. They would broadcast the event to unhearing ears and unseeing eyes, as they had everything since they lost contact so many years before. It was a ritual, almost a religion now. Somewhere out in the void something was listening, and they needed to talk to it lest the Great Powers take notice. And Macfred was their priest supreme, or perhaps the only one aboard. Thomlock tossed a clipboard at him to get his attention. "Any news?" "Nothing," the usual reply. "Ghosts and whispers. I caught a trace of the Potassium 2 a few hours ago, but it's well beyond the range of our ship-to-ship systems. 500 Megameters to its 1.2 Gigameters. Could use the ultra-high-gain, but I'd rather keep that aimed at Kerbin." "No worries, kid. We'll pick it up again, assuming our capture goes off without a hitch." Big assumption there. "K-2 has its orders for the burn, so even at worst-case it'll arrive at Jool. I think." He unlatched his seat harness and drifted to the cabin's console where the navball was due to reorient itself. "Now, how about we watch this silly thing flip flop." A glance around showed Agake absent as usual. "What's the whiz-kid up to?" "Some gravioli experiment." A kick of the bulkhead and he was drifting towards the science lab hatch. It was open, as most of the ship had been these last three years. Safety protocols only go so far before they become unmaintainable, and now they typically only sealed the bulkheads when everyone was asleep or they were doing something stupid. (And it seemed they were often doing something stupid.) Sure enough, Agake had her eyes glued to the lab's microscope, one hand on the knob, another taking notes. "C'mon kiddo, get up here and watch the navball do its thing." "You know I have my own, right?" Didn't even so much as look up to respond. "Yeah? So?" "So, I need to watch it to record the gravioli readings as we pass from Kerbol-dominance to Jool-dominance. The waves and particles...." "Yeah yeah, ok." And back to the main cabin. The three of them would watch while the scientist did her science things. The anticipation was palpable (it's not like much had happened since their course correction burn more than two years before), and Gletrix jumped when the navball started to move. "There it goes!" Sure enough, it flipped from one orange-blue side to another, now telling them Jool was somewhere below, towards the Sun. Where it had been for a year, of course, but now was close enough to be their gravity lord. Gletrix darted over to the window, scanning the ocean of stars. "Can anyone see it?" "There!" Macfred pointed into the slightly brighter parts of the black. "Just a tiny splash of green and a faint sliver at that. We're outside its orbit slightly, dropping down to meet up." The cameras came out and soon the two of them were taking pictures of a tiny hint of green clouds and its five tiny dots of moons. "And still 36 days from periapsis. Long way off. Save your film." Show over, Thomlock strapped back into his seat, and quickly drifted back into his dream of sleeping in a tin can at the edge of the universe. And somewhere, somehow, a member of the World's First Society witnessed the ship entering into Jool's orbit. Those guys appear to be as permanent and inescapable as bankers and taxkerbs. -- 99 Years, 376 Days, 5 Hours Agake had the distinct pleasure of being the first kerbal to perform an EVA while in the Joolian System. At first she was a bit apprehensive, needing to go outside to recover results of the various science experiments. Her mood improved once Thomlock reminded her it was no less safe than any other EVA she'd performed over the years and that she'd have the honor of being numero uno to go jetpacking around the jolly green giant. The view was growing ever more impressive, even if the science results were a bit lacking in their flavour [text]. It turned out to be quite a bit of work, jetting around to every experiment that was strapped to the ship and extracting its juicy science. In the end she spent nearly two hours outside, though she later admitted most of the time was lost in stargazing and Jooldreaming. -- 99 Years, 379 Days, 3 Hours "These eight horses of ours are mighty cold. Be amazing if they all work." Thomlock and Gletrix turned their keys to unlock the NERVA safeties simultaneously, as the checklist instructed. To save fuel during the long trip the reactors were scrubbed and the fuel rods locked in retracted positions, returning the fissile elements to their normal, non-critical, natural rates of decay. Now more than two years after their last use, the eight reactors would be coaxed back to life. Hopefully they still had some radioactive gusto left in them. "Looks good from here. All eight unlocked." The safety protocol for bringing the tug's reactors back online was purely for show. The cores controlling the tugs could independently activate and deactivate the engines as needed, as could kerbals in mission control (if such a place still existed). Yet some genius kerbal in the agency had decided crewed ships should have a two-kerb rule and dual key locks to protect the reactors. The conversation had been short: "Something something accidentally bumping the controls, something something boom. Not open to discussion." So they let it drop and focused on more important things. Yet that was three years ago, and Thomlock couldn't help but think it was still a dub rule. He worked through the procedure to bring the engines online in sets of two, spooling up those opposite each other simultaneously. All eight showed green with good reactions, so he gave them a very short test burn. Just a tap. "Ow!" from Gletrix as she went tumbling backwards into the main cabin. Other exclamations echoed into the cockpit as the others also bumped into some unexpected bulkhead. Oops, maybe should've warned the crew first before giving them their first taste of acceleration in two years. He pulled up the intercom system and addressed his captive audience. "Good evening kids, this is your astrogator speaking. The main engines appear to be working, so in a few minutes we'll begin our nine-minute thiry-one-second burn to place us into orbit of Jool. An intercept with Laythe will occur in the following orbit, after which we will conduct another, shorter burn to lock us into our watery graves. At this time we request that you please return your tray tables and chairs to the upright positions, secure any loose belongings, and we thank you for flying Jumble of Parts Air, er, Space." Now that they were in the inner Joolian System views of the three major moons were commonplace, and the crew had all spent their fair amount of time taking random pictures. As it so happened, all three were visible leading into the capture burn. Laythe had been the most interesting of the three majors, and it was now looming quite large in the Jumble of Part's forward cockpit canopy. Soon enough they would be able to reach out and touch it, but not just yet. A flare near the innermost moon caught Thomlock's eye, something moving that was clearly in orbit. It was a tiny speck, and he lost it as he looked away. He moved to take a video of the moon, hoping it would jump out at them again later, but just as he reached for the camera the main engines kicked in and his thought process was interrupted. And there they were. The acceleration felt nice after so long in the nothingness and microgravity. The sensors told him the engines were producing a thrust-to-weight ratio of 6.4, which must surely have been in relation to Jool as it only felt like half a G to him. He grabbed a notebook and let it "drop" into the lower compartment as an experiment, listening as it bounced off the narrow walls and of the connecting hatchway. He thought about squirting water bubbles out of his water bottle to watch them splash past, but decided it was best to not mix fluids with the irreplaceable equipment he was riding with. A short nine and a half minutes later they were Jool's newest tiny satellite. He pulled up the map to see the hadn't quite reached a proper rendezvous with Laythe... a bit of a correction would be needed. He calculated the adjustment and dialed it into the flight computer, relaxing as the ship turned itself and performed the burn. And then they were set - Laythe capture in 3 days, 1.5 hours. More than long enough for another nap. -- 99 Years, 382 Days, 3 Hours "Would you look at that!" Gletrix and Macfred were both obsessed with the view of Laythe and Jool as they approached, and Thomlock could understand why. Quite the sight. They had been able to observe Laythe in some detail for the last three days, trailing just behind them in Jool's orbit, and then just ahead as they fell in towards it. The buzzer announcing the upcoming maneuver node went off, so Thomlock unlatched and pushed his way upwards into the cockpit, offering up an observation as he went. "Rather a bit too blue, if you ask me. And with all that water and all those storms it's probably not the safest rock in the universe." Gletrix retorted quickly. "Safer than Moho, I'd think. Not as hot, and easier to get to. Far safer then Eve." They were coming at Laythe in such a way as to be placed into a 10 degree inclined orbit, as was their intent. Being a full 10 degrees off equatorial opened up a number of different landing sites to chose from, and would let them land anywhere up to a full 30 degrees from the Equator. They'd wait to choose a final landing spot until the two mapsats being delivered by the Potassium 2 had finished their surveys, of course, but that was no reason they couldn't start lobbying now. He already had a couple of ideas. In a bit of a surprise move, Agake jumped out of the airlock just twenty minutes short of the capture burn to collect another round of experiment results. Thomlock thought of giving her an earful once she was back aboard, but decided it was best to just let her do her science thing as long as she did it quick enough to not be left behind. He was quite relieved when he heard she had stashed the experiment data in the lab before taking her place in the Jumble of Part's main cabin for the duration for the capture burn. All aboard, and all accounted for. The view approaching the capture burn was impressive. First Jool slipped behind the limb of Laythe, then the Sun itself started to dip towards the moon's atmosphere. And then the eight big nukes sprang to life as the flight computer pushed them into their desired eccentric parking orbit around Laythe, red trail of excited fuel venting into the void ahead of them. The Sun was but a tiny speck, distant enough that Thomlock could stare without it burning into the backs of his eyes. Remarkably he could make out three of the four inner planets (Moho apparently behind the Sun), and another speck he guessed must have been Dres. So very tiny, all four of them. So very far away. They themselves were little more than a splinter against the might of Jool and its moons. Forty-eight seconds later and they were in the embrace of Laythe. A quick check of the engineering console and the map view assured Thomlock sure they were in a safe orbit, which he then announced to the crew. "Welcome to Laythe, population 4 plus kraken knows what. We've arrived into a 150km by 1,500km orbit, at a lovely 9.8 degree inclination." They would leave the orbit as it was until the Potassium 2 arrived, just in case their second ship entered into a peculiar orbit or didn't have enough ∆v to properly rendezvous. Just then Jool slipped out from behind Laythe, the moon's noxious atmosphere casting a red pall over its parent. A strange sight, to be trapped in the shadow of a small and watery moon, its absolute blackness obscuring the Sun, the stars, the mighty green giant itself. From here none of the storms of the moon were visible, just the occasional faint flash of lightening in the clouds. The belching volcanoes, the hazy yellow gasses, the angry oceans, all invisible in the empty black. So dark. So close. So silent. Silence. Nothing but the encroaching black and the silence of the universe. Ninety-nine years almost spent, most of it in silence. Navigation: Next Post

Two mapsats/probes in polar orbit, two Potassiums in a not so polar orbit. Only 4 things..... And only things sent on this mission.

It gets very, very dark out here.... Expect an update either later tonight or very early tomorrow morning! (And then we'll [probably] be back to our [not-so regular] regular 2-3 per week.)

AGC used Magnetic-Core RAM, though as you say of a lighter build (I don't recall the specific details offhand). I built some of that from scratch way back in the dusty years of the late 90s..... Not to the grade of the AGC core, of course, and nowhere near as many bits. It's amusing that the next line after "Please crank the silly thing around" is "See if he's lying." (Though I'm not sure if that's really the next line executed... some strange OPs that don't agree with the assembly I know.) Whatever trained-chimpanzee stunt the landing routine was having the astronauts do at that point clearly depended on something being in the right position. I'm at work and can't rewatch @Felbourn's video, but I'm assuming this was a different AGC crash and not the 1201/1202 errors? Those would occur no matter what the pilots did, as they were the result of an interface timing design flaw with one of the radar packages. Turning off the radar package in question would've prevented the issue (which would've gone against the checklist procedure!), but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

I didn't see it linked or mentioned in the article (or linked to in another post here on the forums), but the same source has appeared on GitHub, recently scanned: https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11 Some absolutely snarky code in there, such as in THE_LUNAR_LANDING.agc: And more than a few "This should never happen" bits.

If Tesla made an electric version of the Datsun 620, I'd buy it. (Heck, if anybody made a 620 clone I'd buy it, even if it ran on lemongrass extract or some other wacko alternative fuel.) The shown concept? Meh. About as useful as other luxury "pickups."

Voiced by none other than Kevin Kerman. Or is it Spacey Kerman? I've always wondered if there were female versions of Gerty in the Moon universe voiced by Drew Barrymore....

One kerb's magic is another kerb's incredibly old persistence editing tool.... (Edit: Is this what happens if you feed a kPad after midnight? It turns into an evil Magic Pebble?)

No, thankfully. This save would probably retroactively poison everything that's every been done for RSS/RO. I already have an RSS/RO thread that's been laying dormant for some time that I'll likely just hijack:

Well, I just added more mods than I care to admit, such as all of Near Future and a bunch of glam mods like Engine Lighting. Most are listed in the OP, some I'm just evaluating for the RSS/RO install I may or may not be setting up, some may or may not make an appearance. So... maybe? (Nah, it's a work day.)