Agent86

Does anyone know what all the sparks pouring out during late stage 1 were?

Ooh, barbecue?!

Ooh, barbecue!

Anything to do with Valve, blame GabeN.

Nine hectares and thirty two inches per cubic gallon of hydrogen has been vented already. That's too much!

New drinking game. When someone yells "Hold, hold hold." DRINK!

Hey everyone, There's a device I'd like to build, which I don't think is available for retail sale. http://www.ple.com.au/ViewItem.aspx?InventoryItemId=601359 I have one of these UPS's and it has three circuits which are surge-protected but not on UPS, so when the power goes out, these sockets are unpowered. I'd like to put together a 12V flashlight which charges off mains power, but when the mains power is disconnected, the light comes on. So when there's a blackout, you can find your flashlights easily, and they are always at maximum charge. So it would have two states - mains power on, battery charging, light off - mains power off, battery discharging, light on and a rocker switch which disables the light, so that if there's a blackout while you're on holiday, the lights don't come on. Obviously, these could be plugged into any wall socket, not just a UPS, but typically, when there's a blackout, the UPS is the first place I go to safely shut down my hardware. I've used an old (old) battery charger which I can use to charge a rechargable flashlight I have, but I don't really know enough about electronics to put together a switch that uses little to no power and is switched "ON" when the transformed 12DC power from the wall is cut off. Is there an easy circuit design I can use to acomplish this?

I made this while playing around in KSP and built an indiscriminate killing machine: .CRAFT file: http://www./download/rhfum44h3nv49hz/Killdozer_Vol_1.craft Now, you're probably thinking, Agent, that thing looks useless! Well spotted. It has nine semi-guidable missiles, two command seats, and a significant amount of stylish grey paint. Action group 1 toggles off rear wheel steering, and the other ones do stuff too. Except action group 0. That does nothing. DONT PRESS 0. IT DOES NOTHING. TRUST ME.

I hope you added extra struts to your primary buffer panel.

Just for you. And anyone else that cares to see. Not a launch, just an ignition test and showing off my motor. https://vimeo.com/104169387

I'm a pretty busy person, and it took me a week of nights to design and build the box, but I've tested a few igniters. No videos of them. I have one completed rocket, but I'm a little hesitant to static test it, because I'm fairly sure it's illegal to do so where I am. The pursuit of science must go on, though! I need to find a farm or secluded place to conduct a test firing, and when I do, I'll certainly record it and put it up. I plan on doing a round of static tests to determine the ideal fuel ratio and nozzle structure to use, and hopefully can conduct a real launch with by the end of September. I probably won't add complex flight computers to my first launches until I can determine that science payload recovery can be done safely under chutes.

Oh, that's really helpful. I didn't properly calculate the resistance requirements, I just used trial and error on a breadboard to come up with something that gave the results I was after. I've never really understood the correct way to apply that formula to my circuit until now. I'll use that method to calculate the correct requirements for my next box. Thanks man, that's all really good advice. I'm really only using 18V because my 12V battery pack didn't fit into the enclosure. As for running 12V down the CAT5, I've used that cabling for 12V power supply to CCTV cameras, running 12V on a pair to cameras at about an amp each, so I was pretty confident it would handle my circuit. I wanted to use as few wires as possible, because I plan to add additional circuits to a later iteration using those spare pairs. I've got a few mini LED flashlights that I'll modify and attach to the launchpad I build, to light up the rocket on the pad like little spotlights, and I'll run them off a 12V power pack from the control box. The red LED on the control box is meant to be a low voltage warning light, but I haven't wired that up as I need some transistors, and I'd like to add a blinking red light on the pad control box to warn when the launch controller is connected, so that you'll know to use caution when approaching. Once I'm happy with all of that, my next project is to turn my arduino into a flight computer to record altitude and deploy chutes, but that's a long way down the track.

I've been learning electronics for a bit on an arduino kit. I wanted to make something a bit more practical, so I've been working on a safe electric launch system for model rockets. Excuse any circuit diagram errors or what have you. Here is the whole setup: The big white box is the launch controller, the little white box is the launchpad control box, exiting it is a couple of alligator clips connected to an igniter. The blue cable is just a standard network cable. I used standard RJ45 sockets for two reasons, one, I had them lying around, and two, with a crimping tool, you can make a cable any length you want. I also made sure to only use pins 3, 4, 5, and 6 on the sockets so that a digital telephone cable can be substituted for the CAT5 network cable, using socket reducers. The cable shown is just for show, when using the rig I use a 6m cable that I made up for extra safety. These images shows the control panel, with the two green test LED's lit up. Basically, the first LED tells you if the cable is plugged into the launchpad correctly, the second LED tells you if the igniter is functioning. The idea of these extra circuits is that you can do a little troubleshooting before launch, and after a failed ignition attempt. There's nothing more dangerous than pressing the GO button, seeing nothing happen, then walking over to the rocket and dicking around with it to see what the problem is. This can tell you if your igniter hasn't gone off, or if it did go off and just didn't light the rocket, or of there is a cabling issue. Shown here is a used igniter attached to the pad control box. It is just a pair of twisted solid core copper wires from a CAT5 cable, attached to a 10 Ohm resistor. Here is the MS paint schematic I drew up for the box. My end design was slightly different, I think I used two 10 kOhm resistors instead of one 100K resistor, and I have toggle switches instead of momentary switches because I bought the wrong ones. The voltage to the LEDs is a guestimation, but since they neither blow the globe nor fire the igniter prematurely, I haven't needed to change them. It uses two 9V batteries in series to give 18V. When the go button is pushed, 18v passes through the 10 Ohm resistor in the igniter, causing it to glow red and then self destruct after about 3 seconds. I've used it to reliably fire off about 10 small R-candy ignition charges, but yet to launch a rocket with it, as I live in an apartment and my upstairs neighbors would be upset if I poked a hole through their floor. I'm sharing this mostly to show off what I've learned, but also to share a bit of knowledge with anyone else who might be interested in amateur rocketry (as if there would be someone like that on the KSP forums...)

"WHAT'S THAT, SONNY?"

I just got done rescuing him from a ~20 year orbit of Eeloo. You see, it was an ambitious science gathering mission, but in the Kerbalverse, 'ambition' is interchangeable with 'poorly considered' and he didn't have quite enough fuel on board. A rescue wasn't feasible until much later in the future.

Making progress on the "Triflouroacetic anhydride" molecule. only 17, 472, 549, 813 segments to go! I also made a video to show how it's made: And uploaded a copy of the craft to the spaceport in case anyone wants to build themselves. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/modular-molecular-segment/

Just out of curiosity, has anyone yet built a craft in orbit that has a 2.5+km length? Does anything *invertebrate-ish* happen?

Just call IBM and ask to borrow their Roadrunner.

I deorbit them onto the other space center's runway. Now it's their problem.

1 - 'Cause I can. 2 - I'm likely to die of old age before I reach 2.2km. If not, then I'll worry about it when it becomes a problem. Also, no mechjeb on these machines. Each launch is purely vanilla.

Resequencing the human genome in space, with fuel tanks, one molecule at a time. All dockings completed without the use of RCS.

I recall an episode of stargate where Sam carter in an alternate reality was a shuttle pilot who ordered her crew to evac via parachute while she steered the ship away from a city and out into the ocean where she died on it. No real reason to bring it up, stargate just rocks is all.

It's fantastic, I love it so much. I've replaced the Cutlass Spaceplane with the Beliskner Space Shuttle. It holds 11 kerbals, compared to Cutlass's 1, and can land horizontally at the KSC rather than vertically like the Koyuz supply ships that I used to use to rotate crew.

Thanks! It's relatively easy, I only messed up one approach in the ten modules joined there. I made a video of docking the battery banks here, but even with the largest module, the red russian one, it's just a matter of having a lot of patience, a small engine, and plenty of torque. It also helps to rightclick your main engines, and limit the throttle to like, 10% so you can really fine tune your relative velocity. Even if you're coming in on a bad angle, as the first part of the battery bank was, just make sure the docking ports touch, and shut down ASAS so the magnets will do the work for you.

Alkatraz Station. Complete with American, Russian, and Chinese modules. By the way, all modules were docked without the aid of RCS or mechjeb.