PakledHostage

I like that we're citing XKCD. Has XKCD risen to that level of repute?

Thanks for clearing that up... The criticism that "we know nothing" was made this morning, presumably in response to this morning's re-entry predictions, so pointing out that the re-entry occurred within 3 minutes of this morning's predicted time is also valid.

So it came down within 3 minutes of the predicted time. Maybe we do know a thing or two about space weather?...

The Aerospace Corporation website's latest prediction is for 00:10 UTC on April 2nd, plus/minus 2.5 hours. If it comes down at the predicted time, it will be re-entering over the southern Pacific: [snip]

The guys at the University of Nottingham's Sixty Symbols YouTube channel reminiscing about Dr Hawking:

I don't have to do much searching. My local grocery store had an entire bin full of pies strategically placed right by the front entrance the other day. And the social committee at work is having pies delivered to the lunch room today at 1:59.

Is it too soon to point out that he died on Pi day (March 14)? And Twitter is starting to light up:

I'm out... You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

Or a develop a model rocket control system...

Use the force, I guess? It worked for Rey.

Buy a servo. Servo City is one place you can get them online. Servos typically respond to a pulse signal at about 25 - 50 Hz ( although higher quality servos typically use far higher frequency signals). The width of each individual pulse (in microseconds) within the stream of pulses tells the servo where to move within its range of motion. There are sample Arduino projects that will help you learn how to write a program to do this. But you'll need to be able to do more than just read a gyro in a single axis and move a servo in response. You need dugital signal processing algorithms to filter the noise out of your sensors, math to process the inputs into an estimation of your rocket's current state in 3D, control logic (control theory) to come up with a reasonable algorithm to keep your rocket going where you want it to, etc. But trust me, this isn't going to be a "My First Project" project. I have an engineering degree and I do this stuff for a living, so I am all too aware that the devil is in the details. I have no doubt that you could pull it off if you are dedicated enough, but don't expect to do this as a first project. Start small and work up to it.

Get an Arduino. Make it blink an LED. Make it blink an LED at a variable rate in response to some input. Make it output a more complex signal like serial. Make it move a servo. Make it read a voltage (0-5 volts) and output the reading over serial. Make it move a servo. Make it move a servo in response to an input voltage. Make it read a simple MEMS gyro and output the rate of rotation on a serial link. Make it move a servo in response to the MEMS gyro. Learn linear algebra and quaternions. Learn control theory. Wax on, wax off.

Or start with a smaller project and work up towards your goal over the course of several projects. You [Cheif Operations Director] railed against Rey's character in TLJ ad infinitum because she went straight from zero experience to Jedi level experience, and now you want to do something similar in real life... Go get an Arduino (or similar system) and start playing with it. Wax on, wax off.

I think you'd pretty much need to be a Mary Sue to pull all that off without any coding experience. Why not start smaller?

Great... Now I've got that stupid song stuck in my head.

It passed directly overhead for me earlier this evening, about an hour after sunset. I didn't see a thing, despite knowing exactly through which constellations it would pass, down to the second, via the tracking app on my phone. Clearly it is far from being "the brightest thing in the sky".

Wrong crowd, obviously... Sure, some properly cringe inducingly bad films have won awards over the years (**cough** Gravity **cough**), but there are good films that get recognized too. Often you'll find them down in the more obscure categories. That's what I enjoy about the Oscars - they inevitably draw my attention to good films that I otherwise would have missed.

Quaternions are easier in a lot of ways, IMHO. The math isn't that complicated if you want to "roll your own", but there are plenty of libraries out there too.

I'm an unabashed movie buff, so I'll be watching. I've done my best to watch as many of the nominated films since they were announced in late January. I liked some, didn't think much of others and hated one or two. So what nominees are people rooting for? Predictions? And what about snubs? Myself, none of the Best Picture nominees that I saw did much for me, but both "Mudbound" and "The Florida Project" stayed in my thoughts in the days after I saw them. I wish they'd have gotten more recognition.

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

I agree. What's wrong with using balloons? Much of the remote sensing instruments used on weather and other Earth orbiting satellites could be mounted on a balloon probe and you can cover a lot of ground riding the winds. Venus' jetstreams are strong enough to allow a balloon to circle the globe every day or so. And remember that wind speeds alone aren't a problem, relative wind speeds and turbulence are. Here on Earth, many eastbound commercial airliner flights will intentionally be routed via the jetstreams to save time/fuel; the passengers aboard those flights generally have no clue that they are riding along in a 200-300 km/h river of air.

I wasn't talking about the Earth based simulations part.

Erm? I thought this was the Mars Colonization thread, not the bad science in fiction hall of shame thread?

And welcome to the forum.

Icarus. Nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 90th Academy Awards. 'nuff said. On a lighter note, I did like this Tweet by the German Foreign Office: