StrandedonEarth

Wow. She was going strong into her 60s, and played her last show (AFAIK) at 69. Fantastic woman It’s only love, and that’s all

Well whaddaya know, it actually does seem to be working after warping a bunch. It looked like it already had stuff to transmit though, and the antenna was idle before. Weird. Oh well, the contract completed without resorting to cheats (receiving science was holding it up) , and my science is creeping up.

This year I dove back into KSP, heavily modding it with RSS / RO / RP-1 to keep it challenging, and, yeah, it's challenging. The part that's frustrating me though is trying to transmit science from lunar orbit. Somehow I was missing RealAntennas, so I installed that. Antenna tech and ground stations are both Level 3, I've configured the procedural avionics antenna to L3 S-band. The antenna planner says I should have a connection, 10kb/s down and 160kb/s up, and at least this time I have full probe control. But the science isn't sending, and I can't find anywhere to force it to send. Batteries are fully charged. Do I need to try upping the transmit power more? This is getting annoying. I've made liberal use of the cheat menu in this playthrough to ramp up KCT and keep the R&D flowing, but I'd like to try to keep that to a minimum. I've been through the Realantennas wiki here, and haven't found any other info that doesn't point back there. Some pics: Mod list: What do I try next?

Sure, they could do a Vulcain hoverslam, if the airframe can handle the gees. You’ll notice I never implied TWR < 1, just low enough for the airframe. I’d WAG that a Vulcain landing would pull10-20g, which means a lot of extra structure.

F9 has shown that if you want to land propulsively, you need to throttle so deeply just to not overstress the airframe that it makes the most sense to have several engines with the center engine used for landing. Trying to land a two or three engine booster propulsively makes it way more challenging than it needs to be. Hydrolox is really a poor choice for a booster anyway; not nearly dense enough.

Forgot to carry the one. Or is there a plus where there should be a minus?

Inspired by teenagers…. “You can lead a dumS to knowledge but you can’t make it think!” - me

I would expect them to have some sort of collection system to recapture and reuse the runoff, since I would assume fresh water isn’t exactly abundant around there, and I don’t think that they would want to use seawater. Of course, I could be totally wrong about that…

I would think that part of Raptor 3 development is addressing those issues…

Somehow this feels appropriate...

I'm impressed with how long Ziggy has been going strong... https://www.gocomics.com/ziggy/2023/05/14

SpaceX has the advantage of being its own best customer. Just fill the remaining capacity on light payloads with starlinks.

Adventures in food time: So Wednesday morning my wife got up before I left for work to try her hand at sourdough bread (she was given a starter by a friend), so I asked her to make yogurt since she had time before she went to work. She declined, but when I got home from work the yogurt cycle was running, yay! But when I actually opened it to strain the whey, I found that it was just warm, bubbly milk. She was puzzled, so I asked her what she used for culture, and she got quiet. Oops! That's what happens when one is up early and the coffee hasn't circulated yet; she forgot to add last weeks whey to start the culture (I saw the container, untouched, in the back of the fridge before asking her). Okay, can I save half a gallon of milk, sugar, and Mexican vanilla? I threw in some whey and restarted the timer.... The next morning, it was.... unusual. Normally it's jelled together with not much visible whey. This time, there was a layer of whey on top of what was basically yogurt emulsion: it was kind of like a thin (runny) mud instead of a blob. So I put the lid back on and went to work. I may have discovered how they make drinkable yogurts like Yop. When I came home, it was basically the same, so I shrugged and set it to strain overnight, as usual. Usually when that is done it's the consistency of Greek yogurt; this was more like paste, or, uh, thick mud. it's more tangy than usual due to the extended culturing, but it hasn't made me sick, so I guess I saved it. I'll blend in some frozen berries and it's good to go. Oh, and the sourdough turned out pretty good, despite being a tad overcooked. Practice makes perfect, and the starter is growing like mad...

Who's on first...

IMO there's no mistaking Venus, it's just so brilliant. A bright star chasing the Sun down, just after sunset (or before sunrise, but right now it's in Evening Star mode), visible long before any other stars: yeah, that's Venus. The only one that comes close is Jupiter, which can be visible any time of night.

In space, no one can hear you scream, but that’s what you have to do in the event of sudden rapid decompression to minimize lung and other damage…

"Forgotten and unknown now..." You're not kidding. I'd never heard of them, and the song was not at all familiar to me, although to me ti certainly had a Beatles influence. So a little wiki and I came across a title that did seem familiar. Totally different from what you posted, and it's been covered many times, which is how I recognized it...

It's missing the foundation of thousands of factory and warehouse grunts.

Now they need a diamond planet to shine on....

I dread when someone gets the bright idea of replacing Alec Guinness with Ewan McGregor. No offense to Ewan, but that would be sacrilege and an insult to Sir Alec. Er right. Back to funny/interesting. Um, didja know rubber can be de-vulcanized? Yeah, okay, probably only of interest to a retread like me, but here ya go...

Clarification: Hayden was added in the DVD release in 2004, "to establish continuity with the prequel trilogy." I knew it wasn't the SE because that was before the PT; SE was a testbed of the CGI work as a precursor to the PT. Thanks to @TheSaint's link for refreshing my memory.

@VanamondeMore commonly known as the Special DVD Edition I believe. At the end of RotJ, the “Force ghosts” of Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin appeared. The original had the original Vader actor (in the faceplate off scenes, his name escapes me) as the Anakin ghost. The Special Edition (added scenes, some upgraded f/x) had Hayden Christensen, the prequel Anakin, as the ghost

They did. What they did not test, apparently, was hitting the door with a sledgehammer then throwing a ball at the window… I’m guessing what was not tested was how many times they could throw a steel ball at the window before it broke. Even so-called “bullet proof glass” can only stop so many bullets before it fails. In vehicles, the idea is that you’ve driven away by then