ModZero
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Posts posted by ModZero
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22 minutes ago, p1t1o said:
Ooh, that goes strongly against my grain, seems very anthropomorphic, any source data? Specifically on the DNA-as-close-to-optimal and protein chirality? Sounds interesting.
Not while at work on a tablet, it's in there in those discussions on that blog, but that's thousands of comments over 3 or 4 posts, so a bit too much work digging it out ;-) it's full of knowledgeable people, but the context is recreational dispute on a writer's blog, so don't base your diet on this ;-)
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Charlie Stross recently wrote several blog posts on science fiction and fantasy shibboleths and cliches (latest here), and while those aren't exactly the same as annoyances, each of those bug at least some people.
I'll say, my opinion on how aliens look completely reversed some time ago: DNA is a close to optimal solution, and even the chirality of proteins can apparently be traced way back to stellar processes. and oxygen is really super useful, and nitrogen is a pretty good filler gas. So I'd expect aliens to have quite a bit of biochemical similarity to us – and even some physiological similarity (need to grab things, structural solidity, similar – on one of the recent Stross blogs there was a long comment thread about spines and birth canals).
My pet peeve now is universal to all fiction: poorly though out or ignored socioeconomic consequences of the setting. And, from a certain heavily praised book/tv series, spinning up loose clumps of rock to simulate gravity ;-)
10 minutes ago, benzman said:Futuristic computers that, when they display text on a screen, make a noise like an old teletype machine. e.g. the first 'Alien' movie.
That's just because those will become obligatory once I take over the world.
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7 hours ago, tater said:
I think you mean 2120
I'm doing my best to maintain an optimistic and enthusiastic attitude :-)
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57 minutes ago, Kryten said:
When asked where the money was going to come from for this launch, the responses boiled down to 'that's premature' and 'maybe NASA'. AFAICT there's no actual launch contract from this announcement, just a 'launch slot reservation' and some minor studies into payload integration; somebody still has to stump up the cash, and it really sounds like they want that somebody to be NASA. That isn't going to happen.
Eh, it doesn't exactly sound like the most expensive NASA ever funded. Wouldn't bet my pants on it, but it still just might happen. Then US would get a decade of trying to justify maintaining two balloons in space, but they'll be fine. The balloons, that is.
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https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/04/ula-bigelow-partnership-first-commercial-space-stations/
Uhuhu, ambitious. I must say I like how they call corporate investment "democratisation". Also, 2020, that's almost when Skylon will fly</trololo>.
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14 hours ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:
Skylon would revolutionize space travel, and is necessary to make it available to the masses. However, the SABER tech is unproven. Rockets are more versatile and skylon would only be effective if flown 100 times per year, but it can fly that much. Also, what does skylon stand for? What would be a good abort system? I thought pyros on payload bay doors and srbs on the crew module.
Skylon has way too little payload to revolutionize anything on its own, it's not really all at necessary either.
It doesn't have an abort system, because it's not a crewed vehicle. If it were to carry people, it would just go back to the airstrip – it dumps quite a bit of mass right after liftoff (water for the brakes), and could possibly jettison the oxidizer.
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2 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:
Where did I say this lol?
That's the gist of your argument: "games without feature X are inherently broken". They're not, and neither is KSP, which is illustrated by:
3 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:I was going interplanetary before I knew this game even had mods at all.
...which I of course knew, because pretty much everyone did, which means you're being not very serious, so:
4 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:Do you actually have anything serious to add to this discussion?
Yeah, did you, actually? You just threw a bunch of assertion, each one invalidated by at least one fairly successful game, implying (but skirting, because actually making one's point clearly would make it too easy for others to dispute you) a point that's invalidated by your own experience.
KSP is just fine without dV readings. Many players, including me, would rather have it — possibly most. But implying the game is broken for not having is, um, not very nice at all.
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Ugh, all eggs in one basket argument, how I hate it. There are arguments for crewed exploration, but they are much more "squishy" (science, understanding how humans deal in different environments as a way to verify assumptions etc), so I guess people really want something hard. Too bad it's not a good argument.
One part of it commonly dealt with: if you really value species survival that high, it's still not a good way. There isn't going to be a self-sustaining off-world colony anytime soon. But that's beaten to death.
My take is, that species survival doesn't bother me as much as the quality of life and survival of the humans who actually are alive. And from that perspective, having two planets just means twice as many (well, not really, Mars is smaller) places that can get hit by an asteroid in a way that kills or hurts many people. It means spending resources in ways that are less efficient in terms of making people happier (sorry, but while we here on this forum may get happier from looking at rocket landings, we're not really a majority, and even I can also be made happier quite a lot cheaper by providing me with Stardew Valley and a free afternoon).
Now, I disagree somewhat with the OP premise: people will go to space. Eventually. If and when it's efficient and sustainable enough that they can't really be stopped from doing so. I think we're going to wait a long time, but hey, everyone's favourite megalomaniac made some promises for a crazy plan yesterday.
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On 3 April 2016 at 6:51 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:
A space simulation game with no Delta V/TWR readout makes about as much sense as:
- A racing game with no speedometer/rpm
- A football game with no score display
- An RPG where you don't know what level you are
- An FPS with no ammo counter
- An RTS with no display for collected resources or population cap
- A sims game with no "needs and wants" meters
- A fighting game with no health bars
I could go on...and on...and on...
- The only car game I've ever paid attention to my speedometer is ETS. At there are plenty racing games that don't show you the speedometer,
- this is a silly comparison,
- this is a silly comparison, and levels are terrible RPG design that has to go,
- this is a commonly toyed with idea, it tends to increase tension quite nicely, also, that's closer to your fuel amounts
- no, that's fuel amounts,
- those tend to be pretty much magic, and are nothing like dV,
- health bars are a silly idea and have to go, and are also more similar to fuel amounts.
And, finally, pretty sure you're trying to argue that KSP is unplayable and nobody ever made orbit in stock.
Also what regex and anyone else with the faintest idea here wrote. It's relatively easy for a human to calculate the dV rocket they see, mostly because the human actually understands the rocket — basically does a lot of heuristics of the "this goes before that" and "this counteracts this" and "this engine works in this special way" kinds without even paying full attention to it. dV calculators don't get that benefit.
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54 minutes ago, MalevolentNinja said:
1) it fundamentally changes the game play. Why do I need to unlock 2.5m or 5m parts in career mode when you can just scale up 1.25m parts to work?
That's actually already solved both in TweakScale and procedural parts — scales can be restricted by tech level. While personally I'm not a fan of either, that's mostly due to aesthetic and some minor stability issues , and stockifying would give it opportunity to improve on these.
56 minutes ago, MalevolentNinja said:2) TweakScale can be ridiculously overpowered. How do you determine the ISP and thrust of a Spark scaled to a 5m engine?
You just do't do it for engines, one of my complaints about TS is that it includes by default configurations for everything and the kitchen sink and messes up mods that weren't necessarily developed with TS in mind.
TBH if I had to pick, I'd much rather have procedural fuel tanks, that would enable me to reduce part counts, and a stock version would hopefully have some fancier texturing options.
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1 hour ago, The Great Potato said:
It's supposed to be an eyecatching 'hey you! you're using x64!' warning, I think.
Yes, but it also happens on 1st of April, regardless of everything. On most days it doesn't trigger on 1.1 64 bit, actually. I actually started making sure I have the correct MM version.
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8 minutes ago, taniwha said:
There is not one. The toolbar mod is very good: it lets you put the buttons wherever you want on the screen. (that's not a "never", more just a "what's wrong with the toolbar mod?")
Mostly it's just a bit of a bother when it's installed just for one mod, and then some other mods change their behaviour in non-configurable ways when toolbar mod is around (for example the Haystack mod without toolbar uses a "tab" button on the bottom that I really rather like). It's not your mods fault, of course, and I never complained because on my list of annoyances it's lower than people complaining about toolbar mods.
On the other hand there's a bunch of mods with terrible icons, that can't be stashed away to specific contexts unless you use the toolbar mod. Hell is other mods :-)
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1 hour ago, KerbonautInTraining said:
So Sci-Fi isn't part of this list?
Uhhh...
On 24 March 2016 at 10:23 PM, StrandedonEarth said:5. The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
That's not exactly documentary ;-) (or is it?)
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1 hour ago, p1t1o said:
Definitely right on the conversational anecdotes, you wouldn't believe how many people I have converted to rocketry with the story about lemon oil!
Ok, its zero, but still a really good read!
See, that's because you went with the lemon oil. I go with butyl mercaptan, and the test stand still keeping the smell 10 years later. And maybe the mercury injection. People like scary stories.
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"Ignition!" is fantastic, though by the end it kinda starts getting crazy with chemistry. I guess this must how mathematics must feel to other people. Not only it's a very informative book, though, but also a source of fantastic conversation starters.
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So, this is the year for almost-failing it? (Referring to launch pad aborts of a Soyuz and Falcon, and the Briz-M that blew up instead going to the graveyard like a good zombie).
I'm going to take this over last year's "everything explodes", though (I know, hyperbole).
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15 minutes ago, hendrack said:
My quick and dirty MM patch wasn't meant to deliver the depth of the complete USI chain. Those Almaz/Salyuz were not meant to sustain life through hydroponics and recycling as far as I know, they were all depandant from supply crafts.
That's mostly fine, one issue here is that once you install UKS, it actually changes the settings for USI-LS (I think it just activates the hab functionality), so people would have some weird unexplained behaviour. Doesn't particularly matter for you if the way you use it works, but it's best people take that into account ;-)
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On 18 March 2016 at 11:59 AM, hendrack said:
For those that play with USI life support, I took the extra cfg for TAC and edited it to support USI. The values are rough guesses, change to own preferences. I am new to making MM .cfgs, so please point out any errors or suggestions.
So, looking over this, you added supply storage to all the modules. But USI works differently — habitation/comfort mods should have extra habitation, habitation multipliers, and/or recyclers. Also, if a module is specialised for long-term habitation, it should have some extra replacement parts storage (it's a hidden resource representing "wear and tear" of the module). You shouldn't really include supplies storage per se, unless it's actually a cargo module.
There is a short comment in LSModule.cfg:
Spoiler//Suggested settings are based on part mass for consistency.
//
//For dedicated hab parts (no other generators, etc.):
// Kerbal Months should equal mass * 5
// ReplacementParts = 100 * crew capacity + 100 * Kerbal Months.
//
//For parts that act as hab multipliers (dedicated or bundled with other functions/converters),
//a multiplier equal to the tonnage works well.
//
//For recyclers, their percentage should be mass / crew capcity (i.e. the UKS Pioneer Module at 3.75t = 75%)
//at crew capacity 5. Increasing crew cap should result in an increase in mass.
//i.e. a 12-crew recycler that weighs 7.5 tons should have a recycler percentage equal to 7.5 / 12 = 62.5%
//Recyclers require (per crew capacity) 0.2 EC and 0.000002 ReplacementParts with a cap of 75%.
//If water is used as an input (0.0002 per crew capacity) the cap can be extended to 90%Also, there's a support patch in Nertea's (anxiety problems: should I tag him so he knows he's being mentioned, or should I not do that, because that would add to the forum noise he gets? Argh) station parts module — might be worth checking out. I'll try to look at it later today, but last time I tried I got a bit overwhelmed with the variety of parts, I'd never be able to test all of it, so I'd have to just use the hints.
Oh, and while I'm talking about hints: Recyclers should be rare. In stock, it's just the lab that has it (at 70%, which is quite good). The best part that USI part that doesn't require external input is the Pioneer module — recycles at 75%, AFAIK. There's also, I think (I'd have to check the modules) aeroponics, that does 90%, but takes 0.002 water per day of operation.
USI looks like a module simpler than TAC-LS, but it's actually quite complex, and does a fairly deep simulation. If you just stuff supplies everywhere, you're going to get really heavy crafts — and then, if you install UKS, it will really mess things up for you if it's not set up correctly.
EDIT: I'll tag @RoverDude, just in case he likes/knows this mod enough to offer hints ;-)
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1 hour ago, fredinno said:
It's based off the density of Sundancer, which is basically an empty scaled down BA-330, and off thishttp://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php#id--Habitat_Module--TransHab
That's guesswork. It's worthless for anything than entertainment. You don't get to scale up an "empty sundancer". Too many things scale non-linearly. You certainly don't get to be more optimistic than manufacturer's spec, so unless you can show me Bigelow's spec that says 16t lets just disregard the website quoting libertarian cartoons in technical analysis, shall we?
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Just now, fredinno said:
20T is just listed as BA-330. Not "empty" or "full," just 20T for a BA-330. By the pictures Bigelow gives, it's relatively empty, but not 100% empty. That would be the 16T number I gave you, since it is listed as the "basic" density for inflatables.
That's just an illustration. It also includes a bunch of people, I guess those are inflatable as well. And it still doesn't explain where that website got its 16t number from. At least Wikipedia has sources.
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40 minutes ago, fredinno said:
The 20T number is considered "lightly furnished". However, a full Lab module can go up to 41T, which basically makes use of all the space in the module.
20T is from Wiki, which comes from Bigelow himself. Where do the numbers on the website named after being overly optimistic come from?
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On 21 March 2016 at 7:20 PM, KAL 9000 said:
Go bacteria! Saving our lives from Grey Goo!
You wouldn't be so cheerful if you realised it means that *we are the grey goo*.
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11 hours ago, fredinno said:
Tourists like having extra space for comfort.
Tourists are an infra-red herring. Orbital is different from a suborbital jump, it's too expensive, takes too much time, and volume isn't the only thing that makes it uncomfortable. There are very few people who could afford it, and even fewer who have health, money and will at the same time.
Doesn't mean this won't ever happen, but it will be like ISS self-funded tourism — and there were far too few of them. A launch of a 20t module is going to require a heavy-ish launcher (Ariane 5/6, Proton, Angara, Long March 5), so you're paying at least 50M (probably much more, possibly twice as much, but hey, I'm being super optimistic here) just for that. A space tourist nets you 20-40M, if said tourist teleports themselves into your space station from their doorstep and doesn't use much oxygen, food or anything. Not that consumption will be a problem, because they won't stay there longer than two weeks, and you'll see them once every few years.
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20 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:
Submarine crews manage pretty well in smaller spaces for long duration missions.
AFAIK that long duration isn't that long, compared to ISS deployments, and they're not continuous. ISS deployments aren't all that long either, not on the grand scale — less than year and a half. And not that many of them. This really isn't enough to draw conclusions.
EDIT: agh, 80-100 days is obviously pretty close to ISS deployment.
Whats wrong with Skylon?
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
Oh you have got to be kidding me. Why stop there, add Alcubierre drive and time travel. At least SABRE has a precooler and people who have basic idea about physics on its side.