Space and Science BS Thread

For me it was Russell Johnson / Professor Roy Hinkley, Ph.D

Ya... smartest guy on the island but couldn't fix a hole in a boat.

 

Damn, I haven't thought about that show in a long time. I was looking at the names and it took me a second to register who you were talking about.
That was funny, a coconut TV, bamboo car, and no life raft..........well, eventually he made one.

 

Not sure if anyone here is into PC games but I found Kerbal Space Program has blown my mind time and time again and it really put's stuff into a new perspective. I thought I was pretty good understanding of space travel but actually playing around with the game it just explains everything 10000x better than reading anything or watching anything could imo.

It's basically a sand box space flight simulation game with pretty realistic physics where you design a craft using a set part list and then you try to get around in space. The game universe is basically a copy of our solar system with a bunch of similar planets you can travel too. This includes an Earth like planet with a moon very very similar to ours.

Playing the game it's a massive challenge to even reach space in the first place. Then you barely scrape an actual orbit. After that you fine tune and fine tune until you can do it reliably. Most people next step is trying to reach the moon.

When you see how far it actually is you gain a entirely new respect for the men who made it to the Moon first with less computing power than a calculator. After you finally land on the Moon and return (This took me probably over 50 hours of tweaking the craft and working on my piloting skills) you scroll out to look at the rest of solar system and you realize the distances involved are easily a thousand times greater.

Anyways I'm sure most people aren't really into this kinda stuff on here but for those who are check it out it's only like $10 on sale on steam.

 

At Buzz Aldrin's book signing, I really, really wanted to ask him what he finds more annoying... sitting at a desk signing his name for 3 hours, or being in a tin can with Neil and Michael for a week.

But all I could muster was "It's an honor to meet you Colonel Aldrin"

 

On one hand it would be probably by far the most life changing experience to be involved in something like that but scary as hell because if anything went wrong they could still be stuck out there somewhere maybe shooting off into space or maybe floating around the moon or earth.

Something about being so far away from another human being that man kind could not help you scares the hell out of me. If they got stuck on the moon they would just have to sit there and wait until the air ran out. Just terrifying stuff.

I know I couldn't deal with the stress of that.

 

that's why I always admired those astronauts. I mean, the tech they had back in the day was mind blowingly simple
and there's so many things that could have gone wrong, esp since it's not like they could have "practice" moon landings to make sure ALL of their equipment worked, multiple times


If something went wrong on a moon walk....They'd literally stare out into the blackness of space until they suffocated

 

Gravitational Waves from the Big Bang detected.

 

I want that job.... south pole sounds dope

 

My city is currently cloud seeding so we can get some rain. We have been in an extended drought and our lake levels are below 30%. We are about to run out of water. They have impossed huge restrictions on how and when water can be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

 

I hear there is a 5:1 girl-to-guy ratio and the nightclubs can't be beat.

Huh, interesting, I didn't know that was possible. I like how the wiki article has an illustration showing an A-10 dropping cloud seeding chemicals...

Sheppard though... that's a fun place.

 

nawwwwww I'm gonna go wrestle polar bears.......

 

psssst

wrong pole

 

Haha ya big dummy!

 

Hilarious

 

KSP is very win.

 

Yessssssssss I knew there would be another haha

I just did an SSTO mission to and from Laythe. Such a cool moon having big old Jool looming over you.

How did you get that monster into orbit lol.

 

A bit messy but I got back up into orbit. Had a slight miscalculation on delta-v requirements to get to orbit so yeah had 45m/s to spare a bit of a close call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQI-JXbxfQM


Wow, can't put in iframes but if you just paste a youtube link tacomaworld auto-embeds it. I hate it when websites try to do things for you, maybe that's why I drive a 6spd... :lol3

And a link to the home server if youtube doesn't work for anyone: http://convulsingmuffin.com/warehouse/vids/Laythe%20Launch.mp4


For that, I launched it with the orange tanks emptied to reduce stress on the one decoupler at the base of the craft (a design I've since upgraded) and refueled in low Kerbin orbit, then launched up a lander and the whole thing went to Jool, landed on two moons and came back with aerobraking at Jool and on the Kerbin return. However after learning the limitations of the mobile laboratory I should've just made a small space station around Jool with the mobile lab instead of having it on the tug craft.

 

And subbed I love looking at other peoples designs. What's the part between the main body next to the decouplers?

I tried a very very similar design but I ended up using like 10 units of fuel on the Lander to aerobrake. When I went to leave the craft would just pitch over extremely hard particular direction. I checked many many times that the fuel levels were all equal. I tweaked the engine power was off on that engine and it still tilted...

After that I just went with the ssto but I went too high too quickly and I ended up with way too much liquid fuel so I ended up getting orbit with like 5 units of oxidizer left. I could not fly that thing coming back into the atmosphere. I just let the thing randomly spin until about 10000 and then save it lol. Coming back to Kerbin I made the mistake of just directly coming back and not aerobraking. I dropped from the edge of the atmosphere to like 10000 in 10 seconds hitting like 70+ gs lol. Poor jeb


My next mission is to Tylo. I have a pretty big Lander that I just did a fly by of the moon using just the Lander as the launch, mid and final stages. Do you think that will be enough? I tried a mini Lander but it just ran out of fuel still doing 1000 m/s...

I'm with you on the 6 speed. Nothing like drifting all over in the snow and mud

 

The yellow piping is fuel line, the white rectangular thing is a radial mounted parachute.

 

Tyloo's gravity well is almost as much as Kerbin's. It's the most difficult thing to land on and get back to orbit, besides maybe Eve.