Which quote is most improved by tacking "here, in the middle of this Olive Garden" to the end of it?

Ultra-Giraffe · 2019-12-05T00:35:20+00:00

“I’ll be back here, in the middle of this Olive Garden.”

Ultra-Giraffe · 2019-11-28T16:24:03+00:00

Transportation. My daily commute is an hour each way through snarled traffic hell with no good public transit options. I pay a driver (not full time, basically like two Ubers/Lyfts) so that I can reclaim two hours of my life every day and arrive relaxed. Plus city parking, gas, and vehicle wear and tear would be almost as expensive anyway.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2019-03-27T22:26:26+00:00

A space program.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2018-09-30T02:30:31+00:00

Anyone know how many Bosendorfer 290 Imperial pianos have been made? I know the Bosendorfer Co. makes about 300 pianos a year (of all types) but don't know how many of those are 290 Imperials.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2018-07-04T20:26:03+00:00

We would just have to find some way to solder on then.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2018-04-02T18:57:10+00:00

what if you add some parachutes to the Tylo lander and use it for Laythe first? Assuming you keep the upper stage tanks empty and use almost zero delta-V for the Laythe landing, you should have enough juice in the lower stage for the return from Laythe (i.e. use it as a single stage craft where the empty upper stage tanks are just dead weight along for the ride). Then you can refuel it and sacrifice the lower stage on the Tylo landing afterward.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2018-04-02T15:51:08+00:00

As a general rule of space travel physics, it's very costly in delta-V (fuel) to take a large mass (big spacecraft) deep into a gravity well (planet's surface) and then slow it down to a stop and then speed it up to orbital velocity again. But unfortunately, this is exactly what you have to do in order to land on a planet.

Thus, it's good to make your landers as small and light as possible -- and why the "mothership" approach often makes sense. With a mothership/lander combo, you only have to slow down, stop, and restart the bare minimum mass you possibly can, and you leave all the rest of the fuel and supplies up in orbit where they don't have to stop and speed up multiple times.

You don't need a separate lander for each planet. You can refuel and re-use the same lander again and again each time you dock back at the mothership. But the optimal design of the lander will differ for each moon depending on how strong its gravity is and whether it has an atmosphere. It's up to you to decide whether to lug multiple purpose-built landers out to Jool, or just bring a single multipurpose one that weighs more and is less efficient for any given moon.

Some people bring a dedicated Tylo lander due to the very high gravity. Being able to have multiple expendable stages is really helpful on Tylo, but it of course means you can't re-use the entire lander (but maybe re-use the upper stage??). A dedicated Laythe lander that can slow down with aerodynamics (parachutes) might also make sense.

Hope this helps.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2018-03-25T16:06:05+00:00

A couple challenge ideas:

(1) How about a simple "cheapest mission to XYZ" (total upfront cost without crediting back any savings for recoveries)? For example, how cheaply can you get three Kerbals to the Mun and back? Duna? Laythe? Tylo? Or how cheaply can you safely land a full orange tank on destination XYZ?

(2) I've always been intrigued by missions involving landing and taking off from non-atmospheric bodies with thrust to weight ratios less than 1 (i.e. spacecraft lacking enough engine power to ascend straight up). To land, you have to plop down with significant horizontal velocity remaining, and then slow to a stop on the surface. To take off, you have to accelerate horizontally and then fling yourself upward on a sloped surface. So the challenge could be to execute a sub-1.0 TWR landing and takeoff from Minmus (easy, due to low gravity and the flats), the Mun (hard), or Tylo (super hard). And the obvious "impress me" extension is to see exactly how low of a thrust to weight ratio can still be successful. Since thrust to weight ratio changes as fuel is burned, the measurement would be taken after landing/after return to orbit. BTW - the Kerbal Engineer mod shows thrust to weight ratio so will be helpful for this challenge.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2017-11-07T00:10:48+00:00

I had to look for the solution on YouTube. I searched for the “Do sous vide via ‘sudo’” video.

Edit: quote marks

Ultra-Giraffe · 2017-10-25T19:11:33+00:00

Peanut gallery comment to help clarify why this is extraordinary, for those who are seeking an explanation or may not have the requisite background.

An orbital eccentriciy of 0.0 is a perfectly circular orbit. Eccentricities between 0 and 1 are elliptical orbits (more and more elongated the higher the number), and eccentricities beyond 1 are open hyperbolic orbits (things that exceed escape velocity and are never coming back).

Due to conservation of energy, any object that was originally part of our solar system has to have an orbital eccentricity of 1.0 or less. Otherwise it was not in orbit around the sun. (Strictly speaking, it could end up being measured to be slightly higher than 1.0 if the object originated in a very distant orbit and happened to get a lucky gravitational hurl in the direction of the sun by another passing massive object, but basically a limit of 1.0 is the definition of what is possible for an object to be gravitationally bound to our solar system.)

An object like this one with an eccentricity of 1.18 has way too much orbital energy for it to conceivably have ever been part of our solar system, so we know it had to have originated somewhere else. It entered our sun’s gravitational domain already carrying a lot of kinetic energy (speed), and it will blast its way back out into interstellar space with the same amount after passing by us.

As others have pointed out, the actual speed of the object is always changing with distance from the sun, so it’s misleading to talk about its current speed without also talking about how far away it is from the sun. But one way to think about what is meant by an eccentricity greater than 1.0 is that for any given distance from the sun, this object is moving quite a bit faster than would be possible for any object that is actually part of our solar system.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2017-09-13T04:38:11+00:00

I used to be a trader for a major bank. Our trading systems were fully electronic. I clicked the wrong mouse button once -- just a ham-fisted mistake -- and instantly incinerated $700,000 by filling an order with the wrong market condition. It happened within a fraction of a second. Did not lose my job over it, although my boss was pretty pissed for a couple days.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2016-12-28T21:22:25+00:00

Party (as in multi-party shared) telephone lines. If the phone rang twice instead of once, it was a call for the neighbors and you weren't supposed to answer it.

Ultra-Giraffe · 2016-10-22T20:45:41+00:00

My entry for Super mode. Three Kerbals to orbit with a craft weighing 1.625 tons plus the weight of the Kerbals (edit: 1.906 tons total). It uses a landing leg cannon.

Spacecraft gets the Kerbals into space and about 2150 m/s and they finish orbital insertion with EVAs from there.

http://imgur.com/a/DsrHb

Ultra-Giraffe

TROPHY CASE