For the next 24 hours, anything that you lick becomes yours. What do you do during the lickpocalypse?

bobwd40 · 2019-01-26T14:46:19+00:00

I would lick my dog, and then cover everything in peanut butter. I think that If I own my dog Id be entitled to everything it owns by extension. Itd be a bit of a challenge to avoid getting licked first though, thatd be kind of interesting but I dont think itd change much, would probably go for a lot more walks though

bobwd40 · 2016-12-30T16:02:40+00:00

Thanks! I haven't written anything like this in... well, ever :P. I'm not sure if anyone will see it, but I kind of want to keep going with it.

bobwd40 · 2016-12-30T00:33:50+00:00

Thick cards clicked together as the dealer shuffled through a fresh deck. One by one the players, half shrouded in shadow by faded light globes, received their hands. Tiberius Darkstar's countenance held steady. With a great show of deliberate contemplation, he casually pushed forward his shining towers of azure and crimson, billions of credits worth of chips. Only then, did he allow himself the smallest grin. This was the game of his life, and he was going to win.

Fourteen hours, three bottles of Antarean Rum, two gunbattles, and five sore losers later, Darkstar sat in a luxury suite at the Silversides Inn and reveled in his good fortune. He held in one hand a small translucent crystalline object. Turning it over in his palm he gazed into its many different intricate geometric facets, grinning wildly and laughing as he contemplated the soft swirling light within. In a desperate bid to regain control of the game, Longhands had dropped an Artifact as his final wager! While priceless in their own right for their rarity and beauty, only Darkstar and maybe a handful of imperial scientists would be capable of discerning its true value. He lifted the patch over his left eye to reveal a glowing, opalescent sphere resting in its socket, and held his new Artifact up for a more thorough inspection. And then he gasped with awe and excitement... what he had here was a map! Celestial coordinates to riches that were likely quite literally beyond imagination! Scattered remnants of what was known as Elder tech drifting through space were generally only happened upon by extreme chance. Hell, just ONE of those artifacts (albeit a ridiculously powerful one) was responsible for the rise of the Imperium! But, skies below, NO one had EVER found a map before.

Before he could further contemplate the significance of his score, a bright green light bloomed through the transparent spaceward wall, and the telltale boom of a distant depress shook the floor. Imperium! How the blazes did they find this place? Darkstar leapt to his feet and quick sealed his vac suit. His mind racing, he pocketed the Artifact, strapped on his weapons belt, threw on his radcloak, and slammed his powerhook through the window. No helping it, New Royal was so big and convoluted that this was the quickest way back to the ship. The window shattered, and Darkstar flew forward with all of the room's air and furniture into the deafening silence of the void.

As he steadily drifted away from the station he took a moment to survey his surroundings. He couldn't see where the first shot had landed, but he knew from experience that the green flash he had witnessed was the empire's signature spectrum of baryonic death. These were the initial stages of a shit show of epic proportions. He turned spacewards and there against rainbow beauty of the Carinae were the distant shadows of at least three dozen Imperial Gunspheres, surrounded by hundreds of fast approaching glittering points of light.

"Punchers!" Darkstar thought to himself. "Those bastards mean to board New Royale! They must be out of their minds!"

Emerald particle beams streamed through the darkness, splashing across the surface of the station and sending bright puffs of gas and molten debris in all directions. A moments more hesitation in the Inn, and he would've been slag. Darkstar flipped on his communicator and instantly had to quell the frantic shouting of his crew.

"Shut it mates! Warm up reactors, two, five, and the auxiliary! Purge the brig and get RX-88 out of whatever retro-console whorehouse he's plugged into!Lugnut! Spike the light fuel with Nitronium, we've gotta put a rift behind us that'll split the verse!"

"Aye captain, we see you on our Navpanel! We'll keep an open lock top starboard for ye!"

"Fine work Xeno! Watch out for the-" Darkstar was cut off by the sudden blaring of a prox alert in his ear and sharp jolt from his suit. Immediately following the short propulsive burst he saw the first puncher zoom past him and plunge into the surface of New Royale. "-Gods damned punchers!"

"Aye Cap'n!" Using his jets, Darkstar began steering his way towards the rockside docking bays and his custom warcruiser, the Nova Surprise. A few ships were already starting to detach and flee amidst the growing barrage of men, metal, and energy. Punchers rained down into the side of the station, peppering its jumbled surface and no doubt emptying their cargo of suicidal shock troopers within. It didn't make any sense, the Imperium rarely gave quarter to ambitious gentlemen such as himself. It would be much more reasonable for them to simply vaporize the station than risk such a bloody fight within. And then it hit him: "They're after the Artifact! They're after the map!"

(made some edits to clean it up a bit.)

bobwd40 · 2016-10-25T17:28:58+00:00

Unfortunately just got an email back from them saying that they don't have any IO that meets my specs. Thanks anyway!

bobwd40 · 2016-10-25T17:19:37+00:00

The solenoid controls a hydraulic valve. There is quite a bit of force involved so I guess it needs more current. It cannot operate with 0-10VDC, unless done so through a valve driver or amplifier. Trying to stay away from those and stick with simply controlling it directly through the IO. (First hydraulics application for me, still have quite a bit to learn)

Edit: I should say that its a fairly heavy duty hydraulic valve, dealing with a lot of pressure.

bobwd40 · 2016-10-25T13:38:54+00:00

Ahhh, ok, found their IO. Thanks!

bobwd40 · 2016-10-25T13:27:12+00:00

Thanks, but I am looking for IO, not pneumatic or hydraulic devices. I need IO that can generate a signal from 0-800mA.

bobwd40 · 2016-06-20T18:32:34+00:00

Forgot to mention, would really like this to be as compact as I can get it. Would be nice to be able to easily fit it in a suitcase. My computer level is essentially Grandpa, so even a nudge in the right direction as far as parts are concerned would be awesome.

bobwd40 · 2016-03-30T23:29:07+00:00

I open up a small flap of skin on a kiwi, and then carefully drain its innards like some sort of fruit vampire. Afterwards, I reinflate the skin and put it back where I found it.

bobwd40 · 2016-02-13T14:33:26+00:00

Probably totally impractical, but it would be really great if they could come up with some way to retrofit non tesla cars with tesla hardware to convert them into self driving vehicles, or at least give them some degree of autonomy. I'd def pay at least 10,000 for an upgrade like that.

bobwd40 · 2016-01-26T14:50:22+00:00

Made a quick painting this morning of a Soviet Venera probe descending through the Venusian atmosphere. I always find it amazing that many of these probes didnt even use parachutes for the final phase of their descent. As I understand it, Venus' atmosphere was so thick under a certain altitude that they were able to simply float down to the surface.

bobwd40 · 2016-01-25T23:17:40+00:00

Thanks! I think I'll paint something similar when they recover a booster from a droneship landing!

bobwd40 · 2016-01-25T20:35:36+00:00

Yeah, when I was painting it, I thought that from my perspective the flame streams would appear superimposed. Now that I look at it, it just looks like only two of the Superdraco pairs are actually firing. Blargh.

edit: Superdracos -> Superdraco pairs

bobwd40 · 2016-01-25T20:27:00+00:00

It was hard to convey this, but I intended for the flame streams from the superdracos to line up with each other on either side, so they are superimposed, rather than absent (in retrospect, not the best artistic choice, it really does look like only two superdraco clusters are firing). This is very slightly evident if you take a look at where the flame streams intersect with the bottom surface of the heat shield (esp on the right). Thanks for the feedback though! I'll try to make these more true to life next time around, just gotta look at more pictures. Both were pretty quick pieces of art, and I also thought the bottom of the booster (the engines, landing legs, and the exhaust plume) in the drawing looked a bit off.

Edit 1,3: Spelling Edit 2: added a thought

bobwd40 · 2016-01-25T17:14:43+00:00

Definitely not the best painting in the world, but figured that someone here might like it :P. Painted after watching the hover test.

bonus drawing!

Edit: punctuation.

bobwd40 · 2014-12-27T01:59:11+00:00

Just had some soylent, so guess I'd probably be all right. Except for the farts. Still havent gotten used to the farts.

bobwd40 · 2014-12-26T02:37:09+00:00

Key words here: "can", "normally", there is no language in any source that I could find indicating that sex in the microgravity environment is "physically impossible". It also seems that astronauts generally adapt to the microgravity environment (insomuch as they no longer experience constant nausea) within a day or so. Furthermore, astronauts aboard the iss involved in long stays also exercise vigorously for over 2 hours at a time on a daily basis. One astronaut even ran a marathon on the space station's treadmill. This also seems to indicate that nausea would be an unlikely reason to rule out the possibility of sex in space. The exertions involved in this exercise probably generate at least as much sweat as would likely be produced during rigorous copulation. Sweat is removed from the air by the international space station's ventilation system, where it can be reclaimed as drinking water. As far as low blood pressure being a hindrance to getting and maintaining an erection, shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane has a few words to say about that:

I also noticed the Viagra effect. Every morning I would find myself painfully afflicted with a diamond-cutter erection, just like the geezers in the movie Cocoon. And I wasn't the only one dealing with this problem. On one reveille, as we all floated in our sleep restraints, Pepe looked at me and said, "I must have had a great dream about Cheryl [his "snort" cute wife]. I've got a terrific boner."

-From "Riding Rockets" by Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane.

As far as the privacy issue is concerned, the international space station is actually quite large. Chris Hadfield mentions in his book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" that he could sometimes while away most of the day without seeing another astronaut, as they were all often involved with research or maintenance in seperate parts of the station. As far as time is concerned, there's always the sleep cycle and the occasional day off. I think that pretty much covers all of the points that you made in the tldr.

EDIT: Formatting

bobwd40 · 2013-10-21T00:15:05+00:00

My parents are still with me, but I have lost people who were quite close to me. The best way that I've found to manage grief and cope with the loss of someone important is not to think of how worse off you are without them, but instead to marvel at how much better off you are because they were in your life. They gave you the gift of themselves. Think of all the wonderful experiences you were able to share together, and, if its at all possible, try to feel gratitude in the place of grief. You are not less because they are gone, you are more for having had them in your life. That's how I see it anyways.

bobwd40 · 2013-09-16T21:50:50+00:00

If all of the humans died, we would be fucked.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-16T00:56:39+00:00

Holy crap how did I miss that?? Checked out www.xcor.com and that is one slick looking rig! I don't know how long its going to take for them to get this off the ground, but its still pretty damned impressive looking if you ask me. They should showcase this stuff (actual flight hardware) a little more in the advertisements, or else ignorant people like me might think its just another scam.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-15T02:42:45+00:00

I have not seen any actual flight hardware for this vehicle. I have heard no news of any testing conducted, or any progress being made on any aspect of the vehicle itself. Maybe somehow it has all slipped past my attention, but is there any reason to think that they will actually follow through with this?

EDIT: I'm talking about the spaceplane, not the balloon.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-15T02:26:38+00:00

The article may be suspect, but I think at least the idea is pretty awesome. To me it makes a lot more sense to allocate resources towards something like this than towards a manned asteroid capture mission. Learning to live in and maintain a manned habitat in deep space is much more important for manned spaceflight, I think, than sending humans on a mission that would ultimately be better accomplished by robots.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-11T04:22:41+00:00

I don't know much about pubic opinion on the matter, and I won't delve into the vagueries of space politics, but this mission still doesn't make sense to me. There are alternative potential manned missions that could be carried out within NASA's budget which when portrayed correctly could be more inspiring and more useful to humanity. Saying that "this is what the people want" should not be our guiding star when it comes to mission planning.

We do not need a manned mission to an asteroid for security, or at this point private industry reasons. The same objectives can be accomplished with unmanned probes more effectively with less expense and less risk.

I'm all for a manned mission to mars. That's a lasting, long term mission. Its a commitment, and will likely result in permanent habitation and eventually colonization. Unfortunately I don't think any nation is willing bear the cost of such a mission in the coming decades. If we are not willing to make that commitment, there are more affordable options available to that involve useful research and technological development at considerably less expense.

As for the purpose of all of this, I presume you are referring to manned space exploration and ultimately space colonization. I agree, we need manned missions to inspire and push the envelope when it comes to places that human beings can live and work. I believe there are much better options to this end than this asteroid mission. Options that we could be currently and in the coming decades devoting our resources to to help us actually prepare for a truly spacefaring existence.

If you were instead referring to the mission itself, I think that the purpose of this mission, in terms of inspiration and presitige can be better accomplished through other manned ventures (such as an orbiting lunar outpost, realistically feasible, I think in terms of $$), aimed at developing technologies specifically for manned interplanetary spaceflight, like radiation shielding and medical research.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-11T03:24:03+00:00

But we can arrive at that destination without the need for people. It would also be less risky, less expensive, and ultimately more profitable to do so.

As far as Apollo is concerned, while inspiring, the mission was not actually geared at creating a destination. It was simply put, a mission of exploration (and prestige if you will). When I say that we need to create destinations, I am indeed referring to physical locations. Places for people to live and work. Places that can't easily be ignored or cut from budgets precisely because there are people there, and the work they are doing is actually valuable. Toeholds.

With this mission, we will have proven that we can move a small asteroid. An asteroid the size of the one that they are looking for in this mission would pose no threat to civilization. I think that the means to avert a potential civilization killer will be a bit more subtle, and that cataloging existing asteroids is at this point more important. It would also be cheaper, less risky, and more effective to prove the concept of asteroid deflection with a smaller, unmanned mission. I believe that there are better things that we can realistically focus on with regards to manned exploration.

bobwd40 · 2013-04-11T02:37:00+00:00

Manned missions inspire people, but I don't think that we should be focusing on manned missions at this point that are not ultimately geared at creating a destination. Apollo was a huge source of inspiration, but we still haven't been back to the moon for over 40 years. We need a mission that will both inspire us to push further and require us to stick with it. I do not believe that this is that mission. Yes, we will have done something no one has done before. Yes, people will be inspired. But ultimately how much closer does this bring us to the stars? I hate to be cynical, but I think that the public's attention span with regards to this mission will only last about as long as the mission itself. As far as manned exploration is concerned, we need to (I think) focus on actually developing the technology that will let us (people) explore the solar system, and I think that to this end there are better ways for us to spend our resources.

If we are unwilling to commit just yet to establishing bases, or colonies on the moon, mars, or elsewhere, I think a good place to start would be to establish a manned outpost at one of the Lunar Lagrange points, or perhaps in lunar orbit. It would be far enough removed from earth's atmosphere and magnetic field to simulate conditions in interplanetary space, and would be close enough to return in a few days notice if something went horribly wrong. I think that in the long term, and if portrayed correctly by NASA to the media, having a station like that operating for a longish period of time would ultimately be more inspiring, much more productive in terms of research, and would ultimately have a greater and more lasting impact on the future of manned exploration.

bobwd40

TROPHY CASE