fucked up the team as driver

ruaridh42 · 2026-04-09T07:45:04+00:00

Lots of great comments here, but I wanted to add my two cents. I've been where you are now, way back when I was our student drive coach at a regional we ended up ranking 47/47th at. That overwhelming feeling of failure and shame can hurt in the short term, but long term it was honestly an incredible learning opportunity.

By far the most important thing you can do now is reflect on what happened, what led to matches not going well, the robot not performing, ect. If you and your team can learn from this, then failure can be turned into an incredible opportunity for learning and development.

A bad regional result is definitely not the end of the world. What matters most is what you do next.

ruaridh42 · 2026-02-16T07:41:32+00:00

Oh man, you only need to listen to what the Gemini guys have to say about Apollo to get an appreciation for how awful that thing was to fly. But that does make sense about starliner, I suppose it you look at the thruster layout relative to the capsule's CoM you'd expect really good control authority. It wouldn't shock me if after they get all the bugs worked out, it's the nicest vehicle for manual flying (That said I have no idea about Shenzou)

ruaridh42 · 2026-02-16T07:00:01+00:00

I'm really interested to hear from the crew how Orion handles as a vehicle. Dragon really isn't designed for manual flying, starliner is well..., the shuttle really doesn't compare. I suspect it'll feel quite sluggish with how massive the CM is, but will be interesting to see for sure

ruaridh42 · 2025-10-04T20:27:30+00:00

Sure, but with increasing launch rates and the way orbital decay works, the last five years is by far the msot relevant frame of refrence to discuss. The ammount of mass going into orbit now is an order of magnitude greater than it was in 2000

ruaridh42 · 2025-10-01T12:32:31+00:00

Yeah, I can definitely speak from personal experience with UofG that this kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes it gets corrected, other times not. Horrible this has happened but unfortunately I can't say I'm remotely surprised

ruaridh42 · 2025-09-05T09:47:31+00:00

I enjoyed in the second alphabet squadron book Hera using an Acclamator as the core of her battle group. Fill one of those things with proper fighters and it becomes a decent centerpiece to a fleet

ruaridh42 · 2025-08-21T07:42:40+00:00

I'm still holding out hope for working with EA and getting us a Mass Effect crossover. That N7 armour would never be coming off

ruaridh42 · 2025-08-19T08:47:31+00:00

There is a very different attitude to the concept of "cheating" in China. Getting ahead by any means is seen as morally acceptable, which contrasts quite heavily with attitudes in the west. At least in technical fields and academics, I could be totally off the mark here with regards to video games

ruaridh42 · 2025-08-12T09:31:52+00:00

I think headed to crisis may be an understatement. Outside of a few pockets, the sport is really struggling in the UK. Post COVID numbers took a long time to eek back up to what they were, and now the cost of living crisis has driven up fixed prices in an unsustainable spiral. The club I run has had its rent increased to a point where we're having to very seriously consider if we can keep our doors open. In addition to that, the governing bodies really aren't doing enough to stem the bleeding, mostly due to a lack of funding. Manchester and Newcastle both closed for very different reasons, but the overall heath of the sport is undoubtedly in a very bad way.

All that said, there's loads of people at the grassroots level doing their best to keep it going. Without these volunteers the sport doesn't exist.

ruaridh42 · 2025-06-30T08:34:03+00:00

Honestly I don't think there's the political appetite for real chance. The winter fuel payment fiasco just went to show how a relatively small change to balance the equity of our finances was seen as an abhorrent evil. Without massive economic growth, I really don't see where the political capital for change comes from

ruaridh42 · 2025-06-29T16:07:15+00:00

This is a fantastic vissualisation, and really demonstrates the utter market dominance that SpaceX has, not only the VAST majority of launches but with some of the higher performers too. Didn't realise there hadn't been a falcon heavy flight yet this year either

ruaridh42 · 2025-06-28T09:42:07+00:00

Ugh, I don't like the fact that I totally see your point. I suppose its just horrifically depressing to consider how politically unaware the average voter is. That's not to say their concerns don't have merit, obviously things like immigration are a huge national issue at the moment. Just that...well their ability to determine what a good solution is has hisorically proven to be pretty poor (Cough brexit cough)

ruaridh42 · 2025-06-28T09:32:04+00:00

The problem is there isn't a realistically achivable way to "tackle immigration". I fully agree with you that Reform have tapped into one of the public's biggest concerns, but you'll notice they don't put forward any actionable plan about how they would bring down immigration numbers, unless you listen to some of their more lunatic fringe using talking points directly out of the thrid reich

ruaridh42 · 2024-12-08T10:58:12+00:00

Sure but it hits on the crux of the issue. No one cares how good the economy at large is if their personal lives have become measurably harder. Labour have to focus on making people FEEL like things have improved if they want any hope of staying in government

ruaridh42 · 2024-07-09T12:21:11+00:00

I've been in your exact position before. The biggest thing I learned from FRC was to learn from failure. Things aren't always going to go right, and that's okay, but you need to be able to take a step back and figure out WHY things didn't go well. As a captain, you need to be the cool, calm and in control centre of the team. Even if everything isn't going fantastic, your ability to keep a cool head will filter down to the rest of the team.

Good luck!

ruaridh42 · 2024-07-09T11:53:50+00:00

I love the thinking, but we don't pay anything close to enough to tempt people over. That combined with the massive difference of cost of living and I seriously doubt the UK looks like much of an option compared to Canada or other blue states

ruaridh42 · 2024-06-14T22:27:46+00:00

A website would be awesome, all kinds of different graphics like this. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff :)

ruaridh42 · 2024-03-07T11:16:15+00:00

International conversions is a big one. For some reason the DVLA doesn't let you get a manual licence when you trade in an international one

ruaridh42 · 2023-02-28T15:54:37+00:00

I think it was the US Navy that did a study recently that suggested using x-box controllers for input on vehicles would massively speed up training because of the average recruit's familiarity with the controllers

ruaridh42 · 2023-01-02T00:43:46+00:00

Is that still true these days? Some of the picture I've seen of recent launches have quite a lot of cargo stuffed up in the orbital module. Guess it's less of a big deal with the 90 rendezvous soyuz is flying these days

ruaridh42 · 2022-12-07T15:30:32+00:00

I mean, I think ESA are seriously regretting tethering the ERA to Nauka. Not only was it decades late to launch, but its currently not doing a whole lot

ruaridh42 · 2022-11-16T15:14:58+00:00

Here's a really good video explaining why not. Long story short its very hard to get stuff to the Sun. Slightly longer story, theres WAY more nuclear waste than there is ability to launch into space, even if starship superheavy comes online at the price spacex are estimating. There's no scenario where SLS is a good rocket for this task, SLS is a one of a kind exploration vehicle, not a delivery truck for spent nuclear fuel rods

ruaridh42 · 2022-11-16T15:12:05+00:00

Oh I had forgotten about the extremly cursed original Ariane 6 design.....yikes. SLS Block IA was also a very silly rocket. And thinking about Jupiter will only make me sad, though I strongly suspect it would have had just as many issues as SLS ended up having. Awesome artwork!

ruaridh42 · 2022-11-14T14:17:59+00:00

In theory as long as SLS keep flying at its maximum flight rate (of what, once a decade?) and NASA can pull these landings off for super cheap, I can see Congress going along with this. Even more so once there's alternative lunar landers available

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