Kerbal Project: Initial designs

The final craft will be composed of several components, to be assembled in orbit. The first four parts have been designed and are ready for mounting to a lifter.

Bow: Lander

Habitation

Probes

 Aft: Fuel and Propulsion

Kerbal Project: Goal and Mission Outline

The goal:

• To send a team of kerbonauts on a return tour of the complete kerbol system to make scientific measurements and take photographs.

The mission:

• A probe will touch down on every celestial body with a surface.
• A manned lander will touch down on Mün, Minmus, Duna, Dres, Laythe, and Eeloo, before returning the kerbonauts to the space center on Kerbin.

The engineering:

• A new lander
• A new probe
• An interplanetary stage
• A launch vehicle

Some thoughts:

• It will be necessary to construct the spacecraft in orbit around Kerbin. 
• Such a heavy craft makes ion engines impractical.
• A nuclear engine will work, but will require a whole lot of fuel. 3 orange tanks? More?
• It may be possible to refuel later on, if the mission turns out not to be feasible with the existing fuel.
• The mission will likely last a year or more. A habitation module would be nice.
• 14 probes will be necessary - minimal design!
• Only 3 bodies have atmospheres, allowing parachute landings. (Duna, Laythe, and Eve)
• The rest of the probes will have to land on rocket power.
• The lander will execute 6 landings and take-offs, before a 7th and final landing (on Kerbin).
• Landing on and leaving Duna will likely be the most challenging parts of the mission, although the landing may be easier if parachutes are used.

Out-of-game thoughts:

• I've safely landed on the Mün just once. This is all going to be very new!
• Let's take it one easy step at a time...

Kerbal Project - Professional Edition

I'm going to try an experiment, and that is to engineer an interplanetary exploration mission in Kerbal Space Program. The entire process will be documented, including all missteps and failures, from design to engineering to the execution of the actual mission. There are two rules I will be following:

1. There are no (other) rules than these.
2. I will use no mods or external programs, and only the stock parts supplied by the most recent version of KSP.

Stay tuned for the first delivery: a defined scientific goal and a mission outline.

Projects galore!

When I was a child, I was terribly afraid I would be bored as an adult. This fear was very real and would literally keep me awake at night. I was absolutely petrified of the idea that I would spend hours and days and weeks and months and years of my life being bored. There was this image I had of adults, that they spent their lives in perpetual repetition, watching their bodies slowly lose vigor and begin to decompose in the pale reflection of the bathroom mirror, destined to repeat the events of the previous day endlessly until death, and Groundhog Day was a documentary.

I was a very silly child, I realize now. I'm not sure if I ever voiced this fear to my parents, but I wish they had told me how foolish I was. What fueled my fear was the dreary repetitiveness of elementary school and evenings at home with homework and television, and I thought that a day job and housework would amount to largely the same thing.

I'm so glad to have been so wrong.

When I started writing this post, I was thinking of the large number of projects I have going on, and how I lack the time to get any of them done. "Golly gee, I'm too busy to be bored!" was my thought. That's not entirely accurate! I was also a very busy child - school, homework, chores, games, books - I was never particularly idle. And yet, I distinctly remember being bored, and being mortally afraid of it. What changed?

The transition from childhood to adulthood, for me, was where I changed from solely accepting and observing my environment, to one where I act to change it. "Self-actualization" is one of those terms that come up in self-help books a lot, and it even makes a little bit of sense. Of course one is more satisfied if one is able to "realize" some aspect of one's "self". However, I think it doesn't make enough sense, so let's toss out that term and try another. How about, "Creativity"?

For me, at least, I'm most happy and at peace when I am fully engaged in some creative process. Engineering is bliss. Writing is heaven. Drawing and painting, ecstacy.

Think back to your elementary school. Well, maybe yours wasn't as stale as a Belgian school, but I'm sure it wasn't substantially different. Which activities do you remember? The pages and pages of multiplication tables? Probably not, until I mentioned it! Even the art projects are paint-by-numbers. What I remember most were the few instances where instruction was most unstructured. Dissecting owl vomit. Making dinosaur pictures out of autumn leaves. [As an aside, what's with gluing macaroni to stuff in American schools? I've seen it on TV and in movies and Jessica swears she's done it more than once. What's going on with that?]

I'm not arguing against the utility of a rigorous education. I appreciate every single page of multiplication tables, and wish I'd been forced to do a few more, in fact. The best time to acquire skills is in childhood, when the mind is as malleable as gold and as absorbent as polyacrylate. My point is this: only when a person has the opportunity to create or experience something absolutely new, out of their own free will and subject to their whims, will that person truly feel happy.

So where does that bring this post? Oh yes - I work as an engineer, which is some sort of useful creativity that pays the bills. I like to write (e.g. this blog), to draw, to paint (starting new watercolor class next week), to make stuff (netduino is a fun toy), to program (gourmand-grimoire and science-butler are ongoing projects), to play in a sandbox (such as Kerbal Space Program), to cook, to bake, and I'll be starting beer brewing and piano playing this year. It's true I don't have time to be bored, but that's not the important thing. What's important is that the things that you inevitably do fill your day with, are things you feel are worthwhile. I think that's what distinguishes a well-lived life from an ordinary one.

Carbonated Beverages to Offset CO2 Emissions

COPENHAGEN - A landmark decision was made today, after a week of debate and disagreement at the environmental summit in Copenhagen. The major obstacles precipitated from differences between the first-world countries and the block of developing countries, but these have finally succumbed to the ingenuity of the diplomats and the good faith of all involved parties. Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), considers the summit a "resounding success," while continuously dabbing tears of joy with an organic cotton kerchief.

The key piece of climate science was introduced to the discussions by the Coca Cola company. "By storing CO2  [the greenhouse gas that is the driving factor behind global climate change] as carbonic acid," mr. Thomas G. Mattia, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Public Affairs and Communications explained, "we can effectively remove the carbon dioxide that's poisoning our atmosphere and lock it up in water, thereby simultaneously saving our planet and providing delicious beverages for consumption."

Dubbed "Fizziks4All", the plan will reach beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to a realistic and economically viable agreement for managing the global climate well into the next century. Analysts expect nearly unanimous ratification among the countries represented at the summit, and a wide-spread acceptance amongst the public. Although North Korea and Iran were expected to disagree and attempt to sow dissent, Palau - for some reason - also raised a vocal resistance to the plan. Even so, disagreement was token at best, and expert prognosis indicates that early adoption of "Fizziks4All" will phase in almost immediately in the most important CO2 emitting countries such as the US, China, and Brazil.

Details of the plan are still sparse, but it is said to be "ambitious," according to de Boer.

The Pale Blue Dot

Yesterday I celebrated the second anniversary of my move from the continent of North America to the continent of Europe. My mother came to visit (coincidentally, but it seemed appropriate). Nothing much else happened on the occasion. The bottle of sparkling wine I had bought stayed unopened in the refrigerator. Not that there was anything wrong, but it also wasn't exactly an Earth-shattering transition, and the simple fact of a visit from my mother was enough to move my attention firmly from the topic.

Now, late at night, I've had some time to think, and I thought of the following excerpt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

From the perspective of essentially the entire universe, I moved only an infinitesimal distance. Even from within our own solar system, I moved over the tiniest fraction of a pixel, from a highly advanced camera specifically focused to find that particular point of blue light in the depths of space. I just celebrated that this little point has made two complete revolutions around the modest star that gives it life, since I made that nearly imperceptible move.

If anybody can instill a sense of humility in a person, it's Carl Sagan.

It does make me yearn to make a more perceptible move, though. Somehow. Sometime.

Rules of Engagement

I don't generally write "political" posts because people are provably: ignorant, unreasonable, and self-centered. Read any cognitive psychology book. I'll get into the specifics in another post maybe.

At any rate, I recently posted a video released by WikiLeaks about an incident where a US Apache helicopter mowed down a group of "possible" insurgents, which happened to include two Reuters staffers. I'm an active reader and contributor of Reddit, a rather large online community that encompasses a wide range of perspectives from people of all walks of life. The video initiated a heated discussion in many many threads, with thousands of comments, and I've read a fair selection and hopefully gleaned something meaningful from it.

The most interesting item I encountered was a post by a former US military combatant who had served in precisely the same area where the video took place. It echoed - from a personal perspective - the position that the personnel heard on the audio track acted legally within the standard rules of engagement determined by the US military for attack helicopters in urban environments in Iraq. The situation was exacerbated by the stress of increasing insurgent activity at the time of the incident, leading to the unsettling tone of the commentary.

These things don't bother me particularly much. War is a fact, and a horrible, dirty, despicable, and undeniably negative fact at that. People die, and that's the point of war (pretty much). The subsequent coverup is also understandable, to a point. It's clear that it's difficult to wage a war without public support, so certain things must be done to keep that support. Fair enough, we all knew that, no big deal.

Two things bothered me.

Thing one: the Rules of Engagement are designed, written, controlled, and enforced by the US military. What is the purpose of these rules? To minimize costs in personnel and material, and maximize efficacy (achieving military goals). Civilian deaths increases costs because of court costs, PR costs, and perceived costs from public outcry, etc. Without public support, the tax money dries up (or somebody else gets elected), and the troops have to go home. It's a simple equation. 

Logically, the solution offering maximum efficacy and minimum costs is nuclear annihilation: the enemy is irrevocably wiped out, and not a single ally is lost. The amortized cost of the weapon is absolutely minimal. Win! Except the domestic public and international governmental bodies would be horrified, the generals and commander in chief would be charged and judged to committing war crimes, and this type of thing certainly wouldn't be done.

The other extreme is sending in a force armed entirely with handcuffs, legions of detectives, psychologists, and lawyers, and capture, investigate, and try each potential enemy. Each case would be dealt with justly and with an absolute minimum of collateral damage (aside from inaction). This scenario is just as clearly impossible as the previous.

So we identify the need for a middle ground.  Can we honestly say that a middle ground where it's acceptable for a helicopter to circle over a kilometer away and kill a group of people without absolute certainty that they pose a direct threat is where the line delineating the "Rules of Engagement" should be drawn? How about a middle ground where it's acceptable for that same helicopter to target and attack a van whose occupants show no interest but to help the wounded? When that van contains children? And what can we say about those rules of engagement when they prompt officials to deny any wrongdoing or mistakes, don't offer support or condolences for the survivors, and don't release the events for the public at large to consider the implications? What effect does that have on democracy?

Thing two: the ex-military man who wrote the post was intelligent, eloquent, and morally just man. He wrote with conviction, was well-informed, and refrained from name-calling, generalizations, and other low-brow techniques that can sometimes convince unreasonable people. The problem was that he argued the actions of the pilots and gunmen were justified, solely on the fact that their actions were within the letter of these Rules of Engagement. As if they were ordained by God himself. But they aren't - they're just written by some people in suits in a building somewhere, who're trying to balance a min-max equation of costs and benefits, and the derivative of the equation happens to be zero at the point where Apache helicopters and weaponized unmanned drones cross - a little to the right of the police-raid-arrest-trial nightmare, and a little to the left of nuclear holocaust.

Let's rethink those Rules of Engagement. This time, let's consider the foreign civilians as equals.