Year: 2013

After having another Kerbal Space Fail with the first attempt, I just had to give this one another go.

The rocket was pretty much as before, although the bottom end may have had minor differences (didn’t save the first – oops)

Launch !

Going up nice and stable. Too stable ?

Fast forwarding a bit, this is where I think I have enough height to escape the atmosphere, so it’s time to take stock and set up the orbit. The blue line is the projected path, with the “Ap” showing what the highest point would be. The idea is to time the maneouvre around that highest point, because that’s when it’s most efficient. The yellow dotty line is the projection after making the manoeuvre.

And during the manoeuvre. The idea is to aim for the blue symbol in the nav ball. It takes a lot of effort to make an orbit though, that 1668m/s is approaching 1/2 of the fuel tank.

And into orbit :

Ok. Still a bit wonky orbit but nonetheless, it’s a valid orbit that doesn’t touch the atmosphere but the highest point was about 280,000km. Oops. Not circular as intended. Quite eccentric indeed.

I still had about a third of a tank of fuel left after getting the orbit, so there would have been potential for adjusting that orbit. But … I need Jebediah for the next mission, so it was time to bring him home.

Hark at him looking at that sunrise. He’s loving it.

Anyway. Jebediah, home safe and waiting for the next one. And I got it done during teatime in the cricket (well, teatime plus a bit).

PS Steam Summer Sale started yesterday. My credit card wants to hide.

I’ll often read the astronomy and rocket related stories that hit the news and this one about Arianne 6 was no exception. (Register Link)

Arianne 5’s a good, powerful rocket but costs a bit too much per launch to compete with the new pretenders coming in from the private market. Arianne 6 is less ambitious in terms of what it can carry but should be much cheaper. That’s because it’s using solid rockets more than liquid rockets.

Too much tech already !

Solid = cheap & simple
Liquid = higher power but more complex and expensive

So while Arianne 5 did its stuff with a solid first stage with the second and third being liquid, Arianne 6 will do it by having solid first and second stages with the third being liquid.

My instant thought ? Gotta try this in Kerbal Space Program. I bet there’s tonnes of Fauxrianne 6 videos coming right now … I thought about seeing if I could prep one but to be honest, it’s too darn hot right now to investigate all I’d need to do to set up recording and investigate publishing one for the first time.

Gratuitous hangar shot :

Yes. It looks like a certain appendage again. Rockets have a habit of doing that. Give thanks that I put the side boosters on front to back on that shadow instead of right to left.

The box at the top is Kerbal Engineer which tells you how fast and how far your rocket is likely to go. You need a Thrust to Weight ratio of above 1, or the rocket doesn’t get off the ground. 2.6 and 2.4 for the first stages looked promising.

What’s the staging ?
1st stage – 3x solid BACC boosters
2nd stage – 1x solid BACC booster
3rd stage – the thinner fuel tank plus the nuclear engine
(chosen because it’s the same diameter as the boosters)
Oh and a parachute at the top.

Launch time – early stages ? Promising :

Decent speed at a low height and it was going straight up.

But wait … this is Kerbal Space Program :

Something went horribly wrong. The rocket was too heavy and was slowing down (possibly because of a decoupler being in the way) and was sliding out of control … Oops. Once a solid rocket is lit, it’s max power all the way baby. No stopping it once it’s sparking.

I actually got it under control again but had to junk that rogue second stage :

And under control at an acceptable speed again :

I didn’t think there was much point in continuing from here, the nuclear engine goes forever but isn’t too powerful. I may have been able to get the rocket out of the atmosphere but probably not into orbit. So it’s over to the last stage which is the parachute :

I hope the first flight of Arianne 6 goes much better than my first flight with Fauxrianne 6 !!!

And look at Jebediah in those screenies. Loving it all the way up, all the way sideways, all the way down and that definitely looks like a dreaming of next time “ahhhh” in the last one.

PS Click screenies for bigger, they will hopefully give 1080p goodness with a big enough window 🙂

There’s a few constants in this world :

Death,
Massive complaining when it’s cold,
Taxes,
Bad driving in Bristol,
Massive complaining when it’s warm,
And shockingly bad reporting from the news agencies.

If you ever find yourself believing anything the news people say, remember this pic :

Yep. I’m raiding Facebook again.

Oh and women aren’t just people too, they’re their own special brand of awesome. And I’m including the (possible Russian honeypot hunter) young lady who was part of a pack of UWE people heading into Sainsburys. Why the mention ? Well, she spotted me before crossing the road bits into Sainsburys, the eyes caught and I got a “Hi” and a wave on her way past.

Me being in disbelief of course for getting attention from a pretty young lady.

It’s highly unlikely that I’ll see this particular pretty young lady again but it put a huge smile on my face as I was on the bus on the way back. Coulda been the hat actually. After feeling my brains baking yesterday under my dark green hat, today was day 1 of the Ashes hat :

I like my hats. They hide my hair, which misbehaves literally at the drop of a errrm … hat.

Back on topic back on topic !

Yeah. Our news people aren’t that interested in telling the truth. What makes it worse is that if they don’t know something, the “expert” correspondents will just make something up. I occasionally see stuff on the news that’s directly related to the field I work in. And I’ll often get the urge to throw something at the telly because of how wrong they get it. I’ve seen the expert guessing thing a few times. It’s not just lies, it can be very dangerous lies.

Remember with the news that they’re interested in their bottom line. The cash. The circulation. And sometimes the best way to do that is to make news. Like finding something with a bit of controversy and pulling at just the right thread to get the most attention.

I’m going into a bit of dark place there though, so :

Three cheers for Virginia Wade ! Our last winner at Wimbledon and unlike the other, within living memory for me at least. Although I didn’t know much about it seeing as I was 2 years old at the time.

Time Enough For Love is one of his best. Poor old Bill the mule. Need to read it after some of the other Lazarus Long books though. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a classic too, although more for the first half than the second.

Starship Troopers has definitely been murdered by the films. The animations were much better but still didn't go into the socio-political "yeah it sounds great but would you want to live in it ?"

The book Starship Troopers was 100x better than that travesty of a film. Try 'Time Enough for Love' if you haven't already – just don't be put off by the title!

He was a hell of a writer. Pretty much everything he wrote was golden. Something for everyone too :

Huge interlinking backstory linking many of the characters together,
Plenty of young scifi books (Starman, Space Cadet) that explained very complex ideas very simply
Thought provoking books like Starship Troopers (yes really !)

I may well have to add one to the queue after Guardian and Hunger Games …

Friday was one of my fave Heinlein novels. He wrote a *lot* of good stuff……..

Spotted this earlier :

Made me chuckle.

It’s been an awkward Monday today. It didn’t start too well cos … you guessed it, I was washing those metaphorical cats again. Oops.

And the heat ! We’re more hardened to the cold over here and we don’t adjust at all well when the heat lamp in the sky gets turned on. And it’s been really hot today, uncomfortably hot in the office. We have thermal strip thingys on the pillars in the office and some of them today were reading 29 degrees C inside. That’s not healthy …

I dunno how much water I drank today (lots!) but I don’t think I quite drank enough.

Talk about Friday … I’m dreaming about Thursday !

The place I’m visiting has far better conditions inside than our offices plus … no bus. I get to sit in my car for a lot of the day basking in the air con. On the other hand, our buses are built for the winter. They have 2 slit windows near the front for ventilation, that’s it. It was quite possibly 35 degrees plus in there. Possibly more. My pooter is saying the cpu and graphics are at 38 degrees C at idle (which is probably around room temp) and it felt warmer on that bus.

Meh. Enough with the complaining !

Yep. Thursday should be good. And now today’s out the way, only 9 more working days until I can get some R&R annual leave in. Hopefully I can heal up some more. Some bits of me are completely fixed (no more Zombie Patches on my face), some are getting there. But I may need to see the doctor again to see what can be done about the holdouts.

You’ve probably been wondering where the subject heading comes from ?

I’m a big fan of Robert Heinlein novels. The guy was capable of novels of stunningly brilliant quality (although there are bad ones in there too like Farnham’s Freehold) and one of them was called Friday. This book had everything. Everything ! And this was just the first couple of chapters. The rest of the book examined what it meant for the lead character, Friday, to be an artificial person living in a world hostile to the thought of that. And it’s a tough book for our heroine too.

And … ~wibble~ Isa Guha is interviewing someone in the cricket. She’s an Ashes winner, she knows what she’s talking about.

Yeah – Friday. Best day of the week, even with it being a teacake free day in the canteen. And one hell of a book too. Not the first Heinlein book I’d recommend someone read (Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers first) but it’s definitely one of the good ones.

Sport’s dominating at the moment 🙂

We’ve had the conclusion of Wimblydon, a couple of Grand Prix, Le Mans 24 hours a couple of weeks ago and we’re rushing headlong into another Ashes campaign. Plus a Lions rugby tour down under. (I follow Six Nations rugby but Lions tours seem a bit artificial somehow)

Oh ! I have some time off coming soon too ! It’ll be in a couple of weeks and hopefully the heat will be more manageable by them. Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of sun. (And it’s weird having to shade the eyes in the shower!) But I overheat very easily.

Sun = good. Heat = bad. Global warming ? Yeah, I think they’re right there but I don’t think the temperature will get appreciably hotter, I think instead the Earth will adjust by turning that warming into energy that drives the atmosphere more and we’re seeing that in the more intense storms we’re getting.

Doh. That was a bit of an aside wasn’t it. See ? I do pay attention to the world sometimes !

Although I’m more concerned with a few of the people in it than I am of the world itself. Yep. Got my eye on a few of you and I hope you’ll be ok.

Anyway – sporty stuff. I watch a lot of sport. But I also apply a lot of quality control to what I select for watching. Like avoiding the Lions rugby. I don’t watch all cricket, I’m selective. Like there’s a West Indies game on at the moment, I’m not interested in that.

Another aside (based on what’s on the news right now). Charles Saatchi is a crazy man. To mistreat (allegedly!) and give up someone as beautiful and with the character of Nigella Lawson ? Nuts. I don’t watch her shows much but when I do, I’m entranced by one of the hottest people on telly.

(I think this post qualifies for the scattergun label now, don’t you ?)

Yet another aside – news is showing the Boeing 777 crash story. Comments – it’s a credit to whatever worked right that only two have died (may it stay as two!) but you have to ask questions of “how ?”. My first thought was that it was another sign of why the Dreamliner shouldn’t be flying but I’m wrong there, 777 is not the ill fated Dreamliner.

Back to topic – motor racing. This is very much a mixed bag to be honest.

The Le Mans 24 hour is interesting due to its uniqueness. Here we have 200mph cars racing solid for a full 24 hours. It’s an incredible event. But to watch it for the full 24 hours ? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone ! I did enjoy watching the selection of it that I did watch though.

Grand Prix racing is a curiosity too. It’s better when we have our favourites doing well. I’m only 99% (ok, less than that) keen on it right now because the McLarens are struggling. I like the Brits to do well in all sport I watch. Formula 1 is only interesting because of the incidents that are happening right now. The actual racing isn’t great. Some tracks are better than others. Some tracks are less interesting than watching paint dry. Like the Nurburgring today, Monaco from a while ago and soon Hungary.

Oh it’s also interesting for Suzi Perry. Did I mention that going gaga about ladies with long dark hair thing ? (see above ref Nigella Lawson). Highlights are a good way around the dead time but I feel more connected with sporty stuff when I see the whole thing. There’s a kind of story to the game or race that you don’t get with highlights.

Oh but what was exciting – tennis.

I exercise the quality control here too. It’s very easy to get burned out on a sport. Especially if it’s as repetitive as baseball (sorry baseball fans it doesn’t have the “ball can go anywhere” of cricket) or tennis.

But we did have 2 incredible games over the weekend. I wasn’t sure who to support in the ladies final but when hearing there was someone with strange habits and who falls asleep at random times, yep. That’s the one I’m supporting. And she’s the one who won too. No such issues with wondering who to support in the men’s final.

Well done Ms Bartoli and Mr Murray ! Thoroughly enjoyed those games.

Back to work tomorrow, although I’ll be looking forward to the Ashes starting on Wednesday and you can bet the commentary will be on in the car on Thursday afternoon when I’ll be driving back.

How’s my own cricket coming on ? Haven’t played for a while. That’s partly been down to lack of opportunity (rain, empty teams, full teams) but there’s am outside chance of a game on Thursday. Wait – I said I was travelling … There’s a chance I’d be back in time but I’ve told both captains it’s a “play if I get there in time”. I wouldn’t want to play to be honest as there’s zero chance I’d be able to prepare myself.

Physically, I could play. But that’s me refusing to acknowledge why I shouldn’t as per usual. My skin is much improved, although my arms still look like I’ve been washing cats. My legs are super improved, they’re still damaged but that damage is repairing itself. The reason my arms are still bad is because my discipline has been weak and I’ve been “helping” them too much.

I can ignore the damage to my arms though, enough to play at least. What I can’t ignore is the damage to my hip, there’s damage inside and outside. It’s an old groin injury that’s been aggravated by reinjuring it a couple of years ago, plus it hasn’t appreciated the sitting on floor that I’ve been obliged to do because of treating the skin condition.

So yeah – improving. Looking forward to the Ashes. Definitely looking forward to that time off to chill out.

Oh and hugely looking forward to the promise of cakes that came with a certain very special person’s Facebook post from Friday :-).

And I’m now looking forward to a few days of chilling out (after work finishes tomorrow of course!)

Wednesday saw the craziemob heading off to see Despicable Me 2. If you’ve not seen the first Despicable Me yet, you’ve missed out. It’s a very funny, if rather silly, movie. Despicable Me 2 is more of the same but better in pretty much every way. I think one reason is because all of the character introduction was in the first movie.

More minions !

There’s been a couple of really good movies this year. I’d rate Oblivion and Star Trek Into Darkness incredibly highly. Highly enough that I’ll be looking to buy the blurays early. I may preorder Despicable Me 2. It’s that good.

My movie of the year so far.

Don’t tell anyone (bad for my image) but I had tears in my eyes by the end. Tears of laughter. In fact, it was so good, I’d happily see it again if the right person asked.

So for today.

Today was a travelling day … meetings down in Portsmouth. I don’t mind the travelling. It’s not so much the meetings you go to, more the business you can do around the meetings. Being personally present is much better than conversing over email or messenger. Purely text methods (even the phone) don’t allow you to see what’s going on behind the words. I can convey honesty much better in person than on messages.

And when you don’t have much to tell, then it’s good to have a method of conveying that as honestly as you can.

Oh and it also lets me talk about stuff off the record. Emails have a habit of travelling further than you intended them to. But enough about that. Today’s side business (yesterday’s was the infrastructure guy) was talking to the support lady.

Support is a massive deal where I am. Or it should be … For most major organisations, it’s not the cost to buy which is most significant. Sure, it’s big but it’s not nearly as big as the whole life support cost. We try to keep the support cost down where I can. You can easily put too much attention into the “buy” and end up with something that costs silly money to run. Whereas, if you’d paid attention to the “support”, you could save enough to let you have better shinies (upgrades!!!!) later.

So keeping the support lady on side is very important. It does help that she’s : highly intelligent, very cute and in possession of long dark hair. You know, the type I go gaga about. Seriously though, when we do the bits and pieces that set up the support plans, this little lady will help turn it from best guess into something supremely polished with everything considered and nothing out of place.

I know someone else who does that and she also fits that type. There’s a rare intelligence behind those twinkling eyes and I miss having the chance to natter or just see if I can get the boost that comes with seeing a smile light up that face. It’s things like visiting one team, seeing someone who has switched to that team from the old team and wishing you had the excuse to visit the old team where this lady works.

Where was I ? Working relationships are very important. I like to work in the background. There’s people who make a lot of noise about how they work. That sometimes has benefits, except when they flit from hot topic to next hot topic, without actually achieving anything except for annoying everyone. Unlike today and yesterday where I quietly give the important people a personal update to let them know why I’ve been quiet. And in return, I’ll get Stuff from them that’ll help my work no end. There’s still a few more people I need to chat to though. Maybe next week.

Today’s long day was finished off with a trip to Lexus in Cheltenham, where they were having a launch party for the new IS300h.

Opinion ? Very shiny. My CT beats all the cars my family’s owned, which includes things like Granada Ghia’s, Senators, Mercs and a few more decent marques as well as those. And the new IS is better again than the CT. It’s got some seriously shiny bits to it and it’ll be very tempting to switch to one.

But not just yet. Cos of a moratorium on pay rises, I’m going to be looking for a payment holiday from car loans so Plan A is that my CT is with me for at least 5 years.

So the next car is for another time.

For now – instead of cars, I’ll be thinking of a real someone and hoping that she comes through her current trials and tribulations with the same carefree joyous spirit that made her the heart of my last team.