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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • Kerbal Space Program 2 and Dark Souls 3.

    KSP2 released their science patch this month that adds missions and a progression path to work through. It’s a lot more fun now that there are goals to work towards, and the missions are much better than what KSP1’s career mode offered.

    I’ve been co-op’ing through DS3 with a buddy, which has been a fun way to tide us over until Elden Ring’s DLC comes out. I just wish there was a similar seamless co-op mod for DS3. Neither of us are interested in PvP, and it’s a little tedious to have to go through everything twice.




  • Not really, and no. This shouldn’t affect your already-running system. This change means that the iso will offer plasma by default and will run plasma in the live environment.

    And I wouldn’t say it’s particularly hard to switch from any desktop environment to another. It takes some relearning where stuff is, keyboard shortcuts, etc, but any desktop environment can run any Linux program, provided the necessary libraries are installed (which your package manager takes care of). You can install kde programs on your xfce desktop, and they will run fine (and vice versa). They’ll just pull in a bunch of kde libraries when you install.






  • I haven’t had time to build up a big city, but so far I’ve enjoyed it. I’m running on Linux with a 5600X + 6600XT, and 1080p at medium gets me 30-40 fps.

    I LOVE that roads transmit power and water. Money is way more available early game than in 1. The only annoyance for me so far has been the terrain overlay that comes up when you select a zoning tool (similar to how selecting water pipes switches to underground. You can make it go back to normal by hitting i after selecting the tool. It’s minor, but its an annoying difference from 1.





  • Not an expert, aside from countless hours in kerbal space program, but I would guess the problem is more about the total mass and structural strength. The station has some kind of thrusters to counteract orbital decay, but they wouldn’t have nearly enough fuel to boost to a higher orbit. So another craft with lots of fuel would be needed to push the station.

    Something low thrust like ion thrusters would probably take a very long time for something the mass of the ISS. And you can’t just burn continuously. Raising an orbit is a two step process: burn to raise one side of the orbit, then burn again to raise the other. These burns are most efficient when done at the lowest and highest points of the orbit, respectively. Too long of a single burn would waste precious fuel from being too far away from the optimal points. I would guess that it would take many, many orbits to raise the station into a permanent orbit.

    A higher thrust engine pushing the station would solve that problem, but since it wasn’t designed to be pushed, I could see it being unable to withstand the stress. Plus, it might be difficult to thrust along the center of mass, causing it to tumble during the burn.

    That’s just my layman explanation, anyway. I imagine it won’t be easy no matter what, and it may ultimately not be feasible at all. But I’d like to see more public discussion of preserving the station.



  • I wonder if anyone will counter propose to put the whole thing in a parking orbit as a museum piece.

    This is what I’ve been thinking. I assume it hasn’t been on the table because it would be hugely expensive and difficult (due to the station not being designed for the kind of burns needed to substantially boost its orbit). But honestly, I’d much rather see funds and research devoted to preserving such a significant piece of space flight history over manned trips to the moon and mars.


  • It’s possible that a nuclear response would have prevented the ground warfare that dragged on in the war on terror. Possible, in the way that it’s possible that a meteor will land on my head tonight.

    One of the reasons the wars in the Middle East dragged on for so long is that for every terrorist we took out in an attack, multiple more civilians were killed. And every dead civilian potentially creates another person with nothing to lose to turn to terrorism.

    Nuclear weapons are even more indiscriminate, and they have the additional problem of risking alienating basically all of our allies. Plus it drastically changes the nuclear calculus for near peer enemies.

    If we’re willing to launch a nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear nation with no ability to threaten us militarily, then why wouldn’t we launch against Russia, China, etc the second we see an opportunity to take them out? That’s what they’d be thinking, anyway, and so their motivation for launching a first strike against us if the opportunity arises goes up dramatically.

    There’s a reason Russia has only talked about nukes in their invasion of Ukraine. They know that actually pulling the nuclear trigger is crossing a line that sets them on a dangerous and irreversible course.