Spurred by Permeable Ceiling's excellent feedback this week, we decided to take a little break from the new physics engine we've been working on to address some of those little issues that need attention.  And we made a ton of progress:



"Test" next to each of those means that it's fixed/implemented, and just waiting for final verification to be considered done.

If anybody's curious enough to want to know more about any of those, you can go to https://app.assembla.com/spaces/high-frontier/tickets and append the ticket number, e.g. https://app.assembla.com/spaces/high-frontier/tickets/238 .

We still have more on our to-do list, of course, but it feels good to have picked so much low-hanging fruit today, especially since we've been eyebrows-deep in physics code for so long!

Permeable Ceiling suggested that he'd like to terminate a path by right-clicking, rather than double-clicking or pressing Return.

This sounds reasonable to us, and is something we're looking into now.  But there's a detail of the behavior I'm not sure about.  Suppose you've already clicked several times to make a nice path with several bends, and now you're ready to finish.  You right-click.  Should this:

1. Add one last segment to where you right-click, and then terminate?
2. Ignore the position at which you right-clicked, and just terminate the path at the last point left-clicked?
   

Hi,

I more or less just started playing with High Frontier. Is it weird to consider it not a game in a sense? I look at is as more of a design software, that illustrates concepts and possibilities. Hence my perspective will likely not focus on the game aspect, but rather other aspects.

Keep in mind, they’ll be things that jump out to me because they don’t behave in a way like I expect them to. It doesn’t mean they’re bad, just, y’know, outside expectations. Like… In an old game seeing a flag flying on a castle, but the flag is stiff as a board. It’s minor, but jumps out because it’s not what you expect from a flag.
Incidentally, I’ll be using the Mac version.

So, without further ado, issues that I found weird or notable while fiddling with the ‘game’.

• Torus:
  • finances (2-10 spokes doesn’t affect cost; Hub radius doesn’t affect cost)
  • Spoke Radius > Minor Radius is possible (and swallows hub incidentally)
  • As I understand it, the spokes should widen as they approach the hub (1)
  • It’d be interesting to see hub’s height not tied to Minor Radius. ‘Smaller or taller’ hubs would be nice to have.
  • Air mass isn’t affected by number and radius of spokes
  • Air mass isn’t affected by Hub Radius
  • Hub Radius > Major Radius is… what is going on here?
  • Why can’t I plaster the outside of my Torus with Solar panels?
  • Lit solar panels produce as much power as shadowed panels. This should be addressed.
  • Copy-Paste structures? Not possible :/
    
• Cylinder
  • Okay, why is the stock structure more expensive than the plan allows? It costs something like 22B, whereas the Build Mode markets it as 1.6 Billion.
  • What are these pillars that are build for $100 when I shift-left-click place a lamp post? And why do they extend into infinity?
  • Well, It’d be nice to have a the ability to place multiple structures in a row, like lamp posts, without always going through the menu for every iteration.
  • I can build buildings hovering in the endcaps. I assume that isn’t intentional.
    
• Other stuff
  • The management menu is strange. Or rather, the camera is. I kind of want to have the cylinder’s surface rolled out and place my structures that way.
  • Is there a way to detach connected modules from each other? If so, it’s not communicated well. Ah, I found out. Still, not that well communicated. And a bit… arbitrary when a module is disconnected and when the whole structure is moved.
  • Moving the camera position by right-clicking while holding the Option key is hella slow. It’s far easier to move the whole station.
    

Bollocks. Bloody third time I write this in full, annoyance causes brevity

Yay, here I am, liked the demo, yaddayadda.

Registration issues:
Password requirements aren’t stated unless your password is outside requirements.
I managed to enter myself as the referrer. Which shouldn’t be possible, and didn’t allow me to continue registration process. Couldn’t unselect myself. Hence @JoeSprout is now my referrer, simply because I remembered him.
"Pocket" security question at one point didn’t have the correct display of quotation marks, instead displaying them in html markup.

Looking forward to playing and stuff.

https://software.nasa.gov/

One that stands out being of likely interest here https://software.nasa.gov/software/GSC-16824-1

Quote:Evolutionary Mission Trajectory Generator (EMTG)

EMTG is a global trajectory optimization tool intended for interplanetary mission design. The technology automatically searches for the optimal sequence of planetary flybys and propulsive maneuvers for maximizing payload delivery at a destination. Designed for minimal user oversight, EMTG requires only start location, destination, allowable launch-date range, allowable flight time, and minimal spacecraft hardware information.

As you might know, we've been working for what feels like way too long on a new physics engine.  This is necessary to support designs with counter-rotating cylinders, like these:



It's been a bit of a slog... the math is very dense, and it's a LONG walk from square 1 to where you can get anything at all to actually do anything.

But today we reached a bit of a milestone... we finally got a kinetic tree (that is, a set of connected rigid bodies) to move as expected.  This demo has two rigidbodies (three, if you count the stationary base) connected by two joints, with each joint revolving at a constant rate.



I know it doesn't look like much, but believe me, this is a victory!  It proves that at least some of all that code we've been writing for weeks works as intended.

Now we'll build on this, step by step, until we get those O'Neill cylinders working!

Blue Origin has been circulating a white paper at NASA about a proposal called "Blue Moon" to deliver tons of cargo to and from the Moon in the near future.  This would use their existing New Shepard VTVL rocket, launched into orbit on top of an Atlas V, SLS, or their own New Glenn booster.

Read all about it in this Washington Post article.


This is seriously exciting stuff.  In just the last week we've learned that SpaceX will be taking people around the Moon as soon as next year; Bigelow Aerospace is ready to build roomy space stations in Lunar orbit, or even on the surface; and now Blue Origin is prepared to provide cheap, reliable cargo delivery to and from the Moon.

Mars is great, but it's not the next step in the technology tree.  The Moon is, and it looks like all the major space players are now turning there attention there.  We could see some major progress in the next 5-10 years!


Oh yeah, and here's a video of Bezos explaining why it's important that we expand out into the solar system... no news to High Frontier players, but it's great to see these ideas gaining traction!

From AviationWeek (free registration required):

SpaceX Says It Can Beat NASA to the Moon

Short version: SpaceX has two paying customers who have put a substantial deposit on a lunar fly-around, which it says it can pull off by the end of 2018.  This is ahead of even NASA's most nail-biting, aggressive estimates of when they might be able to do the same thing with SLS and Orion.

Moreover, Musk said that SpaceX hopes to conduct more commercial lunar flights, and predicted that eventually they could account for 20% of company revenues.

This is really fantastic news.  I've been cheering SpaceX for their innovative hardware and lean operation for years, while at the same time being disappointed at its sole focus on Mars, which is much too far away to be a sensible next step.  But I've hoped all along that once business starts developing around the Moon, SpaceX would surely not turn it down.  Now we see that's the case.  People are going to the Moon, and SpaceX will take them there.

Now we just need Blue Origin to step up its game a bit, and get into the race as well... and we will truly have a virtuous cycle that drives costs down and services up.

I am having trouble getting my colonies started. It seems to take forever for buildings to ever start being constructed once I've zoned somewhere. I have not yet found any way to accelerate the process. On this topic a game speed control and an RCI indicator would be very useful.

You've probably all seen this already — researchers this week announced the finding of four more Earth-sized planets in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, about 40 light years from here.  That brings the total to seven; three of these are clearly in the habitable zone, and all seven might have liquid water in some locations, depending on their atmospheres.





TRAPPIST-1 is a dwarf star, like most of the stars in the galaxy.  That means these planets orbit very close, with orbital periods all under 13 Earth days.  They're almost certainly tidally locked to the star, with one side always facing the sun and the other side always dark.  And, such close-in planets tend to lose their atmospheres, unless they happen to have a very strong magnetic field.

But still.  We keep turning up more and more of these Earth-sized planets at the right distance from their suns to have liquid water.  If these planets don't have life already, they could probably be terraformed to support Earth life without too much trouble (by the time we'd be able to get to them anyway).

Of course, by the time we can get to even Alpha Centauri, we won't need planets to live on anymore — most of humanity will be living in thousands (millions?) of orbital space colonies, throughout the solar system.  Planets will seem passé.

But...  The bigger an ecosystem is, the more stable it is.  Space colonies will require active maintenance, and if some disaster ever strikes down all the people, the plants and animals won't survive long without them.  That's an extremely unlikely scenario, I know, but still... there's something viscerally appealing about seeding the galaxy with rich ecosystems, wherever we find a planet that's habitable (or can be made habitable) and not already alive.  These living green planets could act as reservoirs of life that could even outlast humanity, possibly evolving new civilizations someday.

Or maybe I'm just dreaming.  What do you think?