KT-10 makes best orbit yet

KT-10 makes a self-guided launch into a 142x99km orbit.

Standard "Baniff" lifter

Program complete

This project is using the kOS plug-in to manage the launches.  Everything is done programically.  The only inputs I make manually are view changes and the action group to command the solar panels and antenna to deploy.

Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, is that the hardest part of the launch is the circularization burn.  If you just whack it at apoapsis, you end up with a hugely elongated orbit.  Early KT-series probes even achieved escape velocity from Kerbin.  There's got to be some math I can do to take my altitude, velocity, and vector, and calculate both my current orbit and my desired orbit -- and therefore the circularization burn to transition between the two.  Right now I'm trying to balance my altitude, apoapsis, and periapsis dynamically and the 142x99 is the best I've achieved.  As you can see below, the KT-series has come a long way:

KT-1 through KT-9.
KT-9 highlighted.

Review: Escape Plan

Not nearly as terrible as it should have been. The predictable plot problems, but really who goes to see these movies for plot? Also the wrap-up at the end was a little weak. But it hits its target, as long as that target is set low enough.

Review: Rush

Excellent. Not sure that it will surpass Grand Prix as the seminal Formula One movie, but a very well done effort.

People Can't Drive, A Continuing Series

I find it fascinating that this:

...appears the same day that this article does:

Executing the "zipper" merge. Road work often reduces two lanes of traffic down to one. In these situations, American drivers typically merge into the right lane as soon as possible and form one long line. The main reason they do this is because people think it's bad behavior to stay in the left lane and merge late.

In fact, says Vanderbilt, traffic would be much better off if cars stayed in both lanes then merged at the very end, one by one, like a zipper. It's safer (fewer lane changes), it reduces back-ups (often up to 40 percent), and it quenches road rage (still on the rise).

The zipper merge is used in Germany but can't overcome its bad reputation in the United States. A trial in Minnesota failed because drivers wouldn't stay to the left. They were too nice.

Personally, I usually stay in the vanishing lane and drive right up to where it ends, then sit there and wait for someone to let me in.  Someone always does.  Besides, what other purpose would having that lane open to that point serve?  If one was only supposed to drive in a lane that wasn't going to end/exit, the entire highway would be one lane.

Learn to drive, people.

Review: Riddick

Cheap night, best of a bunch of bad offerings, but I think I still overpaid. The machinations to get him out of the end of the previous one were a bit contrived, the entire pre-station piece is more of an introduction or prelude. After that it settles down to Riddick-being-Riddick set in a world of implausibly horrific monsters. The previous one was better, although one starts to suspect that it had a lot of other moving parts around the core Riddick-being-Riddick and the end result was an accident.

In which we go to Moho.

Yeah, G+.  But what are you going to do?

Review: Star Trek - Into Darkness

This movie was easily the worst move I have seen this week. And that's considering that I watched The A-Team this week.