Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

Nailed it first time!! I was super excited too, cos it was so obvious that this so-called “simulation” was in reality a test to find pilots to save the ISS from some top secret calamity that we don’t know about.

Surely this was going to be like in “the last Starfighter”, except that Elon Musk would be the one knocking on my door, needing a new pilot.

Sadly it just said “congratulations” :(

View on HN

It probably increases your chances of being evacuated to space should moon blow up without warning and for no apparent reason.

I love this book! And if you didn't meant it, I much recommend Seveneves.

And to think I’ve already spent the last two months training to ration food, complain about the US president on the internet, not use my legs, and play video games.

I’m basically ready to lead the arklet swarm already.

As long as you don't empty your browser cookies.

In that case, I'm not sure I want to be evacuated.

Give them a minute - they're drafting an offer.

And when you counter, don't forget to mention how much a successful docking would save them.

For all we know this could've been an Enders-Game-esque "simulation" with actual astronauts' lives in our hands.

Well, now I feel bad for just stacking all my options into one single shot and trying to hammer my way into the docking station.

Hope these crazy caterpillar dreams stop at some point...

Nice, took me 3 tries.

Although I believe the real thing will be quite different. There will be coupling betweeen various controls. I think it's one of the goals to reduce that by centering thrusters around centres of mass, but there's a lot of moving pieces (humans) inside, and the fuel mass is always changing.

Yup. That's the kind of fun you can experience in Kerbal Space Program. If you just want to fly around teakettle, then you can get away with clever design that ensures the center of mass doesn't shift as you expend RCS fuel. But as soon as you're trying to do anything interesting - e.g. build a lander, or a craft that hauls other crafts around your station - you'll experience coupled controls in full.

I for one love building space stations in KSP, and I tend to have a compliment of "worker bees" - small RCS-only crafts meant to haul big pieces of space stations to their correct positions. So I often attach sideways to a fuel tank that's 2/3 empty and still weighs 10x as much as the worker bee. Docking that thing is an exercise in patience.

It is pretty cool that the actual interface is similar to this simulation (at least trivially so). Guess I'm qualified to be an astronaut now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com