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For offtherock re return to the forum after extended absence...
I was happy to see your ID in the mix today, even though the venue you chose was not in the main stream.
We have enough members who seem to enjoy working in that Category that your participation should stir things up.
*** on the technical side ... I've made some progress with OpenFOAM, and ** just ** heard back from a manufacture of an educational robot. I assembled the robot and hit a snag because I do not have an Arduino. There are Arduino emulators that run on every major OS, and the vendor just sent me an update with instructions for how to activate one of them. I am looking forward to seeing this robot wake up and wave around under game controller control.
If you know anyone interested in CAD or 3D design, we have some projects in early stage for various habitat designs for Mars.
You can take your pick of a giant dome, a huge half-torus, or a wide range of little huts of various kinds, as well as the usual assortment of caves and tunnels.
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i was just understanding, how important it is to not source scripts in bash. as a general rule.
to run subshells as default.
its a tree.
the process tree.
and scripts, run, independently.
to not create a giant blob which is my current terminal shell script.
so obvious.. now.
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im more of an rpi guy myself. maybe can show this to this one guy i know. ill send him a message.
would be a dream to be able to run something physical via script.
i did teach, precisely that, when i was making this rpi course at this high school.
it never got beyond rudimentary phase, sadly.
we had several cars,
with an rpi,
and a camera.
and we could ssh into this rpi in the car.
and there we could access the camera,
plus we could programmatically control the car via python scripts.
so the students could use code to programmatically "see".
and make decisions regarding where to move the car, based on what it was seeing.
the students then programed the car to, for instance, drive towards a ball.
we had balls of fixed sizes and color, meaning distance measuring was super comfty.
just, pixel quantity in the screen of that color=> distance.
Last edited by offtherock (2026-01-25 08:22:27)
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For offtherock re #53
Thanks for describing that ** really ** interesting teleoperation educational setup!
That is surely going to be far more important in the global economy than it is today.
Jobs that currently require physical presence by an operator can be changed to teleoperation, and risks to humans at the job site will be reduced. Jobs like high voltage lineman can be given over to remote robots operating with remote supervision.
For our readers who may not have seen video, a helicopter takes a technician to the site where work is needed on a high voltage line. The operator extends a pole to the line to equalize voltage between the helicopter and the line, and then the technician performs the service. The helicopter presumably loses the charge after the service is done. That is ** one ** risky occupation for both the pilot and the lineman.
***
offtherock, the reason I opened this post is to ask if you know of a way to refresh a display on a Chromebook while it is "looking" at the forum. The issue we are addressing is that when we set up for a Google Meeting, our members open the connection to the meeting and arrive in the "Waiting Room"
The problem we are addressing is that kbd512 has applied for admission on more than one occasion, and I (acting as host) have not seen the application. We're trying to solve that problem. However, we have the forum as a backup. If a person is applying and not getting in, they can post a message in the forum in the Google Meeting topic.
My question for you is: Can we (somehow) cause the Chromebook to update the Active button on the browser display so I can see if there is a new message in the queue? A small robot could do that. In fact, a simple machine could do it, by pushing the Enter key periodically.
Are you aware of any devices that are available right from the Internet that can do that?
***
Your report on the teleoperated toy car reminds me that the Mars project is going to require teleoperation in many ways. From Earth, for example, we have the opportunity to refuel vessels from GW Johnson's refueling depot. If you are curious about that the forum contains many posts about it. In addition, RobertDyck stalled out on assembly of his Large Ship in LEO. We had many technical problems to solve, and teleportation of assembly tools was one of them.
At Mars, it is highly likely that teleportation will be useful for operators in orbit to direct machinery on the ground.
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Does this help?
https://chatgpt.com/share/69777047-9f80 … faa28d8824
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For offtherock re #55
That is ** awesome ** .... Thanks !!! I'm impressed by your success with ChatGPT !!! I've been working with ChatGPT for over a year, and it didn't occur to me to ask about this problem.
The small app that can be added to Chromebook looks like exactly what we need. Thanks! I'll pursue it.
The other options are worth knowing about!
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For Offtherock re interesting idea: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11478
I see why you chose the Single Stage to Orbit topic, but your choice is likely to cause confusion among some of our members.
This is an opportunity for you to use ChatGPT to answer the question you have posed.
Please ask ChatGPT to prepare it's responses in BBCode for our forum.
We provide guidelines for ChatGPT, Gemini and others to use. The topic contains the word "BBCode" and the guidelines are in the third post. Be prepared to do a bit of BBCode cleanup. I have found that all the AI systems seem to fall short in bookkeeping. For example, a list should have Left Bracket * Right Bracket at the beginning of each indented line, but the asterisk is often omitted. I fhave found it is easier to simply add the missing asterisk.
I understand you don't know the history of rocket development. No human being could know all of it. On the other hand, ChatGPT can and surely will find examples of folks trying some of your ideas.
To my knowledge, no one has attempted exactly what you proposed.
The reply from ChatGPT should be interesting for our readers and amusing to some.
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For offtherock re interesting catch-a-rocket design in "New Rocket" topic...
First, thanks for enlisting ChatGPT to create an impressive image showing a design that ** is ** truly innovative!
Please ask ChatGPT to give you some text to wrap the link to the image.\
No one (except me) would ** ever ** click on a link to a ChatGPT offering.
There are far too many risks on the open Internet.
Please add text that explains what the link will deliver.
Regarding your idea ... that is definitely worth considering, and it deserves wider exposure than just this little forum.
Popular Science is still publishing online. That idea might win a place in their offerings.
That could lead to someone raising funds to try it. The difficulties of navigating in 3D space under a falling object are (apparently) beyond human capability (the US Air Force being a notable exception). Your vision is of an intelligent capture platform able to maneuver in moving air to intersect a falling object with precision. It would help if the object could cooperate by steering itself.
Update: The US Air Force actually caught the descending film canister from ** above **. That was some superb flying!
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how do i contact popular science?
just send them an email?
im checking out this but not sure.
https://www.popsci.com/contact/
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For offtherock re Popular Science ...
Please share what you learn about the possibility of publishing something with this venerable magazine.
GW Johnson has been working on a variety of concepts for Mars transportation, and one or two of them might be of general interest.
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For offtherock re responses ....
You've asked a really ** good ** question in https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 93#p242593
The Admins are supposed to read everything, but in practice few of us have the time to actually do that.
I try to at least look at ever post to get a sense of what is going on in the forum, but I certainly don't have time to read everything by every member. On he other hand, I read every word that RobertDyck posts and the same for GW Johnson and Calliban and lately GW Muller.
The reason is straight forward... these authors seem (to me at least) to be advancing the mission of the forum as part of the Mars Society. We have members who use this forum as a private blog. Under the very tolerant leadership of SpaceNut (Senior Administrator) it is very rare for anyone to receive guidance to post differently. Thus we have a lot of content that is of interest only to the writer.
This forum has the potential to record and report readership. That feature has been on the to-do list since at least 2024, when we did a major update to the software. kbd512 and I simply ran out of steam, and then the Mars Society server crashed, and then ** we **crashed due to a hacker, and we never got bsck to the readership feature.
I think that if you want to build a following, you can invite persons who you think would be interested in your writing to join.
There is another possibility ... it is possible that current members are reading your posts, but finding they agree with it, and in the absence of a "Like" feature (which we started ti implement in 2024) they simply go on to the next post.
Finally, if any of our authors would like to build up an interactive subgroup, it would appear to me to make sense to pay attention to the other members who are posting.
The general theme of this forum seems to be we have talented folks who like to write about subjects that are of interest to them, and they are selective about how much time the spend on subjects that are not of interest.
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