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I'd like to experience micro-gravity (for more than the fractions of seconds that one feels when one jumps), but otherwise the current state of the art is much too primitive.
If we had drives that could take us around the Solar System in a few days, I'd love to see Jupiter and Saturn close up. If we had faster-than--light warp drives, there are astronomical sights I'd love to see with the naked eye.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: I'd like to experience micro-gravity (for more than the fractions of seconds that one feels when one jumps)
When I was in training to be an airline pilot, I discovered microgravity. I'd climb to an altitude of 13,000 ft AGL. Then, I'd push the yoke forward and put the plane into a dive. It took some practice to get it right. Sometimes I would dive too steeply and everything in the cockpit would fly up and stick to the ceiling. Other times, my dive wouldn't be enough to achieve a state of microgravity. Once you go it right, though? It's really cool! I've never actually timed it, but I estimate that I've experienced microgravity for about up to 25 seconds or so at a time. It's just like what you see on videos of astronauts playing with things in low earth orbit. I remember watching my car keys float up into the air. They'd float in one spot and rotate slowly just like it would be in orbit. Then, you'd eventually have to pull out of the dive, and everything that was floating falls to the floor. It makes a huge mess when that happens. There were some heavy items you'd have to bring along while flying. The FAA Regulations book was the size of a dictionary. I was fortunate enough to avoid it hitting me while pulling out of a dive. I'd always lose my pen, which was annoying. Microgravity is fun, but if you experience enough of it, I've found that it loses its luster. As long as there was the novelty aspect to it, it was a lot of fun. Either way, I'm still not fond of being within a mile of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen. That's some f***ed up s***.
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There's also NASA's "vomit comet". AIUI, they place the plane in a climb, turn off the engines, and get about 10 minutes of microgravity before they have to turn the engines on again. It doesn't sound very safe, but compared to sitting on top of hundreds of thousands of litres of burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen... 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: about 10 minutes of microgravity
Oh hell no.
ChatGPT says 20-25 seconds.
Space says 25 seconds ("How it works" section, near the bottom).
Live Science also says 20-25 seconds.
Even Wikipedia says 25 seconds.
Any plane with its engines stopped won't experience 10 minutes of freefall, no matter what altitude it reaches. Gliding, sure, but you won't reach zero-G while doing that.
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I sit corrected. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: I sit corrected. 
You mean, you float in mid-air corrected?
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Maybe when the technology improves, Aircraft still use Bird technology, Rockets use Balloon technology.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: If we had drives that could take us around the Solar System in a few days, I'd love to see Jupiter and Saturn close up. If we had faster-than--light warp drives, there are astronomical sights I'd love to see with the naked eye.
If we could travel across the solar system in days, that would definitely be more than enough incentive for me to travel into to space. This is why I find special relativity to be depressing. Then, we have quantum mechanics. If any two subatomic particles are in a state of entanglement, then a change in the quantum state of one particle immediately changes the quantum state of the other, regardless of what the distance is between the two subatomic particles. From what I understand, everything without mass only travels at the speed of light. If something has mass, it can only travel a tiny fraction of light speed. What would happen if we were to "turn-off" mass at the quantum level? If that could be done, then travel at the speed of light could be a real possibility. In terms of how acceleration dilates/contracts time? I haven't come up with any guesses. The more acceleration an object has in relation to another, the greater the difference in the speed of time becomes. If I could travel across the solar system in a matter of days, the length of time that elapses back on Earth in relation to the rate of time I experience would be greatly accelerated. That means my loved ones back on Earth would grow old and die in a couple of months. I know that's depressing, but I take solace in the fact that I have no understanding and knowledge about how the universe actually works. I hope someday that we'll be able to travel at speeds greater than the speed of light while somehow eliminating time dilation/contraction. Who knows what's possible, right?
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I already am in space.
But, seriously, I have trouble on Space Mountain these days.
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lots of folks were Spaced Out back in the 60's.
I would probably not fly in a craft made up of thousands of parts purchased via low bid.
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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f*ck yeah.
real space, not just low orbit stunts.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Nah, why would I, I don't know anyone there.
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Yes, and I don't even mind that the current technology isn't sofa-ready.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I would. In the future it may be no big deal, but in our lifetimes not many people do. Would be a joy to experience something so rare.
Jeremy Falcon
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The whole idea seems very cool.
Zero grav.
Seeing the earth from above.
Seeing the universe from our atmosphere.
The science of it.
Call me a whimp, but the idea of "using the bathroom" in zero gravity scares me off the idea.
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For a while, I would have wanted to go to Mars, but not anymore. There are the dangers - radiation, collisions with micro thingies, the risk of missing the target or supply vessels missing it, and so on. But the main problem for me probably would be spending the eight month journey going there, with 3 other people in a very small capsule. Ouch! And according to one of the moon landers, there tends to be a certain smell after a while.
That being said, I have asked my wife it she would allow me to go, and she said yes.
Should humans go to Mars at all? I don't think so, but I certainly hope we do. Before I figuratively leave Earth ( close to 70 now).
pibbuR who still would like to go to the moon. To for a short while be as far from Norway as possible.
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I'd love to go to space for a visit. And by space I don't mean on the BO phallic rocket. I mean to orbit or further.
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My brother has worked on and off (mostly on) as a NASA contractor: Think treadmills in SPACE!! and a really cool four wheel-steering concept car. He always says space is actively trying to kill you. There are so many random and completely unpredictable ways to die it is ridiculous.
To people who are very excited about colonizing Mars, I say go find the most extremely inhospitable hellhole on the face of the earth, somewhere like the middle of the Sahara or Afghanistan or Death Valley, bring minimal equipment and provisions with you, leave your sat-phone at home because no one is coming to help you, and you'll still be a thousand times better off than you would be on Mars.
Having said all of that I would be happy to do a sub orbital flight on one of those very high flying aircraft. And I would absolutely do the Red Bull parachute jump from space. That would be beyond amazing.
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I have enough space already (between my ears).
I wouldn’t know what to do with more.
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Warning: C++ rant
So I'm making an image base class for things like jpgs, pngs and svgs (those are my 3 derivations)
JPGs use CMYK888 color model, SVGs use RGBA8888, and PNGs vary but often RGBA8888
The way my library works is that it supports different color models at arbitrary bit depths, but the model is part of the type signature.
like rgba_pixel<32> vs cmyk_pixel<32>
This creates problems for me trying to produce a generalized draw callback for images because the source format and color model can vary.
Now you might think "why not abstract your pixel with a common interface?". These pixels are a binary footprint, and are the nearest available word size to the actual size of a pixel in memory, for very good reason. Also they compile to integer literals a lot of time (as long as it's a fixed color at compile time). If I start hanging a vtable off of it all that changes.
One thing I could do is accept a common color format for every image. Just force it to be rgba_pixel<32> (RGBA8888) and call it good enough, but that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Another thing I can do is templatize everything to accept a pixel type but that just kicks the can down the road, and worse, causes template poisoning/template creep.
Further complicating matters is the fact that images produce their data in different ways. JPGs yield 8x8 regions until the entire space is filled. PNGs give you sold colored rectangles of various sizes (as small as 1x1) to draw. BMPs give you an entire horizontal line at a time, bottom to top, and SVGs plot one pixel at a time.
I have figured out how to abstract that, but not in a way that works efficiently with every format, so I need to poke around more, especially with the SVG code to see if I can get it to produce small bitmap regions. Probably it will speed things up as well.
I occasionally find myself in a position where I wished C++ was more expressive, but in this case, while I wish that, what I want I want is probably impossible. I want a common binary interface for something that is not generalized. Ain't no language feature gonna change that. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Just throwing this out there…
so the high level apis don’t show the lower type specs, but all take a generic callback pointer.
The callback must match the lower type requirements?
Compiler won’t be able to help here, but if your bitmaps show up incorrectly, they should catch that pretty fast in testing.
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The stack frame would be different for different signatures. I'd have to make a sig that took something very general like void* for the bitmap data - not out of the question.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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No doubt your work is of great consequence and significant. I the other day raised my arms in victory merely having discovered how in C++ to templatize function calls per tuple size.
"I must have had lessons." - Reverend Jim Ignatowski / Christopher Lloyd
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More of consequence to me than anything. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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