Found my starting point. The registers can be built with a bunch of these D-type 3 state flip flops:
74ALVCH16821

PDF Datasheet https://assets.nexperia.com/documents/data-sheet/74ALVCH16821.pdf

According to my rough calculations, I need an O'Neil Cylinder built in Earth's Larange point 5, with a diameter no less than 1.14km and length no less than 7.61km, to support a renewable forest for firewood for a single a wood stove in a single orbit

Seasons like winter can be simulated with solar shading and moisture pumped through a central line of needle spray nozzles. The Coriolis effect on falling snow and rain would be remarkable

Maintaining this wouldn't require much processing power

Finding bucket seats good enough (and cheap enough) to withstand a launch into orbit and reentry is a challenge

This can probably be built in a weekend with a bit of spare stainless steel, some pipes, and maybe a gasket or two

How hard can it be

Borrowing some ideas

TIL This is the "noise" captured by Voyager 1 in the interstellar medium. I can't be entirely sure there are no space whales

Wonder how practical it would be to build something approaching the Voyager probes' durability in my living room

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/voyager/v1pws_interstellar_epo.html

There's technically no rule against using bamboo inside a spacecraft, aside from weight considerations (and possible sensitivity to temperature fluctuations)

The only hazard is possibly flammability, but that has countermeasures

A DIY space program needs lots of antennas

It's possible to build a fairly adequate parabolic dish (beam waveguide type so the base is stationary) with EMT electrical conduit. The dish just needs to support itself and EMT conduit is fairly easy to bend to the correct shape and is robust enough to survive outdoors even under heavy snow

I can totally build this with electrical conduit

There's a lot of "X has more processing power than the Apollo lander" and similar phrasing and that's usually not a good comparison

Spacecraft hardware is highly specialized and extremely capable in the narrow field in which they're used

From a biological perspective, it would be like comparing brain size and neuron count. Behavior is a lot more accurate indicator of intelligence and capability

I can't even guess how smart an octopus is, but we don't typically use their size to compare

And speaking of space hardware, being resilient is often more important than just capability and speed

In fact, most space-rated hardware is going to be slower than their consumer counterparts, but that's OK because the software is highly optimized to run on it

The trick to getting the DIY space program operational on that front is making sure the hardware is resilient and the programming optimized and actually fits the purpose more than increasing raw speed

Every space program needs a rover

This is by far one of the better animations of a rocker bogie that I've seen in a good while. It moves the middle suspension bar to the rear, which frees up the middle for actual storage, power etc...

Via:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49AJeDyDjmI

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker-bogie

This is by far the simplest practical breakdown of the rocker bogie mechanism that's easy to understand. It's one thing to read papers with angle calculations, pressure delta etc... but another to actually see just the moving components

I think this platform would work quite nicely for the simplest practical rover

https://wpirover.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/rocker-differencing-kinematic-suspension/

And then there's this guy who built an entire rocker bogie car for his kid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_6e71BJOzM

There's a lot of reading involved when it comes to starting your own space program

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?node=pt14.1.21

Personal hygiene is important under the DIY space program. Of course, a spinning habitat would make things a lot simpler, but in the meantime, we'll probably go with the no-rinse shampoo too

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/jp76rj/washing_hairs_in_space/

I was looking at the engine detail of the Redstone rocket engine, the heart of the PGM-11 missile. It occurs to me that this particular geometry lends itself quite well to the expander cycle

This particular engine had a turbopump powered by decomposed high-test peroxide

In theory, H2O2 is a pretty neat way to power a turbopump (also used by Copenhagen Suborbitals is using it for their engines) and as a monopropellant for RCS thrusters, but it's kind of a pain to handle and store safely

Fiber optic cables don't seem to fare well without special shielding and different methods of construction in a high radiation environment. While they're resistant to transient EM spikes, they do tend to break down and attenuate more of the laser light over longer distances

This is a bit of a dilemma. Either go with copper lines for signaling and sensors and risk spikes and have them acting as antennas in a EM field, or go with fiber. Alternatively, I may have to make my own

Also, I may have accidentally landed myself on some kind of list by searching for "radiation sources" too many times

I'm both heartened and terrified that some of you are genuinely interested in this backwater space program

Please be patient about the first several (dozen?) explosions

Speaking of explosions...

The number of accidents in rocketry is too damn high!

Some of that is the inherent danger of the fuel + oxidizer and the complicated plumbing involved. I have neither the intelligence or patience to grasp all of that mess so if I build a rocket, it will probably use the expander cycle

The plumbing is *far* less complex with fewer moving parts. Which means fewer places for things to go wrong and fewer areas of concern to monitor (less work for the computer)

I know the new hotness is Methane right now, but I'd go with Dimethyl Ether as the fuel instead. It's very cheap and can be made from biofuel (possibly on Mars via a different process as well)

As the oxidizer, I'd use Nitrous Oxide. Laughing gas, basically. It's also very cheap and made by the millions of tons. Best of all, it can be decomposed into a very hot gas at 577 C

Dimethyl Ether auto ignites at only 350 C so there's the startup process solved. No need for pyros, sparks, etc...

No nonsense that can fail explosively. Just a tiny electric pump to get the N2O going over the catalyst, which is more than hot enough to ignite the mixture

Also, the expander cycle limits the maximum size of an engine, which means you have to build more smaller ones anyway. While that's extra work, you get spares if one or two shutdown mid-flight

And expanders don't have complicated turbopumps which need high temp/high speed moving parts and seals so they're cheaper to build

Hmm...

An expander cycle rocket engine with a radiation resistant computer and sensors will probably cost more than the $2.41 I found in my couch this morning

I'm gonna need to engineer this to within an inch of its life

Going with Dimethyl Ether and Nitrous Oxide as fuel and oxidizer also because they can be kept liquid at similar temps

-141 C To −24 C for Dimethyl Ether and −90.86 C to −88.48 C for Nitrous Oxide. Which means, they can share a bulkhead in the tanks

This significantly cuts complexity and reduces weight

Also, both have enough expansion at warmer temperatures that I can use "Autogenous pressurization". Same as SpaceX's Starship (though mine will probably be made of glue and aluminum foil)

Hypgergolic propellant as praxis

ProTip: The oils on your skin can be just as bad as battery acid depending on the material you're touching. Especially if you can't clean it ever again and will remain in operation for years or decades

Also, welding gloves are better than oven mitts for everything you'd need ovens mitts

Technically, there's no rule that you can't use a turbo charger used for a typical small block V8 in a rocket engine as a turbocharger (with a few modifications)

As long as it doesn't blow up immediately, it should work

This plan is flawless and brilliant

My kitchen is too small to build a rocket engine :(

Apparently a turbocharger from a V8 isn't actually designed to funnel liquid propellant at -89 C at turbopump tolerance. Or survive reentry down from orbital speeds (because reusable rockets or GTFO)

My plan to use a rice cooker to make homemade high-temp composites is probably gonna have issues too

I hope lockdowns lift a bit so I can go trash diving. I'm sure someone's thrown out an orbital grade turbopump somewhere

ProTop: Always separate utensils used in your rocketry experiments separate from your food cooking stuff

Graphite tastes terrible and epoxy is toxic

I think I'll also be using stainless steel for my rockets so there's basically no difference between me and SpaceX

Oh wow. Titanium is kinda expensive. Like much more than I thought it was. Well, it's probably OK to use plain ol' steel as long as it doesn't reach softening/melting temperatures

2 girls 1 cup

Although there are significant drawbacks with a multi-nozzle rocket engine design, I think for small scale development, the benefits outweigh them. Biggest benefit being combustion stability, which is greater in smaller combustion chambers (see Apollo's F1 issues). The biggest drawback is the additional manufacturer of nozzles and chambers, but once you get the design finalized, they're relatively straightforward to do repeatedly

So far, I've been unsuccessful in finding an appropriate spacesuit design that I can make with my own sewing machine and materials from the craft store. Probably will have to settle for a pressure suit made of heat resistant material for now, until I get better at it

I'd like to investigate non-pressurized suits, particularly compression types which use "lines of non-extension". The materials will still be expensive, but at least this will be old research

Today in gloriously-impractical-yet-want, here's an actual core memory unit including the Gerber files for the circuit board and schematic

http://mikesmods.com/mm-wp/?p=556

Spacecraft don't use these anymore since there are better options, but part of me feels like there's still some value in here

I also wonder if it's feasible to have core memory backed SRAM

So the system reads/writes to SRAM in normal use, as a fast buffer, while it slowly updates the core memory

Might just be crazy enough to work