wrog

Hyperbolic Geometry, continued from part 1, in which we learned about critical distances and critical angles.

So this comes up in Relativity, it having been noted that, in a space-time diagram, velocities are essentially slopes and, as such, don't add/subtract the way you'd think, that the Right Thing with velocities in one dimension is to project them onto the 1…

Special Relativity continued from part 5, in which we learned about translating coordinates, the unit-later hyperbola, and velocity angles Or you can start from Part 1 Today's topic is constant acceleration, which, in Special Relativity, is much weirder t…

My Special Relativity series continued from part 4.

I of course screwed up and left out the explanation of Lorentz Contraction from the obvious place in Part 3 where I should have talked about it.

My explanation of Special Relativity, trying to keep it geometric, continued from part 3 wherein I describe the Interval between two events, a kind of "spacetime measurement" that everyone agrees on and that, depending on the trajectory between the events,

My explanation of Special Relativity, trying to keep it almost completely geometric, continued from part 2 wherein I describe what the Moving People spacetime grid looks like when mapped out by the Stationary People, how all we have left to do is figure o…

My revamped explanation of Special Relativity, trying to keep it completely geometric and not invoking Walls of Math, continued from here where I have now completely beaten to death the concept of "Stationary" and it's time to Meet the Moving People Actua…

(yeah, ok, I don't actually know Latin) So, here's another go at explaining Special Relativity.

(...so, if I post this now link so that it is nearer the top of the page, will hachyderm.io light up the dreamwidth entry on my profile the way it's supposed to?)

(this is Part 5; Part 1 through Part 4 contain possibly-necessary background, but maybe not) It is time to start putting the pieces together.

(why I should not be allowed to write textbooks, part 342) This is mainly because I wanted to have all of the formulas in one place.

a.k.a.

(this is Part 3, more background for critiquing The Expanse; here are Part 2 and Part 1) Let's suppose we have Best Possible Rocket, as much free fuel/reaction-mass/whatever as we want, … and we just want to get there as fast as possible?

(This is "Deconstructing The Expanse, Part 2", continued from Part 1, here.)

(other titles:) How to do Solar-System-Travelog SF and Not Get It Completely Wrong How Magical is The Expanse's "Epstein Drive" Anyway?

(…a curious observation about relativistic light-sails, … followed by a teentsy bit of obligatory, if undeserved, "Stargate: Universe" bashing.)

It seems we can do shit like a⁢x2 + b⁢x + c and maybe also -b± b2 - 4⁢a⁢c2⁢a .

ok, so I'm on Mastodon (as @wrog@mastodon.murkworks.net, for now).

I keep thinking I should put up a pinned post with pointers to my various "Space" posts and other things which people keep trying to find (or, rather, which I keep pointing people to when I get tired of explaining stuff in other forums) And then I discover

promoting this out of my FailBook comments just because So, there's this diagram which has been making the rounds now that the James Webb Telescope has been launched.

goddammit. … we can have a station at L2 behind Mercury and still have a wide variety of orbits available.

(you'll want to read about solar power satellites first, where we cover all of the sensible stuff) On Dyson Spheres and the other ridiculous things truly advanced civilizations will be doing with all of their free time I should note that the scenario that…

After my previous forays into the question of How to do Solar Power Satellites Right, here and here, there seem to yet more ways to simplify the math and get a better sense of the design space.

(continued from here) So, now what?

(as I was saying in my tech wish list,) To put some actual numbers on this, if we have the satellites grazing the sun (1 million km out) So, this was all based on this theory that I had that there'd be a point to putting solar power satellites in close to…