2026-03-16 13:12:57 Was just using an LLM in a way that felt kind of useful, I wanted to know how long a trip to proxima centauri would take with a constant acceleration for 50% of trip and constant decceleration for remaining portion 2026-03-16 13:13:05 Could calculate an answer which looked right 2026-03-16 13:13:13 Using relativistic formulae 2026-03-16 13:13:35 And then asked about how much rocket fuel was necessary, answer was interesting 2026-03-16 13:13:57 Only antimatter / photons were capable of doing that trip per mass 2026-03-16 13:15:24 With 3G the trip took like under 2 years (in local frame of reference) but I guess something closer to 1G is healthier 2026-03-16 13:30:13 It's something I could calculate myself, but don't care enough to do so, so now I can find the answer anyway 2026-03-16 13:30:31 Even though I don't get the value from doing the work myself... but that's fine really because I only have limited time 2026-03-16 13:31:26 Just don't ask it if you should drive to the car wash that's two doors from you 2026-03-16 15:10:13 uh I think binary lambda calculus 2 + a memory palace is good for Turing complete mnemonics 2026-03-16 15:18:38 Hi lisbeths 2026-03-16 15:19:47 whats up 2026-03-16 15:20:03 Too much really 2026-03-16 15:20:07 What about you 2026-03-16 15:20:33 getting shit done on coffee 2026-03-16 15:21:01 check em https://github.com/memesmith67/lang67.awk/blob/main/lang67.sh 2026-03-16 15:21:12 comments are ai generated code is noot 2026-03-16 15:23:44 veltas: Even at 36, and particularly at 16, the relativistic calculation probably wasn't terribly necessary - did you check the non-relativistic answer against the relativistic one to see how close they were? Most of those relativistic effects come on pretty slowly at first, and then get much more dominant at the end of the curve. 2026-03-16 15:24:14 I think you'd NOTICE the difference at 36, but it wouldn't be huge. 2026-03-16 15:24:15 lisbeths: Yeah I hate writing comments too 2026-03-16 15:24:27 The difference is significant but not orders off 2026-03-16 15:24:42 KipIngram: ^ 2026-03-16 15:25:09 I think it was like 1.2 years vs 1.8 with relativistic calc 2026-03-16 15:25:24 For 36? 2026-03-16 15:25:27 So apparently it takes more time if you have to shrink your route 2026-03-16 15:27:21 An interesting side note on this, regarding the fuel consumption. The manner in which the fuel is used matters. In the fictional series The Expanse, they had this MacGuffin they called the Epstein Drive, and it "somehow" let them jam about the solar system using very very little fuel. I.e., the fuel really went a long way. It occurred to me that there is a plausible physical basis for that. 2026-03-16 15:27:40 Rocket propulsion is all about momentum conservation - you fling momentum out the back and you get that momentum going forward. 2026-03-16 15:29:00 If you could eject your propellant very close to the speed of light (irrespective of how fast your vehicle winds up going), then you get a relativistic momentum boost for that propellant. So depending on how close to light speed you can get it, you get a lot of forward momentum from an ever smaller amount of propellant. So a reasonable stock of propellant can last you a long time if you can 2026-03-16 15:29:03 shoot it out the back fast enough. 2026-03-16 15:29:33 They never laid that out in the series, but it was my head canon after thinking about it. It was really the only "real physics" explanation I could think of for what the Epstein Drive ACCOMPLISHED for them. 2026-03-16 15:30:16 They never went at relativistic speeds themselves - it took them weeks or months to buzz around the solar system - but they could run around for a LONG TIME on one load of propellant. 2026-03-16 15:31:03 And they did exactly what you said - acceleration halfway, deceleration the other half - so they had some amount of gravity the whole trip (they'd flip the vehicle around at the halfway point). 2026-03-16 15:31:52 There were also instances of using the drives as weapons - point the nozzle at a target and fire the engines. I don't know how realistic the results were, but in the story they were substantial and more or less impossible to combat. 2026-03-16 15:32:04 It was regarded as almost a war crime level thing to do that. 2026-03-16 15:44:32 Anyway, my point is that there's an additional variable that comes into play on the fuel consumption front. 2026-03-16 15:53:39 KipIngram: any effective rocket engine is also an effective weapon 2026-03-16 16:03:45 I don't know what 36 refers to 2026-03-16 16:20:02 I assumed you meant 36% of light speed as the max achieved speed there at the middle of the trip. 2026-03-16 16:20:18 That may be totally wrong - you just mentioned the numbers 36 and 16. 2026-03-16 16:58:43 Nope 2026-03-16 16:58:53 I didn't mention 36/16 2026-03-16 16:59:24 I said 3G and 1G i.e. 3 x earth gravity and 1 x earth gravity 2026-03-16 16:59:35 Well acceleration caused by grav rather 2026-03-16 17:41:03 veltas, Ive been finding AI useful for a few things lately as well. One was analysing my C code for a solid particulate level detector device I used to sell 2013 - 2019. It's 100% my own design, hardware and software and I know it intimately. Im amazed that the AI could determine so much from my source code, and it only made one small error which was because it didnt have the schematic, only the code. 2026-03-16 17:42:59 veltas, another use was giving me advice on how to restore my genealogy website from the backup I made of geneweb (about 10 years ago) when I shut the cloud server down 2026-03-16 17:43:55 finally I wanted a recipie for a meal I could make with some ingredients I have on hand, it seemed to do that just fine 2026-03-16 17:46:02 note: there is no 'vibe-coding' as I havent done that for about 6 months after I found that it killed my software creativity, weak as it is as Im a hardware guy 2026-03-16 21:34:10 Oh, I'm sorry - I misread. That makes a lot more sense, since acceleration was much more directly relevant; I had to stretch to find a way to make velocity pertinent at all. 2026-03-16 21:34:28 It was early and no doubt I was still bleary-eyed. 2026-03-16 21:34:45 6, G - somewhat similar structure. 2026-03-16 21:35:40 And actually I should have snapped to the fact that one of your time intervals was 2 years (onboard) meant you were CLEARLY getting a lot of relativistic effect, since Proxima is over four light years away. 2026-03-16 23:17:21 crc what is your current recommendation for a spartan set of primitives do you have a blog of it somewhere?