@CBredlow Go ahead and ask now, clock on rep cap has rolled, and I am ready to answer. :)

Decided to add the Sun in.

That helps, also, thanks for making mars round. :)

Yeah, that was bothering me... I found a better image.

Maybe I'll remove the lines and axis labels, it really isn't that important...

Hmmm...

When the tracks are crossing they are less clear. I suppose I could label them in other places, however. Hmmm...

I think that is an improvement.

I might play with the colors some, but not tonight...

I just found out that Ciolkovskij isn't the only person who's considered the father of rockets. Robert H. Goddard, who I'd never heard about, is also called as such. Mind that they were both active before the war, so it's not just the case of an invention getting independently discovered on the two sides of the Iron Curtain because of lack of communication.

@b_jonas Goddard is the only one of those two I had heard of for many years. And then heard of Tsiolkovsky (spelling in UK) about 15 years later

@b_jonas then there was also Oberth and Esnault-Pelterie

So that group of 4 is generally considered the "fathers" of rockets

@RoryAlsop I'm surprised there's been no mention of Wernher Von Braun, he came up in a book I'm reading as the "Father of Rockets" as well as simply googling the term.

@Edlothiad Oh yeah - he should definitely be on that list too

Crossed the 100K views in a single day threshold...

Just yesterday?

@PearsonArtPhoto Are we ever going to graduate?

@geoffc Sorry, that was my site.

Space.SE is doing really well too:-)

Well nyah nyah then. Context switch!

Same question though. :)

I'm not allowed to share exact numbers, but I will say we are doing really well. We have actually maintained a high Q/A rate for most of the last week, not just in the two key days.

If we keep up the question rate, we no doubt will be graduating soon.

@PearsonArtPhoto Any chance you could put a side view of the orbits on your site, so that people can see how inclined they are?

@called2voyage ooh - that's a nice idea. Hopefully it's not a huge amount of effort, @PearsonArtPhoto

@called2voyage Will save it for the 3d view feature I am going to start working on, any day now.

bgr.com/2018/02/13/spacex-tesla-roadster-mars-tracker

reddit.com/r/space/comments/7xh39j/comment/du8nxvi

@PearsonArtPhoto Yep, came up in my feed! Congratulations, you're reddit famous!

@PearsonArtPhoto wow - that guy got 9000 upvotes for posting that link!

@PearsonArtPhoto soooo jealous :D

by the way... supposing we were to graduate. If i recall correctly, the cut-off line for swag is members with at least 10,000 points. Is that right?

AlanSE is just south of that line. I'm inclined to go check if there are answers of his i haven't voted for, because he deserves some swag. :)

It is usually top number of users.

5 to 7 pages, something like that.

Oh? Gee, good. I had thought it was much less generous. :)

I guess i was thinking of the privileges. The standard changes, i believe, so that only users above 10,000 have full privileges, instead of 4,000.

I got a package from Graphic Design, and I'm not nearly that high there.

Triple publicist badge:-)

I got the Bicycles one only so far. Still have the retractable Sharpie and like it quite a bit.

So I need to spam more popular questions in order to get something cool from this site?

I think for the sites I have been on through graduation it's been the first 2 pages

@geoffc I got the Security, Music and Bicycles graduation packages = which were all nice

@CBredlow Or beg for votes. Only 5/day per person, else they roll them back.

My strategy for questions here is the same as the ones for sci-fi and fantasy: random questions that come into my head during my workout/commute

I got SFF and Graphic Design. There are a few others that I no doubt will get, if/when they ever graduate.

@CBredlow I had already upvoted most of your stuff... Added my contribuution.

@CBredlow I like the way folks tried to keep your towel answer at 42 :-)

silly, but appropriate

@RoryAlsop yeah, that was pretty funny

i may regret not doing more asking and answering over the past week.... 52 votes for saying Starman is wearing a seatbelt...

@kimholder It's daft what gets the big votes, really

80 for saying he isn't a person...

my top voted stuff SE-wide is my throwaway stuff

My well thought out posts get a tiny fraction of that

i'm alright with that common touch stuff. i just am not getting in on the votes party.

my highest question came when I was loopy during a dentist appointment

i underestimated this spree quite a bit.

@Edlothiad not that it wasn't a fun question - just, you know - wow, votes

has anyone posted about change in traffic since last week?

I'm kind of curious about how much of a spike it was

It was a really big spike.

@kimholder And due to rep capping I think I got 215 points out of those 80 votes.

The peak was 3x bigger in views then any other day, and the second highest day for questions ever.

@geoffc i'm afraid i can see the justice there. But you will get the great answer gold badge, and that is a very nice badge.

I'm just happy for my 3 new shiny golden badges today:-) Thanks Reddit!

XP

it was a pretty sharp idea, making that site...

I'm just glad I managed to make it work.

And even better that NASA is providing the data. I did a reasonable first guess at it, but...

Thanks to Reddit I've now hit at least 200K views for the day, probably more.

@kimholder That is my highest voted answer so far. As Rory noted, kind of a crappy Q/Answer and yet, my number 1. TANJ!

My highest is still the steal Apollo rover.

@PearsonArtPhoto holy crap...

@PearsonArtPhoto That at least is a good q/A. Mine is really stupid.

@kimholder No kidding... I'm probably going to top out the day at 300K or more.

And you still don't find my site anywhere near the top listings if you google "Where is Starman?"

Ironically there is a news article that mentions the site that comes up first, but it's a pretty low quality site.

I might hit the 1 million total views this week...

My highest answer is still that "Why do we launch from Florida, not Texas?" one.

It was super easy to answer, and I never expected it to be my top.

Though now the going over/under the asteroid belt answer is my second.

My personal favorite answer of mine is the one I did on the animals that have been to the ISS.

my highest is why the apollo lander isn't fake. it'll probably get a gold badge one day.

Curious if there is a query to show us who did the best from the Falcon Heavy bump? Upvotes, badges, etc?

Or how well we all did? :)

@kimholder Congrats, I see you passed LocalFluff in rep.

Pearson is winning of course, cannot easily top 3 gold badges in short order.

@called2voyage i would say that is mostly because he has been pretty quiet lately, while i have had an unusual bump in activity

@kimholder True

frankly, mostly because the work i have to do coming up is complicated, and i don't know how to do it, and i am lethargic and sick post-vacation

Just look at the last week's reputation league.

What is Rep league?

space.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&filter=week

oh i see.

though, because of the large amount of rep-capping, you can't tell how much activity was behind that

but it's very interesting to see the number of new or low-activity users on that page

yep

momentum

MichaelK got a big boost from that

oh i see.

@geoffc not only that, 3 Promoter badges. 3! whereisroadster.com might actually be a measurable factor in maintaining our activity level high enough for graduation.

@kimholder Yep, whereisroadster.com actually shows up in analytics.

@kimholder That monster! Well done!

I wonder what it will look like tomorrow...

If I received 3 promoter badges, it means I sent at least 3K people here...

and that has mostly been over the last 2 or 3 days, right?

we're currently getting double our visits that we had pre-FH, but that still amounts to up to 10% of our total.

Mostly today really.

well, there you go. then that could be like 25%, and it could last for a while.

Will see.

and you could rack up a ridiculous number of gold badges...

it wouldn't surprise me. wait til google catches up. their algorithms probably downplay one-page sites that just came to be, and that is probably wise in most cases.

ok - yours isn't one page, but you know what i mean

they will list it near the top in due course or my faith will be totally shaken

then watch what happens

Only 3, that's how many pages I linked to from my site.

Hey, I gained the idea for the site and a lot of the early promotion from here, it's only fair I return the favor.

cool.

ok, now my only nitpicks are - one - the hand-drawn-circle feel ;P

Will put in the locations soon, but need graphics.

Yeah, it does kind of feel like that. I don't know what I can do to improve it...

The sampling is one per day, so even Mercury has 87 points. That should be enough for a circle...

I'm going to have to go to a different plotting library I think... Sigh.

where does it pull that from? is that horizons?

that determines what those circles look like?

I could do a smaller sampling size if I wanted to. Might do it to try it.

Mars should have plenty, however.

I think it is the lack of antialiasing.

@kimholder I have said many times before and will say many times again. The HNQ is stupid. I’m not saying the people there are stupid, but that they’re most often the people with basic interest in the pages they’re opening. So the more basic the question the better they’ll do.

Which is the plotting library.

My first answer gold badge on SFF was a rather simple question that skyrocketed, at the same time I’ve done an analysis of the 4 versions of Tolkien’s the Hobbit, stretching way back to the original 1938 plot openings (14 years before it was published) on some matter or another and only gotten ~10 upvotes (on a very generous site)

Due to my ignorance with regards to most of the questions here (not being as knowledgeable as you guys, yet or ever), I have to prey on the google-able questions! (Or thenones about seatbelts that we’d already discussed in here!!

these things are all true.

@PearsonArtPhoto two - i really think that everything except the legend should be on black.

i don't know if i've ever clicked on an question in the HNQ

@kimholder I definitely enjoy reading things from different sites, although for most I don't have an account

@kimholder I don't disagree. I need to figure out how to do that.

I haven't been on SFF much for a long time...