Whenever I try to find new albums, I find myself skipping through the entire record fairly quickly in order to find out if they’re good enough to warrant a full listen. Sometimes I’ll find an album that sounds impressive to me for very simple reasons, e.g. the sound of the bass guitar or frequent use of a pleasant synth sound. In my case, Oneohtrix Point Never is the perfect example. I enjoy virtually every single kind of sound in his discography, even most of the random sound effects. That’s why I began wondering if I’d overrate his future albums if he kept using the same synths, effects, etc. without actually bringing anything new to the table.

Is there anything similar that will always make you more likely to enjoy an album regardless of many other aspects that contribute to its actual quality?

I love single-location films, and use them as inspiration for my own very-constrained filmmaking endeavors. This is a space where great screenwriters and filmmakers shine, coming up with creative solutions to keep things fresh and enticing with little to no variation in ambiance. Some examples:

• 12 Angry Men (1957)
• Straw Dogs (1971)
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
• El Angel Exterminador (Exterminating Angel, 1962)
• Phone Booth (2003)
• Coherence (2013)
• The Invitation (2015)

But I want more! Any ideas?

I should add that my motivation for this question is research for my next production, and because of practical concerns I'm only looking for single-location films in which the main location is small and simple enough that its sub-divisions cannot be considered a location of their own. For example: according to my criteria, a large house or apartment would be a single location, because its subdivisions (living room, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc) can be considered as logical parts of the main one. A shopping mall, a large condominium or an apartment complex would not be a single-location, because its many buildings and apartments are distinct and independent enough to function as locations of their own. When in doubt, try applying production pragmatics instead of pure logic. If something is logically not really another location, but would be just as hard to manage as another location (a whole new set design), it is a location. Thanks!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

You've been asked to submit a proposal for a space exploration mission of your own desire, to the New Frontiers spaceflight program. These missions have a cost cap of approximately $700 million to $1 billion, and have famously produced the following spacecraft:

• New Horizons, a flyby probe to Pluto.
• Juno, a polar orbiter of Jupiter.
• OSIRIS-REx, a sample return mission to a rocky asteroid.
• Dragonfly, a drone lander to Saturn's moon Titan.

These are medium-sized missions in both scope, and cost. You can't build the Mars 2020 Rover, or the James Webb Space Telescope. What do you send, and where? Things to consider:

Technology Readiness Level

Administrators are less likely to choose your mission if you choose to integrate risky or untested flight hardware, or novel concepts into the mission design. You're more likely to get selected with more conventional hardware.

Power Source

Your best bet is probably solar panels, maybe something commercial off the shelf like NG's Ultraflex panels? The downside is that these are only effective up to about Jupiter's orbit, and generate power according to the inverse square law. How much do these cost and weigh? How much energy do you generate?

If you go further out into the solar system than that, you'll need a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). There aren't many of those around, in fact, after Mars 2020 has taken its RTG, there's two left. What makes your mission deserving of an RTG? Is there enough power in the MMRTG to power your mission?

Propulsion

Does your mission need in-flight propulsion? Either for orbit insertion, landing, or maybe a long coast with Ion thrusters like Dawn? If the latter, you can get some pretty good Xenon-powered thrusters, like NEXT, which gives you 236mN of force from 7kW of input power (this rules out an RTG as your power source).

Don't need long-term burn capability? Maybe a COTS bipropellant engine like LEROS is your thing. Watch your weight though, bipropellants aren't efficient! Often more than half the mass of large spacecraft can be dedicated to just propulsion alone.

Instruments

Go crazy. What are you looking to research? Do you need a long range camera, a wide angle camera, something outside of the visible spectrum, a spectrometer, ground-penetrating radar? Do you have a mass-budget in mind?

Launch Vehicle

Every dollar you save on your launch vehicle, you get to add to your mission profile. Your best bet in terms of performance and cost is probably Falcon 9, which retails for $62-90 million, depending on the amount of assurance for success you need. Of course, if you can find a cheaper launch vehicle, feel free to pick it if it fits into your mission weight.

Objectives

What scientific questions do you want to answer? What are you interested in exploring the most?