Diche Bach

I re-installed KSP today. Fired it up to insure it worked. Went to CurseForge. Downloaded Mechjeb; watched a video to remind me how mods in this game work. Extracted the MJ archive and plopped into the folder. Fired up KSP. Got an error about MJ not being properly installed. Realized it was the dreaded double-packaged problem that so often happens with 7zip. Grabbed the inner directory and moved it outside the outer directory, deleted the outer and fired up KSP again to success. Then, my modaholism kicked in and I began to download every mod I recognized and loved (from my previous install on a version long, long ago, on a hard drive, far, far away) . . . I think I got about 3 pages deep before I realized I was creating an enormous backlog of installing for myself and restrained my urge to download still more mods. I closed the window and made a mental note to myself to install and debug those dozen or so mods I had downloaded "when I get the time."

For whom? Well, for me and people with tastes like mine, so perhaps several tens of millions of would-be consumers I suppose. Consider how many copies games like Civilization sell; that seems like a fair index of "for whom." How "much better?" Well, there is no accounting for tastes, but I think most developers would agree that selling 1 million copies > 100,000! And again: consider how many copies of games like Civilization sell. Rimworld is another point to consider; slightly different set of factors but also instructive. What stops ME from building a campaign generator? Well for one thing, I've got other things I need to work on which promise more for me personally. But for another, I don't have access to his source code nor permission to gain access to it or use it. I suppose if I did have access to his source code, and assuming it is a language I'm not unfamiliar with (I think it is C++ so that would fly for me!) . . . well, I suppose it would kinda fun to take a stab at building him a campaign generator, or at least to write up a framework for how economics and logistics would. I wouldn't even really want any recompense other than the recognition of any successful outcome, and of course constrained by a proper NDA. That said: in the little bit of time I spent on their forums, I didn't get the impression the fellow felt comfortable bringing in more helper developers and I cannot blame him. Share your source code with someone and you just might be giving away your livelihood.

Life itself is, in some sense, a defiance of "physics and chemistry." What happens to a dead body? It decays. So why are none of us decaying yet? Because we are alive. Senescence itself is an adaptation, and it does not reflect, as some of you seem to think a simple manifestation of 'wear-and-tear' or 'expenditure of supplies.' It does involve trade-offs in somatic versus reproductive effort and various other forms of life-history allocation, and to be sure all of those relations (as well as the very existence of life itself) adhere strictly to the natural constraints of reality which are so coarsely described in our "natural sciences." I believe it was in the Blind Watchmaker or else the Selfish Gene that Richard Dawkins planted these notions in my head.

I think your definition of "hard sci fi" differs from the norm Sounds very nice, but I think you've actually evaded the question. I asked why senescence rates in eukaryotes vary between very brief time intervals and relatively much longer ones. You can refer to physics all you want, and it is undoubtedly true that whatever ultimate explanation to such a question is reached will be explicable in terms of physics. But you are NOT going to be able to arrive at that explanation with pure physics. You need the more inclusive level of scientific inquiry, commonly called biology, to get to your explanation. Biology explains how organisms can--by degrees and temporarily--defy physics is my point. Frogs shouldn't be able to go dormant for a whole winter in the mud under a lake, with their entire body temperature dropping very close to the freezing point of water, and some of their peripheral limbs actually freezing and survive: but they do. You cannot tell me why senesecence rates vary because this is a big question in biology which has yet to be fully explored, and physicists are in no position to answer it either.

That is a good find, I appreciate it. It makes the point I was attempting to argue, i.e., that hibernation, stasis or something along those lines is a plausible means for humans to undertake interstellar travel. Not yet a proven technology, and perhaps never actually achievable, but plausible, unlike say FTL which is implausible. That in my opinion is the key distinction between hard and soft science fiction; your distinction apparently being 'if it doesn't already exist then it is soft science fiction, if it already exists, but only in very limited form then it counts as hard science fiction'.

Lotta "ifs" but I suppose there is some slim chance Proxima isn't a scorched, airless rock. I suppose the whole color scheme for flora would be totally different given Proxima is shifted more to the infrared end of the spectrum? Seem to recall someone saying that an analog of chlorphyll in that context would need to be more toward the black end of the spectrum in order to be optimized the way our green chlorphyll is optimized for Sol.

Why then do senescence rates in eukaryotes vary between mere weeks and literal centuries? The whole point of biology is to temporarily defy entropy. It may well be true that completely forgoing it is impossible, but no one has suggested that have they? Point is: sound biology doesn't defy physics or chemistry, but physics and chemistry cannot fully explain biology. The fact a bristlecone pine ages so much more slowly than a frog or a house cat can be reduced down to the level of chemistry and physics and what we would find at that level is: biological system "working around" the rules of the universe which are coarsely represented by human conceptions like "laws." It seems to me that very few of our "laws" are truly law like given the necessity of x-variables like dark matter and dark energy.

Well, apparently it MIGHT have that 3/2 orbital synchrony and if it had a very high saline content oceans, then that combined with the 3/2 (264 Earth-hour long "day" and same length "night" and no appreciable seasons . . . don't think an axial tilt is viable with the 3/2?) means that some modeling suggests it could be "tropical" along the equator! ADDIT: also! Gotta have a VERY good magnetosphere which has been functioning reliably for its whole ~4 billion year lifetime protecting the planet from Proxima's radioactive tantrums!

Agree. But you don't need to freeze a body to put a body in stasis! Medicine and physics say YES to putting people into various types of stasis routinely.

I've been studying the broad interdisciplinary area of human biopsychology since the late 1970s. I've been studying computer science since early 2016. In my opinion, we are CENTURIES from having even the most basic necessary understandings of human psyches to be able to "upload" people. We are in contrast, already placing people (routinely) into a variety of altered states of metabolism and consciousness, as well as restoring normal states to people who have for reasons of disease or trauma been plunged into degenerative states (e.g., "death"). The problems of regulating metabolic state so as to induce a kind of "stasis" are already being solved, though still in elementary degrees. These problems have immediate real world benefits with real economic value (e.g., saving people from disease and trauma) and short of ethical constraints, budgetary limitations are always going to be minimal. The central problems are ones with molecular biology which are readily approached through both in vitro studies and in vivo nonhuman studies and where there will always be populations of near-death humans with whom to gain "last-ditch" advances in knowledge. As such, we may only be decades from having sufficient technology to gain functional benefits from placing humans into prolonged metabolic stasis (aka, "cyro-stasis") for various purposes. Have I attacked YOU? Could you point out to me where I have engaged in an ad hominem against YOU? From my standpoint, I have reacted to your egregiously rude, dismissive, and frankly ill-informed and pedantic commentary, which, as I said, is perhaps a consequence of English not being your native language?

You should be respectful and restrained in your claims to only those you actually have reasonable knowledge basis to make, if you do not want the quality and veracity of your arguments to undergo attacks. You do not know what you are talking about and you are not okay with just admitting that and saying "Ah my bad. I didn't know about that."

If you are not looking for a fight then why did you start one? Perhaps the fact English is not your first language is what accounts for your rudeness and lack of comprehension? Same with every technology that has ever gone from imagined to real . . . your efforts to stand firm with whatever position you've taken have the appearance of diminishing good will and increasing defensiveness from my standpoint. . . . what does this even mean? Are you suggesting to me that you are fully versed in the sciences of senescence and caloric restriction, else that you read that entire article in the time lapse between my pointing it out to you and you responding? ADDIT: no need to read the whole thing, nor to spend 20 years of your life reading such things broadly, just read this: and now tell me again about how we understand "perfectly" that induced low-metabolic or "hibernation" states will have no effect on aging and subjects will suffer degeneration all the same.

You are aware of what happens to frogs, bats, etc. when they hibernate? Your level of knowledge of biology is sufficient for you to conclude that those processes cannot be modeled for application in humans? LOL, slowing aging is no problemo! The fact that you obviously have zero knowledge of this well-established empirical generalization (which has existed for decades) and yet seem to feel that you are sufficiently well-informed to dismiss science fiction which would leverage these sorts of natural phenomena is what I find remarkable. Like I said: I always thought you were a pretty cool, pretty knowledgeable and likeable person, but for some reason you are feeling particularly pedantic, argumentative and dismissive today

And I said "Yeah, 'freezing and thawing a human body alive is not hard scifi'. So what?" Like I said, try to understand There are now several posts since your first one including some by me where I provide more detail. I'll leave it at that, except to repeat what I already said several posts back. Not necessary to achieve functional benefits of cryo-stasis (which in truth should be called "Cryo-Chemo Stasis" because most legit models involve perfusion of specific drugs if not artificial blood into the organism to mediate non-destructive effects of the cooling). https://www.nursing.virginia.edu/news/alumnus-mark-adams/

Yes, like I said: you are being too dismissive, and also too pedantic. You seem to be suggesting that: because it is not possible to freeze a human solid and leave them that way for 10 years then thaw them out and have them return to fully normal functioning RIGHT NOW, that it will never be possible for ANY sort of cryo/chemo/energetic stasis to have functional benefit for long-term space flight. You should try to understand things before you dismiss them under the guise of "being helpful" ADDIT: it is also perhaps prudent to remind you that: what scientists are attempting to achieve in these respects are not to achieve things which defy nature, but rather to REPLICATE or create analogs of processes which already EXIST in nature. The fact that frogs can sink into the mud below a lake and experience very low body temperatures, including freezing of certain portions of their bodies, then when spring comes "wake up" and go back to being living, fully functioning frogs, certainly doesn't prove that it will ever be possible for human beings to experience the analogous process. But it does demonstrate that the principles involved do not defy reality as you seem to think. In sum: putting people into a state of torpor (including but not limited to reduced body temperature) is, as far as I know already a thing for certain traumatic injury interventions, and is likely to be even more of a thing as time goes on.

Yes, 800 years is a long time isn't it! But there are other known exoplanets that are not so far away too . . . some of which may stay in the "possibly possible to be 'habitable'" echelon long enough for me to get my thing packaged and selling units and still claim "I'm a HARD Sci Fi Creator!" even though they will probably, eventually be found to be highly unlikely to be 'habitable.' I'd say 200 years is doable, and off the top of my head, that puts a dozen or more possibly possible habitable exoplanets on the drawing board I think? It isn't actually necessary to FREEZE a human being into a chunk of ice for the benefits of "cryo-stasis" to be partially realized. True, Humanscicles would be the ideal and if that degree of cryogenic stasis could ever be achieved then we really WILL prove to be the "Precursors" because nothing will stop us from eventually sending colony ships everywhere . . . But simply slowing metabolism and inducing a torpor state (medically induced coma as you put it) should be able to work wonders for making long-distance manned spaceflight tenable. In the first place, a person who is unconscious will not be psychologically burdened by a 200 year long journey. Assuming that the effects on cell senescence and organ senescence are also reduced, "aging" should also be markedly reduced by prolonged maintenance in a low-metabolism state. I have to admit, this is probably the "most speculative" part of the whole spaghetti bowl, but I do believe there is at least anecdotal evidence suggesting that aging is slowed by such conditions. Perhaps most importantly: rate of consumption of organic resources (food, water, air) would obviously be dramatically reduced. While the actual rate of reduction might not be sufficient to allow the departure of the craft with the full store of all necessary resources for the entire journey, the rate of reduction might well be sufficient for a high-efficiency arcological system to achieve a positive resource balance for the necessary duration of the journey. In sum: if there small-scale onboard "ecosystems" and the human and animal wastes are all channeled back into these systems, then the total quantity of organics at launch could be a significantly reduced fraction of the total that would be consumed during the journey.

My past forays have apparently resulted in different results than yours . . . Like I said, not currently a client of a Universities search function and I'm not in any hurry to contact the alma mater to set it up. So my capacity to bury you in a deluge of citations as you seem to feel would be "compelling" is limited. You are PERFECTLY correct to state that "currently there is no possibility to freeze and revive a human body" but then I don't believe anyone in this thread has claimed as much. If I adopt the same pedantic stance you seem intent on maintaining, then I could easily point out to you that "currently it is not possible to propel a space craft at any speed faster than about 70km/s" or to point out that "currently nuclear pulse propulsion is not possible." Nor is laser sail technology of the sort which can achieve 0.3 c, nor are the nano-techs necessary to send a starshot probe. Indeed, until the thing is actually OUT THERE, functioning, it is necessary to point out that "currently it is not possible to build and launch a functioning cryogenic infrared telescope positioned at the L_0 position where it can benefit from being eclipsed by the Earth . . ." even though that is EXACTLY what thousands of scientists and technicians working on the James Webb Space Telescope have spent billions of dollar and many years striving to achieve. All this to say: until it is achieved it is science fiction, and at one point myriad technologies which are now common everyday technologies WERE science fiction. There is however, a big difference between technologies which DEFY established empirical generalizations or well-ordained theories (so-called "Natural Laws") and those which depend on possibilities which have yet to be firmly proven or disproven, much less those which simply rely on exploration of dynamics which have yet to be explored. We might rank order these as: (1) Probably impossible given current science; (2) Possibly impossible given current science; (3) Possibly possible given current science. We could also add one more layer to that cake (4) Probably possible given current science. Neither you, nor I have the actual expertise to say with great authority, of that much I can be confident. You are an archaeologist, and I am a retired evolutionary psychologist. However, in my opinion, based on what I know about current research into topics of hypothermia, organ preservation and therapeutic hypothermia for amelioration of post-resuscitation syndromes, cryo-stasis sufficient to reduce required organic resource consumption by pasengers and to moreover, reduce the psychological burden of prolonged space flight would lie in layer (3) Possibly possible given current science.s There, you now have some keywords to plug in to your Galileo account or whichever search engine you have at hand! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30315552 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30309417 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26433095

You guys are just being argumentative cheeks wipes. Wanna help? Give me links. Additional arguments to the effect you have already made will result in me just plain blocking both your accounts, because I simply don't have time to argue with twits on ANY website at any time.

No, you are not helping. Helping would be doing like you seem to think is the "gold standard" and finding me some links

Haven't had access to a Uni search engine for several years now, so if you seriously want to contribute, why don't you go find it? Normally you come across as a nice guy, but for some reason today it seems someone liquided in your cheerios? "Youtube does not count?" Seriously? What does that even mean? Like, some garble on a password protected peer-reviewed journal publishers server is somehow inherently BETTER information than a Youtube video!? I guess that means NASA, etc., should all stop posting on Youtube cause it "DOESN'T COUNT!"

Too dismissive, and apparently not very well informed.

Wow. Literally tear invoking. Who could guess that the accreted space wreckage of a 4.5 billion year old celestial planet crash could be so beautiful to the improbable big-brained bipedal hominids that sprang up on the bigger half of the wreckage only some 23 million years ago . . .

Well . . . my training is in human biopsychology, so . . . I feel a little less "uncomfortable" about engaging with some "speculative" biological tech. As such, cyrogenic stasis is the method I intend to invoke: remember cost, human rights, and ethics are NOT constraints! Not that I have kept up with developments but . . . a few years back (perhaps ten years now?) a Russian research group managed to put a dog into complete cyrogenic stasis for a long period of time (48 hours or something). The dog was effectively DEAD. Its body temperature was near the freezing point of water, and it had zero vital signs. They achieved this by sedating it, draining most or all of its blood and replacing this with a special substance that would allow the tissues to allow the process. I'm not sure what permanent or long-term neurological or other physiological deficits the poor dog suffered, but yeah . . . I'd say we are less than a century from having functioning cyrostasis. If enormous sums of money were thrown at it, maybe only 20 years. ADDIT: actually that Russian dog story may well have been a hoax! Even so, we know there are vertebrates who have natural adaptations which allow them to enter long-term dormancy, so cryostasis is "tenable" and the methods for achieving it are a matter of research, not a matter of "imaginary biology," imo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryobiology#Vertebrates Even bats and bears enter prolonged torpor, which, while not as dramatic as examples in the quote above, at least demonstrate that neurologically advanced vertebrates can get very "close" to something like a cryostasis and conceivably all the way there.

Implying that my "error" of writing 0.5 c in place of 0.05 c reflected a deep-seated subconscious HOPE! When I express approval of the URSS Alabama design it was more in terms of the narrative the author has created around the imagined space craft not so much to say "Ah! THIS is what I will use in MY imagining!" Like I said: for the phase of the timeline I'm working on, I want to keep the "hardness" on the science fiction hardness scale as hard as possible. If that means 0.05 c and 780 years is what we gotta work with: well so be it! As the timeline progresses, it makes sense for more futuristic "speculative" techs to open up, but not early on. My understanding was anything EXCEPT nuclear pulse propulsion (meaning external detonation of a bomb and "surfing" on the blast wave) is across a boundary we might call the "Speculative Technology Line." Obviously the laser sail idea CAN WORK, but only for quite limited payloads. As far as I can tell, even the NPP conception _IS SPECULATIVE_, at least in the sense that: the actual design, cost and redundancy systems needed to make it actually function reliably are only projections, which cannot be established without advancing the project beyond the drawing board phase. It could be that: even though the system is completely viable in terms of existing physics, the necessary redundancies to make the system function reliably prohibit its functional utility even with unlimited funds and no social or legal constraints. But that is why they call it science FICTION! Even the HARDEST science fiction is still science fiction!