Aethon

I think in the past it was in our best interest to know what or who was over that next hill/mountain/waterbody, and how big and sharp their teeth were. People are also fascinated by things that may kill them. Animal planet doesn't have gerbil week, they devote their programming to powerful dangerous animals in general because we're genetically programmed to gather information about dangerous things.

A highly interesting article on VAB renovations to make room for the SLS. http://www.universetoday.com/130095/major-overhaul-of-vab-for-nasas-sls-mars-rocket-reaches-halfway-point-with-platform-installation/

When you're within 5 km, instead of stopping completely and burning toward the target, you can push and pull the prograde/retrograde makers to line up with the target marker. The prograde marker moves toward where the nose of the craft is pointing when you burn and the retrograde marker moves away from where the nose is pointing when you burn. Also mind your closing speed with the target. When I'm 2 km out, I try to keep my closing velocity around 20 m/sec.

I use the O to expand the window but I guess I've never noticed that feature. Thanks for the info.

I don't know what Pb666 is babbling about. I've never claimed that 'sentient life is a dime a dozen'. Just ignore anything he says. Back to the topic.

Hmmm. Can you flesh that out a bit. I use PreciseNode as well. -orbit button?

The best way to Moho direct from Kerbin is to forget transfer windows and leave from Kerbin when Kerbin is crossing Mohos' ascending node. Scroll down to maccollos' post, and then scroll further down and read what Kasuha says. Hope this helps.

I'm loath to enter a thread where PB666 has posted because he knows everything, but in 1974 Richard R. Vondrak wrote an interesting paper for the journal Nature. Unfortunately It lies behind a paywall. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v248/n5450/abs/248657a0.html "Vondrak calculates that if the atmosphere of the Moon was increased to a mass of at least 100,000 tons it would be driven into a “long-lived state“ which would drastically reduce losses to the solar wind. According to him: To produce a breathable “shirtsleeve“ atmosphere, about 1018 kilograms of O2 must be pumped into the lunar environment. This should require a total energy expenditure of about 1024 joules. Again, both mass and energy figures lie within the budget of an ambitious mature Type I civilization." http://www.xenology.info/Xeno/19.2.1.htm

Let's not forget, there are more things out there than just monoliths.

Man is that frustrating. Occasionally the game will allow you to place a node on the purple (next) orbit line. If it does you can grab that node and carefully circle it back around the orbit and get it onto the blue orbit line where you want it. This doesn't always work, but sometimes does. Hope this helps.

Does anyone know if the M700 stock scanner is still bugged. In past versions I couldn't get the resource data into the ScanSat system after running the survey with the stock scanner. It would lose the data when I went back to the KSC, and wouldn't allow a rescan. I'm about to send out a fleet of scanners and hope I have the ScanSat options set up correctly to get the data even if the M700 is still bugged. I think it is instascan on, biome lock off, requires narrow band scanner off, and disable stock scanning. Is that correct? Thanks in advance.

Umm. Urethra! Correct. I dunno how to play. ;_;

By combining data from Chandra and several other telescopes, astronomers have identified the true nature of an unusual source in the Milky Way galaxy. This discovery implies that there could be a much larger number of black holes in the Galaxy that have previously been unaccounted for. The main panel shows X-rays from Chandra (purple) that have been overlaid on an optical image from Hubble. The insets show the source is bright in radio waves, but can only be giving off a very small amount of X-rays. These pieces of information indicate the source contains a black hole with a few times the mass of the Sun. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Alberta/B.Tetarenko et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/Curtin Univ./J. Miller-Jones http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/clandestine-black-hole-may-represent-new-population.html What percentage of the 'missing mass' of the universe could this account for? Could this begin to explain dark matter? Does it mean MACHOS are much more culpable than WIMPS? Discuss please.

Some of the results of my Harvester stalking over the years. http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=20494 https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/position-of-ascending-and-descending-nodes.534665/

Wow. It makes me seem so cosmopolitan.

Enhanced color. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/the-jagged-shores-of-pluto-s-highlands

I assume you mean propaganda. I'm not sure how me giving my opinion can be construed as propaganda, nor am I sure where you're hostility towards me is coming from. At no point have I attempted to insult anyone. I've been nothing but respectful to you even though your poor typing and command of English makes many of your posts difficult to comprehend, but I'm beginning to understand why your threads receive few comments.

Hey I agree this is nothing more than flimsy speculation, but I (and many others) just don't see how you go from the Earth being a molten ball of lava, pummeled by the late heavy bombardment, and a few hundred million years later magic happens and you have these organisms that are far more complex than genes and auto catalytic lipid bubbles or whatever should be the first logical steps in the tree of life. I'm not saying the elements were there that early to form life, but possibly the precursors of what would become life. Soon after the big bang, when the distance across the universe was much smaller, there was a time when the temperature of the entire universe was right around room temperature. I'm speculating that perhaps the earliest components of whatever separates life from non life began then. The first evidence we have of life seems to me way to complex to have formed here in the short period of time between molten Earth and the fossilized life record we have. Earth didn't form in isolation, but in a cluster of thousands of nearby stars. Or perhaps life was formed before the late heavy bombardment and was knocked into orbit clinging to rocks by the LHB only to be returned to Earth by orbital decay after the cessation of the LHB, again just a thought experiment. I find this highly unlikely. Copernicus taught us that we are in no way special in the universe. And could you cut the name calling. I've patiently read through your thousands of posts, some of which are pretty out there, without once insinuating you were dumb. @KerikBalm Did you even read the paper?

Scientists say there are 300 billion stars in our galaxy ( I say there are many more than that ). Scientists say there are 300 billion observable galaxies in the universe ( I say there are many more than that ). To say that out of that vast number of stars, this is the only one on which something interesting is happening sounds like mythology to me. Sorry, pay wall. http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2015.1418?journalCode=ast In this article, we address the cosmic frequency of technological species. Recent advances in exoplanet studies provide strong constraints on all astrophysical terms in the Drake equation. Using these and modifying the form and intent of the Drake equation, we set a firm lower bound on the probability that one or more technological species have evolved anywhere and at any time in the history of the observable Universe. We find that as long as the probability that a habitable zone planet develops a technological species is larger than ∼10−24, humanity is not the only time technological intelligence has evolved. This constraint has important scientific and philosophical consequences. https://www.inverse.com/article/14957-drake-equation-revision-hugely-ups-odds-intelligent-extraterrestrial-life-exists

The more I study the question of when life first appeared on Earth the more I become convinced that life began long before Earth formed and was transported here via lithopanspermia, possibly from one of Sols' thousands of sister stars in Earths' birth cluster, where the velocity of interstellar debris was much lower, allowing greater survivability of interstellar meteoric debris. To transition from a molten ball of lava, to a place possessing comparably complex archaea in a few hundred million years is hard to accept. Where did these early life forms get their genes? If we trace our way back through the time it took to increase genetic diversity from the first fossilized evidence we have here of life, to the formation of more complex organisms, and extrapolate that back to the formation of the first genes, It seems to me there just wasn't enough time for this to happen on Earth. http://cosmology.com/SearchForLife105.html Genetic Gradualism and the ExtraTerrestrial Origin of Life Alexei A. Sharov, Ph.D., Genetics Laboratory, National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, USA Abstract The principle of gradualism provides insights into the mechanisms and timing of the origin of life. It assumes that complex systems originate only from systems of comparable or higher functional complexity; therefore, life started from very simple systems, and complexity increased gradually through evolution. Life did not start from nucleic acids because nucleotides were not available in sufficient quantities as resources. The simplest hereditary system requires autocatalysis which is functionally linked with local environment. According to the "coenzyme world" scenario, life started from non-polymeric coenzyme-like molecules (CLMs) that performed hereditary functions before the emergence of nucleic acids. These molecules multiplied via autocatalysis and modified (i.e., encoded) the properties of their local environment. Dependency on the local environment later promoted the cooperation between multiple autocatalytic systems, which in turn increased the functional complexity and evolutionary potential. Polymerization of CLMs and development of template-based synthesis is a possible evolutionary path towards the emergence of nucleic acids. Genome complexity increased slowly during the evolution of life, which is consistent with the principle of gradualism. Backward projection of this rate indicates that life started long before the formation of Earth, and the transition from coenzyme world to RNA world happened on another planet over 10 billion years ago.

This isn't true. We can detect the cosmic microwave background radiation from over 13 billion light years away. It doesn't matter how great the distance is, signals can be detected as long as you have a big enough antenna. Now some signals may require an antenna so big that it's not cost effective to build, but it's still theoretically possible.

Dangerous in many ways. Perhaps a dangerous religion or a computer virus. Ideas have power. Look at what happened with Orson Welles War of the Worlds. Perhaps to limit competition they send us plans on how to build a machine that would destroy us. What do you think would have happened to the world if Alexander III (the Great) had been given plans to build A-bombs. A decoded, advanced alien Wikipedia would destroy our culture and replace it with something new.

Hey, even if we can't have a dialog with them and they are long extinct, a decoded message could still be valuable/dangerous. I've learned much from Aristotle's 2000 year old messages.

"We don't put much power into our TV or radio transmissions because their intended audience is not very far away. Our defense radars are much stronger and the current Phoenix search could detect that kind of signal out to the limit of our current search which is 155 light years. The strongest signal generated by our technology is the planetary radar on the Arecibo radio telescope and we could detect its signal half way to the center of the galaxy." Jill Tarter. SETI Institute. http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/research/seti/questions.html Unknown. How do you look for something you don't know the nature of. I have ants in my driveway. They see me go by everyday, but I doubt they have any idea they are surrounded by a technologically advanced space-faring civilization, or even what those concepts mean.

I'm not sure I'm following you. We have a complete dearth of information on what makes up 96% of the mass of the universe. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't be attempting to discover the nature of "dark matter". Isn't some degree of "fluffy" speculation the way hypotheses are formed?