McLuv

Well, far more likely and realistic than Avatar, asteroid mining IS an exciting and profitable. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining/ What space mining allows you to do is to target asteroids made primarily of an exotic and expensive element on Earth, such as Platinum and gold. It also allows for space colonies to be built out of and in existing asteroids, which decreases their cost and increases their usefulness by a huge degree. Furthermore, asteroids with large reserves of water can be used as fuelling stations, which paves the way for far more efficient and less expensive interplanetary travel, and would add a whole new branch of designs for space vehicles. I\'d love to see space mining in this game. It doesn\'t need to be boring (pun intended), and the actual extraction of materials can be automatic, but getting there, getting the hardware onto asteroids, and finding a way of making it useful are all incredibly interesting aspects that would add a new facet to the game.

Yeah it takes some getting used to. My first few lives were all short lived and mercilessly taken by zombies. Look for good loot spots to start out (the construction site in Cherno\'s great, and usually has at least a Hatched with which you can defend yourself). Know your escape routes before entering any where, and definitely try not to aggro anything when you\'re weaponless. Deer stands often have pretty good military equipment. Once you\'ve got your basic tools, you\'ll be able to find some better weapons to defend yourself by. Just know a few things about PvP though. Unfortunately, if you use game theory to try and predict a player\'s move, the only winning solution is to shoot the stranger if you have the chance and they don\'t have a ridiculous advantage. You get their loot and you don\'t risk them shooting you. Even playing survivalist, I\'ve heard many people simply shoot on sight if both players see each other at the same time. That being said, if you play like me and you\'d rather team up than shoot down another player, you still have to watch your back, and you are definitely running more risk. Keep in mind that most other players will still pre-emptively shoot, or that they may call out as being friendly just to backstab you at the first chance they get. As long as you know this, then you should be able to figure out what the appropriate move is. I\'ve met a few friendlies who\'ve been great once you team up.

Well that dob puts my small Celestron newtonian to shame

If any of you are fans of zombie or survival games, or own Arma II Combined Operations and are looking for a good mod, check out DayZ - http://dayzmod.com/ The game is a persistent multiplayer survival thriller. You have to face both PvP and PvE scenarios, battling bandits, scavenging for resources, and trying to survive in a world filled with Zeds. Set in Chernaurus, a huge 225 square km world in a fictional post-Soviet region. Some features include: [li]Permadeath (you die and you lose everything, spawn again at the beginning)[/li] [li]Realistic weapon modeling (this is based on a Mil Sim, so zeroing, ballistics, sway, etc... all have to be considered)[/li] [li]Persistence (when you log off, you log back in the same position with the same resources. Like an MMORPG essentially)[/li] [li]Large servers (typically ~50 players and up)[/li] [li]24 hour day (if the moon\'s not out, you\'re going to have one scary night)[/li] and plenty more that you\'ll have to find out for yourself. http://youtu.be/A7Q8c8jnL3s At the time of this post, the game currently has over 800,000 active users, typically peaking with over 30,000 players online at a time.

Surprised to see no Feynman listed. Sagan and Tyson are amazing popularizers of science, but people like Feynman, Einstein, Newton and Euclid are the amazing advancers of science (standing, of course, on the shoulders of giants, as Newton himself said).

Depends what you look for in a flight sim. I personally love mil sims, and DCS has produced very high quality games (see DCS A-10 and DCS Blackshark), and IL-2 Sturmovik is also a great WWII game. As a side note, DCS A-10 is on for 60% off on steam right now (only $16)!

Really, all reaction engines are 'bosonic' in that bosons are force carrying particles. So any engine that works by providing a force to accelerate the craft would require boson interactions. Today\'s engines use the interaction of photon bosons because chemical engines rely on the electromagnetic force of chemical reactions.

\'grats on the mark, if the marks are anything comparable to the school I\'m at that\'s quite good, ESPECIALLY for engineering ;D I personally took first year engineering this year, but I\'ve since switched into pure physics. I\'m assuming this is in British or some European uni though? Just because I got my marks way back in May, whereas my friend in Brighton just got hers recently too

I laughed when I saw the title. You don\'t really 'debate' physical laws unless you\'re presenting contradictory experimental evidence. Reminds me of when governments try to legislate scientific phenomena, like when NC decided that climate should follow not what climatologists have computed and predicted, but what would be better for them economically http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21934-north-carolina-tries-to-outlaw-climate-models.html

Star Trek: TNG was great, but I absolutely loved every episode of Futurama.

in fact have a second cookie for having a post count of zero.

Canada, not being completely metric officially, still uses many imperial units casually. Weight is usually listed in pounds (kilos on official documents), height is measured in feet/inches (except on your ID where it\'s in cm), and being right on the US border also means that I have to do those conversions myself as well. Although I use 1.6 kilometers to the mile for better accuracy.

FH2 and PR were both my favourite mods fo BF2, god I spent so much time playing them FH2\'s models and textures are top notch, and they\'ve always impressed me, good luck with the search!

If it\'s science generally, Kelvin is by far a more universal reference frame than either Celsius or Farenheit. Even being based on water is completely arbitrary, because it\'s not just temperature but also pressure and other local influences that have an impact. The best scientific metrics are those that are definable in the most general and universal terms. I basically think of it as the following: If we were to meet some alien race from Mars (heck, from another galaxy even, since Mars is still very local on an astronomic scale), how would you describe your units of measurement? How do you describe how big the Earth is, for instance? Describing the size of the earth in terms of one man\'s foot length won\'t work, because how long\'s a foot? Instead, you could describe it in terms of metres, which are each 1/299 792 458 the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a second, where further a second is a certain ratio of the radioactive decay rate of an isotope. As long as the laws of physics don\'t change with space and time (if they did, they wouldn\'t be universal), then you now have a universal system of reference, which is precisely what has happened to the description of SI units.

Not sure if you were going for sarcasm or just your own anatomical similarities to some past king, but it IS because imperial was based on the body lengths of the king at the time. Of course, this meant that measurements would change with monarch success in the past, and that it wouldn\'t quite match up with everyone\'s anatomy, but it explains the seemingly primitive origins (much in the way that our decimal system is based on ten fingers). Technically, each Celsius degree is equal to every Kelvin in magnitude, only their absolute references change (kelvin takes 0 as the theoretical minimum temperature possible, Celsius of course has to deal with melting point of water at a specific pressure, much more abstract from a scientific and general PoV). Currently, the metric system is the easiest to do conversions with, especially within the realm of science. Converting between centimetres and kilometres (you just move the decimal point 5 digits) is a heck of a lot easier than going from inches to nautical miles, for instance.

Read 'The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must' By Bob Zubrin (Exoscientist also mentionned him, he\'s one of the biggest current proponents for a Mars Mission). The real problem with a [manned] trip to Mars isn\'t getting there: it\'s getting back. Unlike the moon, the red planet has both an atmosphere and a sizeable force of gravity, so getting back out of it\'s gravity well and to the earth would require a return stage much larger than what the Apollo missions required. The most common trip itinerary produced involves assembly of a large spacecraft in low earth orbit, which would fly both the astronauts their return ship and fuel to Mars. All of this is based on future technologies, too. Additionally, because of how staging works (requiring ever larger lower stages to accelerate the added mass of fuel from higher stages), the cost and magnitude of the project go up exponentially if this method were followed. Additionally, it wouldn\'t be a sustainable method of transportation, which would probably result in a planetary 'hit it and quit it'. Zurbrin\'s suggestion, which I am completely in support of, involves using technology which is already available and low-weight, low cost methods of getting there and pack. An initial unmanned landing vehicle would arrive without any return fuel about a year before the manned launch, and during that waiting time it would synthesize new fuel through chemical processes powered by some small nuclear reactor it brings with it. Then, with the return capsule fully fuelled and ready, the astronauts blast off and reach the red planet, landing close to the return vehicle. They can then spend the time between then and their next launch window to conduct ground experiments, exploration and other scientific pursuits. When their launch window comes back, they ride their fully fuelled and stocked return vehicle back to the earth. If you\'re simply looking at the orbital maneuvres however, I\'m afraid that a direct Hoffman transfer is really the only feasible solution that optimizes trip time for the crew and fuel required. Spiralling out using an ion engine of sorts is a possibility, but it also increases trip time and it\'s unproven technology, at least as far as manned missions are concerned. Ultimately that means that if we want to reach Mars in the near future it\'ll probably be on well proven chemical engines. EDIT: Exoscientist, I took a look at both articles you posted, it seems I haven\'t seen his up to date plans...

I honestly just came here to post about that Especially with complex ship designs (read: Space Shuttles), getting your thrust to head straight through the CoM is crucial to efficient burns / not flipping your craft on the launch pad.

I think it\'s highly possible that we were visited by aliens, only not sentient ones. It\'s been shown that extremophiles can endure the hardships of space, unprotected in some cases, and there\'s evidence of possible extraterrestrial microbial life found in meteorites from mars. The theory itself is panspermia, and it deserves a look at because it has its merits. Ultimately, however, there\'s no evidence which proves that either life originated on Earth or elseware, nor even to assess the probabilities in any detail, but the possibility for either certainly exists. Any form of sentient alien having visited the earth within humanity\'s life time, however, would appear highly improbably. Since the dawn of civilization, that probability quickly approaches 0 (8,000-10,000 years passes in the blink of an eye when compared to astronomic scales).

I love my university internet

That\'s incorrect, it\'s undefined because the limit of f(x)/g(x), where f(x) and g(x) both approach zero, can represent any number. You have to take l\'Hopital\'s rule and find f\'(x)/g\'(x) until you can get an answer that isn\'t of the form 0/0 or infinity/infinity.

Depends. If you go to the university night clubs, you\'ll get a very different scene than at highschool dances, or house parties, etc... Where have you been going? =P

Are you kidding? This generation has some pretty swagger moves too, it\'s just you\'re generalizing what you see as only the fistpumps and grinds. There\'s the sprinkler, the baseball player, and one of my favourites:

In all seriousness though, there is an inherent need for a heavy launch system, hopefully this would make future extra terrestrial missions possible.

What a teaser... I went looking for the DL link only to be dissapointed.

from 2001, right? How much fuel does it have?