fairytalefox

Well, it's not like they've got their "Hero of the Soviet Union" titles for their pretty eyes. Wanna know when looks actually matter? Look at the Soyuz-Apollo custom docking module: ...as opposed to the original docking module design:

What's the goal of the mission? Plant a flag? Proxima Centauri hands down. (If by "plant" we mean "drop into space somewhere nearby"). Bring back or transmit science? Alpha Centauri. Find an earthlike planet? As @kerbiloid already mentioned, we ain't need no stinky interstellar for this. Some really useful astrophysics? Ask real astrophysicists. Build a colony? Since I don't believe in colonization of planets, all we need is literally any star as an energy source and a bunch of asteroids/dwarf planet as a source of materials for a space habitat. So let's find asteroids first, space telescopes FTW, again.

Can you elaborate please? What, besides optimism and other personal traits, could make someone think so?

Let's ask ourselves: what could make people create and maintain colonies? Probably the same things that make them do other things in space, right? I'm reading Chertok's "Rockets and People". Seems like the main reasons behind the Soviet space program were (in order of importance): 1. Military. Warhead delivery measures, surveillance, that sort of things. 2. Political. Space race, we're the first, our opponents suck. 3. Economical. Doing something useful that is either impossible or stupidly over-complicated and expensive without space. Let's apply all these to potential planetary colonies. 1. Useless. Having people on Pluto won't help you fight err... Somalia. Let's call that country "Somalia". 2. To some extent. When Somalia does have it's people on Pluto, and you don't, who's the daddy? 3. Heavily depends. Let's talk about (2). It doesn't actually matter how many people you have on Pluto. You have them, Somalia doesn't, it's all that matters. Even more, it doesn't matter if your people are living on Pluto right now. Been there, done things, nothing to do on this ex-planet anymore. You're already the daddy, Somalia already sucks, and it will last forever. No need to spend more money on the colony. Which means "no colony". It's what happened with the American Moon program. So all we have is economy. If we need something up there, we will be up there. Think of GSO. Will we abandon GSO any time soon? Hell no. Not while comsats are profitable. Will we abandon the Moon? Well, done already. Apparently there's no silk spice oil colonial goods on the Moon. Will the Moon be profitable in the near future? Maybe, as an industrial base for large-scale space construction. Low gravity (but gravity nonetheless), minerals and solar radiation in abundance, relatively cheap to reach. Will anything else be profitable in the near future? Probably not. Too far, too inhospitable.

Well, strictly speaking, it's not exactly true. Your point is solid, I won't disprove it; but at the same time, cheap consumer-grade radiometers are a thing. I, for example, am a proud owner of one of these. It's more a toy than a science instrument, but still.

You see, speed squared plus "time speed" squared is always c squared. You can't actually change your full speed, you can only split it between moving faster in space and moving faster in time. For me, it looks like a conservation law, or like another face of the conservation law maybe. We don't try to trick conservation laws, because it never works. It's how I see this.

Guys, I'm afraid not many of us are ready to discuss power generation. It isn't just complicated, it's helluva complicated. Saying "we have wind generators, we can scrap NPPs" is like saying "we have fireworks, let's fly to Alpha Centauri". First, yeah, the more wind and solar generation you have, the less nuclear power you can use, but at the same time the more peaking generation you need, and peaking generators run mostly on totally non-renewable and ecologically unfriendly hydrocarbons. Second, energy generation these days is probably the most politicized topic ever, I'm not kidding you; everything they say on TV and other media on this topic is either blatant lies or partial truth (which is an euphemism for "even more dirty form of lie"). Who are "they"? You see them, you know them. No politics on this forum, so Scheherazade's shutting up. Third, as @SomeGuy123 already mentioned, Chernobyl reactors (RBMK-1000) weren't exactly the most foolproof contraptions possible. Mostly because they were designed in 50's with "quick and dirty" motto in mind. The 1986 incident wasn't the first of it's kind, it was preceded by almost the same, except not catastrophic events on Leningrad NPP. Ironically, the Chernobyl reactor blew up during scheduled stopping sequence; they were stopping it in order to install safety additions, to prevent disasters of exactly this type. So, if it didn't happen that day, it would never happen. Fourth, digging radioactive waste in isn't wrong at all. Ever heard of lava, that molten rock thing inside this planet? It is hot and molten because inner part of the planet is full of hot isotopes. It's where they belong. So digging in, I mean really deep, is THE solution. Fifth, that Fukushima reactor performed extremely well during the earthquake. It properly stopped and began cooling. The problem was not with the reactor itself, but with totally not nuclear auxiliary generators. They were damaged by a tsunami a couple of hours after the earthquake. With no energy for proper cooling, the reactor, after some time, did what it did. The problem is not with reactors being nuclear, the problem is with people being idiots. As always. You see a problem, you look for an idiot who causes it. A rule of a thumb. We should not fight nuclear energy, or terrorism, or drugs, or whatnot. We should fight idiocy and ignorance. When we defeat them, everything will be fine and even better.

So what this discussion is about? FTL traveling doesn't seem to be possible, I can say it right now. Light speed definitely isn't an arbitrary barrier, it's a part of what time and space are. I really don't see how this can depend on DNA capacity, grey goo growth rate or number of angels dancing on a needle.

They look clean and cute, I'm already in love

I don't think it would be right to add parts just because they look Russian-ish (or Chinese-ish, or whatever-ish). Like @tater, I'd prefer to see new parts with some new/changed functionality, not just retextures/remodels/mild respecs of the old ones. Two-men capsule, five-men capsule, something like Soyuz (one part while in the VAB, three separate-able parts while in flight). Holy mother of Jeb, it would be like a miracle to have an early available 2-seat capsule for those rescue contracts...

We just need more different pods. Now we have one 1-seat pod, one 3-seat pod, and that's basically it. Other habitable space parts are, strictly speaking, for building stations, not for launching people into orbit. Speaking of real life pods, spherical ones are from the early stage of the Soviet space program, Vostok/Voskhod. They suffered from horrible g-force on reentry, like 10g or so. That's why more technically advanced Soyuz landing capsules look mostly like Kerbal pods, their shape gives them some lifting force to make reentry trajectory less steep and g-force less cruel.

@K^2 Magical thinking is the problem. People these days are used to use things they don't understand. You push buttons, you get the result. It's basically like magic (hello Mr. Clarke). Buttons as spells, electricity as mana, and we call our magic wands "remotes". When they think of something seemingly impossible, they don't believe it's actually impossible. They just say: "we need more wizards technicians". Surely, science and technology can do much. But what some of us can't understand is that sometimes (read: quite often) the universe just doesn't work the way we want. It's not like lack of technicians, it's fundamental. Impossible things are impossible, no matter what. Like, when you're 8 years old, you can't subtract big numbers from small numbers because you don't know where it leads to. And you can't divide by zero because never ever. There are two different sorts of "can't". We should learn how to distinguish them.

The only more or less plausible way to communicate with the probe I can think of is to manipulate the star's light. A planet-size mirror, or a cloud of vapor, something like that. My point is, we have to either use an existing extremely powerful source of radiation or create our own one. Yes, it's far beyond our current or near future technologies, just like the probe itself. Or maybe we can just refuel the probe and return it back home. Somehow. ISRU or whatnot.

Got it. Okay, I was wrong, forget that idea. Thank you for the discussion.

Man, think one more time. Fuel. Electricity. They aren't here, something around there stops working. It's, like, the core-est of all the core mechanics. Sorry? If you dock a ship with a little crew cabin to something, it means the ship has a pilot. Thus, if both ships were controllable before docking, they're still controllable after docking. Unless you've managed to remove the pilot after docking... which is technically possible but seems completely random, overcomplicated and unneeded. So no endless streams of tears for ya. A few drops, maybe. Like I said, it's not completely counter-intuitive. One body in the trunk, other body in the driver's seat. For me, it makes some (although... yes, not too much) sense. And not very Kerbal. It's a weak point of the plan. Yes, it was my point. Thank you for making it clear. I've mentioned magic just for reference. - - - Updated - - - Hmmm. Patched conics is my first or second upgrade. I get top-level pilots, let me think... never? I mean, I've got the idea, it's not necessarily fruitless, but not in it's current form. Atmospheric predictions, maybe? It's what that 'Trajectories' mod does. I doubt, though - putting mods based on heavy calculations into the stock game isn't very SQUAD'ish.

No convoluted checks. All the checks, except one, are already here, implemented and working. In order for a ship to be controllable, it should have a functional control part. A pod with no pilot in it isn't functional. It's how the game works right now. We need one more check: if there's a part marked as 'habitable', don't consider control parts marked as 'automated' functional. It's simple. Regarding this limitation being arbitrary. Yes, it kinda is. I never called my idea flawless. But it isn't THAT arbitrary - human passengers require human pilots, it's sort of understandable. Regarding Isp changes and stuff. As people already mentioned, it's a big no-no since that ....storm when Squad was going to actually implement something like it. The main argument was 'it's magic; the next step would be kerbal witches piloting interplanetary brooms'.

Guys! I think I have a solution! An automated probe core shouldn't be able to control a vessel with a kerbal (or maybe a crew-capable part instead, all that hitchhiking containers and whatnow) on board. You want scientists and/or engineers, you need a pilot, too. Robot pilots are for fully robotized kerballess ships only. What do you think?

It's like real life: nobody pilots rockets, everything is controlled by computers, humans are just a payload I'd suggest to make automated probe cores to be able to only control ships with so many science parts. If you want more experiments in one trip, you have to have a real pilot. Not very realistic but kinda solves the issue. Should solve.

Yeeeah, now we've managed to boil it down to philosophy Man, I so agree with you, I could put my signature under every of these words! I think it's not exactly right to throw away what you call "non-biological life". I believe it's possible to some extent for some of these theoretical abiological lifeforms to exist close to our temporal, spatial and err... environmental (?) scale. I can't think of any reasonable arguments right now, it's just... all I know about the universe makes me think so. Of course I can be wrong because, as usual, nobody knows nuttin', but who cares, it's just an internet forum, so I'll stick with my point for now. You also exclude plants from the question because they're not alive enough. This cannot be argued because, again, philosophy. So the actual question is 'blood of what color creatures we're willing to consider alive have'. If we define 'alive' as 'something that uses gaseous oxidant carried by a liquid to burn something oxidable and thus gain energy required for this thing to exist', then probably yes, some metal cations would be good enough. It's just this definition is too narrow for my taste. Oh man. That problem with a plane on a conveyor belt from the thread next to this one is easier to be solved

The only thing we're certain about extraterrestrial life is that it should have some sort of energy cycle. Literally everything else is unknown. Aliens don't have to get energy from oxidation with oxygen, or even from oxidation at all. Aliens don't have to have energy cycle based on chemistry. Thermal, mechanical, electromagnetic, sound, nuclear, gravitational, you name it. Aliens don't have to consist of solid matter. They can be complex combinations of fluid or gaseous streams. They can be complex combinations of neutrino streams bouncing between galaxies. They can be complex combination of anything else that can form complex combinations. Or they can't. We don't know. kerbiloid and other iron supporters, think about plants. Despite all your reasons, they don't have iron- or copper-based liquid transportation systems. Smallest of them (I believe) don't have any liquid transportation system at all. Amazing, right? And they aren't even alien plants.

Guys, I hate to say that but... tl;dr: The term "alien's blood" itself is (most probably) ridiculously irrelevant. Like, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" level irrelevant. For those who enjoy reading textwalls in broken English: There was a Polish dude called Stanislaw Lem who isn't probably that famous outside of ex-Soviet Bloc; but inside, he surely is. He wrote science fiction books. Not that American 'our swords are called blasters, our wizards are called scientists, our fairy tales are called SciFi' sort of bullcrap (sorry, American people), but fiction books of a really scientific kind. His most famous work is 'Solaris', a 1961 novel about people trying to communicate with a space alien. It doesn't contain much action, it consists mostly of the protagonist's thoughts about what's going on. The book's most vivid feature, in my opinion, is deeply developed setting. I believe that the book has the most realistic space alien description created by humans ever. In the book, it took about a hundred years for human scientists to merely realize that this thing is an alien. Blood, they say. Don't make me laugh. Blood means body. With blood vessels and something like a heart to pump that blood. Which means something like nerves and hormones to control the stuff. Which means something like glands and something like ganglia. Which all is extremely, insanely, overwhelmingly anthropocentric. In Lem's book, after centuries of studying, it still remains to decide whether or not this thing can count as a body. Still, it's just a fiction book, created by just a human. As we all know, life is orders of magnitude more deep and unexpected than any book. Even a book written by Stanislaw Lem. The truth is, we're probably looking at a dozen or so aliens right now. We just don't recognize these things as aliens. Because they are too different from guys in rubber masks we can see in almost every Hollywood SciFi movie.

The universe is full of weird things. I highly appreciate studying them, of course, I can even live with one of these things making a news headline. What I can not appreciate is panic. I'm pretty sure, in a year or two this whatever-you-call-it will become 'oh one of these outdated news, let's watch a new reality show instead'. I just know it So why panicking? Let's think about things that will be important tomorrow.

DON'T PANIC. Once upon a time there were canals on Mars. Everyone and their mom saw them with their own eyes. There were tons of pictures with these canals. The pictures are still here, and they are the same, but there are no canals on them anymore. Apparently everyone and their mom tend to see things on even slightly unfamiliar pictures. Goodbye, canals. Then, there was a man's face on Mars. Again, everyone and their mom etc etc etc... Again, these pictures are still here, but etc etc etc... Goodbye, face. Now, there's an artificial structure near a distant star. You can see it with your own eyes, you can even show it's picture to your mom. No doubt, THESE aliens are real! ...come on.

Those KSP players and their overengineering fetish...

And Medieval Warm Period was not a thing. Understood.