[KSP CD/DVD Artwork]

I'm buying KSP for my 13 year old nephew James for christmas and I will be handing him a CD of the KSP 32bit installer. What I'm looking for is artwork for the CD cover. I can do it myself but I wanted to know if there was: any official artwork, a thread like this that I'm missing, or possibly if any of you have artwork you use and would like to share. Thanks.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

What are you talking about? Where did you get this idea of automatic assumptions of high mutation rates? What are you talking about with human cloning?

This is just one of the criticisms used to make the assertion that cloning with mutation cannot possibly replace the functions of sexual reproduction. Let me the reason you think such a system can't compete, and I can address it. As far as the human cloning bit, I'm saying you can't introduce the argument of a lack of variation or a lack of mutation as reasons why "cloning" as you called it cannot be a working reproductive method. You are introducing flaws in this system that exist for human cloning, but not "cloning" as a reproductive method.

No it doesn't. Otherwise you would expect almost everything to be sexually reproducing. There was nothing innate in the DNA sequence of the LCA that favored ....

When you talk about the "same beginning DNA", you are ignoring that the a series of mutations in organisms that resulted in sexual reproduct, occured in organisms with orders of magnitude longer DNA sequences than the LCA, that were already highly diverged.

Why would you necessarily expect all life to be sexually reproducing just because all of the ingredients to create a sexually reproducing system are present in the origin creature? Some organisms, although they have all the genes that could easily be muted to form a sexually reproductive system, might choose a non sexually reproductive system. Let's use another thought experiment to illustrate this, if I give 1000 chefs all the ingredients to make a cake plus a few odds and ends, many of the chefs will make a cake, but not ALL of them. The likelihood of cake is greater because all of the ingredients required for it are present, BUT this does not mean ALL chefs MUST make cakes, other recipes exist that would inevitably be made. How can you argue that a sexually reproductive system is not likely to emerge, considering you already know it evolved "independently" in multiple instances?

No, its not. We only see convergence when external factors dictate it. If there is an alien world with things swimming in a liquid ocean, they will adopt a hydrodynamic shape, as fish did, as icthyosaurs did, as marine mammals did. Its not because of starting DNA that they adopt hydrodynamic shapes.

Really, is a sea sponge hydrodynamic? What about oceanic plantlife? This is exactly what I'm talking about, the parent organism of all of the hydrodynamic creatures had certain techniques for staying alive that ultimately resulted in the traits that they developed down the line. Being hydrodynamic enough for movement is an improvement on a set of techniques that already exist. If you have a mouth (the gene setup for a mouth) then growing fins to manuevuer your mouth to food is advantageous, as is growing arms, suction filters, etc. If your a plant, or an organism with no mouth, you don't need hydrodynamics to continue your lineage. You make improvements on the techniques already present in your genetics rather than shifting from an animal into a plant. The genes of the ancestor dictate the genes of the offspring because of the ancestor commitment to a strategy, it's unlikely, possibly impossible, to completely switch strategies in the middle of your lineage. This is precisely why animals don't shift into plants, plants haven't all begun growing wings and feet and it's precisely why life on earth doesn't take a shot at trying non-sexually reproducing strategies for passing on their lineage. If their great grandparent had never hunted and consumed other organisms on a cellular level, but instead developed a way to convert sunlight into energy, then perhaps the offspring wouldn't need movement, or hydrodynamics for movement to live.

Likewise, as organisms grow more complex, the allowable mutation rate grows smaller and smaller. This has nothing to do with DNA sequence, or even DNA, but is intrinsic to any system with discretely heritable units.

No, the mutation rate is steady, unless you express the mutation rate of the total genetic "data" within an organism. If I have 10 genetic data units, and the rate of change is 1 per generation, then the total percentage change is 10%, if I have 100 genetic data units and the rate of mutation is still 1 per generation, then I have 1% percent mutation. The rate of mutation is steady, the complexity of the organism is what got larger.

Yet organisms still need to adapt and change, so variation is needed. Thus you need recombination, where variations can be indicidually naturally selected, and combined...

You don't necessarily need recombination to facilitate the adaptation and variation, there could be other techniques that accomplish these prerequisites for evolution. You assume hammers are the only thing that can drive metal into wood, because you come from planet hammer. We're theorizing screwdrivers, not arguing the merits of hammers from other planets.

And here we get to another limit of comple organisms - sometimes when you change "the blueprint" of something that is too complex, You have to build it again from scratch, not modify a previous iteration.

Also, its not clear which combination of the variations is even best, so you'll want to make multiple combinations, and test each one -> ie new organisms with that genetic combination - ie sexual reproduction.

I'll note that many organisms can switch between sexual and asexual reproduction. Some only switch to sexual reproduction when stressed... ie when their current genome isn't quite cutting it, they try out new variations.

This principle is inherent, it is not specific to DNA or sequences of life on Earth.

That is why it is likely to occur in complex aliens.

It all sounds great, but to argue that this is how aliens from planet X MUST function because things here function like that is just silly. Screwdrivers? Thats impossible! How can rotation generate enough force to put the metal into the wood? Blasphemy!

"data" is equaly bad, just stick with "heritable unit".

I don't like that either because it assumes the same grandfather>father>son setup as we have on earth. There is no reason why alien life has to stick to a sequential system like that. Perhaps every organ of an alien could be like our lifeforms, reproducing near death. When an alien defeats a foe, he could coopt the organs of his rival into himself when advantageous. Hell, we're assuming forms of life that rot and die like our forms of life here on earth do. Perhaps a species of alien, although they die, could return from death. A brain slug organ from far down the evolutionary line crawls itself into the long dead body of a dinosaur and beings living, reproducing, and mating with the local populace after millennia of extinction. This is why I wouldn't use "heredity" and why I use such a general term, because heritage describes what we have, and could disclude other styles of reproduction

There are organisms on Earth that live in the conditions you specify, they did not give up their membrane. It is very hard to imagine life becoming very complex without discrete "cell like" units, and compartments to contain metabolic products. "organelles" on a string sounds very much like cells on a string. In fact, many of what we call "organelles" for our life are more properly regarded as endosymbiotic cells.

They didn;'t give up their membrane because they inherited a vestigial membrane from their ancestors. If the ancestor grew up with no membrane, descendants might grow one, but only when the environment dictates that it is required. In my example, the organelles I describe are not enclosed, they themselves are a sort of series of biological systems on a string. But yes, much like people theorize michochandria may be an ancient symbiotic bacteria, so also would my "string-slugs" attach other "string-slugs" to their master reproductive genetic string the same way we may have absorbed the midochandria so long ago. I'm disputing the need for a cellular covering, not the origins of organelles, some of which certainly are not re-purposed bacteria.

Yes, it does. Sure is easy to make baseless assumptions.[/quote[

Yes, it is easy to make such assumptions, you are the one doing it.

I was attacking the way you respond to something by saying "No, it doesn't" without explanation. If your argument is "nuh-uh" you are easily refuted by the unbeatable and infoulable "ya-huh" argument.

I quote: "The idea of aliens presupposes a likely lack ".....

"presupposes" is basically the same thing as "assumes". The idea of aliens means you can't presuppose much of anything... but there you went, assuming a likely lack of many things.

Um...Yeah? The very idea of aliens presupposes they are different from us. Thats why they are aliens. If they are just like us, they really aren't aliens, more like dopplegangers.

I assume aliens are drastically different from us, you assume they are biologically near identical in function down to the cellular level. Who's more absurd here?

Strawman argument.

I was not saying I assume alien life would neccessarily be based on that. I was just saying, hypothetically, that alien life that uses it could well exist. This was an argument against your statement "cellular life that utilizes DNA would hardly even be worth considering an alien"

Please excuse me, I never meant to strawman you. But I simply don't understand how you think that a cellular configuration, DNA, and sexual reproduction could arise from ingredients so vastly different from our own. Wood makes a great house, just not when you stack it up and glue it together like you can with stones.

Does it not stand to reason that if the things you listed are not the building blocks, that perhaps other techniques than cells, dna, and dimorphism might be equally effective for facilitating evolution?

An independent genesis of life on another world would be alien, regardless of whether or not its basic building blocks are similar to our own.

Right. I admit: if humans land on a spaceship they are still aliens even if they are identical to us right down to the DNA. I agree with you but only because are trapping me with a technicality rather than admitting that they are humans and not really what we would usually consider aliens.

To claim otherwise implies you don't understand how common all Earth life is at levels beyond the basic building blocks.

Adenosine is in so many biological pathways? all the basic metabolic pathways are very similar and use very similar enzymes.

Alien life could still have very different metabolic pathways, using completely different enzymes, it may not even have adenosine at all... yet it could still use DNA, lipids, amino acids (probably not even the same 20, and then there is chirality to consider).

*Sigh* But can't you understand that they may not have DNA, lipids, or amino acids AT ALL?

Why must you again draw up a vision of an alien with completely different building blocks, and then ruin it by assuming it somehow forms the same types of larger organic structures that make up our lifeforms? Can't you possibly imagine completely alien building blocks, completely alien biological micro-structures, and completely alien methods of reproduction? This is why I think you have a narrow view of things. How can you possibly argue that the most likely structures to arise out of completely different ingredients will be the same ones that we already have? I never proposed it is impossible for these things to form out of different beginnings, I just purpose that it is far more likely that other, different structures and techniques would form than those we observe based simply on the difference in properties of the originating ingredients.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

... I don't even know where to begin... what? ... that just makes no sense

How would such a system even get started? Are you supposing "intelligent design" of aliens rather than evolution?

The nodes would be like our viruses, only larger and in the way that they contain snippets of dna that interact to form a larger organism in much the same way our viruses replace the dna of cells. This type of cycle could start with the nodes as the originating form of life with the other set of organisms as a mutation of the nodes with the ability to co-opt genetic data that was not from their parent node. From a single great grandfather node an entire kingdom of organism could arise that rely on nodes for reproduction rather than sexual reproduction as a way of facilitating evolution.

FWIW, I'm don't even really know what your talking about with this cloning and mutation stuff. All I can say for now is Muller's Ratchet, and that you don't get to invent new meanings for words. (regarding an earlier comment about your "vision of cloning" and calling another "narrow").

I believe I said the vision of cloning was narrow because you make automatic assumptions that mutations happen at incredibly high rates rather than the exact same rate of mutation we see on earth. It's a good idea to introduce problems to these ideas to see if they are stable, but it isn't helpful if the problem is easily solved. If you look at human cloning and say human cloning won't therefor this technique won;t work, you are ignoring that we aren't talking about human cloning, we're talking about a style of reproduction similar to cloning, or similar to the way cells reproduce within multicellular organism.

I've read what you've posted about Muller's Ratchet and even with that in mind I still assert that biological dimorphism is hardly the be all end all of all evolution. Other techniques could work as just well, or even better than sexual reproduction as long as they address the same challenges that sexual reproduction addresses with equal or better effectiveness.

No, I don't

I'm not saying that you don;t know this fact, I'm saying that when you try to say that sexual reproduction or even the many manifestations of eyes in our world are independent developments, you are incorrect, because those developments were mutations of the same starting dna. Thats really an odd way of using the term independent. It only stand to reason you end up with similiar convergent mutations when you start with the same beginning dna.

but they didnt share the same reproduction system. We all come from the last common ancestor... but we all do ... in different ways or not at all. The reasons for that are independent of the structure of DNA.

The ancestor organism we come from had a single reproductive mechanism, all other reproductive mechanisms are mutations of that system, and because of this convergence is not just possible but actually highly likely. If I give 1000 teams of builders the same building supplies, they can only create so much variation in their creations, EVEN IF they modify the parts we've given them. That's what is great about the thought experiment we are conducting now, we don't have to box ourselves into the already observed by assuming all the same starting parts (cells, DNA, etc), the same conditions on planet X, or even the presence of what we call biology.

Please don't use this vague, undefined term "information", you sound like an ID tool.

I apologize, I thought it was clear I was talking about genetic data, I just didn't want to use the term genetic for a creature with no DNA and no genes. The word genetic implies so many things I wish to leave out. Hereditary information or possibly reproductive information may have been a better term although they also carry implications that do not properly illustrate the endless possibilities of alien life.

No, they are all responding to different parts of the environment. A tropical plant an an extremophile are in very different environments. And its not the environment that is the driving factor, it is innate feedback loops in any mutating genetic system.

Very true, but there are commonalities between even the extreme environments you describe that we do not have to assume exist on planet X. Again I will use the example of cells. Cells are a great idea for the rigors of life on earth, but to an organism who lives on a planet with no wind, no tides, very little variance of terrain, constant and steady light, etc. a cellular covering would not necessarily be a requirement. Organelles on a string might suffice for these worm-like microscopic lifeforms.

You could even have a system of biological evolution with no death. A sort of fossil record of living organism birthed on top of, or below the parent living organism. Suitability/Survivability would not be defined by staying alive thru generation, but rather being able to find enough resources to reproduce. Grandpa and dad never die, but if junior cant get enough food to reproduce that evolutionary branch ends while his cousins who do find food continue on in life. This system still contains evolution and natural selection, even though every organism in the system is eternally living.

No, it doesn't

Yes, it does. Sure is easy to make baseless assumptions.

So if there was a completel independent genesis. On a rockey world... considering the laws of physics are the same in the universe, and pre-biotic chemistry can and does produce lipids, amino acids, and nucleotides (after all, you can find those even on comets, and in nebula based on the spectra).... if that life happened to evolve to contain DNA enclosed in lipids, you wouldn't call it alien....

Ha, your assuming this life is based on lipids, amino acids, and nucleotides. This is the error that limits your vision of alien life. When supposing aliens, you need not resort to those building blocks. I personally presuppose that carbon runs the show based on the laws of physics, but I find it hard to justify making the assumption, as you do, that this alien life MUST use the exact building blocks you have listed. It's not necessary for life that those things be included.

Even if its genetic code was completely different, with no sequence homology to Earth life... but you'd say not alien....

Riiiiiigggggghhhhhtttttt.............

Life evolves on a completley different world thru a completely different abiogensis event with a completely different environment and yet the organism still evolves itself cells, dna, sexual reproduction, etc etc. I'm gonna have to borrow your Riiiiiiiiggggggggggghhhhhhhhhtttttttttt for this one.

Even if we did find life like that, imagine we actually do discover life so amazingly similar to us as that: At that point which is more likely, that our exact biology propped itself up with the exact same characteristics thru a completely alien abiogenesis event, OR can we reasonable assume that these newly discovered organism are our panspermian cousins based on their physiology? I would assume the latter, which is why I say that such a similar creature is most likely not an alien at all, but rather just more of the same as we have already discovered on earth.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

Sexual reproduction independently evolved on Earth multiple times in multiple lineages. Example: plants and animals.

Your talking about 2 "independent" developments in the same planetary environment and with organisms that started with a huge amount of shared dna to begin with.

You need some sort of recombination, otherwise you have no escape from a Mullerian ratchet, and the species is doomed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller%27s_ratchet

Granted you don't need ... for recombination.

and ... doesn't neccessarily mean sexual reproduction either.

Exactly! For DNA and genes to accomplish their evolutionary "goals" recombination is a wonderful toolset, and sexual reproduction is not the only road to recombination as you admit.

Perhaps a lifeform could assemble a full genetic profile by collecting a small amount of DNA from a series of "nodes" in it's environment and assembling them. These nodes would be a sort of egg filled with one particular gene that a lifeform could come and access for reproduction. Every organism that contained a certain gene would work to nourish that "node" during their life. Organism would mostly visit the nodes they had nourished during their life for reproduction but not necessarily all of them. Nodes could contain small amounts of variation, but this variation would be limited because of the small size of the genetics within them. New nodes could split-off from old nodes when enough diversity occurs, and I'm assuming mutation occurs at stable levels within the nodes, and during the creation of new nodes.

Now imagine a non cellular form of life who does not depend on DNA or the genetics within them. There are even more variances to our evolutionary techniques that could occur.

This cloning + mutation thing wouldn't work.

I disagree. At least explain why you make that assertion, and yes, I will then produce a list of possible caveats that might satisfy whatever your concerns are. Thats the difference between talking about fantasy aliens and talking about earth biology from the past/future. If you want to talk facts, the fact is there are no aliens that we know of. We are starting this conversation with bad presuppositions and following from there, and I think considering the bad presuppositions we start with (assuming aliens with evolution from planet X) you have to question the idea that these lifeforms will even have cells, you have to question if they will even have DNA. I can agree that is these aliens were our "space cousins" thru panspermia, or were the most coincidental organisms to ever exists then everything you say is true, I just think both of those are highly unlikely unless the OP adds them in as a presupposition to our discussion.

We have seen many different ways of circumventing Muller's ratchet evolve on Earth, some convergently arrive at the same solution (sexual reproduction)

It is likely that an independent genesis that leads to a diverse biosphere would also have many lineages arrive at this solution as well.

Again, the "independent" "convergent" development of sexual reproduction, as well as other convergent developments (eyes have developed "independently" over and over and over for many different organisms) are not independent at all. You forget that both plants and animals are the descendents of the same great grandmother organism. They share dna, and even though they develop new information, they can only derive that new information from variations of the old information they possess. Also, remember that all these creatures are responding to the same planetary environment, which is the driving factor of this convergence.

The idea of aliens presupposes a likely lack of cellular structure, DNA, and maybe even biology as a whole. Thats why you call them aliens, because they aren't like you, they're alien in composition and physiology. Sexual reproduction is the go to solution for cellular life who utilizes DNA for heredity. No one disputes that, I just dispute that cellular life that utilizes DNA would hardly even be worth considering an alien, more like just another "kingdom" in the biological classification system.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

Life is a cyclically self-reproducing process with accumulation of information (in thermodynamical sense of it, i.e. chaos->order).

So, any life would be cellular in wide sense of "cell": an isolated space with its own in-line cyclical processes.

A mess will stay only a mess where no one process could be repeated infinitely with a competition against another such process.

So, no cell means a mess; a mess means no evolution, just an endless organic goo bubbling.

To get an evolution you would definitely split your vat to separated bubbles.

Your talking about explanations of why our life on earth works the way it does. You've perfectly explained why our form of life works/evolved the way it does/did. But you can't leverage an understanding of our techniques for survival to disprove or judge the likelihoods of other possible solutions to the same survival problems. If you can't even imagine non-cellular alien life, you're really limiting the scope of what your idea of an alien even is.

On a planet with very little environmental pressures, the contents of our cells (the "mess" as you call it) would not necessarily need a protective covering to survive. Simple linking the organelles together on a rope might suffice. On a planet with incredibly harsh conditions, more than just the protection of a cell might be required, a much larger naturally occurring structure might be the only safe vessel for life in a very harsh environment. You can't apply the merits that our earthen cellular life has utilized to these different environments, there simply would not be any reason for life to evolve such cellular structures without the environmental pressures that our life was subject to.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

I understand now, but you're describing asexual reproduction. If you mean construction outside body and it doesn't involve intelect (because then that can't be included in the discussion), then how did those organisms came to be in the first place? They had to evolve.

I am not disputing the organisms evolution, it was a presupposition of the OP. Construction outside the body, in my mind, would be similar to the hypothesized methods of abiogenesis for cellular life, expect the forces that may have accidentally created life thru abiogenesis would be purposefully recreated and harnessed for the purposes of reproduction. The variables in this methodology would lead to diversity and changes in the "construction techniques" of these lifeforms could evolve from generation to generation.

It's a very poor genetic diversity compared to sexual reproduction. If the evolution leads to sexual reproduction, the species gains a powerful tool for even better adaptation. Vast majority of the life on Earth evolved the capability to do so. Bacteria share plasmids, plants produce motile gametes, etc. It makes the species more resilient. Chances are such behaviour would occur elsewhere because it's not keeping all the eggs in one basket. A smart thing nature made by chance.

Again, you only cite things you have observed on earth and label them as the best tool for evolution. You are making an "argument from ignorance". We're talking about how a fictional alien organism COULD biologically operate, not how earth life behaves. Other methods than sexual reproduction can achieve the same results or even possibly better evolutionary results. You're assumption that sexual reproduction is the best technique, just because it is the best on earth is completely unfounded. You think hammers are the best thing in all the universe at inserting nails into things because all we have in the shed is hammers, the OP didn't ask how biology works on earth, he asked how biology could work for alf.

Well, they are not. The sciences of ecology and biology disprove you.

Earth biology does not disprove or effect the liklihoods of creatures that are not from earth. If aliens from planet X work in a different way than you, it doesn't mean you have to operate just like the aliens from planet X, it's possible, and possibly likely that two independent methods exists for achieving the same goals.

On the contrary, it's not equally unlikely. Sexual reproduction offers more diversity. More diversity results in less mortality when species is exposed to a problem.

Sexual diversity offers better reproduction than the other techniques used here on earth. You cannot extrapolate those results and conclude that sexual reproduction is the be all end all of genetic diversity. It isn't hard to use your imagination to hypothesize improvements in genetic diversity be adding caveats to sexual reproduction, and I personally don't find it that hard to hypothesize and imagine evolutionary techniques that completely remove sexual reproduction.

So you propose a species which is reproducing by cloning while it auto-introduces high levels of mutations to keep the gene pool different?

There's one huge problem with your idea - such species would be short lived because no hereditary information is shared between the organisms. If huge mutations are introduced every time an organism multiplies, it has a large chance of dying (most mutations must be detrimental; it has a lot to do with entropy), not to mention the divergence would be extreme so we could not have stable and numerous populations. Of course, tweaking the reproduction rate could help, but it would require a large one, and such life or biosphere if you please, would be very similar to fire or any other chemical reaction where the equilibrium is shifted greatly towards the products. It would consume its environment and then what?

I never purposed HUGE mutations, I purpose a system of cloning that introduces mutation at the exact same rate that our system introduces mutation at, just without the need for sexual reproduction.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

2. Robots are not organic life and will not form by biological evolution, so they can't be part of any argument here.

There is no reason that organic life could not assemble more organic life out of pieces depending upon what those pieces are. I just use the word robots to explain the methodology of reproduction, not the biology or lack fo biology of the organism.

Simple splitting without any change does exist on Earth, but it never made anything complex. We're talking about complex, evolved life, beyond procariot-like organisms. It is highly unlikely that animal-like organisms, motile and active, would behave like bacteria.

Your talking about bacteria that create copies of themselves, it's possible to copies ones own DNA while introducing mutation and even keeping a sort of database of recessive genes to supply genetic diversity.

Again, you seem to forget that sexual reproduction as a concept is not tied to the base mechanisms it relies on on Earth. There could be other mechanisms and biochemistries with sexual reproduction, just like other bases could and would yield bilateral symmetry for organisms actively moving in fluids.

I don't discount that it is possible that other forms of life could use this technique, I just think that other methods are just as reliable or MORE reliable and useful for the goals and mechanisms of evolution than sexual reproduction

3. It is highly unlikely for a highly complex species to arise by cloning, where by highly unlikely I mean "for all intents and purposes impossible".

Nonsense, it is equally highly unlikely that we have arisen the way we have, yet we did AND it works. If you looked at out our biology from the outside, you'd probably question why we have liquid blood that could easily pour out and result in death, until you understood all the caveats and subsystems that make such a thing plausible and even quite effective. If you refuse to think that a self clotting system is possible, liquid blood would seem impossible and foolish for biological life. The same goes for other, non-sexual means of reproduction. Your vision of cloning and mine are not the same and I venture to guess that you could easily introduce all the qualities that necessitate evolution into your narrow view of cloning.

If you have hereditary material, vast opportunities are presented to you if you exchange it with another organism. Reproduction by pure cloning would make your species stagnant and, if suitable methods (huge population or very powerful repairing mechanisms) don't work, a cul de sac and prone to extinction.

Again, no one suggests pure cloning, but rather cloning with the introduction of variation from generation to generation either accidental or purposeful.

Think of sexual reproduction, of which there are many varieties, as expected as motility or sensitivity to touch, and not as something intrinsically tied to our genetics or biochemistry.

I certainly don't think of it that way, at least for our life it is tied to our genetics and biochemistry, but for a completley different set of non-gene genetics or biochemistry such a thing is hardly required and maybe even completely convoluted.

[Extraplanetary Dimorphism?]

Alot of wild assumptions have been made in this thread.

1. Independent life would not necessarily be DNA based.

Unless these other organisms are our panspermian cousins, it is unlikely that other organism would have DNA at all. They most likely would not even be cellular. I only say "most likely" because the quasi random nature of evolution means that different life will respond to challenges, it is unlikely they will use the EXACT SAME mechanisms to deal with those challenges. (evolution was a presupposition of the OP's original post, so I won't argue that this life may function without evolution at all)

2. DNA or not, sexual reproduction would not likely be a function of alien life.

Sexual reproduction assumes that this form of life replicates it self thru the exact same means we use, which would be unlikely. Perhaps other organism build copies of themselves intelligently, like a race of robots. Perhaps the organisms reproduce by simple splitting in half, the way cellular life does. Perhaps all organisms of a "species" descend from a single queen organism that does not require ... or fertilization of eggs. Perhaps other life never reproduces at all, perhaps whatever event caused the initial life to exist sometimes reoccurs, and new life is added to their "eternal" ecosystem.

3. Just because our evolutionary strategies work, does not mean that the same outcome is not achievable thru different means.

I see people arguing that sexual reproduction would be likely simple because it work to accomplish "some goal". I agree that genetic diversity and the other goals listed are an important part of evolution, I just disagree that using the exact same strategy we use is the most likely in an independent system with different operating perameters. I would argue that other roads to the same goals exist even on our own earth, and would especially exist on a world with a different set of conditions to drive said evolution.

Please remember that evolution is the only known force that can create increasing complexity out of simplicity. This likely seems counter intuitive but this is possible by taking "steps". Take what exists, add "1 step" of complexity, throw it against the wall and see if it survives, repeat. The way evolution accomplishes these goals is not necessarily the most simple or most efficient method available, and as the goals of survivability change (change in environment), an organism is "trapped" with changing what it already posses into what it needs thru evolution, fin into leg, leg into wing. A great example of this is a nerve that goes all the way down a giraffes neck, then all the way back up because evolution found it easier to just extend the neck one step at a time then to totally reinvent or rethink its own highly inefficient highway of nerves ( http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2010/06/22/the-laryngeal-nerve-of-the-gir/ WARNING: Video may contain Richard Dawkins). You have the chance now, with your own imagination, to rethink sexual reproduction in a way evolution does not have the option of doing. You get to cut out the inefficiencies, or even add new inefficiencies into the fiction of your alien species reproductive techniques.

[[Scenario] We have 4 years.]

Is it possible to redirect the incoming object's trajectory enough to get it to impact the moon? Moon shield for the win. Also, would this cause kessler syndrome to the point of ruining space travel for humanity for 1000 years+?

[Longevity Research]

Longevity research seems the most-necessary kind: its every gain saves lives, and its ultimate aim of immortality would save us all. Were your task to make man immortal and your resources all mankind's, what would you do?

Preventable death would be eliminated by whatever means necessary. Smokers would be convinced or forced to quit, smoke dealers locked away, and the world scoured of smokable drugs. Meanwhile, fat people would be sent to fat camp, ones regaining or not losing weight would get surgery. The crackdown could lead to civil war, but the casualties would pale compared to the alternative, and the culture would eventually change.

Next the organization would tackle cardiovascular disease. It would develop artificial hearts and blood vessels, manufacturing and directly giving both to surgeons implanting them. Once the hearts and vessels could be left inside patients for years, all but a small watch group would move to cancer research.

The organization would try to maximize the number of lives saved yearly, always researching only one cancer at a time and focusing on reducing fatal effects until encountering diminishing returns. Once all the big killers were tamed, mop-up operations would begin.

Vaccination would be mandatory and cures and vaccines pursued for infections disease. Artificial hearts and vessels would be tweaked to last longer and therefore require fewer replacements. Other organs would be grown.

-Duxwing

I would fight you to the death with every ounce of my being and I wouldn't be bothered sinking to low levels to do it.

Your idea of longevity research is the total reduction of individuality and personal freedom and if half of what you suggest came to pass it would be worth dying for to stop you.

[Plasma in a Microwave?]

human waste...400 tons per cubic meter.

You gotta start eating your greens.

[I've got plans for a Hype Space Station]

The worst part of this thread/station is all of the extravagant and intensive promotion surrounding it before public release.

[China could launch a manned lunar flyby next year (if their crazy)...]

if THEY'RE crazy

[What would you want in the next update (0.90)?]

Fix the bug with parachutes cutting themselves every time a save is loaded.

[Does the KSC need more life?]

I'm not so sure about vehicles and kerbals walking around, but I would like to see the facility grow and change as your program progresses based on the choices you make.

Yellow construction vehicles at the outskirts of KSC if you destroy your buildings a few too many times. A science facility that expands as your research progresses. A series of prototype probes parked outside the VAB after you unlock them. Maybe your radar could grow larger the further you flew from Kerbin, or instead an observatory with a telescope that grows. A "boneyard" of rocket parts if you exceed to many crashed. A large crater in the distance if you land a meteor near KSC. Dare I suggest that if you kill a few too many kerbals a graveyard spring up somewhere.

[Disasters and safety survey]

I think it needs an option for "Unbalanced Weight Distribution". Not necessarily on launch but once in space this can be crippling and it is nigh impossible to make small accurate adjustments to fuel loads on small vessels.

Also, am I the only one who has stranded a kerbal outside of a lander that he was unable to climb back into? I've learned not to forget about ladders and keep the area around your hatches clear. No idea if it is possible to refill jetpack RCS outside of a lander.