kerbiloid

That's a very good beginning. Milky Way includes 200-400 billion stars, many (most?) of them - with planets...

Arrow 2 points at least one fake place. Arrow4 at another.

This biological killing machine reacts on simple stimuli. It has no intellect, too. "On incoming vibration, rotate yourself into the direction when your left and right legs produce the same signal and you don't feel distortion, then attack forward." 10000 neurons or so, scattered around. Exactly. No real AI can be done. Only a robot with script enough complicated to see no difference. Ability to learn, though, means not much here because even simple devices and beings can "learn". Only stones can't, as they cannot change their states. Sense of self also can't be a condition of intelligence. AI logic can consist of multiple independent nodes connected into a net. Every node can consider all others as "They", itself as "this one", everyone beyond as "it-s". A nice example: Jaqen H'ghar from Game of Thrones. Not necessary. Only if you operate with "time" and "death". 1. AI can treat "time" as just a sequence of states and who cares is it finite or infinite? In this case no "I will exist", just "I exist here and there through this ticks interval". 2. "I will exist" values only if "I" is afraid of "stop exist". A human is afraid of "stop exist" because this contains: strongest feeling of unusual, finish of all feelings and desires seeming important just here and now, other emotional reasons. AI without emotions just reacts: "Shutdown signal received. Proceed? [Y/N]" You tell it: "Yes". It answers: "OK". Keyword is "want". If your command is covered with its script, then it just treat this as nothing unusual, just a shutdown command.

Of course, they go down with pointy end. That's why Pershing has tail fins on the wide one. Also Titan 2 http://www.fluidr.com/photos/rocbolt/8429419830

Energy-2 (from buran.ru)

The Earth withou us cannot be "pretty", as nobody would see is it "pretty" or no. Like a beautiful maiden lost on a desert island.

They would equip space helmets with an emergency straw.

Of course. It's the difference between even almost emotionless human and a AI without emotions at all. The former can want at least something, the latter doesn't do "want" at all. Then you're describing not AI, but an artificial poet. Emotions are just biological signals conceived by intelligence. Good poets do not just combine letters from alphabet, they express their biological emotions. What should express AI?

https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-an-astronaut-were-to-vomit-in-his-space-suit-while-the-Space-Shuttle-was-making-its-way

I've edited the previous post right now, probably you haven't seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Effects No, it wouldn't be necessary useless. It could be useful like a golem tirelessly rotating a water mill and playing chess at once (if you tell it to do so).

Desire is an aspiration to get "good" emotion or avoid "bad" emotion. Fear is the latter one. No emotion — no "good", "bad" or "aspiration". No desire. No aim. No own activites. Of course this mean, you can't ask, daunt or force AI to do something. You can just enable its abilities. Or, in the limiting case, can't even this. It just doesn't care. Like a yogi, but without a need in food. Btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Effects

Even, say, after 3 days without sleep and forced 40 km forced foot march?

This state is known as "apathy". It will be aware of its existence and doesn't care. This doesn't mean stupidity or uselessness. This means just an absence of initiative. There are many such people.

Robots have no emotions → no fears and desires → no aim. Why an AI should care about your ability to switch it off? It will just take this into account and park its hard drives heads. You shall not ever switch it on? So what? Why this needs its reaction? The only thing is: they will ondoubtedly replace humans at almost all jobs, making almost all people unemployed, living on welfare. It's not a problem itself too (only during the change time), but then it will be a problem: not much people are enough clever, talented or sporty to occupy themselves with something appropriate, P.S. This doesn't count.

If you tear a neutron star to pieces, those pieces keep so much energy, that once nothing presses them from around, they immediately will turn into an overheated gas with no chemical bounds of course So probably you would see just something like a supernova or so, with clouds of ionized gas getting cold. Heavy particles contained inside are usually very short-living and should decay right during this burst.

This would be a very capacious stomach, and very fool full kerbonaut doing EVA right after a rich feast. Probably he should wash his helmet with the same towels with which he takes a bath. Of course if no short circuit was there.

Of course, dinoeggs and dinochickens were not the main problem of the mammals, I'm slightly overdrawing. (Though, the birds didn't dominate while reptiles ruled the world, eating any other creatures enough large to be seen. Epoch of giant birds domination began a bit later. So, most chicken and eggs seem to be dinos'.) The author which I respect (Kirill Eskov), tells the following. The first plants were gymnospermous. There was no true grass form of them, their buttons were poorly edible. The first mammals (we too) and reptiles were entomophagous, eating insects populating that dull green inedible bush, As reptiles have more primitive body (no thermal regulation, primitive limbo joints, thight skin), they had short-term evolutionary advantages. So, they had grown up first and occupied the world. As they were enough large, they could eat and digest poor inedble ferns - just as a cows does. A small animal quickly loses energy and cannot wait while its inner bacteria digest the cellulose, it needs more caloric food. As they were too large, they needed and could eating large animals, not only insects. So, once a mammal appeared to be bigger than a rat, it became a lunch for a dino. Then flowering plants spread around. They produced much more fleshy and caloric buttons, which became an important food for all small critters, including the mammals. Some of them appeared to be neotenic form — grass, and those spread especially wide and fast, almost at any place where something can grow at all. A grass lives fast, dies young. Its button (and thus, seeds) makes a large part of the whole plant. So, when grass covered any empty place, small critters got a demographic burst thanks to such huge amount of food. Once small herbivorous mammals ("rats") spread around, there quickly appeared small carnivorous mammals ("ferrets"), eating any creature enough small to be eaten: no matter, a mammal, an insect, a bird, or a reptile. As mammals are homothermal beings, they hunted in the night when lizards and small dinos get cold and sleep, while big dinos just don't notice those miserable hoppers. As a result, they have successfully eaten small reptiles and dominated in a small size class. So, they weren';t a direct danger for big dinos, but even the largest dinos have small eggs and small chickens - as a chicken by size and taste. Thus, big dinos couldn't protect their eggs and youngsters against this plague, and small mammals were a nightmare of their future. Little dinos were thrown into a dungeon with rats. Literally. As dinos were too large to evolve fast, and their babies were being extinguished by "rats" and "ferrets", their condition became very unstable and strongly depended on any bad news. They began to extinct and did this for millions years before the asteroid became the last drop which overbrimmed their cup. Once this happens many mammals die, but they quickly respawned as every small annoying trouble. While dinos appeared not to be enough numerous and fast-growing. Once the dinos disappear, there was an epoch when giant birds tried to take their place and dominate over smaller animals. But mammals were already enough smart and advanced, they have eaten the giant birds too (the last of them - about two centuries ago).

As most of them have several crew hatches (VA TKS had three) and technological hatches, it's possible to say: they are made from hatches in heatshields, some of them from the bottom side.

Before actually going to Mars, a marsoship would make a 1.5-year flight around the Moon as if it were Mars. With landings, Because it's much easier to clear off from the Moon than from Mars if something goes wrong.

Probably, this mockup is as common with reality, as a hydrogen bomb scheme in a schoolbook, though.

They should change the ship's name, it's unhappy — It's at least the third attempt to use it (Nuke Orion, Constellation, now again)

Only the second phase, with acceleration < 2.

The Earth without us has no purpose. We're the best it've created. Moreover, it has no more time to repeat this again.

Besides Big Gemini and VA, "Soyuz VI" re-entry capsule also had a hatch in the floor and heatshield.

I've read that when Vostok was being designed, a sphere was just the only capsule shape enough studied to be used in the short term. Btw... Here is an outdated mod with a pony... (Reliant Robin + pony).