kerbiloid

The more flat your trajectory - the more dV you can dissipate in atmosphere. IRL chutes can be forced (and oftenlt are) to open with a gunpowder charge. For comparison. From ru.wiki, translated from Russian. Mars-3 landing. The landing began after the 3rd trajectory correction. Before the lander separation, the orbiter has been oriented at proper angle for safe air breaking. Lander has been separated just before the orbiter comes onto Mars orbit, i.e. at hyperbolic speed, 12:14 Moscow time. 15 minutes later a solid-fuel engine (mounted on a special truss) corrected the lander trajectory to hit the Mars atmosphere (dV = 120 m/s). A correction system (mounted on the same truss) has turned the lander to prograde with a conic heatshield. Two small solid rockets mounted on the heatshield have stabilized the lander with rotation. That correction truss has been separated. 4.5 hours of free flight until entering the atmosphere. A timer ignited two another solid motors mounted on the heatshield - to stop the rotation. 16:44 Moscow time: enter to atmosphere at speed 5.8 km/s with angles close to proper values. Airbreaking with a heatshield begins. After main airbreaking, yet on supersonic speed, acceleration sensor ignites a solid booster (or charge) mounted on the top of a parachute container. This solid-fuel charge forces the drogue parachute to open. 1.5 seconds later a linear cutting explosive charge cuts off the cap of the torus-shaped parachute container. This cap gone away with that drogue parachute. But flying away, this cap pulled out from container the main parachute (with reefed canopy). The main parachute's cords were attached to a bunch of solid-fuel boosters, which wre, in turn, attached to the lander itself. When airspeed got subsonic, a timer enabled a reef cutter which cut the reefs. Main parachute canopy, being unreefed, fully opens. 1-2 s later the heatshield is separated and falls away. Also radioaltimeter antennas are uncased. While chuting down, the airspeed gets 60 m/s. At 20..30 m height (by rafio altimeter) the bunch of the landing solid boosters (do you still remember them? they were to attach the main chute) are ignited. The main chute is separated and gone with (yes, you got it!) one more solid booster. The landing engines are off (btw they arre mounted on a chute container). The chute container is separated from the lander and gone away with (as this used to be) one more solid booster. The fragile lander is packed in a foam plastic to prevent from damages. Happy touchdown.

You can land in a lake, so the exhaust will vaporize water, while the solid surface below would stay undamaged.

DNA isn't a magnetic tape. It's just a matrix from which proteins are being printed, that's its only purpose. So, it can keep only proteins images, nothing more. Butterflies and mountain: one million butterflies starts, hundred thousand finishes. Who had selected a wrong way — doesn't survive. Who (occasionally) had selected the correct way — survives. All survivors selected the correct way. Also: even if a million years ago there was a mountatin, the climate (and butterflies optimal path) has changed dozens of times.

How could you explain 2063 technoligies to a earth tribe of 11 century?.. Back to theme: you take chief's sons as host... guests and promise him a help against a neighbour tribe. And that's his problem how to learn you language.

Just put your hand on opponent's nose and mouth and when he's eyeballs out, take it away and explain: "Got it? With cells — all is the same."

Rather than humans, AI has no hormones, no emotions. No emotions → no feeling → no horrors and no desires → no motivation → no goal setting. I.e. super-AI lives in eternal Nirvana and doesn't care about anything. Even more than hippy. Humans are frightened that super-AI would attack them once being activated because it understands that they can switch it off and destroy. Yes, it understands, but why would it bother with that? Uptime of trillion years or of a millisecond — just different tick numbers. - Super-AI, self-destroy! - OK. Press any key to continue... But. From a real report of Galactical Planets Inspection: "Star system JFUG57/GA-7. Yellow dwarf with eight planets. The third planet from the star is occupied by endemic lifeform evolved from arborous omnivores. All attempts to find a significant planet-wide AI are unsuccessful. Any contact with local reasonable life is considered impossible. Update planet status: → unhabitable. Colonization: → acceptable."

If Bob is armed with invincible dreadnoughts, why Alice should vainly attack them? She would attack what's behind these monsters: bases, cargo ships, so on. While Bob's dreadnought massacres one place, Alice's kamikadze torpedo boats do this with several others. So, those Bob's monsterships would be quickly replaced with medium-sized destroyers, and also Alice does the same. As a result, there should be established a parity: - medium-sized destroyers which hardly can (but can) intercept this swarm of enemy minions (missiles and boats) vs - rockets which hardly can (but can) hit those destroyers This gives a wide diversity of tactics and enahncement strategies. Also, nobody prohibits to have a planetkilla-supercharge on every destroyer - just for lulz.

Actual nuclear AGM: Skybolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAM-87_Skybolt

How can the Sun revolve around the Earth, when the Earth is a flat disk?!

Beware! Betelgeuse is 640 light years from us, and we can't know exactly if it still exists: maybe it has blown 500 years ago. It's a Schroedinger star for us: with some probability it exists, with some probability - no. And your observations decrease the indeterminancy of Betelgeuse state and with 50:50 chance not in desired direction...

And when it rotates - all crew inside its outer layers becomes spots on a wall thanks to centrifugal force.

Falcon has only landed. Still no proved re-launched liquid-fuel rocket exists.

They don't. They honestly try to build a classic dreadnought. But every time Gravity squishes it to a sphere. As nobody wants to admit an error, they say that this round shape is by-design. Btw in accordance with IAU definition of "planet", Death Star: 1. "is in orbit around the Sun" 2. "has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape)" 3. "has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit" - by gun, of course, but the definition doesn't forbid that.

Enormous and potato-shaped planets in the sky just over the head; half-day half-night sky around were a real shock for me. Then I was stunned first time watching from a spaceship all the places of my animal life. When I was tired defending the planets, I've just ignored their annoying screams, enabled cheats, got (by cheats) all fictional devices aboard and then just played transforming the planets and moving animals from planet to planet. And the colonized planets were enough happy without me, defeating the pirates themselves.

1. If a thin plastic bag is enough to withstand against the dynamic pressure - why install that heavy nose cone at all? They could take several bags of potatoes more - instead of the nosecone. And btw use those bags to cover the MAV when the potatoe has been eaten. 2. If he just puts a potatoe into the feces, no potatoes should grow, because it would be burnt due to the decay heat. Any feces must be first totally rotten into compost, and only when the decay stopped, this becomes a fertilizer. 3. Watney's RTG heat power is 1500 W - as a powered clothes iron, and it's still enough to keep a bath of water hot. Why the RTG wasn't molten down or at least red hot when it was buried into the ground? Try to hide a powered clothes iron beneath a seat and feel the difference. Probably, Mark could bake his potatoes above that place, but he was wrapped up in his thoughts and lost that opportunity. 4. When Hermes released the air, dV = 29 m/s. Air molecules velocity U = sqrt(3 * 8.3144 * (273 + 20) / 29e-3) = 500 m/s. dV = U * ln(M/(M-m)); M/(M-m) = exp(dV/U); (M-m)/M = exp(-dV/U); 1-m/M = exp(-dV/U); m/M = 1-exp(-dV/U) = 1-exp(-29/500) = 0.056; Per every 1000 kg of Hermes: Air mass = 0.056 * 1000 = 56 kg. Air volume = 56/1.225e-3 ~= 45000 m^3. Average Hermes density ~= 1000 kg / 45000 m^3 = 0.02 kg/m3. Hermes is 50k times lighter than water and 16 times heavier than air. It's a space zeppelin.

Two words about "thermoMIRV" part. - Aren't its axes rotated? Looks like it's designed for SPH, as in VAB it was rotated by 90° for me. - If I add "CoMOffset" parameter into cfg and make the center of mass shifted from its cone base towards the nose, it became more stable on free fall and falls nose-foremost all its way (not side-foremost). - For other command pods, nosecones, etc, this line worked fine for me: CoMOffset = 0.0, 2.0, 0.0 (I.e. dX = 0, dY (usually vertical axis) = 2.0, dZ = 0.0) But with this part dY = 2.0 has shifted the center of mass not upwards as usual, but sideways, towards the cone base, even if I'd rotated the cone upwards. So, probably, the axes are rotated.

Data link to Skynet cannot crash the car because Skynet doesn't control the car. It collects info from all the cars on the road, manages traffic-lights (as now), provides the board computers with information about traffic bottle-necks (as now) and other traffic events, makes real-time photos of traffic incidents and violations (also as now, but probably using also the nearest board video registrators - which already are on every car, but yet not online). It doesn't manage the car "low-level" movement. I.e. it does all the same what it does now, except of: all cars permanently report about their positions and maybe passengers, and this is one service system instead of several as now. And - in a rare case when a robo-car is put into a situation when it cannot evaluate a safe route, it will ask the Big Bro to describe the situation watching with eagle's eyes and to compute how to avoid collision or minimize the effect. Big Bro (Skynet, MasterControl) which can see the situation in whole honestly tries to compute the route with minimal possible damages and casualties. It doesn't care which of the cars asked this question, it just tries to save all around the possible crash point. So, it computes the route(s) for the car(s) and sends them an imperative command: "Broadcast Command: Emergency Protocol Enabled. Lock the manual override.", "Caterpillar - move left", "School bus - break", "Sportcar - speed up, keep forward, enable safety balloons". It won't drive the cars, the board computers still will. But according to the script sent from Big Bro. When all is finished those of the cars who is still on the road return to their normal management. In any other case you will get a competition between car owners whose car is more tough and a battle between robo-cars each of which will try to crash others saving its own passenger. "Ethical way" will be a "Carmageddon way".

Would they go by a bus which is driven by unknown person maybe sleeping 4 hours per night and eating antidepressants? Also, again, if a robo-Caterpillar decides to save its driver by crashing to a bus instead of falling from a bridge, I'm afraid they would still depend on a computer's decision. Just this would be not their own computer and not they had allowed it to rule their lifes, but a Caterpillar's owner. And these are isolated systems. Normally a car runs on its own, it's not a remote-controlled toy car. In normal situations in makes decision without Skynet. Also it reports every millisecond its position and status to Skynet, as all cars around it. But in case when the inner computer "needs to make an ethical choice" it doesn't "take an ethical choice". It delegates the decision to a disinterested arbiter - i.e. Skynet/MasterControl. So, the disinterested arbiter decides: to crash a two-person bolid or a school bus. No "my" cars.

The star must be stable per at least a billion years. Because any life evolves when generations change each other, not modifying existing bodies. And the a complex lifeform can change only by relatively small portions, as "very much mutated" usually means "very much ill" for it. So, generations number seems to be limited from below, and the evolution needs at least half of billion years (as on Earth) to evolve from a plankton into nice and beautiful us. And from zero to infinity to implement the bacteria from scratch. So, at least a billion years. This means: - No giant stars. They live fast, die young. - No red dwarfs. Because any planet in a habitable zone would be very close to the star and tidally locked. While the red dwarfs are very stable in the sense of lifespan, but very unstable in the sense of radiation. They are based on a convective equilibrium, not a radiation one, and gurgle as a lava lamp once per several months, which means very unstable conditions and very stable radiation blasts. - No red dwarfs again - because photosynthesis is weak under their light, and until something significant would grow on their planet, the geological activity finishes and circulation of matter stops. So, it would be a Sun-like star, a yellow dwarf. The star place would be: Far from the region with active star formation process. - Far from the galaxy bulge. - Far from the galaxy arm front. Preferably in the corotation zone, i.e. at the same orbit radius as Sun has. I.e. where you never cross the arms front because here you revolve around the Galaxy center with the same speed with its arms. - Far from star clusters. Though the star should appear in a cluster because it needs heavy elemnts to form the planets. I.e. it must leave a star cluster billion(s) years ago. In a region rich with heavy elements. - Far from the galaxy outer edge, where only hydrogen is. - Again, it must leave a star cluster billion(s) years ago. I.e. the star must situate at the nearly the same orbit as Sun does, between galaxy arms as Sun does. This means just several bubbles of space, each < 1000 l.y. in size, per the whole Galaxy. Inside one of these bubbles we live, while others we can hardly observe because of dust. So, < 1000 l.y. around the Sun is more or less realistic space to look for life. A yellow dwarf, far from star clusters, at least a billion years old. The planet would be Earth-sized, as it needs to be enough solid to have a surface, enough large to produce enough much volcanic gases while gravitanional differentiation to create an atmosphere and an ocean. And to keep the atmosphere from dissipation. Mars size is inappropriate. But not much larger than Earth, otherwise it will be a gas giant. I.e. 0.5-1.5 Earth masses. There must be at least one gas giant to clear the space and to stabilize orbits (Jupiter, not Sun, "contains" almost all angular moment of Solar System). And at least one another gas giant to move the first giant far from the habitable zone. I.e. Jupiter and Saturn. Very preferably the planet would have an equatorial tilt to make year seasons. They enforce the evolution speed by testing lifeforms for heat and frost twice per year rather than growing them in an incubator. But the tilt would not be ~40 degrees and more - otherwise heat and frost would not "come to", but "crash onto". The planet would rotate enough quickly to prevent the life die from night frost and day heat, but enough slowly to allow more or less continuous chemical reactions. Say, 1 round per 24 Earth hours - not months or minutes. Very preferably the planet would have a giant moon which: - Runs tidal waves, splashing lifeforms from water to coast and washing them from coast into water transforming a lifeless rocky coast into a bog with algae and jungles and testing the lifeforms, speeding up their evolution. - Most probably created that equatorial tilt from the previos point. - Most probably created that ~24h rotation from the previos point. The planet must be in a "habitable zone" +- 10%. A little closer - the ocean will cause greenhouse effect and we get Venus, vice versa - we get an iceball. Summary: A yellow dwarf, out of star clusters, < 1000 l.y. from the Sun. With two gas giants far outside from a habitable zone. 0.5-1.5 Earth mass planet inside the habitable zone, equatorial tilt 15-30 degrees, with a huge moon.

When you are watching a cable TV, you don't own TV channel. You own a piece of glass and non-exlusive rights to use the channel and its client software. When you a driving sitting in a robo-car, you are to own a piece of metal and non-exlusive rights to use the (hypothetical) traffic channel and its client software. Nobody cares, whether it's you it this exact robocar, or not you. Not the car must choose between "my beloved Master and other miserable people", but the traffic Skynet must minimize casualties. At least because otherwise robo-Caterpillar would always be on top.

Earlier of Tantares mod had V-2 clone named "Pavonis". Maybe still available. Currently its maintainer moved it to Taerobee modas an American clone of V-2 named "Bumper". But with some design changes.

Inside.

Not orders. Navigation, so on. I mean, this problem appears only on streets and highways, not amidst a desert with no mobile communications. So, we can presume that a robocar is always online. As it is always online, we can provide it with some Emergency Online Protocol. "Hello, MasterControl. This is MobileObject id=2398562985. Can't evaluate an optimal route. Please, give me your suggestion. Priority: Highest.". "Hello, MobileObject id=2398562985. This is MasterControl. Emergency Protocol Enabled. Lock your manual override. Keep forward." "Roger, MasterControl."

Any human is GMO: mom's "O", "GM"ed by dad. Almost 50% of genes are injected from outside, from both sides of view. And for most of them a final is the same.

a ) A robodriver requires an efficient wireless net to effectively drive. b ) The choice problem is actual only on large roads with high traffic, not on a desert road. c ) Smartphones, navigators, etc, definitely keep a wi-fi connection inside all these cars. So, we can presume that all listed vehicles are permanently connected to an outside communication infrastructure and permanently report about themselves at least to wi-fi/4G operators. That means they all can be under all-seeing eye of a local Skynet which can convoy them all time on their road. So, not a "car/driver" would make a decision, but a big and clever computer somewhere in a city traffic department in twenty miles far from there. In this case: 1. There is no "crash myself or not" because no "myself", just 200000 of car virtual objects in Skynet's mind. 2. A choice is absolutely clear: minimize casualties. Either a car asks a traffic Skynet: "What should I crash into?" And gets recommendation: "Lock your manual override. Keep forward.". Or just a traffic Skynet enables Emergency Remote Override on several cars and drives them on its own suggestion.