baggers

Ceres as a different story (not well know) than earth: the "natural earth nuclear reactor" started to react at a precise moment in the earth story. (1.7 billons years ago) when some prerequisites meets locally.

We have evidence here on earth of "natural" local uranium concentrates and reaction that make a bit of warm (enought for boiling some water). So it's a possibility for a "local" Ceres cryovolcanism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor We could even imagine that a local increase of uranium-ore concentration could be bring by (or started by) an asteroid impact? And start localy a chain reaction that last "hundreds of thousands of years" until all uranium is gone?

But in that case, as they have evidence of life on multiple habitables planets so close, they certainly can bet on habitable planets and life on many other star systems. It's a very-very good bait for interstellar travel. (like the one that push Colomb and other guys on the seas)

Earth and Moon are impacted very frequently, and Dawn is in the Asteroïd belt. Last year: http://www.space.com/24789-moon-meteorite-impact-brightest-lunar-explosion.html 1 year before, a 20 meter-diameter or 13.000 tons asteroïd in Tchebliabinsk, Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor

It's a shame the payload of 15 science instruments initially intended to Dawn was reduced to 3: the camera, the infrared camera, the gamma/neutron spectrometer. But back in 2006, it's 3 instruments or no Dawn at all, so...

I'm not sure we will launch a "real" insterstellar probe this century (Voyager-like doesn't count) unless we can afford a travel-time to next star of less than 4-5 decades. At 1% ligth-speed and 500 years to Proxima centaury, it's really no need to rush.

Why not go both ways?

May seem a waste (as the XXII century probe will certainly reach its destination before the XXI century probe), but if you don't R&D and launch the XXI century probe, you will certainly not be able to launch the more technology advanced XXII probe. So, we have to keep going.

Maybe you can try a Kickstarter? Like: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102678844 XXI economy, man!

The idea behind it is "if we have no evidence of anybody doing an interstelar travel before, maybe it's simply because it's impossible/impraticable" It's only one in a bunch of answers of this "paradox", tough.

Even in the worst case of interstellar travel, we are certainly able to launch some automated/A.I probes in the very near stellar systems.

At 1% ligth-speed, it take 500 years to go to proxima centaury. At 10%, 50 years. More reseonable. We need 30 000 000 m/s DeltaV So, the launch will be for 2050, you have 35 years for finding that. (Oh, I forgot: double DeltaV, for braking and circularize/exploration purposes at the target) (and a good IA, at least capable of close-orbiting any planet, interplanetary travel and taking some surface surveys) (and if you really want to know if your interstallar travel is a success before the end of the century, lauch at least 5 years before for the "touchdown!" signal travel back to earth)

Just note that: - Our universe not allow actually a "reverse the time": You would alway have one "original" and one "clone". - Physically, it may or may not be any differences. But it's absolutely not the case for human justice, a tribunal, or even a philosoph ^^ - - - Updated - - - Fun fact: If you to something stupid like, kill your mother -in-law, and just after, perfectly clone yourself and go both for judgement: What could the court do? Jail the "original" and free the clone? ^^

The main "pessimistic" thing about manned exploration is the Fermi paradox, I think. Personally, I think we have better time improving genetical technology than manned spacecrafts. Heavily-modifieds "humans" and biologicals systems could probably live in very differents planets. And effectively solve the "all our eggs in one basket". http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/02/life-not-we-know-it-possible-saturns-moon-titan

We can dive with a redbreather and pure oxygen bottles, so maybe sustain a "relatively confortable" 0.6 bars atmosphere with that sort of gear. But typical mars temperatures is still a problem: -89 to -31 °C. But maybe the CO2 atmosphere will raise these? And for how long will last these artificial one-shot 0.6 bar atmosphere without a real cycle?

Note that "terraforming" another planet to make a copy of the actual biological earth system is: - Very costly (terraformation process) - Not solving the "all eggs in one basket" in terms of biological diversity. ( a simple virus can destroy all humans planets if able to travel from one planet to another by trading spacecrafts for examples) A less costly and more effiency way to "diversify" and not putting "all eggs in one basket" will probably be a division of the human race in more than one specie and biological system, each closely adpated and optimised to differents planets. Doesn't it sound interressing? ^^

Mining, trading, gib clay and mony/slaves/goods to motherland. The usual stuff. Maybe a penitenciary colony?

What's the point of a flying Venus colony nowaday? I mean, catching sulfurics cloud with a butterfly net is certainly a respectable hobby for some scientist with dirty hairstyle, but what else, the hell, can you do in that sort of place?

Maybe we could say that to the actual state of technology and knowledge about space, our solar system, and the neightbour solar systems, unmanned space flight is the best choice at the moment? I mean: we are humans, and Darwin say that we are adapted to our planet. We couldn't "live" outside our "biological system" in another planet in our solar system: In fact, they are many place on our own planet were we couldn't live! But we can explore or exploit even in places we couldn't sustain our specie. Unless we find a way to "adapt" ourself or the others planets (terraformation) to our "biological system", we probably can't sustain a permanent "trading post" anywhere outside our planet. So, we can explore unmanned and hope for a "sister-earth". Or we can try to improve terraformation technologys ^^ Or adapt ourself: permanent spacesuits, live forever for travelling hundert of years, eating vacuum, that sort of things. But I'm affraid that "manned exploration" go to an end here. Unless a special case happen. Note that remaining one and only specie and one and only biological system is probably a costly way to colonize space: An "humanity" divided in differents species and adapted to differents biologicals systems/planets is probably a better way to expand itself in space: diversity...

Hello. I agree Ceres is very dark(0.09 albedo), but theses spots have an albedo >0.5. Remember that they have been spoted far away and are very small. The contrast is very high. We still don't know the "final" albedo of all these spots. Could be 1 in some cases.

The fact that Kerbals seems to have poorly conquered the durface of Kerbin (very few structures) and even learn science stuffs by taking surface samples of Kerbin is troublesome. Add it that they seem to have access to a "very good" technologic stuff and all that rocket lying along the roads... It sure: the Kerbals doensn't came from Kerbin!

Taking camera shots and selfies, maybe with a special idle animation for Kerbals in champ.

It's a bit strange to have to pilot blind (instruments only) before unlocking cameras? I vote for electrics!

Got it, thanks! Really, this is a nice mod, we even have all the "map" infos, the manoeuvers nodes we make in the Map screen, we can pilot from inside! ^^ Just, unfortunately, the JSP camera is in the 300-science tech, not affordable Can we have these in more "basic" tech tree level? (or unlock these by another way?) I would like to use these on my carreer save ^^

I will try that back at home, thanks ^^