JoeSchmuckatelli

@Spacescifi Your best bet is to think like a weapons designer. And then escalate and counter. Escalate and counter. Weapons (*includes the ships and missiles and countermeasures) evolve over time given new technology and threat assessments - and that's part of what makes them interesting. Get a detailed look at WW1, WW2 and Modern Warships that show how they were armed and armored against various threats. You will see 'torpedo bands' and certain areas heavily armored and certain parts virtually unarmored. You will see compartmentalization increase and armor decrease and shift - and all of that is due to the expectation of what threats the ship faces at time of design, along with what offensive weapons they carry. WW1 boats don't have a lot of AA. Postwar boats don't either; but they do have different systems. Lots of guns becomes virtually no guns but plenty of missiles... So create your first goodguy space battlecruiser, then design one for the enemy and give the enemy weapons to kill the first. Then give the goodguys counterbattery and a new badguy killing weapon and have the badguys need to find a way to overcome that. Allow a stalemate period, followed by a new tech that kills one side and have them counter. Etc. Force ship design changes based on each advance. Maybe someone gets a new drive that limits the ability to use an old system. Maybe someone develops better stealth - except the boat has to be slower. Through this iterative process, you will be both building story and 'classes' of ships and an interesting 'world' that your characters inhabit and talk about. I forget where I got it from, but "Sparkle" is my favorite space-based countermeasure. Like chaff - it's basically a mixture of metal flakes and crystals with a thermal component designed to puff cheap clouds of stuff between you and what's chasing you. Drop a mine behind it and watch the fireworks.

So... a Power Bar - except with animal proteins. Gotcha Our pasty Vegan underlords would lose their ever-loving minds

. The thing I don't get, is that given L2 is less stable than L4 / L5... how the orbit actually works. Absent correcting the orbit (drift) several times a year, I can't see how the wobbling solar orbit is a stable one. Looks to me that at some point it should 'fall off the hill' and just keep going.

Thank the noodly appendaged one (or whatever deity might apply).

it all makes sense now!

Why do astronauts get "space anemia"? This study has an answer. - CBS News

For those interested: NASA would like you to stare at the clouds https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-globe-cloud-challenge-2022-clouds-in-a-changing-climate

The Tom Cruise run is an NFT

Did not know that: thanks!

James Webb Space Telescope (nasa.gov)

I'm guessing that S20 was designed and built before the idea of the chopsticks - so... no. However, SX knows the internal structure of S20 - and likely has modeled where and how to grab it. I'd think they could / would weld some on the outside if they thought it was necessary... but why? It's a deep reef in the near future. Edit: what @Beccab said

As society has grown more complex so have our rules. In a traditional (ancient) society, despite the female not having the same rights or status in the group as her male family members, they were not always treated as mere chattel. You typically want value for value - so you would try to find an advantageous match for her and you; remember societies are built upon relationships. The literature is filled with situations where things went bad, but the tradition would not have survived if it was always bad for the female. Early on in my adulthood I met a woman from India studying in the US. The subject of arranged marriage came up. Despite the fact that she was dating a friend of mine, and very fond of him, she knew it was not going to last. Her family had already promised her to a man from India. A man she had yet to meet; the first she would meet him was right before the wedding, scheduled for after she graduated. She was okay with this. A fact that absolutely confounded me. Her efforts to explain it ran up against my ignorance and prejudice. Men typically did not sell their daughter off as a slave; that would have resulted in an extreme loss of face/reputation/status. So the horror story we hear is the exception, not the rule. Where possible families exchanged promises of marriage for eligible children with the expectation that the result would be good for both families... regardless of how each society defined what roles were available to the respective child. It is a challenge, being someone raised within the Western Educated Industrial Representative Democracies to understand why anyone would want to live in any system less egalitarian than our own... But to them we are weird. There is a sort of comfort to the traditional, I guess. I think the main thing that humans instinctively fear is chaos - and the world is replete with places where people are willing to accept onerous forms of government in exchange for predictability and security. Ultimately - most people only want one thing: the security to live their lives safely, raise their kids and not be abused by their neighbors.

It's always been an analog for labor and also agreed value of things. Never been a one-to-one; the value of the labor to extract the gold was never as much as the having of gold... but you are correct - how we value it is truly arbitrary and capricious: and yet it has an agreed on value. Think about this: Property. You can read an article like this (Microsoft Word - 10Johnson EIC.SME.doc (vermontlaw.edu) ) where someone tries to distil how the concept of property (rights) works in a place like the United States... but it distils down to something pretty simple and almost absurd. Property is whatever we say it is. Not really a head slapper - until you begin to delve into it and try to deconstruct just what makes something property. The definition varies from society to society - and that can be powerfully dissonant to someone who is invested in his or her society's definitions. Another way to define it is that "Property is whatever anyone strong enough to enforce his will says it is". Medieval strongman: I am the king and I own all the land. And the people. Anyone who disagrees can die. I keep this right because I share my wealth with other strongmen, but only out of the goodness of my heart, and only so long as they do what I say. Tick me off and I'll give the right to enjoy my land to another strongman who is loyal. Later Medieval strongmen: If you want to keep up this charade, we own our land and can direct its ownership to our descendants. American Indians: No one can own the land - what an absurd concept. Still, thanks for the stuff... suckers. Peter Minuit: Here's 60 Gildurs worth of trade goods; this island is ours now. We own it. Suckers. Modern people: no one can own a person. People throughout history: we can kill you all or you can be slaves. Modern people: women enjoy the full rights of society and can own property People throughout history: women are the property of their fathers until married, then they are the property of the husband. There are examples in history where people behaved differently ( A Look at 5 Matriarchal Societies Throughout History (brides.com) ) The original egalitarian societies: What human history tells us about human nature – Solidarity Online ...but they are rare exceptions. Still, when you look at these societies - they all simply had a different agreement on what constituted property and what rights members enjoyed within the society. Money is the same. A simplification of how we exchange value for value. In that context, if a dogecoin has no value to you... it has no value. But for someone who has a dogecoin and wants to exchange it to someone who wants a dogecoin for a thing... they come to an agreement both on the value of the coin and the value of the thing. Which, ultimately is both arbitrary and capricious - even when there's a whole bunch of people agreeing that each thing has a specific value of one against the other... it's just faith.

Well... So here's the thing: Is your intent to tell the story of space travel and explicate current and near-future implementations, or is it to tell a story and have space travel be the backdrop? Either way the limits are part of what confound the characters. Your 'giant space battleyacht' isn't necessary when you can scale the tech down... so what if you can't? What if the only way to sail between the stars within the lifetime of a human is what Pournelle did in his universe? A great big ship that goes to a specific locus and translates from there. Or you could do the classic 'great big ship gets far enough from the star to safely translate, then using massive engines and or capacitors bends space to its will and appears at the outskirts of the enemy's system'. Frankly - one of the things I hated about the subsequent StarWars movies was that anything could warp. Obi Wan introduces us to the idea of the galaxy far far away and the ability to travel by having them be forced into a den of scum and villainy to find someone with a ship capable of crossing the galaxy; a souped up sleeper freighter. They travel a long enough time to learn sword fighting and play chess. Later? Some guy jumps in a yugo and is instantly where he wants to be. Stupid.

Don't forget your Ambrose Bierce: "War is the untying of a political knot with the teeth... that would not yield to the tongue". It's what Governments do. What all the taxes are for.

Two Enter... Only One zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz @Spacescifi - I think you're starting to see why other writers use Impossiblium Drives and Zapper Torpedoes.

This is why this forum needs a 'don't like' button.

Chinese cryptominers bought whole power plants. China's underground bitcoin miners (cnbc.com)

Not sure most subs have steam piling out of them.

delete (Necro'd old posts accidentally)

FWIW - I've never used the HDR feature. The implementation isn't great. Lighting zones tend to be a bit of a rough solution to a fine problem. That was ultimately what swayed me against the ASUS. The people who bought it, ended up loving it after a while - but it took some getting used to. The high number of lighting zones was still centimeter sized 'light pixels' (effectively) and for the price, that wasn't what I wanted. I honestly wonder whether the industry will put out fast 4k OLED 32s in the next few years, just for the HDR advantage. (Okay, peak brightness may not be there - but pixel control would be fantastic!)

The M32U is a fantastic monitor: Gigabyte M32U Review - RTINGS.com When I bought my FI32U, the M32U was barely a whisper. Now, it is exactly the kind of thing I would have bought (same performance, less money for the cost of a few features)... had it been available. But I'd been in a two year holding pattern wanting and watching for fast 4k 32. The one I really wanted, and ultimately decided against, was the ASUS... it just really did not do what I hoped it would do. Got the Gigabyte and never regretted it. I think you will love the monitor!

6th Grade Science Fair is coming up. Last time I did this, my son and I built a wooden and plastic model of how an internal combustion engine works (something totally within my wheelhouse). My intrepid daughter declared last night that she wants to build a robot. Something like this: So - it turns out these things are kind of expensive. I absolutely want to support her interests, but I don't want to get something that a kid with a basic grasp on programming (she codes in Roblox) cannot do in a reasonable amount of time. (I'm confident she and I can lego anything together and I know how to follow schematics, so the physical construction stuff isn't a concern... it's the programming that I have zero experience with). Anyone have experience with these - and willing to recommend good products or those to avoid?

Advice time again: Anyone have experience with 'Robotics Kits'? 6th Grade Science Fair is coming up. ... Asking for a 'friend'

Get a room!