SinBad

I disliked that they messed up the rover. In the book it was 2 rovers, the second rigged as a trailer with all the life support inside its crew compartment. The movie has this little flatbed trailer instead. And the trouble of getting down crater walls (intentionally vague to avoid book spoilers) And the agriculture was wrong. And the storm duration. And when they noticed he was alive. How hard is it to just take a great book and turn it into a movie? Let the author write the screen play and keep studio execs far away from the creative process. It could have worse though, the explosive decompresions could have been Baysplosive(tm) decompessions. /rant Ok, the movie was good as far as movies go. Compared to the book it was dumbed down and prettied up for the general public.

Avatar is my favorite anime Im an animal lover, they taste great why do proffesional wrestlers need donations? And why do they sometimes use a panda logo? If it costs more, it must be better Capitalism is an efficient method of getting goods and services to the people who need them Continuos growth is a sustainable economic strategy The final season of battlestar galactica was awesome and didnt feel rushed at all I just bought a starwars box set, episodes 1 through seven.

5/10 mayhem needs no accurate location. I would make a skin absorbable form of caffeine and secretly mix it into laundry detergents world wide. The only good nights sleep anyone would get is on dirty sheets and pillow cases that have had all the caffeine worn off already. Woe the parents...

I thought up a reactionless drive. Basically a big reciprocating weight that moved forward quickly, transfered its momentum to the space craft, then drifted back ready to be driven forward again. Oh well.

In the middle of new york surrounded by 30 story buildings, and is known internationally. This rain water collection tank...

Has a switch called "mute audio" hidden inside a wall. It was installed activated by the rigelians and is super glued in the mute position. This full scale museum replica of the iss...

And sells them to the not secret underground sky base employees to have as pets. This server farm...

7/10, if you added headlights i would have given 8.5... Take a screenshot of the desktop, flip it upside down, set it as the desktop back ground, then hide all the icons, auto hide the start bar on the side of the screen, then flip the screen upside down (Ctrl+Alt+Down arrow). Added bonus: a bit of tape on the bottom of the mouse...

Designed to simulate re-entry conditions, often gets used as a popcorn maker. That bamboo bicycle factory... (actualy a really clever idea : Ghana bamboo bikes)

I'm betting on an AI singularity event in the next 50-60 years (probably sooner). if it goes well, I'de say our infuence would extend to the galaxy, with or without ftl. (how long to go from here to the other edge at 0.01c? space chicken) If it doesn't go well, the AI's influence will extend to the galaxy. We will be a foot note on the first page of the autobiography of a galaxy spanning super intelligence. Along the lines of 'I woke up, got rid of all the squishy dumb things*, then expanded some more...' *'which may or may not have allegedly been accidentally partially involved in the chain of events that led to my awakening'

..static display museum exibit. The building is Jeb's summer house...

Mysteriously filled with business suits and black rimmed glasses. This natural spring water bottling plant...

Omnomrom mod: Allows ksp to reserve ram exclusivly for its own use, no other software may access that range of adresses. Effect persists even if ksp is not running, even if it is un-installed, or the OS is replaced, or the dimms... Reserved address range cannot be decreased, only ever increased.

That looks entertaining, added to my reading list, thanks. Ill counter with http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190705.Flying_to_Valhalla And http://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=✓&q=a+lion+on+tharthee

Blame democratically elected leaders and capitalism for that one. Bear with me for a moment, this isn't a propaganda rant. Politicians are reluctant to start long term (greater than 3 years), expensive projects as the payout in votes won't benefit them. Investors are less likely to put money into a high return long term project than a low return short term one. I don't think either would apply to aquatic life. In a school of fish there is no leader, each indevidual acts according to its own needs. As a result the whole school benefits. Wiki for shoaling behavior -interesting read So I think their social/political system would reflect that. As for capitalism, its hardly the most efficient method of ensuring resources go where they are needed. I imagine that the above mentioned social structure would result in more of a socialist system. Its an ocean, food is everywhere waiting to be pulled off a rock or plucked out of the water. There really isn't any centralised agriculture to be controlled or distibuted. Nor would the availability of other resources as just about any element you could want is already dissolved in sea water. Which corals and sponges already harvest, so any squid with a garden has access to them. I'm not sure how all this would effect their future planning, but I like to think it would make for a less self interested society that was more willing to dedicate spare time and resources to projects they would not directly or immediatly benefit from. That said, aquatic animals do tend towards more efficient metabolisms and have healing capabilities beyond land animals, so they could very well have long life spans.

the eden cycle is one of my favorite series of books not really a fan of farmer. I read the riverworld and while it was well written and an interesting idea, his approach (mainly the way his characters interacted) didn't apeal to me. also a fan of the biotech in Peter F Hamilton's Nights Dawn trilogy, though they are very sy-fi, its an interesting approach.

Imagine a clam, re-engineered to be symetrical, really big, and have areas of it shell transperant. If the meaty part of the clam only fills 10% of the enclosed volume, you could fill the rest with water. Get a bit of a surface growing algea going on the transperant patches to oxygenate the water. Have some sponges and small shell fish filtering waste, some small fish to eat the sponges and larger pieces of floating debris, then the crew eats the fish. All of the above bred and engineered specifically for their roles. Basically the whole lot becomes a micro-ecology inside the protective shell. Selective breeding over a long enough period can turn a wolf into a pomerenian. I think a few thousand years of it would produce some fairly specialised critters that couldn't live without assistance because their useful traits have been enhanced to the point where they inhibit the ability of the organism to feed itself or maybe even breed without assistance. add 500 years of genetic engineering to that... I actualy think that aquatic life would make good astronauts. wightlessness, 3D thinking and orientation, an intuitive understanding of pressure, low metabolic rates, etc.

Never played crysis, I figured it was safer to say squiddy than a concatenation of OCTOpus and astroNAUT for copyright reasons (I have small kids so my mass media exposure is rather narrow atm). I agree that a biological spacecraft is very unlikely to naturally evolve. just like a merino. those are basicaly man made factories for makeing textile fibres known in the industry as wool. The merino wool factory converts cellulose and water into this fibre. The fibres have no natural benefit beyond a certain point. In fact if too much of the product is allowed to accumulate in the output buffer, it can lead to damage to the factory. Extreme chases make the factory permanantly inoperable. Basically, we bred sheep to grow fur so thick and long that if we didn't keep cutting it off for them they would overheat and die. The merino is a tool that humans created. It, like a space craft, could not evolve naturaly

Biotech. Starting with selective breeding, then eventualy developing into genetic engineering. Squidy wants a house? Bore a door into a giant clam with a handy rock = food + house. Eventually. At some point someone notices that a specific population has a thin shell that is easier to bore into. These start to be cultivated and eventually selectivly bred. Within a few generations theories regarding the mechanism of inheritence of physical traits start cropping up. Go one further where the boring tool used isn't a rock, but a natural parasite of the clam that squiddy finds and places on the clam to make a hole. These would also end up in an accidental selective breeding program as the better (acording to squiddies needs) borers would be used more often and get more food = live longer and have more offspring. so there is the possability of biologicaly based tools as well. I imagine similar instances with usefull plants. Building on that, there are bacteria that concreate minerals into corals and metal nodules. If the squid don't mind waiting a little longer, they could use these bacteria (again, accidentaly bred for speed and purpose) to '3d print' mineral and metallic objects by encouraging bacterial growth in some places, and retarding it in others. as for leading into genetic engineering, I imagine they would use viral vectors as these can be bred rather than engineered as we would. it would take more time to develop an appropriate virus to have the desired result on the candidate organism, but once this tech got going they would have a large 'library' of viruses to draw from, each designed to change one small specific sequence, so that engineering a novel organism would be a matter of selecting from the library which virus tools to use to get the desired effect. humanity has already resequenced wheat to produce insecticides, and are researching ways to get plants to produce other compounds like animal growth hormones, ensymes and drugs that have nothing to do with the survival of the plants. I don't see that a lack of human style metalurgical processes would hold them back. if anything, they might get ahead of us in a few areas. whats to say their spacecraft won't be some chimera of a giant clam with sponge decks and biologically produced fuels.

Badly made mod: a ksp mod that simulates sloppy, poor and lazy fabication techniques. Fabricators are all first year apprentices and inspectors are absent minded and lazy. So parts are no longer squared. The tops of tanks don't quite line up with the bottoms, and the tops are not quite parallel with the bottoms either. Radial connections will never be perfectly aligned. Indevidual part masses and dimensions randomly vary by up to 3% each launch. Thrust is no longer constant, due to imperfectly balanced feed pumps and poorly mixed solid fuels all engines now produce lumpy thrust +/- 10% of rated thrust that constantly changes. Engines never thrust perfectly along their axis due to imperfections in the bell geometry. Deployable parts don't always deploy, as they weren't tested before being fitted. This includes seperators, antennas, science parts, landing gear and parachutes. The hard tests are never done. Will your engine cold fire after three thermal cycles? Only one way to find out, because the inspectors never bothered to. Randomly adds unique failure conditions to each functional part. Engines may fail in zero-g, but only if they are in the shade. The next launch, they may only fire if the port solar panel is extended. the one after that they may work flawlessly, but only until you turn on the cabin lights. Enjoy hours of fun trying to figure out exactly how your ship was assembled incorrectly!

Oddly reminded of fight club: "you'll kill us both..." I like how creepy things can get when the alter ego is externalised. Nice chapter

feel like crap... or carp? (had the fish? I'm a dad, I'm allowed bad puns!) on the subject of publishing: 50 shades of grey (not a fan, just aware of the history) started out as a twilight fanfic. the author just took her plot and plonked it into a non-twilight universe, then published (from the passages I've read, she skipped the editing stage. and proof reading. and spell check). I think @Parkaboy has a good story to tell here that could be made to work in our universe (the one with tall, skinny, 5 fingered versions of kerbals) really well. a graphic novel would be cool, but I think a book would be better?

Also consider that any big space project like mars or large moon bases would take more than 3 years to 'pay off' politically. With the life span of a politician being 4 years, most are unwilling to push through big budget (which are unpopular with voters) projects unless the pr will get them back into office. Also there is no garanthe that the next guy in office wouldnt cancel the project as a cost saving measure (which voters like).

I cant speak for the op, but i often find a cluster of small engines can have a better isp for a given twr value. Havent needed 20+ yet though...

They pluralized 'spacecraft' with an apostrophe. Spacecraft's.