Godot

I guess part of this also had to do with the deadly accidents that overshadowed the sowjet attempts at the moon race and the loss of engineers in the project due to political reasons

Poor ...-Geckos

Actually a boolean designation for life IMHO is not all too useful. You would have to classify the type of life (for the highest level present). Like: Microbial life Multicellular Maybe multicellular further subdivided into size and/or mobile/sessile and type of nutrition (like carnivorous, photosynthetic and so on)

Of course not ... IMHO there are only few uses that cyborgs could do better than robots / remote controlled units. One potential use (for a cyborg like andrew envisioned (i.e. biological brain in a total mechanoid body)) IMHO would be astronauts. A human brain still is superior to all AI algorithms in situations where you require flexible decision making (and probably will remain for a long time) So, with cyborg astronauts we could send human presences to other planets (like Mars or the jovian moons) with only a fraction of the life support that human astronauts would need, and would have something out there, that is superior to probes (insofar as they can decide flexibly for any situations that might arise there, without requiring contact to ground control [together with the logn traveling time for the signals]) Smaller implants however (like replacement limbs or cybernetic neuroenhancements) may be very useful for mankind

Cylorg-Andrew then may be in for a bad surprise if he is affected by an EMP weapon. Or forgets to recharge he batteries of the cyborg body (or these fail)

I agree with both answers provided. As for food: If energy is no problem you could have giant hydroponic farms ... maybe in underground caves with huge artificial lightsources that imitate the stars spectrum. A bigger problem IMHO is waste processing and water. A city the size of a planet will need huge amounts of water .... its inhabitants will also create huge amounts of excrements. If we want to have a Coruscant that is self sustainable to a large degree, we would definiely need methods of waste recycling that are close to 100% efficient. Escpecially with regards to the water recovered. Else Coruscant would always be dependant on a huge fleet of waste collector ships (to ship waste off world) as well as ice ships (to bring in new water)

Well, I for my part consider myself to be a moderate Transhumanist. Insofar, yes, I would be open to augmenting by body with technology. But only with things of which I am more oer less certain that they don´t cause any negative long term sideeffects. And only things I deem absolutely necessary (which, for example, would exclude any leg or arm replacements ... as I neither work in a business where I need an especially high strength in arms/legs and there also is no real reason for me to have such a thing in my personal life, there would no reason to take any risk for augmentations that would be just fancy gadgets for me) As for pressure of employers on emloyees to get cyber-enhancements. Yes ... even if it is regulated that cybernetic or genetic augmentations are deliberate and no emploer can demand from employees to get these things, they would just use employment policies ... with preferring new hires who have augmentations above those without ... and maybe finding reasons to fire employees without augmentations, if they have the opportunity to get an augmented replacement). This is a grave danger and ways have to be found to prevent hire/fire strategies like these. (it reminds me a little bit of the movie "Gattaca", where normally born and raised people are second class citizens compared to those who got genetically enhanced in the womb)

Actually it would be quite doable with a 2 layers Hitpoint System: Hitpoins (of part) Armor (of part) When armor = 0 -> Damage gets transferred to hitpoints When hitpoints = 0 -> Part destroyed It would bear similarities to the system Deadly reentry uses, with the exception that the damage over time wouldn´t only occur when temperature > threshold, but when the part is exposed to he various conditions (corrocive atmosphere, pressure > thereshold, radiation etc. ) It could work similar for Kerbonauts, with spacesuit armor, Kerbonaut Hitpoints and Kerbonaut dead with HP = 0. In its simplest version as depicted here this would be understandable for everyone and oculd be applied to every effect (by just giving each efect a certain amount of damage over time and making the total damage over time for the module/kerbonaut being the sum of the DoTs of all conditions which affect the module/kerbonaut). The system could also be turned into a slightly more complex system, by having not a single armor value, but different armors for each atmosphereic condition (like armor(temperature) armor (poressure), armor (radiation) ... )

I agree that this is a huge problem then. Well, the most important thing is, to know where you have to look. You need informations about where to look for the planets, else you can search for a long time The internet has lots of resoruces for this, for example this here: http://www.astroviewer.com/current-night-sky.php?lon=151.21&lat=-33.87&city=Sydney&tz=EST+ You might also find a compass useful and a portable starchart (if you cannot/don´t want to carry your laptop with you)

It is definitely different ... closer to realism especially. In EU IV (as well as Crusader Kings II which is a little bit similar but covers the medieval times) for example, you need a valid casus belli in order to wage against another nation. And when you have won, you don´t get to claim every city/province you conquered, nut only what you claimed for yourself as the casus belli (unless a white peace is given in which case neither side wins or loses something) You also can win and lose a lot by getting the wrong ruler (with not so good abilities) and may get certain historical events for your country that may have great influence on the world (for example th marriage of Isabel y Ferdinand, resulting in the unification of Castile and Aragon, so that Spain is formed)

Craft he world may be something for you ... or Gnomoria Maybe also Planet Explorers

I´d definitely recommend Space: Above and Beyond Maybe 20 years old, but still among the series which would have deserved a 2nd season (fotunately season 1 ir rather long, with 24 episodes).

Yep, my interplanetary motherships usually have a hitchhiker module. The capsules seem to be a little bit too cramped for longer missions

Convert it to your faith or kill it if it doesn´t want to be converted. Nope, of course, a manned mission would be the logical next step. An unmanned sample return mission would probably be too difficult as it would involve a robot that 1. can catch the specimen and 2. has to either keep it alive for the return, or in a condition, where the remains don´t decay for the long voyage back to earth. Therefore it would be more practical if we could get scientists to europa in order to research the life (and its ecosystem) in situ

Exactly ... and for Torpedoes it actually makes sense

While it sounds interesting, the big question is, whether it is less environmentally damaging (and uses less fuel) than a supersonic passenger plane (and with "environmentally damaging" I don´t even mean chemical byproducts of the engine, but also the underwater noise that the supercavitation most likely produces ... since decades we have cases of whales stranding on beaches ... many scientists are thinking that underwater noise may be the culprit)

One additional thing with regards to jump planning: Use the "mass slider" only after you made all ship upgrades / downgrades you want to make. Every module and weapon in your ship has its own tonnage ... so using the slider before, for example, you ad a module with 4t of weight, may result in a miscalculation of the cargo you can take on by up to 4 tons

The thread in the science sub about the effects of venus atmosphere on the human body made me think about one interesting thing that could be included in KSP. At the moment, as son as we have landed, our spacecraft and Kerbonauts are more or less safe from harm. In real life however there is at least one planet where we cannot even safely land a probe for more then 1-2 hours. I.e. Venus There are also several planets which are harmful for human landing (due to radiation and vulcanism) like Io and other jupiter moons. So I would suggest certain atmospheric and planetary conditions which make staying on the surface/within the atmosphere of a planet moon dangerous (with maybe future planets and moons which are subject to them) Examples for hostile environments: Atmosphere: Pressure Temperature Corrosive elements Surface: Radiation input (for example by narby gas giants) Vulcanism In addition to this the tech tree could be expanded with modules that counteract the effects: Special cooling elements Armor against pressure/corosion Radiation armor (and maybe expecially shielded electronics) Special spacesuits The effects would be a damage per time on the spaceship modules or the Kerbonaut while they are subjected to the environment, with the special researchable countermeasures acting as a buffer (that is, first the buffer pool gets decreased by the dpt before the spaceship modules or the kerbonaut itself take damage)

Actually even the 5G that I mentioned for the cushioned landing of a soyuz isn´t the worst thing. There have been cases of 8G descents (due to misplanning/problems during rentry). Like described here (in which the Kosmonauts and Astronaut experienced the 8G for the duration of a minute): http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/U-S-astronaut-recalls-terrifying-Soyuz-descent-1759455.php

Isn´t the shock during landing (when the retroboosters fire a few meters above the ground) even higher than 3.5 G? (like ~5G)?

Well, in both movies/series depicting EVAs on Venus (i.e "Defying Gravity" as well as "Space Odyssey") the time is extremly limited. In Space Odyssey it is 1 hour. In Defying Gravity it is even just 20 mins (which actually was exceeded by the female astronaut, leading to the seals becoming porous, the suit nearly failing before her return and her getting large scale burns on her body) Same goes for the lander in Defying Gravity, which also was meant to only spend 30 mins on the surface of Venus

Oh, interesting ... thanks for correcting this

Considering the fact that Venus has > 500 °C and 92 atm at "sea level", I guess the death would be almost instandly. Also I would guess that the organic components of the body would denature very quickly, due to the high heat as well as the influence of the sulphuric acid rain I don´t think that the remnants that remain (which could be picked up by venusian wind) could be called "body" anymore Everything on the prerequisite that the human doesn´t wear any protective suit (which probably would resemble that of a deep sea diver) (there was actually a nice series named "Defying Gravity" which was canceled all too soon ... and featured a good depiction of a venus walk .. see pics and vidlink below)

You can´t even fully trust the informations about kCals that are contained within foodstuff. kCal informations usually exclude a large part of the kCals that are supplied by dietary fibers (due to the inability of the human colon, to fully break them up into usable components). Problem is, however, that the real ability to break up (and use) dietary fibers is individually different ... the body of one person may be better in digesting dietary fibers than the body of another person. Therefore one person may take up more energy by digesting food with a high content of fibers, than another person

Very ... especially if you jump to a planet you hadn´t visited in the past (and for which you therefore don´t have any data). Equally useful is the option, to have the jump distances displayed with a certain tonnage of cargo in your holds. Especially for the distance between Aulin and Rakapila it requires to jump with less than full cargo holds for most ship types