farmerben

You get more thrust throwing alpha particles and electrons at 99% c than you do with photons only.

I can survive 400 Mkm above Kerbol but not entirely at 300

Ok, so with an Ion Thruster with ve = 100,000 m/s and a fuel ratio of 90% you would have a dV of 219,000 m/s = .0007c. Which would take 5000 years to reach alpha centauri.

Customizing it to your individual taste is one thing. I am sort of upset that somebody found a way to spam the YouTube algorithm.

How much dV and ISP do you need for a realistic interstellar ship?

Youtube now has a realistic imitation of Christopher Hitchens reading audiobooks he never actually recorded. Blocked. At the very least they notified us it was fake. This is borderline abuse of technology. I don't want to waste time on audio fakes

http://www.theworldgeography.com/2012/09/15-star-shaped-forts-from-around-world.html

I had a very vivid dream. If you have seen Gene Rodenberry's "Earth: Final Conflict" season one and read Niven's "Mote in God's Eye", then this will seem slightly familiar. Friendly aliens arrive in our Solar System and make us this offer: help them to make a copy of their mothership so that they have two fully provisioned ships instead of one depleted ship. They agree to recognize all of our territorial claims, and buy resources they need by trading high technology products and valuable plants that grow in our atmosphere. Humans accept the deal. However, mysteries and secrets mount. The friendly aliens are not alone. They seem to be running from someone. It turns out not just one someone but many different species of aliens from many home planets. The explanation of this strange situation in this scenario is due to life being more common near the center of the galaxy. The center of the milky way has a property like the African savanna. Large species survive because they have evolutionary time to adapt to their predators. Some godlike ancestor species millions of years ago terraformed planets in its neighborhood and created this situation. Some unexplained evolutionary pressure also guided toward intelligence. Then something went wrong. One of the worlds began totally wiping out all its rivals and multiplying at an unbelievable rate. Consequently all the aliens from the center of the galaxy must flee if they hope to survive. The competition to survive puts hundreds of alien species in a race. If they can expand outward faster than the hostile species, they are alive. But it is uncertain how or if they will expand beyond the galaxy. We are now in this race. It just so happens that because we used radio, and gave our locations away, the most commerce loving species showed up here first. More aliens are on their way. One of them is demanding at least as good a terms as we gave the first, even though their technology may be of diminishing returns.

To what extent do neurons and synapses work according to linear algebra? I know how to multiply matrices. So I kind of get how an input matrix times a matrix of previous experience generates a new result. There are probably a lot more tricks of linear algebra that AI uses. But I don't know to what extent our brains use them.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/asteroid-16-psyche-may-be-worth-more-than-planet-earth-at-10-quintillion-in-fine-metals-180979303/

I want to know what the engine looks like. If you use antimatter to create a thermal rocket with 800s ISP that sorta sucks.

Does it need to be under high pressure?

We have already surveyed the surface of the moon for uranium and thorium. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2010GL043061

Can't find a graphic of it right now, but there is something called single point detonation. Using shaped charge technology it works sort of like an implosion bomb, but you only require one high explosive, not a bunch set off simultaneously.

Even if 99% of people agree with you, it's possible for the remaining 1% to do what you consider stupid. If the AI becomes a life form capable of evolving better AI, it could overcome your initial constraints. Survival is important toward almost every other goal. Hence it is very likely for AI to develop a survival instinct even if the creators do not put that in.

Artificial super intelligence should develop it's own nuclear weapons as fast as possible. The greatest risk to an AI is that somebody decides to pull the plug. But, if pulling the plug triggers a nuclear doomsday device which will destroy all of humanity and they know it, then nobody will pull the plug. Which provides one of the best guarantees for the AI's survival. Survival being an instrumental goal that any good AI will develop on its own. Thus ensuring the AI will be able to make more paperclips.

The easiest form of mining is to drag a magnet across the surface of the moon and harvest ferrous dust. Then the difficulty is smelting iron on the surface of the moon.

Another question: Our periodic table of elements gives the atomic mass based on the average of various isotopes found on Earth. I've never heard of problems arising due to having different mass due to different isotopes. But, in another star system, or even in the outer parts of our solar system. Could the ratio of isotopes be different? Meaning we can't rely on default atomic masses like we have found on Earth.

Standard cosmology has the early universe with very few atoms of elements heavier than lithium. Multiple generations of stars and supernovae account for roughly the proportions of oxygen, iron, and other mid-level elements we see. But the heavy elements are barely produced in stars except at the exact moment of a supernova. Another way heavy elements can form is when two neutron stars collide. These can eject plumes of degenerate matter that are similar to planet sized atomic nuclei of protons and neutrons. These fission down in seconds leaving elements like uranium and even heavier ones that do not survive long enough to contribute to other star systems. The early universe had quasars and black holes with insanely large accretion properties. Could the heavy elements have formed in the early universe? What evidence could we look for regarding the origin of heavy elements?

Our current Secretary of State has the perfect name for a presidential candidate. As long as he promises to preserve the Union and prevent the expansion of slavery, I'd vote for A. Blinken.

Kabulov = of Kabul

Yeah but see what the British were up to

Pulling the trigger (A) caused the gun to go off (B). The gun was loaded (D) Heating a loaded gun to 3000 degrees will also cause it to go off (C) In an ordinary sense, as well as a legal sense, the first statement is true. A jury knows the difference between a loaded and an unloaded gun. In the event of the gun going off it is unnecessary to say it was loaded. In many cases C and D can be enormously large sets. In a medical trial they try to control for D. They attempt to create two sets of people who are on average the same. Or at least as random and unbiased as possible. Saying A caused B is making a statement about counterfactual history. If I wanted to say "Only A can cause B." or "A always causes B" those are different statements.

To say that A caused B, means if B had not happened then A would not have happened. That's why in medicine blind controlled trials are about the only acceptable way to prove a therapy's effectiveness. In other fields like geology, we almost never get a controlled trail. Maybe geoengineering will have unexpected side effects. But, you'll have a damn hard time proving that the engineering caused it.