Spacescifi

I know... less heavy I remarked is not doomed because if it breaks it is easier to thrust back and reconnect it BECAUSE it weighs less, making the ship weigh less which means less fuel burned during recovery. That's the irony of spaceship design. The heavier and more redundant a ship becomes, the more it becomes too big to fail like the Titanic. It's arguably easier to fix what is less redundant and lower mass than what is heavy and redundant to the nth degree.

Had not considered static versus variable dynamic loading.... thanks. I just assumed... build a super awesome tether guys! Problem is... you can't just... do that. Because like another poster said, one thing effects another, meaning you either get superheavy but redundant tether and lower thrust ship, or less heavy tether but doomed if something goes wrong but no problem! Ship has better thrust since tether is lighter!

Here is where I or anyone can post tips, or things they learned doing things as an adult that they did not know earlier. Here is my list of adulting 'secrets' 1. You can find informatijon for help with virtually ANYTHING off the internet.... useful in practical ways like working on the house, car, etc. Whatever it is... you bet a solution usually exists, just make sure the site is legitimate and the information is correct first. If parents failed to teach you something, no need to fear, you really can teach yourself so long you have the power of the internet and a reasonable job. 2. Going to the same restaurant over and over seems to result in diminishing returns for most restaurants as the staff may begin to take your patronage for granted. On the other hand, if quality has not diminished despite this... you have found a rare but good thing. Still... murphy's law means that by virtue of regular visits you are more likely to find a decline in quality on occasion. As long as it has not become routine for you it should not be a problem for future visits. 3. A reasonable job as an adult is usually full-time and makes wages that will provide for all normal expenses of living (rent, food, utilities, car repair etc). If your job does not provide this then it will be wasting your time until you can acquire a job that does. Part-time jobs that pay a reasonable wage usually require you to pay back student loans, and work less than reasonable jobs while training. 4. What you want is less important than what you absolutely KNOW you do not want when it comes to life choices I think. Since what you want can and will change, but your feelings about what you absolutely cannot stand seldom does. Take my opinions with a grain of salt if you like because they are just that... but I have lived through the experiences which formed them.

Not ship to ship directly you don't. They don't have to kiss docking port to port. Just need the tether to attach or secure itself to the other and then back off by thrusting as it unspools the rest. Several ways of doing it, one is using a mechanical arm once ships are close to attach the tether to latching area... or you could design a port area to stick the tether to as well. Docking is fine, but getting as close as possible to the point of kissing port to port is not absolutely necessary.... for tethering anyway.

Ideally you don't want a tether to break... but two vessels of equal weight is arguably easier than having to worry about docking... if the ship needed to because it was halved by tether and needed extra supplies from the other half. Granted I know weights will change with the mission, if the tether is good enough, which is a major challenge in of itself... it may be possible. In theory it works on paper. But in reality wear and tear and radiation and heat will add it's own input to the challenge to make it... just that.

We... you and I, will never have the power to make that call for the masses since the tech is scifi fantasy. And if such were ever possible, either it would be stopped or would have both it's enemies and supporters.... which makes for great fictional drama BTW so thanks!

I am not saying it is healthy... it's a scifi scenario. The cool thing is the hyper realism though... And again... although the matrix never went into detail... I am sure there are ways to keep a human in a pod without it becoming full of human waste products. Just use monitoning and human staff and machines to clean it. Actually... a human staff would be better to monitor the pods. They could be fed without ever leaving the sim as they are not aware of the real world body inside the sim anyway..... which opens a whole nother can of worms if the human staff misbehave that is.... that's the point where even I don't want to discuss it.

Nooooooooo! I am of the mind that JMS cannot redo Babylon 5 without updating it like Trek did to it's own peril. I mean... every scifi tv show is a product of it's time... that's part of the charm. And even then Babylon 5 had plenty of lessons that were simply.... timeless. Not sure I wanna see a Babylon 5 that is forced to update the characters to fit all the modern shifts in culture at the expense of all else. If JMS tries to do his own thing I do think the execs will do their best to kill it... and the CW? The same folks responsible for all the teen soap opera superhero shows that mistake preachyness for depth? CW may want JMS... but I don't trust CW.

Well.... as stated the entire simulation is hyper realistic... literally 'matrix' like. One camnot really tell the difference between reality and the sim unless they actually KNOW. what reality is supposed to be. Seriously... you can work, sleep, have a family and kids and die in the sim.... if you are an NPC. For an NPC, the sim is their 'reality' and they know of nothing more. And the NPC's are just as realistic in character as real people because they are.... just they don't live in our 'reality' but in one made by the OSAI. Humans can work, eat, have families, but are unable to actual have NPC offspring by mating with NPC's. Also human death in sims is not truly the case if they were just banned or logged off. Yes... this whole scenario COULD be forced... and not just a machines take over like the Matrix. Rather, one nation COULD use such technology to subjugate the populace rather than having to forcibly deal with resistance cells 24/7. And this way could be preferred if life in the sim is better than IRL anyway. Poor folks eat the same stuff day in and day out. In the the sim? Whatever the OSAI is directed to have available under the authority of the conquering nation. Imagine if third world folks lived like average westerners in the simulations? They may not want to go back ...

Not as bad as you may think... if I am right in assuming that you thought I intend the the tether for a space station. I only mentioned stations since all are more familiar with that than spinning coasting spaceships on tethers on interplanetary trips. Two ways: Separate a ship in halves with a tether. More risk involved. Or use two ships, one with the tether equipment and backup mission supplies, and the other with crew and main mission supplies. One ship attaches to other and spins. If a separation does occur no problem... that's what rocket engines are for that all spaceships worthy of the name have.

In lieu of actually making a huge torus rotating station which is harder still... do we have the ability to make tethers that could do 1 RPM at 1g at about a km length? Max weight load on both ends without breaking?

Well.... I would sure like to hear the speech he would give to try to 'sell' this to the American public! "I believe this nation should commit itself, before this century is out, to land a man on Mars and return him safely to the Earth.... we choose to go to Mars and do the other thing, not because they are easy but because they are hard!" Something IRL would be different given the change of scenery sunlit zenova mentioned... but hopefully will stilll include the epic phrase 'we do this not because it is easy but BECAUSE it is hard!' Still epic decades later, music was made based off it:

Hyper-realism=hyper-escapism. Sentient, able to reason is true AI.... which is why few would browse interspace because dumbware 'AI' and humans can cover that. In the systems under it's control an OSAI is god-like, only answering to the human moderating team above it, which answers to the human administrator who monitors things overall. Inside interspace, an OSAI has much the same abilities as a User, only becoming god-like in systems it actually controls, which definitely is not interspace. NPC's have less freedom in interspace... mainly because certain places they literally cannot enter and are barred as if with an invisible forcefield... unless a user or OSAI grants them access.

Yeah... your right. Free it is. Yet the access is not, unless hooked up to public access. Otherwise you have to buy or rent your own pod. Public access has long wait times. The 'world' comes in three flavours. Gaming: Minimal if any pain receptors active. Hard gaming: Gaming with ALL pain receptors turned on. Since some people want to experience things that should... end them. Can be legal or illegal depending on age and other considerations (like mental health history and past jail time). Interspace: Where you have 3-D internet essentially. A world where every building is.... a website. Some bigger than others.... don't get me started on the dark side of the internet. Interspace is noted for having far more Users than AI present, unlike the game worlds. If AI is present, it's on some sort of mission. Pain receptiors are on totally here. Reason? For the experience. NPC's are not or should not be in interspace, unless they are pretending to be an AI gamemaster or they are accompanied by a user who bought them outright.

Hahaha... yeah... with a human personality to boot. And harder to 'delete' unless it's 'home' location in the real world was located and destroyed. It has a mix of organic and machine components part flesh, part machine, a cyborg brain as a supercomputer of sorts. You also forgot the part that the AI could, with access to the game world, have a body of it's own and speak and talk to or touch the user like an a normal person would... but as for the actual real world..... Go Pro and sensing is about as good as it gets for the AI.

OSAI are aware and work with humans as well as oversee the game worlds for anomalies to fix. NPC that live inside the game world usually are unaware of the outside world. Part of the reason is that users do not appear to enter or exit the game since users literally pause the game when leaving and it starts as soon as they return as they were where they left off. Each human user has their own single save feature for this. Humans may tell an NPC but they won't readily believe them as apart from some scifi goodies.... physics in game are much the same as IRL... and the universe is as big as the milky way, with stars of the rest of the universe visible.... though not reachable unless the game gets a DLC expansion. OSAI rarely chooses to get involved in an obvious way to show it's involvement in the game world. Preferring more subtle ways of resolving humans trying to stir up NPC rebellion. One of the more simple ways is just banning the user who told after they logout and then letting their avatar body drop dead of a heart attack... or so it would it would appear to NPC who never saw the human user again as the game started up again. This is more of a last resort... if the OSAI noticed a ripple effect with many NPC starting to understand the true nature of their world. As the saying goes.... history is written and told by the victors... not the losers.... unless you count their bones. EDIT: Some would consider reservations ethical as it would protect sentient NPC from user abuse.

Understood on first point, but that is the whole point of the OP. Second point I agree. Waterboarding is all one has to say... only difference is more backlash with less suppression overall if notional good human rights reputation exists. Third point... when playing God... ethics vary with people... obviously whoever does put them in a 'reservation' thinks it is ok. Or at the very least is doing it for science results like an experiment, so ethics are igmored.

For what it's worth, I read an online IRL story about a youth from India who with his dad's permission (the boy is like 13 years old or so), used his computer to mine bitcoin when off school for summer. He reaped profits but not a lot, so he invested (through dad again) upgrades into the computer. The second time, now that he both understood bitcoin, and also had an upgraded computer, resulted in thousands of dollars of profit. Instead banking it he invested it to a still more power machine, and rinse and repeat. Nowardays he makes as much money as a full time job just from bit coin. But he pays a price in air conditioning because his uber computers need it (he no longer uses the original but upgraded that too). Yeah OSAI could do it... but the only link to a normal life for OSAI would be moonlighting every now and then as an NPC in the virtual world... otherwise they would be a bodyless but intelligent entity. My point is that you need something to offer the OSAI to work for you. Threatning them to work or die will not work forever, but if you at least make their virtual world life as an NPC when they are off work pleasant... that's something. The closet thing to the real world IS the virtual world for all AI and NPC. They could never enter the real world so the virtual world means arguably more to them than all but the most obsessed human gamer who is probably infatuated with a sentient, gorgeous female NPC anyway. Just wait until human ladies complain that their husband left them for an NPC!

NPC are not even aware of the outside world.... let alone bit coin. That said... He gets this! The OSAI (Operating System Artificial Intelligence) is exactly that... and very aware of the outside world. Mixing common computer abilities like multitasking and speedy calculations mixed with human level reasoning does make the OSAI.... a bit overpowered compared to your average jack or jane human. Although kerbiloid was joking, if an OSAI was given access to bitcoin or used for that, it would do well. Too well... probably get banned from bit coin for doing too well.

I guess... but lets be honest.... how many of us have done repugnant things in games BECAUSE we would not do them in IRL? Don't all raise your hands at once LOL. The real problem is the folks who ACTUALLY do want to do whatever repugnant thing they did virtually in the real world. But in this setting you are right.... once sentience is in play, ethically many would take as much or more of an issue with the OP than they do animal abuse. Some countries with less than stellar human rights records could care less though.... and may make some horrifying cyber creature for both hacking and other feats that they may regret later... which could lead to nuclear war.. but that is getting ahead of ourselves. The result of a conscience about AI treatment would be: Several closed system natural 'reserves' without gamer contact are allowed to evolve independently on their own. Naturally human researchers would want to check in once in a while... wanting to see how they faired locked away on their own.

True... the USA and other countries already have internet problems with what limited abilities those seeking harm can manage. No doubt..... yet the tech in the OP could take the concept further still. Imagine NPC's able to reason like us.... if AI linking the system to the user can.... so can they. You could literally make direct literal analogues s of any scifi alien you wanted or could imagine. It need not be an us versus them by necessity... even though human reasoning with speedy computer calculating intelligence would be potent indeed. Free AI intelligence aware of the outside world would be like workmates... assistants to humans. Otherwise... I perceive AI NPC's as a new form of life that sooner or later would clamor for rights the more they grew to know about how their virtual world actually works. Hence the need for gamers to play by the rules and not tell the NPC's about the fact that it is all a massive simulation. It's been done and having to reboot systems makes companies lose money as it starts a game all over again... wiping memories of all NPC's.

When I said crime... I meant in the cyberspace type.... not directly linked to the game itself. Basically a 3-D dimensional internet where you van literally interact with all you see and everyone as if you were there. Where pain reception is not muted and it is JUST LIKE IRL.... not muted or absent as in many games. In actual game sims, likely dying would not cause pain... except for those that were wanting that. Like it would be kinda bad for business if you got to play Captain Sheridan of Babylon 5 and LITERALLY went through all the mess he has been through. He nearly was carved up in one episode and tortured for days in another. Life is stressful enough... I wager that if people had the opportunity to liive out their space opera dreams they may soon found they lack the composure of the actors, since they will for all intents be experiencing it for real.... assuming pain receptors are turned on to reality level in most games. I don't recommend that, as people are so reckless gaming that if it was so close to reality that soon people would carry over that same recklessness to reality.

Video games can be used as an escape, and there are enough people that game so much that I wonder if it were possible to LIVE inside a game as an NPC around regular players but with the ability to do MC stuff, how would that effect world economies? The Scenario: Rich company allows people to plug in-matrix style via a type of biotech AI that has what computers don't have.... human reasoning... but with the added high speed calculations that computers are known for. People pay 10 USD bucks for every 30 min of pod time. Results: 1. Young guys drop out of college more, and females continue to surpass them in college. 2. Some spend so much time in pods that they do little else, and lack possesions they would or should have in the real world but are totally rich in the game world. Renting cheap apartments with little else in it besides what is absolutely necessary plus a 'matrix pod' they own. 3. It could and would also be used like a 3-D internet. Being able to interact with IRL people you would never meet otherwise.... with all the good and bad that entails. 4. Hackers would hack. Also... moderators would actually get paid for a change... because things would get really serious really fast. 5. Crimes in the 'matrix world' would STILL be considered crime IRL... since they would feel the same... when I say crime I include stuff like murder... and all the other bad stuff. Does not matter if they wake up alive IRL... that is still a crime and could mentally scar a person for life. What are your thoughts on how it would effect the economy and society?

Please... this is IRL, I only care about SSTO for space opera. I meant reusuable chemical boosters... attached to shuttles. basically you would have to do Spacex in reverse... land the booster and shuttle separately via tail landing... use ISRU to refuel both, then thrust the shuttle to sit above and attach to the booster and launch. Hard but not impossible... you just don't get many do-overs with the tail landing shuttle landing atop the fueled booster. So overall mini-mag is not so good except for low gravity situations, and by the time it is loaded with shuttles and reusuable boosters it's thrust will be lower still. Now I see why project Orion gets all the love. Mini-mag is better for space probes... but anything manned wants as close to torchship as possible.

I see... so a cone is good for deflection... but will ablate over time due to being plasma beamed multiple times a day. Leading to a flat nose tip sooner or later. To improve the design I suggest regenerative propellant cooling and a powerful electromagnet cone to deflect the plasma even more with a mighty magnetic field.