SOXBLOX

Ah, yes. Antimatter will work just fine from a science standpoint. It's the engineering of such a system which is difficult, not a lack of evidence that AM will annihilate matter.

For colonizing anything further than Earth orbit, you'll probably want nuclear power, so you'll need lots of specialists, but overall, a self-sufficient colony on Sedna shouldn't require many more colonists than one on Duna Mars. As for liftoff in a shuttle bay, you'd want to lie down or sit. IDK if there's a suitable spot on that aft bulkhead. Anyone care to look? I'm too lazy... Here's my own question: Is it possible to truly colonize a world with less than Earth gravity? Are humans up to it? I know the standard stuff, loss of bone density in 0g, etc. but I wanted to see what else there is on the topic. What alterations would occur to human proportions, growth, lifespan (not due to time dilation in a gravitational field, I mean because of potential health effects), muscle strength, etc? Also, I haven't watched or read the Expanse, but I know that "Earth gravity wreaks havoc on the Martian physique". So do Martian ships accelerate at 1/3 g for cruise, or is there another solution to this (e.g. training, a drug of some sort)? How does the show address this issue? It seems that this gravity factor would give Terrans an advantage over Martians in high-g scenarios.

uuouu! But seriously, this is cool. Also, can anyone explain this Spatial Scene Graph in more detail? What is it doing, how will it effect gameplay? Thx.

It might be a little more dramatic than that

If you ain't a professional, and you're doing astronomy, guess what you are!

I really don't want to see Jeb die. Not that I don't crash him, though. The lifespans might be in the thousands. Yoda Kerman, anyone?

Absolutely. If you're looking for a good read on physics, though, run, don't walk, and get a copy of Edward Teller's Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics. It is both readable and accurate; that is, it uses math. I loved it, hopefully others will find it useful.

Oh, yeah! M13 is one of my favorites. It was the first globular I ever identified. The first time I went out observing, I tried to find it, but failed. The next night, I found it accidentally by panning my scope around slowly. So annoying! If you're in the tropics, you probably get to see Omega Centauri, right? I wish I could see it, but from here, it would be just a couple degrees above the horizon.

Well, I'd say it was probably catching a microscopic glimpse of a number of galaxies in Leo. The realization that I was seeing billions of stars at distances of millions of light-years (or ~1/3 as many parsecs) was humbling. I love observing, even though my location isn't the best. Dark skies, but humid air.

I don't think it was a foil; pretty sure that was an English thing. Épée works, I guess. Of course, if the Russian is shpaga, it comes from Italian espatha or Spanish espada ropera. That would refer to the rapier, which is what the épée evolved from. That makes sense, seeing as how it was close to being the ultimate civilian sidearm, and would be in wide use. It's use was considered something of an art form as well, so I'm thinking this is the sword. But I'm not an expert, so please enlighten me if I'm wrong! Might have been a schiavona, too. Pretty sure Porthos carried one. And yes, English is weird. That isn't surprising, considering that it's basically the entire Indo-European language family recombined into one big mess.

I'm personally hoping for solid, collidable (?) systems of thousands of rocks. The navigation hazards will be most interesting... I do hope the devs can come up with a good solution to the performance problem; I don't wanna have to refrigerate my PC.

Exactly what I'm hoping for! I see ISRU written all over those boulders!

No. This petition did, though.

Aha. That absolutely demolished the only thing in this petition maybe relevant to ethics. Thx, Pthigrivi and James M! Raptor9 I'd sign that! I love your stuff on KerbalX, btw.

Profession is a choice. The choices of these people are, I think, none of our business. If they made a bad decision, they get to fix it, not you. It's called personal responsibility. If Take 2 has done anything illegal or immoral, there's a way the victims (ain't us) can rectify it. See Judicial system. Overall, this letter has very little to do with ethics. If KSP 2 is like what we've been promised, I will buy it. The only time I wouldn't buy it is if it wasn't what I wanted. I might not want it for many reasons, but that's a personal thing. Not 500 years ago. Today. It still happens. That is how the rest of the world works. Enforcing ethics? While we are sticking our nose in other people's business, please remember that there are bigger fish to fry than first world game devs. Profession is a choice. Made by people who are accountable to themselves and themselves alone for the consequences of their choices. Surely someone who has worked for any employer will understand this; weak excuses are not tolerated IRL. What job I hold is beside the point. I won't argue these points further; I respect your opinions on the matter, but I don't care if they line up with mine or not. I won't try to alter them. Hopefully we can leave the discussion without any hard feelings, and come away from it having learned something!

Actually, it is. I already considered all your points before posting. These are factors the employee would consider. The employee would rather have his job and deal with bad employers than leave. Additionally, he/she didn't have to go into game design at all, especially if it's such a rough industry. This profession is a personal choice. And even if they have longer hours or their job isn't perfectly stable, there is virtually no cause to complain. 500 years ago, people broke their backs digging potatoes food out of fields, wore rags infested with fleas, lived in a mud hut, and had to feed more children on a tiny income. They had no other option; there were few ways to move to another job. Most others were worse. Also, consider that many people still have a life like this; America and the rest of the world are radically different. Maybe we should consider the "ethicality" of these people's conditions, rather than game designers in 21st century America who have freedoms heretofore unheard of in human history. Not being political or suggesting you aren't concerned with these other people, just pointing out that this is a very insignificant issue.

Well, those developers don't have to work for those studios. That 's how the market works. Trade your labor for their money. Regardless, I don't think "stress" or damage to "mental health" is an issue with KSP 2. The devs seem to be fans of the game, just like us, and they look like they're genuinely enjoying making the sequel. If they are being mistreated by their employers, they can leave. If they choose to stay, then they are doing so because they would rather keep working, even with the maltreatment, than leave.

So I was looking at the trailer, and suddenly I wondered what it would look like to fly through the ring systems we see. Are they going to be just "dust", only a cosmetic feature with no effect on spaceflight, or will we see objects in them like small asteroids? What other possibilities are there? If there are particles and asteroids in the grasp of the game's physics, I want my Ice Trawler Canterbury!

Pardon, but is it any of your business whether the game is developed ethically or not? And why is a game which features DRM software unethical? And the studio is under absolutely no obligation to release any information to us. You seem to think that the publisher would be happy to work their developers to death, but that would be a suicidal business move; only the most desperate people would ever work for them after that.

Well, as cool as it sounds, uranium fusion would actually consume more energy than it would release. But using it to make superheavy elements? Heck yeah!!!

I think the target didn't go critical, since it's *hard* to circumvent the critical mass requirement. So the laser caused a reaction, it just wasn't a chain reaction. This makes sense, as it was driven by Bremsstralung from scattered electrons, which lose energy and can't be recycled. Of course, it didn't go critical (I don't think) so it didn't release anywhere near enough energy (I don't think) to "break even". It seems you have to use either compression to lower the critical mass or make up for lost neutrons by bombarding the substance with extra neutrons, bringing us back to the neutron beam problem. Another method would be to put neutron reflectors, like beryllium or tungsten carbide, around it. However, this only works down to a point; after that, it can't bring the fuel critical. Of course, if we're thinking about using compression to 4 kg/cm^3, then it might be time to worry about uranium fusion instead of fission.

Yep, I just realized that after I posted. Grabbing some numbers off Wikipedia, I did some math to find the density required to bring a 1 g sphere of pure U235 to criticality. Here goes... First of all, critical mass and the square of the density are inversely proportional. We need the proportionality constant between these values. (Remember, inverse proportionality says that a × b = k where k is the constant.) So room temp. density x critical mass in a sphere at room temp. is k =((19.1 g/cm^3)^2) × 52000 g k = 18 970 120 g^2/cm^3 Now we can set the critical mass equal to one gram and determine the square of the requisite density. k= 18 970 120 = p^2 × 1 g and solving for p... the required density is ~4355 g/cm^3 . We can then go on to calculate, using the bulk modulus, the force required to compress the U235 to this density. Through more calculations and modeling, we can find the compression generated by ablation from arbitrarily large laser banks, to find the laser energy needed to compress this metal. Also, this is for a sample of pure U235. I would expect civilian-grade fuel to not be weapons-grade, though. The added impurity would raise the required density even higher. However, I somewhat arbitrarily chose the mass of one gram. Perhaps with smaller masses, other effects dominate? Also, I have been known to make rather dumb mistakes in algebra; please take my numbers with a grain of salt. Overall, the the compressibility of Uranium looks like it would be significantly lower than that of deuterium-tritium pellets, so I'm thinking it would be more difficult to use inertial confinement fission. I am interested in whether this method would "burn" fuel with a higher efficiency, though. *** Went and looked up the densities of fusion fuel (D-T) in ICF. Usually fuel is compressed to about 200 g/cm^3 to ignite. Remember, a whole gram of very pure U would need to be compressed to multiple kilograms per cubic cm, and smaller masses would raise this requirement.

I assume you are proposing using beams of neutrons to create burst fission in subcritical masses of fuel? There are problems with this, mainly that it's basically impossible to direct neutrons in a cohesive stream; they just go everywhere. If you're thinking lasers, as in ICF, then I have to say, I can't see this overcoming the criticality limits on chain reactions. Perhaps mass restrictions don't apply to a non-chain-reaction?

True, but I'd remind you of just what it took to sink the Yamamato. Also, what surface-surface engagements there were in WWII (mostly in the Aleutian campaigns) involved cruisers taking multiple direct hits from the main batteries of equivalent opponents. Overall, WWII ships would be more resilient. On the other hand, no modern warship will just be sitting and not defending itself with every trick in the book. With the exception of the USS Starke and such gross mismanagement, no ship in a threat zone will be vulnerable to a surprise attack, especially American ships (and others) with the Aegis ICS.

Most modern AShM types would bounce off a WWII battleship's hull. However, if it hit the superstructure, it would probably mission-kill the ship, if not outright trash it. On the other hand, a modern warship, such as an Arleigh Burke, has (apparently) very little armor, but possesses a state-of-the-art radar and combat control system, coupled to electronic countermeasures and the Phalanx CIWS. Naturally, these are rather fragile. If they aren't doing their job of decoying or intercepting inbound missiles, then they will be shredded. Overall, though, one just has to look at the Falklands War to see the effect of AShM's on a modern target. Since the Sheffield and Antelope were smaller warships built for ASW, and they were basically one-hit-killed, I'd say a Burke or Ticonderoga would take two or three hits before total destruction. An Iowa -class, or even a midsized Alaska-class, would probably last four or more hits. Of course, we could talk about the "modern" Russian Kirov and its brother the Frunze...