trekkie_

it's actually even easier to make it into a weapon, if you get it functional. all one would need is probably a handheld sized ship, fly it out into space a bit, then back toward earth like a rocket, releasing a blast of its radiation in the general direction of say, a city block or a country.

I would assume that the drive is flawed to begin with, because the collisions along the way will probably pass through the bubble and hit you. You may be bending space, but it's still like ramming a brick wall into a car, along with other side effects like trapping the radiation inside the bubble with you. It may be possible to create some kind of space bending pattern to disperse the particles around you rather than into you. But people also think too big. There's no reason why we can't for example, stop and go rapidly to discharge build ups if that was indeed the case. You also would be able to use such a drive for slower cruising speeds and other maneuvers too. People seem to forget this fact.

Any thoughts? Predictions, Impacts, and Comparisons to other countries welcome.

All this talk of 2 stages.....and people seem to forget the space shuttle was a 2 stage craft. The first stage wasn't exactly reusable, but they did recollect the materials and remanufactured them, which was a decent savings since the metals were pretty much still purified and of generally the same mass. Much better than having to remanufacture them from new raw materials.

That's why a large vehicle with all the tools to base build and a live-in crew cabin would be the optimal choice. And with nuclear power, there would be no issue of running it, since it would run for years, capable of building bases the whole time, or wherever is needed, while still being able to house a crew for the entire duration. So you could build two bases on two opposite ends of the moon without having to worry about traveling back and forth, if you wanted....while also exploring and doing science. Of course, you could create automated base building robots, but if they needed maintenance, you'd have to go through the trouble of getting to them for human repair. With humans on site, you can make optimal decisions and repairs on the fly, again, while still being able to do science. definitely a lot easier to land one object on the moon rather than two, not to mention there would be weight savings, since a separate base and builder rover (which would need to be manned to some extent, even if only sometimes), would offer overall weight savings in the long run. to have automated base building robots, you'd need at least 3 objects sent to the moon; a live-in base, a rover to get around, and the base building robots. obviously, the larger the bot, the quicker things get done, and a crew cabin would be a good weight offset too, so you could easily put a large set of tools on the front, from drills to shovels, and lift a lot more weight without having to add more dead weight. since solar flares hit the moon all the time, it would be best to be able to have a roving base that you could simply park under something or in a crater or man made cavern, at least until you could build a decent underground base. Any permanent base on the moon would have to be buried to some extent, to protect from radiation and erosion. moon dust is highly corrosive, able to erode away stuff like air tight seals. and while there isn't wind on the moon, solar flares and magnetics kick up tons of moon dust. I once made a real-time video of a solar flare hitting the moon, and you could literally see it with the naked eye, kicking up hundreds of tons of moon dust across the whole sun-facing surface of the moon, tens of miles high or more. and this happens regularly.

a lot of people that think they have synesthesia, don't actually have it. example: sound > shape. Well just about anyone can close their eyes, listen to some music, and imagine something like what you would see with a sound visualization plugin. REAL synesthesia has basically ONE reaction to something, involuntarily. So if the same of something doesn't trigger the same color/visual/etc over and over involuntarily, it's not synesthesia. So if you were to say listen to a song, close your eyes and see visuals, those visuals would be EXACTLY the same EVERY time you heard the song.

I suspect all negative matter and energy, if exists, are long since pushed to the outer reaches of the universe...if there is such a thing as the outer reaches of the universe. sort of like a surfactant does to particles in water. The only place we could find some, would be rare places where it would be trapped because its surrounded on all sides by matter since its inception, which would effectively bottle it up. but that's a tall order, because the mass of its surroundings would have to be equal from all directions otherwise there would be an imbalance, allowing it to push and escape. and that matter would also have to be quite dense. I'm not sure if it's even possible since if there is a mass differential, it will be shifted out of the center of the sphere, and then due to its new position, there would be an even greater imbalance in the mass surrounding it. this would be true regardless of how dense or thick the matter surrounding it is. so the only way to trap negative particles, would be to literally encase it in the absolute center of a 100% perfect sphere at the instance of its creation, or a very powerful magnetic field.

The main idea for a starter moon base is a large moving vehicle capable of housing several people. This way, you don't have to land a base and a rover to get around, since your base is your rover. This also cuts time by not having to drive back and forth between bases. That base, could even be utilized to help build other permanent bases out of moon materials, gather resources, etc. A moving base would also have the benefit of being able to avoid some incoming threats, and any re-supply landings won't have to be so precise since the base could move to the landing site. The only drawback is you would need some decent radiation shielding, but if it is only a precursor to a main larger base, it wouldn't be as much of an issue for the short term. the perfect permanent starter moon base would be a tall underground cylinder with just a hatch opening at the surface. the deeper it goes, the safer you are. from there you may even be able to excavate caverns under the surface and expand the base. that also has the added benefit of being able to gather deeper samples. as for powering a moon base, I think nuclear power would be the best option. would last for years without much issue. solar panels are ok, but they might be prone to erosion and getting dusty and they will need to be replaced periodically. we could possibly extract energy from the moon too, but we'd need a power source we could rely on 100%, so nuclear is the best bet. Solar panels could be used as supplemental energy or had on hand for emergencies.

Even if non DNA life exists, it would still be a natural property of the physics of the universe, given the right conditions.

I expect alien life to be similar in functions to earth life (even if they don't physically resemble earth life), especially if it is based near the same environment. That doesn't necessarily mean earth life of today, because a lot of things have long since died out that you could consider to be alien, and their evolutionary paths never bore any fruit for one reason or another. What we do know, is that earth life has developed naturally, under the physics of the universe. So it's safe to assume those same physics can cause similar life to appear elsewhere. Now, there are a lot of catches, such as life forming with a different base than carbon. But we already have found non carbon based life forms on earth, and they are still similar to the rest of life on earth in how they operate. Even non-DNA based life could still follow the same basic processes. I'm not sure how else life could develop and reproduce in any different methods than earth life follows, even if it's based on a different process with different bases. the only way of reproducing that life on earth doesn't already do, is for some organism to inject a third party organism and mutates its genetics to either recreate itself or create a new type of organism. But obviously, you'd need a third party organism to begin with....and you won't have that if you're the first form of life developing. You could argue that things like virus's already do basically that, but technically virus's aren't alive. Anything else, and it'd either be a poof-into-existence reproduction (seemingly impossible) or a mechanical reproduction. It may be possible that there is life that essentially mechanically 3d prints itself naturally to reproduce on a large scale....but technically, life on earth already does that on a small scale.

Life exists because things like DNA synthesis is a natural property of the physics of the universe, under the right conditions at the right time that is. The idea that the universe somehow leans toward creating life to increase entropy, is flawed in every way. That almost gives the impression that the universe would literally be making decisions and acting accordingly. Just think about the impact of life on earth even to just our own solar system.....it's basically zero effect, over hundreds of millions of years. Meanwhile, during that same period of time, 'natural' entropy having nothing to do with life, dwarfs any entropy caused as a result of life.

I think a separate satellite based power transfer system would probably be better if weight savings was a concern. There's actually a lot of bloat when it comes to weight anyways though. For example, the shuttle reaches nowhere near all its structural limits...which means that's mass that is serving no purpose other than 'just in case' or for longevity. It costs what....$10,000 to put a pound of mass into earth orbit.....and we've probably put more than a pound worth of things like alcohol in orbit, adding unnecessary costs. There's also some waste in general when it comes to fuel. No booster or first stage is actually 100% empty when it's done with its task, with the reasoning being better safe than sorry. You don't want to end up on 'E' short of your target. Paying a little more to make sure a whole mission doesn't fail, pays for itself in the long run. That's especially true since most space programs are government funded, and failure after failure would probably shake the confidence of tax payers.....and they'd be less likely to get funding.

What you think is stretched and compressed time, is gravity (and possibly space by proxy) acting upon the interactions of energy and matter. Time doesn't necessarily have to be tangible for actions to occur in the universe. Rather, time is just a concept derived from observing those actions.

I think determining the size of one should be based on a factor of the average human height. Basically though, the smallest size possible that allows comfortable gravity simulation, but the further away from the center of the spin the better, to a point anyways. Ideally, 100% of earths gravity should always be the aim, but 80-90% would probably be a good compromise. RPM would be based on the size of the rotating structure and its distance from the center, so it's not a fixed number.

even without a frame of reference, stuff still moves. just like light doesn't cease to exist just because you close your eyes. and I would deem the entire video to be relevant to anyone interested in why the universe may not be expanding at all.

You must of missed it when I said...

here's a nice little non laymen presentation video. about 40 minutes long. http://vimeo.com/97608525

Well, they're still all theories, and there's still arguments on both sides. http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-universe-not-expanding-01940.html here's another theory about red shift cause. http://www.nature.com/news/cosmologist-claims-universe-may-not-be-expanding-1.13379 http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/is-the-universe-expanding-or-just-getting-heavier-130822.htm

We don't know if there is a limit to the expansion of space. It could for example, stop before the speed of light. It could even possibly reverse once it reaches at or near the speed of light. What you are essentially describing, is the proposed cold death theory of the universe. As for velocity, even if you cannot determine if you are moving, velocity is still present, even without a frame of reference....let's say your lone particle all of a sudden had a piece of material placed in its path, the velocity would still act on it, either going through it or bouncing off of it. logically, if space expands faster than light, sure....then particles would never be able to act upon each other.

The point is, even if there isn't a frame of reference, the particles themselves still have properties like velocity. It's just the frame of reference covers soo much space that it can't be measured. But, you as the observer of the particle, would then become the immediate frame of reference now wouldn't you. As for the delay, it doesn't matter....the effect will happen at the speed of light, and once it does, the effect will happen continuously from that point, even if it is initially delayed by billions of years. as for universal expansion, I'm not sure if that has even been proven yet.

This is the best case scenario: All humans on earth, non essential to producing the essentials like food and energy, will have to work together to create one massive ship, or a series of massive ships. These ships don't have to go far, all they have to do is get to a suitable distance in orbit around earth to not be affected by the blast. How many ships, or how much of the population we could save, I don't know.....but it would really all depend on how much we can get done in the allotted time. It may even be possible to save the entire earth population if we used our time and resources wisely. Once in orbit, these ships will become our new home until the earth recovers, which could be a long time. They will need to be as self sustainable as possible, but it may be possible to have return ships to go back to earth and bring back raw materials as needed. See, the truth is, in a doomsday scenario for earth, earth will still always be our best bet to recolonize, rather than colonizing another planet. It would take us much longer to terraform mars, than it would to recolonize the earth. And orbiting the earth, is going to be a lot less trouble than traveling to another planet. Once it's safe enough (as in the earths temps aren't too hot or too cold) regardless of atmosphere composition, we can colonize the earth much like we would on mars anyways.....we'd just go back down there to build bases.....but these bases would have to be solely for energy and resource extraction, unless we have a way of also landing the main ship(s), then we'd just land back on the earth and live inside of those instead. Technically, the moon could be a good prospect too. We could technically fit the entire planets population in an area the size of texas, with enough room for everyone to have the same living space as your average apartment or home. That means there's plenty of space on the moon for humans to wait out the disaster. But the real hurdle, will be organizing the effort. We may not even need space ships....if the devastation is only limited to the surface of the earth to a certain depth, our resources would probably be maximized by creating underground cities deep in the earth. it's like creating a space ship....except without having to expend the energy to lift it off. when it comes down to it, it's all about pure energy expenditure in the allotted time. But when you get down to pure energy expenditure, destroying or redirecting an incoming object might be an even easier task. I mean after all, if we could move the entire earths population into space......well then it would probably be easier to just create a massive ship that flies to the object and pushes it out of the way. Texas for example, is about 700K sq KM (the land mass needed to save the entire human race comfortably). If the incoming object is only 580KM across, it could be much easier to deflect the object than to send the entire human race into space....and considering we'd be saving the earth in the process, the savings would be even more tremendous over a protracted period of time. I think it's all do-able, as long as we use our time wisely. Even if we run into issues like material strength being unable to support the mass of an object.....well we just build smaller objects. if a ship can't hold under its own massive weight....well then you build smaller ships. technically, it would still take the same relative amount of energy to put 1 massive ship into orbit....or 1,000 less massive ones that equal the same total mass as the large one. we could build and fly thousands of ships designed to land on the object and push it out of the way, while also employing other methods in conjunction, depending on the effect they will have. the most dangerous thing is to think that we can't save the earth. many will try to convince people of the easier route....a 'small' colony ship with a few thousand people.....but that's just because they'd rather save themselves and start over, than save everyone. they don't want to take the chance of failure, so they'd rather let billions perish to save themselves. for some, it will be their dream to start over and lord over the few remaining humans in a lifeboat, so they will convince people to sacrifice the earth to live that future, or not even bother with a solution to saving the earth, even if it is very much possible albeit difficult.

Yeah, technically, the entire universe is affecting the rest of the universe, although there is a delay (the speed of light). It's just at a certain distance those effects become soo small that they're either inconsequential or indeterminable. To be able to understand the true effects, we'd have to account for all matter in the universe, all their locations, states, distances, directions, velocities, etc....which is impossible. Gravity from the edge of the observable universe is affecting us, just in ways too small or too impossible to understand. Then there's interference patterns with things like gravity too, which 'cancel' each other out or alter each other slightly. Like ripples in a pond. It's like if you have something suspended between two magnets. All the matter surrounding us in the universe is pulling on our planet, and themselves, and every other celestial body. Furthermore, even without a frame of reference, a particle would still have motion. Think of it like this....you're on a train, you look at the floor.....it's completely still from your frame of reference. But.....does that mean the train isn't in motion? Of course it is in motion. Even sitting in your chair, you are moving at high velocities through the universe. Unless you were moving the same speed/direction as the only particle in an observable universe, you would become the only point of reference. Technically, we don't even know our true velocity in the universe. Our biggest reference point is the speed galaxies are moving to/from each other. But imagine you're on a train once more, stirring a glass of water with beads in it, the beads representing galaxies. Sure, you can probably tell how fast they're moving in relation to each other in the cup, but if you don't know the speed of the train, you can't exactly know their true speed now can you. So all the galaxies could be spinning around a giant black hole in the true center of the universe, and we simply don't have any frame of reference to determine how fast we're actually orbiting that black hole.....and that's assuming that universal black hole isn't in motion either. But based on the reference points we have access to, i.e. our velocity of the suns orbit, the velocity of our solar system, the velocity of our galaxy, etc......you are at our best estimates, moving through the universe at over 2 million miles per hour at any given moment......and if the galaxies are orbiting something, and that something is also moving at X velocity, we could be traveling much faster through space. There could be soo many more levels to the universe than we can ever determine. Galaxies are essentially like planets orbiting a sun, but instead orbiting something much much larger, and even a universal black hole could be just one of many, orbiting something even more massive, like a fractal. This could possibly go on infinitely. People talk about multiple universes, but technically, even if universes were like planets orbiting something much larger, it would all still technically be one universe.

Time does not exist either way. Time is simply a human idea for measurement of changes within/between matter and energy. A day is 24 hours because that is approximately how long it takes for the earth to spin once. Even the ultra accurate atomic clocks are just based on the amount of vibrations in atoms that happen in a given second, and even the given second is just an arbitrary number invented by mans mind. The accuracy of those atomic clocks are based entirely on the amount of expected vibrations a second. The more vibrations, the more reference points, the more accuracy. Therefore, time is derived entirely from the observation of changes within/between matter and energy. But in reality, time does not exist. Matter and energy do not need time to do things, but other things (like the gravity of a black hole) can affect how matter and energy interacts relative to matter and energy not being affected by a black hole. That however, does not prove any existence of time. That is just matter and energy effecting other matter and energy.

yeah it's impossible due to the physics limits. I'm not sure if even breaking an elevator into individual pieces would work. a space elevator is also just plain impractical, it'd take a while to get to orbit....might as well just do so with engines. I don't think it would do anyone any good to waste time on that. and since there are things like orbital construction mods and hyperedit, it becomes more for aesthetics than anything else. space elevators are for energy saving reasons for a very expensive problem in the real world. in game, strapping on millions of dollars worth of fuel is as easy as a few clicks. there are ways to give the illusion of a space elevator, but they're not good illusions. in the end it's just a whole lot of work for an inferior and useless mechanic.

i think the issue is being able to adjust soo quickly, without the legs getting caught up on the terrain, which would just cause a push and you'll probably bounce or topple over anyways. and that's not even considering that it would be a tremendous amount of work just to make the legs extend intuitively. landing gear with suspension also wouldn't be that stable since it would again, bounce and wobble, worsened on a slope. and after a certain ship height, the landing gear wouldn't be able to compensate for the off axis balance of the weight hanging over it and just topple over. the simple solution is just to use large enough landing gear. if your landing legs are wider than the ship is tall, it would be difficult to flip such a ship over, even on a slope.