Seret

[circular logic]They must have been, or else why was the parachute line slipping?[/circular logic]

If you're talking about carrying people, you'd certainly want to have some other way of adding buoyancy.

All versions of KSP are multi-threaded. The problem is that the total workload is dominated by one large process. This means that one core is going to be doing 90% of the work. This is exactly the same on Linux/Windows and 32/64-bit. It's just a limitation of the way the game is coded.

ARM? The developing world? Actually Canonical did a quick poll, of something like a third of the hardware they were committed to supporting was still 32-bit. So it's not a case of being able to assume that all your users are able to run 64-bit just yet. I certainly support the idea of making 64-bit the default choice, but 32-bit should still be supported for a while yet.

No one is twisting your arm to play early access games. If you want stable games, stick to ones that aren't in active development.

Mostly just KSP and World of Tanks. Little bit of Minecraft and Civ 3, and I've got Shogun 2 sitting around waiting to get played. Really enjoyed the original, so want to wait until I've got enough time to give it a proper go.

Linux desktops have generally supported PAE for yonks, either as an alternative kernel you can just swap in straight from the repos, or latterly as their default 32-bit kernel. PAE does the job, but it's a bit of a kludge. The number of cases where it would be preferable over just going 64-bit is rapidly approaching zero IMO.

I've sent you a PM so as not to ruin the fun for the OP.

I realise that, you've also got the option of using ballast to limit an externally imposed rate of decent. But you've got to admit it would limit the utility of such a balloon somewhat.

So when the sun goes behind the clouds you lose control of your buoyancy? That doesn't sound safe.

Maybe their router is knackered...

I wouldn't rag on the realism too much. They did make a concerted effort to be much more realistic than most space films. The sound design for example, where only objects the astronauts were touching could be heard. The stuff they did get wrong was generally deliberately done. For example they parked several spacecraft in orbits unrealistically close to each other, as having the protagonist spend days making a complex series of orbital maneuvers to reach them wouldn't have worked dramatically.

Fantastic film. Watch it on a decent sized screen with good sound. Beautifully shot and very immersive. They take some liberties with realism for the sake of the story, but that's excusable.

Me too. It's safer that way, and I always like to run a full test of the escape system before I send up the boys. Tbh a lot of my stations are unmanned anyway, since they're fuel depots. The only time I have fuel and bodies in the same structure is if I've attached the science lab to make a one-stop refuel and transmit shop for science landers.

Sure. Of course, when I say "sharks" I of course mean ill-tempered sea bass. Shameful cuts to the shark budget.

Killed Bill Got a bit carried away building super-lightweight space scooters. Which are great in space, but not much use for an abort if something goes wonky on the launcher. Bill was last seen strapped into the command seat trying to pull the nose up on the transfer stage as it wiped out into the sea. RIP little guy. From now on we're launching the things unmanned, or including a pod with chutes in the stack that the boys can ride in until they're safely in orbit.

This is the bottom line to me. Throttling a 64-bit chip down to 32-bit speeds makes absolutely no sense. Even if you're stuck in Windows land and the applications you're running on it are still 32-bit, letting the OS run free in 64-bit lets the chip do at least some of its thing unfettered. I've been running 64-bit for years and years, but I've still not felt any need to install more then 4GB RAM. 64-bit is about more than just RAM.

I'm not in the US, but US Amazon seems to have 32GB USB sticks for about $15-20, 64GB for about $30, or 128GB for about $75. For reference, 32Gb would probably be big enough for most people's music collection. You really should suss out how much stuff you've got though. USB sticks and the like are fine for a quick backup so you can do your reformat, but like Nuke says they aren't a proper long-term backup solution. I don't think external drives are either FWIW.

If you took a map from 500 years ago, very few of the countries we know now would be represented. Go back 5000 years and none of them would be. The idea of nation states is actually pretty recent, but even if you take the old definition of a country (the bit a certain king could hold) they're just cultural artefacts. As culture changes, so do the countries. 5 billion years is a really, insanely long period of time. That's about a third of the age of the universe, or about as long as life has existed on Earth. Humanity is the blink of an eye compared to all that. Very, very few species have lasted more than a few million years, let alone billions.

Probably just a giant light bulb. Either that or a bazooka that fired angry sharks.

3D printing isn't a one-stop shop. You can't just use it to produce any high tech component in a single process step. I know some evangelists talk like it is that simple, but it isn't. ALM definitely has a huge role to play in any prospective space fabrication, but it certainly won't be the only thing we use. As for only needing to supply powdered metals, that's not actually any less hassle than supplying ingots for other processes.

Ok, as a mechanical engineer I'd say you probably want to curb your enthusiasm about 3D printing a bit. There's a lot of hype and unrealistic expectations of it in the media right now. A couple of facts about additive layer manufacturing: It's not new. Engineers have been using it for 20 years or so, and it's pros and cons are fairly well understood. It's just the cheap consumer-grade thermoplastic extruders that are new, and have been causing lots of buzz. It's a complement to other manufacturing processes like machining, casting and forming. It won't entirely supplant any of them. You're not going to build an entire spacecraft through ALM. Why number 3? Well take the example you give, SLM of aluminium. The successive layers of hot and cold metal cause huge internal stresses in the component. Effectively the whole thing is one big weld, with all the problems that brings. Cracking is a big problem. Coupled to the fact that ALM techniques always give poor surface finish compared to things like machining and you'll have an even worse problem with cracking in a highly stressed part. There are lots of different kinds of ALM technique, but they all have their own problems as well as advantages. In short, while there are some components you could make via ALM (it's really good for oddly shaped things made of expensive materials produced in small runs) there are some things you absolutely wouldn't make with it. Ignore anybody who suggests that 3D printing can replace every other type of fabrication. Any engineer will tell you that anybody who tries to convince his wonder-tool can replace every tool in your trusty box is either a salesman or doesn't know their trade. Besides, some stuff will just be plain easier to build using non-ALM methods. Would you 3D print a length of ali tube, or just extrude it? Right tool for the job.

By restraining the shroud lines, preventing the canopy from opening fully.

The human race will be loooooong gone in 5 billion years. If we're lucky some of our distant descendants may still be around. Who knows, maybe a gene you carry will make it? As for terraforming, I'm sceptical of the whole concept. Geoengineering is still a speculative field, we lack the actual technology to be able to do it in a controlled and coherent fashion. Doing it on another planet would be astoundingly expensive, one would have to ask the question: who's paying? The process would take hundreds or thousands of years, so you couldn't fund it through the sale of land. I'm of the opinion that by the time out technology becomes advanced enough that we're able to even consider such enormous projects in space we'd simply be able to create permanent habitats in space. Why bother with planets at all? Instead of shoehorning an alien planet into Earth-like conditions, just create Earth-like conditions from scratch. The other obvious option would be remodelling the human physiology to suit the location, rather than vice versa. Granted that's not really an option for Mars, but it's possible we'll find exoplanets that could be inhabited by modified humans.

I've heard this one a few times. In reality, benchmarks tell a different story. Phoronix have been flogging that particular dead horse for several years now, and the results are always the same: 64-bit is substantially quicker for some tasks, and for the rest is no slower than 32-bit. This however is true. The kinds of things 64-bit excels at are video encoding, encryption, compression, etc. Gaming will generally only see marginal benefits.