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[quote name='Bill Phil']Which Q? Oh wait, only two are shown and one only shows up in voyager.[/QUOTE] Leave Q alone. He has humanity's best intentions in mind. He just has a screwed up way of showing it. Basically Doctor Who, if the Doctor liked playing practical jokes on entire civilizations.

[quote name='lajoswinkler']I had to search what fan service is. Oh my. LOL Yeah, it's a dumb thing to do, especially when characters are minors. It's just wrong and besides, stupid.[/QUOTE] Heh, fortunately my wife is privy to the fact that a nudist party can appear from seemingly nowhere in Anime, even in shows where you would never EVER expect it to happen.

Sadly, when I read this, the first thing I thought was, "NASA is giving smart phones to people who post legit science articles?" :sticktongue:

Better to just make a film about a theoretical near-disaster that never happened, but provide a solution for rescuing the crew. Also, it's interesting to remember that other shuttles have survived with ugly holes in their shielding. The crew of STS-27 saw the damage before re-entry and were absolutely convinced they were going to die. NASA thought they were over-reacting and said not to worry about it. After examining the shuttle on the ground, nobody could believe that it didn't blow apart on re-entry.

Considering what the Romulans were pulling when they were introduced, I'm not particularly surprised. Wiping out listening posts along the neutral zone without being caught? They were trying to open the door for an invasion without even a declaration of war. They're arguably based on Cold War Russia, but the episode is based on a WWII film and their attempt to sneak into Fed-space and cause chaos is very Pearl Harbor. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at Starfleet HQ, whenever anyone read an official report from the Enterprise. Half the people at the table are facepalming, and someone else is scratching his head, saying, "Go over that again, he did WHAT?!" One has to wonder if he ever got reprimanded for any of his Prime Directive violations, or if UFP was content to just give him free reign. He never did seem too happy when he received direct orders from Starfleet. Corrupt governments were all over ST:OS, but it was usually the Enterprise that came along to straighten them out. A number of them were parallel Earth's, or the mirror universe. There was also Stratos, enjoying a life of luxury in sky cities at the expense of the under-appreciated labor class who lived in ridiculously unhealthy working conditions. And a final note on the topic of money, I chuckle at Triskelion a little, wondering if we as humans, even if we reached some insane level of immaterial existence, would still be clinging to some form of score-keeping as silly as currency. If the Ferengi are actually going to be major players, a lot of fun could be had with their version of Capitalism. To the point of a lot of Federation folks thinking they're evil, because "we did away with that nonsense centuries ago," only to find out that the Ferengi version of Capitalism is actually far more honorable than anything humans were able to achieve. On Earth, we practically use it as a less messy alternative to feudalism. That usually didn't go over too well either. Though I especially liked the Apollo episode. I got a lot of interesting parallels from it, for some of the political issues we're dealing with in today's society (without going into too much detail with risky ban-worthy topics).

Well, Nibiru is obviously the most popular name now. Suffice is to say that some think it may have been responsible for Pluto's erratic orbit. But that just as easily could've been a rogue object just passing through.

Is this something new, or just the original "Planet X?" Because Planet X got discussed quite extensively a few months ago.

You also need to factor in things like gravity and atmospheric density. The most obvious thing to us being that rockets on Kerbin need a lot less fuel to reach orbit than ours do. A "car" on Kerbin would probably not require as much energy to run as it would on Earth, because it encounters less resistance on Kerbin. Kerbals have less mass, so less HP is needed for travel (can you imagine how much fuel the world would save per year if everyone lost JUST ten pounds?) Kerbals are also arguably shorter than us, which means smaller living structures, which means less heat needed to keep them warm, etc. It's not JUST the available resources that would scale down. We could even go so far as to point out that Kerbals have HUGE eyes, and so probably don't need to waste a lot of energy on light emitters. Also I'm going to guess that on a planet with a smaller surface area and fewer pre-industrial resources to go around, reproduction rates for all creatures would be much lower than it is on Earth, otherwise the ecosystem would eat itself alive long before Kerbals could even evolve.

Sorry if this comes off in an unintended way. I'm absolutely in no way, bigoted, but I'm curious if bigotry may be at the heart of this. Is the relationship in anyway outside the socially-accepted norms of the traditional status quo? It may be that the family doesn't approve not because of who you are as a person, but because of some near-sighted dogmatic nonsense. Sometimes even being of a different denomination in the same religion can draw a lot of flak, to say nothing about the more 'extreme' kinds of relationships we have in the world now. At least, bigotry is what it sounds like to me. Even for stereotypical in-laws that everyone has heard horror tales about, this sounds way outside the normal "I really don't like that person" and is going way deep into creepy psychotic stalker territory. You could legally get restraining orders based on what I'm reading, and that's pretty telling about how unstable these people are. Additionally, what does your partner think of this? It sounds like whoever that is should be telling the family to F-off. It's not your job to become an even bigger "bad guy" by telling them what they deserve to hear.

Seriously, who cares? It's a lot easier to generate heat than to get rid of it. With a little ingenuity, we'd have no trouble growing food during an ice age. Making life bearable in a perpetual global warming heat-wave though? Ugh...

I'm not saying it necessarily is, but then, it appears that without spending $100 I can't see any further details. The summary doesn't compare using heat converted from electricity through coal burning to heat converted from electricity through solar energy. It may simply be that when all you want is heat, burning something is a better option. But then you're better just lighting a fire in your own home instead of using a remote source of electricity for it. Because then you're just wasting energy converting heat to electric, only to convert it back to heat.

Am I misreading that quote? Surely using solar panels to run an electric heating unit is better than using a coal-burning power plant?

Ah, heh. No, I never felt the Federation was perfect. And frankly, I never expected them to be. Sometimes firing a shot was warranted (alluding to your pummeling of the school bully, which I also did once, and got the same long-term response - actually, he and I became great friends after that). In other cases, all beating somebody up (if I was lucky enough to win) would have accomplished is me having to fight him AND his friends the next time). Overall, I'm a peacenick, but one of my favorite ST-TOS quotes remains, "The best diplomat I know is a fully-operative phaser-bank." Star Trek sufficiently made the point in that same episode that sometimes you can't negotiate your way out of everything and just have to resort to swinging the big stick. Don't use it though until you've explored less-destructive alternatives. Ehh.... I'm not sure if I find it ironic at all, if you're simply assuming that the Federation is my "Church." There were some good episodes about corruption in the UFP as well. I don't see a problem with that. We're human, we're not perfect, and therefore, any system of government we can create is going to be imperfect (unless maybe we do the "Day the Earth Stood Still" thing and let machines govern us). But yeah, that's a lovely paradox of the human condition. In the absence of an actual deity coming to tell us what is what, we're all stuck with trying to make sense of relativistic morality. We can try to make an educated guess about what is good or bad, based on what impact it has on our society if we choose to allow it. Generally, destruction doesn't result in positive results though.

What's important to keep intact though is how the Federation tries to deal with those situations. Absurdism isn't the point of Star Trek. If that were the case, it'd be no different from Pigs In Space. The situation can be ludicrous, but how they react to those situations is what is important. Star Trek was my ONLY source of guidance for how a civilized species should behave, and it very likely kept me out of a LOT of trouble while growing up. I may have to watch that episode again because I didn't find it to be comedic. Is it absurd? Sure. But was Roddenberry trying to make us laugh at it? No. That would be no different than trying to make Ferguson seem funny. Their race war may have looked ridiculous to us as humans, but that was the point. An alien looking at our own petty squabbles would just scratch his head and ask, "Why?" The dual-colored faces in that episode was a brilliant bit of psychology because the difference between them was something that the audience would never have noticed. All we were thinking is, "They look the same," just like Kirk did. If only we could look at our own race that way. Satire maybe, but not comedy. It wasn't meant to make us laugh. If you want a comedic satire of racism, try South Park.

That first pic is SO adorable, and also very Kerbalesque. And apologies if this seems like stealing thunder from the thread, but I have to submit an Anime film with an element of space in the plot. There's not a lot of space imagery in it, but I loved it for a different but no less relevant reason. Saying anymore than that will give the whole story away, but it won't be apparent why until you're halfway done watching it. Any KSP fan should find this story VERY relatable if they give it a full chance. Or if you don't mind spoilers, you can read the synopsis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled_from_Paradise

Or simply: a Star Trek that does what old Star Trek did for society: inspires people to get involved in science and exploration. Nobody is going to get inspired to become an astronaut after watching AbramsTrek.

We have a desire to conquer pretty much everything. Expansion and exploration are certainly ingrained in us. Without our insatiable curiosity, we probably wouldn't even have basic tools. But we also have an innate sense for risk vs. reward, and space is VERY risky. There are a number of us who want to go for it anyway, but the majority, it seems, feel it isn't worth it.

It's going to take place in the Abrams-verse, no doubt. So, nope. No new Star Trek show coming.

Well just because the public helps float the bill doesn't mean they're part owner of it. It's not the same thing as say, being a shareholder. Maybe the only problem though is the rest of the science community would laugh at such a "by the seat of our pants" move. Still, I don't think they'd have much trouble crowd-sourcing for better experiments. IF it works, who wouldn't want to be able to say they helped fund a quantum leap in space travel?

I'm guessing there's some kind of legal issue that would prevent any chance of Kickstarting such a project?

So if it can do all that, can it turn screws?

It's the Kerbal way?

Whatever happened to that experimental project that was intended to revolutionize rainmaking? My search fu is terrible and I can't find anything about it now. There was a tower in the desert that more or less functioned to condense the atmosphere and cause rain to fall, and based on reports at the time, the thing seemed to be working and rainfall was more frequent. Also: http://www.geek.com/news/ethiopia-is-getting-a-real-life-moisture-farm-1590682/ Seriously, bringing a canal to keep California green? Comeon, we've gotta be better than this by now. And California already hoards everything already. There has to be SOMETHING good that other places get to have more of. Greedy Hollywood pool party peeps.

So you're talking about a "hamster in a ball" kind of robot? My biggest concern, even more than instruments, is what to do with the solar panels. The rover, if we can even call it that anymore, would need to be able to store enough power to move around, only flipping out the solar panels when it's stationary. The only other thing I can think of is, why make it a sphere? Why not something more like a tire with struts on both sides? Sorry I don't have an image to provide with this, in case my description just has people scratching their heads. With the struts, the rover could move with the solar panels deployed. If they were allowed to swivel with the proper center of mass, gravity alone could keep the panels pointing skyward. You can also have apertures on both sides of the 'tire' that open a little wider to allow instruments to come outside, parallel with the struts. The probe could extend 'kick stands' out of these openings as well if it needs extra stability for precision jobs. How will it turn? With a torus shape, simply shifting its center of mass to the left or right slightly will cause a natural turn. Smaller wheels at the end of the struts can prevent it from completely tipping over and becoming helpless. This is an INSANELY complex idea though and seems more risky than any space agency would be apt to consider.

Is that even theoretically an option? Or do you just mean for the sake of storytelling? It seems to me we wouldn't have control over the internal structure of a wormhole (do we want it to be a 100km tunnel or a 1mm "looking glass?"). Not without manipulating it at an even higher dimension anyhow, and that's only if string theory is correct. We have enough trouble working with curved space as it is.