-Velocity-

1) Alt-F5, save as "Pre station move test"; 2) Try moving the station to Minimus; 3) Observe; 4) Alt-F9, select and load "Pre station move test".

As far as I know, it's only possible to assemble a genuine ring (a loop of parts) in orbit using docking, because otherwise the game's part-tree system prohibits you from building a part "loop". If I had to guess, there are gaps in the structure because the parts are close, but not quite, the perfect size. So the station almost fits together perfectly, but not quite. Anyway, it's a pretty impressive structure. I had a gigantic spaceship (like 1700 tons) I launched in two pieces once, and the two pieces were joined by four simultaneous Clampatron Sr. docking ports. It was really tough to get all four of the docking ports to attach at the same time. But... that wasn't a RING. I'm really impressed that this ring station turned out as well as it did.

If the reactor is never turned on until it's safely on its way in space, there is no significant danger, even if the rocket explodes and the reactor vessel disintegrates and spews itself over a wide area. Fission fuel- uranium 235- isn't particularly dangerous. What IS dangerous are the short-lived fission products that are created when a reactor operates. But if the reactor has never operated, these don't exist. In fact, even in the worst-case scenario, the high chemical toxicity of the uranium fuel might end up being more dangerous than its low-level radiological hazard. Anyway, combine the low hazard with a reactor vessel that is designed to survive rocket failure, and the overall danger of launching a reactor into space should be insignificant. You just want to make sure, once the reactor is in space and has been used, it never re-enters Earth's atmosphere...

Nuclear reactors would work, especially if fusion became feasible. Uranium-235 has a half life of several hundred million years, so even a fission reactor could feasibly work- you wouldn't run it continuously for 20k years. You'd run it in spurts. Start it up, run diagnostics, see if anything on the ship needed repair, if so, power up the robot wardens, have them go fix whatever needed fixing, etc., then go into hibernation mode again.

It would be 0.4*2 = 0.8 mol of aluminum atoms. I'm not a chemist but I believe that mol is supposed to measure the number of particles. So you have to be careful and specific about what you're talking about. For example, if you somehow decomposed this hypothetical compound and recovered just the oxygen, then the question "how many mol do you have of oxygen?" is not really valid. Oxygen what? Oxygen atoms, O2 molecules, or O3 molecules??

Funny. Even though I've been flying flight sims for nearly two decades now, I find the default keys of KSP confusing for a different reason- pitch is reversed. My brain views the "A", "S", "W", and "D" keys as ARROW keys. So, pressing "W" should make your nose go up, and pressing "S" should make your nose go down. That the "A", "S", "W", and "D" keys should be treated as arrow keys and NOT as joystick axes is further underscored by the fact that the "A" and "D" keys apply yaw, not roll. If these keys were supposed to be regarded as joystick axes then shouldn't "A" and "D" be roll? So anyway, what I always do is that I reverse the functions of "W" and "S" and "I" and "K" so that they are like arrow keys, which is the standard way to treat "ASWD" in video games anyway! Make "W"- up- make your nose go up, and "S"- down- make your nose go down. An alternate setup- which wouldn't work for me but at least it would make sense- would be to make "A" and "D" be roll, and allow "W" and "S" to remain the same as they are in default. Then at least it could be logically argued that the the ASWD keys were something like joystick axes. The yaw axes would be switched to "Q" and "E". And no, I do not get confused when I switch back to using a joystick. It's just that my brain doesn't regard a joystick as being anything at all like arrow keys on a keyboard- why in the hell should they be?! One is pressing four discrete buttons and the other is moving a single stick. But I've been told that a lot of people find pressing the up key to make your nose go down feels natural to them, which completely boggles my mind. The default KSP key setup really reminds me of this-

I'm not so certain about that. Massive space-based construction and manufacturing would be required to travel to Alpha Centauri. This same technology could be used to construct some incredibly massive telescopes. They've already been talks about building a 100 meter ground-based telescope- it's not funded yet, but probably someday we'll build one that big. But in space? There's no gravity or weight to contend with. If you can build the telescope IN space, then it can be MASSIVE. What if your mirror was simply a very thin sheet of reflective material that was micro-actuated into a parabolic shape? That would never work on Earth, but in space, you might be able to get a thin, foil-like mirror that could be a hundred km across or more. This may sound ridiculously large, but consider a possibility where we are using machine intelligences to mine asteroids and run gigantic, space-based factories. Also, a thin-foil telescope doesn't use much in the way of raw materials anyway. Anyway, the diffraction limit on a telescope that large would be around 6 picoradians. You could easily surface features a few hundred km across on any planets orbiting Alpha Centauri. Make a telescope 1000 km in diameter, and you can resolve objects the size of cities. Very large space-based optics would also have other uses- laser optics for light sailing. Besides light sails requiring a very lightweight reflective sail, if your light sail is laser-pushed, then you need massive laser optics to keep the laser focused on the sail out to great distances. So the same tech that allows telescopes hundreds of km across or more might be able to double as laser optics used for laser-pushed light sail interstellar probes. I guess my point is, in the future, if we ever do get the ability to send probes to distant stars, our telescope technology will also be likely to have greatly improved as well. So exploration of space would likely be a combination of robotic missions and telescopic observation, just like today. You gotta have the telescopes to find interesting targets for close exploration anyway.

I'm studying for a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, so I'm familiar with academia. The reason I want to bring it up is because I've got first-hand experience- just because someone has a Ph.D. and works at some university doesn't mean that they know what they are talking about. Yes, usually it does, but I've seen plenty of examples where some Ph.D. professor is wrong about something- even some of their research. Now, while a lot of people distrust science and education and revel in their own ignorance, and in particular will often point to examples of bad researchers (either in support of some crazy idea they have, or as proof that science cannot be trusted), the fact is that the scientific process is about forming a consensus. Everyone, even the smartest people in the world, are wrong about many of the things they think. That's why we form a consensus. That's why PEER REVIEW is CRITICAL. Whenever some person or group reports a result that contradicts the consensus and years of research and experimentation, no one believes them, and other scientists will try to disprove the contradictory findings. This kind of thing happens all the time in science, and findings that appear to fly in the face of scientific consensus and research are almost always shown to be some kind of experimental or analysis error. Sometimes, especially if the research was empirical in nature, identifying what caused this error can be highly valuable to other researchers in the field so that they do not fall victim to a similar problem. In this particular case, the fact that this "proof" was not published in a peer-reviewed journal is very telling. It also flies in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus by some of the smartest minds on the planet and decades of observational evidence. In other words, this "proof" that black holes don't exist can be safely treated as bull!@#$.

Maybe it's been answered in this thread somewhere, but have you thought about making a more realistic version of this mod- a version without things like warp drives and quantum thrusters which appear to violate known physics? Even with a most generous appraisal of the odds, such technologies appear to be very unlikely to ever reach fruition. KSP scales stuff by like an order of magnitude; so we might expect the closest stars would be only 0.4 light-years away, meaning even if you traveled at 10% the speed of light, at 100000X time compression you could reach the closest star in only 20 minutes (obviously though, acceleration at 4X time compression will end up taking up most of your gameplay time... so some work-around such as a hack to allow acceleration at 1000X TC may be required). Of course, with no stars to travel to yet, this problem does not even really exist yet. But my point is that assuming we do get distant stars we can travel to in future versions of KSP, conventional time compression combined with the reduced scale of the KSP universe means that we do not need exotic technologies to accomplish interstellar travel within practical gameplay time limits, as long as we have some way of accelerating at time compression levels at least a few orders of magnitude higher than 4X. There are multiple types of high impulse, high thrust propulsion methods that may allow interstellar travel that we already know of, using known and practical physics. I'd be highly interested in a mod that focused on these- Nuclear thermal (various types) Fission pulse Fusion pulse Antimatter catalyzed fusion or fission pulse From what I've read, it is unrealistic to harvest enough antimatter from the magnetospheres of planets to power a pure antimatter rocket; however there may be enough for an antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse rocket. I donno. Anyway, I was just curious if you had put any thoughts into a version of the mod that gets rid of the highly speculative and unlikely forms of propulsion for us realism purists. Basically, it would just be a version that takes out the warp and quantum drives (and maybe the antimatter drive, replacing the antimatter drive with one that is antimatter catalyzed) and modifies the tech tree accordingly. It wouldn't be a major modification (would it?), but I can understand how you might feel that maintaining two separate versions and trying to balance gameplay on both may not be worth your limited time you have to work on this.

Yea, of course you'll have to match its orbit, and it will take more delta-V to do so since the orbit is elliptical. However, that is not necessarily detrimental because like 90% of that delta-V is part of the delta-V you have to expend ANYWAY to leave Duna's SOI. It does matter if you're doing a bunch of ferrying between the orbital base and the surface- but the benefit of synchronous orbit, and Duna's relatively weak gravity (which means that the extra delta-V you need might only be like 300 or 400 m/s) should outweigh that downside even in this case. The synchronous orbital period of the orbital base doesn't necessarily make launch windows so much as landing windows. To launch and rendezvous with the base, you would probably launch your lander from the surface a day before the base reaches periapsis, and go into a circular orbit that is co-planar with the orbital base's orbit. Next, you would modify your lander's orbit so that its periapsis (or apoapsis) is the same as the orbital base's periapsis. To complete the rendezvous (minus the final velocity matching maneuver), your lander would make a prograde burn at the orbital base's periapsis, making your orbit increasingly elliptical until it reaches the periapsis point at the same time as the orbital base. You'll end up rendezvousing with the orbital base as it passes over the equator, just before it passes over your northern hemisphere surface base. Also, for aerobraking and landing, for a northern hemisphere base, you'll want the orbit of the orbital base to come in over the south pole so that it is travelling from south-to-north as it makes its closest approach. If not, you'll be coming in rather steep when you land.

Lajowinkler, that's a rather pessimistic view. I'm surprised, your posts are usually well thought out, but I've never seen you be more wrong about anything on this forum. I know for a fact you are completely incorrect when you say that such a medical technology would not be purchased by anyone. As a person who has a close family member afflicted with alcoholism, I know for a fact that there is a vast number of people out there who would receive enormous benefits from something that eliminated intoxication. A person who is addicted to alcohol is not addicted to all drugs- they are addicted to ALCOHOL. If you eliminate the effects of alcohol, that doesn't mean they will switch to other drugs. While a person who is dependent on a drug tends to be more prone in general to drug dependency than the general population, physiologically, drug dependency is on a per-substance basis. Anyway, a treatment to eliminate the effects of intoxication could reap huge benefits to society by returning alcoholic persons to a productive status. You'd still face the problem of getting alcoholics to admit that they have a problem, but treatments could be made mandatory treatment for persons convicted of multiple alcohol related offenses (like DUI or alcohol-related domestic violence). Such a treatment would not only remove a menance to society, but also allow the offender to return to a normal, productive life.

The contracts system and money made me switch back to using space stations for the first time in over a year. I want to save money by making a fully reusable fleet of spacecraft so that to explore any body (except Eve), I only have to pay the costs of fuel to get there and back. (For Eve using stock parts, it is impossible to build a fully reusable lander, at least without exploiting unrealistic ion engines- and I am unwilling to stoop to that level.) This is the system I have in mind: Kerbin system- 1) Low orbit fuel station (~200 tons @ max fuel state, to be launched tonight) 2) High orbit fuel station/lander base (~800 tons @ max fuel state, in orbit already) 3) ~120 ton fuel transfer tanker (in orbit already) 4) Fully reusable, VTOL SSTO fuel tanker (delivers around 40 tons of fuel to LKO- uses 24 R.A.P.I.E.R. engines, just completed design and testing last night) 5) Medium space plane (crew complement: 3, it's already been used and refueled and reused three times). 6) Ground support vehicles for refueling space plane and VTOL SSTO tanker. Interplanetary craft (not including landers): 1) Small interplanetary transfer craft (~40 tons)- it's a left over from my Mun and Minimus exploration missions... 2) Large interplanetary transfer craft (already in orbit; 400 tons fully fueled and carrying no landers) The way this works is this- a) Multiple flights of the VTOL SSTO reusable tanker are made to fill up low orbit fuel station; Fuel is ferried from the low orbit fuel station to the high orbit fuel station using the orbital fuel tanker (which uses more efficient nuclear engines); c) The reusable interplanetary transfer craft refuel and pick up surface exploration vehicles (landers/rovers/spaceplanes/etc.) at the high orbit fuel station; d) Kerbal crews are delivered to the interplanetary transfer craft using the space plane (the plane may have to fill up at the low orbit station to make it to the high orbit station though, I donno yet); e) Kerbal crews and science data are returned from the interplanetary spacecraft to KSC using the space plane; f) All landers/rovers and spaceplanes I build are fully reusable (except those designed for Eve) and will work on multiple bodies. Landers not needed for a particular mission are docked at the high orbit fuel station. Anyway, once all this hardware is in orbit or complete (putting it in orbit DOES of course require the expenditure of rocket parts) I should be able to explore the surface of any body except Eve at just the cost of the fuel it takes to get there. I do have a decently cheap Eve sea-level-to-orbit spacecraft already, but it's still probably around 1,000,000 in funds to use it. There needs to be a contract to deliver Kerbals to the surface of Eve and return them to Kerbin that rewards at least like 2,000,000 in funds...

It's incredibly simple. It's just an orbit that takes some integer multiple of the planet's rotation period to complete. The object in such an orbit orbit will always pass over the same point during its close approach. The catch is you need to make the time to complete the orbit an integer multiple of the sidereal day, NOT the solar day. The Earth spins once every 23 hours and 56 minutes; however because the Sun is slowly moving from west to east against the background stars (due to Earth's orbital motion around it), it takes 4 extra minutes each day for Earth's rotation to "catch up" with the new position of the Sun in the sky. So a SOLAR day lasts 24 hours.

What about putting your orbital base on something like a 6 Duna-sidereal day (or whatever is appropriate) polar, highly elliptical, synchronous orbit with the apoapsis being in-plane with the plane of the solar system. The orbital base will pass almost right over the surface base once every orbital period, as the orbit is some integer multiple of Duna's sidereal rotation rate. Even though the orbit's apoapsis is outside Ike's orbit, because the orbit is polar, the spacecraft will never cross into Ike's SOI as Ike's orbit will reside entirely within the orbit. As the orbital base's periapsis only just above the atmosphere (say, maybe 60 km), then you only need to provide a small amount of delta-V to land on the planet from the orbital base- all you need to do is to dip the periapsis of a lander from like 60km to like 15 km and you should aerobrake away your orbital velocity and land. To leave Duna's SOI from the orbital base, you might want to switch from a polar orbit to an equatorial orbit first. This won't cost very much delta-V, as you will be moving very slowly at apoapsis and additionally, as already mentioned, you'll be in the equatorial plane of the solar system. Once you are in an equatorial orbit, you can then do any number of things to return to Kerbin- Ike slingshot/orbital modifcation, or, easiest option- simply providing a little extra prograde delta-V at periapsis. So the advantages of this are several: 1) It takes almost no delta-V to land; 2) You've got launch and landing windows to/from your orbital base every X number of Duna days- every time the orbital base passes overhead of the surface base; 3) It takes very little delta-V to leave Duna's SOI from the orbital base. Disadvantages: 1) Rendezvous with the orbital base can be somewhat time consuming as the orbital period is rather long (but isn't that what time compression is for anyway?) 2) As already mentioned, when departing Duna, you might find it advantageous to do a plane-changing maneuver at apoapsis to take you from a highly elliptical polar orbit into a highly elliptical equatorial orbit. This will cost a small amount of delta-V (100 m/s? You won't be moving very fast at apoapsis, as you are so far away from the planet).

Depends on where you're trying to land. Nuclear engines are the best lander engines there are for low gravity worlds with no atmospheres. Duna is somewhere in-between, but even on Duna I think nuclear engines are likely to be very, very good. Even if Duna has enough of an atmosphere and enough gravity to make nuclear engines not the best lander engine, the fuel savings you get during orbital maneuvers may make up for it.

If you're landing on Eve, Laythe, or Duna you can attach the rover to the top of your lander with a decoupler or docking port. Give the rover a bunch of parachutes- MORE parachute per weight than your main lander (this is very important!). When you get low in the atmosphere, WHILE YOU STILL HAVE SOME TRANSVERSE VELOCITY, pop the rover's parachutes open and decouple the rover from the lander. Your rover has more parachutes per unit weight than the lander, so it will appear to accelerate retrograde away from the lander as it is slowing down faster. Since you released the rover while you still had velocity transverse to the surface of the planet, the rover will land afterward, somewhere short of where the lander ends up landing instead of landing right on top of it. Anyway, this is the method I used to deliver rovers and habitation modules to my Eve base. However, the simplest way to design rovers for pretty much every destination except Eve (and probably Kerbin and possibly Laythe) is to make the rover and the lander the same thing. Wheels weigh very little, so what's the point of making the lander and the rover different vessels?!

You're thinking of boxcar evolution, I think. http://boxcar2d.com/ We already procedurally generate the layout of very complex integrated circuits. I have heard that no one actually lays out the location of every single transistor, there is software that follows design rules (possibly even some evolutionary algorithms) to design our most complicated ICs. There are now over a billion transistors, after all. So the idea that we can never create something because we're not smart enough to understand what we're building is a fallacy, already shown to be false because no one person fully understands how even our current generations of integrated circuits work. What is important instead is that we create good design rules and algorithms for the software that generates the circuit layout. This DOES require an understanding of general principles, which we probably do not yet have in the case of intelligent machines. Perhaps all we need though is the right evolutionary algorithm and only limited understanding of how consciousness works.

If you can construct a rocket? That is not difficult at all. Estes is the beginner-level choice; Aerotech is a good intermediate choice: http://www.aerotech-rocketry.com/default.aspx http://www.aerotechstore.com/ I started with my own Estes designs when I was 10 and moved onto Aerotech when I was 13, so it's not hard at all. Just follow the directions Now, these rockets won't fly very high, fast, or far (only a few hundred MPH in velocity to altitudes of a few thousand feet) because the engine mass is only a small fraction of the rocket's weight. But without any guidance or tracking system, if you want to recover your rocket, you don't have any choice but to handicap it like that. This is one of my main motivations for developing a guidance system- I want to launch rockets that go very high, very fast, and very far. I want the rockets to fly so high that the electronics must be heated

Well, you'll probably want an electrical engineer too. I did a lot of model rocketry when I was a kid but never progressed beyond G rocket motors. Other hobbies, the lack of launch sites, the high cost of motors (each launch of a G rocket costing like $15 IIRC), etc. all got in the way. Anyway, with an electrical engineer you can integrate control systems and micro controllers into your rocket. As a simple example, there are a number of MEMS gyroscopes and MEMS IMUs (inertial measurement units) on the market right now. You can buy them for like $5 each. They come in surface mount packages, typically 4mm X 4mm X 1mm or smaller. So you could integrate them into a rocket and steer it to keep it vertical, or follow some profile. A more advanced version could use a full MEMS INS that flies the rocket back to the launch point. You could even include GPS guidance. (Yes, I can think of a few issues- rocket motor vibrational/acoustic noise could excite the MEMS gyro at its mechanical resonance frequency and throw off its measurements; you might have to mount the electronics in sound absorbing material. Also, you would probably want to use a slow-burning rocket motor (they do make them for rocket-powered remote control model gliders) that didn't exert too many Gs on the MEMS components, otherwise they might bottom out. Also f you design the control system incorrectly for the rocket, it could also go dangerously out of control; you might want a radio-commanded abort system.) Anyway, once I finish my degree and get a house, I'm looking forward to restarting rocketry myself; I'll need a nice garage or shed for a workshop and some oscilloscopes, power supplies, signal generators, etc. for the electronics. I'll have to be a little careful though; the same kind of stuff that could guide a model rocket could be used for nefarious purposes; if you published or sold any of your designs you could get the Feds breathing down your neck or worse yet, find yourself partly responsible for the deaths of innocents. I'm not joking; sometimes you have to be careful about what you make and publish, even if your intentions are clearly and demonstrably noble or harmless. Supposedly a professor here had one of his student group's senior design project (a rail gun) taken away by Homeland security. ANYWAY, I mention all of this because if you want a reasonably advanced and novel model rocketry effort, at least in terms of building high altitude instrumented rockets you'll need electronics, at the very least for staging and altitude measurements. Some of these electronics are already available, but if you really want to get serious, you'll need to design your own. Custom electronics wouldn't be necessary for your first rockets, but they would become increasingly useful as your designs advanced.

"Sentient" only means capable of responding to external stimuli; feeling. So in a sense, any machine that responds to external stimulus is already sentient, since its behavior is modified by external effects. In fact, just about anything can be viewed as being sentient to some degree, as long as it's a system that responds to external stimuli. When considering Earth lifeforms, the most sentient beings will tend to be those with the most complex brains; humans probably being the most sentient beings on Earth, but not necessarily so, as it depends on how sentience is defined. Remember though that we are animals, and responding to external stimuli is exceedingly important for all creatures. For machines, the relationship between "brain" complexity and sentience is not necessarily related. As an example, imagine an exceedingly fast supercomputer that performs even more calculations per second than the human brain, but is ONLY programmed to calculate digits of pi. It doesn't respond to anything at all other than running through an endless numerical expansion. So ANYWAY, I believe that the word people are looking for here is SAPIENT. Sapient means intelligent, smart. Humans are definitely the most sapient animals on Earth, though I would hesitate before I would call the the ONLY sapient animals; the other great apes besides humans, and dolphins, elephants, and even some birds have been shown to be extremely intelligent and aware. Sapient beings would also tend to be highly sentient beings as well. In answer to the original question, of course sapient machines should be allowed to make critical decisions if that machine has been shown to be trustworthy at the task. After all, unless the laws of physics are being constantly violated inside our heads (of which there is no evidence at all), we are simply chemical-electrical machines ourselves. There would be no reason why a sufficiently powerful computer (none of which has been built yet) running the right software could not be as sapient and sentient, or even MUCH more so, than we are ourselves. Oh and the idea that machines don't do anything that they aren't programmed to do is very wrong; we already use evolutionary algorithms to come up with things that no human would ever think of. Technically, randomization even counts. And again, if machines are only capable of "doing what they are programmed to do", then the same must apply to human beings, unless the laws of physics break down inside our heads. Finally, I do take exception at the term "AI". I believe that "AI" should be reserved for simplistic systems that merely mimic the appearance of being intelligent- take "Siri" as an example. A truly sapient machine should NOT be referred to as an "AI", since there is nothing artificial at all about its intelligence; its brain is artificial, not its intellect! A better term is "machine intelligence", or "MI".

What doesn't hold? ANYTHING that gives you more than one stack drastically increases drag. I don't care if you call it asparagus, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, tomato... WHATEVER. If you're pushing more than one rocket body cross-section through the air, it's going to drastically increase your drag. You want to make your rockets tall and thin, not short and fat.

He's saying that in FAR, each separate stack causes a huge amount of drag, so to minimize drag you want to put everything in one stack. That is realistic. In stock KSP, each part creates the same drag no matter where it is placed. That is unrealistic. This (realistically) forces you away from massive asparagus staged rockets in FAR.

Is it even possible to make a Eve sea-level-to-orbit ascent vehicle in FAR that isn't ridiculously top-heavy- too top heavy to land? My Eve ascent vehicles have all been rather short and squat (and asparagus staged) so that they could land on the terrain- which unless you are REALLY lucky, will mean landing on at least a 5 degree slope. A vertically staged rocket would simply tip over on landing on like 99% of the land surface of Eve. Hmm... I suppose you could make really wide landing legs out of those truss pieces that stretched way out to the side though. Hmmm....

Tell that to the millions of wild animals that call the thriving wildlife preserve around Chernobyl home. Yes, Earth life is thriving the in lands surrounding Chernobyl. For example, one of the largest populations of an endangered species of wild horse calls these "uninhabitable" lands home. Two reasons for this 1) The biggest threat to many species is simply human encroachment, poaching, accidental or collateral deaths, and habitat loss. Humans are a hell of a lot worse than some slight residual radiation. 2) Wild animals don't usually live long enough to develop cancer. Cancer tends to strike the elderly, and elderly wild animals simply die from other causes because they become unfit for survival. Continuing... There isn't much energy there. During the early years, they did have occasional overheating issues (heat was not being sinked out of the decaying radioactive debris fast enough), but those short-lived products have largely decayed now. Secondly, why try to harvest that energy? Do YOU want to go lay pipes to run water through that radioactive rubble? It probably doesn't even get hot enough to boil water anymore, though maybe there are lumps that are still that hot. I donno. Secondly, as you said, it's IONIZING radiation. Just because it can kill you doesn't mean it's a lot of energy. For example- stand outside under the sun. You're being irradiated with ~1000 W/m^2, mostly in visible light and infrared. Individual photons at these wavelengths of light are not powerful enough to break molecular bonds- they are not ionizing radiation. A small amount of solar energy consists of ultraviolet wavelengths. Ultraviolet photons ARE powerful enough to break molecular bonds. Frequently, an ultraviolet photon will break the bonds holding together one of your DNA molecules in your skin. 99.9999% of the time, your body is able to successfully repair this DNA damage. Sometimes, however, the DNA repair mechanisms all fail and the messed up DNA starts making the cell behave erratically. I believe the body has additional redundancy to deal with malfunctioning cells- I believe there are self-destruct and immune response triggers, but I can't remember. (A living cell is a fascinating piece of "nanotechnology".) However, sometimes, ALL those mechanisms fail, and the cell starts reproducing out of control. You get cancer. Despite the effectiveness of the body's DNA repair and malfunctioning cell eradication mechanisms, you have A LOT of cells, so chances are quite good that eventually you'll get cancer. The more DNA damage you accumulate, the higher the chances that you'll get it. Now, remember that sunlight that was 1000 W/m^2 of mostly harmless radiation? Now imagine that that's 1 W/m^2 of gamma rays- incredibly energetic photons that can just decimate a complex molecule, and pass right through your skin, doing their damage deeper inside your body. It wouldn't take long, even at that to take a lethal dose of radiation where so many cells in your body take severe radiation damage to their DNA that you die in a week or two. Even worse than gamma rays, imagine that you are being exposed to neutron radiation. Being electrically neutral, the neutrons stream into you, right through your skin, strike the nucleus of an atom, and then make a shower of energetic particles that rip through your body like subatomic shrapnel, ripping apart any biological molecules they find. Anyway, understand the difference- Non-ionizing radiation (electromagnetic radiation at visible light wavelengths and below) just makes you hotter if you absorb it. It can even be good for you. Ionizing radiation (high energy electromagnetic radiation, alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, etc.) BREAKS UP THE MOLECULES THAT COMPOSE YOUR BODY. Bad. VERY bad. So just because a place contains a dangerous amount of ionizing radiation doesn't mean there's much energy there. It's just that the type of energy that is there is of a type that is very hazardous to the biological molecules we are composed of.

Humans don't seem likely to die out to me- we're too adaptable. However, our current civilization can certainly collapse to varying degrees. We need to ensure that we always have knowledge backed up in ways that can be read without electricity.