Diche Bach

Congrats on your first orbit! Didn't count how many it took me the first time, but I'd guess somewhere between eight and 15. Once you get the hang of it it seems absolutely easy.

Cannot honestly think of anything I "hate" about this game. Hate is such a strong word. Not to mention it is still alpha. There are things I look forward to that are still lacking (career mode, interstellar travel, real science) but other than that I'd say the game is going quite well so far!

Wow, you guys didn't take the red pill didja? Hate to break it to ya, but there already IS an Internet of Everything, and Kevin Warwick, cyborg professor is calling the shots.

600 times bigger than the world's entire nuclear arsenal . . . was a bit skeptical of the basis for such an estimate but sounds like our trusty space probes proved quite useful . I've expressed confidence that humanity could not be driven into extinction by any cosmic event short of the sun's final death throes in a billion years, but having read this I'm actually beginning to wonder. What the heck would a comet that big do to Earth? Was the size of that detonation something to do with a comet entering a largely hydrogen atmosophere? Or would it be just as explosive if it intersected Earth?

Options to turn off any "auto" thingy are always good.

The bomb would have to be designed to resist Jupiter's incredible pressure and heat as it descended. I suspect that it would be impossible to get it very deep before the housing of the explosives, the controlling mechanism and the like would be destroyed by the incredible heat and pressure. On the other hand, if the bomb was designed to be TRIGGERED once the incredible heat and pressure crossed some threshold then presumably it would be possible to detonate it fairly deep inside Jupiter's atmosphere. Beyond those very simple constraints (probably only a few hundred trillion gabillion dollars to make the device with today's technology) I would guess that setting off a chain reaction to ignite all of Jupiter into one massive fusion explosion would be limited by two factors: 1. detonating deep enough that the surrounding pressure and heat was high enough to sustain a chain reaction; 2. Is the dilution of hydrogen (versus helium and other 'contaminants') sufficiently high and evenly mixed to sustain hydrogen fusion? Helium is the heavier atom so I'm guessing that the distribution of hydrogen and helium in Jupiter's atmosphere changes as one descends closer to the core. Thus, it would seem to my naïve mind that the two contraints are opposing. (1) compels detonation as deep as possible, whereas presumably if you go too deep there will not be enough hydrogen to sustain a chain reaction.

Human Extinction: I am quite confident that the _only_ risk that poses a strong chance of driving humanity into extinction is the death of our sun some billion years hence. Suffice to say, Nibb has it exactly right. The idea that humanity could be driven to extinction by an asteroid, plague, wars, famine, or nuclear armaggeddon is simply absurd. In order for Earth to become completely uninhabitable by humans it would have to be reduced to the desolateness of a Mars and this highlights the silliness of the fear when the risk of human extinct is being proposed by people who also propose the contradictory claim that we can 'easily' colonize Mars. Short of an asteroid vaporizing everything on the surface within a few hours, there will be survivors and they will find a way to prevail. I have that much faith in the resourcefulness and hardiness of my species

The problem here is that, we have in recent decades been presented with a very simple model. A simple model with powerful political, ideological, and moral meaning. None of us, not even the world's leading experts, are in the position to say with certainty and finality that "THIS IS THE SOLUTION!" Nonetheless, this is how the current political discussions, and moral chastising that goes with it tends to be presented. Reducing our carbon emissions is laudable because it assuredly is a greenhouse gas, and it is artificial. But it is also laudable to reduce our nitrogenous waste output, reduce our agricultural methane output, our heavy metals pollution, our plastic litter, our waste of rare metals like platinum and so forth when we throw away used industrial equipment, our failure to properly steward forests and provide habitats for vital species, our unintentional spreading of invasive (e.g,. feral pigs in the Appalachians) or pathogenic species, etc., etc. For example, White nose syndrome, which seems to have been introduced from European caves into the North American bat populations, may well cause SEVERAL bat species to go EXTINCT! The inordinately politicized and profitized focus on carbon emissions has, as far as I can tell, done absolutely NOTHING to help save these wondrous species from the risk of disappearing forever from existence. These are just a few examples of the myriad environmental catastrophes that are unfolding around the globe. "Believing" in the global warming rhetoric makes people feel good, it makes them feel that they are believing in something good. Perhaps it has helped by making some changes to certain specific elements of the human boot stomp of Earth. But by focusing so much attention and faith into a single factor, and moreover by promoting a dogmatic nearly religious zeal about the sufficiency and necessity of that single factor as an explanation and moral imperative, this 'movement' may well have prevented other equally important issues from receiving proper attention. ADDIT: as far as the sufficiency, validity, reliability and soundness of the 'science' underlying simple anthropogenic models, the simple points raised here in this readily accessible source are worth considering, and can easily lead a dispassionate reader to a long string of additional materials. None of which I endorse; but simply raise to point out that, the general contention that "there is no debate, there is no basis for any doubt" are not sound.

I think you are missing the main point. I have not "denied" anything you posit (except see below about the idea that the speed of change is necessarily outside the range of past variability). What I have pointed out is that: (a) Earth's climate has always been in a state of some change. ( any anthropogenic forces (and there are far more than simply 'carbon emissions' ranging from cow farts/belches, to the sum total of warm-bodied critters on the planet, to changes in distributions of biomes, to myriad other pollutants, and even potentially the total heat retention of cities and other builtup areas) that have been acting in recent centuries to influence Earth's climate have necessarily been 'inserted' into those pre-existing dynamic systems. -> (d) Thus, in addition to sorting out how any specific form of anthropogenic footprint has influenced climate, and how those various factors may have interacted with one another, truly useful models must take account of the complex interactions of those anthropogenic forces with the pre-existing dynamic natural Earth systems. If you are aware of a model that actually attempts to do this, I would love to read it. Moreover, the following is, as I understand it, speculation. Debates about the rapidity of past climate events continue as I understand it and the possibility that the current pace of change in those variables that are clearly being observed to change is significantly different than any previous event is questionable as far as I know. If you have citations that demonstrate otherwise I would actually welcome the chance to read them. Moderating and slowly reducing the horrific human impact on the Earth's ecosystems is of vital importance. Reducing carbon-emissions is certainly a good thing, and I'm not opposed to that. However, a single-minded focus on the prevailing "carbon emission reduction" model, and especially the premature conclusion that "Aha! We got this figured out! Its all about carbon-emissions" runs the risk of being only partially correct and misguiding efforts or preventing a more complete understanding of the complexities. Fundamentally, the ultimate problem is that there are ~7 billion humans (plus ~25 billion chickens, ~1 billion cattle, and several hundreds of millions each of pigs, sheep, goats, etc.) living on Earth, most of whom aspire to a high standard of living approximating that of the Western countries, and some of whom live those sorts of highly impactful and wasteful lifestyles with glee.

Correlation does not equal causation, and especially when that correlation is observed on the tail end of a temporal sequence involving what is confidently known to be a complex multi-variable interaction which has shown even greater variance through time than that which is putatively explained by the correlation. There is little question that anthropogenic forces have dramatically altered many of Earth's ecosystems and probably influenced long-term global processes such as climate. However, whatever influence anthropogenic forces have had, they have been exerted into a system which was already highly variable and dynamic before those anthropogenic forces came into play. I have yet to see a single "global warming" scare model which even acknowledges this basic undeniable fact, much less attempts to account for it in a theoretical or quantitative way. Your insistence that it is "real" is no different than a religious believers insistence that what they believe in is "real," and unbelievers are consequently heretical. ADDIT: just to be clear. I am a huge environmentalist, having spent many sum total years in the wilderness. I am an advocate of reducing the human ecological footprint by any viable and reasonable means which promises to actually benefit the Earth's ecosystems--and especially the myriad species that are presently at risk of extinction. Reduction of any pollutants, carbon emissions included is generally a good thing. But none of these ethical and practical convictions leads me to believe without critical thinking in an finalistic and dogmatic explanation which lends itself all to easily to simple, and potentially useless or even misguided 'solutions.'

Earth's climate has been changing forever. In the past, long before humans developed permanent settlements, much less industry, there is irrefutable evidence that Earth's climate has fluctuated quite wildly. This presents a very important complication to any efforts to explain contemporary climatic fluctuations in terms of exclusively and completely anthropogenic forces such as industrial carbon emissions. The basic ignorance of this fact among proponents of simplified "global warming" scare talk (which is in fact, political advocacy for a particular segment of special interests) is one of the most breathtakingly painful and disappointing testiments to human intellectual laziness and dogma ever. It rivals historical superstitious beliefs that led to things like the Salem Witch Trials, the European Wars of Religion, and the decimation of indigenous populations by conquest that extends back to the beginnings of civilization. And yet, it is so normal, so pervasive, and so widely accepted.

Isn't it also true that, relativistic effects are relatively 'trivial' at lower velocities/time-space whatever thingamajig? As far as the objects colliding, I don't get what you guys are getting at there, but lets take one I do get: time dilation as a result of different velocity of two entities. I was under the impression that some of the earliest 'proof' of relativity was derived from comparisons between atomic clocks that were left behind at the airport and one inside of a very fast aircraft. Over a sufficiently long journey and at high enough speeds, very tiny disparities (thousands of seconds?) accumulated showing that time had actually slowed down every so slightly for the aircraft. In the "real world" in which human perception evolved, variance that small is irrelevant so it is perhaps not surprising if we are not very good at understanding it, and it is hard to demonstrate. And by the way, what is the "LHC?" Is that some distinctive phase of the very early universe? Or is it the something Hadron Collider?

Well, one thing I think we can be sure of: whatever elements might facilitate the molecules that are essential to life as we know it, meaning self-replicating (i.e., not crystals which do replicate but not through a self-driven process) 'vehicles' for packets of chemical information, they will have to exhibit similar capacity to form into complex reactive and catalytic biopolymers; in the case of Earth these being nucleic acids and proteins the basis for all life, including prions, which like viruses are not 'technically' alive. My limited mastery of organic chemistry does not allow me to speculate what possible configurations of organic elements could suffice in place of good old carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorous, etc., as the building blocks of life. But I think the available options would be fairly limited simply from the standpoint of what would allow for the sort of chemical structures that could serve a similar role as do the nucleic acids and proteins. I think there has been speculation that, in some exotic context, "silicon-based" life could (maybe) evolve, but I have no idea if that is pure fantasy or not. It seems unlikely that there is much in terms of unknown elements to be discovered out there in the cosmos, though I suppose if the unknown elements are organic and thus found only as traces in the large structures that can be spectroscopically examined, it is possible, though very unlikely. So, I think it is reasonable to operate from the hypothesis that, life anywhere else in the cosmos is likely to be based on a very similar chemical basis as life on Earth.

This is largely what I had in mind in response to the OP too. I don't think there necessarily is an upper limit on how big a rocky planet can be and still evolve to have conditions that favor the evolution of life. There may however be a lower size limit, because in the absence of plate tectonics, volcanism, or a magnetosphere it has been argued to be unlikely that a permanent atmosphere or surface water will form, both of which are regarded as essential to the development of life. Beyond that I think what matters most is: tidally locked orbits are unlikely to be conducive to life and the 'goldilocks' region around a star (not too hot, not too cold) is important. However, in some special instances, sufficient heat to maintain liquid water could come from other sources. For example, they hypothesize that Europa may have liquid oceans under its all ice surface as a result of tidal flexing by Jupiter's gravity. The other thing obviously is that the planet absolutely must have a suitable mixture of the organic elements that are essential to carbon-based life (unless of course you want to consider the possibility of life based on other elements, which is pretty much pure science fiction I think).

Absolutely!

Damn you Shifty! Another game that I must buy now . . . Well said Magnemoe! It is always difficult to generalize about a "population" (all the solar systems in the Milky Way for example) if you only have a sample size of one (Sol system). I seem to recall that some of these exoplanet discoveries seemed to rather dramatically defy traditional wisdom about how solar systems tend to form. Specifically, I seem to recall that a few of those exoplanets are enormous gas giants that are rather close to their parent star, and revolving rather quickly. I debated doing my major in geology instead of anthropology; I finally decided humans are more complicated so go with that (silly decision in retrospect). I envy the unborn who will one day get to do extrasolar geology, xenogeology or, astrogeology whatever the heck you want to call it.

Wow. Had no idea people were doing this sort of thing. You guys are true pioneers! I'm curious; I would think that permits and licensing and so forth to launch rockets into sub-orbital trajectories are a real problem?

Who is Damion and why do we want him to come back? Ah heck who cares, excuse to post cute critters . . .

Well, humans rendezvousing with an asteroid and taking samples from it is an historic first, no matter which way you slice it . . . get it! _slice!_ . . . as in slide the asteroid! . . . what is it about asteroids and bad puns?

You're not an engineer are you Sarge?

Not surprising . . . Thankfully nobody died, the facility has been spared destruction, and a University is making good use of it. Hopefully the real lessons of the experiments can be edifying to all: closed self-sustaining artifical life support systems are still just a reasonable theory, not the sort of rock-solid, time-tested technological and operational system(s) that could form the basis for developing extraterrestrial colonies. In ten or twenty years time, when a half-dozen or more experiments like this have been successfully carried out, and shown conclusively that it is possible for a small group of humans to survive if not thrive in such an enclosed ecosystem (and without external supplementation or assistance), then discussions of Martian colonies won't be quite so absurd.

Is that a game interface you're showing us a picture of? What game? I believe the prevailing theories about the formation of Earth and the solar system have been revised rather dramatically since my days in the geology class room, so I'm probably wise to just keep my mouth shut. Would be very interested to hear what anyone with some expertise has to say though!

Only two things I can say to this! 1. I personally doubt it. 2. We all gotta die sometime! Sure, there is a chance that us going interstellar will get us all killed. Seems irrelevant though, cause you know if anyone makes a breakthrough that shows clearly that a warp drive is definitely possible in 10 or 15 years that every government, every corporation, every Tom, Dick and Harry is gonna want in on the action. For one thing, the capacity to safely and rapidly send vehicles to the remote parts of our solar system could revolutionize industry and science too. And then of course there is the irresistible lure of other stars. If there is one thing that you can say for absolute certain about humanity: we are intrepid. There could be fleets of intergalactic aliens threatening to invade if we fire up our first FTL drive and there will still be groups/govts who will not be able to resist the temptation. I still say warp drive would be the single best thing humanity ever accomplished; but I see the point of the killing star scenario. It is true that it is a possibility, perhaps even a strong possibility!

Yeah, it would be way cool if it included the more strategic 'program management' elements that is seems to focus on with more 'hands-on' control and physics like in KSP. But, maybe that is down the road in 10 years when, after both KSP and SPM are triple-platinum smash hits, Squad and Matrix team up for the Big Momma of space program sims

I really just cannot believe that anyone of a reasonable and friendly mindset would have anything to sincerely complain about this game at this point. I call BS. Some people just like to troll, esp. if everybody else going over the bridge is a nice guy/gal.