NFUN

-44 got put down, it's -45 now. -

tater, I'd argue that the fact that it's cheaper to rescue crew than to hire them is a positive. The game gives you two choices which both have advantages which can change over the course of a game: recruit crew for a lot of money quickly, or spend more time and effort in rescuing somebody cheaply. The game lets one earn the first few crewmembers by rescuing them, and after one has proved their worth they'd generally have enough money to hire new ones. It makes more sense than the alternative of having rescuing crew members be more expensive than just hiring new crew, as then there'd be little incentive to actually do the contract. Your points make sense though.

Is Jupiter a star? In any case, a binary star system is different in a few ways than binary planets. A binary planet system that is caused more because of a medium sized, distant moon would be less common than the same situation involving stars, such as the case with Jupiter and the Sun. The scales involve make the former less likely because such a situation would be, in the long term, less stable than the latter.

That day Earth will be a binary planet.

The theory that the extra gravity is provided by [relatively] normal baryonic matter is called MACHO, for Massive COmpact Halo Objects. In general, the theory of WIMPs, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, fits observations better than MACHO.

This might be better placed in the Science Labs. -There are zero interstellar flights coming into Earth, but returning vehicles do aerobrake. They kind of have to. Aerocapturing at Mars might be a better question. -There are several limits to Earths atmosphere, depending on the definition, but they are mostly arbritrary. The atmosphere slowly grows thinner as altitude increases, and depending on definition, it could be detected quite far, if only by escaping hydrogen. -Escape Velocity: 11.186 km/s Orbital Velocity for LEO: ~8km/s -Technically you are affected by every piece of matter in the Observable Universe's (possibly beyond, but probably not) gravity, but practically, in Interstellar space you orbit around the center of the galaxy if you are stable. -The ISS is 249 miles/400 km up, and stays at the altitude, with thrusters present to maintain the orbit. Countries involved with the program likely make decisions together. -Everybody has done stupid things, but I've never heard of any astronauts smuggling things, especially as extra weight is expensive. ... in space apparently has a few difficulties, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd tried it. -Treatment of crime in the station is also likely determined by a committee of the different nations involved, but nothing serious has ever happened, and I don't know what minor crimes could even happen up there. -SpaceX Dragon launches cost $57 million for example. The Apollo Program cost $150 billion, inflation adjusted, by 1973 IF there is a difference in information between my and Nova's post, trust him over me. I did this quick and dirty.

Cheaper almost always is worse, but the degree matters. When you bought or built your computer, how much did it cost? I'm assuming you aren't in a rush to upgrade it with a Titan GPU and the latest i7 even though they're better. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, and Ralathon argued that at this moment and for the near future, investing in vaults would provide a greater ROI on protection than extraterrestrial colonies-- why bother going to Mars when comparable safety is here at a fraction of the cost? We shouldn't necesarily begin colonizing the solar system now because it would cost a metric crapton of capital for no solid gains in a reasonable timespan. Give it a decade or two, I mean, look at 2005. How many private spaceflight companies comparable to those today existed? SpaceX is getting closer to being man-rated, and several other companies are on its heels. If Planetary Resources becomes successful, we could see an enormous decrease in costs of spaceflight. At some point we need to bite the costs and jump in, but it is up to debate if now is that time. - - - Updated - - - [citation needed]

I said any variation of it, which means no unjust comparisons to dictatorships, secret police or ruthless authoritarian regimes.

Using Godwin's Law, or any variation of it, automatically means you lose the argument, with few exceptions. And these terms are almost impossible to enforce. There would be nearly no way for Microsoft to find and disable pirated games unless a specific version became insanely famous, enough to attract a great deal of attention putting pressure on MS, and I doubt unauthorized hardware being disabled will be a thing. If it is, there'd be many ways around it. The privacy issues you've heard about almost certainly apply only to data uploaded onto the cloud, and it'd only be investigated if there was good suspicion that you had something illegal there, the same terms Google Drive and Dropbox have to cover their ass. Remember, Microsoft doesn't have much of a spine-- they always fold under public enmity, just look at anything about XBox, for example.

Please explicate. Also, when reading any statement involving science, you can mentally insert "as far as we know" to the end of it; I don't want to have to do it all of the time. Even those who fervently argue that something is impossible (such as K_2 and lajoswinkler) implicitly understand that they might be incorrect if everything we know is somehow proven wrong. However, just because nobody knows anything in absolute certainty doesn't mean you can dismiss observations by stating that scientists have been wrong before.

What? The hypothesis of eternal expansion has evidence behind it, and new evidence of dark energy suggests the expansion is accelerating and rather than stagnation and slow death, all of the Universe's matter will be ripped apart. Your statement is devoid of evidence, don't ignore science out of fear*. Hope for the best, but don't live in denial. I wish the Big Crunch would happen too, but data suggests that gravity isn't strong enough, and who knows if that would cause another Big Bang anyways? *applies to such scenarios as AGW, toxicity of common chemicals, etc - - - Updated - - - Entropy states that it will die in a way familiar to us. Even ignoring dark energy, the Universe is expanding and thus growing colder as energy gets more spread out. As matter is turned into energy via fusion, the Universe becomes emptier and eventually all of the stars will go out and the lifeless matter will decay. Every instant more energy becomes unusable and the cosmos become a little darker. When the last star has gone out and the great civilizations have fallen, the only hope for the Universe is a signal advertising Utopia.

In many fields of science the standard of certainty is five sigma, a one of 3.5 million chance of the data being a fluke. You might be right.

I'm with Ebert on this one. There's a reason you can rewatch it so many times.

Though I agree that 'geek' culture is a fad*, many people interested in geeky things probably don't know much about orbital mechanics or quantum physics or comic books or whatever specific area you like. It's a big tent, don't get hung up on purity tests. Also, we're getting a bit off topic; the thread is about "Best middle and worst movies". *I hate the aforementioned purity tests, but the Big Bang Theory? Really?

Unfortunately, the American way for coping with rural boredom is meth, and that never ends well. Just pick something you enjoy and become extremely good at it. An instrument, a sport, some field of science or history, or even KSP. It'll be fun being absurdly good at something relative to your peers when you finally see other people.

Best: Probably the Godfather, whichever of Tarantino's movies I'm in the mood for*, or the Room. Middle: Battlefield Earth. It didn't live up to its horrible rating, I didn't hate it, but I remember it. It was special because at all points it was overwhelmingly mediocre, each aspect 4 or 5 out of 10. The acting wasn't great, but wasn't hilariously bad, the plot was silly but not ridiculous, the effects completely unmemorable. At some points I was even slightly engaged. It was so bland as to be noteworthy. Worst: Freddy Got Fingered or Theodore Rex. The former because it was vulgar and just awful, the latter because I was thoroughly confused throughout the whole thing. *favorite movies, not best movies

If you care enough, try dual-booting it with Linux. It's a PITA to do and might not even work with your computer, but it will make KSP more stable.

"Heat it a little" is probably somewhat of an understatement. Thermodynamics is not on our side in this instance. As that is the methane combustion reaction in reverse, it would take as much energy as would be produced by burning methane with perfect efficiency, which obviously isn't attainable. In general, the less engineered and less complex the setup is, the lower the efficiency. In space, mass is everything, and it would be expensive to lug heavy reaction cells along for this purpose. It wouldn't really be necessary either, acting more as an inefficient battery than effective means of generating oxygen. Collecting heat is also a problem, as heat doesn't like to be concentrated, and intentionally retaining heat without, again, heavy ways to control it would probably end badly. Spaceships produce more heat than they know what to do with, and radiating it away is a better solution than using complex engineering to make it usable.

Some people do; many college courses likely teach about 50's culture, and even high school history classes spend time on the values expressed in the period's media. In any case, you are building a strawman. He already made an analogy, don't counter it with a similar but more extreme (50 years vs 400 years) example and present that as an argument.

Especially if she is a local and lives in Mexico, as Spanish has much stronger gender agreement than does English.

Does the Warp Drive also require constant power when operating, as inertia doesn't exist in hyperspace? And would we have to be wary of the *happy campers*?

Wikipedia has citations. He linked to Wikipedia. Therefore he linked to citations. QED.

I was just running off of your "To blathe" comment earlier.