lajoswinkler

You forgot about photons, too. If the system has chaos, the matter inside will radiate low energy photons and if the system is isolated, they will continuously reflect into the matter and keep it at the same temperature. Even if the particle collisions were perfectly non-elastic, joined particles would emit a photon. If the system was just closed in a zero kelvin universe, photons would carry away the heat and, gradually, the matter inside would cool down until it has zero point energy. In our universe away from any clump of matter such as a star or a planetary body, it would cool down to the background temperature as it gets into thermal radiative equilibrium.

No, it would not. Vapor is not gas. You're vaguely remembering triple point and you can't have air ("normal ATM") in your vessel for that. For water to exist in a triple point you need to ensure 273.16 K and its partial pressure (also the total pressure in the vessel, as water is the only thing inside) needs to be 611.73 Pa. Then all of the three phases can coexist. There is no nullification of energy in any case. Energy can not be destroyed in a thermodynamic system. If we ignore insane quantum phenomena that might occur during absolutely insane googol year experiments, and presume this is an isolated system with liquid water only, the water will remain liquid. This thought experiment is lacking important detail, though. "A cup of water" - what does that mean? Water as in wet liquid thing or water as a compound? Is there anything else in the vessel, like atmosphere?

So, this is not "politics"?

I agree. It's really not funny.

This is great news!

It's still being heavily designed, but now I'm concentrating on the power generation. There's one smaller fission reactor just above the LV-NB so that all the nasty particles are kept as far away as possible from the crew. So far I've got 10800 m/s in current configuration. Leaving the science equipment module, main heatshield and lander behind, it should jump close to 12500 or more, but I'm still not satisfied.

2.5 m nuclear thermal engine, such as the stockalike KSPX's LV-NB which is basically two 1.25 m engines' power in one. Associated LF tanks, too. Also, ability to create electricity using fission. Perhaps integrated into nuclear engines, perhaps as separate nuclear reactors. And at last, useful radiators. No space mission can go without radiators. Even the real lunar rovers had them. They should be obligatory for reactors and perhaps even nuclear engines. Magnetometer and, for its use, magnetic fields around planetary bodies. Geiger counter and radiation fluxes around Jool, emanating from Kerbol, etc. KAS/KIS style pipes/ports and struts. Set of hinges. 2.5 m rotating thingy for centrifuges. Sepratron II, something like KOSMOS ones. The ones we have now are too weak for larger stages.

That's not how personhood is defined. Matter being replaced is a normal thing of living and metabolism. It's the information (matter arrangement) what is the important thing.

Yeah, I've noticed the station's name few days ago when I watched the famous Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis car whistles.

Actually they do have them stored in "buffers" so they can "compare the patterns" in case something goes wrong. It's called technobabble. Doesn't mean a thing and it's invented to keep the TV show running.

How much time are we talking about? Thousand years? Billion? Billion ages of current universe? One mole of them? A googol years? Universe would end way before that, so you need to establish more detailed parameters. Realistically speaking, it will remain liquid. The container is not only closed, it's isolated. Matter or energy - no escape.

Yes, because teleportation requires destroying the original to read its information. This is not a subject of debate. It's obvious and an old thing. But yeah, it's not gonna happen. Energy required is insane, as well as information storage. Not to mention the key, natural law impossibility - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

Yes, this is 1.0.2. I hope 1.0.3. won't break things, but if it does, all of the mods I'm using will take ages to update, so I'll probably stick with 1.0.2. I'm gonna have to use Hyper Edit to place all those probe landers at Urlum's system back. Yeah, me too. I'm designing the ship to be more bulky this time. There shouldn't be any problems.

Tested it. It's not perfect, of course, but it does work. Is there any chance this could be used on Taurus HCV and HGR mods?

Are you sure it is?

You deserve rep. I'm checking this ASAP. BTW what happens when two reflective surfaces meet? This?

If there is indeed cryovolcanism occuring, then the white deposit is salts. Ice simply can't survive there. It would have to be ejected as decent amounts of liquid water, not few kilogrammes as estimated and it would have to occur basically now, geologically speaking. A very tenuous plume, carrying very small amount of very fine salty (doesn't have to be NaCl, of course) powder could be active every few decades. Remember that this is an ancient, small body. It is not molten inside. Such time spans and such small amounts of higher albedo deposits means the depositions itself are very poor and very rare.

If you took 10 litres of water and keep removing only the salty water until you got to 10 millilitres, sample of that would look like this. The sample actually starts looking like mud, and you can see various stuff swimming and floating in it. Phytoplankton, zooplankton, pollen, quartz grains, etc. Try to tell that seawater is homogeneous to a marine biologist and they'll look at you like you're insane. Seawater is not just salty water.

Because we're a crappy species, that's why. Whatever good we do, we spoil it.

To truly understand this, you need to peek into the cellular mechanisms. Histology, physiology and molecular biology. Then you will see that our current technology is still vastly inferior in most cases. We're talking about elaborate molecular machines and even some sort of analog computers inside us, all connected by chemical signals in a macroscopic body. Billions of years of development. Technology has lots of potential, even more than our own biology offers, but it's still inferior. Even with its development, it will have to piggyback on biology.

But what could power this cryovolcanism? Ceres is not being tidally squeezed by anything, and it's very tiny therefore can't be very hot inside. I doubt it even has any decent stratification. Uranium concentrates?

Doesn't matter. My point is that this is bright rocky ejecta. That can be thousands of years old. We're talking about geologically almost nonprocessed material. The Moon had its fair share of geology. For this to be water ice it would have to be a very recent occurence and the odds of that happening on several places on Ceres are negligible.

Exaggerated and false. That's NASA's PR right there.

Heterogeneous, absolutely no doubt about that. If you can see discrete pieces of stuff in a sample using a light microscope, even using ultramicroscopy, the sample is heterogeneous. There is all kids of tiny stuff, even visible to a human eye, in a sample of ocean water. Whoever says differently needs to get their facts straight. This is really not something any expert doubts.

Ceres is well inside the frost line. Yes, that could be even ice, but what are the odds something impacted it very recently (few months at most)? They are pathetic, negligible. I still think this is just bright ejecta. I'm trying not to think anthropocentric here, that's all. Hubble made one but it's quite useless. Also I think NASA processed one Dawn made - dig through last 10-15 pages.