lajoswinkler

Jebediah riding the ALCOR lander above Hale, satellite of Sarnus (Outer Planets Mod). (thanks to esinohio for removing the in-game notification)

It's not that simple. Genetically modified means that you take gene(s) from one organism and insert them into the genome of your experimental organism, or you shut down or activate the genes present in the organism's genome. It is a shortcut. What you're describing is a long cycle of breeding and selecting which is slow, tedious and has a pretty decent capacity of going wrong or into a dead end. By gene manipulation the whole process can be incredibly shortened and it is highly controllable. You know exactly what you've done and where, so if any problems arise, you know what to fix. That's probably the best thing about this technique. Old selective breeding has accounted for the hybrids humanity used up until 20th century. Nowdays we use mutants made by sped up evolution in gamma ray gardens, neutron fluxes and cytostatic and mutagen chemicals. You take lots of seeds and you wreck havoc with their genome like that, then you plant them and select the plants with the traits you want, if there are any in the batch. Then you breed them, select, breed, select. Then some cross pollination. Breed, select, breed, select. Then some gamma rays or cytostatics. Wash and rinse, repeat until you get what you want. The product's genome is disfigured, full of hidden mutations (possibly exprimed as dangerous compounds in the long run, contributing to some types of cancer), but the phenotype is plump, full of nutrients and yummy. And nobody cares because hippies don't know how it's been done for at least 60 years and greenies think it's made in "grandma's garden, therefore it's yummy". But change one or two pinpointed genes so you know exactly what you did and all the sudden everyone loses their minds! It's "unnatural"! Such is the human stupidity. Will you excuse me, I'm off to my lab to steal your idea.

You have this nasty habit of endorsing and promoting crappy stuff on KSP forum. What you wrote there is ridiculous beyond comprehension to anyone with the slightest working knowledge of basic laws of nature. Energy conversion efficiency is always less than 1.

Not good or bad just like gravity isn't good or bad. There is nothing in particular such organisms have in common except the fact they are transgenic. They don't have a "GM gene" as I've heard dumb people say. You can alter an organism in such fashion so that it produces something nasty or to be a high yield agricultural plant. The technique is the key to our survival. This is not a matter of politics. It's agriculture and nutrition.

That's a good question. The ship has few detachable parts. It basically carries a space station and a lander. And an enormous shield. So every time I dumped those, I'd get lots of extra dv. But just to be sure, I've launched a small resupply probe. I didn't want any nasty surprises being all blind about the reach of this vessel. Indeed, but it's getting tiresome. I'd like to wrap it up, but if the fuel allows it, I'll go to Eeloo, too.

Let's go to Hale now. Below 8 km you can not use normal time warp, so the descent is tedious unless you point towards the ground and fire engines. A lander is not needed; Kerbals can use their jetpacks to land and return to orbit, but this way you get to transfer three of them at the same time. Landing was very precise. In fact, it was similar to docking with the ground. Bob went to EVA first. A Kerbal can jump 92.8 m above ground. Great thing about Hale is that if you flip the camera into orbital mode, you can easily float "next" to it instead "above", while watching the stuff stucked on the ground. Although there was nothing on the Kron 3A probe to pick up, seeing it after few years was interesting. While playing the the ground anchor, Bob accidentally launched the probe. It landed 2 km away after rolling for quite some time. What is up, where is down? Who cares? Next stop were both poles. Southern, first. It was closer. Here is Jebediah, being one with the universe. Southern pole is surrounded by tall mountains. Sarnus' rings make it look like Hale has an atmosphere, through which the gas giant is poorly visible. Floating boulder of Hale was there, too. The pole itself was hidden under a lot larger boulder. Coasting to north pole. North pole is also dark, but features a pyramid. Bob never stepped on it. Rendezvous with Kron 3 was very easy. Straight launch, approach and some 20 m/s braking. The question remains - to go or not to go to Eeloo? There is one probe on its surface.

Yes, do a mission. The more the merrier. Hale is difficult to catch. Its sphere of influence is so incredibly tiny that even when falling from Ovok's orbit you have like less than two minutes to brake, and that's not easy with high Isp and low TWR ships. Here's Hale among the rings. Eeloo is on the left. In fact, the ship was on a collision course and braked half way to the ground, and then established a circular orbit. Few m/s is all it takes to enter orbit. The view truly is spectacular. In the distance, a more familiar world is visible. That little dot below the K is Kerbin.

And here's one more example of a raped verb in English language. To believe. Sadly, the issue has spread to other languages, too. Belief in supernatural is irrational, based on zero facts. You don't believe in spaceflight. You know it works. You have the proofs, both theoretical and empirical. Also, while we should respect people and their right to have an opinion, we don't need to respect those opinions. People have rights. Opinions don't. All facts should be opened to test, and opinions and beliefs especially. Punishing the mocking of beliefs is not the same as punishing hate speech towards people who endorse them. First thing is something dictators enforce, and the second thing is restricting the freedom of speech so that it doesn't cross the freedom of healthy social life of others.

And yet there's lots of people in the photo who just don't give a rat's ass. -.-

Eagle, Freedom or GalaxyOne... Who came up with these names?

This is one of those threads which inevitably end in casualties.

As a TAC-n00b I had no idea all of the waste products actually automatically get dumped. The container are there only to provide a buffer for recyclers, if you have any. Freezing four Kerbals might therefore be seen as a stupid idea, but there was barely any food left before resupplying so all in all, it came out useful. Kron 3 has successfuly entered an orbit around Ovok. Few hours after, landing procedure started. It is very easy to overshoot your target on Ovok, due to its weak gravity field. Almost 30 minutes after undocking, the team was on the surface in front of the Kron 3B probe. Bob did the first steps. Slate in the sky. One of his first mistakes was to jump. 43.4 metres into the air. That didn't stop him from fooling around in the fluffy terrain. Jebediah placed the flag. Kron 3B probe has one very important device to pick up. Here's Bob removing the RPWS antenna. Stumbling back. There was even a boulder some 2.4 km away. Easily accessible using a jetpack. Before leaving this spot, one photo for the press. Because Kron's lander is a vessel powerful enough, two more hops were made. One to north, one to south pole. You'll notice the undulations in the terrain. Seismometer reported sine waves. I don't recommend fooling around on the south one. Terrain has breaking points where Kraken lurks. Hopping to the north pole. Jeb doing his thing. At this time of Ovok's month, north pole offers a very nice sight. No glitches reported. Both poles are very dark with high contrasts. Landing is not easy without proximity detectors. Lander has later returned. Curious enough, it takes some 90 m/s to turn inclination for 90°.

Kron 3 has left its central centrifugal module in the form of a station above Tekto. The station has TAC devices for life support and water, one instrument and an RTG unit. There are two docks on it and a tiny amount of monopropellant. Large radiator array has been left for the ship. After restrutting the ship once again, Bill went to the back of the ship where the nuclear reactor is and peeked over the shield. Bill now has a brand new tan. Escaping Tekto. Back in Sarnus' orbit, the ship did a rendezvous with two older probes that have arrived there months before Kron 3. Food was running low. There is plenty of fuel and food on those probes so future rendezvous could be made before leaving home. Next target is Ovok, the ball of fluff. As Kron 3 lacks the main shield, aerobraking in Sarnus' atmosphere is out of the question, so I've chosen the gravity assisted braking using Slate. Additional orbit correction was done in periapsis of Slate. The ship will soon enter Ovok's sphere of influence. Food is no longer an issue, but waste still is. An urgent one.

Money.

Really? You're spending time questioning the portrayal of the laws of physics in a beaten-to-death ancient fantasy franchise? Really?

If anyone of you posts a photo of a gray alien, I swear I'm gonna come to your house and smash your computer.

Whole cases for cobalt-60 cameras are made out of it. The heavier the nucleus is, the better it attenuates gamma and x-rays. Uranium does not create enormous flakes as iron does, effectively exposing more of itself and ultimatively ruining itself, but it neither gains a stable passivated layer like aluminium. It's something in between. Freshly cast is VERY heavy and if it wasn't so hard (6 by Mohs, more than steel!), you'd think it's an unusually dense lead by its surface. Being a very similar to any typical rare earth element, it's subjectible to attack by moist air. This is how it looks after a while. You can see the dioxide layer. It's best to keep it under argon or in vacuum, but kerosene or inert mineral oil work, too. Just like for sodium, except uranium is nowhere near reactive as any alkali metal. DU is therefore never used pure. Those penetrating bullets are alloy of DU and usually tiny percentage of titanium. Other than penetrators, nuclear weapons and radiation shields, I'm not immediatelly aware of any other use of elemental uranium. Power generation uses its dioxide as it's very inert.

No, you are absolutely right. Its radioactivity is negligible compared to the chemical toxicity. If you eat its salts you can say goodbye to your kidneys. And life. LOL

His progress seems to be too slow. I'm kind of tired of youtubers who make KSP look like incredibly difficult game which can give satisfaction only when you explode stuff on the launchpad. Hopefully he'll get better with KSP.

The sound of hitting is so bennyhillian.

Looks like someone forgot about Newton's third law. For every action there's an opposite reaction. If you act with a force on a shield, the shield will react with the equal and opposite force to you. That means that even if you aren't sprinkled by blast particles, you will get kicked into the air like a ragdoll. Sounds like crap to me, and news designed for people whose only "scientific" knowledge comes from SF movies.

Of course it won't produce a chain reaction today, but it will generate heat. TV-sized lump probably won't become dangerous unless shielded by asbestos or something similar. Sun-sized... oh yeah. It would turn into a molten ball. It should even fission-explode because of the enormous pressure in the core. I'd say it would go nova. As a reagent, uranium is used in the depleted form. Such compounds are poisonous like any other heavy metal compounds (thallium, mercury, lead, silver, barium, ...) but don't require special shielding against radiation. They can just stay on your shelf in your lab in the reagent bottle. I meant a ball or uranium, not a plate. Ball of uranium of 1 m diameter ("size of a TV") would have nearly 10 tonnes and its surface area is minimal. 0.1 W/t is a rough estimate for even depleted uranium, meaning our ball would produce approx. 1 watt of power. That is safe. Phew. Have you accounted for the fact that uranium is a very efficient radiation shield? Also, the main problem with a 1 metre uranium ball in your room would be the fact its surface would become dusty with oxide. It's a chemically far more reactive metal than iron. That dust would soon get everywhere.

Bill setting the neutron counter experiment before lander ingress. Final checkups before liftoff. Liftoff from Tekto is one of the most difficult things with OPM and FAR being installed. Rendezvous and docking with Kron 3. Upon docking, it was realized that the amount of poop on the ship is so high that 4 Kerbals will need to be returned to the cryonic chamber. That will give Jebediah, Bob and Bill the opportunity to finish the mission before going to cryo-sleep, too. Next move is assembling the station around Tekto, leaving it and then probably rendezvous with those two resource probes being launched into Sarnusian orbit few years ago.

If you want A or B or C, then you shouldn've have used inclusive poll options. It will skew your results. I use optimal approach. If Mun can be used in an optimal manner, I use Mun. Same goes for other bodies.

Natural uranium meaning the isotopic content, 0.72% of fissile radioisotope. Uranium in nature appears as dioxide, uranyl compounds, vanadates, phosphates, silicates, all in combination with earth alkali elements. Oklo reactors show what happens when you concentrate a bit the compounds. Natural uranium metal ball the size of a TV would get hot very fast and would not make a healthy addon for a living room.