PakledHostage

This, to me, is the amazing and beautiful thing about evolution: That somewhere along the line our ancestors clicked over a hump and diverged towards the type of intelligence that allows us to rationalize as successfully as we do. Science is about asking questions and seeking answers based on evidence rather than faith. It is about using the gift that we've been given, whether one believes that it was given by a creator or by blind luck. There are multiple streams of evidence for evolution. Whether it be comparative anatomy, fossil records or the more recent DNA evidence for it, they are all consistent. How anyone could deny the validity of evolution in the face of such broad evidence is beyond me.

Fair enough, but you don't need a burning bush or whatever to tell you that the circumference of a circle is 3 and a bit times the diameter. You can arrive at a reasonable approximation for Pi via nothing more than a simple experiment.

I am curious where you're getting your information on Ross 248's close approach, and why you chose to necro a 4 month old thread for that matter? The best information that I could find says that Ross 248 will only approach to 3.024 LY of the sun in 36000 years time. It will be more distant than that again by 50000 years from now. AFIK, the star that will make the closest known approach to the Sun is Gliese 710, but it won't reach its closest proximity (possibly within 1 light year) until 1.4 million years from now.

Well thank dog for that!

My wife throws pots... But only when she's really mad. Seriously though, I agree that defense and food production would be the highest priority for any organized group after such a catastrophe. As Peadar1987 pointed out, a Chicxulub size impact would be initially survivable by millions of people around the world but the after effects would be devastating to the remaining population. Stockpiles of things like machines, tools, books, food, medicine, etc. would go a long way towards ensuring the survival of human civilization, but it wouldn't be a pleasant time for anyone to be alive. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle did a pretty good job, I think, of describing the initial period of havoc following a comet impact in Lucifer's Hammer. But heck, an event like that might be the SCA guys time to shine if they manage to survive until after the NRA yahoos run out of ammo...

Support for contracts is on my todo list. As lame as it sounds, my first priority is just to get the mod's various "public faces" reflecting the fact that it works in v0.24 of the game so that it doesn't look like I've abandoned the project. I'm a bit busy in life outside of KSP right now so it is taking a bit of time. Please bear with me. I am away on vacation for the next 10 days and then I've got family visiting from out of town. Mid September is when rainy weekends typically start to rear their ugly heads again in my part of the world so I'll have more time to work on developing a contracts class for the plugin then.

Hey, I was starting to miss Pavel... He's like a crazy aunt that is fun to have around.

Sorry. Although I haven't yet downloaded v0.24 of the game, I just assumed that the current version of the mod already works with KSP v0.24 because I am not hearing a lot of noises from the user base. I will do my best to download the latest update and rebuild the plugin for that version in the next day or so. If it does already work with v0.24 of the game, then could someone please let me know and I will update the title of this thread and Curse.com.

Fair enough, but you also said that humans couldn't live underground in hastily built bunkers where they would ride out the immediate negative effects of the comet or asteroid impact. You claimed, despite the evidence to the contrary, that we couldn't hide underground like our mammalian ancestors because mines and underground bunkers are too unpleasant. My point, going all the way back to my original response to KASAspace that you first took exception to, was that the conditions post Chicxulub would have been survivable for properly equipped humans because multitudes of animals and plants survived that event without any technology. They had to rely on their existing adaptations. We, on the other hand, have technology that allows us to live in and adapt to a variety of harsh environments. We would also know about an impending impact long enough in advance that we could stockpile resources to allow a group of survivors to muddle through. A stockpile of books, machines, tools, medicine, fuel and food would go a long way towards getting a fairly modern society back on its feet again quickly after such an event. It wouldn't be pleasant for anyone, but human life and civilization could be reasonably expected to go on after a Chicxulub size impact.

Erm, sorry to burst YOUR bubble, but even chipmunk size mammals (among other classes or organisms) are considered to be complex organisms. Most complex organisms don't enjoy asphyxiation, starvation or being burned, yet those organisms that survived the Chicxulub impact did so without any technology. We have technologies that include hydroponics, animal husbandry, etc. As peadar1987 pointed out, we wouldn't have to live there for years. The "refugees" would only have to survive just long enough to wait out the firestorms, secondary impacts from debris kicked up by the primary impact, earthquakes and tsunamis. That is far from being beyond the realm of possibility. People work in mines and survive there just fine. Heck, there were the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days in 2010 with very little in the way of creature comforts. Certainly there would be massive extinctions and the vast majority of humanity would die off but some people would survive to restart a civilization.

On what basis do you say we wouldn't we survive an impact similar to the Chicxulub impact? Complex organisms like birds, reptiles, mammals, flowering plants, conifers, etc. all survived that impact just fine. And without any technology. Chances are that we'd see an object like that coming some time before it hit. We may not be able to do anything to prevent it hitting, but we'd know well in advance that it was coming and would probably even know where on the surface it would impact. Consider, for example, comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring. It was discovered a year and a half before its closest approach to Mars this coming October. Were something like it to be discovered to be on a collision course with the Earth, we'd have a year and a half to prepare. That's not a lot of time to convert underground mines into bunkers stockpiled with books, machines, livestock, food, fuel, etc. but you can bet it would get done. Probably it would be a very ugly period of mayhem, wars and lawlessness necessitating the imposition of marshal law, but some of humanity would be able to ride it out underground just as our mammalian ancestors likely did 66 million years ago.

So you bumped a 9 month old thread to make an ignorant and arguably racist post? Classy... The irony is that India does feed billions of people. It probably even feeds you. It is the second largest agricultural producer overall in the world and the second largest producer of rice and wheat (Ref: Agriculture in India). Your location tag says you live in Connecticut. The United States has slums and poverty too, yet it also spends billions on a space program (not to mention its military). If you are going to publicly cast judgement on India for its space program, maybe you should check the facts and consider them in context first.

How about this: Since you are so familiar with thermodynamics and entropy, please explain to us, using those concepts, how a random dust cloud can't pull itself together into a planet with an uncountable amount of life forms. I am sure that many of us here on this forum would be happy to peer review your argument. So far you've done nothing more than wave your hands. Why should we take your word as gospel? We need to see some science to back it up.

Thanks for that link! I love the paragraph in Isaac Asimov's introduction:

The important point is that people should understand the conventions used in the forecasts that they are reading. Environment Canada has an entire web page dedicated to defining their "weather elements and when they are included in the forecast". Environment Canada's definition for "chance of precipitation" is the same as that quoted by softweir as the UK Met office's definition. I am sure that other countries' national weather services also have similar web pages and similar definitions. Dumbing down the conventions, whether it be by the popular media or by the weather services themselves (don't get me started again on wind chill...) just leads to misinterpretation and opens the door to willful misrepresentation of what the models predict/don't predict.

I think that would depend on where you live. Where I grew up, a 60% chance of rain meant that there was a 40% chance of it being sunny all day because it was an arid region and precipitation was mostly as a result of localized convective activity. On the other hand, where I live now, a forecast of 60% chance of rain usually means that it is going to rain solidly for 60% of the day and be cloudy for the remainder. If you read the definition of what 60% chance of rain means on the Environment Canada website, it is closer to the UK Met office's definition that Softweir quoted. In reality on Canada's west coast, it almost never works out that way. If they say 60% chance of rain, you're not going to see the sun and you are definitely going to get wet if you go outside.

I think you need to go inside. Clearly the heat has fried your brain... Why would meteorologists lie? Heck, why would you say that it is 45°C when others have already pointed out to you in another thread that your thermometer's reading of 45°C is invalid because it was sitting in the sun? In my experience, meteorologists speak in probabilities. For example they might say that there's a 30% chance of a thunderstorm. And since thunderstorms are localised, there may indeed be thunderstorms just not in your immediate area. I am sure you can find a weather radar site for your local area online. Why not have a look to see if there's anything going on out there before accusing the meteorologists of lying or of incompetence.

While we're on the topic, I wonder if someone here with some expertise in optics and CCDs could comment on this thread: Longer exposure & lower ISO or shorter exposure & higher ISO - what gives better results when photographing stars? The answer given by jrista (the first answer) seems extremely thorough and knowledgeable but as often happens with our own threads on this forum, others jump in with their own comments that seem to contradict those of the guy who most seems to know what he's talking about. He goes into a fair amount of detail about photon shot noise and read noise. What I'm most curious about is the paragraph just above the first figure. He says these things without giving any explanation of the reasons behind them:

And there's always DeepSkyStacker or other stacking software like it that allow you to combine multiple images into a single stacked image. They don't require accurate tracking because the software automatically aligns the images based on the pattern of the stars. I was able to capture an image of comet ISON this past winter using just my DSLR camera. No tracker or telescope. I took several minutes worth of photos and then stacked them using DeepSkyStacker to reveal ISON. Stacking software basically uses statistical methods to reveal images contained within the sensor's noise, much like rolling a loaded dice lots of times reveals a bias while rolling it once does not. Edit: Ninja'd by K^2

Interesting that you should mention that. A DC-8 crashed in Guantanamo Bay in August 1993 after the flight crew botched the approach due to extreme fatigue. It is an infamous example of how flight crew fatigue can lead to accidents. I recall reading in one account that the captain actually experienced little micro sleeps during the approach that lead to lethargy and indifference about the fact that the approach was going very badly. Fortunately, all three people on board survived (it was a cargo flight). The accident report includes a transcript of an interview (on Page 51) with the captain (who was the pilot flying) talking about his fatigue during the approach:

UPDATE: I'll download v0.24 of the game later today and will have a look at how to implement a rudimentary contract for building a GNSS network. Maybe some of you here who have played the newest version of the game already can offer suggestions on how much reputation and money should be awarded for launching a constellation around Kerbin? Hopefully I'll have a new release of the mod ready for early next week (the week of July 28th). P.S. If someone wants to collaborate with me and take over development of a contract class for this mod, I'd be happy to consider it. Just send me a PM.

Oh, I see. Thank you. Bombastic rebuttals that don't contain any context or references are easily dismissed.

Lajoswinkler lives in one. What are your credentials to judge the validity of his remarks?

Thanks, Entropius, for jumping in to help out with the tech support! And Higgi91, you should also have a look at the first post in this thread. There is a FAQ and a couple of videos there that should be useful. Update for v0.24 of the game is imminent. It usually takes me a week or so to get around to it after I get my hands on a new version, but I am not one of those guys who downloads a new version of the game the second it is released.

I think you must mean it is going away from the camera? The bright bit near the top of the image is almost certainly Atlantis engulfed in plasma as it re-enters while the trail extending towards the bottom of the image is Atlantis's descent path up to the time of the photo. Also, space shuttles would re-enter in a rolled attitude to steepen their trajectory (i.e. the wing's lift was directed sideways not up). The roll would result in a cross-track velocity component but roll reversal maneuvers were used to "sway" the re-entry trajectory back and forth across the target landing site.